----------|----- -|-----|----- ~ |-----|- - |- ---------------！----~ --|-|--------- THE STRENGTH OF BEING CLEAN. A STUDY OF THE QUEST FOR UNEARNED HAPPINESS. I wish in this address to make a plea for sound and sober life. I base this plea on two facts: to be clean is to be strong; no one can secure happiness without earning it. Among the inalienable rights of man —as our fathers have taught us — are these three: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” So long as man is alive and free, he will, in one way or another, seek that which gives him pleasure, hence life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are in essence the same. But the pursuit of happiness is an art in itself. To seek it is not necessarily to find it, and failure may destroy both liberty and life. Of some phases of this pursuit I wish to speak to-day. My message is an old one. If by good chance some part of it is true, this truth is as old as life itself. And if it be true, it is a message that needs to be repeated many times to each generation of men. 5 6 7 HE STREAMG ZTH OF BAE/AWG CLEAAW. It is one of the laws of life that each acquisition has its cost. No organism can exercise power with- out yielding up part of its substance. The physio- logical law of transfer of energy is the basis of human success and happiness. There is no action without expenditure of energy, and if energy be not expended, the power to generate it is lost. This law shows itself in a thousand ways in the life of man. The arm which is not used becomes palsied. The wealth which comes by chance weakens and destroys. The good which is unused turns to evil. The charity which asks no effort “cannot relieve the misery she creates.” The religion which another man would give us we cannot take as a gift. There is no Christliness without endeavour. The truth which another man has won from nature or from life is not our truth until we have lived it. Only that becomes real or helpful to any man which has cost the sweat of his brow, the effort of his brain, or the anguish of his soul. He who would be wise must daily earn his wisdom. The parable of the talents is the expression of this law, for he who adds not effort to power soon loses the power he had. The responsibility for effort rests with the individual. This need is the meaning of individuality, and by it each must work out his own salvation, with fear and trembling it may be sometimes, and all times with perseverance and patience. THE STREAVG 7"H OF BAE/NG CLEAAV. 7 The greatest source of failure in life comes from this. It is easier to be almost right than to be right; to wish, than to gain. In default of gold, there is always something almost as good, and which glitters equally. In default of possession, illusion can be had, and more cheaply. It is possession only which costs. Illusion can be had on easy terms, though the final end of deception is failure and misery. Happiness must be earned, like other good things, else it cannot be held. It can be deserved only where its price has been somehow paid. Nothing worth having is given away in this world, – nor in any other that we know of. No one rides dead- head on the road to happiness. He who tries to do so, never reaches his destination. He is left in the dumps. It is probably too much to say that all of human misery can be traced to the dead-head habit. Misery has as many phases as humanity. But if we make this statement negatively, it will not be far from the truth. No one is ever miserable who would truly pay the price of happiness. No one is really miserable who has not tried to cheapen life. The price which every good and perfect gift demands, we would somehow or other get out of paying. But we can never cheat the gods. Their choicest gifts lie not on the bargain counters. Our reward comes with our effort. It is part of the same 8 THE STREAVG 7"H OF BAEING CLEAAV. process. In this matter, man gets what he deserves, meted out with the justice of eternity. In the sense in which I shall use these terms, sorrow and misery are not the same thing. They are not on speaking terms with each other. True sorrow, the pain of loss, is a hallowed suffering. “For ever the other left,” is a necessity in a world which each one must leave as he entered it, — alone. And we would not have it otherwise, for there is in the nature of things no other possibility. So long as we live we must take chances. Sorrow is sacred. Misery is accursed. Sorrow springs from our relations to others. Misery we have all to ourselves. As real happiness is the glow which accompanies normal action, the reflex of the abundance of life, so is misery the shadow of dullness, the reflex of failing or morbid life. Misery is nature's protest against degeneration. * - Human misery may be a symptom, a cause, or an effect. It is an expression of degeneration, and therefore a symptom of mental and spiritual decay. It is a cause of weakness and discouragement, and therefore of further degeneration and deeper misery. It is an effect of degeneration, and