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| WRESTLING AND WAITING

SERMONS

ei 252
Sy, 050. W2Z2W

JOHN| F. W. WARE

:
:

“Hold in, hold on, and hold out!” |

J. row. W.

BOSTON
GEORGE H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET
1882

1882,

By GEORGE H. ELLIS.

INTRODUCTION.

Joun FoTHERGILL WaTERHOUSE Ware, the
son of Henry Ware, Jr., and Elizabeth Watson
Waterhouse, was born in Boston, Aug. 31, 1818,
and died in Milton, Heb: 26, 1851. A eraduate
of Harvard College in the class of 1838, and of
the Cambridge Divinity School in 1842, he was
minister of Unitarian churches in Fall River,
_Cambridgeport, Baltimore, and Boston, succes-
sively. In the latter city, he was the suc¢essor
of Dr. Channing and Dr. Gannett, and had
charge of the Arlington Street Church, formerly
located in Federal Street.

Those who knew him in life remember him.
Those who knew him not will find him at his
truest in these sermons. The pulpit is the
preacher’s confessional. The anointed of his
people know how to receive and shrive. him
there. The sermons brought together in this

1V INTRODUCTION.

book do not give an adequate idea of the scope

and richness of his ministry. His work sur-

passed his word, strong as that was. Home and
camp, church and school, acknowledge his help-
ing hand. The rich and the poor thank and
bless him. To the home, he has given AHlome
Life, a book which is a grateful memorial of his
youth, a witness of his manhood, and now a
keepsake which will long maintain his ministry
by the fireside. His “white tracts,” as the sol-
diers called them, flew in and out the camp like
the doves of the old Arsenal. He also revised

and republished the Szdex¢ Pastor, for use in the —

hospitals. He labored for the Church, as a son
honoring his father and his mother, filial love
blending ever with missionary zeal. The freed-
men remember what he did for their education
and uplifting.

A few friends, believing that the word which
had helped them would help others, have chosen
these sermons and published them. Nor would

they disavow a loyal impulse to offer some trib-.

ute to the memory of the faithful pastor, true
friend, and honest man. They know that the
only honor he would value is the privilege of

INTRODUCTION. Vv

further ministry. In hours of pain and weak-
ness, he never gave up the hope of preaching

again. If, with God’s blessing, this book only
half fulfils his longing for further service on the
earth, it will wholly accomplish the purpose and
hope of its compilers.

GEORGE LEONARD CHANEY.

Boston, March 26, 1882.

SERMON

Ii,

III.

VII.

VIII.

CONN NETS,

Pace

Bremen AMI) WAITING: °. 2 Se. ee I

“*T will not let thee go except thou bless me.’?’— GEN. xxxii., 26.

IS MIE SS ee ay Ge ee | 1

‘* Show us the Father, and it sufficeth.”’— Joun xiv., 8.

ELVA a cg

‘* Day unto day uttereth speech.’’— PsaLm xix., 2.

a id RE Spl Pe a ae a:

‘€ And I know not where they have laid him.””— JouHN xx., 13.

Ie OO e e eee se BD

‘This one thing I do.’’— Puiu. iii., 13.

REGO OP GOD 6, ke es 8 ee 68
“The kingdom of God.”— LuKE xvi., 16. ’

SemeemE NE CUPNCES Hf.) Sel cpiiie le” dl wh depen e) ee O97

‘* And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul,
that David took an harp and played with his hand, so Saul was refreshed,
and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.””— I. Sam. xvi., 23.

BRAN VETER NG is cote joie «wt ere te a > a ems OF
“‘The hidden man of the heart.””— I. PETER iii., 4.

ERMISE OIC eR ISThy ob ere le eat hae: es ae 1OZ

‘‘ Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”
— JouN vi., 68.

SOMmMCPLO IMT Ui eee pre st ch ete ee EF
‘* A place which was named Gethsemane.’’— Mark Xiv., 32.

SERMON

XI.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

CONTENTS.

Tuer Fimrvy FURNACE. . % + (0) soa

‘Nor the smell of fire had passed on them.””— Dawn. iii., 27.

FAINT, YET PURSUING. . 93. 53). 03

“Faint, yet pursuing.””— JUDGES Viii., 4.

TOGETHER WITH GOD.) 2) = ss 2 ee
‘‘ Laborers together with God.’’—TI. Cor, iii., 9.

OIL AND WINE «| eos) 6° e 5s
“Oil and wine.”’— LUKE x., 34.

LIFE AND IMMORTALITY =. <3 0) acne

‘¢ Jesus Christ, who has brought life and immortality to light.”—
II. Tr. i., ro.

Tur TENTH BEATITUDE = >. oe

‘* Blessed is he that waiteth.”"— Dan. xii., 12.

HELPS ° . ° ° e e ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° s e e e e

“They used helps.’’— Acts xxvii., 17.

THe SILENT COMFORTER <2 Gy oe

‘Sleep on now, and take your rest.”,— MATT. xxvi., 45.

FRAGRANT LIVES). «os. =o ce) canines ener enenn

“* And the house was filled with the odor.’’— JOHN xii., 3.

WHat SHE COULD . 2.) 6} 0 sue

‘¢ She hath done what she could.”’— Mark xiv., 8.

TIBNI AND OMRI = . «0s «6 3) ee

¢So Tibni died, and Omri reigned.”” —I. K1nGs xvi., 22.

SILENT BUILDING . . «5-06 |e) ene

‘And the house which King Solomon built for the Lord was built
of stone, made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was
neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron, heard in the house
while it was in building. So was he seven years in building it.”—
I. KINGs vi., 2, 7, 38.

oe,

173

2ot

213

226

259

CONTENTS. ix

SERMON PAGE
Pe een) ESUS, AND PAUL. 27.925 6 5 6 we mw 292

“* John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness.””— Mart, iii., 1.
“¢ Jesus Christ, the Son of God.””— Mark i, 1.
‘Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.”,— II. Cor. i., x.

Bete oe UROOK-SIDES, 2 8 ew ee tw ew 28K

‘The brook in the way.’’— PSALM cx., 7.

Peewee ik 1 INGS WHICH REMAIN... 6. 5 wee + es 298

“‘The things which remain.’’— REV. iii., 2.

Poa ete Brust: FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED... . . . gl4

‘Two or three berries on the top of the uppermost bough.’’ —
ISAIAH xvii., 6.

OR EARS em ee we 2 328

“The days of our years.’’— PsaLM xc., 10.

[May 4, 1879.] _
si

WRESTLING AND WAITING.

“T will not let thee go except thou bless me.”— GENESIS xxxii., 26.

I WONDER if this experience of Jacob by the brook
- Jabbok may not have been somewhat akin to that of
Jesus in the wilderness. It is impossible really to
know anything about it; but do they not each in
some sense represent the personal conflict of two
young men coming up to face the first great crisis of
life,— a wrestling with the great fate that confronts
them, a struggle for that moral, mental supremacy and
calm which we allfeel the need of as we first actually
meet that life for which we have been preparing? In
the wrestling of the night, in the temptation of the
wilderness, each man may recognize his own expe-
rience. They are very human incidents, and do not
require the ordinary bald, literal interpretation to make
them solemn and effective. As allegories, epitomizing
universal experience, they are of as true value as. if
they were statements of fact.

Fleeing from his exacting father-in-law, Jacob had
approached the place where he knew that his brother
Esau had established himself. Naturally uneasy at
this fact,— for he had not forgotten how he had cheated
him out of his birthright or how he had afterward

2 WRESTLING AND WAITING.

defrauded him of his blessing,—he sends messengers
to him, who were to address him in terms of respect.
Esau, without sending any reply, sets out immediately
to meet his brother. More anxious than ever, Jacob
divides his herds and his servants into two bands,
separated by wide interval, so that, in case of attack,
that which was behind and with which his household
was might escape, at the same time again sending
servants forward with a gift taken from the choicest
of his flocks and of his herds. It was while awaiting
the result of this embassage that the incident from
which the text is taken occurred.

The last division of herds had passed over the broek
by which he had encamped, and Jacob was left alone.
And it was night. Plenty of work for conscience to do,
as it is apt to be when night brings us to face a foe-
coming morrow. And Jacob had much in his past con-
nection with his brother for conscience to busy itself
about. It was the great hazard moment of his life, and
there were conditions to the problem of which he was
not the master. He was a very unhappy man, and
sorely perplexed. Then there appeared to him, as the
Scripture says, a man who wrestled with him a large
part of the night. In some way, Jacob was seriously
injured. His thigh was dislocated or strained. Crip-
pled, he was not mastered; and, the day beginning to
dawn, his antagonist desired to be released. Somehow,
he seems to have been in Jacob’s power, could only get
away by Jacob’s consent (which ought to shut out the
ordinary belief that his antagonist was the Divine Being
himself). Jacob has the power of dictating terms,— the
condition of the conqueror. His reply is, “I will not

i oP
=.
>

WRESTLING AND WAITING, 3

let thee go except thou bless me.” We simply do not
know anything about this incident, the narrative of
which starts a flood of unanswerable questions; and it
were better to hasten to get our moral from the words,
than to linger over possible or impossible interpreta-
tions of the event. i

The simple elements of the incident are these,—a ~
contest between Jacob and an adversary, in which the
adversary gets the worst of it. He is resisted, held, and
in place of any proposed mischief is compelled to bless.
The incident is striking, the lesson invaluable.

For here, in epitome, is human experience. Jacob -
may stand for you and for me, for any, for every man ;
and the antagonist for our baser selves and the baser
things of the world, and the wrestling, the struggle
that has to goon between us. We grow up to that
point where we are to undertake the handling of our-
selves. That certain shield which home has been, that
certain support, guide, which parents have been, expires
by limitation. We cease being child, we begin to be
man. The bars are thrown back through which we
have gazed at the field of life, while they have re-
strained us from entering. Weenter. As we pass the
line, we at once meet opposition; and our first work,
duty, experience, is resistance. We are at once put at
task, at the task life keeps us at ever after. It would
be very pleasant could this first part be only a sort of
school-boy’s holiday, in which we could wander here
and there over the field, and pick up every joy. We
would like to throw an idle hook in this stream, lie
under that tree, enjoy the sweet do-nothing, letting our
eyes lazily rest themselves on sky and earth, refreshing

4 WRESTLING AND WAITING.

and informing the other senses, taking in the keen, but
superficial, relish of all the novel wonders about us. It
is not at holiday we are put, but at school, and our
masters are hard and exacting. We may not doze and

dream and get an animal fill of pleasure first. First we ©

have to go to work, and our first work is hard work.
Inexperienced and ignorant, timid and weak, we are
called upon to resist the subtlest foes of the soul. If
we take the Book of Genesis, the first duty to which
the first man is called upon is the duty of resistance.
Before he does anything, he must resist somebody. If
we take the Gospels, they repeat the story. Before
Jesus goes out to do, he retires to resist. Resistance —
the negative, the opposite of will —is our primary obli-
gation. The young possibilities of virtue seem to be so
nurtured. We-have to get strong, assured in our re-
sisting powers, before we can essay anything by way of
progress. Before we grow, we must be able to stand,

and overcome the powers that would not have us stand. »

There are many things that will put themselves in
the way of a growing soul, many that must be at once
met and resisted. At first, we have not-helps. The
mission of things seems to be not to help you live, but
to force your death; not to establish, but to overthrow.
It is not that hindrances strew the way,— obstacles you
might expect to meet and to have to surmount,— but
more than hindrances, positive, virulent opponents.
All the way up, through the various grades of nature,
existence seems to be a struggle, a fight for itself.
Nothing is cradled, but everything attacked. Nurse,
care, afterward; at first, hindrance, opposition, things
to be learned which other things seem bound to prevent

ee ee es a ne i ee,

WRESTLING AND WAITING. 5

your learning. Once establish yourself, and you get
help, friends; reach for and receive support. Nothing
can be drearier than the first life of the seed in the cold
and dark, its way to make against hindrance. If you
go into a garden or a field some days after your sowing,
you will see how the great vigor of tiny shoots has
pushed aside the earth crust, perhaps has lifted a lump
of dirt, or a chip, or a stone,—how it has overcome
resistance, is born by virtue of that into beauty and
light.

Once established, once in the light, things begin to
consent, become friends. So with our virtues. The
law seems to be resistance as the condition of taking
root, of becoming established, of growth. We do not
begin and just grow easily and pleasantly, but through
all sorts of pains and aches and mishaps,— the frictions,
jars, antagonisms of other things. Our moral hin-
drances naturally divide themselves into two classes,—
those from within, self-born, nurtured, grown; those .
from without, which have no self about them. If it
were worth while to stop long enough to say it, one
might perhaps say that the self things are the more ob-
stinate, while they perhaps are less recognized, watched,
controlled. The things that go wrong with us, the self-
hindrances, are largely matters of temperament; and
temperament is a thing never entirely original, but
largely of inheritance: it is the twist to my nature, the
thing I find in me and that starts me the me that I am.
If I understand myself at all, my great trouble as a
moral being is with a certain something which goes by
this name. As I understand it, it is the sub-structure
of my whoie being. It underlies my life, my thinking,

6 WRESTLING AND WAITING.

and my doing. There is a peculiarity native to me, as
sap to the tree or blood to the body, which shapes my
thoughts and methods, my hopes and my deeds. It
has its felicities, it has its infelicities. No man’s tem-
perament is wholly the one or the other. The felicities
we set aside. Wedo not want them now. The infelic-
ities are our concern. What is to be done with them ?
Shall I yield to them, and say: “This is my tempera-
ment. I cannot help myself. {£ obey the dictates of
nature?” Obedience to nature is very well where the
dictates are all right; but, where they are wrong, they
are to be disobeyed, just as any wrong thing is. That
is what we live for. Temperament is amenable to the
laws of discipline. Its imperiousness, its tyranny, is to
be resisted. The unlovely is to be grown away from,
the lovely grown into,—two distinct processes. Jacob
resisted his opponent ; but he did more. He held him.
The unruly part of temperament is to be more than
resisted: it is to be held hard, and turned at last into
an ally, afriend. A blessing, it is to be held until it
bless. There is an illustration of what temperament
may become when its bad is well ruled and its good is
master, in the apostle John. In his early discipleship,
he belongs to a club called “Sons of Thunder,” loud-
mouthed, noisy, restless, revolutionary men, the Social-
ists, the Nihilists of their day,— wants the lightning
to destroy the Samaritans. He is as hot and impulsive
and rash as Peter.

In the maturer days of his intercourse with Jesus,
he lays his head upon that sainted bosom, becomes
the Christ’s special favorite, and in his mid-life and
ald age is as the microcosm of gentleness and love,

ee ee

WRESTLING AND WAITING. ys

It is not that a new nature, a new being, is given him
through his changed faith, but that he has through
his faith so worked upon that ardent, vindictive tem-
perament, has so resisted, chastened, held it, that it
has ended not merely in blessing others, but himself.
He has done that most radical, difficult thing,— not
destroyed his temperament, not got another one, which
no man can ever do, for it is that which bases indi-
viduality and keeps one man from being like every
other man,— but he has held the inimical thing in his
temperament until he has wrung from it a blessing.
He is the John he is not by inheritance, not through
force of temperament, not by an act of nature, but by
a resolute self-culture that has whipped the offending
Adam out, and has supplanted the natural, inherited,
by a broader, braver, better, sweeter self. I do not
know anywhere a more striking illustration of what
may be done at the very root of things where one
really takes hold. It is overturn, it is annihilation, it
is rooting out the bad and overgrowing the place of
it with the good, and making the other things of the
temperament the sweeter and the stronger. In that
way, not merely may adversities be made friends, but
_ self-antagonisms be changed to blessings. What we
need all through is the attitude, the endurance, of that
midnight wrestler by the brook Jabbok. We may be
wounded, crippled, bear the mark of bruise and scar
of wound, feel it our lives long, though we may not
show it. But we are the conquerors, and the van-
quished thing has made us over; has been compelled
not only to yield, but to do that thing so doubly hard
for a vanquished foe,— bless,

8 WRESTLING AND WAITING.

So it is with the whole catalogue of the self things,—

passions, appetites, prejudices, dislikes, habits. . The
thing we really ought to do with them is to turn them
in to do better work. We do not readily see it that
way. They are imperative, and mean to control, and
we get an easy habit of letting them. If we get brave
enough to make some trial of ourselves against them,
we soon give over. We tell children to try and then
try again. Thatis at the basis of domestic training,
and it is the trying again that makes the child. We
who are mature do not do as we tell children. We do

not try. We do not resist. We become impatient,

despairing, give up. Giving up is the most unhappy
thing a man does. To give up is to take one’s life,
is to win curse, not blessing. One is never to give
up, but to hold on and to hold out, and compel the
beatitude which comes of healthy struggle, though he
should not reach that which comes of a complete vic-
tory. These and all troublesome things within us
have great capacity to bless, only we do not yield to
them, only we make them feel us.

Beside self-hindrances are others from outside, and

very various. They are to be treated the same way,
made to yield the same reward.

In every day, we have disappointments,— common,
trifling, troubling things. Life is a good deal made
up of them. They are its severest trials. We bear
great things with at least a show of equanimity. We
break under little ones. If we know there is some-
thing serious, we muster our energies and face it. But
little, annoying things which spring at us from the
wayside, from unexpected corners, at most unwelcome

WRESTLING AND WAITING. 9

moments, just at the time of all others when we fancied
all going smoothly, just where we can least brook
Opposition, postponement, or delay,—these every one
feels to be serious annoyances of life, and of no special
use. But suppose,— instead of fretting and disappoint-
ment over the rain that keeps you indoors, over the
dinner that is not ready or is badly cooked, over the
man who‘ is not punctual, over the investment that
does not pay, over annoyance of domestic or child,—
instead of scolding and fuming about the present,
immediate form of the trial, you hold it, study it,
reason about it, look at it every way, turn it over on
all sides, and see if something cannot be made of it,
if there be not some fine gold there. Instead of taking
these into your temper, suppose you take them into
your heart, and hold them there till all shadow of the
ugliness of temper is melted away, and the blessing
comes,— the blessing that as surely comes, under these
conditions, as the blessings of sunlight and spring
breezes come after the fret of east winds, and low
leaden clouds, and dull rains or hasty showers. Sup-
pose one were to make it, not a principle only, but a
habit, to hold on to every trying and adverse thing until
it blesses, plucking away the disguise beneath which
lies the beatitude! It would not be long before all
these wearing, worrying irritations would be trans-
formed into angels of light, teaching the once captious
spirit great and solemn truths, and leading it into
gentleness, patience, and forbearance. Every one of
us who has had any self-discipline knows what has
come to himself out of the most hopeless elements ip
him, simply through handling them wisely, compelling

Io WRESTLING AND WAITING.

them to do good work. Every such one knows how,
out of the little irritations and vexations of life, once,
like the little foxes of the field, destroying all that
was fair and manly, he has made great blessings; and
you will generally find the happiness and security ~
of maturer life to lie just where hard wrestling has
wrung blessings out of hostile things. Then there are
a thousand things in one’s intercourse with others
which are unpleasant, vexatious, irritating. Some men
and women are merely annoyances, aversions. We
don’t see why they were made, or why they should
themselves care much to live. They make us feel
uncomfortable, if they come near us. They cross our
paths every way, and if we cross over to the other
side, they cross over too. They contrive to run
counter to our wishes, to set themselves against our
prejudices, to throw ridicule upon our principles, to
set things awry, to be every way repellent, to offend
our tastes or somehow to be only disagreeable. And,
where things do not run to this extreme, there still
is much in every-day intercourse, at home and with
friends, which puts us into an uncomfortable humor,
and makes us wish ourselves well rid of such society.
This is the first, the outside feeling, and too frequently
the only and the lasting one. It does only and purely
harm more to ourselves than to them. Let a man
become conscious of the folly of allowing the petty
annoyances of character or conduct to have so much
influence over him. Let him resist the annoyance,
hold it till he sees how, by that very antagonism, some
good thing is drawn out and strengthened in himself,
or some bad thing avoided. Let him hold it till out of

WRESTLING AND WAITING. II

the ashes of aversion shall spring a true, courteous
regard, till he find a blessing in that which had been
only a plague. For myself, I confess that, among the
people of worth whom I have known, not a few were
those with whom my first intercourse was unpleasant,
and my first impressions repulsive. And I have no
small self-rebuke at that want of moral steadfastness
which neglects to hold back the crude or unpleasant
opinion, that lack of fidelity to conviction which allows
me still to refuse to hold the man till I find the bless-
ing in him.

The truth will bear to be carried higher, among
the great troubles and sorrows of life,—the sorrows
in which, long time, the stricken spirit can discern
no light. Nothing would seem,— did we not know it
by experience,— nothing does seem to many still so
utterly impossible as that any blessing can come of
sorrow. Of none of Christ’s Beatitudes are we so
skeptical as of that which promises blessing to them
that mourn. And yet, hold sorrow till its more selfish
aspect passes, till it turn its religious side to you, till
time and experience and faith do their work, till you
feel, not its gloom, but its glory; not its storm, but its
peace; not its loss, but its gain; not its cross, but its
crown. Do not, through any device, lose its sanctify-
ing influence, the greatest loss the soul can meet. Do
not flee from it, or seek to smother it, or yield to it,
but hold it,—hold it till it blesses, till you have con-
secrated it by prayer and submission, till all other
views grow dim, and only its religious side, its heavenly
side, God’s side, is toward you. Keep it till it bless,
though it long delay, and you will then see how, out

12 WRESTLING AND WAITING.

of seeming evil, God educes good; how, out of the
darkness of earth, he brings the light ineffable of
heaven ; how, as night precedes day, so sadness and
suffering precede peace; how, as day issues from night,
peace from trouble comes.

That surely is a mysterious, but not the less real,
power of blessing which lies within every well con-

tested, rightly borne trouble. He knows but little .

who supposes that, if there is to be a blessing in his
earthly lot, he shall at once detect it, as he would
who, searching for gold, should look to find it scat-
tered liberally upon the surface. The things of per-
manent value are mostly hidden,— have to be sought.
Did not he of old entertain angels unawares,—only
know them, get their blessing, as they departed? Did
not Jesus walk with his disciples, and only as he left
them did they see that the crucified was risen? And
does not God still hold men’s eyes, and behind dis-
guises conceal the ultimate good? In lesser things,
man has learned the divine law. The pure and glit-
téring metal lies in the dull ore. The diamond’s coat
is rough, uttering no prophecy of the wealth beneath.

Forbidding forms enclose choicest souls. Only as

one perseveres, gets through the crust, knocks off the

covering, or penetrates beneath the surface, is it that

the true worth is revealed. The form of trial, harsh
and repulsive, and all its earlier manifestations setting
strongly against a man’s desire and will, makes him
feel that it is only trial, only pain,—takes him on
his lower side, his selfish, his earthly side. He may
resist it because his nature prompts, or he thinks it
duty, or because he feels that, if he do not, it wil
destroy him.

WRESTLING AND WAITING. 13

He does not see beyond the necessity, the impulse
of resistance ; and the resistance is that dogged, soul-
less resistance wherewith so many confront their lot.
It must be borne; and he will set himself to bear it.
It must be met; and he will set himself to meet it.
But, as to any good in it, any blessing to be got out
of that harsh and repulsive fact, any yield from it
beyond a dogged bearing, he does not see it. If it
be a serious thing, he may grow rebellious and ques-
tion God’s right or God’s love. Let him, however,
set himself to bear in a real child-spirit. By degrees,
slow and uncertain at first, the painful pressure is
relaxed a little. The shades are a little less dark.
A possible good begins to be suspected. Then it is
half-confessed, till finally, if he will but hold it long
enough, he will find that this crushing thing, which
was only gloom and only harm, has its bright and
holy side, and where misery came blessings are left.
The very thing which rose in its terrible might, and
seemed about to sweep him from the earth, against
which he had feared to measure his puny strength, is
found to be a priceless good. |

“Surely,” said one writing me who knew something
of greater as lesser trial, ‘it is only our fault if we do
not turn the hard trials into blessings; and I take
shame that the things which were sent to sweeten
I have so much allowed to embitter me.” That state-
ment grasps and holds the great truth and the great
confession. We yield or resist, and are only embit-
tered ; we hold, and grow sweet ; and where the sweet-
ness is established, the beatitude follows. The secret
of successful living is to extract blessings out of all

I4 WRESTLING AND WAITING.

conditions, to compel of them that. God does not lay
them upon the surface, and sometimes he buries them
deep. You may not know where the blessing lies
except by search, weary and baffling many times.
Where it seems most useless, there oftentimes is its
most blessed reward. Learn the wisdom to hold every-
thing till it bless, though ill be heaped on ill. Make
every discipline what the brook Jabbok was to Jacob,—
the place of conquest and blessing. Let nothing go
till you have probed it well, and got the uttermost
of blessing, as the bee does not desert the bitterest
flower till she gets the last drop of sweetness from it.
Never withhold searching because it seems of no avail.
Search as the woman did for her money, as the shep--
herd did for his sheep, as the seeker did for his goodly
pearl,—till you find. Having found, hold as Jacob did,
and there shall be nothing in life, however frowning,
hostile, baffling, which shall not have for you a bless-
ing,—a blessing you would not surrender, a blessing
you in no other way could attain.

May 4, 1879.

ibe

Weel SUPPICR TH ?

“ Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth.”—Joun xiv., 8.

I HAVE always felt the incident with which the text is
connected to be one of deepest pathos. The air of
gentle, suffering tenderness which invests this scene, as
the whole language of that last interview, seems to
deepen just here; and the little dialogue that intro-
duces, and in part shapes the after-talk, is as exquisitely
true to nature as touching in itself.

I think that either you or I would have said just what
Thomas did. It was an outspoken piece of honesty.
He really did not know whither Jesus was going; and it
was confidence in his Master, and not doubt, that made
him say so. More confused men probably were never
gotten before so great a fact ; and it was just as natural
for Philip —and again you and I might have done the
same — to say at the next point Jesus made: “Why,
now there is really something! Only show us the Fa-
ther, and that is enough.” And I think the very grave
way in which Jesus met them, with a tenderly pained sur-
prise, with a something in tone and look which was
not rebuke, while it had a dash of disappointment about
it, helped to steady them all, keep their tongues quiet,
and their ears alert, and their minds active, receptive, if
they failed of being wholly sympathetic.

16 WHAT SUFFICETH ?

The showing of the Father was the whole mission of
Jesus, his one aim, his life’s work. Never was that other
or less; never was it other ormore. The one thing was
to manifest not the dezug of God, which was an already .
established fact with his nation, but the character of
God, which they never had understood, which they
of that generation were understanding very much less
than such men as Isaiah and Daniel—men of the
most spiritual insight under the old dispensation — did.
It was with faith when Jesus came a good deal as with
art when Raphael came, with the Church when Savon-
arola from within and Luther from without attempted
its reform,—a time of grotesque deterioration, falseness _
and deadness, when the name of a great thing covered
only ghastly and foul decay. Even the Jehovistic idea
of God was very much degenerated, and may be said
to- have had little real following. The idea one man
has of another is betrayed by the manner of his inter-
course with him; and, more than by any language, we
reveal through the methods of our intercourse our in-
terior conception of God. The Jew of Christ’s time
was a ritualist, the most servile believer in and follower
of form, a formalist so rank and so mean as to always
have had only the Saviour’s contempt. Growing out.
of his formalism, its inevitable concomitant, was self-
righteousness ; and to be self-righteous is inevitably to
be hypocrite. The brave old prophet had said that God
could not bear the sacrifice of bulls and of rams, and
another as brave had added just what God did desire.
All that had been. displaced, and the tradition of the
elders, abrogating the sure word of God, taught the
cleanliness of the outside of cups and platters, in the

WHAT SUFFICETH? 17

place of the service of the pure spirit and its pure
worship. The Being who was to be served, to be sat-
isfied, to be reached. through such methods, could of
course be in popular conception only a sort of Baal, an
idol of a graver kind. You might use the most accred-
ited phrase in speaking of God,— it signified nothing
so long as in men’s hearts and in men’s approach there
was no savor of him. So Jesus had to begin with
showing what God was. Not who, so much as what
his task. He was to show God in his real character.
He was to place before men the attitude in which he
stood toward his creatures, to teach his real relation,
and in what true intercourse with him consisted; not
to teach the rudiments of a divine law,— that had been
Moses’ work ; not to pursue mental subtleties and dis-
criminations,— that had been the rabbis’ work; not to
read the stars,—that had been the work of Chaldeans
and astrologers; not to make investigation into the
great occult realm of nature’s many-chambered labora-
tories,— that was in reserve for Tycho Brahe and Kepler
and Da Vinci, Newton, Cuvier, Agassiz, and all the host
of them. All these for other men, some of them for
other times. In these he had no part, with these no
interference. Simple and unlearned in the world’s
way, as the world’s lore, his one limited work was to
show the Father, to shred away the feeble as the false
which obscured the glory of the divine countenance,
and make men see in himself the reflected attributes of
the infinite unseen. Working the works of Him that
sént him, stating and unfolding his truths, shaping
conduct always into glad and facile subservience to~
the divine will, he who had really seen him had seen

18 WHAT SUFFICETH ?

the Father, had seen his power manifest in the works
done, his love in the tender forbearance, sympathy,
and forgiveness shown, his truth in the wonderful
and gracious words that had fallen from lips anointed
only with truth; and by these three, work, word, and
life, had made such manifestation of the Great One
as no vision of mere person could ever have given.
It is not seeing the person that makes us realize his
character, his relation to us, 4zm#. The world had
never been wiser or better, had the form of Jesus
been the veritable showing of the person of God. The
world is better for its assurance that in these things
Jesus showed, manifested, reflected that of God which
the soul most craves to know, what he is, and how
he feels toward us. The bewildered Philip still asked
for the showing of the person. But that would not
have sufficed, though he thought so. He who could
not see the Father in the Son would have got only the
lowest, the most transient impression, had the Great
Being vouchsafed to stand before him in all the incon-
ceivable majesty of his glory.

What I want to say to-day is that, while the teaching,
the sufficiency of the gospel, is the grand doctrine of.
the divine Fatherhood,—and blessed forevermore be
our God and Father because it is so! —we must school
ourselves to recognize that it is also its limitation. As
we grow into other knowledges, we must not consent to
outlaw God from them, and feel that only in the Bible
does he speak, only by revelation is he revealed. The
Bible does but a partial work; and, when you have
exhausted it, a great deal is left unknown.” Whole
invaluable provinces of thought-knowledge are left un-

WHAT SUFFICETH ? 19

touched. God is the great Economist, and he teaches
but one thing atatime. The nail he drives is driven
home and clinched before he strikes another. That is
one reason why his work stands. To Jesus was dele-
gated the grandest duty ever intrusted to man. Other
men had been, have been sent for other things,— each
for his work. This was his. And no man can say but
he has done it utterly. We have nothing more to ask
in that direction, however inquisitive or impatient in
others. It suffices. The showing of the Father is
complete,— perfect after its kind. But it does not
exhaust God. It does not suffice us as seekers after
God. The gospel showing of God as the Father is
not sufficient to meet the wants of the man of civiliza-
tion, culture, faith, who cannot be satisfied with words
or facts shut up in a book, but burns to know the all
possible about him. The gospel does not put him
before us as the ALL that he is. It does not give all of
him we may know, and shall be happier and better for
knowing. God is something beside Father,— may we
not say better than Father? And we must learn to
see that, and be brave to speak it, and accept and wel-
come every investigation of human thought, not fear-
ful lest it weaken the hold and lead away from reve-
lation, but rejoicing in anything that, by broadening
our conceptions of an infinite knowledge and power,
shall lead us up to a thought we can by no possibility
reach when God stands before us only in the parental
attitude. |

God is something other than a Father. Grand and
elevating as that conception is, it meets and satisfies
the religious sentiment; but there is something —a

20 WHAT SUFFICETH ?

vast, vast deal —that it does not cover, does not meet
and satisfy; and ministers in their preaching, as men
in their lives, miss it that they do not confess it.
When the man of clear brain and devout heart stands
by you and shows you the evidence of the divine
reason and handiwork in every minutest tracery of the
human frame, in what the microscope reveals, as in
what the telescope unveils, and goes step by step
before you, leading your groping way among the winds
and leads of the divine thought and purpose, while
with every advance you feel yourself consciously ap-
proaching the centre and source, it comes with great
force to you that there is really something of most
moment to our best conception of the Infinite which
our gospel leaves out, and that man must have.the
co-ordinate testimony and revealing of many-handed,
many-voiced nature, before he can really hold an any —
way adequate idea of God.

When I am thinking of and trying to comprehend
the Eternal and Infinite One, I cannot, with Philip,
say, “Shew me the Father, and it sufficeth.” What I
want to be shown is God,—God not in any limited
relation, though it be the highest, but God in his whole-
ness, whatever and all of him, not too high for me to
attain to,— God in mind, in matter, in space, in time;
God under all aspects as under one aspect. Why
should Christian teaching seek to rule him out of
these? What ave mind, matter, what have they done
that they may not interpret him, that they must be
alien? They know and tell what Gospels do not,
cannot. It does not suffice me to know God is my
Father, though you bring me, to help out and empha-

“WHAT SUFFICETH ? dt.

size the gospel word, the everything of every human
tongue or pen or brain which has sought to express
the wonder and the happiness and the condescension
of that connection. There is something that, more and
more as I grow into experience and knowledge, I feel is
to be said of him, known of him, and must be said and
known, which it is not in the power of gospel word to
disclose or the strictly parental idea to embrace, which
can only be disclosed as the humble, teachable, rev-
erent soul draws toward and finds the God everywhere
immanent.

If God be only Father, if that be all there is to such
a Being, the showing of Jesus is sufficient: I would be
content. But when I find that my teacher himself did
not confine his thought or teaching exclusively to that ;
when I find him, through the lily and the grass and the
Sparrow and the mustard-seed, leading me to see a
great working Providence, teaching me to look for and
find tokens of him in spheres outside his parental rela-
tion, and in those an added grace and power and
dearness; when I find that Jesus evidently fed and
refreshed his faith by converse with the Great Spirit of
Nature, that he himself held relations and received
instruction in other than the sharply restricted filial
way; when I find him going back to the old-time his-
tory and recognizing the Jehovah power of rule and
law and restraint as part and parcel of the great one
purpose,—I can but say that God is more, and I want
to know the more of God, not only for the knowledge’
sake, not only for the knowing him, but that my idea
of him as Father may be fed and broadened and inten-
sified, become glowing and transfusing. I know him

22 WHAT SUFFICETH ?

more, I love him better, my conception is grander for
the things I know of him that cannot be embraced
within the narrow compass of the one tie. To me
always there has seemed as the type of a satisfied faith
the good old New England grandmother living in her
small way on some back road of some unknown vil-
lage, laying her Bible aside at the setting of the Sun-
day’s sun with her spectacles in it for the next week’s
mark, in the utter and blissful confidence that every
minutest word of the book was written by the very
finger of God, and came down out of heaven to man.
And yet there is a sublime faith and a more restful
assurance and a more solemn thought of the Great
One as one makes him out to be the informing life of
all that is. When I follow the keenest analysis down
to the ultimate,— to “organisms without organs,” the
simplest of all observed, the simplest of all imaginable
organism, so simple as a little lump of -an albuminous
combination of carbon, the ultimate that human re-
search gives us as the origin and cause of life,—and
there I find the bars up, and the awful word creeping
upon me, “And what next?” and the as awful answer
out of infinite distances and infinite silences,— God ;
when I take history, and, all the way down among the
affairs of men, I trace a something that is not man, or
current of time, or drift of event, but a power somehow
setting aside and overruling, balancing and compensat-
ing, lifting ages and races, and advancing against all
retrogrades the harmonies of humanity, making of the
confusions of man, as once of the chaos of matter,
order and beauty and growth and success and life;
when I get the last word of philosophy, the farthest

WHAT SUFFICETH? 23

bound of reason, and over the waste and desolate and
unfathomable beyond, as next thing possible, comes the
assurance, God;— why, I am wholly a grander man.
I have got a grander faith, my God is more than my
Father, and my Father seems all the more adorable,
because, besides his loving care for little me, and the
myriads beside me who are little, besides his mercy
and his forgiving, he is all this,—all this to other
things, and my Father, too. It does not take a bit
from the Scripture revealing, but it adds immeasurable
things to it; and I may stand beside the ignorant and
confiding grandmother, and feel that though she be
spared many dark moments and grave questionings,
yet that mine is, after all, zze faith, and I in triumph
can look around me and above, and in proud yet
humble trust exclaim, ‘“‘These are thy glorious works,
Parent of good.” ‘My Father made them all.”

You have only to bring this home to yourself by
asking, “In what way do I really get the completest
idea of my earthly father?” “By regarding him solely
in that relation or by trying to know all about him in
his various relations,— his connection with other men
and things.”

For myself, I know this: that I take my all of
memory of my father in all his love and care for me,—
in companionship, in affection, in discipline, in advice,
in example,—the everything that in the tie of blood
and the relations of intercourse involved the parental
connection, and, when I have exhausted all, it comes
to me that, dear as he was,— completely my father,—
that relation did not exhaust 4z#. There was ever so
much more that he was; and when I know what others

24 WHAT SUFFICETH ?

have to say among whom he moved in duties, labors,
sympathies outside the more narrow, if most sacred,
precincts of home, he is in every way an exalted being.
It is not the mere fatherly that I know, but the so
much that cannot be included in that idea at its high-
est. I turn that thought, that experience, Godward.
A good being has come to earth, and virtually said:
“Men have been mistaken all along. There is but one
God, and that God is not the jealous and vindictive
king, the hard, unreasonable, selfish Jehovah that my
own countrymen have conceived; but he is a Father,
—my Father, their Father. And that I am come to
teach.” And the followers of the good Teacher, taking
him up more narrowly than he had purposed, have
made it the aim of their teaching to impress upon men
what they conceived the Bible to tell, many of them
clinging to the Old Testament idea, while using the
New Testament language, letting Old Testament spirit
pervade it, and saying “Father”’ when they only saw
and feared the “king.” And it has*been a wrong, a
danger, and a crime, to think of him elsehow or else-
where, to work for any other feature or attribute or
revealing, except along the line of Scripture phrase.
Men have -scowled upon and forbade any foray into
the great realm of Nature so vocal of God to Jesus,
and have trembled lest somehow it should be dis-
covered that there was some contradiction between
what he had said in his creation and what he had said
by his Christ. They have compelled the. human soul
to look at God only under a single aspect, and in con-
sequence, to our Christian faith, to our Christian con-
ception of God, everything is wanting but that which

WHAT SUFFICETH ? 25

has a special Bible sanction; and we have one whom
we call by the very sublimest names, of the greater part
of whose sublimity we keep ourselves wilfully ignorant,
who, as merely the Father, is almost as much wronged
as by being merely Jehovah.

It is the very dearest, brightest, happiest thought
that the Great Infinite holds this parental relation to
me, that Iam his child; but more and more, as I go,
I know —as I know it of my earthly father —that it
is impossible to shut the whole of God within that
relationship; and that, wherever else you find him,
and whatever else you) may have to say about him,
instead of veiling or confusing that first grand idea,
it only sheds a purer lustre about it. It is not the
Father minus anything, but it is the Father plus some-
thing, when the heavens add their declaration, and the
firmament shows his handiwork, and day unto day and
night unto night, through every part of his boundless
dominion, bear witness, not to his design, his work
alone, but to what is infinitely beyond and quite other,
—to Himself.

And it seems to me that the privilege of this later
day is that, in so much deeper and grander way than
the poet knew when he wrote it, we may look
“through Nature up to Nature’s God,’ —not Nature’s
God merely, our God, nay, our “Father” ; may come to
see that the things of her domain are not the work-
manship of mere power, wisdom, will, but that they
all carry with them the subtler element of love, knit
themselves back to that same one whom Jesus called
Father. And if so be this fair universe of things has_
not its ultimate in our human prosperities, delights,

26 WHAT SUFFICETH ?

and elevation, if the great purpose be beyond ana
other than for these inhabitants of earth and time, as
may well be in such vast concerns as God’s, still are
we sharers in it all, helped by it all, elevated through it
all, and by all brought into the innermost presence.
It is that we want, whatever will so enlarge the vision
of our souls as to bring God out of distance into pres-
ence; and what can more do it than the reverent
teaching of the imprints he has ever left along every
way that his spirit has passed, so that the ardent
seeker, striking into unknown discoveries, may stray
nowhere but he shall see that God has been there
before him, and if God, then — power, reason, wisdom,
will, love, the Father. It is one thing to grasp the
idea that God made and holds all, and another that
all that God made and holds repeat and confirm the
truth that the Father did all this as he did the works
by which he was manifest through Jesus. The inter-
_ weaving of that thought with all that is is that which
best interprets him. I never touch Nature anywhere.
I never hear the word that wise seekers bring out of
silences and distances, out of secret microscopic or tel-
escopic lurking-places, that I do not feel how many are
the unnoticed messengers and ministries awaiting us,
and how mistaken we are who go deaf and blind
through this vast museum, like the dead soul of Peter
Bell.

“A primrose by the river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”

Oh that we might see the primrose, as Jesus saw
the lily,—the messenger, the interpreter, the child of

WHAT SUFFICETH? a7,

the one Great Spirit, over all, and through all, and
in all! Oh that we might catch the harmonies that
pulse through all things, chanting their consenting
ascription of glory and honor and dominion and
majesty to the one creating and ruling Wisdom, till
man should feel that through every star, through every
grass-blade, as through every living soul, “the glory of
a present God still beams,’ that God, the God and
Father of all things as of Jesus Christ, our Lord, of
whom, from whom, in whom are we all.

III.
DAY -UNTO.DAwe

“Day unto day uttereth speech.”— PsALMs.

Every yesterday is talking to, instructing, to-day.
Every to-day has its word for the morrow. So each
individual life progresses, so ages ripen. It is not —
what is new-born. Born to-day,—that is our hope, our —
power, our weakness, or our defeat. We /ve iw and
because of yesterdays. Their life enters into ours.
They are our nurses, our instructors. They have had
us by the hand, led us step by step, little by little — s
unfolding to us the work before, and giving little by —

little the helps unto its accomplishment. In nothing

is the law of sequence more inevitable. In nothing
does that which zs more depend upon that which was.
In nothing does the next step more directly hinge
upon the last. Not only yesterday speaks to to-day,
but what yesterday says decides what to-day zs. He
lives well and wisely who has the speech of each day ~
as it goes, who hears and heeds the voice it utters;

who lifts himself not into a far, indefinite future, but —

into the future of to-morrow, not by the vague teach- a
ings of a remote past, but by the last word of the last —
day in which he lived, by the things said to himself in
his own experience and consciousness, wot by things
said .to others under other conditions and to other —

DAY UNTO DAY, 29

ends. It was a very sublime truth uttered by the
Psalmist, but he did not know half its meaning.
With some old memory of his shepherd life (if David
wrote it) or some fresh glimpsing of the skies whose
twinkling hosts we so seldom think of, his thought
turned toward the handiwork of God; and his language,
simple, brief, grand, has gone to the uttermost parts of
the earth,h—a wondrous expression of that which no
finite mind can ever fully gather in, or any finite spirit
utter. No mere words so completely fill us with the
awed sense of the Infinite as these: “The heavens
declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and
night unto night showeth knowledge.” Once stand-
ing under midnight skies and looking through the
_ telescope, as the star I was gazing at passed out of

the field of vision and left me looking into deep, dark,
empty space, I for an instant caught a feeling akin to
that which these words suggest. It is only at rare
moments — moments like angels’ visits —that we find
ourselves lifted to any conception of the immense and
infinite,— now and then upon a Mount of Vision, most
of the time spent down among the things that hardly
go out before prayer and patience and faith and toil.

I suppose that it was of God that the Psalmist first
thought when he said, “ Day unto day uttereth speech.”
In great nearness, he tried to hold himself to that
Being from whom we keep so far. Had he really kept
himself as near as his word would seem, great peace
he must have had; for it is that that the sense of the
divine nearness greatly gives in life’s tumults and
straits, But it was with him just as it is with us,

30 DAY UNTO DAY.

Here is the language of his better mood, his sense of
inferiority and dependence, his sense of reverence and
trust. His speech was better than his life, his emotion
loftier than his conduct, what he knew better than
what he did,— not because of anything hypocritical in |
him, as not in us, but because of that flagging service
with which we follow up in life what really les as
corner-stone to our conviction,— yes, to our desire and
attempt. Just that same surging, desperate battle
which any of us of any moral vitality knows that he
keeps up sometimes so-despairingly between his better
and his baser self, with ever-alternating victory, he
waged, now calm with success, now desperate with
defeat. I think we all love God better than we serve
him, and it is just so always with our affections. The
love outruns, underruns the needs, especially when the
object of the love is above us and demands of us ser-
vice. Day unto day uttereth speech unto us of God,
from the moment that we wake. Like Old Mortality,
it busies itself with sharpening the fading impressions
of yesterday, or it gives new witness in its new event.
Our daily waking, each day’s girding for each day’s
combat, the renewal of affections, temptations, and
labors,— the whole minutize of life’s intercourse and
machinery,— these, as well as Nature, with her sights
and sounds, are daily utterances of God. They are wit-
nesses to, interpreters of God. ‘No matter what else we |
say or think,—last, first, always,—it is of God these
speak. If you have any thought at all, you cannot
dissociate them from him. In him, by him, because
of him, we and they live, move, and have our being.
Just now, day unto day utters speech in these rapid

DAY UNTO DAY. 31

changes which flash themselves before our eyes,— this
fresh verdure, these spring blossoms, this glorious gar-
niture Nature has flung so lavishly over hill, field, and
_ wood, this rare beauty newly written in upon the face
of the earth in grass and grain and flower, in songs of
birds and lingering twilights, in deep thunders and
gushing showers, in breezes that make breathing a
luxury and living a delight. Day unto day is telling
the story of the new hour, and God’s infinity of love
in it. The Lenten season of winter is over, and the
Easter of Nature calls from their graves to the beauty
of new lives the grains of seed, the germs of life that
had seemed to die; and with each new outburst up
from silent lips go hallelujahs that chime with all
Nature’s chorus, ‘“ God zs good.” Go out into the coun-
try to this magnificent array of varied beauty in which
God has lapped our city, out where the earth is telling
the resource as the glory of our God,— go, blind sons
and daughters of an Infinite Love, and see and hear
and read and comprehend the story day uttereth unto
day, away from noises and jars, works and ways and
strifes and envies of man,—see what God is doing with
busy love. from morn till eve, in fields and lanes and
woods that stretch themselves everywhere, that woo
and coax with sight and sound, and where nothing
stands between the soul and the divine creating hand.
The great temple of Nature stands daily open, and,
with enticings no art can have, waits to welcome and
reward, to soothe and elevate, to tempt to the worship
no mammon temple wakes. Beautiful for situation was
Mount Zion, but round about Jerusalem the guardian
mountains did not stand in such calm and varied

32 DAY UNTO DAY.

beauty as these hills-about this city with the rich inter-
vales between. Throw off the harness of your daily

lives, get from beneath the hammer that beats the life |

from out your souls. Go to the smiles of our great
Mother Earth, and up from them look for the smile of
our great Father,— God,—and the dull thud of your
sluggish pulse will bound with new life, the encrusting
scales will drop from your eyes, and you will see, not
flower and sky, not beauty and summer, but the great
immanent spirit of them all— Him in whom you, as
they, live, move, and have your being.

Not in the country only, and at one season, does day
unto day speak of God, but there are voices of the
city, louder than its hum, that man may always hear,
must sometimes heed. God is not only resident out-
side of city limits, an omnipotent gardener replenish-
ing the earth, but just as much present and just as
loudly speaking and just as clearly spoken of where
the weary vessel chafes her sides against the dock, or
the clatter of machinery or the concussions of trade
make what men call life. Only you heed it! Daily
life and daily detail proclaim Him by whose law and in
whose sight all things revolve, whose infinite issues in
blindness these work out. Strangely into the clash
and selfishness of business and intercourse the day
intrudes with its speech of God, its various lesson ; and
man finds himself compelled to learn of high things
while grovelling amid the garbage of life. Sickness,
misfortune, sin, poverty, gaunt in rags, with hollow
voice and eye, waylay his step or besiege his business

hour, demand for sympathy and charity breaks in upon |

the anxious fret, and calls him back to the humanity he

DAY UNTO DAY. 33

is tempted to forget, brightens and strengthens the
great brother tie. Only let him heed what the busy
press and busier telegraph bring him of the great har-
vest of events, adventure, discovery, progress,— only
let the great, ever-growing record speak, not of facts
alone, but the author of them, as they all do, just as
much as lily or star,—and man would find that under-
neath the sordid cares of commerce, and overlying the
intricacies of traffic, outspeaking from daily jar and
jargon, is a divine name, influence, presence, as
mighty to effect its purposes as the glowing life of
sunset or of autumn. There is no hiding of God in
cities, though men may hide from him. He walks the
streets as the fields. The day is vocal of him every-
where. Day unto day uttereth its speech.

Day unto day uttereth speech of ourselves. We live
by days. They are the leaves folded back each night
in the great volume that we write. They are our auto-
biography. Each day takes us not newly, but as a tale
continued. It finds us what yesterday left ais. «It
works with us by yesterday’s report. It has the draw-
backs as the experiences of yesterday,— the good and
the bad,— and with these sets itself at the new task of
to-day. And, as we go on, every day is telling to
every other day truths about us, showing the kind of
being that is handed on to it, making of us something
better or something worse, as we decide. It tells us if
we have kept our temper, our resolves, our faith, if we
have been selfish or self-denying: it tells the rule by
which we walk, and how really we are growing into the
lineaments of Christ.

The day’s whisper to the next day, as it dismisses

34 DAY UNTO DAY.

us, is that it will find us very remiss in this command,
in the following of which only are the harmony and
success of life.

I remember that I used to think, as I suppose many
still do half consciously, when everything had gone
wrong with me, and the day’s record was black with
dissatisfaction, as it still so generally is, that, only could
I get to sleep, that day’s record would be closed and
out of the way, and to-morrow I could begin with a
clean sheet for a new trial. Sleep I used to think the
same sort of sponge that some men conceive forgive-
ness to be,—the eradicator of the ineradicable facts
of experience, and each day not the continuing of an
old life, but the beginning again. So partially it is,
new chances with new courage, while it is yet the
outgo of the day gone, as the link in the ship’s chain
that slips your finger is the outcome of the link before.
Many links, one chain.

It is a very weary heart as well as head that man
lays away at night, and oblivion for the one as much as
sleep for the other is his craving. His life-longing is.
to begin again, and yet again, to get away from these
inexorable yesterdays, which cling to us in our strug-
gles, and will not off. We cannot doit. Into the web
of life they go, figure and color receding as the busy
loom of time works in others,— get rolled on the great
roll that with every diurnal revolution grows. Just as
the swift runners amid the Highlands handed the same
torch to the next, and it was borne on from hand to
hand, from stage to stage, till its work was done, so
day to day hands us on, each taking up the same life
the other laid down, each with rapid stroke shaping

DAY UNTO DAY, 35

us a little, and with its added labor passing us on to
the next, the new not effacing the old. However it
may change color and figure of the future, however
these may blend in future harmony or scatter wilder
confusion, we do not lay aside life, only continue it.

Our one chance is improvement, not oblivion,— not
that the past days shall forget or deny their record,
but that the coming shall have better things to utter.

Not only of what has been does day unto day utter
speech, but more sadly sometimes —might I not say
always ?— what might have been.

It is not the commission that haunts memory so
fiercely as the omission,— omission that seems so tri:
fling and venial as we yield to the moment’s enticing,
which looms so big itself and with such giant shadow
to our backward looking. What I have done is bad
enough; but what is unwritten that ought to be on
life’s record, what I had no business to leave out, what
I have left wzdone it is that runs up a long and
heavy column in the account. Day unto day uttereth
speech of it,—little additions rolling on in ever-swell-
ing volume, as the spring-tide comes rising, rising, till
it submerges so much that is fair in life.

I need no other reminder than my memory; and, as
I glance along the days, and sadly see that I “might
have been” a man of so much juster proportions, so
much fuller in all the faculty that makes manhood,
with so much more even pace might have run my race,
achieved so much more for man and for God, “might
have been”’ so much more honest, persevering, indus-
trious, bold, pure, true, unselfish, gentle, and obedient,
so much better in every relation, manward, selfward,
Godward ! i

36 DAY UNTO DAY.

The old days tell the new days this, and the new
days find how toughened I am in the old depraved
habits and thoughts. I mourn over what might have
been: they cannot raise in me the courage yet to be
that I wish I had been and shall yet more wish,

O friends, do not let us lapse into the drift that takes
us away from hope as we near the goal, do not let us
have these pitiful tales of day unto day as our only
record, but let us rouse and nerve ourselves; and,
whatever the sum of yesterdays, let us make the sum
of to-morrows brighter, nobler, holier, the time past
enough for mistake and folly, shame and sin, while
future days shall utter unto future days a better tale
and show a clearer course.

“ Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
Thus ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.
For the structure that we raise,
Time is with material filled : ©

Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.”

June 15, 1873.

alg
EASTER.

“And I know not where they have laid him.”—JouHN xx., 13.

ONE never quite satisfactorily arranges the sequences
of the story of that resurrection morning. The sepa-
rate gospel accounts are brief and unsatisfactory.
When collated, there are gaps not to be closed, and
contradictions not to be reconciled. The fragments
of narrative, the separate interviews, the independent
witnesses, can by no human ingenuity be woven into
one complete, continuous account.

After the exciting scenes of the crucifixion, a few
devoted friends —from among whom the disciples are
conspicuously absent — get the body of Jesus, and lay
it in the tomb, but are hurried from an incompleted
service by the setting sun, which ushered in the Sab-
bath, on which no manner of work could be done,
especially as that Sabbath, by Mosaic ordinance, was
a high day. The little party of men and women retire.
We do not hear of the men again. The future story,
so far as that first party is concerned, is confined to
the women of it. And, of these women, she who most
interests us, to whom Jesus seems to have shown
special attention, who most tenaciously clung to him,
is Mary Magdalene; and, if seven devils once went
out of her, surely seven saints must have then pos-
sessed her.

38 EASTER.

She was at the burial, she saw the place where her
master was laid; and that so sacred body had, no doubt,
been composed to its-last rest by her tender and loving
touch. She drew back and went away, one bright
thought only in her heart to support her slowly reced-
ing step, that she should once again see that so loved
face, when early on the morning of the first day of the
week she should come to finish her incompleted task.
In the lone company of her heavy heart, wearily she
waited at home till the Sabbath day was gone; and
then as the prophetic dawn hinted of coming day,
before the sun was up, “while it was yet dark,’ bearing
sweet spices, she started on her sacred errand.

As she went, she thought of the great stone that had
been rolled against the mouth of the cave. Who should
roll it away? But it was rolled away already. The
tomb was empty. Startled, she fled toward the city,
and met the more tardily coming disciples. Her words
are the first annunciation of that morning, ‘‘ They have
taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we
know not where they have laid him.” She turns back
with them, and stands by the tomb, alone, silent, weep-
ing, when a voice addresses her, ‘“ Why weepest thou ?”
And again it is, “Because they have taken away my
Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” And
then, as the angel leaves her, a form is before her which
her dim eyes suppose to be that of the gardener, and
to him she pours out anew the one agonizing thought,
exquisite with the pathos and eloquence of despair:
“Oh, sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where
thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” How
dirge-like this repeated refrain, that solemn, sad, wail-

EASTER, 39

ing cry, wild and weird, “I know not where they have
laid him,”

They had not laid him anywhere,— disciple, gar.
dener, angel. There had been nothing of that which
the Pharisees pretended to fear. Of all men, the dis-
ciples the least capable of that act. They were too
stupefied for that. There had been nothing of that
which Mary may have vaguely suspected,—that his
enemies had stolen him away. No enemy had done it.
Nor had angels. Nor had man. When, how, no man

knows; but
: | “The rock-barred door

Is opened wide, and the great prisoner gone.”

The rites of sepulture never were concluded; and the
swift word passed from lip to lip of friend, it reached
the ear of foe, it spread the wide world round,—

“ He is risen! he is risen!
Tell it with a joyful voice.
He has burst his three days’ prison,
Let the whole wide earth rejoice! ”

Jesus was not to pass to dust in the long, unrelieved
silence and quiet of that hillside garden. It was death
that died there ; and Jesus lived.

Of all the days in the Christian’s calendar, this
should be the gladdest and the welcomest. <A feast
kept with sincerity and truth and one loud song of
exuberant joy, echoing and re-echoing from pole to
pole, and swelling in every soul, should usher in and
greet

“This welcome morn
Which scatters blessings on its wings
To nations — unborn.”

40 EASTER.

Could we only in simplicity and sincerity adopt the
morning salutation of the Greek Church,— ‘‘ The Lord
is risen,”— greeting friends and neighbors so, as on
Christmas and New Year’s morning we exchange our
salutations, it would do much toward handing on freshly
the gladness which should fill every heart at the return
of this peculiar anniversary. But we may say it to our-
selves, and be glad.

I have never been so impressed with the joyousness
that ought to characterize this festival —that naturally
would, if we really felt its meaning—as in reading
many Easter hymns of late, and hearing the children
rehearse their Easter carols. There is a certain senti-
ment that we talk about at times, and at times let lie
half-dead, which characterizes a good deal our feeling
about an anniversary which a real, deep, keen faith
would vivify and pour out in spontaneous joy. For do
we not celebrate the giving of the greatest love to man?
Not the coming of Christ so blesses as does that going
of his, which took with it the remnants of shadow and
gloom, and filled the anxious heart of man with sweet,
divine assurance. Say what you will about the wit-
ness, question and demur and declare the proof inade-
quate and the recorded fact a mistake, and bring science
to deny the possibility of statements which have been
the glad credence of the generations, somehow there
is a fact that one cannot get behind,—that, dating
from that time and day, an unprepared and reluctant
people began to accept a marvelous truth, which be-
came, in the enthusiastic hands of Paul, the mighty
power with which old faiths-were subverted and the
one new established. For himself, his confidence in

EASTER. 4!

the story of the resurrection, made him impatient
of the clogs and conditions of the flesh, soothed his
troubles and his wounds, and made light his dangers,
and forced him on, dauntless, in a career which had
not one earthly hope and every earthly loss. As Jesus
was transfigured while speaking-of the decease he was
to accomplish at Jerusalem, so is Paul transfigured as
he speaks of that accomplished decease and the bright
morrow that broke through its horrors and flooded a
world with its quenchless light. In the cross of Christ
he glories, but it is the resurrection that makes his joy.
No happier man in all history than he, as he pours out
his ardent soul in joyful adoration, and tells of the
blunted sting of death and the victor crown torn from
the now uncrowned tyrant. And what a story is it
to which the dim, dumb corridors under old Rome bear
witness, that home of death vocal with hymn and hope
and emblem, that up from dead centuries brings,
through its dusty halls, the glad, triumphant convic-
tions of those who laid their dead there! Since then,
the host of high and low, old and young, great and
small, wise and ignorant, who have gone; who have
mourned, not as those who had no hope, but as those
‘in whom hope was as open vision, and faith the great
comforter! Well to ring in the Christmas tide, to
greet its coming from steeple and. from lip, with carol,
gift, and gladness! Well that the whole heart should
rejoice because to us is born a Saviour! And, surely,
equally well, equally to be welcomed with glad acclaim,
with happy voice and joyous song, the Easter day,
which sheds its light over a world lying in darkness
while Jesus walked with man, taking on brightness
only when Jesus passed away.

42 EASTER.

How shall we keep this holy day of gladness,
This queen of days, that bitter, hopeless sadness
Forever drives away?
The night is past, its sleep and its forgetting :
Our risen sun, no more forever setting,
Pours everlasting day.

Let us not bring, upon this joyful morning,

Dead myrrh and spices for our Lord’s adorning,
Nor any lifeless thing.

Our gifts shall be the fragrance and the splendor

Of living flowers, in breathing beauty tender,
The glory of our spring.

And with the myrrh, oh! put away the leaven

Of malice, hatred, injuries unforgiven,
And cold and lifeless form :

Still with the lilies deeds of mercy bringing,

And fervent prayers, and praises upward springing,
And hopes, pure, bright, and warm.

So shall this Easter shed a fragrant beauty

O’er many a day of dull and cheerless duty,
And light thy wintry way,

Till rest is won, and Patience, smiling faintly,

Upon thy breast shall lay her lilies saintly,
To hail heaven’s Easter day.

The Mary question —which she, in the darkness of
the morning and the darkness of her heart, put with
such persistent perplexity —is a question that virtually
many times comes to the thinking man, quite as much
perplexed, quite as much in the dark as she. All
about us, everywhere, words and professions, and call-
ing upon Jesus, churches, societies, charities, hospitals,
phrases a man must accept, dogmas he must believe,
creeds he must subscribe to, forms, processes he must
go through, a crowd, a host of things labelled Chris-

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EASTER. 43

tian,— but the Christ, where have they laid him?
Here is the civilized world, holding as the apple of its
eye a venerated institution; and here are customs, laws,
habits of people and of individuals, and they all bear
a Christian name and purport to come of him, to be
because of him. There are many valuable, admirable
things about these, mingled with much that is no
way desirable; but, even in their best expression, the
marvel is that they should be considered Christian,
that they should claim Christly origin and sanction,
so little of the Christ is in them. Where have they
laid the Christ? we) say. A very successful, well-
regulated Church, feasts, fasts, rites, ceremonies, occa-
sions punctiliously looked after, a right administration
of service, a broad allegiance of people, a wide-spread
interest and power,— but the Christ, where have they
laid the Christ? These might be attributes of, attend-
ants upon, a well-regulated heathenism: they might be
dicta of a philosophy, the expedients of a police, the
morality of a well-ordered society, the sanction of
honored custom,—any of a thousand motives might
account for, uphold these. There is no Christ flavor

to them. They bear his name; but where have they |
laid him? Where, in these, his unmistakable spirit?
Jesus is not an embalmed body laid away in a Judean
grave centuries ago, but Jesus is a living spirit, source
and centre of a faith that: lives; but where have these
which have stolen his name, which do work as under
his sanction and as by his help, laid that spirit which
is to be the world’s deliverance, without whose leaven-
ing presence all must go for nought? It is his own
word that it is useless to cry, Lord, Lord! or to claim

44 EASTER.

to do mighty deeds in his name; and an apostle puts
fresh emphasis upon it by declaring that no man, and
no man’s work, except it have his spirit, can be his.
Where that is wanting, it is the madness of the mad-
dest folly to claim to be his.

He is no patriot, how loud soever his profession, how
plausible soever his seeming, in whom the very spirit
which makes the patriot is evidently wanting: he is
no republican, he is no democrat, he is no hard-money
man, whose spirit lacks the very elements that go to
make him one or the other. He is no Swedenborgian
who ignores the influence, the spirit of Swedenborg ;
and why should that man be Christian, or that thing
be Christian, which is conspicuous and notable for the
absence of that which makes the Christian? The in-
forming, inspiring spirit of a thing is that by which
it is to be alone known. You may call something a
rose to all eternity, but, if it have not that informing,
inspiring something which makes a rose, an eternity
of calling can’t make it one; and you may call church,
sect, man Christian up to the last “syllable of recorded
time,’ but if church, sect, man, be not informed, in-
spired by that spirit which makes, which is, the Christ,
the calling is vain. It comes back as empty as the
echo that shouts at you behind the mountain,— noth-
ing but a sound, the rebound only of air. We talk of
nominal Christians. There can be no such thing. An
echo is a nominal voice; but it is nothing, baseless,
bodiless, substanceless, the shadow of a sound. To be
nominally Christian is to be Christian not at all, is to
be empty of Jesus as Mary found the tomb to be, is
to mistake the tomb for Jesus, the dead place where

EASTER. AS

he had lain for the living force which already he was
become. When Jesus had been taken away, it would
have taken more than an angel to prove that he was
there. .

Only man attempts such legerdemain, and would
have us believe that a cerement is a body, and the
~ napkin and the linen clothes the living man, and the
empty place quick with the throb and quiver of a beat-
ing heart. It is only man that takes a semblance for
a reality, a shadow for a substancé, who undertakes to
lay away the spirit of Jesus, and yet pretends to have
and hold it. |

I have briefly to answer the Mary question by say-
ing, We have laid him in the past. He is an embalmed
memory rather than a living influence; he is a fact in
history,.not a present spirit; a man whom claiming
to know is honor to ourselves, not proof of faithful
service. We have laid him under catechism and creed,
decrees, substitutions, and religious form and formula
and custom,— buried him under these, not as one buries
a corner-stone, that it may be the solid thing upon which
the substantial edifice shall rise, but buried him as we
bury things that we want to keep out of sight, and
mean shall stay dead. We have been satisfied with
the conjuring power of his name, and by its spell have
attempted to work. We have let our idea of respecta-
bility, the customs of society, the proprieties of inter-
course, the distinctions of class, and all the shifting
and shallow expediencies overlay him, and established
the sanctions of a reputable selfishness, tinctured with
just a flavor of his name,—the low average of opinion
of the low average of men,—into the place which is

46 EASTER,

alone of right his, till his influence is as dead in these
as was his body when Pilate’s myrmidons thrust the
spear into his side. It is not undue exaggeration to
say that, saturated with what is called a nominal Chris-
tianity, the things that pertain to life are empty of that
spirit which is specifically his, and that to attempt to
press the law of that spirit upon Christendom would
be to shake it to its foundation. And that is a shak-
ing Christendom needs, and must yet have.

For a moment look at what we call manhood. The
cynic Diogenes lighted his lantern, and said he was
searching for a man; Plato, banished to Syracuse, told
the tyrant that he had come to the island to find a virt
uous man. Christ came not to search for, but to
make. He came not in the majesty of a God, but in
the beauty of personal holiness,—the model, the ex-
ample of what the men of different philosophies were
seeking, what the many wanted to find, to be. In
all the way of life, he stands before us. Whatever
we want to get at regarding it, he supplies us with.
We have only to refer back to him, and the principles
as the conduct of every-day existence become manifest.
We no longer walk in the dark and stumble, but it is
light all about us, and we are erect. Principles, pre-
cepts, injunctions, not mere matters of record, but in
living witness, stand dressed in all their attractiveness
and possibility, and how to grow into a Christianly
manhood, a Chxistianly womanhood is just as clear in
rudiment and in progress as how to grow into any
ordinary calling or trade. And yet, in this great art of
living,— the art of arts for all of us, the desirable and
all-important consummation,—that very example, the

EASTER. 47

living spirit and influence of Jesus, has been laid aside;
and we consent to be moulded by ten thousand other
antagonistic influences, and to grow everyhow, after
our own wills or the dictation of men and things about
us. Satisfying ourselves in the virtue of a name, we
go on to live much as if Christ had never lived, died,
risen. So far as his example is concerned, he might
as well be lying in a never opened tomb. With per-
sistent ingenuity, we keep him from vision, we thrust
him from thought. We go our own way. Clinging to
his name, and in his name essaying to do many things,
we grow away from that spirit whose stringent imper-
ativeness is softened by the sweetness of his life and
the grand results of resolute service. We make him
really of no account, carefully laid away from sight and
thought, and in history and in ourselves we have this
unaccountable, this monstrous anomaly, a pattern by
which nobody patterns, while everybody assumes to be
by it patterned. How are we better than the whited
sepulchres Jesus pointed out to his disciples?

What the-Christian men and women have done with
Christ all along these years of a Christian era is simply
this,— they have laid him aside. They have not de-
nied him: they have not forgotten him. They have
confessed him, and then they have put him by, as one
puts by the thing or thought that with a too faithful,
troublesome pertinacity will keep itself before one, as
the angel of the Lord would keep itself in the path of
stubborn Balaam. Assuming to be walking after him,
glowing with the desire to be named as his, in his name
doing every manner of thing, and on it building every
manner of hope, him men have simply waived aside;

48 EASTER.

and all his mighty self has been as a buried death in

the Church’s enterprise and the individual’s career.

Empty, as the disciples found the tomb of Christ
they expected to see, has the church life, individual
life been of his life. The scattered cerements of the
sacred body witnessed where the Christ had lain, wit-
nessed to his death, and what more living witness have
the Church and the soul? Forms, feasts, fasts, profes-
sions, cries of Lord, Lord,— cerements, swathing-bands,
not the living soul. That is not in them. Our prov-
erb is the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. The
religion of the Church, the religion of the soul, is the
religion of Christ with Christ left out. New churches
building all the time, new sects rising all the time, new
preachers, new views, new methods, great stir and
interest and zeal, and every manner of thing laid hold
of and brought in in his name, but not the Christ.
Things not going right, the gospel not progressing,
the world and the flesh and the devil successfully
withstanding it,—an ever-growing, compact, and well-
cemented kingdom arising to confront and threaten
the kingdom of God, and men pressing into it, and the
anointed custodians calling meetings and asking what
to do, and devising new machinery, and gearing up
and oiling old, themselves doubtful and quaking and
distraught; but the Christ not called in, still laid aside,
that living spirit not invoked, without which all ma-
chinery must be dumb and had better be dead.

And so this Easter morning finds the world. Nearly |

two thousand times have men kept the high festival of
this memorial service,— flower and language and hymn
and prayer and praise and ceremony joining in acclaim

——— ee ee

EASTER. 49

to Him who was dead and is alive, yet not alive to the
hearts, to the faith, to the needs, to the lives of the
very men who shout and profess and commemorate.
This is our to-day picture, our to-day fact,— immortal
men not living as if immortal, but as if they were to
eat and drink to-day and to-morrow die. We want to
put away the corruptible law and life of the flesh, and
put on the incorruptible law and life of the Spirit, to be
clothed upon with the likeness of that One of all the
sons of men whose life was a rising from the grave of
trespasses and sins, whose spirit both points and leads
to what can never decay. We need to grow into a
diviner thing than the time shows, than the time as-
pires to, than the time believes in. We need to take
the Christ from where he has been laid, and allow him
to walk abroad in the atmosphere of daily life, once
more appealing pungently and convincingly and _ build-
ing himself into the soul, its life. We do not need to
keep Easter as a memorial; but we do need that living
Easter power which shall raise us above our every
infirmity, and make us quick with the elements of the
holy life.

The point of it all seems to be not so much that
Jesus has risen from the grave, and our hopes of a
future are through that strengthened, as that because
of him is the way out of the grave of trespass and sin.
Immortality by itself is little. Merely to live again has
nothing about it that one should desire it. The con-
tinuance of being has no value. The value, the desire,
is in the new reach possible to the soul when it has
risen above the things obnoxious to an infinite: purity
and love, obnoxious to a man’s own best thought and

50 7 EASTER.

purpose. That which Jesus calls the eternal life is of
more worth than any immortal life. It is the eternal
life that gives the value to, that is the crown of the
immortal life, that is more than cycles of ages, more
than rest. And that thought should crown and con-
secrate the Easter, that the spirit touched to new life
breaks the tomb of carnal desires, rends the cerements
of selfish pursuit, puts off the dross of the earthly part,
and walks out into new duties and higher hopes; and
as the spirit of spring touches dead grass and buds,
and makes’ new life course along their veins till all
semblance of death is sloughed away, and Nature stands
resplendent in the new vesture and glory of life, our
souls, touched by the spirit of life in Jesus, put on
their promise and their beauty, carnal things drop
away, and the full flow of a diviner being, cleansing,
purifying, elevating, throbs through these dull and lag-
gard lives, supplying them with that quick power which
shall transmute the man of earth into the man for
heaven. Mary did not know where Jesus had been
laid. She could not go to him. We do, and nothing
stands between us and finding him except the stolidity
of our wills.

We do not want to have it said of us that we have
laid away our Saviour. Rather would we have it said
that we are risen with him, that we have sunk our
lower selves, repressed what is base, and are growing
to be like him. We do not want that men should say
of us or we confess it of ourselves that Jesus is but
a name. No presence, no power. It is not the dead
Christ of a past history that we desire to own, but the
living Christ of a present influence. We want to feel

|
.

EASTER. 7 A» b ( ] St
possessed by living power of faith in him, and then to
feel it more, and after that still more. It was Mary’s
sadness that a body was gone: let it not be ours to
miss that spirit which alone gives life, lifts man above
what perishes, and crowns with honor and immortality.
Easter songs, flowers, wishes, ceremonies, are nothing
save as the spirit of Easter in our hearts, consecrating
all that we are, do, and hope, enables us to leave
behind as dead chrysalis all power of the inferior
nature, while our ransomed souls wing themselves in
new arid broader flight, mounting as eagles mount,
singing as larks sing, folding wing and hushing song
only as we rest upon the topmost peak of high en-
deavor, and know ourselves to have found favor as
God’s sons.

How shall we better keep this holy day of gladness,
this queen of days, than by renewing our fealty to the
One too much overlaid, forgot, and under his banner
re-enlisting for the great struggle of life? Life! Who
knows its meaning, who comprehends its vastness,
since Jesus has said there is no death? Who can
make too much of this part of it? Who too well fit
him for the other?

Easter Sunday, 1879.

aie
ONE THING I DO.

“This one thing I do.”— PHILIPPIANS iii., 13.
£ ’

PAUL was a man of definite purpose. In all history,
probably, no man more thoroughly in earnest, so pos-
sessed by one great desire. He had one thing he
would do. His whole make seems to have looked that
way,— a man of an original, grand intention, of a con-
densed individual force, who would do whatever he had
to do with a might, with an intensity that should
insure its thorough doing. Any cause which had him
for a champion was sure to succeed. He would do its
work wholly and bravely and singly. No frittering of
capacities, no scattering of energy, no wasting of
opportunities, no halves about him; but what he is and
what he does concentrate the entire man,— evidence
of one and the same spirit in every phase of his
checkered career. Into every one, he put his whole
self. No one could complain. No one can write it
against him that he did not thoroughly do the thing he
started to do. Whether haling people to prison, or
riding to Damascus, or fitting himself in Arabia, or fol-
lowing out the after career of industry, courage, and
faith, one indomitable purpose impels him, Into his
tent-making, his persecutions, his apostleship, he carried

ONE THING I DO. 53

one and the same spirit. Each in its own season was
that one thing he would do, the one thing he did.

We talk a good deal about success, but a good deal
the secret of it is consecration to one work, and con-
centration upon it. That is very much truer than the
seductive mixture of nonsense and falsehood with
which so many tickle themselves and deceive others.

Success is an achievement and has conditions; and
chief of them are these, which not the most fortunate
or the most largely endowed may overlook. Condi-
tions are never very fascinating, nor will anything
short of the bitterest experience convince some men of
their necessity. Industry that shall never tire, not
want purpose, will alone redeem even genius from
mortifying failure. Genius, with all its brilliant, but
uncertain, desultory, and, on the whole, valueless efforts,
has not made the world much its debtor. Its obliga-
tions, rather, are to single-purposed, industrious, fixed
mediocrity. Opportunities, surroundings, social posi-
tion, and influence, the thousand outside accidents or
natural advantages to which men attribute success,
have really very little to do with success; while they
more generally hinder than help the individual, spoil
rather than make him. I don’t like that word “suc-
cess,’ when used as the aim of life or the criterion of
it. A man is to let all thought of success go, to sweep
from his imagination the glamours with which it fasci-
nates, to put himself at the work of life in the spirit of
fidelity, to do the best that he can do because it is
right, and then dismiss every thought of consequence,
refuse to gauge himself or allow himself to be gauged
by success, I do not suppose Paul ever thought of it.

54 ONE THING I DO.

Jesus never did, and no true man should. Let it come,
if it will; and, if it won’t, why then pray for heart and
pluck to bear it, and try again, always sure that honors
and wealth and the thousand things men prize may not
come, but consecration to and concentration upon any
one honorable work must give a career eternity will
never be ashamed of, and enough worldly return to
keep from the clutches of poverty. There is every
- manner of misfortunes attending our mortal condition,
but nothing has yet occurred in human experience to
shake man’s bottom-most convictions that fixed and
resolute energies insure what is best in any success.

When we start in life, we do not think enough about
this fixing upon one thing and sticking to it. Young
people have not a great deal of that quality. It is
something they have got to learn.

Our first striking into life is a good deal like our first
striking out in the water,—a very large quantity of sur-
plus energy very illy directed, spatter and splutter very
discouraging, to very little purpose. We are all abroad,
flustered, concentrated not at all, because we have not
learned the habit as the necessity of fixedness, of pick-
ing out from the great mass the one particular thing
upon which we will lay out ourselves. And somehow
our education, both at home and at school, does not
help us a bit. They alike tend to fritter. What do
you for a child’s mind, when you compel it to wrestle
with a half-dozen different branches of study in a single
school session, get it a good start at history and then
call for geometry, and, when well in the intricacies
of angles and sines and what not, call for French?
What do you for the trade-apprentice, when you are

.
po -
A ey =F
ne ee ee ee ee

— a =

. ‘ Sous 4
—— a Te ae eee

ONE THING I DO, 55
&

always taking him away from the thing he is just at,
when he has to drop file and take hammer, or turns
from adze to sand-paper, this moment is on some nice
and delicate job, and the next at rough work that taxes
ali his muscle and unsteadies his mind for what he was
just at? We talk about the narrowing tendencies of
the divisions and subdivisions of labor ; and when a man
can only make the heel of a shoe, but can’t put on the
sole, life does seem whittled down to a pretty distress-
ing minimum. And yet the mastery of a single thing,
however minute, is of very much more importance than
the mastery of nothing,— the mastery inevitably his who
fixes himself to no definite purpose,—and only by such
concentration on one thing can we get perfection.
With every drawback, the only way is to do one thing.
The men who have accomplished the real things of life
are not the brilliant, erratic men who have turned their
hands to everything, but the plodding men who have
stuck to one thing. With all the ridicule we have
played off on them, the men of one idea have been the
men to heave the world ahead; and so the men of one
work. It is one idea, one work, one thing clung to, as

a man clings to the plank that holds him from death, ©
that has filled the world with accomplishment; and men
prove that they begin to understand it by this matter
of specialties in every vocation, which is one of the
significant things of this generation. I suppose Colum-
bus was a man of one idea, a bore, a fanatic whom peo-
ple hated to see coming, because he would be sure to
talk about the great unknown continent; and yet it was
his persistence in the thing which he made the one
idea of his life that opened up a new world and made

56 ONE THING I DO.

your life and mine possible. We know what a pestifer-
ous set of fellows those were, a few years ago, for whom
we had hard words and mobs, who, in season and out
of season, in every style of language and of garb, by
day and by night, and everywhere, preached the gospel
of anti-slavery, and yet, on very diffuse, general con-
viction that slavery was wrong, never would have forced
the issue. It is the purpose to do one thing, and the
doing it, that achieves result. The engineer of the
passenger train does not tend the fire, and stand at
the brake, and collect the tickets, and manage the ex-
press, and handle the freight, and chat with the pas-
sengers, and play cards in the smoking-car, an ubiqui-
tous and generally ornamental or overburdened official ;
but he is in the cab, his eye on the track, his hand
where it can touch lever or throttle, his whole self alert,
a man of an incarnate consciousness, no off-thought or
power. He is doing one thing; and because he does

it, your safety and the journey’s success.. And think

how it has been in science, in invention, in all manner
of discovery, in scholarship, state, art, mechanics, phi-
lanthropy. It is the one thing at a time, the-one thing
well held to till accomplished, each separate stone well
placed and thoroughly built in, that builds up causes,
truths, men. Put everything that you are into a bewil-
dered series of vague and ill-assorted effort, and you do
nothing real, valuable, lasting. It is like the old fowl-
ing-piece that was a master-hand at scattering small
shot all through a flock, ruffling feathers and breaking
legs and wings, but really bringing down nothing. Put
all you are into one thing: stick to that. It is like the
rifle at Creedmoor or at Wimbledon. It takes out the
very central eye, and bears away the prize.