behind personal degeneration lies a multitude of causes. None of its causes are simple. Some are subjective, the visible signs of weak mind or mean spirit. Some are objec- tive, the product of evil social conditions, to which IO 7"HE STREAVG 7"H OF BAE/AWG CLA2AAV. stronger for the next struggle. It was a fable of the Norsemen, that when a man won a victory over another, the strength of the conquered went over into his veins. This old fancy has its foundation in fact. Whoever has conquered fortune has luck on his side for the rest of his life. So adversity is good, if only we know how to take it. Shall we shrink under it, or shall we react against it 2 Shall we yield or shall we conquer To react against adversity is to make fortune our servant. Its strength goes over to us. To yield is to make us fortune's slave. Our strength is turned against us in the pressure of circumstances. A fa- miliar illustration of what I mean by reaction is this : Why do men stand upright? It is because the earth pulls them down. If a man yields to its attraction he soon finds himself prone on the ground. In this attitude he is helpless. He can do nothing there, so he reacts against the force of gravitation. He stands upon his feet, and the more powerful the force may be, the more necessary it is that the active man should resist it. When the need for activity ceases, man no longer stands erect. He yields to the force he has resisted. When he is asleep the force of gravitation has its own way so far as his posture is concerned. But activity and life demand reaction, and it is only through resistance that man can Con- quer adversity. 22 7THE STREAVG 7"H OF BAEAVG CA. EAAV. expression of the bitterness of its own experience. There is real meaning behind each of society's con- ventionalities. Its condemnation is never unreason- ing, though it may lack in sense of proportion. “Even the angels,” Emerson says, “must respect the proprieties.” The basis of the proprieties of social life is that no man should shrink from the cost of that which he desires. It is not only the gross temptations which the wise man must resist. There is much that passes under other names which is only veiled licentiousness. The word flirtation covers a multitude of sin. To breathe the aroma of love, in pure selfishness, without an atom of altruistic responsibility, is the motive of flirtation. To touch a woman's hand in wantonness may be to poison her life and yours. The strongest forces of human life are not subjects for idle play. The real heart and soul of a man are measured by the truth he shows to woman. A man's ideal of womanhood is fixed by the woman he seeks. By a man's ideal of womanhood we may know the degree of his manhood. 4. Precocity. In the hotbed of modern society there is a tendency to precocious growth. Preco- cious virtue, as the Sunday-school books used to describe it, is bad enough ; but precocious vice is most monstrous. Precocious fruit is not good fruit. The first ripened apples have always a worm at the 26 7 HE STREAVG 7"H OF BAZZAVG CZAZAAV. this vice is like the pestilence. Wherever it finds lodgment it kills. It fills the mind with vile pictures, which will come up again and again, standing in the way of all healthful effort. Those who have studied the life history of the homeless poor tell us that obscenity, and not drink, is the primal cause of the ineffectiveness of most of them. In the ranks of the unemployed, besides the infirm and the unfortu- nate, is the vast residue of the unemployable. The most of these are rendered so by the utter decay of force which comes from the habit of obscenity. The forces which make for vulgarity tend also to- ward obscenity, for all inane vulgarity tends to grow obscene. The open door of the saloon makes it a centre of corrosion, and the miserable habit of treating, which we call American, but which exists wherever the tippling-house exists, spreads and in- tensifies it. There is no great virtue in statutes to keep men sober. I would as soon “see the whole world drunk through choice as sober through com- pulsion,” because compulsion cannot give strength to the individual man. The resistance to temptation must come from within. So far as the drink of drunkards is concerned, prohibition does not prohibit. But to clean up a town, to free it from corrosion, saves men, and boys and girls too, from vice, and who shall say that moral sanitation is not as much the duty of the community as physical sanitation 2 32 7A/E STA&AEAVG 7TAZ OA' BAE Z.VG CLA2AA’. purposes, and none of these make any provision for paying back the loan. One and all these various drugs tend to give the impression of a power or a pleasure, or an activity, which we do not possess. One and all their function is to force the nervous system to lie. One and all the result of their habit- ual use is to render the nervous system incapable of ever telling the truth. One and all their supposed pleasures are followed by a reaction of subjective pains as spurious and as unreal as the pleasures which