— 4s" eee

he ee ee ee ee ee en

ONE THING I DO. Eo:

And so, whatever of belittlement may come of the
doing one thing, we must run the risk for sake of
the good that can in no other way be reached, and learn
to counteract it by that counteracting a well-instructed
conscience insures. We may write it as a first con-
dition to useful, honorable life anywhere, without
which is no accomplishment, that the power of the
whole man must be laid out on the selected thing.
One thing must be resolved on, and that one thing
done. The old patriarch, dying away back there in the
centuries, said it of his, son, “ Unstable as water, thou
shalt not excel’’; and history and biography and experi-
ence have been ever since repeating the fact. You and
I know many a failure in manhood, solely for lack of
concentrated purpose ; while we have seen many a one,
pigmy otherwise, grow by it. into a sonof Anak.

And when we see what a fixed devotedness to one
thing does, consecration and concentration, one won-
ders that one ever hesitates at anything. The most
obdurate has to succumb, the most hopeless yields.
There is no obstacle. To-day’s necessities are the im-
possibilities of the last generation, every one of them
the result of somebody’s fixed adhesion to one thing,
till it was done. So tunnels pierce the roots of moun-
tains, and telegraphic wires lie undisturbed in ocean
deeps, far spaces in the firmament above are read, and
fickle weather induced to make known its secret. One
feels it to be the sesame before which all things shall
unlock themselves. Somebody says, ‘That man is ter-
rible who does one thing.” I remember just after the
battle of Winchester that General Sheridan said this
to me, ‘“ When I go, I want to go all over.’’ He put

58 , ONE THING I DO,

everything that was in him into the thing he was about.
It was life or death, hit or miss, neck or nothing, and all
that not in the reckless, uncalculating way we have been

apt to think,— something definite, no half-way ; and so

he was terrible,— terrible because every obstacle that
put itself in his way had got to get out of it, cost what
it might. It was the soldier spirit we want a little
more of in life. I love to think of men who are up to
something the like, not the hair-brain, dare-devil men
dashing against the mills of the gods, but the hardy and
daring and resolute men not to sway or yield, who con-
quer in all fields, and not only write their own name in
glory letters, but leave the horizon all threaded with
gold when they are sunk beneath it. When a man
says, “ That thing has to be done, and I am going to do
it,’ whether it be a battery to be taken, or a habit to be
conquered, or any little home stent, or daily trivial
duty; when you read, by word, by deed, by look, that
the great resolve possesses him, as a divine spirit might
have possessed the Pythoness,— possibly you may feel
that the word “terrible” hardly defines it; but just let
him strike difficulty, meet resistance, find himself sore
pressed, and then you feel not the sublimity of purpose
merely, but the terrible power that lies in him, resolved
to do the one thing.

And there is something in one fixed, definite pur-
pose that unfolds a man to himself, and gives him confi-
dence, courage, and growth. A man does not begin to
grow till he has purpose. He does not understand
what is in him nor suspect what he can be. Alas, how
many live out all their days without understanding
what is in them, and go away with no suspicion of the

ONE THING I DO. 59

kind of men they might have grown up to under the
inspiration of a single resolute purpose! It is amazing
the sluggish, contented embryo that one can contrive
to be before he has thoroughly roused himself, and
what confidence and courage he comes to, who has set
himself his task and measured himself against it.
That is a new day, the dawn of a new life to the boy,
when he has taken himself out of the routine of the
child, and resolved to be something in lesson or play or
conduct; and the thrill with which the young man put
his hand on his earnest life-work tingles yet along the
very nerves-of age. It makes us almost giant to feel
the birth-throe of a living purpose. The lioness, re-
proached because she gave but one at a birth, replied,
“Yes; but that a lion.” And the one lon purpose
born to a man, to grow into the one thing of life, is a
birth to be proud of and never forgotten. After it, we
are never the same. It has lifted out of old conditions,
limitations : it has put a spirit in us as the new inspira-
tion toward a broader life, the quick play of whose
pulses, vibrating through the whole man, impels us to
thought and deed. You may have noticed in your boy
how be seems to have sprung in a night into a great
manhood. He laid himself down a child, he arose a
man,— the boy behind, and he a new creature in all the
grand, fixed purpose and resolve of life. You may
remember the leap you made yourself, shut out of and
beyond self, when you had come up to the great crisis
and turning of life and were resolved what to be, and
had set your first foot out in the new journey, and had
turned the new leaf in life. In that act, you stood self-
revealed, were more of a man than you knew for, had

60 ONE THING I DO.

more of the stuff and substance in you; and life, which
turned from you as playmate, you welcomed in his new
garb of yoke-fellow. It is a proud, a solemn, a sublime
moment that sees the soul register its purpose and
write it as with imperishable letters, “This one thing I
do, come weal, come woe, come ban of man or shock
of time, come sorrow and distress and loss,— though I
stand alone, dere I stand, this I do”; and the life of
slow, earnest, arduous toil that follows partakes of the
grandeur of the birth. A dull and depressing toil, too,
sometimes; and often has life to be taken at a dead
pull, at every disadvantage, steam shut off, brakes
down, and all around yawning despairs. The more
the need for just that purpose, which comes to us
phrased in the fiery words of Luther, but which was
keyed to a loftier note by the Buddhist missionary who
said, “Even if the gods were united with men, they
should not frighten me away.” That is what we want,
—the purpose to do from which nor devil nor gods
shall drive, before which the very despairs shall be
dumb and impossibilities compliant. It was in the
midst of such that Paul cheered and braced himself
by saying, “This one thing I do.” It was the device
upon his banner, his cheery, always cry, the word ever
re-echoing its response from the far and beckoning
heights, leading and sustaining till he laid all down.
The “Excelsior” of the poet is but)the:Pauimousea.
flesh.

The tendency and temptation to fritter, and the
amount of it discernible in the lives about us, the lack
of concentration, is one of the most alarming features
of our American civilization. We have been educating

ONE THING I DO. 61

ourselves away from the virtues of our ancestry, and it
begins to tell. Necessity, perhaps, compelled them to
fixedness of habit and purpose quite as much as any
principles of faith or conduct zwpelled them ; but, un-
deniably, they were a people of truer calibre and
greater specific character than we threaten to become,
for as yet the disasters to American character are

threatenings, foreshadows, rather than any actual, posi-

tive, permanent deterioration. The decay of useful
habit and occupation among our young women, the
immense amount of aimless nothing they manage to
infuse into their lives, the absence of exact and thor-
ough and resolute and useful occupation; the minutes
gone here, the hours there, upon an industry that
means little and amounts to less; the superabundance
of waste upon the purely ornamental and ephemeral,
the lack of sober setting one’s self down to what hon-
estly may be called work so as to become proficient in
the homely graces,—in short, the absolute fritter of
life, to which the average American young woman sub-
mits herself, is only equalled in disaster by the folly
of her brother, who is everything by turns and nothing
long, who is here to-day and there to-morrow, this one
week, that the next, so that, unconsciously, our salu-
tation has got to be, “Well, what are you doing
now?” As such times as these specially betray, the
market-place is full of those who have half-learned
trades, or of those who are just tide-waiters, ready for
the thing that turns up, and not fitted to do that well.

You find that most men who come to you for aid are |

the men who never had a definite occupation, have
never fixed themselves to anything, have nothing of

62 ONE THING I DO.

which they can say, “This one thing I do.” It is amaz-
ing, the catalogue of things a man will tell you he has

turned his hand to; while it is all but impossible to find

- aman who can do any one thing well,— and very much,
I. think, because of the idolatry which the average
Yankee has so long had for the god Smart. Young
men think themselves smart, and trust to that: they
have no consecration or concentration; and it is a
threatening cloud of doom that rises up before the
future,— and he is no croaker who says it,— unless our
young people shall be compelled to see that, not in-
terest, but necessity as well as principle, demand a
quick and radical change. We can’t go so another
generation. We must get the old fire of purpose, the
old fixedness, into life. We must inspire young lives
with the true elements of manhood and womanhood.
We, as they, must come to see what life means, what
life wants of us, and put ourselves at that with all the
power we are masters of, and do that thing as if it
were the only thing to be done and we alone could do
it,— consecrate ourselves to, concentrate ourselves upon
it. That is the only assurance that you can have that
the things of life will be done. One of the best lessons
I ever learned was from a laborer with the city teams,
whom I watched for years. I have seldom seen the
spirit of the one thing more fully embodied. He
seemed to feel as if the world were made for him to dig
a ditch in or make a street through, so incarnate was
he of purpose about the thing in hand, so resolute in
industry; and every nerve he had, the whole volume of
his muscle and sinew, were given to his mission. It
was really sublime,— the tireless energy with which

ONE THING I DO. 63

he put himself into the thing he did. It is again true,
and always true, and everywhere and every time true,
what the quaint old worthy said :—

“Who sweeps a room as for thy laws
Makes that and th’ action fine.”

But let us not forget that the one thing Paul said
he would do was to press forward to the possession of
that spirit that was in his Master, from which he said
principalities, powers, things present, things to come,
height, depth, life nor death, nor any other creature,
had power to separate him. He had one over-all thing
he wanted to do, and he had one motive for doing it.
What in religion men want is both,—the one thing to
do and one great, prominent motive. A thousand little
ones never will make one great one. Possibly, it may
do to enter upon any other pursuit from a variety of
motives ; but as one great power upholds the world and
sends it spinning through the spaces, while at the
moment of need a myriad little ones might leave us
the prey of their insignificance, so, to have a grand
Christian life, we must have not only one example, but
one motive for accepting and following it, and in the
strength of its simplicity and sufficiency move to the
great one work. Paul has supplied us with the motive
to become Christ-like, as Christ has with the example.
That fixed, it is for us to be the one thing. The inter-
mittent, fluctuating attention we give it, the divided
affections which it has, are not the means to a success-
ful issue. There are venerable sins in us will not
fall before anything less than a determined and per-
sistent siege. Not an hour’s diversion from our pur-

64 ONE THING [\DO. gas

pose but is felt, but weakens our capacity and prolongs
our strife. We have not the hours to spare. A-work,
the issues of which no man can overvalue, waits for our
whole energy. Our soul-sparks struck from the divine
essence need kindling into a pure, steady, and intense
flame. They can only be fitted to inherit the kingdom
by that genuine, entire devotion which shall lift them
above the wiles of other employments, and leave them
at liberty to love and labor for the One.

SWAMPSCOTT, July, 1875.

VI.

Tih wKINGDOM OF .GOD.
“The kingdom of God.” — LUKE xvi., 16.

Tue phrases “kingdom of God” and “kingdom of
heaven’ are old Hebrew phrases, and used inter-
changeably. They mean one and the same thing; that
is, the rule, dominion, supremacy, of what is true,
right, God-like, heavenly, not a place, but a condition.
Paul says, “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink,
but righteousness, joy, and peace, in the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus says, “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
righteousness,” and afterward declares that kingdom to
be within.

What I have to say of the kingdom of God, just
now, lies in a little different direction. And I would
like to gather within its realm things not enough seen
to be of it, nay, supposed to be contrary and alien to it,
Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is within.” I want
to say that it embraces all things. It runs back to
that time which science includes within unknown thou-
' sands of years, which Scripture comprehends in the
one word “chaos,” to that “beginning” of which no
man knows; and it runs forward to the end of time
and things, of which extreme, as of the first, again no
man knows. It embraces and it holds within itself all
that was and is and is to be. Men have not yet come

66 THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

fully to understand this. They have a good many king-
doms besides God’s; and they put him over a very
restricted province. Scarcely was Christianity recog-
nized before it dwindled into a strange incongruity
and complication, betraying no more elevated concep-

tion of the Deity than the mythologies do, the whole ~

_ matter being cut up and divided very much as Homer
had it, among the Olympian gods. _

Very little was left to the Supreme beyond a vague,
far-away, impersonal oversight. That phase was suc-
ceeded by a condition of things no better. God was
just as much wronged, obscured, his kingdom invaded,

taken away from him, when Christianity, following —
Persian leading, gave most of it to the devil. If you

believe what is a great deal said to-day, you will have

to believe that this evil spirit still rules over a large.

part of the kingdom of God, that our God is but a
very helpless God. Then, theology, jealous of the
divine right, believing only in a revealed word, to all
intent and purpose excludes him from nature, so that
between materialists, who deny him anywhere, and
religionists, who would have his kingdom to be the
exclusive one of their faith, the great Al/zn-All Spirit
is a virtual recluse, the larger part of material and
human affairs are within their own separate kingdoms,
under other cognizance and control than his. A very
fundamental need is the need of some conception of
the extent of the divine kingdom. When David wrote
it so grandly,— ‘‘ Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or
whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend
up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in
hell, behold thou art there, If I take the wings of the

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 67

morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand
shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness will cover
me, even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the
darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth
as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike
to thee,’ — he wrote it better than he knew. Such lan-
guage seems very wonderful, as do many like outbursts,
in which the glories of the heavens and the movements
of the winds and the grandeur of the storms and the
awe of silence-and of night speak not of themselves,
but of Him to whose kingdom they belong, of whose
power and majesty they are the witness and expression.
It was such an advance upon the best heathen belief,
that had put all these things of the outward world
under separate and subordinate deities : it is such an ad-
vance upon the belief of most of us, of this busy crowd
who profess and call ourselves Christians, to whom
these things are as ever-present as to the old-time
singer, while they do not sing to us the same constant
and glad melody. He drew them all within the king-
dom, made them subject to the handling of God: we
are but too ready to rule God out ; and to-day the strug-
gle and wrangle, a good deal, is as between a material
kingdom and a divine. Men talk about certain mate-
rial changes in the brain, and draw diagrams to show
how separate molecules assume different relations to
one another. in response to, or rather as creative of,
certain sentiments, thoughts, resolves, and point to
these things, changes, as within the realm of order of
a physical kingdom. I cannot help feeling however
wonderful and true that thought, how much truer,

68 THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

more wonderful, an older thought, that would keep
these within God’s kingdom. This effort to leave God
out of the things that are his, whether it be made by
man’s indifference or man’s familiarity with phenom-
ena, or with what he calls nature’s laws, not only
shuts us off from many grand and tender thoughts,
from much delicate and helpful sentiment, but really
shears of their grandest proportions, as of their most
wholesome truth, many things capable of carrying us
on to the Eternal, materially and inevitably.

It is well enough to know what science has to say
about the structure and material of our frames, to take
it home to our thoughts that we, so compact in flesh
and blood and bone, are really but a “few pounds of
solid matter distributed through six pailfuls of water”’ ;
but to stop there, to remand us to the physical king-
dom, to keep us out of God’s kingdom, were no service
to us. We had better be ignorant about the compo-
nents and properties of our bodies, so we can keep the
thought of them as within God’s dominion and care.
It is vastly interesting to follow the astronomer, the
microscopist, the evolutionist, through their marvel-
lous unravellings; but if you establish them within a
realm of their own, if they contain their own causes, if
the behind, primal creative impulse is of and in them-
selves, you rob God’s kingdom of his grand omnipo-
tence, you make puny principality his dominion, shut
in, shut out by the surrounding peaks which divide it,
in cold abruptness, from the kingdom of a godless
evolution.

A good man said one day, when I was pleading for
morality in business, and that no one had a right to

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 69

allow the expediency of market or the temptations of
individual gain to override the grand fundamentals of
honesty and truth, “God has nothing to do with the
grocer’s business,” slicing off one great province of
his kingdom by a word, taking all the active hours of
his life, his plans and hopes, straight out of the keep-
ing of the Almighty, shutting himself within a little
kingdom of his own.

We cannot do this arbitrary thing. We cannot,
at whatever line we will, bow the Great One out.
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. All places,
powers, times, seasons, eternities, are within his do-
minion: it cannot be brought to desolation by any
such division; and though we rend away, here and
there, portions of it, and only leave him, like some
Jupiter upon an Olympus, a far-off king amid a host of
lesser and rival deities, it is, in the end, we that are
rent. His kingdom stands, world without end, indi-
visible and one.

When Jesus so emphatically told his disciples that
the kingdom of God was within, he did not mean to
deny that it is without also. With just as much in-
tenseness and fervor was he careful to show that the
kingdom of God was without, and has tied forever the
flowers blushing at his feet, the sparrows circling above
his head, the clouds along the western sky, the hairs
of one’s head, the cubits of one’s stature, to the thought
of a divine providence, revealing it, through them to
us, as itself was revealed by them to him.

Though I cannot quote it to you by chapter and
verse, “The kingdom of God is without you,” yet it is.
there, and, in its time and place, as unqualifiedly em-

70 THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

phatic as the other. The great nature volume bears
witness of his authorship as clearly as the tablets of
stone which we are told were written by his fingers.
The things writ upon her pages, writ in flower, in star,
in minute and marvellous mechanism, in chemical
change, in advances and retrogrades, in growths and
deaths, in blossoms and decays, in solar systems and
infinitesimal existences, have behind them his guid-
ing, his law, his will; drop from his fingers, as the
type from the hand of the setter; are the transcript of —
his thought, the fresh, visible record of what centuries
long gone he did, of what to-day he does, and read out,
in clear, indubitable phrase, his honor and glory.

The kingdom of nature is his kingdom, informed
freshly and, as I love to think despite all the chain of
intermediate causes which I do not disallow, imme-
diately by him. I know men frown upon it, and they
array their fact against it; but I love to think that
David was literally right, and that the moon and the
stars, and, if these, all things, are made by the very
finger of God. I love to feel that his voice calls. out
the spring, and that the hurrying breezes and the
sweeping storms, the movements of tides and harvests
of earth, and all things that live and grow, wherever
they have their being, bear not only the image and
superscription of the One, but are his handiwork. I
would put God close against his work, as I would the
mechanic close against his tool, his creating thought
and will against his created thing, so that I might feel
it to be his and take great gladness at the feeling; and
I would have the gladness grow to reverence, and rev-
erence to love, and love to faith, and this fair universe

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. ; ya

become in every part, in very deed, the kingdom and
glory of God. ;

_ There are, besides, other provinces in the divine king-
dom than this vast and varied one of nature. God’s
kingdom is kingdom within kingdom. The kingdom of
thought is his: men use it as if it were theirs. They
abuse it in many ways, and feel no account owing him
for abuse. But mind is God’s as well as matter; and
all that a man makes or gets out of his mind belongs to
God, as much as that he makes or gets out of his soul.
I think it is the great thing not to let our thought at
any time prove traitor, and work toward the setting-up
of any other empire, the sapping of that one. In all
the freedom and revel of it, in all its allowed liberty
and wonderful range, in its lighter, in its graver mo-
ments, in its depressions, in its aspirations, have a care
that it do not escape, that it do not rebel at the bar-
riers beyond which lies an outer kingdom of darkness,
where are wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I have no right to hand my thought over to the custody
of any thing that makes against the interests of God’s
kingdom. Not that I need be thinking of them all the
time, chained like a galley slave, or doomed in penance
like a-nun to one spot, one method, one work. God
is served, his ends advanced, his kingdom secured by
the indirection of pure and honorable living as by the
special acts and services of meditation and of prayer
and worship.

Only it must be pure and honorable living, the un-
studied and unconscious outgo of pure and honorable
thought, the living water of an untainted source.
Whether it be the thought that is born and dies un-

Ve: THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

voiced, passing as a dream, or brooded over as the heart
of life; whether the thought that shapes itself in art,
in painting, in sculpture, in building, or that goes out
seeking other thought through literature of whatever
branch; whether thought backward — memory — or
thought forward — hope or fear,—it all belongs to,
should all be kept within, all subsidiary to the one king-
dom and rule, drawing men out of the silent and secret
seclusion of their own less and more trifling things,
drawing them on to greater strength, to broader reaches,
helping them to soar with upward gaze, as the eagle
soars and gazes, till they can rest within the bosom of
the Infinite.

It fairly oppresses one to remember that all the won-
derful things men have said, and have handed through
the ages down to us, have been the outgo of feeble and
timid aspiration, and the bringing back from the be-
yond Source, great riches and treasures out of an
infinite wisdom and knowledge, impressing it upon us
that the limitless range within which the human intel-
lect has liberty is God’s kingdom, as well as is the
limitless expanse within which light and gravitation
and the blue ether harmonize and dwell.

The same faith that feels that the man can take no
wings and flee no whither but God is there, that the
man cannot get outside of God’s kingdom, attests the
inability of thought to escape the bands and limits
assigned it, and that all these ample returns that troop
about and surprise and gladden, instruct and elevate,
are but echoes of the great Spirit dwelling within us
all, to whom. all things that are are subject.

The same may one say of truth. Truth may not be

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 73

tampered with, because, how broad soever of itself and
how valuable, over all it is of God’s kingdom, and you
may not annul or tarnish it. In its lesser grades, as
truth between man and man; in its broader sphere, as
truth of science, literature, religion, it is subordinate to
the great, over-all Being, its founder and father, within
his realm and jurisdiction. Wherever truth is, there is
God; and, wherever truth is, it leads to God. There
is no danger in following truth wherever it leads, what-
ever it overthrows or destroys. It ever keeps within
the lines appointed of God: it will never cross the ap-
pointed limit. It needs no warning of revenue law or
custom-house or excise man or soldiery. It deals in
nothing contraband, it seeks nothing of its own. It is
alive with another spirit. It knows itself to be hand-
maiden of that which is as much beyond itself as the
unborrowed light of the central sun of suns is beyond
the light. that glitters from the surface of a broken bit
of glass flung on the ocean beach. Truth is grand in
itself, whether from a child’s lips or from those clothed
with the power of intellect, experience, or character ;
but truth has only its own grandeur when we conceive
of it and all its wealth of worth as but one of the
innumerable provinces which go to make up the king-
dom of our God.

Take one more material thing, and say the same of
mechanism, in whose marvellous resources and abilities
man has in these just past years been inclined to see
but the reflex of his own might and the extension
of his own kingdom. Nothing strikes us as more
utterly gross, unethereal, unspiritual, than the machin-
ery — oily, noisy, and grimy — which in complicated

74 THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

variety makes and controls the comfort and the wealth
of our generation, and contains within itself “the
promise and the potency”’ of things in the future, the
very possibility of which dizzies the soberest brain.
We are only at the beginning of the triumphs of the
mechanical section of the great kingdom; and many a
one, unsettled by what has been achieved, conceives of
mechanism as standing with its hand at the throttle of
‘the universe ready to defy Omnipotence, bold to make ~
the attempt to run the great machine itself. We have
those who, in thought at least, would dare the old at-
tempt of Phaeton with the chariot of the sun; men ~
who do not see God at the centre of the machine, but —
man; and the more the machine does, the more they
see man,— like Herod before the people,— pleased with
the flattery and considering themselves as gods. I
more dislike and doubt this materialism, the material-
ism of practical men, than the more pronaunegen mate-
rialism of the schools.

-One day at the Centennial Exhibition, at the hush of
noon, I stood, one in the great crowd awaiting the
starting again of the great engine. By and by, as the
hour struck, it seemed to stretch and yawn and draw a
long breath, like a man rousing from slumber, then
slowly and with half-force to begin its work, and then.
at last, thoroughly roused, the ponderous beam rose
and fell, the piston sunk and lifted itself again. Near
and away off, I heard the whirl and whirr of wheels and
saw the swift gliding of belts, and I knew that all over
the many buildings life and labor responded to the
dumb throbs of this lately so inert mass before me.
Men and women looked at each other. ‘Great is Cor- |

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. me
liss,’ they exclaimed; but an inaudible voice spoke,
“Great is God.” His spirit was within the wheels, his
breath informed with life the interlacing bands. At
his word, swift shuttles flew, accurate cogs interlocked ;
and, to the systole and diastole of the great iron heart,
whole miles of machinery responded with a nimble ac-
curacy that outran that of human fingers. These great
vessels, crowding through storm and night ; these huge
locomotives, following the iron rails through zones and
continents, over mountains and along valleys, doing the
traffic and bearing the) burdens of harvests and com-
merce; and these watches with delicate accuracy tell-
ing the time beats of the sun and systems; photo-
graph, telegraph, telephone,—they, and whatever else
the genius of mechanism shall devise, send up their
consenting voice to the oneness and the glory of the
kingdom of God, of which they with their marvel and
their magnitude are but a small part.

So one might go on and tell how broad the domain
of that kingdom of which we, too, are. I do not know

what it is, but to me the satisfaction is immense. I
feel the glow and quiver of it, that I can believe that
everywhere all things are of God. From everywhere
to everywhere, I can go nowhere, can find nothing that
is out of his kingdom. The great revivalist talks a
ereat deal of men who are “out of Christ.” To me, it
is a grand thing to feel that nothing can be out of God,
that all are parts of one glory and one kingdom; that
there are no divisions and un-harmonies, but all things
bound in one, to one end, for one good. It is not that
at the uttermost bound of earth I still find him, but
that at the uttermost reach of space, of time, eternity,

76 THE KINGDOM OF GOD,

of truth, of power, of thought, hope, and love, I find
him myself, in all directions, under all guises, a citizen
of his kingdom, by no possibility of escaping. If you
want to get an idea of God, of the vast and the infinite
power he is, do not go to the heated pleadings of men
or to the cooler logic of theological statement, but go to
your own spirit, with the door shut, and then from its
silence step into the world, or follow out some thought, -
or trace some truth, or into the busy wheels and mech-
anism of life put inspiring God.

It will move, it will awe, it will satisfy you; and then
when your Bible comes to tell you about your heavenly
Father, and you follow all the wise words of good and
holy men, and add to the kingdom within the kingdom
without, you will have clearer thought of the infinite
marvel of your own being, and all the interacting har-
monies among which you dwell, and life will grow to
one long interpreting of the one Spirit that animates
all things, and seeks through all to lift the human soul
out of its solitude and littleness into that wondrous
sympathy and companionship which binds each to all
and all to God.

February, 1877.

VII.
GENTLE INFLUENCES.

“And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul,
that David took an harp and played with his hand, so Saul was
refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.”—
I. SAMUEL xvVi., 23. .

Saut had proved himself unworthy of the trust
reposed in him, and had fallen under the divine dis-
pleasure. It was told him by the prophet that the
sceptre should .pass out of his family. He became
jealous, irritable, and occasionally fell into fits of the
most profound melancholy, during which it was danger-
ous for any one to oppose or offend him. As this ten-
dency increased upon him, his friends felt the necessity
of taking some steps toward its removal, and, remem-
bering that he had always been sensible to the influ-
ence of music, they proposed that some able musician
should be obtained, whose duty it should be to play to
the king, whenever these fits came on. This meets
with the king’s approval; and one of the courtiers,
recalling the skill and sweetness with which he had
heard the young son of Jesse play upon the harp, men-
tions his name to the king, at the same time making
such allusion to his personal qualities and prowess as
‘induces Saul to send to his father and demand the
attendance of the young David.

So the future king, a bright-eyed boy of fifteen sum-

78 GENTLE INFLUENCES.

mers, found himself first within the precincts of that |
royal abode which, in the end, was to be his own
home; while Saul, ignorant of the fact that he was
so preparing the way for his successor, received him
gladly, and, won upon by his beauty, his manners, his
bravery, promoted him to the honorable place of armor-
bearer. His presence was a comfort to him. “And it
came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon
Saul, that David took an harp and played with his
hand, so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil
spirit departed from him.”

What power was that thus gained! David but
passed his hand over the strings of his harp, and the
maniac soul was calm and submissive asachild. He
whom all feared, who had hurled -his-ready javelin at
his only son even, became a man again under the
soothing of music; at first thought, a thing as little
likely to produce such result as any that could be
named,—a thing of mere airy sounds, which would
seem to beat against the nerves of a crazed brain as
fruitlessly as the waves against the rock. And yet,
though only sound, sound l#w, sweet, harmonious, im-
pressing only the wave of air that passed it, dying
as soon as born, it calmed the rage of the monarch,
lulled his jealousy, and brought him to himself again.
Though only this frail, delicate thing, it has done what
nothing else could do,—tamed the beast, the savage,
and the madman, and wrought mighty changes in
character and life. What is mightier than music? It
expresses what language and painting and sculpture
and architecture fail to express. The simple melody,
the solemn chant, the elaborate opera or oratorio, the

GENTLE INFLUENCES. 79

human voice, the wonderful combination that utters
itself in a well-appointed orchestra or peals from an
organ or a chime of bells, each and all attest a power
of expression in music, unapproachable by any other
which is given man.

The songs of a nation are said to be stronger than
its laws. At the sound of a national anthem, the
patriot’s heart beats, he grows brave, and is ready to
do or die.

Music lifts the deadened soul up to worship, makes a
deeper gladness in the joyful, soothes sorrow when all
things beside fail, reawakens hope, gives courage and
endurance. The invisible harmonies thrill through the
whole being, permeate our animal and our spiritual
nature, and touch a depth far beyond what has before
been touched. The coward running for his life catches
the note of some “God save the King,” he halts, and
turns, and is a man again. The glazing eye of faith
grows bright again, as the familiar hymn for the last
time reaches the ear. All emotions express themselves
in song,— the gladness of joy, the humility of contrition,
the bitterness of sorrow, the fervor of gratitude, the
rapture of love. When the world was completed and
God rested from his first great labor, the morning stars
sang together. Music was the first acclaim of gratitude
and joy that broke the silence of creation. When
Christ was born, no word was uttered, no voice spoke,
no thunder muttered, no lightning flashed, but music
broke the stillness of the Judean night, and an angel
chant wafted the benison of heaven to the worn and
weary waiting ones of earth. And so, as earth passes,
it sometimes seems as if the ear, that grew dull to

80 GENTLE INFLUENCES.

earthly sounds, caught other nobler strains, as if that
which is the highest reach of expression here were the
common language of heaven.

It would seem a foolish statement to make, if it were
not everywhere a recognized fact that great power is
not with men and things which have the name of it.
Some obscure man will write a song: it shall pass from
lip to lip, from heart to heart, till it becomes the chant
of liberty to a million souls, and tyrants and thrones
and powers shall melt before it. You marvel at the
ponderous machinery which drives the thousand rat-
tling looms of the factory or propels the vessel in the
teeth of the gale across the ocean, and you use it as an
emblem of power; and yet the power is in that almost
invisible vapor which in repose sails lazily up from
every evening cup of tea, and in its might conquers the
power of the seas, and in its passion wrecks the might-
iest fabric of man. We still retain the idea that power
resides in the rude, rough forces which we see about
us, which assume to guide and control. We believe in
the loud and confident and brute force: the soldier or
the bully is the man for emergencies.

To remove obstacles, to obtain ends, we look to great
means,— means which approve themselves to us as ade-
quate,—slow to learn of experience that the real motive
power, the power to go back to, the power to rely upon,
the power adequate, is some small and silent thing, hid
like the steam in the hold of a vessel, unseen, yet not
unfelt. Beneficent, permanent influences come not
with observation. An army may overthrow a city, a
hurricane waste a country, but behind the army shall
follow the genial influence of liberty to build again and

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GENTLE INFLUENCES. 8I

restore, and do what no force shall undo; and after the
hurricane shall come the smile of the sun and the
blessing of the dew, under whose gentle and genial in-
fluence the waste shall be repaired and the desert
blossom and be glad.
_ Cezesar, Alexander, and Napoleon, the often quoted
types of earthly power, the men of blood and violence,
have left nothing behind them. Their empire died
with them; while He who would neither strive nor cry
aloud, who led no armies, who founded no dynasty, has
to-day a mightier empire than tyrants ever dared aspire
to. It is a curious fact that Napoleon owned that by
gentleness Jesus had attained a power which could not
perish, while all that had been done by him through
years of blood should waste and perish with him.

“Were I,” says a late writer, “seeking for the
emblem of an enduring force, I should not select the
bronze figure of the emperor, with his glass eying the
fortunes of the battle, but another work of art, called
‘The Light of the World,’ in which Christ is repre-
sented at dusk, in his hand a lantern whose beams fall
upon his features, and light up his soft, ruddy hair and
delicate countenance, and make fruit and flower glow
on the soil near his feet, as, while the darkness gathers
and the night hovers all around out of the sky, with
wistful face of infinite tenderness he proceeds with the
other hand to knock at a cottage door.” The dwelling
and the portal which the painter intended, where are
they but within, and what power like that empire over
the soul established by the gentleness of Jesus ?

Real power, beneficent power, enduring power, comes
of gentlest things. It is their influence which is irre-
sistible.

82 GENTLE INFLUENCES,

A man rouses himself against any show of compul-
sion. The antagonist is waked, he is thrown on the
defensive. He summons all capacity of resistance, so
little is gained. Try gentleness, entreaty, persuasion,
love, the milder influences. No man can resist. He
may yield sullenly at first, but yield he will and must.

This fact runs through nature and through man in
the world, in our intercourse with one another and with
God. Let us take examples of the power that resides
in things apparently without power. I cannot do better
than recite a fable I once met. “There was a gather-
ing together of creatures, hurtful and terrible to man,
to name their king. Blight, mildew, darkness, mighty
waves, fierce winds, will-o’-the-wisps, and shadows of
grim objects, told fearfully their doings, and preferred
their claims, none prevailing. But, when evening came
on, a thin mist curled itself up derisively amid the
assemblage, and said: ‘I gather around a man going to
his own home, over paths made by his daily footsteps,
and he becomes at once helpless and tame as a child.
The lights meant to assist him then betray. You find
him wandering, or need the aid of other terror to
subdue him. I am alone confusion to him.’ And all
the assemblage bowed before the mist, and made it
king, and set it on the brow of gece mountain,
where it may be often seen to this day.”

Now muster all forces of nature, marshal winds,
waves, thunders, earthquakes, and though, in their
quick, terrible march, they make a wild and horrid
ruin, yet you may better face their power than the
silent, subtle force of the mist.

Again, this fleeting, very ‘significant, but not much

GENTLE INFLUENCES. 83

known “snow power.” And I cannot do better than
quote the words of a writer known everywhere for his
peculiar ability in such description: “Is there any-
thing in the world so devoid of all power as a snow-
flake? It has no life. It is not organized. It is not
even a positive thing, but is formed negatively, by the
withdrawal of heat from moisture. It forms in silence,
and in the obscurity of the radiant ether, far above
eyesight or hand-reach. It starts earthward, so thin,
filmy, and unsubstantial that gravitation itself seems at
a loss to know how to get hold upon it. Therefore, it
comes down with a wavering motion, half attracted and
half let alone. And then it rests upon a leaf, or alights
upon the ground with such a dainty step, so softly and
quietly that you almost pity its virgin helplessness.
If you reach out your hand to help it, your very touch
destroys it. It dies in your palm and departs as a tear.
If any one should ask what is the most harmless and
innocent thing on earth, he might be answered, a snow-
flake. And yet, in its own way of exerting itself, it
stands among the foremost powers of the earth. When
it fills the air, the sun cannot shine, the eye becomes
powerless. Neither hunter nor pilot, guide nor watch-
man, are any better than blind men. The eagle and
the mole are on a level of vision. All the kings of the
earth could not send forth an edict to mankind, say-
ing, ‘Let labor cease.’ But this white-plumed lght-
infantry clears out the fields, drives men home from
the highway, and puts half a continent under ban. It
is a despiser of old landmarks, and very quietly unites
all properties, covering up fences, hiding paths and
roads, and doing in one day a work which engineers

84 GENTLE INFLUENCES.

and laborers of the whole earth could not do in
years.
“But let the wind arise (itself but the movement of

soft, invisible particles of air), and how is this peaceful

seeming of snowflakes changed! In an instant, the air
roves, There are fury and spite in the atmosphere. It
pelts you, and searches you out in every fold and seam
of your garments. It comes without a search warrant
through crack and crevice of your house. It pours
over hills, and lurks down in valleys or roads and cuts,
until in a night it has entrenched itself formidably
against the most expert human strength. For, now
lying in drifts, it bids defiance to engine and engineer.

“Tn a few weeks, another silent force will come forth,
and a noiseless battle will ensue, in which this new vic-
torious army of flakes shall be itself vanquished. A
raindrop is stronger than a snowflake. One by one, the
armed drops will dissolve the crystals, and let forth the
spirit imprisoned in them. Descending quickly into
the earth, the drops shall search the roots and give
their breasts to their myriad mouths. The bud shall
open its eye. The leaf shall lift its head. The grass
shall wave its spear, and the forests hang out their ban-
ners. How significant is this silent, gradual, but irre-
sistible power of rain and snow, of moral truth in this
world! ‘For as the rain cometh down, and the snow
from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth
the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it
may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so
shall my word be, that goeth forth out of my mouth:
it. shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish
that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing
whereto I sent it.’”

| a aT ae

GENTLE INFLUENCES. 85

Leaving the realm of nature, let us come to life.
What is more quiet, gentle than love,—not love that
is debased into a passion,—for that is a whirlwind and
a fire,— but that which burns pure in the heart of man,
woman, and child? What is its language?. A glance,
a tone, a tear. What are its weapons? Tenderness,
persuasion, devotion. It may not speak, and only do
and suffer; yet it finds its way through the pointed
armor in which man’s heart is sometimes cased. You
can withstand harshness, ill-treatment, chains, persecu-
tion, death, but you cannot withstand love. The last
hope is gone for that man who can. He has slid out
of the sphere of the human down into that of the
demon. The coaxing tenderness of a child, the gentle
ministrations of a mother, the mild persuasions of a
wife, can they not twist you and turn you and rule
you as they will? Passion could not do it, ridicule
could not do it, law could not, blows could not; buta
kiss, an imploring look, a hand laid quietly upon yours,
the mere trembling of the lid which foreruns the tear,
can break the proudest mood and subdue the most
dogged wilfulness. Strike but the cords of the love-
harp, and the wildest frenzy of selfishness or passion
is tamed. Tyrants have been turned from their blood-
iest purposes, revenge has sheathed its thirsting blade,
intemperance dashed the cup from its lip, souls that
were almost lost have been won again to Christ, not
by any threat or strong beseeching, but by the still,
silent power of love, by a word almost inaudible,— less
than that,— by a tone, a motion, a glance, whose pecu-
liar significance, lost on the bystander, sank into the
depths of the heart for which it was intended.

86 GENTLE INFLUENCES.

Love is nearer omnipotence than any other human
attribute, and it is love that makes the omnipotence of
the divine character. :

Let us go a little out into society, where man is
not bound to man or to be influenced by this delicate
sentiment. In social life, who is the strong man, the
powerful man? The man of position, or of wealth, or
of ability? Not at all. But the man who stoops to
the lesser courtesies of life, who despises no little act
of kindness, but keeps a warm heart, a quick eye, a
ready hand. You see many men about you who
rather pride themselves ‘upon their roughness, their
manly superiority to the trifling amenities of life; who
think it derogatory to them to stoop to the little char-
ities of act and speech. They impress you with a
sense of the consideration in which they stand with
themselves, while upon yourself all the bustle and
assumption of their self-importance are lost. They
carry no weight with them,-win no regard, obtain no
purpose. On the contrary, he who has a regard for
what have been called the small, sweet courtesies of
life lays aside all selfishness, in honor preferring
another; quietly stands aside for another’s comfort;
without a word, surrenders his claim or preference; is
systematically, unfeignedly polite; has a bow, a civility,
a pleasant word,—those little things which cost so
little, which yet cost so much,—ready for everybody.
At home, in the street, in society, he does the thousand
nameless acts which are always wanting to be done,
but which so few think it worth while to do.

Without any large ability or large act or cost, he is
felt to be a kind man and a useful man, a reliable man ;

GENTLE INFLUENCES. 87

and he wields an influence and obtains a regard that
no proud, self-sufficient man can ever know. His little
courtesies take large hold of all; and men delight to
come within the sphere of his attraction, and breathe
the atmosphere in which he moves. They love him for
what he does, they listen when he speaks, and are
ready to help him when he suffers.

Take another instance still less dependent upon per-
sonal interest and acquaintance. Eloquence is a power.
And what is eloquence? Not noise and vehemence and
effort, not the strained posture and gesture and tone of
the theatre, but it is the simple, earnest utterance of
some truth which lives in the heart, burns on the lips,
glows in the eye, and stamps itself upon the language
and in the tone. It is not a thing of teachers and
.schools, but a thing of the heart and of the moment.
What a mighty sway it has! I have seen men get up,
and with loud voice and vehement gesture and strong
assertion work themselves into a sort of frenzy; and,
while those who sat by looked on impassive and won-
dered why all that was done, they toiled as one who
beat the air and accomplished nothing.

I have heard one of another stamp, with subdued
tone and folded hand, but with an earnest look anda
kindling glow about the eye, say what the heart told
him to say, and the contagion spread, All ears were
arrested, all eyes fixed, silence deep and breathless
filled the place, and every one was lifted up above him-
self into that divine region into which it was felt that
he who spoke was leading the way. Eloquence is no
trick of the speech or the body, no magic of well-tuned
voice and fine person or a polished manner. It is the

88 GENTLE INFLUENCES.

simple, native conviction of one soul uttering itself to
the want or apprehension of another. Its word as an
electric flush thrills through the heart, spreads through
the land, revolutionizes faiths, opinions, governments,
laws, upheaves the old foundations of principle and
habit, and recreates the man, society, and the nation.

And, last of all, what a power is silence. What so
mighty as that impalpable, mysterious presence which
wraps about our own hearts, embraces the night? It
is the synonyme of mystery and eternity. The hush of
the desert, the stillness of the midnight, the muteness
of grief, the solitude of one’s chamber, what power lies
in these, what appeals come up from their dumb lips!

And, then, what terrible power is there in the pauses
of a storm, the fitful hush waking a fear deeper than
the tumult. What majestic power in the silence of
a multitude subdued by some overmastering spirit,
touched by some great truth, awed by some sad calam-
ity, or melted and swayed by the sweet music of some
gifted lips, bound and controlled at one and the same
moment by one and the same sentiment! What noble
power in the silence that submits to insult, that reviles
not again,— silence that comes of no mean fear, but the
love of God in the heart. What withering power in
the silence of scorn!

Then, the influences upon character which are deep-
est and longest and most efficient are not those which
are made of set purpose, not those of precept, which
have been driven into us by constant repetition, but
the silent influences which imperceptibly win our es-
teem and mould us to their will. We draw near some
gentle spirit, and at once we feel an attraction and an

‘GENTLE INFLUENCES. 89

influence, as if some hidden spirit magnet drew us.
The very air is impregnated with power we cannot
resist. Word, movement, manner, tone, look, without
any effort or purpose, throw a nameless charm over us.
Weare better and holier for the contact, and feel that
we have seen and been near and touched by something
of the beauty and purity of which the human soul is
capable. The power of others over us is in the silent,
indirect influence of character and life. What manner
of men ought we therefore to be!

It is just so God influences us. He does not seek to
subdue us with awful demonstrations of power; not
to compel us, but to convince us through the influences
of love, and lead us by his gifts. His constant influ-
ences are his silent ones. If he sends thunders from
Sinai, to man’s infancy, it is the dewy stillness and
beauty of a summer’s morning, when the wondering
crowds hear the lessons of the second dispensation.
If at times things seem to break away from their divine
order and harmony and quiet, the re-established law soon
asserts itself, that still his is the gentler way of love.
And so Christ coming to our aid, to bring us back to
God, took no form of antagonism, as he well might,
backed as he was by all the power of eternity, but the
simple form of a simple man, the gentle tone and win-
ning manner of a gentle and loving soul, proving by
his adoption of this way in the greatest of all works
that it was the one true way which should be almighty
to effect the intended purpose.

The lesson for us is the folly of passion and force,
the uselessness of that in which the world still trusts.
The power for us to have and wield is the power that

gO GENTLE INFLUENCES.

shall subdue and harmonize all discord within and about
us, the silent influence of a considerate and gentle
spirit. The gentle spirit of God moving over chaos
brought all things into life, beauty, and order; the
sweet strains of David’s harp loosened the maniac
monarch’s clutch upon his javelin, and he sank back
calm and at peace; the word of Jesus hushed sorrow,
and soothed the demoniac, and put back Peter’s impet-
uous sword into its sheath. If we have ever gained a
lasting, genuine victory, done a.real, abiding good, it
has been by no great powers, but through the might of
gentleness in us. So shall the world be in the end
redeemed. Armies, monarchs, revolutions, must have
their way. They shall destroy ; but the kingdom of our
God, the kingdom of spiritual beauty and everlasting
peace, shall come out of the graces of the soul, which
attract and win because they are gentle and still.

February, 1856.

Vili.

EP MAN WITHIN,
“The hidden man of the heart.”— I. PETER iii., 4.

THERE is an outward man and there is an inward
man, a man visible and a man invisible, a man of outer
activity and life and a hidden man of the heart. One
man other men see, take notice of, judge by. That is
the daily outward man,/the man of speech, of action, of
expression, the man that is apprehended primarily by
the senses and is addressed to them, which, in our care-
less way, we are apt to consider the whole man. From
what we detect upon the outside, our affection, our
prejudice, our reason even, draw their inferences; and
the man becomes to us what they decide him to be.

The other man is the hidden man of the heart, the
man that no other sees or can see, the man that no
other knows or can know. Just as underneath the
ocean which we see — which is fretted by winds, moved
by tides, lulled by calms, tossed by storms —there is
said to be another ocean, whose life finds no expression
at the surface, so in us all there lies another man,
the currents and counter-currents of whose life are
hidden from all mortal knowledge. This is the real
man, the man of affections, sympathies, aspirations,
impulses, appetites, motives, the things in which life
has its root, from which it gets its strength,— the man
it has pleased God to hide, to fence in from all intrud-

Q2 THE MAN WITHIN.

ing vision, that there might be one secret, sacred place
in which the soul, alone with its God, mee work out.
the problem of its existence.

This is God’s law, and like all God’s laws wise and
good. Sometimes, we wish that we could take men
down.into the secret places of our hearts, its chambers
and its galleries, its corridors and niches, and show
them what indeed we are, what we want, why we fail,
what we aim at, why we do and why we do not do, how
we aspire. We long to be revealed to those who walk
by our sides, their eyes holden. At times, we weary of
our isolation, and long to fling wide the doors and bid
all welcome. Discouraged, misunderstood, suffering,
we vainly beat at the bars of our prison-house: “Oh,
that men really knew us as we know ourselves! Oh,
that they could read, not these acts so imperfect, so
strange, so contradictory to ourselves even, but the
motive that prompts our inmost life, then should we
have honor and rest.”

But this is only a passing mood. We know that this
which God has decreed is well. Experience and obser-
vation unite to prove it tous. In our sober moments,
we would not, if we could, admit any other into the
mysteries of the heart. We prefer that the inner life
should be hid. If God had not veiled it, we should
upbraid him for his neglect. We will have our hearts
as the holy of holies, into which no foot shall pass.
Jealously, we guard them against every approach.
With pains, we even labor to conceal what men might
easily know, and knowing would bless us for. We love
to pass incognito through life; and when men pene-
trate ever so little our disguise, read ever so little the

THE MAN WITHIN. 93

secret of our being, we baffle and throw them off the
scent. Not only those who are worse in their hearts
than they pass for in life, but those who are better,
seem actuated by the same desire. The good man
conceals his best as sedulously as the bad man his
worst. Neither is willing that the hidden man of the
heart should be revealed. And there are those who
perversely put upon the outside that which has no
place in the heart, who take a pride not merely in con-
cealing the good, but in affecting the bad which they
have not. I doubt if this be right. We ought to
accept any inability God may ordain, not increase it.
The wilful concealment of the bad or the good is alike
wrong. I think God meant we should live out our
inner lives just so far as, under his limitations and
restrictions, it is possible: where we do not do it, we
~are deceivers.

There are drawbacks enough of God’s selecting and
imposing. Under the most favorable circumstances,
the outward man does the inward man great injustice.
We all, or nearly all, have some infelicity of manner or,
address, some drawback in look or tone, some original
or hereditary inability, very trifling in itself perhaps,
which is always saying untrue things of the hidden
man. Very few-are they who can give expression to
that which they want to, just as they want to. How
many warm and kindly hearts dwell under dull, prosaic,
forbidding exteriors, or express themselves in ways and’
words that repel rather than win? How many hard
and dry faces, like clock dials which have no hands,
give no hint of the life within? How many brave
spirits lie unguessed within the shrinking and diffi-

94 THE MAN WITHIN.

dent? How many of earth’s noble ones die and make
no sign, because they cannot master the native in-
firmity which hides the inward man. There are bar-
riers enough to a true self-revealing without our raising
others. So much of the inner life as we can express
we ought to express, so much of the-hidden man of the
heart as we can reveal we ought to reveal. For it is by
showing as much of the hidden man as we may that
ourselves are made better, it is by seeing the man that
we are that others are helped, encouraged, or warned.
It will not be denied that that which we see is the
lowest and least desirable life. It may at first be
doubted, but I think it is safe to say, that the hidden
man of the heart is always better than the visible man.
There is more faith, more patience, more charity, more
loyalty to God, more good-will to man, more craving,
and more hope than ever yet expressed, more actual
attainment. Beautiful as are many lives we gaze on
reverently, and perfect as we call them, they are yet
more beautiful within: the hidden man of the heart is
nearer to God than his works proclaim. Somebody
says that the very effort to shape, to embody, to put
in language our thoughts, .akes something of power
and purity from them. The willing spirit imperfectly
utters itself through the weak flesh; and its sweetest
songs, its truest devotions, its most earnest yearnings,
float upward from it, unuttered and unutterable, to the
Invisible, and not outward by any uttering of the flesh.
And so it is with the weak man and the bad man.
Within, he is building better than we know; and,
though he fail to fitly frame and firmly build and com-
pletely finish the temple God would dwell in, who shall

THE MAN WITHIN. 95

Say that he has no hope, no inner life which, despite
instability and failure, God will respect?

The man of annoying and desperate selfishness, un-
derneath, has a better life. His hidden man is a man
of self-reproach, unrest, resolve.

The man, cold, proud, stern, who seems to shut out
wilfully every tenderness, has a hidden man, longing,
aching, to cast off its mantle, and prove the wealth of
real life that glows beneath. Approach him rightly,
and that strong under-current will break through all
opposition in full, rich overflow.

The man of wild extravagance and reckless dissi-
pation, the man who has scoffed at all warning, em-
bittered the lives dearest to him, the man seemingly
callous and dead, owns to a hidden man, outraged by
this life of self, rebuking it, and moving it many times
mightily toward reform. I doubt if in the dens of
infamy and vice, amid all the riot and revel of the
Sunday’s debauch, God does not see in each a life
superior to, loathing, the outward life, a hidden life of
the heart that could be lifted and redeemed, if we had
but a voice like that of Jesus, which could penetrate
through the overlying mass of trespasses and sins, but
a spirit like his ready to encourage and to help. If
we could but take the light and the bread from heaven
where most they are wanted, and where they ought to
go, we should then do something toward establishing
firmly that sorely beset man of the heart, something
toward revealing to the individual the man that he is,
and help other men to know the life that exists in all,
though it may fail to work. We should encourage and
confirm it, and enable it to finish its course with joy.

96 THE MAN WITHIN.

It is well to remember how constantly the Saviour
noticed and encouraged the hidden man of the heart.

It is not the word, the deed, the expression of the
outer man, of which he takes notice, responds to, but
the condition of the hidden man of the heart, whether
by miracle, gift, or the power of his own insight. He
knew what was in man. It was the inner life, state,
want, inquiry, to which he addressed himself; and they
to whom he spoke felt that he knew them not as men.
Their thought had been read, and what they really
needed had been said. As you read the record, many
times his answers seem irrelevant. What have they to
do with the inquiry? Nothing. But, with the interior
condition that prompted the inquiry, everything. He
tells just what the hidden man of the heart wanted to
know, but dared not. ask; needed to know, without
knowing what it was he needed. It is not the question
of the woman of Samaria, or of Nicodemus, or of
Martha that he answers, not the woman, the Nico-
demus, the Martha who had spoken, but the hidden
desires of their hearts. And, as he made these feel -
his knowledge and his love, so he made his enemies
feel his power, dragging out before others, to the full
light of the day, to be gazed upon and despised, the -
hidden man of the heart, sending cunning scribe and
hypocritical Pharisee and crafty ruler again and again
from him, stripped of every disguise, the whole inner
man laid bare.

And this action of his may well lead us to two
special, practical thoughts.

1. It is the hidden man of the heart decides what we

are. The outward man cannot do that, though we too

THE MAN WITHIN. 97

frequently measure attainments, and make our awards
by it. You will hear in the world men rated by the
outside. That is the world’s criterion. A man of pre-
tence or presence, of studied obtrusion and notoriety,
of outward profession, carries the palm. Words and
deeds, things that can be seen and handled,— these are
the elements of man’s opinion of man, the coin of our
daily currency. But these are not things that make
the man. The man is not the man outward, but the
man inward. It is thought, purpose, desire, the things
of the heart, hidden there, that mould the man, make
or marhim. Out of the heart, the Saviour says, come
all things evil and all things good. His own work was
with the heart. For the things without, he cared noth-
ing. For man’s advancement in the world, he had
nothing directly to give or to suggest. He has left no
rules, no examples, for outer man. The one thing with
him was the heart, and the man that-lay hidden there.
He found it bruised, forsaken, crushed; and he raised
it up, healed and clothed it, revealed it to itself, its then
degradation and its possible holiness.

That which he said and showed to those of his own
time, he says and shows to us. All our life, all our
hope, depend upon the state of the heart. If it is all
well there, if pure and holy thoughts abide there, if
high and noble resolves are formed there, if gentle
charities and kind affections abound there, if the virtues
and graces cluster there, if among these move a filial
faith, and a serene trust renewed to the inward man
day by day, we have the all that can be needed for the
true life, and the outward man must bear witness to it.
- The heart cannot have these things in its treasury, and

98 THE MAN WITHIN.

the life be wholly low, sordid, and false. The good
tree, Jesus says, cannot bring forth evil fruit. Let us
remember and act upon the converse of that declara-
tion. 7

2. And, again, it is the hidden man that God sees, and
by that he judges. Men judge by acts. God makes
no account of them. He strikes at once at the motive.
Men punish crimes, deeds, expressions. God punishes
intentions, thoughts, desires; and, more, he strikes the
balance, impossible to man, between the ever-renewed
alternation, the struggle between the good and bad.. It
is a startling thought, when we give ourselves really to
it, that there is an eye can read more surely than we
can ourselves every prompting of appetite, every mov-
ing of will, every longing of desire, an eye which sees
passions petted, habits encouraged, thoughts invited,
which we dare not let men know of, which we gaze
upon with shame ourselves, which we submit to, even
with a nameless horror, while still we hold them. It is
a startling thought that God not only sees all that the
hidden man of the heart is, but that he makes up his
judgment from what he knows that to be. Disguises,
with pain ‘and loathing worn before men, subterfuges
stooped to while all the better life indignantly rebels,
hypocrisies riveted upon the soul, armor of proof before
men,— what are these before God, who looks straight
down and clean through all, and knows just what lies
at the deep springs of life in the heart? What a mad
hope that is which men will still cling to, that some-
how or other they are going to deceive God, and escape
his judgment or palliate his justice. It will be a terri-
ble retribution to many, when the cowering man of the

= .—

THE MAN WITHIN. 99

heart shall be dragged forth and judged; as it will be
a joy unspeakable to many, when the voice shall say,
“Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom |
prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
And now two questions come up, which need an
answer,— an answer clear and full. What is the hidden
man of the heart in us? Is it such as pleases us, as sat-
isfies our idea of life, such as we are willing to have as
our record and our witness? In the past has it been all
that we could desire? In the present have we nothing
to fear, and is the future only radiant with promise?
No one who knows the hidden man of his heart can
feel wholly at ease, content. Some shadow rests upon
the brightest life, some weakness inheres in the strong-
est spirit, something done or undone makes the best
to mourn. The past has waste in it, ingratitudes,
neglects. It has heeded too much the many voices
which call from without, and heard too seldom the one
voice which speaks in whisper out of the silent deep
within, and down from the silence above. The present
stands upon that past, and it is imperfect; but it is the
divine now, the moment God gives for the renewal and
for toil. Let us seize and use it, and so answer by our
_ future living our second question,— What ought the
hidden man of the heart to be? Let us give ourselves
in the fear of God, and as accountable to him, instantly
and reverently, toa much neglected work. Let us go
down to the bottom of our hearts, and begin there,
among the hidden things, the things we think too little
. of, those of which are life’s issues. Let us have noth-
ing within but what is pure and noble in thought and
purpose. Let every spirit of evil be exorcised, and the

100 THE MAN WITHIN.

hidden man of the heart be formed after the image of
the Son of God. That is a glorious work to which we
are called. Do we think enough of the privilege of
being permitted to toil in the same way and for the

same end that Jesus did? Do we realize what it is to

be worthy to inherit with him glory and honor and im-
mortality ?

In all this crowd of men and women moving so
variously about us, in all this character written and
acted, that which appears is but as the small dust of
the balance. Underneath the man seen is the man
unseen, the hidden man of the heart, very unlike, often
better than the other. The man we thrust before
others for their observation, the man we put forth to do
life’s work, to stand in its counting-rooms, exchanges,
in its halls of legislation, in the daily walk of common
life, is not the man of the heart, but a man for the
place and the occasion,—a man imperfect, a man

expressing only in part and feebly, perhaps falsely, —

what the true manis. The true man lies hid, silently
at work, where no eye sees, working more nobly than
fancy has painted or poet dreamed. For it has work-
ing with it all that is good, the whole host of holy

influences, the whole majesty of God and all that Jesus -

conquered. You may go wherever man has gone, and
you shall see about you everywhere, among barbarous
as among civilized, on the islands as the continents, the
marvels of human skill set up as trophies for the future
to look on and admire, and the generations, as they
come and go, gaze and marvel. But there is no such
achievement of man,—and by and by men will see and
own it,— no such trophy, nothing so worthy of admira-

THE MAN WITHIN. IOI

tion, as the heart in man that has withstood the wiles
of sense and self, has borne the burden through life’s
dust and heat, has conquered, as he who was more
than conqueror did. It is the perfect work of the per-
fect man, a life that is hid with Christ in God.

Dec. 18, 1858.

IX.
NONE “BUT CHRiIis

“ Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”—
JOHN vi., 68.

Jesus had said and done many things conflicting so
strangely with the hopes of the Jews that many who
had hitherto been ardent followers and friends now
turned away. Desirous of drawing from his disciples
some confession of their feelings, he asks, ‘Will ye
also go away?” Peter, always first, answers impul-
sively yet sincerely: ‘‘Lord, to whom shall we- go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

This assertion of the disciple is our assurance. The
words of Jesus lead to eternal life. They are the
words of truth which shall not pass, though heaven
and earth perish. They are the foundation of our faith
and hope. They give the will of God as concerns man.
They show us our duty, they point us our way. They
are the sufficient and only foundation on which we may
raise the superstructure of a clear belief and a holy
character. If, however, we examine the predominating
faith of Christendom, the tenets which men make the
separating points between their various theologies, the
doctrines which they claim as the distinctive doctrines
of the gospel, we shall find them neither stated in nor
defended by the language of Jesus. We shall not find

SS ee

NONE BUT CHRIST, 103

him occupied in establishing the things the establish-
ing of which his followers have held of the first impor-
tance. We shall discover nowhere the foundations of
church establishment, no nicely drawn distinctions, no
elaboration of creed or decree. It is a most singular
fact that, though we have a faith called “ Christian,”
yet the foundations of the religion professed by nine-
tenths of Christendom are laid in the language of the
Old Testament or of Paul. The faith of Christendom
is not Christian, but Pauline. Not Christ himself is
the corner-stone, but Paul. It is not the simple “truth
as it is in Jesus,’ but the perplexed truth as it is in
Paul. Creeds, catechisms, churches, are started from,
defended by, the Epistles, not the Gospels. Proof
texts, the sharp and ingenious weapons of theology, are
not the clear, brief, broad assertions of Jesus, but the
more hurried, confused, and doubtful though glowing
sentences of the apostle. You will find the texts from
most pulpits on Sunday, certainly if the discourse be
in any way a theological one, taken from the Epistles,
and the doctrine illustrated and enforced by reference
to the prophecies of the Old Testament rather than
the gospel of the New.* You will be surprised to find
how little reliance in past theological controversies has
been placed on the words of Jesus; how men have kept
from them, as if conscious that they would not counte-
nance such strange and bitter perversions, For one
text from him, arrayed in proof of the Trinity or the
more commonly received doctrine of the atonement,

* Westminster Catechism supported by 1,200 texts, 624 Old Testament, 811 apostles,
235 Gospels. Justification by faith, 1 from Gospels, 42 from other parts. Original sin, 2
from Gospels, 85 from other parts,

104 NONE BUT CHRIST.

you will find a dozen from Paul; and you will feel that
the stress is thrown rather upon these last, that the
testimony of Christ is thrust aside in order that the
apostle may speak. The argument depends, the proof
hangs, upon his word. He is the great head of the
Church. His words, imperfectly understood, have
given faith to the world. His Epistles, which even
Peter found it hard to comprehend, have been made the
lamp to men’s feet. His thoughts, wrested from their
sequence and place, have been used in fragments, and
out of such incongruous material has been reared a
fabric as unlike the religion of Jesus as the matchless
and mighty dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral is unlike the
wigwam of the Oregon savage. Had not Paul written
letters, had not the early collectors of sacred writings
put them side by side with the writings of the evangel-
ists, had we only the Gospels, we should have to-day a
very different faith and a much higher attainment of
holiness, a broader charity, and a clearer hope. This
is certainly very curious. One would have said that
over and above all other witness would have been the
witness who came direct from God, and was himself
expressly the commissioned teacher. One would have
said that all doubts and difficulties would have been
at once and solely referred to him for solution; that,
when he left anything, there it was to be left; that
humble faith would neither go beyond nor stop this
side of him. Those are memorable words of: Peter,
‘Thou hast the words of eternal life,” and their appli-
cation is as broad as eternity itself. But men, in the
hot contest of opinion, have forgotten them. They
have not found the gospel to be an armory of such

NONE BUT CHRIST. TOS

7 Noy Se
weapons as they needed. The graceful and simplaise /
truth, as it fell from the lips of the Saviour, has not
suited the wisdom of the world, has not answered the
purpose of prejudice and passion, the strife for triumph
more than truth. A faith to live by has not been so
much their desire as a faith to establish and make tri-
umphant,— not Christ’s faith, but their faith,— the faith
of their sect or church. The apostles needed no other
gospel than that which fell from the lips of the Master.
It sufficed their purpose. It was the great antagonist
of heathenism. It was that which spoke from Mars
Hill, which startled the profligate Corinthians, which
made its converts even within the gates of the imperial
city. It was that which turned the world upside down.
The word they preached was just that simple word
which now meets us on the printed page of the evan-
gelists. They took all men back to Him from whom
they had themselves received the words of eternal life.
Even Paul, who now stands so strangely above Christ,
who is now so strangely quoted against Christ, never
taught any other gospel. Little did he dream, when he
poured out his full heart in rapid letters to the various
feeble churches he had founded,— letters written in
the intervals of travel or of pressing business, to meet
their immediate wants, adapted to their then condition,
—little did he think that these, written as all letters are
written, would one day be found in a holy book side by
side with the life of his Master, and by many, under the
pernicious theory of a plenary verbal inspiration, held
to contain other and greater truth than that delivered
by that Master himself. Could he have foreseen this, I
think he would have put that hand which wrote them in

:
!

106 NONE BUT CHRIST.

the fire, and held it there, and watched it consume with
a more than Roman courage, rather than it should have
been the means of depriving his Saviour of one iota of
that honor which is only his. Those letters were never

meant as bodies of divinity, never were written as care- -

fully digested treatises, never were intended to be read
outside the little knot of believers at Corinth or Ephe-

sus, never were expected to survive the people and the ~

occasion for which they were prepared. How strange
that he who so earnestly and eloquently pleaded with
the Corinthians, because some were of Paul and some
of Apollos, to the forgetting of Christ, should, in these
latter days, not only divide the sceptre with him, but
virtually be regarded as above him! I sometimes wish
Paul had never written an Epistle. We should have
been great losers thereby. We should not have known

how large a heart was in him, and how meekly that -

great intellect was bowed before that faith in Christ,
and how completely that noble spirit became under it
as a little child. We should have wanted some deep
and glowing utterances of love and faith, some stirring
exhortations, some pungent rebukes, some liftings into
a purer atmosphere than this; and all this would have
made a void indeed. Yet so perverted have been some
words of his, so unduly exalted some of his opinions, so
have men mangled his language and mistaken his pur-
pose, that sometimes, for the simple truth’s sake, I
could wish we had only the four Gospels for our New
Testament. As exponents of the character and faith
of the men, as showing the condition and position of
believers of that day, as containing much for believers
of all times, I prize these letters of Paul as I do those of

NONE BUT CHRIST. 107

Peter and John and James. And so long as we regard
them as only letters of men to men upon topics then
immediately pressing, so long as we consider them as
separated by an immense and deep and broad gulf,
never to be bridged over from the words of Jesus, so
long honor be to them. Valuable are they as the words
of earnest, living men,— men who had seen the Lord,—
but their place is subordinate, and they must always be
kept to it. The words of eternal life are alone with
Christ. Ele is alone the true and living way. To me,
the centre and support of faith is the language of the
Saviour. Amid all the confusion of sects and jargon
of theology, I find repose and assurance there. Bewil-
dered and confused by the assertions and arguments
of men, almost doubting my own belief when I see it
so confidently assailed and put down by others, it is
unspeakably refreshing to be able to go back to Christ,
and say, as Peter said, ‘Thou hast the words of eternal
life.” More and more, I tire of controversy and divi-
sions among men, the skilful fence of human prejudice
and wit. Waste time, waste words, waste ingenuity,
waste temper are they, obscuring, not clearing, the
truth, the heaping up of sound rather than the advanc-
ing of the cause of Christ. Myone thought is, “ What
does Jesus say?” He was of God commissioned. On
him was the spirit poured. I find in his life and doc-
trine no basis for the stupendous theological and eccle-
siastical systems which have overawed the world, and
I unhesitatingly reject them. To me, they are human

‘only. Icannot conceive of Jesus as a Catholic or a

Calvinist, as a Churchman or even as a Unitarian. I
find in his gospel no elaborate ritual, no specified

108 NONE BUT CHRIST,

church government, no theology, no accurately ex-
pressed creed, squared clipped, and cold. All these
things have been after-thoughts, and they are human.
It is no arrogance in me to deny them. I base my
faith on Christ. Some men may think it a narrow and
insuffitient basis, that so I cut myself off from vital
truth, that so I wilfully blind myself to™great and
solemn necessities of faith. Some will say that I must
go for substance of doctrine to those who came after
Christ. I have but one answer and but one hope. It
is the answer of Peter, and the hope that grows out of
it: “ THou hast the words of eternal life.” ‘When Paul
follows Christ, I will follow Paul. When he goes be-
yond or contradicts him, or rather when men say that
he does, I will leave him and follow only Jesus, to whom
God alone gave the clear truth, in whom alone of all
may we put implicit confidence. What faith I have
shall rest on Christ and on none other. To me, the
Gospels are the way of life, high over all revelations,
the anchor’ to my soul, sure and steadfast.

Take a subject like that of the atonement: a matter
which seems so simple and plain, so long as you keep
to the words of Jesus, becomes unintelligible so soon as
it is mixed up with human theories, supported by frag-
ments of sentences from the words of Paul. I think
time, talent, and temper have already been wasted
upon it, and much more probably will be. Jealous-
ies have been excited, hard thoughts have arisen, and
friendships grown cold; and an injury has been done to
the spirit of Christ’s religion, far outweighing any good
which can arise from discussion of any topic of belief.
To me, it seems a useless war of words, which would

NONE BUT CHRIST. IOQ

never have arisen, had men only gone to Christ as the
fountain-head of religious truth, which might be settled
at once now, if they would make his words the umpire,
and not attempt to go beyond them. We never should
have had this theory and conflict but for a mistransla-
tion of a word of Paul. The same word everywhere else
translated reconciliation is once translated atonement.
If anything is clear and simple, it seems to me it is
this, that Christ came into the world to save sinners.
Nowhere does he say anything of substitution or the
necessity of doing anything that it may be right or safe
for God to forgive. Nowhere does he say that his death
is necessary to constitute a just ground for the forgive-
ness of those who repent. Acting as God’s representa-
tive and in his spirit, he freely forgives those who come
to him upon the sole condition of repentance; and when
‘he comes to speak of divine forgiveness, of what sort
it is, of its nature and action, he simply relates the par-
able of the Prodigal Son. All my interest in the sub-
ject begins, centres, and ends there. Of the thousand
questions that may be asked, I am content to remain
in ignorance. They are conceits and delusions of in-
tellect and curiosity, not the legitimate demands of
faith. I may easily make them matters of intense in-
terest, and stake my happiness and faith upon some
solution of them; but, as a sinner, the only thing really
of interest, the only thing I can know, is that, as Christ
is true, my sin will be forgiven of God, as the conse-
quence of my repentance and return to him. That is
all I care to know, it is all I ought to know. To that
repentance and return, I ought to lend all my energies
rather than allow my thoughts to be frittered away

IIo NONE BUT CHRIST.

upon things started by human ingenuity, or growing
misunderstood, out of some phrase or word of Paul
speaking or writing to some Roman or Jew, who was to
be approached through the medium of his old preju-
dices and education, to whom language and arguments
were to be addressed wholly inappropriate and unintel-
ligible to us. I do not think the simple words of Jesus
could for a moment bear any other construction than
that God forgives when man repents, Forgiveness is
an act of divine mercy, and not an act of barter, in
which a something else has been accepted as an offset
to the act of pardon. The parable asserts that much,
and closes with the welcome given at thereturn. That
ought to be the faith, and the sufficient faith, of all.
Where Christ leaves the matter, we ought to be con-
tent to leave it.. As I read it, I rejoice that theresr
such a parable upon which we may fall back after wad-
ing through the subtleties of thought and language,
more nice than wise, in which the plain word of Christ
and the loving purpose of God have been shrouded. As
I read it, I wonder that men who have that word should
ask for anything more, and in their discussions so sel-
dom allude to it. I know there is a great deal that
Christ does not say. His silence is perhaps as impor-
tant a part of his gospel as his speech. He says just
enough to make us wish to know more, and yet just
what he says is the essential thing; and what he con-
ceals, however pleasant or interesting or seemingly
serviceable, is not essential. There is a deep purpose
in all this, and we ought to respect it. Had it been re-
spected, instead of libraries groaning under theological
text books, and religion rent by conflicting words and

NONE BUT CHRIST. III

opinions, we should have had a large and broad and
free and united Church, embracing all, and a world very
much farther advanced in the fundamental necessities
of faith and charity. It is not essential to know how
God can forgive the sinner, without some penalty or
some equivalent for a violated law: that is not our
concern. The only essential, the only thing that con-
cerns us, is that God does forgive, when we forsake the
evil and do the good. So much Christ says; and, if he
is faithful and true, that is all that is to be said. All
‘other questions should be left, while the soul bends
itself to the securing of the divine pardon. We do not
get any nearer the truth, do not withdraw the veil, by
going to the Epistles, taking some disjointed word or
phrase, and building it up into an argument for this or
that view of the atonement. At best, that is only Paul's
view. If Paul says it was necessary that Christ should
die before God could consistently forgive, then Paul
says what Christ did not say. If true, that is an essen-
tial. Consistently, Christ could not have been silent.
The parable would have represented the father as say-
ing: ‘You have offended against my law. Your re-
pentanceis not enough. I must have some satisfaction
before it can be safe or right to forgive you. Wait
here till I find your elder brother, and see if he is will-
ing to bear the penalty. If so, I receive you again to
my home, and my arms and my love. If not, depart
from me back to your husks.” Could the Saviour have
been justified in omitting some such conclusion to his
parable, if the belief built on Paul is the truth? Not
that I believe Paul ever had any such faith, but that
men have based such a faith upon what he has said.

I12 NONE BUT CHRIST.

Silence here would have been culpable in Jesus. He
would have bequeathed us a delusion rather than the
words of life: he would have led us into darkness
rather than showed us the light. His silence is very
remarkable; but it is always the sharp limit between the
complete essential truth and the unessential accom-
paniments of the truth, between what the soul would
like to know and what it is of moment that it should
know, between what God chooses to keep to himself —
and what he considers as the broad essentials of salva-
tion. There are never any waste words with him.
The truth, so much as man needs to know, the truth,
so much as man needs to attain, the truth, so much as
man requires for his work,—that is all. It is simply,
clearly stated, and there it is left. Over all the rest,
the silence which is from eternity, which, despite all
men’s searching and striving, shall be to eternity, is
kept. The assigned limits of Infinite Wisdom it were
wise in man to accept and respect.

What can be more grand than a faith biti upon the
simple words of Christ? Is it not Christ’s faith,—the
faith that made him what he was? How far above
all decisions of councils and churches and synods and
sects it is! They have built up stupendous hierarchies.
They have spread out faith over a iarge surface, made
it embrace many and minute things, and imposed it
upon multitudes. Yet with all its seeming, when you
come to compare it with that faith built in the heart
and life of Christ, you feel how shallow and unworthy
itis. You see what and how much has been done by
going away from the words of Christ, and how unlike
is prevalent Christianity in its tone and deed to the

NONE BUT CHRIST. 113

spirit of him, the Master. What Christianity needs
is to retrace its way to the simple elements of faith as
laid down by him, to abandon all human adjuncts and
inventions, and sit at his feet in the humble attitude of
Mary. What each one of us wants is to abase the
pride of his intellect, stifle the rebellions of prejudice,
abandon theories and speculations and decrees, and
take the simple page of the gospel, the words of Christ,
and without any other alloy of any other mind, prophet
or apostle, saint or sect, construct for himself a faith.
No backward glance after a type, no forward-looking
for a fulfilment, no help sought anywhere of any. The
corner-stone of faith is Christ, not Paul or Isaiah. The
building can only be fitly framed together, can only
grow into a compact and goodly temple, when he is the
foundation and not another, when he and not another
supplies the joints. There cannot be a thorough Chris-
tian church or a simple Christian character until we
have winnowed our theology and our faith, and sepa-
rated the chaff which is of man from the wheat out-of
which ig to be made the bread of life.

Do not suppose that, in exalting the words of Christ,
I deny the value of the words of Paul. Christ was
God’s Son, and had the words of eternal life. Paul
was an apostle, a man of clear intellect, warm heart,
resolute purpose, and ardent faith, yet only and always
a man, mistaken and weak as other men. Never did
he expect his word would be exalted to the side of that
of Christ, or that his letters would be bound in the
same precious volume with the life of the Redeemer,
and be held equally sacred and important. To Christ
I go, and him I believe. He has the words of eternal

II4 NONE BUT CHRIST.

life. To Paul I go just as I would to any other man of
talent and culture and opportunity. I do not go behind
Christ; but I go behind Paul, and weigh his word by
the word of Christ, and accept it only so far as it
agrees with what the Master has said before. This is
the true way, not the way of the majority who accept
the whole Scriptures as on one uniform level, each
writer of just so much weight, of just such inspira-
tion as every other; but this is the way of scholars, of
the candid, and, when the effects of education and prej-
udice have passed, it will be seen to be the way of com-
mon-sense. There are many great truths in the Epis-
tles, many which one at once recognizes as kin with
the truths of the Gospels. There are many things hard
to be understood, many blind things; and it is these,
and not the simple and plain, which have done the mis-
chief and turned men away from the plain way,— these,
and not the simple and plain, which men bring forward
and contend about, and make fundamental and con-
struct doctrines and sects out of,—these which have
filled dungeons, fed the stake, deluged the world with
blood, and maddened men with hate, and to-day divide
and cripple the Church, and perpetuate prejudice and
ill-will among the sects. This is neither treating Christ
with respect nor the apostles with respect. It is playing
tricks with our own wit. It is making the dark places
obscure the light. It is setting aside the sure word
for an uncertainty. It is interpreting Christ by Paul
rather than Paul by Christ, making the scholar above
the Master, the disciple above his Lord. In the course
of one’s own thought or reading, he will find very much
to perplex him. That is inevitable. So many things

NONE BUT CHRIST. 115

are asserted that one soon gets puzzled. It never need
be long however, only long enough to turn to the words
of Jesus. What the compass is to the helmsman when
the mist shuts him in upon the sea are the words of
Jesus to the soul befogged and befooled by the philoso-
phies of sects and schools. They are the words of
life; and he who steers by them must avoid shoals and
rocks, and enter the appointed haven. Well shall it be
for us individually and for the great cause of the truth,
if we shall throw aside whatever is more or less than
the word of Christ, and have the sure faith of Peter
that there is none other to whom we can go; for none
other has the words of eternal life.

As [I understand it, friends, it is the proud distinction
of Unitarianism that it alone of all the sects builds
upon Jesus Christ, his words, his spirit, his life. We
alone have the single stone Christ Jesus at the head
of our corner. Not the Old Testament, not Paul or
Cephas, not tradition of the Father, not council, synod,
creed, pope, bishop, or presbyter, not anything of any
man’s devising, not any-opinion or dogma about this,
that, or the other, but on Christ alone, and his words
of eternal life, we take our stand. What other sect
does the same? What one creed can you find expressed
in gospel language, indeed sanctioned by gospel spirit ?
You cannot twist the Gospels into the word “ Trinity”:
they utterly refuse to doit. With the Gospels in your
hands, you would never dream of the popular doctrine
of the atonement. From the Gospels, you could never
deduce the theory of the fall and of man’s reprobate
nature, and out of them you cannot draw the popular
idea of regeneration ; and only by the baldest servility

116 ‘NONE BUT CHRIST.

to the letter, and contradicting the word that “flesh
and blood cannot enter” the future kingdom of God,
can you find the theory of physical hell torments in
brimstone and flame. The living words of the eternal
gospel give no sanction or refuge to the faith preached
in Christendom, so hostile to that once delivered to the
saints, . é

The religion of to-day is not the Christian religion;
and, whatever else may be builded upon it, the kingdom
of the Redeemer so will never come. The Gospels

alone are the sufficient guide and way into that. They —

are corner and buttress, they are foundation and turret
cap, they are spirit and life. What they say is simple

and plain. What they tell of God and man, of sin |

and salvation, of duty and of destiny, who runs may
read. To forward the simple truths of Christ, and not
the confused dogmas of men, Unitarianism exists and
toils, watches, prays, and waits. What Luther said of
the Church is pre-eminently true of us. ‘The Church
heareth none but Christ.”

June 29, 1873.

Ds
Sn oONS OF QUIET.

“A place which was named Gethsemane.” — MARK xiv., 32.

THERE is a little spot just across the Brook Kedron,
under the Mount of Olives, which has a history. It is
known as the Garden of Gethsemane, a name peculiarly
sacred to us, which we never mention except with a
something of tenderness. The name originally, liter-
ally, means simply the place of oil-presses. It was
there that the gathered olives were brought and there
pressed. How circumstances change and ennoble
names! This is all we know about it. Three of the
evangelists allude to it, only two of them giving it a
name, and none of them stopping to enlighten the cu-
riosity or faith of an inquiring world.