they follow. Each of them, if used to excess, brings in time insanity, incapacity, and death. With each of them, the first use makes the second easier. To yield to temptation, makes it easier to yield again. The weakening effect on the will is greater than the injury to the body. In fact, the harm alcoholic and similar excesses do to the body is wholly secondary. It is the visible reflex of the harm already done to the nervous system. While all this is true, I do not wish to take an extreme position. I do not care to sit in judgment on the tired woman with her cup of tea, the workman with his pipe or his glass of beer. A glass of claret may sometimes help digestion by a trick on the glands of the stomach. A cup of coffee may give an apparent strength we greatly need. A good cigar may soothe the nerves. A bottle of cool beer on a hot day may be refreshing. A white lie oils the 7'HE STREAVGTH OF BAE/AVG CLEAM. 33 hinges of society. These things are the white lies of physiology. I make no attack on the use of claret at dinner, or beer as medicine. This is a matter of taste, though not to my taste. Each of these drugs leaves a scar on the nerves; a small scar, if you please, and we cannot go through the battle of life without many scars of one kind or another. Moderate drink- ing is not so very bad, so long as it stays mod- erate. It is much like moderate lying — or, to use Beecher's words, “like beefsteak with incidental ar. senic.” It will weaken your will somewhat, but may be you are strong enough for that. It was once supposed that intemperance was like gluttony, — the excessive use of that which was good. It was not then known that all nerve-exciters contained a specific poison, and that in this poison such apparent pleasure as they seemed to give must lie. Use these drugs if you can afford it. There are many worthy gentlemen who use them all in modera- tion, and who have the strength to abstain from what they call their abuse. You will find among drinkers and smokers some of the best men you know, while some of the greatest scoundrels alive are abstemious to the last degree. They dare not be otherwise. They" need all the strength and cunning they have to use in their business. Wine loosens the tongue and lets fly the secrets one has need to hide. 7A/E S 7A’AºAVG 7// OA' BAZZAVG CL/AAV. 37 revolt from tiresome conventionalities. They sin because they will not be tied to the apron strings of society. For these lawless, turbulent, self-de- fiant spirits, there is always great hope; for when they find themselves entangled in the convention- alities of evil, tied to the apron strings of the devil, they are likely to break away again, and lead lives all the more worthy, because they have found the path of wisdom and strength for themselves. To this class belong the subjects of the great conver- sions, the real brands who have snatched them- selves from the real burnings. “What a world this would be without coffee,” said one old pessimist to another, as they sat and growled together at an evening reception. “What a world it is with coffee,” said the other, for he knew that the only solace coffee could give was, that it seemed for the moment to repair the injury its own excessive use had brought. No stimulant or narcotic can ever do more than this. They help us to forget time and space and ourselves, – all we have worth remembering. “With health and a day ” man “can put the pomp of emperors to shame.” Without time and space he can do nothing. He is nothing. “There is joy in life,” says Sullivan, the pugi- list, “but it is known only to the man who has a few jolts of liquor under his belt.” To know this 38 THE STREAVGTH OF BAE/AWG CLEAAW. kind of joy is to put oneself beyond the reach of all others. The joy of the blue sky, the bright sunshine, the rushing torrent, the songs of birds, “sweet as children's prattle is,” the breath of the meadows, the glow of effort, the beauty of poetry, the achieve- ment of thought, the thousand and thousand real pleasures of life, are inaccessible to him “who has a few jolts of liquor under his belt,” while the sorrows he feels, or thinks he feels, are as unreal 3 y as his joys, and as unworthy of a life worth living. There was once, I am told, a man who came into his office smacking his lips, and said to his clerk, “The world looks very different to the man who has had a good glass of brandy and soda in the morning.” “Yes,” said the clerk, “and the man looks different to the world.” And this is natural and inevitable, for the pleasure which exists only in imagination leads to action which has likewise nothing to do with the demands of life. The mind is confused, and may be delighted with the confusion, but the confused muscles tremble and halt. The tongue is loosened and utters un- finished sentences; the hand is loosened, and the handwriting is shaky ; the muscles of the eyes are unharnessed, and the two eyes move independently and see double; the legs are loosened, and the con. fusion of the brain shows itself in the confused walk.