For some cause, probably its seclusion, near the city
and yet apart from its bustle, it became a favorite re-
sort with the Saviour. It was there, many times, he
withdrew with his disciples, in hours of more intimate
communion, when he turned aside from contention with
scribe and Pharisee, and endeavored to explain himself
and his word to his chosen companions. In this, he
was hardly doing more than following the custom of
- the times. The rabbi, the Jewish teacher, had his
chosen place of instruction and intercourse; and here,
uninterrupted, he could impress himself upon the minds

118 SEASONS OF QUIET.

of those who were not only his pupils, but a sort of

intermediate class, between himself and the people,
through whom he made himself known to and felt by
the common mind. The philosopher of Greece gath-
ered around him the young men who joined themselves
to him. They had a chosen place for meeting; and
the shaded avenues near Athens, where Plato taught,
are as much connected with his philosophy as Geth-
semane with our faith. So there was nothing peculiar
in the selection by Jesus of a special band of pupils or
disciples, or of a quiet place of resort where he might
have them all to himself for uninterrupted communion
and instruction, where questions might be asked and
answered, parables, purposely left dark to the unbeliev-
ing, explained, and the innermost life and purpose of
the Master laid bare before the pupils. There is not a
pleasanter picture in the range of gospel history than
that suggested by an evangelist, who speaks of Jesus
as withdrawing from the angry discussions and troubles
of the day, and quietly, at its close, explaining to the

disciples the things which had confused them, which

he refused to make plain to his captious questioners.
Gethsemane became endeared to both Master and dis-
ciple by such meetings and unfoldings. They so drew
nearer to each other and to him, and were made to feel
that he was not the great, mysterious Being to them
that he was to others, but their loving friend as well
as Master and Teacher. The effect produced upon
them is evident. They never feared to ask him any
questions, expected to have light thrown upon dark
things in their moments of privacy. But Gethsemane
was not merely a place to which Jesus resorted with his

eee eee,

—

SEASONS OF QUIET. II9

disciples. No place so likely to have witnessed those
vigils of which we have vague hints, which seem to
have held so important a part in the inner life of the
Master. When at Jerusalem, more than ever must he
have craved and sought these seasons of solitude,
which seem always to be forerunners of some new;
more arduous duty, some brave exposition of truth,
some rarer exhibition of power, some completer act of
self-surrender. For it was at Jerusalem that his chief
trials came, that his most earnest testimony was borne,
that the rare heights and depths of his submission and
endeavor were touched. In the country, he had com-
parative quiet, found warm friends, willing ears, honest
hearts, ready followers. Jews of Jerusalem followed
him there to poison the minds of the people, to counter-
act an influence they felt to be hostile to theirs; but
the real people of the country believed and loved him,
and his enemies gained little. In the city was his hard
work; and when weary, depressed, longing for rest, for
self-communion, and that nearness of God which.seems
to have come to him peculiarly, as it does to us, when
alone, it was the near quiet of that place, already
consecrated by sweet intercourse with his chosen
friends, that ministered to and refreshed him. You
who have toiled and suffered, who in perils and sorrows
have felt how the noise and presence of life grate on
your spirit, who have found some hallowed spot,— spot
hallowed by some dear memory, sacred as the resting-
place of some cherished love, to which you turn with
yearning, in which you find the heaven not only drop-
ping low to your trial, but opening to your faith,— you
who know the refreshing and hope that spring from the

120 SEASONS OF QUIET.

quiet and seclusion of such spot, who go back to your
burdens, your duties, your fears, as if touched afresh
with consecrating fire from heaven, who find your tears
wiped, your sorrow soothed, your trust renewed, and
your way, however steep, more tolerable,— may know
somewhat of the spirit in which Jesus sought that spot,
somewhat of the power and peace which went out from
it: you will realize how large a part it played in his un-
recorded history, and how dear it was.

There was a change in the life of Jesus. Its days of
action, of charitable deed, of friendly intercourse, were
over. His work was done. Life’s busy scenes were
closing behind him. No more in the temple should
men hear his words of wisdom. Not again should the
crouching sinner meet his eye of pity, and depart for-
given. Never more should terrified parent cry to him
to save his child, or weeping widow or sister embrace
again the restored lost. Never more should the dwell-
ers in Galilee watch for and rejoice at his coming. —
Not again, in the hush of day, should the friends meet
at the old trysting-place, and talk over the things that
they heard and ask of what they failed to comprehend.
The short earthly career of the Son of God was fin-
ished. Clouds and darkness and terror shut down
heavily about him. One of his own was gone out to
betray him for a paltry pittance. The bold, confident
man, who just now had promised to die with him, was
already sleeping at his watch, and would soon deny that
he knew him. Gethsemane, the place of quiet, is now
the place of struggle; and he who had found there be-
fore only peace, in a more than mortal agony, seeks
peace again. A terrible strife it is. We cannot

4 SEASONS OF QUIET. I2i

fathom it. We stand dumb before that simple record
of great drops of sweat, as it were of blood. We bow
subdued and silent in presence of that last conflict.
Theology tries to explain, grows quarrelsome over it.
Faith is humbled and silent. The disciples sleep. As
if craving sympathy, Jesus turns to them; and then, as
if rebuked, he turns to God. Anon, he seeks them,
and then again turns back to God. We shall never —
know the mystery of that conflict until all mysteries
are unveiled. You who have suffered, who have had
terrible crises in life, do you not understand something
of this grasping at help from man, and then, because
of baffling rather than of faith, turning to God,—turn-
ing again from God, because he was not quick to give
what you desired, or gave only what you were not ready
to receive, to turn again, craving, yearning, back to
God? That is a very human struggle which Gethsem-
ane that night witnessed.

There is a change again in Gethsemane. The full
moon looks down clearly into the garden, and all is
peace. The struggle is over. Jesus is victor. The
great end is gained. The cup that might not pass is
accepted. It shall be as God wills. The sharp cry of
agony is hushed before that prayer of prayers, “ Not as
I will, but as thou wilt.” The step of the traitor is
heard. Calmly, Jesus awaits him and receives the fatal
kiss, while the astonished guards shrink from their
duty. He wears no laurel, he is captive, he is led to
death; but even they read his victory. Poets and
painters have tried through their separate arts to give
us an idea of this struggle and its results, but they fail.
Faith itself is not sufficient. The garden, so dear to

122 SEASONS OF QUIET.

all because of its pleasant intercourse, so sacred to
Jesus from its hours of self-communing, so memorable
because of that great strife, is made by its conquest
the central point in the reverence. Not the cross itself
has had more to do with making and intensifying love
and gratitude to the Saviour than that garden scene,
into which, when the victory was gained, angels with
their soothing and strengthening ministries came.
You who have suffered and have known the struggle of

Gethsemane have gained little, unless you have known —

also its victory.

The teaching of Gethsemane is threefold,— quiet,
struggle, victory. Is not this just the course all human
souls must run before finding themselves in that per-
fect peace with God which has but a single utterance,
“Not as I will, but as thou wilt” ?

It is a great mistake in these lives of ours that we do
not have more quiet,—nota mere dull, lethargic rest,
but a quiet that comes from God, and the soul’s rest in
him. How busy, absorbed, harassed our lives are, as
if there were never to be a break in this vigorous, act-
ive existence, as if there were no higher, no superior
demand made of us. We are educating ourselves with
zeal and thoroughness for every duty and contingency
of the market and the exchange. I do not suppose the
world ever saw men more magnificently equipped for
every sort of material enterprise. I do not suppose
the world ever saw powers of mind and body more thor-
oughly trained for temporal conquest and success than
shall be found among us to-day. And for these the
bustle and excitement and association, the interchange
of thought, the combination of various ability,—the

SEASONS OF QUIET. 123

marked features of our day,—are essential. But there
is a life which cannot live in this atmosphere, a life not
to be made of this material. As the other waxes, it
wanes ; and, in all the press.and overplus of activities,
it fades and dies. Jesus himself could not keep the di-
vine life in him up to its healthy tone save by getting
out of the whirl in which daily life held him, and get-
ting by himself, finding, making quiet,— quiet that had
not merely rest in it, but God. And, if such as he
needed such seasons, how much more we! How much
we miss, of how much we fail, through want of them!

There is for every one of us the Gethsemane of trial,
of mental struggle, the hour and power of darkness.
Laugh now and be happy as we will, the time comes to
all; and there is not a more hopeless, helpless mortal
than the man who has been both brave and wise in
every complication of life, when he finds himself intro-
duced to the society of a new class of experiences, and
when, instead of compelling men and things to submit
to his will, he must himself submit to the will to
which he has been stranger. It is sad to see how
utterly such a one wilts before the presence of sorrow
and trouble, how little he knows what they mean or
how to use them, to whom to go or how to go to Him.
It is sad_to see the giant prostrate and grovelling, or
fumbling blindly for support.

What all need is to prepare for trial. There is
no sure result in life for which a wise man does not
prepare himself. No man expects to accomplish an
end for which he is unprepared. That is the decision,
the wisdom of the market-place. -What so grave, so
heavy, so sure, as trial, sorrow, loss, the grand disci-

124 SEASONS OF QUIET.

plines of God? And how can they be met, except they
be prepared for, except by seasons, it may not be long,
but frequent, in which the soul shall insist upon the
world’s taking its proper subordinate place, while it
invites the visits of a better spirit, and seeks to sanctify
itself by self-purging and divine communion, that it
may know itself and God,—seasons not annual, pro-
longed, but at every moment of need? Trials coming
to us, then, as the dealings of a Being whom we know,
whose love we cannot doubt, to whose will we bend,
will work their cleansing and healing.

We may struggle as Jesus. We may cry to have the

cup pass. We may say before we can feel the prayer ©

of perfect resignation, for Gethsemane is ours.

Victory must follow, the undisturbed serenity of a
soul at one with God, by quiet, through trial to peace,
that peace which Jesus said he gave, but not as the
world. There is no more enviable condition than that
of him who has been led by the trials of his condition
into the great peace, who has made the pressure of
adverse things the means of a deep faith. Talk of
worldly successes, if you will; point to honors and
dignities and powers, and call them life’s great good.
There is no good so great as that which the soul has
itself wrought and secured, through its overcoming
faith. There is no man so great, so honored, so suc-
cessful, and so happy as he who through much tribu-
Jation has entered into the spirit of acquiescence in a
divine ordering he cannot understand, who has so con-
quered his own will that it has become merged in that
of God.

Oh, what high things we talk of ! How much above

4
7

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eee deal

Ts a Le Re OT oe ere ae

SEASONS OF QUIET. 125

are they! We strain and reach up toward that excel-
lence. We know it is all true, we wish we were push-
ing toward that victory; but, alas! it is not so. When
shall it be? When the Master’s life has for us more
charm than the charms of the world, when we can
spare seasons for withdrawal and refreshing, when we
shall feel that we cannot afford to slight means of
which he felt the necessity, when life’s grave trials
find us prepared by a knowledge and service of God to
accept his discipline, acquiesce tm his will; when, hav-
ing kept the conditions, we shall achieve the inevitable
victory. | |

Let us not lose, forget, slight the teachings of Geth-
semane,— the place of quiet, the place of struggle, the
place of victory. Let its history awaken not merely
sentiment or gratitude, but desire to possess the like
spirit ; and, when our days of trial darken about us, may
we have so trained our souls in quiet that our struggles
shall have the great and perfect triumph.

March 1, 1863.

XI.

THE FIERY FURNACE
“Nor the smell of fire had passed on them.”— DANIEL iii., 27.

Ir is a very wondrous story. No miracle recorded
in the life of Jesus violates more the laws of nature as
we understand them. The statement is very explicit.
These officers of the king who were Jews refused to

bow before the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar, ©

the king, had set up. They are brought before him, and
remain obdurate. Their answer is very noble: “We
are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be
so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from
the burning, fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of
thy hand, O king. But, if not, be it known unto thee,
O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship
the golden image which thou hast set up.” There was
of course but one reply. As in the later day of Chris-
tian persecutions, when the recusant was remanded to
the lions, were these ordered to the fiery furnace, in
the king’s wrath heated seven times hotter than was
wont. And the mightiest men of the army, lifted
them to throw them in, but fell dead before the fearful
heat; but the men were not touched, and, lo! as the
king looked in, four unburned men. And the king

called them out, and the three came out. And the -

princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s coun-

THE FIERY FURNACE, 127

sellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon
whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of
their heads singed, neither were their coats changed,
nor the smell of fire had passed on them.

Life is to man that fiery furnace, and there are
two fates for him which there were here. Some fail
before its heat, fall early, and, blasted, are licked up by
the flame, as the stubble of the field. They scarcely
enter life when they fall before the blighting breath.
The training of home, example, warning, entreaty,
avails nothing. They have had all that can be given
them, are as well fortified as others; and yet pleasures
and temptations, vanities and self-esteem, leap upon
them. They have no apparent power of resistance,
and they wilt at the first hot breath. Again and
again have we seen it, that life has opened with every
promise. The young girl, the young man, has stepped
into it, to waver and fail,—the tempting things too
strong, the seducing things too fair, the glittering
things too real. I donot mean to say they have sunk
into any great and positive sin; but they have turned
away from the things they have been taught are life’s
foundations and hope, and have given themselves over
to the spirit of the world, that corroding canker, which
eats into and eats out the life of so many hearts, and de-
stroys the better self as nothing else can, which is not
the fault, mistake, vice of the elder or the wealthy, of
the hackneyed in the world’s way, the veteran devotee
at the shrine of pleasure, but on young people making
its first deep furrow very plain and sometimes indelible,
and across a spirit that had seemed of better metal. I
think it not to be hardly pressed upon them, when the

128 THE FIERY FURNACE.

young waver as life opens itself to them, when they
begin to take the handling of themselves and see the
thing that life seems to be, now that they are their own
masters. It is not a thing to be wondered at that they
should bow before the hot simoom which sweeps up its
unwholesome blast, where they had hoped only for
gales sweet and gentle as those of Araby the blest. It
is like the wavering of raw troops under the first fire,—
not cowardice, but the awe of a new experience. If it
be not quickly met and mastered, it becomes fear and
disgrace and rout. So the wavering of the young, if
it be only wavering. If there be moral power of self-
recovery, if they turn again to principle, if they put the
world in its place, assert, and assume mastery, it is
all well. It must be done at once, however, or the
fatal habit comes that overmasters the habit that we
see is setthng down upon and overmastering those
young people, whose one law is the decree of society,
whose one master is the whim of fashion, and who let
the fire taint creep over and fasten itself upon them,
till they bear it as a conscious presence, everywhere
live and move and have their being init. I say the
wavering is not in itself a sin; but the yielding is, the
falling before the flame, the moral death that follows.
The men we read of stood safe within the jaws of
the fiery furnace. So some men and women in this
world furnace. But they did not stand alone. Can
we? Ido not know what it means that one, as in the
form of the Son of God, was with them. That is not
an Old Testament phrase. It occurs nowhere else.
The miracle would seem to be because of his presence.
I do not believe any satisfactory solution of the diffi-

THE FIERY FURNACE. 129

culty can be arrived at, unless it be supposed that the
book was written later than its purport, or that the
passage has been interpolated. Even then, men will
differ.

But there can be no doubt about this: that it is the
spirit of the Son-of God with man that keeps him un-
scathed amid the heats and flames of the fiery furnace
his soul finds itself in,—not the person, not the confes-
sion of a faith in, a definition of him, not the placing
him in the Trinity, but the spirit. However much we
may differ, when we come to definitions, all Christians
agree in this: that there is something resident, perma-
nent, in the world, something of influence that Jesus,
departing, left behind. We can trace other lesser influ-
ences to other lesser men. No one lives to himself, no
one dies to himself. The influence we all of us exert is
not much at the moment, as in what is left behind out-
living the deed. Whether you regard it as a special
something unlike as superior to all else, whether it is
only in degree and quantity that Christ’s influence dif-
fers from others, still this is true: that there radiates
from that point of the world’s history as centre, from
him as centre of it, power, influence, special and pecul-
iar, producing results which have changed the whole
character of man, the individual, made everything anew.
As the sun, coming up out of the darkness of the night,
touches, tinges, glorifies nature, draws out all secret
colors and odors, nothing that it rests upon but feels
and shows that coming, and is changed into its utmost
by it, so with Christ’s coming. If you undertake to
change it, you do what you do when you undertake to
change the aroma of a flower: first, you cannot do it;

130 THE FIERY FURNACE.

and, secondly, you destroy the thing in the process.
The weary world has been at this analyzing of the spirit
of Jesus till, in analysis, we are in danger of losing
the thing itself.

See how, if I were to take away truth from this
furnace scene, it would be this,— and -I think it would
-_make a good point against some current theology,—
the men are seen with one who is in form like the Son
of God. He is not burned to save them; he does not
take all their peril and suffering upon himself; they do
not go free because everything is laid upon him. The
men are safe because he is with them in their trial, a
presence soothing and sustaining. And I take that to
be just the secret mystery of the whole thing. We are
saved by having the. Christ spirit with us, by keeping
by it,— not made safe by his destruction, not by any-
thing he does for us, but by the power of resistance
we have while he is with us, by a something we get
of him that we could not have alone; and, were it in
the New Testament, I should take this scene as an
allegorical statement, of just what the Son of God is
to the human soul,—that presence, aid, influence, be-
cause of which all fiery assault is powerless, because
of which even the smell of fire will cleanse. How
have men lost the real point and grandeur and power
in their faith through that many-sided idea of substi-
tution, through that latent cowardice which grasps the
idea of one suffering for them rather than of standing
with them.

The thing he left them was not his blood as some
external cleansing mystery, but his spirit, the influence
of that which in him had been the triumphing power.

THE FIERY FURNACE. I3I

He breathed that upon them, fragrant with the fra-
grance of two worlds. He left his peace,—the peace
of his spirit the peace which grows in us through his
spirit,— not as the world giveth, not as the world
understandeth, not as the world taketh again, to re-
main and bless and sanctify. He did not go from, he
remained with. His body was withdrawn, but that
which was really his life remained, touched to new
light and power, transfigured as every life is by his
going away. I do not see in life what element of
strength there is for me in this something supposed to
be done for me by the death of Christ, a manipula-
tion by some dead and carnal thing of years long gone.
But when you speak of a spirit, an influence with me,
if I will, coming out of that life, akin to that I feel
coming out of other lives, like that which has come
from my father’s life, my mother’s life, from good lives
I have met or read about, differing in quantity rather
more than quality, the same thing, only multiplied by
the power of his superior excellence, then I under-
stand it. It enters into me, becomes a power with my
powers. It helps me. I can lean upon it, be guided
by it, be strengthened init. But I cannot understand
how a physical thing, like blood, is to have any effect
upon my moral condition. It subverts old foundation
law of nature, broad as the universe and with no ex-
ception, that like produces like. The moral cannot
invade the physical realm: the physical cannot over-
ride the moral.

It is the influence of that spirit which keeps us, not
from the burning of the furnace only, but from even the
smell of the fire upon our garments. Jesus prays, not

132 THE FIERY FURNACE,

that his disciples should be taken out of the world, but
that they be kept from the evil. There is such a thing
as “being kept from the evil”: there is such a thing
as going through life without the smell of the smoke
upon us. In our business, necessity has continual
means by which our valuables may be securely locked
against the harm of fire. A safe fire-proof is part of
every merchant’s furnishing. - These have been tested
again and again by the most fiery tests, yet have deliv-
ered their valuable deposit untouched, not the smell of
the fire passed upon them. In this world, just that
our hearts may be safes against which the heats and
flames of passions and temptations may exhaust them-
selves in vain, where we may keep uncharred the soul’s
most precious possessions, while, as with a charmed
life the man or woman pursues his way unspotted from
the world, not the taint even of its smoke passing on
them, the spirit of Christ within—our own spirits
made consonant with his, kept in unison, a spiritual
asbestos — is the fire-repelling power.
One of the hottest, most uncomfortable days of the
summer, we rode wearily and wretchedly in the saloon
of a New York car. Heat and dust, the stifling air
and sparks and cinders, combined to make the hours
one lingering torture. We fanned and washed and
drank, and tried to sleep, to read to forget, to no avail.
We were grimed as the smith or the miner,—a spec-
tacle to men, surely, a misery to ourselves. Yet all
day long sat quietly in a corner a young girl, alone, her
eye upon her book, sweet to look at, cool, without fan
or water. And not a speck of cinder or of dust seemed
to touch garment or face, not a fly teased, not a fiit-

THE FIERY FURNACE. 133

ting of unrest or impatience crossed her face,—she
blessedly oblivious to all companions’ sufferings, and
coming to her journey’s end just as placid and calm as
she had begun it hours before, hundreds of miles away.
Her very face showed that she was possessed of a
meek and quiet spirit; and the uncertain things, the
annoying things, would no more come near her than
the vile things would come near the virgin, who with
naked feet in the night-time, according to old legend,
perambulated fields and meadows to keep off mice and
vermin which endangered the planted seed. Ido not
think I shall ever forget it; for I felt then, as I feel
now, that it is just that way we want to carry our souls
through these trying and polluting things of time, and
to come in at the end of the travel, through the might
of a calm and triumphing spirit, out from the midst of
all worry and temptation, wzthout taznt.

Cannot this be? Have we got to smell of the cor-
rupting things? May not our lives have the rich, pure
fragrance of pure things? Every life savors of that it
consorts with. According to what we are, the inner
society we have had, what lives we lead, is the fra-
grance we cast out into the world. That decides
whether we taint the atmosphere or perfume it.

The smell of the world’s smoke invests many as
with an atmosphere pungent as that which boys carry
‘about them when they have made spring fires of gar-
den rubbish. Ambitions, conceits, selfishness, love of
praise, lust,—these exude insensibly to the man as
odors do. You do not need to know detail. The smell
of the fire betrays, and that is enough.

To virtues there is the same subtile power. You

134 THE FIERY FURNACE,

speak of the atmosphere of such a one, of the influ-
ence of his mere presence, that it tones, represses,
cheers as the want may be. It is not inevitable, be-
cause in the world, that we imbibe its grosser flavors.
We can be as pure in it as the violet, which, if it takes

up any thing out of the surrounding filth, so makes it

over that it breathes from it again only as the gentlest
and sweetest breath. That is to be our way. Inevi-
tably, much about our daily lives is impure and degrad-
ing, low, and tending to lower us. We come in contact
with and are affected by it.

But we can so take it, so through the subtle alchemy
of a filial spirit transmute it, so shed away impurity
and dross, so in the soul’s alembic refine away all
grossness, that it shall become a new life, and issue
again from us, its earthly parts touched to nobler issue,
its residue acceptable to the kingdom of heaven.

Men and women say they must have the earth taint.
That is because they grovel. They say, in the world,
the smell of its fire must cling to them. That is be-
cause they are willing to be soaked in it, and will not
exert the wisdom of the violet or of God’s law, and
make all that touches them sweet by the power of the
sweet life within. The purest lives I have known have
not been those carefully screened from the world, but
which, coming up in it, have kept themselves unspotted.
The sweetest and truest have grown and ripened under
conditions you would say most hostile, but which have
been wrought into the means of a grandly elevated
faith and ‘life, attesting, against our laziness and cow-
ardice, the truth of the example as the words of Jesus.
No man more exposed than he, yet the smell of the
fire passed not on him.

a » ‘ -
_ ee Ss ee Sa oo

THE FIERY FURNACE. 135

Out of the hard conditions about him, he wrought
the excellence we admire and adore; by fighting and
repressing them, grew to his matchless stature. The
crown of his immortality, though twisted of thorns, has
borne the undying aroma of its fragrance to the ages.
In the world, because of the world, was it done. The
same conditions ours: the same fidelity will make of us
those upon whose garments no smell of the fire will
pass. Is it not worth prayer, watching, and toil?

XII.
FAINT, YET PURSUING:

“Faint, yet pursuing.”—JUDGES Vill., 4.
» yet p :

It was a great victory which Gideon’s band of three
hundred had gained over the Midian kings, not by their
swords so much as by the fright of their midnight
attack. The kings, however, had escaped; and the
pursuit had been long and keen. Weary and hungry,
the brave three hundred paused, faint as they were,
only long enough to ask bread at Succoth and again
at Penuel, in both places churlishly refused. Post-
poning vengeance until their end was accomplished,
they pushed steadily on over the Jordan, overtook the
vanquished, the kings, returned by the way of the
inhospitable cities, terribly punished them, and then
went rejoicing to their homes to make Gideon judge,
and to give the land a peace of fifty years.

No more striking picture of a restless, consecrated
energy is presented us in the Scripture than this pur-
suit of the three hundred, who, taking nothing with
them but their swords, held to their one task until it
was accomplished. We can follow them in our thought,
hungry, weary, refused aid of those of whom they had
a right to demand it, faint, yet pursuing, a great pur-
pose shielding them against danger and hunger and
fatigue, holding them up where most would fail, and

FAINT, YET PURSUING. 137

bringing them out conquerors over every disadvantage
as over every foe. We could hardly take a better
example for our help at just this point we to-day
touch.

For this is the last day of the year; and the last day
of a year is apt to find us, who have any habit of intro-
spection at all, like those men at the fords of the
Jordan, ‘ faint,” not so much depressed as faint,—faint
in heart, faint in faith, faint in hope, in effort, down
among the despairs, very near the giving-out point, the
giving-up point. Something in the season seems to
add to a something in ourselves to take the heart out of
us. Self-dissatisfaction has become self-discontent ; and
self-discontent has run well down to that hopeless state,
which says: “ Well, it is no use to try. I do not make |
head. Prayers, efforts, tears, all seem vain. I drift
toward the bad. I had better give up, and done with
it.” Somehow, when a man is at this point, he coaxes
himself with the idea that going thoroughly wrong,
abandoning himself to the seethe of the vortex, will be
a relief. Those who do not go so far are yet a good
deal faint before the review of a year.

It has been a pretty serious struggle with ourselves,
with circumstances, with men, with Providence. We
have not had just what we wanted to have, either from
man or from God; and we have not been just what we
wanted to be. It is a varied disappointment, many-
shaped, many-hued; and clouds and vapors obscure our
sun, and settle close about us, chill, damp, all tone gone.
Not our own shortcomings merely, but all manner of
thwarting has stepped in to interfere with the better
man we hoped to be; while, added to the depression of

138 FAINT, YET PURSUING.

a very generous amount of self-blame, is the opposition
from a certain set in things for which we are in no way
to blame. And it all combines to set us in the same
tone of spirit that one is in who in his business affairs
is faced by a year of mishap and disaster, partly his
own.mistake, largely the general attitude of things. It
is not a very satisfactory back look when one comes
to measure himself at any stage of life with his ideal,
with the thing he promised himself he was going to
be. It is a very poorly realized actual that stands by
the side of the promised ideal; and, when one sets his
accumulating difficulties side by side with his waning
years, it is apt to bring an almost unconquerable weari-
ness and deadly faintness, an unwillingness to. work
more, a hopelessness of effort, apt to make him the
victim of depression rather than the creature of new
energy and resolve. The shortcomings urged upon us
by a very persistent conscience are perhaps the most
uncomfortable experiences of the year; and, as the sun
sinks, our horizon is one of clouds and glooms.

It is not quite a happy season with us, that which
first precedes the bright wishes of others for our
happy New Year. We go down pretty low, reach our
deepest point of self-dissatisfaction and discouragement.
It does not do us a bit of harm. It is pretty unpleas-
ant to have to hide your face before yourself; to stand.
in the presence of conscience, the most unrelenting of
" judges, and feel that you deserve what it is telling you ;
to know that there is no cunningly hidden corner into
which it will not follow you; to feel that the only plea
or palliation you can make must shape itself into the
anguish cry, “Miserable man that I am,” It is un-

FAINT, YET PURSUING. . 139

pleasant, but it is good, it is encouraging. When a
man gets a contrition, it is pretty evident that he is not
all wrong: he is just in the condition to begin to be
right. What he wants is courage and faith,— not to be
faint and lie down and die, but to start in stern resolve
again,— to call upon everything within him, and to ask
for everything God can give to him.

Annoying as it may be, terrible as it may be, one of
the most healthy as most hopeful things is a healthy
self-dissatisfaction,— not the morbid, useless picking to
pieces of one’s self, which results in that worst despair,
the abandonment of all hope and all control of one’s
self, but that which wakes into the spur and impulse
of the future any shortcomings of the past.

First. I conceive this thing to be only true; and
though it sound paradoxical to the ear, to experience
it is a fact, and a valuable one, that, when one is faint,
that is the time of all others to pursue, not to give
<up, but to keep on. The time to hope most of your
harassed horse is just at the point of giving out, when,
if you make the right approach, he will spring freshly
at his collar, and with a sublime energy, though utterly
prostrate before, pull through. The time to carry a
boy through his task is the moment most miss, just
as he droops to faint, and needs only the right sum-
mons to make the victory his.

The real time to work is when indolence most
tempts, is most fertile and ingenious in expedient
and argument. You do best work then, if you will.
On the field of battle, the time to expect men to do, to
call confidently upon them, is as the faintness comes
when pallor is on the face, but has not touched the

140 FAINT, YET PURSUING.

heart; before it has control, tainted that morale which
is an army’s, as a Soldier’s, safety. The true moment
at which to call upon one’s self to take any new step
in virtue is at the fainting point, when it would be so
easy to drop all and give all up: when, if you do not,
you make of yourself a power,—as one being over-
come by the deadly torpor of frost rouses himself,
and in the grapple for life, just at life’s lowest ebb, se-
cures it. ‘ 7

Hugh Miller, whose chosen companions and friends
were the classic writers of English literature, tells it of
himself that, under the influence of discouragement
and fatigue, he had begun to yield to the temptations
to drink, so plenty and mighty among the laboring
classes, when, retiring one night to his hour of read-
ing, he found the stately sentences of Bacon emptied
of all their noble meaning. The resolution taken at
that hour of conscious debasement was ever after kept.

It is the struggle at the greatest point of depression,
the determination not to be overcome, the standing
firm in the conviction that day is not far away at the ©
darkest hour of night, which not only shows the qual-
ity of best courage, but does the best work. There
may be reasons for giving up, but that one is faint,
discouraged, disappointed, tried, not among them.
They are reasons rather for wot giving up.

As he is really the true general, who can take an
army at the point of defeat and compel a victory, as
Sheridan at Winchester, so is he the true man who
shall take himself at the point of fainting, and compel
himself to keep up the pursuit, not overcome by the
past, but confident, hopeful for the future,

FAINT, YET PURSUING. I4!

Suppose you have been unwise, weak, sinful; sup-
pose you have gone on and on, wildly, recklessly ;
suppose you have pinched your immortality into the
corset of self-indulgence, and starved your soul by the
surfeit of your senses, and in the great moment of re-
view, of self-reckoning, you have only a wretched past
facing you, and you stagger and faint with the thought
of the burden,—the thing you are and the conse-
quences to come: shall you lose all heart, and utterly,
deadly ‘faint, become utterly useless and worthless, a
sort of moral limp, neither form, muscle, nor sinew?

The writer of the Book of Proverbs says, “If thou
faint, thy strength is narrow”; and narrow strength is
not what a man wants who has any real living to do.

One of the wisest, noblest, most wholesome things
ever said by man was said by Paul, a man of no narrow
thought, ‘‘ Forgetting the things behind, I press on,”
—not ignoring them, not fainting under them, but
setting them aside, getting them out of the way of
hindrance, I press on. If any man had a right to
faint, he had. Though he said he forgot the things
behind, it is evident they ever teased his memory;
but, when they would possess him, then only the more
he possessed himself, and pursued, reached forward.
Posesowea that he was, in the best sense, alive; it
showed that he was not satisfied,—healthily not sat-
isfied ; it proved that he did not think there was noth-
ing for him to do but mourn or mope, that he had not
reached the region of despair, that he could not, must
not faint, so much was to be done. Once there might
have come to him, as to many a man, when he has
first seen the demand laid upon him, the pallor of the

142 FAINT, YET PURSUING.

cheek, the faintness at heart, as he faced, in all its
new revealed enormity, his mistake, and saw what it
must cost to retrieve his error; but that was only
for the moment, long enough to rally and gird on
his resolve and take the first step toward the great
manhood of his after-life. Dark as the behind, there

soon glowed upon his courage and faith the brighter —

beyond, a painful but not a benumbing contrast with
the by-gone. He saw the grand, colossal ideal tower-
ing above his actual pygmy self, saw the great thing he
might grow into, and without a pause, faint now and
again it may well be with the many buffets and weary
contests, yet without pause, without rest, fearlessly and
always pursuing what he saw to be the one great duty
from the moment he fell in Damascus road till his life
of zeal and sorrow found its triumphant close. To be
thus restless, thus dissatisfied, is only a sign of health.
We may not fancy it; we may try to get away from
it; we may run it into a sickly, depressing sentiment,
but, properly managed, it is an essential to the soul’s
growth. The vain wear and worry of sick fancies
and. impossible desires, with which some men and
women fret themselves, making the past useless and
the present hopeless, is one thing and a poor thing.
But another, a good and brave thing, is that healthy
state into which any one is thrown, who just quietly
and simply sits down and has a good, hearty, honest
talk with himself upon the secret things of his own
past being, and without bewildering and deluding him-
self with praise of what he calls his conscience and
his fidelity, or depressing himself by feeling that he is
in some hopeless case, contrasts the thing he is with the
thing he ought to be. He will not faint, but summon

ee ee

FAINT, YET PURSUING, 143

every energy and resolve that the future shall retrieve
the past, that its very shortcomings and failure shall
lift him into success.
As the poet says it, in the “Ladder of St. Augus-
tine,’ — '
“Nor deem the irrevocable Past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.”

Secondly, we are not to faint. Though feeling faint,
we are still to pursue. We speak of the stand-point of
the present, but really there is no stazd-point. “ With-
out haste, without rest,” — Goethe’s words may well be
the Christian's motto and the fact of the Christian’s
life. Time —the great, ceaseless, seething ocean flood
between two eternities—does not rest; the flow of
_ thought or of blood does not rest; life does not rest ;
God does not rest. How beautifully has some one said,
“He gave his love no Sabbath rest’?! Work is the
divine element, essential to the divine life as to the
human. The life which man draws from God, the life
which is after his life, the life which is to bring him at
one with God, is the life of ceaseless work,— pursuit.
There is no rest to God, no moment of rest to any
virtue or self-denial, no time when these can lay them-
selves down, no time when the man can say to them,
“Sleep on now, and take your rest.” The little dar-
ling, who all day long, with ceaseless prattle and restless
feet, has been the thing of joy and beauty about your
home, lays her dear head upon the pillow, and sweetly
—is there any child music sweeter?—says,— __

“ Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

144 FAINT, YET PURSUING.

But never a virtue, however faint, never a self-denial,
however pure may utter the like; may rest and ask
for God’s blessing; for the moment of resting is the
‘moment of desertion. Without rest, the life of virtue
must be, as the life of the One all virtuous was. Faint
that one was sometimes; for the multitudes followed
him and were importunate and trifling, the disciples
did not get into the kernel of his thought, and the cold
Pharisee twitted, and the crafty Herodian spread a
snare, and the hunt was up all through his tortured life
to catch him in that thing which should bring him to
the cross,—faint sometimes, for the devil pressed him °
sore in the wilderness, and the agony crushed him in
the garden, and the pains and jeers bowed him at the
cross, but no rest, pursuing still the great, fathomless
mystery of his Father’s will, daring to do and daring
to die. Faint we shall sometimes be. There is-the
pressure of many a cross in this life’s career; there is
heat and burden in many a day; there are soft places
of dalliance, tempting our drooping spirits, offering
them shelter and their soothing, begging us to abide
with them; and secret, importunate yearnings within
joining their appeal, but they must not prevail. With-
out haste and without rest, faint, yet pursuing, steadily,
boldly, persistently onward must our march be. The
poet has rightly expressed it, when he speaks of our
course as like “the pilgrim’s, restless as the sun.” In
the present there is norest. That is neither the portion
of, nor potion for, the soul. If there be rest at all, if it
be not utterly ruled out as incongruous to life, it lies in
the beyond, is the end for which the present is the end-
less struggle.

FAINT, YET PURSUING. 148

Thirdly, the one only hope for the soul lies in pur-
suit, pursuing, though faint. In the past no satisfac-
tion, in the present no rest, where but in pursuing in
the future is there any hope of attainment? It was
over the Jordan that the prize for the weary and faint-
ing warriors lay. Not with the bread of the men of
Succoth and Penuel might they recruit themselves.
The recruiting came after the victory. Not themselves
they thought of, but the thing pursued. No ordinary
men they ; but just so forgetting of ourselves must we
be, pursuing, whatever the temptation, whatever the
drawback, whatever the infirmity,— pursuing, crowd-
ing, reaching, only to pursue and crowd on and on till
the work is done and the great halt is called.

To-day, then, let us have no vain, chilling, killing
regrets for the past, no sickly sighing or fainting in
the present, but let us make a bold push into the
future, with a wiser heart, a deeper faith, a dauntless
courage, a soberer sense of duty, knowing no fatigue,
no cajoling of circumstance or place, no pause, no rest,
remembering that, however faint and however much
things may tempt to rest here, the prize is on the other
side of Jordan.

The last day of the year is one of our -soul’s epochs.
We lay by one other portion of our being; and we lay
it by sadly, because of its memories, hecause of its
delinquencies. “It is no light thing to fold up and lay
by forever a portion of one’s life, even when it can be
laid by. with honor and in thankfulness.” Happy those
who can lay it by in honor, who feel that, however we
may have fainted, we have still pursued. Let that
give the new impulse and spur to the new year. Nor

146 FAINT, YET PURSUING.

let those of us.to whom this happiness cannot come—
alas! the many —stand dismayed, irresolute, faint, but
get our spur and impulse out of our infidelities and the
conviction that, though we may have fainted, there is
still before us the way and the hope of pursuit.

Let our work with ourselves be threefold,— retro-
Spection, introspection, circumspection,— the backward
and inward look, the look around. To-day, a little
pause for survey: to-morrow, the drum-beat for the
new march. In that new march, forget not one thing.
When the toils of his unscrupulous foes were winding
thick about him, the friends of Lord Bacon warned
him to look about him. His calm reply was, “I look
above.’ Pursuing with the upward look, the way shall
be, though rough and steep, the way to victory, to life,
—the life in which all pursuing ends, into which no
faintness enters.

Dec. 31, 1876.

XIII.

POGHRITHER WITH. GOD.
“Laborers together with God.”— I. CORINTHIANS iii., 9.

Wuat Paul said of himself was a general truth. It
was no exceptional condition of his as an apostle: it
is every man’s condition, it is everything’s condition.
Whatever has gone from God’s hand has not only its
own life, its own function, but this other higher quality
of working with God. Nothing created but has that
gift. As no man, so no thing liveth, dieth, to itself.
God did not create and then separate from himself,
make all things separate, disjointed, unrelated. He
bound all things together, and kept all bound to him-
self. There is no segregation anywhere: it is all con-
gregation, a community of interest, interdependence,
affinities, sympathies everywhere, nothing isolated,
alien, outcast, alone,—all things dependent on him,
he dependent on all things. He might have left stars
out, man out, flowers out; but, since they are made, he
depends on them to discharge the ordained preaching,
not of life alone, but of aid to him. Science makes
out a correlation of forces. There is a more secret
correlation running all through the things of God down
to the lowest, back to the farthest, out to the minutest,
and up to the grandest: in each and every is some pulse
of him, the divine heart; in the divine heart, some an-

148 TOGETHER WITH GOD.

swering pulse to each. His life fed of man, man’s life
fed of him. He has locked all things together, bound
_ them by a chain, and taking the two extremes brought
them together and linked them as one indissolubly to
his one central self. From him issues, to him pro-
ceeds. He keeps his hand grasp upon all. His inspi-
ration is the life of all. Separate from him nothing is.
Lay down systems of law, interpose series of causes,
put God as far down the line as you may, he must ever
stand at the bottom of it. He must ever be at the top
of it, the cause and result, outgo and return. In him,
all things meet. For him, all energies labor,—the ser-
aph that adores and burns as the viewless and unseeing
atom that lives only to expire. Not that there may be
built up a huge divine selfishness, but that there may
be unity, harmony, result everywhere, the whole devel-
opment of the divine nature as the perfect culture of
the human soul be reached.

No more inspiring, no more vital thought than this,
one we ought resolutely to lift ourselves up to, one
we ought not only to be willing, but glad to hold, one
which we may grandly grow by. God’s life does not
centre and end in itself: no more does our life centre
and end in ourselves. Nor do we put it to its
highest use, when we serve our fellow-men or merely
worship and obey some great spirit. Life is more.
God aims not merely at establishing his own suprem-
acy, carrying out his own thought, but, capable of
high enjoyment, he desires to make others partake it.
His joy is in work and, the return of work. Instead
of keeping it all to himself, he has given all things be-
sides, not life merely, nor something to do merely, but

TOGETHER WITH GOD. I49

something to do for him, something to do in his
work, given it to them to be of some help to him. So
well as I can phrase it in my imperfect language, I
think God has so arranged things, has so delegated
powers, so resigned the power of doing things directly
and solely himself, that he depends upon, has need of,
the aid of all things he has created, to whom, at crea-
tion and so long as he continues their kind in being,
he delegated certain powers. When there was that
first grand mustering of created things, and under the
divine fiat they were commissioned to increase and
multiply, they were so many agents of his that he dis-
missed to “co-operative labor’”’ not merely beasts,
birds, fishes, reptiles, plants, and insects, men, but his
servants, allies, things henceforth he was net to be
able to do without, having their place and function in
his vast economies. We talk of things material and
animal, and shut them up to that class within which we
define them; but the breath of the divine inspiration is
upon all,—upon the stone that has for ages watched
over the chance footprint of some antediluvian bird
as upon man. After its kind, each and every has
something to say or to do for him; to hold or transmit
an assigned part in working out the great problem; a
secret to hold mayhap till the time of revealing shall
come. And as men go down into the deeps or up into »
the spaces, prying into the things hid, taking knowledge
from the relaxing hand of God, it is not buried things
that they expose, it is not distant things that they un-
veil, not unknown things they make known, but God’s
servants that they bring to light; and it comes to us
grander than the Psalmist sang it, when he said, The

150 TOGETHER WITH GOD.

wings of the morning, or the nttermost parts of the sea,
or the beds of hell, could not take him away from God;
for we know they cannot take us out of the society of
those things; which in their sphere, as we in ours, are
his associates and co-workers, not only God every-
where, but everywhere the fellow-working thing, the
thing helping out his idea, assisting in unfolding his
plan and establishing his will.

By interlacing, not all creations only, but all of our
own lives with his life, it is that we shall get to realize
that he is not there and we here, with an infinite dis-
tance between. If, then, we add to that what it seems
to me we cannot doubt, that we are ourselves essential
parts of his success, that he has made himself to be
dependent on our fidelity, we shall have an idea which
many good men will call blasphemy, but which at
once draws God up from the deeps and down from the
spaces, and places him here with us, and places us by
him, in one spirit, to work one work. Not an idea too
vast is it, grand, impossible, but one to thrill the whole
being, and put a new relish to life, as well as give new
value to one’s self.

Take to yourself the conviction that, over and be-
yond everything else that life is, it is a co-operative
agency; that, put to its noblest use, it is capable of for-
‘ warding not human interests alone, but divine plans;
that it is one link between creation and consummation,
something God needs to the unfolding and harmony of
his operations; that its infidelity, incompleteness, is a
check, a bar, a hindrance to divine plans,— get such an»
idea firmly grappled in our consciences, a real, live,
working influence, and what a change it would make

TOGETHER WITH GOD. T51

in life and in us! It would lift life out of the darkness
in which human speculation has shaded it: it would
lift the soul out of the lowness in which human selfish-
ness has thrust it. We should indeed get what theo-
logians have been so much afraid we should get,— what
is an essential impulse toward all true development,—
an idea of human dignity; and we should grow not so
much afraid to sin as ashamed to sin, ashamed to be
wayward and selfish, and indolent, wrapped up in and
content with our own little to-day and to-morrow hori-
zon. We should feel the incongruity between our base
conduct and God’s grand design for us. We _ should
see the privilege to which he would lift us, as partners
in his work,— not working out rewards for ourselves,
but living and doing and suffering, so that the great
purpose he has may be carried toward fulfilment.- It
would give us the feeling that he is building us, as
lively stones, into the edifice it is the infinite purpose
to erect, as the concluding and consummation of his
great thought. And, more than all, we should realize
the sublime unselfishness of God, who, rather than keep
all power in his own hand, scattered it to many; in-
stead of absorbing the happiness that comes of doing,
made the many participants; took into partnership the
various things he had created, gave them their several
spheres and agencies, and crowned the faithful action
of the thinking and feeling man with exactly the same
pleasures and joys himself was conscious of. What an
uplifting for us all, and what demand it makes of us,
and how unmindful we are, and how unfaithful to the
demand!

* But it is our way, when any duty is pressed, to excuse

152 TOGETHER WITH GOD.

ourselves, to acknowledge a truth save as it includes
ourselves. We are ready to say of those strange beings
of whom we get rare glimpses in the sacred writings —
angels —that they were fellow-workers with God. They
came upon his mission, unfolded his will, they spoke
his word, they discharged his errand, they instructed
or they threatened men. And, whatever higher order
of being in other and higher spheres there may be,
they may well be laborers together with God, discharg-
ing somewhere the great obligations laid upon them.
And so the men and women of great exceptional ability
may be, whose lives have lent lustre to any age, or who
have helped man forward, or any branch of useful
knowledge or attainment. Of David, we say that he
discerned not only that the heavens glittered with a
mighty host, but they were working with God, ex-
pounding to man his glory; of Jesus, that he noticed
not only the sparrow, but read the lesson of providence
that its fall was made to teach. It was not a dead spar-
row, but the means of a living lesson from the Infinite.
And so we may make telescope or microscope, not dis-
coverers so much as revealers, bring to us from faintest
star-dust, from minutest sea-bottom shell, not the old
refrain, “The hand that made us is divine,’ but the
grander truth, “The hand that made allows us to attest
him, and in our humbleness bear our part in the great
developing of his purpose and his love.” And this,
too, we might get to believe: that the small, the mean,
the trying, the dark in creation, or in affair, not only
bear the image and superscription of the divine work-
man, but do something of the divine work. And yet
we should continue to shrink from saying it of indi-

TOGETHER WITH GOD. 153

viduals. We plead insignificance, but insignificance
is a word that God does not accept. He lets off noth-
ing so. The God-helpers are not these alone. Many
an agent we have hastily set down as hostile, rightly
looked at, is on the side of God, working his work. A
mistaken Christian zeal leads men to deny to the great
minds, the great gropers of antiquity, that name. They
are regarded rather as opponent, as antagonist, the men
who could not see clearly as with a Christian vision,
as blind, as derelict, as worthy reprobation, punish-
ment. And yet few of God’s more readily accredited
agents have done more for him than men like Plato,
Socrates, Seneca, Epictetus, men whom he could not
do without. His fellow-laborers, men who got marvel-
lous glimpses, especially they of the later Stoic school,
of the best truths, have left wonderful record in word,
if not so wholly satisfactory in life.

Xenophon could say of Socrates: ““The man whose
memoirs I have written was so pious that he undertook
nothing without asking counsel of the gods; so just
that he never did the smallest injury to any one, but
rendered essential service to many; so temperate that
he never preferred pleasure to virtue; and so wise that
he was able, even in the most difficult cases, without
advice, to judge what was expedient.’” He was speak-
ing of one who, in his day, up to his light, was working
God’s work, as conscientiously and as acceptably as
afterward, under far other illumining, it was worked by
Christ himself.

Of death, Socrates said, “I derive confidence from
the hope that something of man remains after death,
and that the condition of good men will be much better

154. TOGETHER WITH GOD.

than that of the bad.” Is not that as grand as the
great after-word of Jesus, ‘‘Whoso liveth,” etc.? Paul,
under the same guiding, never said a grander thing at
Athens than did his illustrious contemporary Seneca,
under the guidance of that inner light which never
wholly leaves any man: “God is near you, is with you,
is within you. God comes to men; nay, what is nearer
yet, he comes into men. No good mind is holy with-
out God.”

And, further back, when Elijah and Elisha were up-
holding the tottering of the Mosaic religion, blind
old Homer along the shores of the A2gean was chant-
ing from village to village his immortal verse, which
gave to Greece not a poem only, but largely a religion.
It was Bible to the Greeks, as the Pentateuch was to
the Jews. He was as truly helping God as his great
contemporaries, faithful to his light, leaving word and
work, his insight and faith, a blessing to his nation and
to alltime. Running your eye down the long line of
the past, it will not do to scout these early seekers
after God, these early, half-educated laborers, to deny
those twilight times, in which the uncertain glimmers
of truth contended with great darkness, or forget how
God leads the ages by slow and successive stages,—in
every crude step, his will; and in every earnest actor,
his fellow-workman. Did not Christ say, “ Many shall
come from the east and the west, and from the north
and from the south, and sit down in the kingdom of
heaven”? We may go farther. If it be true, as can-
not well be denied, that

“ Blindly the wicked work
The righteous will of God”;

TOGETHER WITH GOD. 155

if most signal blessings to the race have been born out
of the dark womb of the most dire adversity; if deep-
est laid plans of malice and hate and ill have only
resulted in best things; if Alexander’s sword only
hewed a way for the coming gospel, its own empire
perishing while the other struck its deep roots down
into the heart of the ages; if American slavery estab-
lished the gospel of liberty,— then must we say that the
bad man or thing, in so far as its work results in good,
the bad with no credit to itself is co-worker,— one in
the great work, though not one in the initial purpose.

The reign of bloody Mary, the persecution of Torque-
mada and the butcheries of the Roman amphitheatre,
siege of Londonderry and St. Bartholomew massacre,
the resolved purpose of men who hated his good, have
done for God’s cause what no other agencies could
have. The blood of the martyrs has long been believed
to be the seed of the Church; and many a malign-vis-
aged evil has been the disguised angel, working out
good for him. The wrath of man not only praises, not
only serves, but co-works with him.

We come back to ourselves. Who and what are we
that we shall not do the same? Men and women to
live through our more or less of the threescore years
and ten as best we may, getting most out of them to
ourselves,— merchants, artificers, soldiers, clergymen,
wives, teachers, servants,—taken up with pursuits,
with pleasures, with ambitions, exempt, insignificant,
no part in this great work, not God helping? That
does not describe us, express us, limit us: we are more
and other. A something nobler are we. Let me be
grandest monarch, greatest genius, achieve fullest suc-

156 TOGETHER WITH GOD:

cess, have any career: that does not define, express,
exhaust me. I am, I have capacity for, I do something
more. My chief work is beyond all these. JI am what
Paul said he was, what all these other things of God
are. Nor star, nor under-world, nor thing that excites
most curiosity, that rouses most awe, is what I am in
this lower universe of God; the only created thing,
capable, intelligently to itself, of spreading the divine
name and glory; capable in other than a machine way
of helping out the divine process, adding to the divine
pleasure, returning somewhat of the Giver’s gifts.
Something has come to me that men call revelation,
something that draws God out of the glorious, that
draws me toward the glories, that shows me to myself,
that enables me to understand another will and work
in unison with another thought; that makes me under-
stand the divine purpose, not only in creating things,
but in creating me; that sets me apart and above as an
interpreting, co-operating agency. I have something
to do for the Power that makes for righteousness that
is not myself.

By my pureness, I commend purity, and advance its
rule; by my truthfulness, I proclaim the wealth and
power of truth; by my fidelity, a great lesson in fidel-
ity is taught. I work for God toward these issues. I
bring my gift back. I am his helper in establishing
them. Together with him, I build at the great fab-
ric, indestructible as himself.

If we found a man untrue to a human trust, where
would be the limit to our reprobation and scorn? To
desert a trust, to leave a post, to betray a friend, noth-
ing lower in our human catalogue. It marks the man

TOGETHER WITH GOD. 157

as with a scarlet letter. But here are we betraying a
divine trust,— not earnestly, actively, with the best in
us, forwarding the end for which we came into this
scene; not helpers of God by the uttermost of our
ability and our integrity. It is a very solemn thing to
have that to do, but it is a far more solemn thing not
to do it. Think of coming into the world, going
through it and out of it, leaving undone, untouched,
the most important thing of all,—the thing you, alone,
of all created things, have the power to do! That is
how it is. You do not hesitate to say that life is not
for selfish uses : you really know that God expects you
to help him, to make return, and that his things must
be left undone or wait unless you do.

There are great and little things in charity, in influ-
ence, there are great and little services among friends
and in daily intercourse, toward high and low and
equal, and all the culture of your own spirit, that it
may take on the qualities of Jesus. These ought not
to be neglected, ought not to be postponed. Every-
where are men and things, institutions and pursuits,
awaiting you,— your voice, your arm, your influence.
Not the truth, not the church, not great outside things
alone, look for you, cry out for you. Life, daily life,
the life you lead, life just around you, is the sphere in

which you are wanted, and wanted not to do the things
of daily life alone, to carry into them a God spirit, and
spread through them God’s influence.

I do not think it will hurt us to come to understand
what we actually are and what we are actually set to
do. What we do greatly want is to hallow life, to get
into it all facts and belongings that can tie us back to

158 TOGETHER WITH GOD.

an Infinite Being, so that our whole being shall be in-
fluenced by and in the service of Him from whom we
spring, to whom we tend. And hallowing life does not
take it among unjoyous things, does not strow it thick
with penance and with gloom, does not sour and sad-
den. It may sober; and does not life need sobering?
But you can see that to none has life so quick, so keen,
so lasting relish as to those who are God’s sons and
daughters, who take into daily duty and make part of
daily intercourse the thought of him. I have heard
it from many lips,—not as a boast, but slipping out
unconsciously,—such words as show me how many
lives are glad and beautiful,— are glad and beautiful, not
because of the outer circumstance, but because of
the inner devotedness, without pomp, without profes-
sion, silently, always doing what it seemed that God
asked, learning of him, teaching for him. It were
a wholesome thing would we all hallow life that way,
feel that no humble thing of ours is lost to him,
that we are workers in his work, though we being only
doers, forget something of our own enjoyment and
realize something of the real end and aim of being.
Were each of us to begin the day, remembering that
God looked to us to help him by word and duty in it,
did we keep the thought near us of our high calling, I
do not believe it would dash the zest of life’s true
flavor at all. It would only give higher relish, not the ~
relish that the sense finds, too evanescent to be de-
scribed when it drains its cup, but the high flavor
that stands by the spirit when it has done its work well.

Jan. 11, 1874.

XIV.

OIL AND WINE.
“Oil and wine.”— LUKE x., 34.

THESE were the simple medicaments of a rude age
and an uncultivated people. Medicine was not a sci-
ence, but rather a tradition, as in many of our country
families yet. A few simples, suggestions of nature or
experience, kept near by everybody; matters of every
day, that was all. No apothecaries, labels, and recipes ;
no blunders of clerks or experiments of half-knowing
men, no rivalries of schools, no quacks.

Oil and wine! Everybody had them; everybody
knew all about them; every one could handle them.
It was just as if we were to have roots and leaves and
shrubs from the wayside. The vine and the olive were
the commonest things; and God stores not great se-
crets only, but great blessings, within the simplest,
nearest, and most common things, just as he does great
duties. The hillside in the time of the vintage stood
garnished in purple, more regal than Solomon’s, and all
along the ways the olive shed her fruit.

The Samaritan of the parable was not a physician,
only a traveller. Oil and wine were part of his neces-
sary equipment. The priest and Levite, no doubt, had
the like, though the trip from Jerusalem to Jericho was
a short one. Oil and wine entered so much into daily

160 OIL AND WINE.

necessity that they would not be likely to be without
them; indeed, as public servants, ought to have had
them. But, then, priests and Levites were badly de-
moralized in those days. They were the counterfeits of
the original, men who went on the other side of moral-
ity and religion as of humanity,— not men to come up
to the square of duty and ease other men’s burdens,
but men to bind on more, and bind them so that the
knot should not slip nor the burden drop. Terrible
fellows they were, when you consider their profession
and their opportunity.

The Samaritan was a different kind of man. The
priest and Levite put him into a very bad place in this
world and the next. They would not deal with him,
and salvation was only for the Jews. For all that, a
very good sort of man; and he had what the priest and
Levite had not,—a heart, and that in the right place.
He found a man lying beaten and bleeding in the road.
It did not matter that he was a Jew, who would not
have given him a glass of water for his thirst. He did
not see the Jew, but the sufferer, not the enemy, but
the man, nor the man so much as his need. He.did not
stoop over him and feel a little pity, and then resume
his journey: he did not leave him and go for a physi-
cian, or report his case to some charitable society when
he got to Jericho; but he stopped, got off his beast,
took the case in hand, bound ‘up the wound, pouring in
oil and wine, and did.all the rest which you so well
know in the simple narrative, that has handed an
accursed Samaritan to an immortality of honor, to
grow more honored as the ages come to get at the pith
of a lesson they have as yet only distantly admired,

OIL AND WINE. 161

and has made the name of priest and Levite a synonyme
forever of all that is selfish and narrow, mean and un-
sympathizing.

Oil and wine,—comfort and strength. Are not
these the two common, cheap things we may all have
and all may carry and all may give? Are they not
the two ministrants all suffering, misfortune, weakness
need,— in them all that man can do for man,—and is
not he who neglects them, refuses them, passes by
on the other side, a priest and a Levite? And tobe
priest and Levite after the parable’s showing,— what
is it but to have as low a place as any Christ has put
any man in?

The make of our souls is very analogous to that of
our bodies, at least our thought and language so have
it; and much the same process must be gone through
with in our moral ails, as in our physical. The
wounded body lying there in the road needed just this
exact treatment and this exact sequence of treatment,
oil to soothe, wine to strengthen, soothing first,
strengthening after. Just this, the need to our human
suffering. and our inward ails, weaknesses, bruises,
wounds, not merely oil, comfort, not merely wine,
strength, but comfort before the strength, so that the
strengthening may really strengthen after. He mis-
takes who reverses the order or omits either. There
is a curious inversion of natural laws sometimes, a
process of which God is never guilty, and yet which
man thinks to do with impunity. There is an almost
brutality in the way in which some men approach, the
manner in which they deal with, the sufferings, wants,
necessities, mistakes of others, The comfort is

162 OIL AND WINE.

omitted, not in unkindness always, but through igno-
rance, want of thought, or appreciation. Here is a
man in misfortune, no matter how, by whose fault,
or because of what circumstance, in a condition that
compels the seeking for aid. What he needs first
is the oil, comfort; what you would need in his place,
what you would always give, did you remember that
so much neglected duty, the Golden Rule. He does
not find it. The human heart to which he appeals
does not turn back to study and understand his posi-
tion, and give the cheer of an honest sympathy, always
so far beyond the dole of charity. Sharp scrutiny,
a something almost querulous in tone, not a wholly
covered-up suspicion, a thinly disguised blame, advice
not over-well considered, at best the bracing of a tonic
at exactly the time when the innermost craving is for
that one comforting drop of which so large a portion
of the human family seems to run dry. Tonics are
well; but the system must be prepared for them, not
shocked by them. :

In cases of affliction among friends and equals, even
in the professional treatment of clergy, you find the
same thing, the poor, wounded, bleeding spirit not |
gathered close, held and soothed, shielded and com-
forted, not the oil of considerate sympathy poured
upon its writhing, that kind of “Peace, be still,” that
Jesus used, not only to billows, but to souls. Instead,
men are exhorted to patience, to faith, to duties,—
“You must not give up,” “You must be brave,” ‘ You
must look to Christ,” ‘‘ You must trust God.” Your
tears and your doubts and your temptings to murmur
are desperately wicked : you must master yourself. All

OIL AND WINE. 163

these very well, very strengthening, imperative, in right
time and place, by and by. The soul has goteto rally
itself, accept, bear, do; but it is first entitled to some-
thing other. It cannot bear wine, it must have oil. It
is a fine thing in friendship, says MacDonald, to know
“when to be silent.” So of comfort. . It is the cir-
cling arm of love and help, encouraging, cheering,
sympathizing, even “bearing with,” the support of
tender consideration that must come first, oil, before
oné can stand alone, or bear the tonic ministrant, the
wine of mingled faith and duty. I always feel that
the larger part of what goes by the name of consolation,
and is the expected formula of occasion, is a cruelty
and an insult, it so overlooks the comforting.

Job’s friends were wise. They were comforters first.
They sat by his side in the ashes through the dull days,
silent, let nature have her way. It is a picture of ex-
quisite wisdom and pathos that comes to us out of that
remote and barbaric past, as every soul that has suffered
_ recognizes,— that patient group sustaining with the
mute eloquence of their presence, till the time seemed
come when they should begin to strengthen, add the
wine of advice and conviction, even of upbraiding, to
the oil of compassion. Our sympathy too much omits
tenderness. It omits waiting. It puts aside nature.
In our most sympathetic moods, too much of hardness,
impatience, and abruptness.

We jump to the end which we feel advisable, inevi-
table, and ignore intermediate necessity. We would
strengthen, but forget to comfort. We do not realize
that in trouble the most manly, self-centred man be-
comes in his mood and in his wants essentially femi-

164 OIL AND WINE.

nine, yea, more than that, more womanly than woman;
and that the one element he cannot then do without —
the comforting —none can do without.

If we are to bear, to have the benefit of the wine,
we must have had the preparative of oil. In your gar-
den, the bruised tendril must first be bound, the wast-
ing sap stayed, the wound cicatrized before you may
bind it back against its support, and coax and stimu-
late it to growth, and expect of it fruit; and with the
bruised spirit it is not otherwise.

Equally true is this with children in a task, a nee
or in sickness. We are abrupt with them, imperative.
Homes sin this way; and here is the cruelty of schools,
which give no sympathy to perplexity, only command,
which will not kindly, patiently, tide over difficulties,
but take wilful indifference for granted. So, between
its two greatest helps, childhood is apt to get no fair
play,— wine, but not oil.

Equally true is it again with men and women who
have a habit to break, a character to reform, an inward
work to do, a new life they desire to lead. We forget
the comforting part, the encouraging of hand or look
and tone; the atmosphere of sympathy we may man-
age to carry with us, and, zf we carry, others inevitably
feel. We forget how much “standing-by”’ one, in his
new and weak efforts, may do for him: we overlook
the little tender, delicate thoughtfulnesses, invaluable
always, inestimable now,—the oil, which shall take him
over the early weakness and hold him until strong
enough to be thrown wholly upon himself. We go to
work with the wine. We advise; we lay down law;
we use, if not threat, warning ; we call out and apply

OIL AND WINE. 165

the things of the severer aspect. We crowd the new
purpose-impressed heart. We expect it to stand alone
and to stand erect. Not the genial aid of sympathy,
but the outright demand of duty,—just as kind and
wise as it would be to take the child, toddling along by
its mother’s finger, and demand it to keep its poise
upon the trapeze. Oil first, by and by wine; lead-
ing, and then standing alone; coaxing, and then de-
mand; that which comforts, and afterward that which
strengthens, Look for growths, healings in others; in
yourself, by the one nature law which soothes before it
asks for strength. In yourself, I say, because just this
truth needs to be applied to the self. I do not care
how severely unreasonable others may be with us, a
man of any moral sensitiveness is more severely unrea-
sonable with himself. The most unnatural, depressing
thing in life is the self-;udging of which we every day
do so much. Se/funreasonableness is worse for us
than that of others. In the great contritions that come
to every man, in the moments of self-loathingand de-
spair, when a man stands culprit before his own soul, it
is the self treatment which is so much harder than any
we get, which does so much more harm.

What indignation, what wrath, what hard names,
what despair, to send us sullen and hopeless at life’s
tasks again! It is not this we want, this that is
healthy, this that will do good, but comfort, soothing,
rest before upbraiding, some self-tenderness and reason,
oil and then wine. And so no cursing the day of one’s
birth, as with David and Job, no despair, no morbid
gloom, no descending depravity, no suicide, but hope
and courage, fidelity and life

306s OIL AND WINE.

As I look at it, in our treatment of others, we a good
deal divide ourselves into two separate classes of
helpers,—the oil-carriers and the wine-carriers. Per-
haps I should more exactly say that constitution and
religious faith divide us.

Especially among women are there two distinct
classes. I used to see them in the army hospitals, and
I find them in life. One is the gentle, delicate, cosset-
ing kind; eyes, ears, heart all sympathy, cooing and
wooing, running the whole self out, exhausting it in
the overflowing intensity of feeling; a class emotionally
sensitive and self-forgetful, whose cruse of oil, like the
widow’s, never fails, though it be poured never so un-
sparingly and to never so many unworthy. These are
saints and heroines of daily life, working out the great
law of sacrifice, and filling too many graves with weary
and worn-out bodies, giving too much and getting too
little, and apt to leave their patients weakly leaning
upon them rather than pushing for strength of their
own, not asking for wine, content with oil.

The other is the class of strong and self-sustained,
not encumbered with nerves or burdened by sentiment,
good-hearted, well-meaning, but rough and blunt, stern
in faith, fixed in feature, sharp in tone, pronounced in
manner, angular in ideas of life, forbidding angels,
like many a nurse in infirmary or hospital; wine-car-
riers, who are always expecting men to take up their
beds and walk; who have no patience with the pain
and weakness to which they minister, and will do
every conceivable thing you can desire, done in the
uttermost spirit of duty, all the while with a sort of
ill-disguised feeling of contempt, as if you were a

OIL AND WINE. 167

half kind of impostor or needlessly complaining. A
sort of cast-iron people themselves, they expect every-
body else to be that. They would stimulate every
one up to their own point of bustling activity and
courage and endurance. Each of these has hold of
half a truth, the half they get in their constitution or
from their religion. Each will thus do only half the
good.

We are always needing, not perhaps to correct nat-
ure, but to complement her halfness,— add by thought
and culture the thing she omits. The oil-bearer must
become wine-bearer also. The wine flagon on the one
shoulder must be balanced by the oil jar on the other.
Into the wound you pour the one, you must not fail to
pour the other. The decision of strong minds must be
tempered by the gentleness of tender ones. Mary must
not complain of, but must supplement, Martha. So we
' get the surest tenderness and the safest strength. The
really nutritious characters of biography, history, and
our own experience, have this blending. Exquisitely
did these qualities blend in Jesus. What he portrayed
of the Samaritan as doing, he himself always did. It
is that which gave him so much power with the men
of his own time, which makes him the bright ideal for
us, that which will keep his hold on the love and rev-
erence of men.

Among all the teachers, he alone comes with oil and
wine. He alone understands and ministers to the two-
fold need in man; and when creeds and theologies, cat-
echisms and prayer-books and forms shall fail, when the
Christ men have portrayed is found not to be the gospel
Christ, when all this claim for other teachers equal in

168 OIL AND WINE,

authority shall fade away, and the truths taught in his
name are owned not to be gospel truths, then, in the
chaos and confusion, within the vortex of which we are
already entered, that one whom we can image out
of those Gospels as the Christus Consolator and the
Christus Imperator — Christ the Comforter, Christ the
Ruler, strengthener —will be the Christ about whom
men will rally, on whom they will believe, not the
Christ of hard and cold defining, but the Christ of
warm, loving, and encouraging heart.

_ As in individuals, so in sects, this halfness of Chris-
tian action is evident. Some of the sects are comfort-
ers, seeking the soothing, elevating, spiritual things,
looking for the smile on the Father’s face, believing
utterly in his love, and perhaps taking something of
robustness from that love in the intensity of their de-
sire to shut off the thought of that hard God men have
so largely made the Divine Being to be. They find
man bruised, wounded, left half-dead by the wayside,
sore and helpless; and they pour in oil. They make
him feel of sin, shame, and transgression, what the
prodigal came to feel: that these have established a
wide distance between him and the deserted home, but
not an irremediable breach; that he- has a simple work
to do, earnest, hard, and long, but sure in the reward it
brings to his fidelity. The Father's face and arms and
kiss are before him, and comforted he begins and goes
on his returning way. Other sects forget the oil. Man
is worthless, a ruined nature, a corrupt worm, incapable
of good. God is a king, a despot, not a friend and Je-
hovah. He can only forgive when the innocent Christ
has taken upon himself the sins of the world and expi-

OIL AND WINE. 169

ated them uponacross. The sinner, every man, stands
stark before himself, alone, comfortless. He is ap-
pealed to without tenderness, he is driven by the hot
tornado impulse of damnation to accept a dogma of be-
lief. He clutches at this mill-stone as the buoy of his
salvation. He is spurred, stimulated, by the dogging
fears ever behind him like implacable fates. He is
under the ministry of wine. The genial glow, the gen-
ial comfort, the genial hopes of the gospel of comfort
are sins and delusions. In the stern, relentless gospel
of strength alone is safety.

(hesteaching and the belief of the Church has
always vacillated between the oil and wine: it has. not
been the blended.

When the two creeds get too tyrannical and the
faiths too narrow, then there is a rush from the side of
strength over to that of comfort. The Puritan faith |
had no oil in it. It gave the wounded only wine, and
the wine was the harsh wine of the earlier fermenta-
tion. The reactionary time has come. Men are de-
manding oil. The Fatherhood of God is taking the
place of the tyranny of God; the ability of man dis-
possesses the idea of his inability; the old, raw, mer-
cantile idea of atonement, equivalent, expiation, every-
where has broken down. Men cling to old shadows of
great names, and claim great power in the things out
of which they know the vitality has gone. The sects
- stand and seem to grow; but the old sect spirit is dead,
and a new life, broader, healthier, is springing within
the dead bones. In every one,—it is in Judaism and
Mohammedanism as well,— it is the liberal, ‘ unchris-
tian,” progressive part that only has life. |

170 OIL AND WINE.

The great popular churches‘no longer demand sub-
scription to the long-time and published tenets of their
creed, but ease the way to converts by letting down
the barriers. I know whereof I affirm in the Episcopal,
Presbyterian, Methodist, and even Romish Church.
The rigid ideas of the past cannot stand against the
liberal spirit of the present, which has no fear of hier-
archies, no reverence for mere antiquity, no bended
knee for old Shibboleth, but dares put its destroying
hand upon the things of the Church as upon things of
government and society, destroying that it may build
broader and better; getting the Christ of tradition and
of men’s mistake out of the way, that we may have the
Christ indeed, the pure and loving spirit who came with
oil and wine to sorrowing and sin-sick, that they might.
have the peace of God, the joy, hope, rest, of living
through him with God. Men are calling that spirit
they cannot stem, which ruthlessly treads out false
things as the ox treads out the kernels of wheat, hard
names, and saying bitter and untrue things of its ac-
tion and purpose. That is the kind of opposition every
advance of thought must consent to meet. That is the
way men think to rescue a desperate cause. But, just
as plainly as to Belshazzar’s frightened gaze there stood
out on the walls of his palace the fatal doom, so over and
above the narrow dogma and creeds of popular sects is
written, “ Weighed in the balance, and found wanting”;
while the liberal spirit in church, literature, science,
pioneers the way to the new time when the gospel,
neither oil nor wine, but oil and wine, neither comfort
nor strength, but comfort and strength, shall receive its
new baptism and start anew on its purifying career.

OIL AND WINE, 171

And is not this what we all want? Not that our sect
mistakes and limitations shall prevail, but that the vast
truth of God shall make its way and be glorified, purg-
ing, as it goes, all dross, driving all shadow, that we
may have at last on earth not the church triumphant,
not my church triumphant, but Christ triumphant ?

As I would not tell time by the hither or further
reach of the pendulum, but rather by that record on
the dial face which results from the combined action of
the two extremes, so would I not gauge the gospel by
its either teaching, but by the combining of the two.
What Robertson used to say, “That truth is not the
way between opposites, but the combining of opposites,
not a way which has nothing of either, but a way which
has something of both,” is true here.

Our gospel is not merely comfort. When it has
comforted, it adds strength. Christ comforted that he
might strengthen; said, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,”
then, “Take up thy bed and walk”’; paused at the sup-
per table for comfort, then passed to the garden for
strength; comforted his friends by what he said, that
they might get strength by what he did.

See how true that is. Listen to those words so
strangely winning and soothing, yet with which he
opens his last talk,— “Let not your hearts be trou-
bled” ; and then, when he has soothed, comforted, pre-
pared, mark how he gradually assumes the higher tone,
and feel your own pulse beat the quicker, and realize
how reassuring the language was, and how the drooping
heads were lifted and the depressed spirits strength-
ened, as his voice rises from its low, sweet soothing to
confidence and triumph.

172 OIL AND WINE.

From his lips and his life, the gospel starts upon its
great mission, surcharged with his spirit, to bear its oil
and wine to all waiting and needy hearts. Never are
they raised and set upon their upward journey until
they have felt the twofold ministry. To the kingdoms
of the earth and to the isles of the sea, to the genera-
tions of man, to the sects of the Church, to the life of
the soul, it goes, a very Samaritan with its comforting
and strength men’s mistakes and follies have not been
able wholly to overlay. Wonderfully has that gospel,
not yet justly apprehended by any sect,— wonderfully,
when you know its history,— prevailed in the world for
men’s good. It has another and a brighter day before
it, when its real spirit shall become manifest, when its
twofold work shall be done everywhere and upon all;
when the oil and the wine, equally ministering to
human need, shall raise the spirit to light and life, shall
be the balm and the healing to all wounds, the strength
and support to all souls.

XV.
mip AND IMMORTALITY.

“Jesus Christ who has brought life and immortality to light.”—
II. TIMOTHY i., Io.

Dip it ever occur to you in reading the sacred his-
tory, a certain deliberateness and uniformity of the
divine method? Our familiar household word is that
“history ever repeats itself.” A greater than history
does that. God repeats himself in the greater as the
less, in epochs as in days, in operations of nature, in
event with nation and discipline with individual. We
who are ashamed to repeat ourselves, lest we should
not be original, lest we betray limit, might take courage
and lesson of him, who repeats himself in every day,
with every night,— repeats himself in seasons, in move-
ments of systems, in recurrence of event, so that things
sometimes seem to circle about a centre rather than
advance from a point. It seems to have been his
policy to precede every great act by an annunciation
of it, to have sent nothing without its herald, its fore-
runner, to have done nothing without preceding proc-
lamation.

The Scriptures give us many striking, startling an-
nunciations,— words from outside our ordinary range
of utterance, truths above our ordinary level and fore-
shadowing the divine purpose, and brought to us in

174 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY.

an exceptional way. God, who in his silence, is even
more marvellous and mysterious than his utterances,
sometimes breaks through that reserve, and helps the
ages on by some new approach, some fresh appeal; but,
before he does it, he announces that which he is about
to do. To Abraham, it is announced what he and his
are to be; to Moses, the burning bush makes proclama-
tion ; the birth of John as of Jesus is announced. An-
nunciations seem to have accompanied all the great
events of Scripture. They are among the invisible ties
which bind the great acts of earth back to the heavens
whence they came and to which they lead.

Those which most arrest our attention, the most
graphic, the most scenic, the most impressive, are the
annunciation at Bethlehem of the birth of Jesus, and
the annunciation at the grave of the rising of Jesus,
the birth into the mortal and the birth into the immor-
tal life. They are both made by angels, and are both
incidents which heighten the impressiveness of facts
over which they, at the same time, throw a deep veil of
mystery. The two scenes, each after its kind and pur--
pose, are perfect, and, were they to be rejected as his-
torically false, must be admitted to be wonderfully imag-
ined, such as grandly, significantly, meet the demand of
such occasion.

In the text there are two things stated to have been’
done by Jesus. As they lie there, side by side, they
seem to have an equal emphasis, equally would he have
emphasized them. But the Christian tendency has
been to put the stress upon the one rather than the
other; and we seem better satisfied to consider Jesus
as the revealer of the mysteries of the life to be than

LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 175

revealer of the mysteries of the life that is, to follow
him in the belief in that life than the living out of
this. Something of this natural to those before whom
ever lies a fascinating, perplexing, awful mystery, and
something of it inevitable from the prevalent tone of
the writings and speeches of the immediate followers
of Jesus, and the exigencies of their position. No
sooner is he risen from the dead than that fact is seized
as the new key to the new religion. John had preached
repentance, Jesus reformation, Paul the resurrection.
The Christianity which took its symbol of the cross
from him has caught also the emphasis which he gave
the future life; and unconsciously our gospel instruc-
tion and our gospel hope are based rather upon an im-
mortality brought to light than a life brought to light.
Peter began by preaching that. Paul’s one text was
the resurrection. Of that was he the witness, for that
was hein jeopardy. Whatever he said started from that
or ended in that. It was the thing never out of his
thought in all labors, journeys, dangers. He made it
the corner of his building. It was his one conviction.
He was a man of the one idea. The fierce impulse of
his ardent nature passed it to the front, and kept it
there. Jesus had said really very little about the
future. The impulse of his nature had been turned to
another theme. Could he bring life to light, raise men
from the graves in which they had buried themselves,
could he get them to follow him here, they must per-
force follow him into the hereafter. If they would not
rise from their self-dug graves now, they must come to
tribulation and anguish. He states the fact and leaves
it, and pretty much all he says about the future is in

176 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY.

regard to his own personal views. When Paul came
to be the master spirit, when he moved against the
stronghold of Gentile and Jewish disbelief, he pressed
the doctrine of the resurrection. Not life so much as
immortality ; for it was just then the absorbing thing
with him and his disciples. The intensest of beliefs
with them was the belief of the immediate coming

again of Jesus, and except one bears that in mind he —

has no true solution of the apostolic attitude, his
orations and epistles. Hegesias, a philosopher of
Alexandria, taught the miseries of life and the blessed-
ness of death, till suicides became so frequent that
he was stopped.

The expectation and intense waiting and longing
were of the at once reappearing, second coming of
Christ, before that generation passed. It might be any
day, it might be any hour; and the sooner, the better.
Paul believed it with all the intense ardor of his intense
.nature. It was the prompting spirit of all he believed,
hoped, said, wrote, did. It guided, moulded, colored
everything. ‘Not so intensely.and surely did the Jews
believe in the coming of the Messiah as did Christ’s
personal friends and closest followers believe in his im-
mediate coming to carry out, in literal exactness, the
scenic display of the judgment. Remember this as
you read Paul, but remember also that he was —as he
called himself—an earthen vessel, and that earthen
vessels failed to detain the subtlest aroma of the great-
est truth he was appointed to teach.

What we have seen feebly, from time to time, in the
limited and absurd preparation of Millerites and Second
Adventists, what was the universal stir and conviction

4
a
’
ia
F
;

LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 177

as the tenth century closed, was still more intensely
and unanimously that belief which pressed itself with-
out shadow of doubt upon the members of the new
church. The end of the world, the catching up of
these into the heavens who should not see death, the
passing of earth, the coming of angels and of the
end in that generation, the expectancy of immortality,
crowded back into eclipse the value, the duty, the desir-
ability of life. The time was so near that there was
not time for them to get life: they must do what best
they could, and be ready for the end.

The coming of Jesus has been the bringing the “life
to light,” the showing, the teaching what life is, the giv-
ing men something todo. Men did not know how to
live before, in no high sense did they live. What we get
as life among all the nations, the Jews as the most fa-
vored and religious, the Greeks as most cultivated, the
Romans as holding the loftier and sterner virtues, was
not life at all in the sense in which Jesus meant it, lived
it. It was not at all the type of that which he divulged,
and which man, amid the baffling of ages since, has
sought to realize and impress as life.

Jesus saw that, if he was to do anything for man, in
the order of sequence, he must first show him the value
and the method of life. He might proclaim, assure, im-
mortality; but the condition of any worth in it lay in
the habit and character of the present. He felt that
not death so much as life lay within the region of
shadow; that it needed to be taken out of that shadow
before any immortality could be worth having. That
gift, assurance, had been nothing without the other,
the mere perpetuating of the shadow, not removing

178 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY.

it, the prolonging of a low-toned existence, not the
building it up into a glory. We have a good many
characters which on the historic page have outlived the
chance and change of time, but neither in the two mar-
vellous collections of biography, the Old Testament
and Plutarch, nor in any section of history of any age
or people, do we read of such characters as begin to
grow common and to adorn the common way of com-
mon lives, the moment Jesus has brought life to light.

I think it well on Easter morning not to think only
of the Easter revelation, the resurrection from the
tomb, but the prior resurrection from the grave of tres-
passes and sins, without which, the first resurrection by
and through our own efforts, no rising out of a tomb,
the effort of God, will do any good.

Henry Vaughan, a quaint poet of the seventeenth

century, says :—
“ Awake! awake!
And in his resurrection partake,
Who on this day, that thou mightest rise as he, Pe
Rose up, and cancelled two deaths due to thee,”

meaning the death of the body in its tomb and the
death of the soul in its. The latter only really concerns
us. What we have to do is to live, to break the bond-
age and cere-cloth of evil, to come forth from the cor-
ruptions we seek, love, submit to, and walk in that new-
ness of life which shall ripen into immortality by its
own law, as the blossom of the tree ripens into fruit by
its own law. \

For a long time, we have been taught there was no
belief in immortality among the heathen peoples, and
there was none that: satisfies our new Christian condi-

Co. a

LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 179

tions. But all people have had a belief in a future of
some kind, and the revelation that Jesus brought was
rather a revelation of the kind of future than the fact
of future. No unimportant part of the mythologies,
the poems of Greece and Rome, and the thoughts of
philosophers, was taken up with the future.

There was belief in it, in some cases belief enough
to modify the act of the present life, belief enough, in
the case of the Egyptians, to make the present little
and the future much. They had become more anxious
about their tombs than they were about their dwellings,
and their interest in the things beyond eclipsed and
cooled their interest in things this side.

I really think that men needed to have life brought
to light rather than immortality: they thought less
about it, did less for it. For what was life at that
time, what had life been? Could anything be more
low, more hopeless, more degrading, not only among
its average peoples, but among its better, its repre-
sentative men? Do we really get at life in its any
expression, except in the very rarest instances, that
any way betrays a knowledge or appreciation of great
duties and possible growths, or a conception of it as
an inward being rather than an outward growth? The
very idea of life was in the dark. The corruption that
reeked and festered history everywhere hints at, but
does not unveil. The world was dead intrespasses and
sins. It was one drear charnel-house; and all the nat-
ural trapping of society, and all the apparent solidity
of empire, and all the elegance and culture and luxury
of here and there, this and the other, were but the thin
veil drawn over the body of a death whose ghastly hor-

180 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY,

rors were suggested by the very magnificence of the
shroud enclosing them. Life was dead. There was
no moral man,—more than that, there was no spiritual
man; no lofty, unselfish devotion, aspiration, no gener-
ous self-abnegation ; no desire to press beyond the sat-
isfaction of the day; nothing of that which to-day
makes the better life of civilization, the life of our im-
perfect Christianity. Life needed to be brought to
light, and a resurrection of man not so much from the
grave as from the death of sin. Not to show men how
to die, and take the shadows from death, but to show
men how to live, and to take the shadows from life,
Christ’s mission.

The soul was obscured as to itself. Men were not
conscious of its quality. Sense, taste, power, intellect,
they were conscious of; but of a something whose range
was other than these, something which, interpenetrat-
ing these, should lift and transfigure these, should take
the whole being out of their range, and mould it into
grace and power beyond highest philosophic dreaming,
making the average of ordinary life high over what the
highest range of it had, at any time, been among any
people,—they did not grasp that grandest conception
of the Infinite, which it was left to Jesus to voice, |
which brought him out of silent and immense dis-
tances, and made him to be, whatever of power he
might be in far away spaces; to be a dweller in human
hearts, loving them and asking to be loved; One
whom, in the poverty of our human conception, we
call our Father, but whose Infinite Self as much
transcends our highest thought of that relation as his
Infinitude surpasses the little life of the most ephem-

LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. ISI

eral of his creations. They did not grasp those higher
obligations and duties of man to man, which we group
under the ruling of the Second Commandment; all
those better sympathies and charities which have added
so much to the value and wealth of life; which are
the correctives of selfishness; which show how we all
become our brothers’ keepers, and force us not merely
to do the good that offers, but to go out of our way
to find and do it. I think that we may somewhat
state it thus: that, before Christ, the human heart
was prompted to say, “Be ye warmed and filled,”
but since Christ the Christianly heart seeks to warm
and fill, and the well-wisher is become the well-doer.
These things are what Jesus specially added to the
best thought and effort of his time; bringing life to
light, revealing what lay behind gross darkness, and
showing to man the boundlessness of the application
of his principles, the moment the scales drop from
the long-sealed eyes, and the heart becomes warm and
responsive under the vision.

I think that we must remember that Jesus never
stopped to prove the existence of God or the fact of
immortality, that he took these from the first and all
along as not to be questioned, as living stones to build
upon, but that he did spend his life proving what was
to be the excellence of life, what was the sweetness
and joy of earnest, humblé endeavor, and how, though
thorn crowns rewarded, and crosses pressed, and jeers
followed, and hates abounded, and every manner of loss
and tribulation grew, these made a life in the soul;
made a life out in the every-day world so refined, so
full of hope, so rich in trust, that the things they

182 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY.

added were in superabundant measure, of more excel-
lent worth than the things they took away. His whole
life, sermon, parable, precept, act,—the mere miracle
that healed the body, the more kindly miracle that reas-
sured the soul,—were the abounding and elaborate
proofs by which he strove to win men away from the
low, narrow, degraded thing they esteemed life to be.
The stress of his effort was to throw light upon life;
and what he said of immortality —though we have been
used to putting it the other way— was auxiliary, I had
almost said subsidiary, to it. What he said was, Re-
pent, reform; make your life right; love God; serve

one another; watch your hearts and all their outgoes ;

do as you see I am doing; make life as you go, day by
day, and it will grow into, make that eternal life, which
is clothed upon with immortality here and now. Asa
fact, now and then, to quicken his disciples, he spoke
of rising from the grave; but, as a duty, he perpetually
pressed it upon them to lift themselves out of the grave
of sin,— not to put stress upon a future rising into some
other existence, but to put stress upon the present
abandonment of whatever makes a shame or a regret,
rising into new life here. To the inherent immortality
of the soul, from which nothing can separate it, to which
it is heir by virtue of its parentage and birth from God,
Jesus added the immortality that can only be shared by
those who have known his life, by faith and work have
grown into that abounding life which he came to pro-
claim; who have put into their grave the trespasses
and sins which had deformed them, and have grown
through the might of the Divine Spirit into the propor-
tion and hope of the pure and the true. To live and

LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 183

move and have one’s being within the sphere in which
Christ lived, and to be led by the same hand, trained
by the same discipline, to feel the pulses of the same
‘ hope, to be encouraged, cheered by the same love, to
share a life which lifts man out of the downward ten-
dency in one part of his nature into the divine life for
which it yearns, is to know and to participate in that
one thing, LIFE, which made Christ supreme, head
over all things.

As I regard it, there is a great deal of unhealthy sen-
timentality about immortality, a very great deal that is
purely false and harmful. In itself, it is a solemn and
sublime reality ; and the veil which has been hung be-
tween the present and the future never has been rent.
Where God chose silence and secrecy, man has been
busy with ingenious curiosity, and has piled about, en-
cumbered, overlaid the fact by the ten thousand times
ten thousand incongruities of his hope or his fear.
The saddest and dreariest of all literature is that in
which, whether Calvinist, Swedenborgian, Spiritualist,
Universalist, Romanist, prose or poetry, attempt is
made to set up some peculiar say-so about the future.
Resignation, hope, faith, cheer, these are not only
beautiful, but well; but whatsoever is more cometh of
ignorance, and doeth evil. Specially vicious are the
hymns put into the hands of our children, and offered
for the use of ourselves, and that rhetoric of what we
call our more spiritual sermons. They are unhealthy
and wrong, and do more to excite a morbid, sickly
sentiment than to quicken the pulses of vigorous life.
We are prone enough to prefer dwelling in the at-
mosphere of sentiment rather than under the more

184 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY.

bracing influences of duty and principle. Duty and
principle become so distasteful because we have made
to ourselves a more congenial thing of the vague and
misty atmosphere of sentiment. Sentiment is the en-
ervating air of a sunny South; principle, the bracing
tonic of a sturdy North. Our religion is always run-
ning away from the one, and running into the other,
when it should be the just and happy mingling of the
two. Whatever of a sort of ecstacy or emotion may be
got out of the larger part of the literature of immor-
tality, a just and real and abiding happiness, a thing to
stand all tests, cannot be had. Our faith is not content
to be healthy and manly and real, reticent in its ex-
pressions; but it runs to vague rhapsodies, vain and
fictitious aspirations and longings, diffusing a tone
whose mischief-making we do not realize, because we
shrink from the rugged, unexplained fact, and seek
comfort and soothing from whatever will undertake to
clothe it for us. We do not mind it that there is an
uncouth rock, ragged and shabby, in the midst of our
well-trimmed’ lawn, if we can manage it that living
vines shall throw over it the vesture of their freshness,
and we do not mind it so much that there is this mys-
tery in life, if so be somebody garnish it with the
leaves and flowers of his devising. But the rock
is beneath the vine, just the same, uncouth, ragged,
shabby; and the mystery is there, just as appalling,
whatever poetry, rhetoric, imagination, desire, may
have combined to conceal it beneath their declarations.
In nothing does our religion more need the strong, un-
sparing hand, that shall strip it of a deal of present
and acceptable nothingness, the tinsel-so many count

4
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LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 185

as gold, and the substitution of strong principle and
faith for sounding, unsubstantial words used with-
out real thought or meaning. I do not believe that
the large part of preaching or talking upon the fut-
ure life, the retail and detail which goes as the stere-
otype of sympathy, and true, spiritual condition, ele-
vates or comforts or in any way helps the man into
the great divine and relying faith. The only thing
that really does that is life, the life Jesus brought to
light, brought up out of many graves and long deaths.
_ Put into life, daily and common life, the exquisite pro-
portion and graces of the Christian; fill every day with
hope and prayer and effort,— Gospel-based ; let the
thought be not of satisfying self, but of attaining ex-
cellence; let life be a real and hearty and honest liv-
ing, full of warm impulses and actual growths and
great yearnings, and you will unconsciously be grow-
ing into the life eternal, which is the hither part of the
life immortal. Living rightly, you cannot help fitting
for whatever immortality may be, and you no more
need the evanescent helps of a literal construction of
the dramatic words of Jesus, Paul, or the Book of Rev-
elations, or whatever in any time, in any way, by what-
ever sanction, has been drawn from them, than the
forest monarch, rooted by centuries and by storms,
needs a trellis for its trunk and garlands for its
branches.

However grand the truth of the soul’s immortality,
and whatever the value of the gospel on that point, I
prize beyond all other things the fact that the gospel
tells me how to live to-day; that it has brought into
light this life; that it lays its stress upon being alive

186 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY.

now; that it teaches us that we are not to seek first
and most the resurrection which comes as the eternal
gift of the Infinite Father, but the resurrection which
is our own work, which, if we do not first see to, any
amount of resurrections, at the judgment days, will not
help us.

The Easter suns still rise and set, and the earth
stands and the heavens remain. In the same uniform
routine, day succeeds day, and the duties of life repeat
their demands. More and more, men come to see that
the one over all obligation, the one foundation and as-
surance, is that we are not to think of any to-morrow,
however near or far, but only and singly and simply
refer to to-day, so using it that it shall go into the great
account, indorsed by the only one hand that carries
value with it at the last appeal. Well may we sing our
psalms, and wreathe our wreaths and put out our floral
tributes: this sweet springtime, and weil may children’s
carols repeat in our temples the tribute other children
once, less blest than they, chanted in their temple,—

“For Jesus has risen, and man shall not die.”

The Easter for us is the Easter in our hearts,—not the
commemoration of a past fact, but the attaining of a
present reality, not to hope that we shall rise from a
place of the body’s decay, but to be sure that we shall
rise above the places of the soul’s decay.

Easter, 1878.

KAM:
fee EN LE BEATITUDE.

“Blessed is he that waiteth.”— DANIEL xii., 12.

THE beatitudes of the Gospels do not exhaust the
beatitudes of God. They introduce us into an un-
known field, but they do not lay before us all its
ripened harvest. They give but a specimen of the fruit.
In the old time, Sinai mutters and thunders, and with
great mystery the man of God comes out of the cloud
with two stone tables of very limited moral restriction.
They read you scarcely more than the alphabet of duty,
—some pretty stern moral restraints, but hardly the
shadow even of a moral impulse. In the new time, the
-man of God sits down upon the ground on some un-
known hill, and opens the treasury of life, scattering
blessings as lavish and as broadly as the old mythology
fables curses to have once spread themselves. They
introduce us into an unknown field,—a field, as I be-
lieve, undiscovered or at most untilled by any philoso-
phy or other faith; but it is only specimens of the fruit
that they give. They advertise, they entice us toward
the bowers and gardens of God, in which more such
fruit ripens. The Apocalypse speaks of a little book
that the angel swallowed, that was bitter to the taste,
but afterward became sweet. So shall we find it in this
field. Init streams bitter as ‘Marah to the draught,

188 THE TENTH BEATITUDE.

and yet leaving a lingering of sweetness that does not

address a mortal sense, and in it trees seeming to be
laden with apples of Sodom, but whose outer and top-
most branches are heavy with the beatitudes of God;
and perhays you know that by the laws of nature, as
the laws of the soul, the finest fruit is not borne and
grown close to the central trunk, and within the
grouped protection of leaves, but where on the outmost
twigs the luscious vigor comes of battle and of storm.
I do not wonder that, when Jesus ceased, and they were
come down from the mountain, the people were aston-
ished at his doctrine. People have not got over their
astonishment yet, not come to believe in, not come to
search for, not come to know the height and depth and
breadth and wealth of the beatitudes of God.

The Commandments limited themselves to ten,

Men asked themselves not, Is this right or wrong?
but, Is it for or against the Commandments, is it men-
tioned or unmentioned by them? They have limited
the beatitudes likewise. But the beatitudes of God are
limitless. ‘Those which Jesus gave were but specimens,
hints, as to the direction in which one is to look, to
search.
None of those you find in Matthew is any more richly
true than this one I use as a text, which is a half-verse
of the later portion of the prophecy of Daniel, and has
no such meaning in its place asI put onithere. There

is no one of you, however, but may recognize its truth, ~

may see that it is of the same family as those of the
gospel, has the divine image and superscription, and
may well be introduced to us as of their lineage and
spirit, It is not a bit more self-contradictory than any

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THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 189

of the others first seem to us, so slow to perceive the
great inner reward hidden within the seeming contra-
diction of words, and in waiting readiness for any who
will patiently knock, and, as all knockers have to do,
wait until it is opened. Some one has spoken of the
eleventh commandment: may we not.regard this as
the tenth beatitude ?

Perhaps no virtue, no necessity, is so little understood,
so hard to understand. It is not a virtue with a win-
ning aspect, with a countenance that commends itself.
You have to know it well, as you do some men, before
you can discover what is really in them. The really
best things, as the really best characters, do not show
themselves at once. You must wait for their unveil-
ing, for time and opportunity. And men look on wait-
ing as barren, waste time, a misfortune, a barrier, a
defeat. All about us is haste, and waiting is death.
A petulant impatience stamps and characterizes us all
the way through. Childhood betrays it, youth fosters
it, maturity is a prey to it, and most of our troubles, in-
dividual, social, civil, financial, are because of it. Rest-
less, exacting activity is our one acknowledged sign of
life. We cannot endure pauses, rests, between whiles.
They are stagnation and disaster : they prophesy death.
You can’t get a young man entering life to pause, look
-about, take time, consider himself and things, wait.
“Waiting is disgrace. Or, if he waits, he waits peev-
ishly, restlessly. He gets no beatitude out of his wait-
ing. His one purpose is to push on in that direction
in which he has set up his goal, and every moment in
which he does not see his actual advance toward it is
lost time. He does not realize —no one does, save by

I9QO0 THE TENTH BEATITUDE.

a good deal of. experience — that waiting is oftentimes
of surest advance. Carlyle says of Sterling “ that the
talent of waiting was the one that of all others he
wanted most.” People are apt to take life as a race,
and to think they must distance all runners. If you
are climbing a mountain, it is the people who are sit-
ting down and resting every now and then, every now
and then taking breath, who are serenest and in best
condition at the top; those who husband resources;
not the loiterers, but those who rest that they may win.
And, in the climb of life, it is not the restless and fussy,
the people who think the kingdom of heaven and every-
thing else must be taken by violence, who make life
one unwearying struggle, one protracted warfare, who
do the best with it, get the most out of it, but those
who know when and how to wait, who respect the halt
that God and duty and circumstance call, and know
how to make waiting turn into advantage, get the
beatitude out of it. ‘The best soldier is not he who
marches best or who fights best, but he who waits
best ; who can keep up a firm and cheerful self-reliance
under the most depressing delays; who can stand in
his rank all day, while the battle delays its call on him;
who compels delay to build him into bravery rather
than allows it to dwindle him into acoward. Only take ~
life in its parts and in its whole, and run it over in your
thought, and it will surprise you,— not the marvellous
demand for waiting, but the marvellous, the apparent,
the transparent value, the blessing of it, what it does
that no activity, the wisest, could do. The boy worried
and worn over his task shuts book, gives it up, waits.
You nor I can tell about it; but we can remember

THE TENTH BEATITUDE. IQ!

how many a time, with a jump, we have said to our-
selves, “I’ve got it.’’ Whence, how, why, we know
not; but, as we ceased.to work, it came. ‘‘ While I was
musing, the fire burned,” the Psalmist exclaims. <As I
waited, the truth dawned, not when I labored, struggled,
fought. You puzzle yourself over the problems of life,
balance the ‘would you” and “ wouldn’t you.” Back-
ward and forward, the shuttlecock flies. You get no
result. You have to stop, wait,.and to the waiting
comes the solution. How many gravest ills have been
relieved, as gravest mistakes prevented, by a simple
waiting! With our habit of forcing things to issues,
a habit we do not intermit when the things are God’s
and not our own, we make a Jehu-drive of it. Life is
worse than a Brighton road or a lightning express.
They have it now on some of the roads that the loco-
motive takes in water as it runs. Sowerun. Steam
up all the time! Stopping is death! But stopping is
life. Waiting is necessity. Else all manner of wear
and tear and accumulation of danger. When one gets
impatient or angry, and has been prevented from foolish
act or hard word, he may see the blessing of it. How
many times a man has to congratulate himself, “I am
so glad I waited,” or upbraids himself, “If I had only
waited”! Inan emergence, a danger, waiting is safer
thanrushing. In rush, confusion, waste effort, strength,
loss of power, use, as of head. In waiting, the cool
gathering of wits and will and energy, and the push at
the proper moment of the proper thing.

That is prompt action which wisely waits. And so
in every problem life sets us at, small or large, not
the reckless dash of impulse, but the wise prudence of

192 THE TENTH BEATITUDE.

delay, the just time for decision and wise action. It is
not through waiting that one shall see the salvation of
the Lord, as the Psalmist declares, so much as the
salvation of himself from very trying mortifications
and ugly defeats. I grant that many times “the
waits’’ between the acts in the life-drama are tedious
and try one to the uttermost, spirits, courage, faith ;
and we have no genial orchestra to fill in the interval.
It is only dead waiting. We have all of us to meet
such times (and may turn them into blessing, if we
will). A little unperturbed waiting is the best service
you can render yourself just now. And, in rendering
it to yourself, it prepares you to render something to
others by and by. It is not only the only thing you
can do; but it brings the only solution, it wins the
blessing. No optimistic philosophy asserts it, but that
Christian faith, which, if it may not know the law nor
trace the process by which waiting grows to blessing,
can attest the fact. Waiting which is the necessity or
the wisdom of condition or position, which is quiet and
willing and patient, not an indolent indulgence nor
peevish weariness, dissatisfaction, or indifference, is not
waste. It is not to rust, to be of no use. It is part
of discipline, a part of development, a step in progress,
the getting ready for the best service. Not only is
there the gravest truth in the much-quoted and little-
understood line,

“They also serve who only stand and wait,”

but the beyond, the more valuable, the deeper truth is
of waiting, as a vital part of the life process to which
all life subjects, without which no life can be.

But I take the beatitude of waiting to be more pal-

THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 193

pable in those affairs which may be said more inti-
mately to concern the soul and God, to be between
the two. It is here, as with the general in the field,
that he proves the mettle of his soldiers. Without at
all taking the sombre view of life, or feeling that there
is any cause for that lugubriousness with which men
speak of it, I recognize the fact, the pressure, the per-
plexities, and the pains of discipline, the soul agonies
by which our mortal career is met and tried. And
I know that many, the very best, see in these only
the agony of discipline, never the beatitude. I find
that in every trial we not only want to know the why
and wherefore of it, not only desire to see the end of
it, but to have the end at once, and the end as we want
it. So far from its being man’s real wish what he says
in his daily prayer, ‘‘Thy will be done,” he rather de-
sires to dictate to the divine will. His real prayer is,
and it has not just the prayer tone, ‘‘ My will be done.”
It is not entreaty, but demand. It is our will, our
time, our result. We pray one way, and we expect
another. We wait for our issue, not God’s. One
hardly says to another a more unwelcome word than
“wait,” or urges himself to a more disagreeable duty.
David says he waited patiently, and the Lord heard
him. We don’t believe in this, and get very impatient
and unreasonable.

Our belief is that waiting has no fruits, at least not our
fruits. But, just as everything has its specific return,
its appointed beatitude, so waiting has. We disappoint
and confuse ourselves, and get some hard feelings toward
God, because we do not reflect what manner of fruit it
is that we are to expect. We make no such mistake in

. 194 THE, TENTH BEATS

the things of nature: we soa not in things of spirit.
There is a beatitude that comes of waiting and that
comes of nothing else, and to take away the waiting were
to deprive of the beatitude. We wait with the expecta-
tion, only too successfully disguised from ourselves, that
waiting will bring some other than its own result,—the
result we wish, not the result it can produce. It is the
answer of our own dictation, not the answer possible to
the thing,— we look for, demand, get dissatisfied, faith-
less, because we do not have. We do not realize that
waiting has its perfect work in the slow and gradual
ripening in wisdom and prudence, insight and fore-
sight, which make life into quiet and self-reliance. The

stormy men carry things by the hot impatience of as-

sault, do wondrous things through sheer impulse and
energy; but the waiting men are the stronger, steady,
unwearying, holding. They are gainers even in the
hot arena of life. And so more in the gravest ills of

all. Waiting will not take away the chronic ail, restore —

nerves and bones ahd remove pain, nor will it- bring to
the empty arms and the lacerated heart what they are
always crying for; but waiting brings the beatitude of
God, quiet, peace, strength, trust, hope, not with the old
bound and jubilance, but other graces, better,— quiet,
peace, strength. We call it resignation ; and the soul
that is resigned, that has resigned itself after long and
weary struggle, waiting as a little child, knows the be-
atitude that gives better than we ask. The common
proverb, “Patient waiters are no losers,’ is as true of
the things of God as of the things of man. |

“Wait a little, fret not, and at last
Beauty will the barren boughs again

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THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 195

Tenderly reclothe, when the snows are past,
And the earth grows glad in sun and rain.

“ Never vex your heart nor tear your hands,
Searching ’mid.the thorns for vanished bliss;
For the soul that patience understands
Needs no wisdom more divine than this.”

It takes a great while, as we count, sometimes to
teach God’s end. The end of our patience comes long
before the end of his design. We reckon by hours and
days, while God reckons only by growths. The tree’s
life is recorded by the concentric rings which, under-
neath the bark, tell the tale of the outward life, and so
the soul. We hold out pretty bravely our own time,
the time of our appointment. Job says, “All the days

of my appointed time will I wait.” The Christian

does not, will not, says he cannot; the language of
his conduct, “Just so long as it seems to me I ought
will I wait.” Even then, he waits with a good deal of
impatience, asks a good many questions out loud, a
great many more to himself; waits to see his own ends,
not God’s; starts a good many demons; holds back
entire confidence; forgets Christ’s utterances of sub-
mission, ‘‘ Even so, Father,” etc. ; is anything but a re-
signed, a patient, a waiting waiter. We want to set the
limit, to say how long we shall hold out; virtually, we
say, “Now, we have done our part: it is quite time God
did his.”” But we can’t measure God: we can’t hurry
God, else he were no God. He does not move by our
idea of time, but brings or drops his beatitude at the
ripe moment when all things consent. And, then, we
do not always know a beatitude when it comes. The
disciples did not know theirs as they went sorrowing

196 THE TENTH BEATITUDE.

to Emmaus. We go sorrowing, hearts preoccupied,
earth-ways looking, eyes sealed. How shall we know,
recognize, the beatitude which somehow, persistently,
we vaguely hope shall come in the old joy-garb of the
before time? As the old Jew was looking for quite
other blessings than those which dropped their unex-
pected welcome upon him that morning, are we looking
for what cannot come; and what can is very far from
what we want. Even while the angel stands at our
side, we turn, and murmur and cry out that no prayer is
heard, and God is recreant, and woe is ours, Isn't it
all because we will shape the way in which our desires
shall be answered as well as the time within which they
shall come? “I waited patiently,” the Psalmist says.
Paul and James lay a great deal of stress upon patient
waiting. The latter exclaims, ‘ Let patience have her
perfect work”; but it can’t, so long as one .will not -
“quietly wait” for God, and heartily take what God
sends. It is not more-than half a faith that will not
do both of these. One gets a sentiment of love and of
surrender, of confidence, of conviction that all is right
and well, down under agony and yearning where lies, ©
while yet one is not grown into that uttermost of faith,
that principle of faith which waits and takes the God-
send, seeing the God in it where we cannot find our
own desires.

Should it not be remembered by us, in all things,
that the last prayer Jesus uttered, which he only at
last uttered through the agony of sweat as blood, is ©
the prayer that our will shall not be done, not merely
that God’s shall, but that it shall be at cost of ours?
‘‘ Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” We

|
;

THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 197

write and talk a good deal about faith, and define it
very carefully, and think we have got it, but there are
tests to which it is seldom sufficient. And the test of
waiting is perhaps its hardest, tries it and you as
nothing else can. If active work, under the compul-
sions of doing, so long as one is busy, can lift and
ease the heart-load by other cares, that bring a short
forgetting, it is weM; but the waiting time, when one
cannot work, when one must stand still and think and
bear, then is the hour and power of trial in the time
when sorrow has become stale and has no _ longer

an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain, in the

time when day follows day in dull, unexpectant same-
ness, and trial is a dreary routine. People come to me
sometimes, and show themselves perplexed, and puzzle
me by saying they have prayed and prayed, and yet the
thing is not removed, the difficulty stays, the load is

just as great, the way as impassable, the prospect as

gloomy; and they declare that there is no use in pray-
ing, that their faith halts, or else, in the agony of desire
to hold their faith, they turn, and like the dying reptile
sting themselves; and it is of very little use for me to
try to discover for them the beatitude that has really
come, so long as the hunger of the soul, unappeased,
peremptorily demands the answer of their prayer. The
wife tells me, with a sorrow words cannot reveal, that —
she has prayed over her recreant husband with all the.
earnestness of love to him and faith in God, but it
avails nothing ; and she turns upon herself, and thinks
that somewhere there is a lack inher. And so there
is. Not in love or faith, but in waiting, waiting God’s
time and way, which may never meet her expressed

198 THE TENTH BEATITUDE.

desire, but which will give her blessing, if only she can
hold out till it comes, if only she shall not demand that
it come as she wills. To the very woman I am think-
ing of, though she did not recognize it, I saw the bless-
ing that had come in the sweetness and power into
which her own character grew. |

In the night struggle of Jacob, that scene which the-
ology has distorted and defamed into an actual wrest-
ling match between the patriarch and Jehovah, the
young contestant exclaimed, ‘I will not let thee go ex-
cept thou bless me.” The holding out until the blessing
come, the pursuing although faint,—that is what we
need. The suffering spirit tells me of a state of reach-
ing out and longing for help which no living man or
woman can give, and which God does not give, of a
struggle that increases in intensity and in dissatisfac-
tion at result. What can I say to that? Only what
seems unkind, useless words, “ Wait,’—wait not for
what you are looking, praying for, craving, but for the
beatitude. God never said he would answer that way:
he will give the beatitude because of that, but not an-
swer as you ask. Paul prayed that the thorn in his
flesh should be removed, as he says thrice,—a state-
ment of intensity rather than of numerical accuracy, as
Jesus prayed thrice that the cup might pass, and yet
the Great Will saw it was better that the prayer
-should not be heard, saw that there lay the way of
strength and growth, did not. grant the petition, but
sent the beatitude. And he confesses to the blessing
that he found by waiting, not the thorn removed, but
the thorn improved into such means of grace as lifted
him above what he could otherwise have been. He

‘THE TENTH BEATITUDE, 199

would have owned the beatitude, and that to have that
was infinitely more than only to have had an answered
prayer. You do not need that I define to you a beati-
tude of God. Jesus did not do it. He simply said
such and. such things, such and such people are
blessed. The people were astonished, and went down
from the mountain amazed. But people have ever
since been finding out what the beatitudes of God are,
that they lie just where he said. Experience has been
defining it to them as, no language would undertake.
Sermons and volumes have been taken up in defining
this and the other of what we call “the Beatitudes.”
Only life can do it. Only as God leads a soul into the
experience can he know anything about it, nor can he
turn round and describe it all to another. “Only he
who feels it knows.” So with this which men have
not been used to regarding as a beatitude, only as -
something wrong in themselves, something inexplica-
ble in God. The blessing of it must be felt : it cannot
be described. And I think that it brings in its single
self all that is promised to all the other beatitudes.
Blessed are they that wait, for they shall be comforted,
see God, inherit the earth, and theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. We earn their several blessings all in one
while we come to say,—

“Not that my Father gives to me
More blessings than in days gone by,
Dropping in my uplifted hands
All things for which I blindly cry,

“ But that his plans and purposes
Have grown to me less strange and dim;

‘

THE TENTH BEATITUDE.

200

And, where I cannot understand,
I trust the issues unto him.

“ And, spite of many broken dreams, ~ :
_ This have I truly learned to say, ;
Prayers which I thought unanswered once

Were answered in God’s own best way.”

January, 1876.

XVII.

FEES.
“They used helps.”— ACTS xxvii., 17.

Tue Euroclydon was a north-east wind. Paul and
his shipmates were sailing pleasantly along under a
southerly breeze, when the wind suddenly veered, and
coming in quick flaws down the sides of Mount Ida set
the sea into terrible commotion. We do not get the
force of the description in our English translation.
The season was late for their voyage, and there had
been already delay, disappointment, and difficulty.
Lured by the soft blowing of a south wind, forgetful of
the past, and oblivious to possible treachery of wind or
wave, they were sailing as on a summer sea, towing
their boat astern, when they were struck with this
Levanter, as it is now called. With the force of a hur-
ricane, it whirled them round, as the Greek signifies, so
that the pilot could not hold his vessel to her course,
but had to let her drive. Running under the lee of
an island called Clauda, and getting for a little into
smoother water, they rounded to, and with difficulty
hoisted aboard their boat; and, as their great danger
was from foundering, they undergirt the ship, for which
emergency the vessels of the time were specially pro-
vided. The undergirders, “helps,” were ropes for pass-
ing around the hull of the ship, and thus keeping the

202 HELPS.

planks from starting; and the process, resorted to infre-
quently, yet taught to all sailors even in our day, is, by
the seaman of the English navy, called “frapping.”
To frap a ship is to pass four or five turns of a large
cable-laid rope round the hull to support her in a storm.
It is a means of prevention in the extensive use of
wire in modern ship-building rarely resorted to. It
would not stop a leak, but would prevent the working
of the planks and timbers, and so increase the safety
under the stress and strain of the storm.

They had gone to sea provided against contingency,
evidently not fair-weather sailors. There was some
pretty good seamanship and some very considerate’
forethought.

I am not going to follow up the figure of a voyage,
but what I want to say is that we are not put out into
all the cares and conflicts of life alone and by our-
selves to contend with the sudden and tempestuous
things, but are provided by the Infinite Ruler with
helps with which to undergird our weakness and carry
ourselves safely through. These helps are all about
us, ready to our use, helps to childhood and to age, to
every kind of condition, infirmity, need. Many of them
are so plain that we accept and go to them without in-
struction as by a sort of instinct; while many of them
are only to be found as the experiences of life develop
in us needs, or reveal the character of things about us,
their oftentimes unsuspected helpfulness.

See how it was that in the very beginning God sur-
rounded man with helps, evident helps, left not himself
without witness, in that he provided him with the things
requisite and necessary to the on-carrying of life,—life

HELPS. 203

not merely on its lower level of animal necessity, but life
in its better moral and intellectual development. Run
your thought back to the early movements, to the first
knowledge and advance of man as the Scriptures de-
tailit to us. See how, in the beginning, God contrived
and all the way down has kept in operation an ever-
ready, varying, and effective system of helps, which
he has introduced and recommended to man, and by
which he has shown that he is meant to come up into
the: broad freedom and power of life by which he
should grow out of any mere condition of birth into
something broader and better. Always has there been
some communication of the divine with the human, the
Infinite with the finite, the parent with the child.
The heavens have never been silent: God has never
been dumb. We who boast our Christian privilege are
not the only to whom God has come. Not the patri-
archs only they with whom God walked, and whom he
has honored as his friends. It is quite time we out-
grew the selfish exclusiveness of our faith, and came to
comprehend that, whatever the peculiar gift and privi-
lege to man through Christ may be, God has never
refused himself to any, forgotten any, left any alien,
helpless. There is no grosser libel on the divine char-
acter than that which represents him as confining his
mercies and his light to the narrow line of patriarchal
descent and Jewish pedigree, such as have heard of the
God of Moses and of Christ. He has sent his helps
down to all men, not through Moses and Isaiah and
Jesus and Paul alone,— though these stand confessed
as chiefest among ten thousand,— but through Confu-
cius and Zoroaster and Sakya-Muni and the hosts of

204 HELPS.

the wise and struggling of every time and name; nor
has the Good Spirit forgotten his children of Western
forest and far-off islands of the sea. I do not know
_ the why about it all, why so few have been as yet per-
mitted to see the light and know the truth, as you and
I may know and see it; but this I know,—if God be
God, it is a terrible mistake and injustice that we are
guilty of when we imagine the man who stoops to say a
prayer to a block of wood and stone is not a God-child,
and is not helped by a divine love, not such as may
satisfy us indeed, but such as shall satisfy his plan
and wisdom. And who shall say that these are not
the best helps to the man in that condition, the God-
intended helps to that level and range of capacity
and of need, supplying according to ability, and filling
out the divine intention so various for all his children,
in all so complete ? :

The universe is a multitude of helps. It is nota
mere creation, a mystery, a beauty, but a thing made
for helpful use. You cannot go any whither that it
does not thrust out its helps toward you. In every —
corner, they hide; at every wayside, they proclaim them-
selves ; from everywhere, they start out at you; by day,
by night, in solitude, in multitude, in cities, at the
uttermost parts of the sea, their hands are outstretched.
They need no trumpeter, they proclaim themselves.
The writer of the Book of Hebrews speaks of being
encompassed by a cloud of witnesses. Much more are |
we encompassed by the crowd of helps, things that
not only witness to a divine glory, proclaim a divine
power, suggest a divine love, but things that help
toward the knowing of the divine love and the doing

HELPS. 205

the divine will. And the thing for man is to know
these helps and use them; to learn to see them not
with eye and mind only, but with heart. Spring days,
summer hours, passing showers, autumn fruits, storms
and winds and stars and sky; the melting, the awe-in-
spiring ; the familiar, the rare; the grand, the minute,—
we must take them out of the region of sentiment or of
indifference, make them other than mere belongings to
the outside of life, recognize in them helps to lift us
into better things, and use them as such, not overlook-
ing or-despising, not blind nor deaf nor dumb, but
awake, prizing, and so growing. So it was that Jesus
grew. The universe was full of helps to him: he
recognized and used them. Not the least escaped him.
Nay, the way he used the least, the great things he »
drew from them, left the impressive truth for man that
there are no little things. The lily of the summer, the
flight of the bird, the color of the evening cloud, the
seed of mustard, the leaven of the household, the fish
of the sea, the scorpion of the shore, the mote in the
eye, overlooked, insignificant, become mighty minis-
trants to mighty truths and mighty issues. We, too,
must learn to search for the helping hands that stretch
themselves out from every portion of God’s universe .
toward these human souls of ours, lifting and holding,
guiding, girding, guarding, bolstering and keeping aloft,
so that we can put out our hand of need no whither but
a responsive clasp awaits it, a firm and cheering grasp.
The poet tells us of the footprints on the shore that
the forlorn and shipwrecked sees and takes heart again.
He uses the footprint as his help. The little weed on
the tossed Atlantic came to the distressed Columbus,

*»

200 HELPS.

and he used its help and found America; and the
astronomer used the aberration of the heavenly body,
and it put him on the track of wonderful prophecy and
quick discovery. There is no want, no distress, no
strait of man but the myriad-handed universe stretches
itself to his relief. He has only to accept and to use.
These helps are ready for us in the grave detail of our
daily lives, where we are so constantly needing help;
‘and they come to us in many ways to our many needs,
and by them we grow into all life and progress and suc-
cess, and make fruitful and beautiful the most barren
way and the most trying tasks. It is a brave thing
surely to take one’s stand, to try to be strong, to be
resolved to do, to be, to bear; but it is only a refined
madness when any one takes the stand disdaining helps,
as too many do,—the young man amid his perils, the
young girl in her inexperience, the maturer man or
woman amid the complications of circumstance or the
pressure of trial. We can never go alone, forego
helps, are never strong enough or wise enough. We
may never venture on life’s sea without them. We
may reject what men propose, what they elect, would
force upon us; but we must elect for ourselves, and ©
hold to and believe in others what our growing wisdom
and needs discover to be useful. To know what is good
for help as the bird knows what is good for food, to
make help often out of things antagonistic and adverse,
never to turn the helps into hindrances, always to dis-
cover and use the hidden and disguised blessing,—in
this lies some of our best wisdom; and they who so use
life walk in the broadest liberty, and find that a garden
of all fruit which to others seems but a dry and parched
and barren wild. °

: HELPS, 207

When people talk about the helps to be used toward
a religious life, they a good deal run to a few stereotype
things, and there leave it, as if it exhausted the demand.
Our religion suffers greatly that way. We are taken
to a few things; we are told these are the only helps,
and are urged to use them; if we are to,get into the
coveted kingdom, it is by these means alone. But I
come more and more to believe that the Church over-
looks and mistrusts many good things, and so leaves
the man without help of much that is of the highest
use, much he would gladly and profitably use, only it
were not forbidden. I find that Jesus had little respect
for the things in which the Jewish leaders had com-
pressed the only helps for the people of his day; and
that outside them wholly he found the things helpful
to him, which were to help people into his kingdom.
To-day, our church allowings are most arbitrarily re-
stricted —in something of Old Testament narrowness
—to-a special round of things which have got a church
impress and the indorsement of custom and time.
But these do not exhaust the list, nor do they include
many of the best helping things. When men say, “Go
to Jesus, go to church, read your Bible, have your times
of communion and prayer, these are the appointed
means of grace, which, after all, though in somewhat
modified phrase, is the allowance, the prescription, the
limitation of our own sect. I say, Very well; but do
not stop here. These are not al]. There is a wide
range of help outside, which a man may find adapted to
his own private, peculiar want, opportunity, tempera-
ment, which no man may catalogue for another, which
accepted by another none may gainsay,—- these are often

208 HELPS.

the richest to him, the really invaluable. And I hold
that every really growing, honest man must have his
own special ways of climbing along the heavenly
heights, of getting access to their immeasurable
height and worth, use his own helps,—things which
are not the prescribing of any authority, but the dis-
covery, the necessity, of his own experience. His rich-
est life, that which is really, immediately, and individ-
ually his, will come that way. We may totter in the
infancy of all effort, more securely in leading-strings ;
but, so soon as we get to firm step and just poise,
to be able to really go alone, we only come to our true.
gait by taking the pace, the stride, the paths we find
best adapted to ourselves. We must assert selfhood
in everything, if we are to be anything. Biographies —
amply attest to us how souls that have lagged wearily
under the old reiteration and routine ripen into mar-
vellous richness the moment they leave off servile
copying of others and take matters into their own
hands, and seek and find food that is convenient for
them. Very much of what we find sanctioned, de-
manded, has no real regard to or adaptation for the
actual want of the soul. It is the mistaken limiting of
a far-back, ignorant, bigoted past, that never glimpsed
the depth of human nature or the breadth of divine
requirement. However it may have sufficed for gener-
ations past, it cannot answer for to-day, is not nourish-
ing the souls to-day as they require to be nourished, is
not building souls as the kingdom of God.

The religious life, the thing we really want to
have, a thing of root and vigor, is never fairly got
where so much of God’s making, both in man and

HELPS, 209

nature, is neglected. Our religion fails to make whole
men and women. Parts of us never grow, are not en-
couraged to grow, which are as much needed to a just
development of character as any. How many real
graces what are called the world’s people have, which
what are called the church’s people rarely show! How
much richer their lives, though the technicalities of
their faith and their anise and cumin may not be so
Sree the Puritan and the Quaker and the strict
church member, ignoring some of the best helps toa
broad and lovely Christian life, have failed in some of
the essential qualities, and have brought a grave dis-
trust of and a deep dislike to that thing they are un-
dertaking to commend. I do not believe good books,
singing psalms, dry talk, dreary discussions, much
Bible language, strictly kept Sundays, painful precision
of demeanor, frowning upon innocent enjoyment, or
the accepted paraphernalia and machinery of our re-
ligious institutions, are the only helps to be used in
growing toward Jesus, were the only helps he used in
growing toward God. He believed in the other part
of his own nature as he did in the other side of God’s,
and set himself to find and to use the neglected helps
‘with which life was full; and he would set us at the
same thing. I believe God’s glory in the world, God’s
providence in history, God’s truth in science, God’s glad-
ness in nature, all that is good and brave and bright in
life, modest traits that we neglect, powers of mind and
act pious people shake their heads at, things men have
stamped as devices of the devil, purely innocent and
joyous as in themselves they are,— these, a host, and
others one cannot even at the moment hint at, may

210 HELPS.

be made to be useful helps in the best outgrowth
whose best fruit is never reached through mere church-
going and creed and ceremony. The open eye, the
seeing heart, may find ready, waiting everywhere, helps
to lead into the great stores of a divine wisdom and
love, the broad reaches of a noble human life. We
must not refuse them, but accept and use them, and
feel that in this universe of. God nothing that is in it-
self innocent and lovely but may be, must be, was in-
tended to be of useful help to the immortal man ; feel
deeper than that that nothing is so low and vile, so hard
_and hopeless, but, rightly met and used, it may be turned
into the best strength of life. The best helps to man
are oftentimes the bad things in him and about him,
which he learns rightly to use. But the greatest help
after all—-one many learn to overlook, to do without
and so make no real, great life —is the help we may be
to ourselves, the help we may get from the better part
of our own natures. We are not left impotent, com-
pelled to wait for angels or for man: we can be in no
condition, no strait, where we may not help ourselves,
and as no other helps may. One would not put other
things, other necessities, other relations and circum-
stances out of sight, deny their weight, their help. Only
should we always remember that the way into the
highest and broadest excellence comes of the use of ©
the self, the help that our own individuality adds to
whatever is without us or above us. |

The maxim of daily prudence is, “ Put as much into
the world as you take out of it,” and the maxim of
a right life should be, “As much as other things help
you, so much, at least, be sure you help yourself,”

HELPS. * 211

The strength of men, their efficiency, the great and
valuable things they do, the grand characters they

_ grow to, the lives they lead, are because they use this

self-help. They do not stand by and let other things
help them, or use the things about them merely; but
they use the helps that are in themselves,— things of
which every man has more store than he is apt to be
conscious or to put in motion. In the war years, we
saw men, under emergence, grow to sudden and great
life, become equal to new and immense responsibility,
found them capable of great duty and sacrifice,— men
we knew, boys, the playthings still of our firesides.
It was not the emergence made them, that sounded
the alarm, that beat the drum, but it was the helps in
the self that made them cool, resolute, courageous,
equal to demand, that drew out of them what no
circumstance, position, could have created. We rise
within ourselves to the level of obligation, or we do
not rise at all’ The hour would have called them in
vain, as it did call some, or would have betrayed them
as it did betray some, but for the answering help
within. That not only responded to demand, but was
set at use; and we all know in the more ordinary
things of our own humdrum lives that, in the propor-
tion as we use the helps that are zz us, lean on our-
selves, walk without a crutch, we make real success,
right advance, true life. It is not those who make life
to be a pushing out of tendrils, a feeling for supports,
whose word is, “would you,’ ‘wouldn’t you,” but
those who thrust themselves up straight and stalwart,
self-reliant, who make the mark and take the prize,
are men in fact asin semblance. They have what the

212 HELPS,

tree has, great store of ‘succulence at the roots, life
from them for remotest branch and tiniest twig, supply
which no use exhausts; but the more the demand for
help, the more help there is. Use multiplies. The
fount is exhaustless. The more one uses, the more
he has to use; and so he grows into the full maturity
of power. Not despising the helps which come from
every other quarter, let no man forget the helps that
lie within. Learn to know, to test, to trust them ; for,
without their consenting, the most favored being fails.

The sailors in the little vessel in which Paul was

wrecked not only had helps with them, but used them, ~ :

knew how to use them. They answered their purpose,
and saved them at that time. Sailing our sea of life,
tossed and torn many times by the sudden and savage
Euroclydon, let us see to it that we are not merely
provided with, but can use helps. From the least to
greatest, from greatest to least, let us not be blind to,

let us not deny, the helps toward the fullest, life which — ,

our God has bountifully supplied us with, placing them
in our right hand and our left, in every place and every
guise. They are too the undergirding of our craft,
often in straits, with gaping seams, in a dark night, a

stormy sea, near an uncertain shore. They make ~

stanch what is weak or has been strained. They set
us, encouraged, on our farther way, to new perils or to
safe harbors. God gives helps. Christ blessed them.

Let us use them,— use them as Jesus did,— not as side _

things, now and then, running to them in stress as

exceptional and outside, but use them as living parts

of every day’s effort and life,

June, 1875.

=)
1%

XVIII.

Bao euoLeE NT COMFORTER.
“Sleep on now, and take your rest.”— MATT. xxvi., 45.

THESE are the words not of anger, not of reproach,
of sympathy only, the pitying sympathy of Jesus.
Possibly, a something of weariness in their tone, but
the weariness that of his own struggle, not a weariness
with their apathy or neglect. It was the word of the
‘strong man to the weak, of a compassion brave enough
to forget itself, to minister to other need. It said,
“The evil is at hand, but, while it delays, take the boon
God gives, rest, sleep,’— tender words, the reflection
of that tender spirit in him. What he threw into them
was just what he was always throwing into life, in
exact quantity, at the exact moment, to the exact need,
and only what could advantage. [I can well conceive
that some other kind of man, having left his friends
in charge, would have been enraged at what he would
have considered their faithlessness, that he would have
heaped upon them epithet and every upbraiding,— so
much our own necessity takes precedence of every
consideration with us. He would not consider them,
their excuses, or appreciate their position at all, only
himself and what he had demanded. Jesus had first
thought for others. He did not weakly overlook the
fact that he had given them a charge, or, more exactly,

ota, _ THE SILENT COMFORTER.

had expected of them the sleepless vigilance of friend-
ship. He had taken the eleven with him from the —
table. From these, he had separated the three, taking
them a little farther away. To the former, he had
simply said, ‘‘Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.”
To Peter and the sons of Zebedee, he gave the more
exact charge, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even
unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.” The

outer band or guard were simply to sit and wait: the ~

inner band were to tarry and watch. Thrice, he came
back. They were heavy with sleep. Could they not
watch? sadly he asks, not upbraidingly. He was yet
tossed, troubled, yearning, feeling out for that human
aid and sympathy we all yearn and feel out for, and
just as vainly as we do. When his own victory was
come, when he had established his own spirit, when he
was ready to meet his doom, this is all forgotten, and —
his sympathy for them is roused; and he says, “Sleep _
on now, and take your rest.” What else could he say, —
what better could they do? It was their need. Them

hour was upon them: they were better sleeping till it ~

came. And it was well to sleep beneath the benedic- —
tion of the Christ. ’
So always with Jesus was it, always adapting himself —

to the hour, his own necessities never obscuring the —

claims of others. To every class, to every man, to every —
condition, his ready sympathy, measured and just,—to .
Syro-Phoenician, Magdalen, Nicodemus, leper, sinner. —
And it was what won people so. There were many at —
that time pretending to do marvellous works, but we do ©
not read of them as beloved by the people. Great deeds a
never make people beloved. Nobody would have loved

THE SILENT COMFORTER. ots

Washington simply for gaining battles, and I think our
last conqueror fails of lodgment in the popular affec-
tion because, much as we may admire and rejoice in suc-
cess, we fail to discover the nameless but resistless evi-
dences of a great heart. We love traits, men. And
Christ was loved because he loved, because he was full
of that loving quality or essence which was running out
in word and deed, and almost from garment hem, so
natural, so inevitable, so full and free as to be almost
unconscious, never falling short in its measure, never
making mistake in its application.

And this not a divine quality, not something excep-
tionally his, not something too high for us, not what we
shall vainly wish for and struggle to attain. A’ very
human virtue, in him perfected, in us the power of per-
fecting it. The germs of it lie in our common nature.
They spring neither from civilization nor from Chris-
tianity. They exist in savage natures. Civilization,
Christianity, are but educators, not creators. In us all,
the existence of a spirit of sympathy; in us all, the
power to aid men by our sympathies; and in you and in
me, as we sit here, or as we live in the Christian commu-
nity, a longing to minister to men with our sympathies.
There is an outgo of sympathetic emotion daily, and,
better and: deeper than that, such as perceptibly qualify
the spirit of our day. We are not so desperately self-
ish as theology and only too much of our conduct
would make us out: we are not pachydermatous, tough-
hided, as regards the interests of our fellows, certainly
not as regards their sufferings. Indifferent enough,
pressing hard in the rough-and-tumble hurly-burly of
every-day ambition and career, our better part crusted

216 THE SILENT COMFORTER.

over by success and struggle, but all our indifference
dropped, our injustice forgotten, our better self roused
the moment that the fact of want or suffering can be
brought before us. Perhaps too apt at times to be
unreasoning in our sympathies as before we were in
our neglects. Bring tangibly before any man, lead him
where he shall see with his own eyes, or let the tale of
distress come so that it carries credence, you need no
arguing, no persuading; the conviction is in the fact,
and he is ready, anxious to assist, or, where assistance
is impossible, quick with his sentiment of compassion. |
Every day, man’s daily troubles beat against other
human hearts; and they respond on that-note to- which
our common humanity is keyed. And when some great
catastrophe such as from time to time startles and ap-
palls, some great sob from the bosom of the ocean, sub-
dues continents with its solemn mystery, rouses us from
our security, carries swift death to many beloved, sor-
row to a thousand homes, and horror to every heart, one
almost feels a pride in this quickly touched common
nature, bowing itself in sympathy, feeling so keenly
with and for those made near kin for the time by the
great fellowship of suffering. It may be true that in
ordinary time, in the pressure and struggle, in thought
of merchandise and form and the anxious cares of exist-
ence, we regard too little our fellow in his ordinary
stress and want, are careless about adding unnecessarily _
to the complicated burdens men about us bear, or, with
something of grim determination, bind them ourselves ;
but let the reverse come that comes sharply, that stirs
and rouses the dormant better man, that touches the
universal human chord, and you find under the slumber-

THE SILENT COMFORTER. 217

ing ashes of the deadest seeming heart glow and burn
the fires of human sympathy. The poet’s truth,—

**One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,”

will bear broadening. The world feels its kinship in
suffering. Men’s troubles prove that there is some-
thing in man’s brotherhood. Their cries reach respon-
sive hearts, our tears rise for the dead, our sympathies
go out toward the living. He is very dead, and had
better be that quite, who never rouses out of himself to
feel for his suffering fellow.

Our real trouble is not that we do not feel, but that
we do not know how to let the feeling out, so that it
shall do justice to ourselves and be of help to others.
How shall we make our feeling for another available,
how become ministrant of the balm we fain would
carry, how know the best time and way? I know that
something in me quickly responds to human misfort-
une; I know that I am always longing to be of use,
pained to stand so idly by; that I would gladly put my
arm around or beneath, and let the sufferer put full
- weight on me, or press lips surcharged with the very
soul of sympathy against those parched with unan-
swered prayers. I know that feet and heart would run
nimble errands, that hand and tongue ache to be doing
something that shall relieve. Forgive the first person,
singular. It is what each one of you knows, what each
one of you feels, the whole being quivering in its ear-
nestness to be of use, to stay the torrent of event, to
stanch the tear, to ward off the blow, to bear some
part, to do something, nay, even to bear the whole.
Show the way by which really we may share the bur-

218 THE SILENT COMFORTER.

den, and the whole community will vie in effort. Tell
me how I may lighten or lift another’s load, and I were
less than human to refuse. Just here comes in the
barrier, here we are baffled by the limitings a divine
hand has placed, here our impotence begins. In life’s
affairs, in life’s career, its stress, its strife, one may
oftentimes come in opportunely, see the thing to be
done and do it, confirm the wavering and set him ona
sure place, or point the way and go with one in it.
These heart-griefs lie within a province in which we
have no place, in which human help is vain. All we
can do is to feel. A few who are_near and dear and
chosen, and have opportunity, and can see just where
and how, may become, do become, blessed ministrants
through that voiceless language that lies in considerate
acts, in tones and looks, and all the uncatalogued min-
istrations, active and sympathetic, love so well knows
how to devise,—which, done so sweetly and so kindly
and so naturally, seem done unconsciously, and in that
seeming carry the half of their beatitude. But, outside
that circle, little can be done; and men must stand
idly by, knowing that they are impotent to relieve.
We are apt to think, till taught by experience, that
speech is the great sympathizer or vehicle of sympathy,
that true feeling necessarily has voice, that to be dumb
is not to feel. For one, human sorrow strikes me
dumb, occasion masters the man. I think God wants ©
all speech to himself then, and his speech is in the
event to the heart’s own silence. ‘He talked to me
so beautifully,” some say. It seems to me that beauti-
ful speech is for other occasion ; and on such oceasion

man’s speech, however it may tone expected phrases,

THE SILENT COMFORTER. 219

is but babbling. You may speak with the tongue of
men and of angels, and, though it be not as sounding
brass and tinkling cymbal, yet it has no might. Speech
is no burden-bearer. That wipes out nothing, soothes
nothing, bears nothing. Job’s friends were right.
They didn’t begin to talk, to do anything until after
the first sharpness was over; and then they did what
seemed the best for strengthening him, first recognized
his great sorrow, and then, in their way, sought to
bring out the lessons of it, and to help him bear it.
Jesus did the same, only he had this one great advan-
tage: there was always something he could do at once.
His sympathy could take tangible shape, he could lift
up the widow’s son or the ruler’s daughter, or by pres-
ence and counsel strengthen and cheer his disciples.
It was very little that he ever said.

I think that the tenderest and truest, the most di-
rect and helpful way of meeting sorrow or suffering is
simply to recognize it. That should be our human
prompting, and it will be found about the best human
help. When I find, as find I shall, without parade of
feeling or speech, a recognition of my condition, that
he who holds me by the hand enters into the fact of
my suffering, allows for it, then have I the beginning.
of comfort. And these are not the mere words they may
seem, as those know who have had experience. It has
a good deal been thought that our Christian religion
demanded that we sternly put our hands as it were at
the throat of every sorrow, and hold it down till we
have taken its life away. You will find at just the time
men need to be met and treated with the most consid-
erate delicacy that they are called upon to stiffen them-

.220 THE SILENT COMFORTER.

selves back to the very sternest endurance. Men and
women think it the right thing to upbraid you for giv-
ing way to feeling, and talk about want of faith, and
exhort you to put your trust in God, or it may be “the
‘merits of Christ,” and harrow you with the suggestion
that all the writhing of your human agonies only shows
that you have no faith, or that you have done some sin,
and make their consolations into outrage and insult
both to your suffering and the God by whose will you
suffer. They do not recognize the suffering in you:
you are only somebody for them to let off their phrases
at, sometimes, I think, their cant or impatience. And
ministers do that, and preach unhuman and inhuman
private sermons to a harassed, tortured spirit, madly
unwilling to recognize the under human fact of grief, —
which by God’s will exists, and by God’s law must
have its way. Such sons of consolation — Heaven help
the mark !—all they ordained to be in the service of
ordination are instructed they must be, if they are to
do their duty. I remember that after experience had
taught me what sorrow is and what the limits are to
sympathy, what one may hope for and what he cannot
find, I wrote an afflicted friend, one of our widest
known and best-respected clergymen, to whom trouble
was not new: “The human heart has its griefs which
must have their way. Faith has no control over them.
They must rule us and tear us before we can fall back
upon and get strength from faith.” His reply was,
“What you say is very true: the human heart is one
thing, and faith is quite another; but it is not every
one who knows it.” But every one should know it.
We ought not to go on expecting, demanding of others

THE SILENT COMFORTER. 221

or ourselves what we cannot have, doubly wretched
under distress because we do not find at the moment’s
need what we supposed the moment would not only
demand, but supply. It is what the soul suffers, its
dark way, its heavy burden, its sore trial, its weakness,
distress, doubt, even unreasonableness, that must be
recognized as the first relieving work of sympathy,—_
just that recognition Jesus, so wise in all things, had of
those humble friends sleeping in the garden. And
after recognition, which is in itself a strengthening,
may come, by occasion, a varied ministry, not of word,
but work; and happy he who has it in his power, in the
intimate and wise intercourse of daily confidence and
society, to discharge the nameless and numberless in-
direct acts of kindness which tide one over the severi-
ties of his distress, and help him to stand again and
renew the activities and meet the fresh obligations of
life. And then, if you area sufferer, you must not ex-
pect too much of sympathy: if you are a sympathizer,
you must not attempt too much. Do not feel that oc-
casion asks or allows of some great thing. The least
thing may often hold most soul. The best things of
the kingdom, no more than the kingdom itself, come
with observation. A simple hand grasp, the tone in
which one said, ‘God bless you,” have done me more
good than all orations. If not gold and silver, they
were frankincense and myrrh. Sometimes, silence is
the truest expression as well as greatest benediction,
as the poet says it is with the angels; and wise indeed
is he who knows when to refrain as how to speak. At
most there is but little one may do, and that little lies
among things so trifling that the unpractised eye

222 THE SILENT COMFORTER.

might easily overlook them, and men of the world
would think there was nothing in them. If you can
carry a little sunlight from the outer world into a sick
chamber or the sunlight of your own spirit where other
spirits sit in the eclipse; if you can take a smile in
where is only gloom; if, without direct word or deed,
you make it felt that yours is a really human sympathy,
—do you not bring the best, and what the sufferer
learns to feel is the all that you can bring ?

They brought flowers and hung them in my cham-
ber before eyes weary with the long day and night and
the worrying dance of everything that in strange maze
perplexed, and words cannot tell how their compensat-
ing colors soothed my weariness and bade down the
tormenting demons and brought rest. |

And so itis among the graver things. One does not
want some great thing done: one knows instinctively
that no great thing can be done. Only he wants the
little compensating thing of sympathy to steady and
restore the unbalanced self, and help him with cooled
and even head take his place again at duties he had
dropped. It is not to have our burden lifted that we
expect, but the chance ourselves to recover poise, so
that, though we may stagger beneath, we shall not be
crushed by it.

“It is not worth while ever to repress the instinct 7%
of sympathy, and forbear the little thing your spirit _
prompts. Many a thing you offer timidly will come to
you again, bringing its full sheaf. We are all near of
kin, and we do not want to be estranged, and we can
come nigh in sorrow as never in joy. Sorrow makes
quick friendships. Genuine sympathy never intrudes,

THE SILENT COMFORTER. 223

rarely mistakes. It is keen in perception, gentle in
administration. Delicate and tender its touch as
an infant’s breath would be upon a gaping wound.
Though it may not say, ‘Peace, be still!” with the
authoritative word of Jesus, may it not help the
bruised and troubled to sleep and rest?

And I have long looked at it as a most blessed com-

pensation to our own troubles that they teach us how
to sympathize with others; yes, they teach us also
what sympathy itself is. Like so many other things,
that is the child of experience. Only they who have
suffered can know what suffering is. Only by suffering
is it that we know what sympathy is, what are the
medicaments it can minister, what are its needs. Men
say, “I sympathize with you”; and they are honest
and think they do, but they cannot, unless they have
gone along that self-same way.
_ Ihave had men say to me in their own troubles, “I
used to think I felt for and with others, but now I see
I did not.” You can only really sympathize in what
you have yourself felt; and you will find that uncon-
sciously you turn from the language of those you know
have had no experience, and crave even the silence of
those whom you know have before you gone down into
the abysses and drank of the bitter waters.

You may throw all your heart into it, by every imagi-
nation, but, if it have not actually pressed its hot and
heavy hand upon you, you cannot know what affliction
is, you cannot know the sympathy that starts quick
within one as he feels that another has come within
the great guild and mystery of grief, nor can your very
truest word give that something of nameless, unutter-

224 THE SILENT COMFORTER.

able support which comes from one who is known to
have been a sufferer. In every circle, you will find
those who seem singled out, whose society is craved,
who get to be the ones sent for and relied upon, not
because of any eloquent tongue, or much doing, or any
special grace of tact, but because of the grace that is
only of experience, that teaches them just what to do
and when to forbear.

There are some faces on which sorrow has written
that which is more comforting than all beatitudes ;
some tones that have a music in them joy never has;
some manners it would seem only angels could put on,
and all learned under the stern and fiery, the purify-
ing, elevating ministry of trouble, the school in which
souls are taught life’s holiest duties, and led into life’s
grandest issues. Doesn’t it show how far we fall short
even of fidelity to our own convictions, when we have
such reluctance to come under the disciplines we know
to be essential to lifting us out of the lowness of the
flesh into almoners to other men of the best teachings
of God? |

It is a divine gift and privilege, this power of sym-
pathy ; and it has a divine mission,— divine in that it
leads us among the superior things, and shows us how
we, too, may handle the things that ally us with God.

Real sympathy is no native gift: it is beyond that.
The finest feelings, the most exquisite adapting of our-
selves to others’ stand-point, do not give it. It is a
thing of culture, and its crowning culture is from sor-
rows ourselves have met and have wisely borne. But
that sympathy, even keenest, truest, quickest, cannot
do everything. It is strong, but it is limited. Where-

THE SILENT COMFORTER. 225

ever man essays to help his fellow-man, he finds him-
self shut in by inexorable limitings. There is only so
much that he can do. |

There is a divine decree, “Thus far, no farther.” In
the sharp hour of trial, as the poet says : —

“Fain would earth’s tried and dear
Save in this hour.
But art not thou more near,
Art thou not love and power?
Vain is the help of man; but thou
Canst send deliverance even now.”

It is all shut up in that. The only and the greatest
thing man is capable of is trust in God. Blessed the
man who knows his capacity and asserts it, and grows
from the radiant trust of childhood to the chastened
trust of maturity. Only as we trust, do we indeed
live, coming to be content, though we cannot fill the
yawning abysses or fathom the fathomless will, in the
conviction that God is over all and over all for good.
Let us do the little that we may: let us stand by each
other in our troubles with everything that is possible
in human aid; but let us not forget that, where man
fails, there God begins, and that he, notwithstanding
human failure, is able with unutterable peace and
blessing to bless those who put their trust in him. «

Dec. 7, 1873.

LX,

FRAGRANT. Livi
“And the house was filled with the odor.”— JOHN Xil., 3.

AN odor is among the subtlest things in the material
world. No one has yet been able to analyze or demon-
strate the essential action of a perfume. Gas can be
weighed, but not scents. The smallest known creat-
ures, the very monads of life, can be caught by a mi-
croscope lens, and made to deliver up the secrets of
their organizations; but what it is that emanates from

the pouch of the musk, that for years and years retains
its penetrating odor, and what it is that the warm sum--
mer air brings to us from the flowers, or what it is that
is locked up in the sandal-wood, no man has yet been
able to determine, so fine, so subtle, so imponderable,
it has eluded both our most delicate weights and meas-
ures and our strongest senses. The four Evangelists
tell us, all of them, that at a feast there was an anoint-
ing of Jesus. They tell-it with a good deal of variety.
Even discrepancy of detail, even the two who were
present. And they place it at different times in his
life. Generally, it has been supposed that there were
two similar occasions,— one near the beginning of his
ministry, one at its close. But this seems improbable ;
and both Matthew and John, the two present, agree as
to the time as just prior to the arrest. The more nat-

FRAGRANT LIVES. 227

ural thing is to consider the incident one and the same,
the differences to be with the narrators, not in the nar-
rative.

Besides the other things told of the ointment, that it
was of spikenard, in an alabaster box, and very costly,
John has thought it worth while to add that the odor of
it filled the house, and so somehow has added, in a few
words, an element of peculiar and abiding interest. It
attracts our attention, and gives us quite other thought
than if the ointment had simply been costly. I do not
believe we should have thought much of that. It
would not have made us read the account a second time,
or dwell upon it in fancy or memory. But, the moment
you read that the odor of it filled the house, you are
eeeetrention. Ihat is another matter. In all times,
among all peoples, perfumes have held high rank. The
sense of smell is a peculiarly refined and delicate enjoy-
ment. John adds a fact that gives exquisite finish to —
the story.

It was not a very big house. Houses at that time
were not apt to be, though of the better sort. Simon's
might be the best house in the village, and yet not such
a one as we should select as the abode of a man of in-
fluence or of property. Lazarus would have had a less
lordly home. Never mind that. John who was there,
when he came many years after to think it over, to tell
about it, remembered that all through the house was
the perfume from the broken alabaster box. He seems
_to have forgotten other incidents, or to have considered
them not worth repeating; but this was still fresh in
his memory, worth telling. All the guests had been
sensible of that delicious odor which filled the house;

228 FRAGRANT LIVES.

and it came to him again as he gathered together the
threads of remembrance, fresh to his old age as then
to his early manhood. What is it about an odor
that makes it a lingerer in memory, like the sound of a
voice, which will come back to you and mightily move
you over the dead waste of years, and recall things
long slumbering, and that would have continued to
slumber but for the resurrection power these impon-
derable, subtile things have? What is this mysterious
tying together of spirit and sense? Not the odor of
the vase alone has attracted the ages. The odor of
the deed far more. The house was filled with the
fragrance of spikenard: the world has been filled with
the fragrance of gratitude. It was not the offering of
a broken alabaster box, but the pleading of a broken |
heart, the tribute of a contrite spirit to one who had
inspired her sin, her penitence, with confidence and
hope. Next day, next hour, the invisible powers had
absorbed to themselves, had scattered, wafted away,
_ the perfume of the ointment. A stranger coming in
had not been conscious of that which but now had
made all glad, strong for a little and then vanishing
away. But the deed, from its unexhausted store, has
been pouring out its perfume till the whole world is
full of it. What Jesus said of it is true. “Whereso-
ever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world,
there shall also this that this woman hath done be told
for a memorial of her.” Time but gives it more and
more,— is not a destroyer, but a renewer, a preserver.
The cunning, grateful work of art perished: the gra-
cious deed of a loving soul endures,—is not merely one
of the touching things in history, redolent in un-

FRAGRANT LIVES. 229

speakable delicacy, but with genial influence appeals to
the best spirit in man, and encourages it with the
brightest hope. .

Just what was that tribute ?—

The silent eloquence of a heart yearning to make
some expression of the obligation she felt she was
under. It was a woman’s way, without noise, without
observation, doing as the impulse prompted, and se-
lecting the most delicate thing to express the most
delicate sentiment. She did not know anything about
his burial. That was the limited interpretation which
the foreboding spirit of Jesus put upon it. True
enough to him, not true at all to her. He knew that
in her the act had quite other cause, with her quite
other significance. With her, it was a tribute of love,
a love that she could not utter for a loving deed done.
We all know that deeds have to come in where words
fail, simplest deeds to phrase for us deepest sentiment.
I put my arm about a sufferer, in joy I give a kiss;
and they mean what and tell what no language can be
fashioned into. Mary, or whoever the woman was, or
whatever her sin had been, whatever her cause for
gratitude, had received of Jesus that which drew her to
him as no ordinary way would tell; and, just as frank-
incense and myrrh had been the costly tribute at his
cradle, the things most expressive of homage and alle-
giance, the costly spikenard of India was made to tell
of the homage and allegiance of one whose heart-sore

had been healed, whose hopes raised, whose pardon

given. If it were at Simon’s house, as Matthew says,
perhaps there was some purpose also of remedying
Simon’s churlish neglect. If at the house of Lazarus,

230 FRAGRANT LIVES.

as John says, and it was the other Mary, gratitude for
the life restored had its part in the offering.

Either way, any way, it was the only voice she could -
find for her womanly devotion ahd faith. Jesus turned
it into consonance with his one leading thought, but no
more than the apostles was she thinking of his death.
The real significance of the act is in the*loving grati-
tude, simple-hearted confidence, that, from whatever
cause, lay behind and prompted it. As the odor of
the oil pervaded the house, so the odor of the deed,
outlasting occasion, has pervaded all time; and we have
Christ’s word for it that it shall pervade all time, an
exhaustless centre, radiating a subtle influence forever.

There is no odor so permanent, so pervasive, as that
from a good deed. It is that, the odor of loving and
gracious deeds, that is the secret of Christ’s power,
that has made him the mighty influence he is. We
are not content to take any thing about him in a natu-
ral way, but must contrive some theory grand enough
to satisfy our conceptions of what should be. - -

We want to make God do things largely, dramati- F
cally, forgetting that he loves to work out his issues —

simply and by small things.

We extol the lowliness of Christ, but we forget the
lowliness of the things with which Christ wrought and
built. We make his gospel a gospel of dogmas: that
seems worthy. It is a gospel of deeds, not of grand
schemes and beliefs, but of simple doing, loving doing,
the simplicity of a genial life. The influence that has
gone from his life, and not the persuasiveness that has
_fallen from his lips, has given him his place. We put
weight upon language: it is in life. We could spare

FRAGRANT LIVES. 231

his words, golden as they are. His words alone, like
the words of so many golden-lipped, would have fallen
to the ground and died.

They would have established nothing, however wise
and eloquent. The virtue.was not in them; but the
virtue lay in what he was day by day doing, the way
he was living, the character he was manifesting, and
the hand of help he was holding out to every manner
of suffering man. So thoroughly was he pervaded by
the great spirit of life that he could not help giving
out life, as the flower cannot help giving out fragrance.
Its perfume was in all: its fulness filled him. That
was no exceptional condition which is spoken of by the
Evangelist, when he felt virtue go from him. Virtue
went out of him, not once alone, but always, every-
where, to all. It was always exuding, as fragrance is
always exuding from the rose. The life of virtue was
in him. The rose, the violet, the lly, cannot help be-
ing sweet. Life’ expresses itself so, because the soul
of sweetness is in them. ‘That is the language of their
souls. You cannot approach them, bring them in con-
tact with your daily dives, but this sweet thing in them
comes out to meet you. No surface thing, no soon
exhausted thing, but a thing in their hearts which dies
only when they die. And there had been no influence
in Christ’s virtue, no life fo it, no living, outliving odor,
had it been, as so much that we call virtue is, the mere
expression of superficial sentiment, the thing of spasm, «
or occasion. He never could have filled the world with
the deathless aroma of a life, save he had had in him
the deathless source of that aroma, in exhaustless sup-
ply, giving itself for each and for all. He was full him-

232 FRAGRANT LIVES.

self, and because of his fulness filled, could not help
filling. .

We are all the time in life wanting to do some good,
and wondering that we fail. We fail, because we are
not first full of the spirit of that we want to do or
give. We undertake to do when we have nothing to
do from. We are dry springs, empty reservoirs. We
have no fountain-head. We have never established a
source of supply. We have nothing to fall back upon.
We cannot pour, fill. Mere sunshine would amount
to little, were there not great sunshine quality laid
away in the great sun. The supply would soon go out,
and leave us but an empty blank of cold and darkness;
and so mere casting ‘‘sweetness and light,” the power
an actor or hypocrite er a very shallow person might
have, amounts to little, except sweetness and light fill
us. It isa stinted surface quantity, soon runs dry. It
does not do much good to shed a beneficence which is
the mere reflection of a surface. It must. be a raying
out from within deeps. Milton says of himself, “I was
confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be
frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable
things ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a
composition and pattern of the best and honorablest
things.” Before we can be the best and do the best,
it is all important that we be ourselves filled with
“sweetness and light,” have the fount of them in us,
more important that we be full than that we attempt
to fill. We fill others by now and then accidental
words and acts, kindnesses, sympathies, forbearances.
We fill ourselves when we have an all-the-time spirit of
beauty and truth. The outflow of that makes sure of

FRAGRANT LIVES. 233

the good to others. Our mistake, to try to do separate
acts instead of trying to get the spirit whose inevitable
expression shall be these coveted things. We waste
ourselves on these, and get discouraged over them, in-
stead of striking clean and bold for the under life.
The men and women whose lives are other peoples’
strength or repose are not men and women seeking to
do separate things at separate times, but those who
have got and are filled with the life of life, who know
there must be a fountain of supply, flowing by no arti-
ficial means, itself from no exhausted ‘source. We
have to get very far back, away from low things, and
close against the HicgH ONE: we must be living and
succulent branches of the living and true Vine. No
life, no fruit, otherwise,—some promise, some show
perhaps, but the fig-tree at Jerusalem gate is no more
really barren than we, if our lack be the very soul of
virtue. First fill yourselves with the spirit of good
deed, as God first filled the great urn of the sun, and
then shed abroad—then you must shed abroad —the
influence of that thing which is in you, a part of your
very life. Much as we may need to fill the sphere in
which we move with what is best and brightest, we
more need to first fill ourselves, and then we shall fill
our sphere. Become sweetness and light, and we give
them inevitably. Of what we are, we impart. It was
_all the influence Christ had, that of his dezvg. Except
for the grace and truth of his life, the grace and truth
of his lips were nothing.

It is not the filling the house with the odor of our
lives that we should think of, but the filling ourselves,
And when that is done, as from the least hem-touch of

234 FRAGRANT LIVES.

the Saviour’s garments healing and strength flowed, so
from the simplest speaking and doing goes out that
which no man may weigh or ‘measure, catch up or con-
fine, but which is as the life of life,—the inextricable,
invisible thread, tying into divine harmony the every
part of being. Shakspere tells how far a candle
throws its light, sending its central life into outlying
waves of darkness, wave after wave, and transmuting
with a kindly glow the ugly pall that hangs before.
The good deed, he tells us, is like it; and you can many
times see it stealing its quiet but conquering way, till
it has suppressed the evil, and wrapped the moral dark-
ness about it in its own garment. So the odor of that
broken alabaster box stole out into the air of that
home, fetid with the vapors of self-righteousness and
cant, inhospitality and pride. They were all quelled
before it. They could not live in its presence, must
hide themselves, at least. It was no self-asserting,
pungent odor, with swift breath and offence, smiting,
charging, and bearing down and laying low, but pure
and subtile as the night aroma of flowers is that pos-
sesses the atmosphere, you know not how, steals in
and is, before you are conscious, the one spirit and
power. And all those men sitting there, the honored
as the tolerated guest, and the common, curious villager,
felt it, were filled with it, not the house only, but they
in the house. But there was an essence in that broken
box. It did not greet the sense, but it found the heart.
The house was filled with it; the men there were filled
with it, the world has been filled with it ever since, the
ages are to be, so long as ages come and go. There
had been many a thing done that day in Jerusalem

FRAGRANT LIVES. 235

homes, in the houses of the happy and the great, that
won applause, and seemed to men worthy of honor and
remembrance. But poetry, painting, sculpture, rever-
ent recognition and affection, did not hasten to embalm
them. Time has forgotten them. No man desired to
be their chronicler. But the act of a sinning woman,
who put all that she had into a costly offering, and then
poured it over the feet of Jesus, the breath of the ages
has taken up and whispered it to ages as they come;
and nowhere that the name of Jesus goes but goes
with it the sweet act of a gratitude that expressed
itself in the fragrance that stole out from a broken box.
To what higher significance, remembering it, may you
lift the poet’s well-remembered lines : —

“You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”

We want to make our lives of best service. We can
only do it by fixing first attention upon ourselves.
Let everything be right in us, and nothing that goes
from us can be wrong. Let everything in us be sweet,
and everything from us must be sweetness. In the
alabaster box, the power to pervade the house with
odor; in the true heart, the power to pervade life with
that which, as a balm, shall soothe all hearts. We
know how full the world is of bright lives and kindly

deeds, and how their influence stretches away from —

man to man, from age toage. The odor of them fills
the descending years. Men live nobler and happier
because of them. With secret subtilty, they penetrate,
reforming character, renewing society, driving out old
miasma and pollution by their better power, disinfect-

230; FRAGRANT LIVES,

ing the corruption and decay in which men so much
content themselves to live.

In these early summer days, the air is fragrant with
the breath of flowers. The blossom-laden trees shed
forth their sweetness, and the lilacs and the lily distil
luscious perfume to a delighted sense. Odors upon
every side gladden even the waste places. The very
soul of nature life speaks in them. They are the out.
goings of its spirit. Just that may our lives become,
odor-bearers to fill even the waste places, only will
we have spirits in us,—living spirits of grace and
truth and purity and love, the fount whence a never-
failing outgo may bear those delicious influences
which shall make the sterile hearts and lives of men
what the sterile earth is before the abounding life of
the sweetly scented summer.

Not a good deed anywhere, not a self-sacrificing act,
not a genuine kindliness, but the odor of it, fills, de-
lights, stimulates. Our homes are filled with the
sweetness when we are true to them, our own lives
and other men’s lives when we carry that true living
abroad with us, and make them feel it. So the great
kingdom grows by little and little, so the true graces
get their mastery, so the incense God loves, the fra-
grance of devout and earnest and growing and unself-
ish lives, fills the days, blesses us, and makes us sources
of blessing.

June 3, 1876.

XX.
WHAT SHE COULD.

“She hath done what she could.”— MarK xiv., 8.

Onty few words these, yet how full of meaning!
And, coming from a Saviour’s lips, how like a beatitude,
a foretaste of the “Well done!” which is God’s wel-
come to the eternal mansions. What had she done?
She had not gone to the Sanhedrim, or to Herod, plead-
ing with her true womanliness in defence of the sainted
-one she felt Jesus to be. She had not defended him at
Nazareth, where his neighbors and friends had _ for-
gotten themselves. She would not appeal to Ceesar in
his behalf; nor in any of his-perils had she stood by
him. These were not her sphere. These she could
not have done, had she been pure. She was an out-
cast; but something living, loving, and true, and pure
yet, despite the taint, told her that, could she reach
Jesus, she might have peace. He was at Simon’s
house,— perhaps the hardest place for her to enter,
unless it were Simon’s heart. No matter. There was
a thing she could do, that a woman in her situation
could best do. She had bought this costly ointment
for her own adorning, to help her in the arts of her
trade, to make more seductive charms fatal to herself
as to others. She could pour that out on Jesus, the
costliest thing, perhaps all she had. Trembling, eager,

238 WHAT SHE COULD.

forgetting Simon and the rest; thinking of seeing only
Jesus, her impatient hands broke off the long, slender,
sealed neck of the bottle, and anointed with its wel-
come fragrance the weary feet to which the haughty
host had denied the simpler charity of water. It re-
freshed not the body merely, but the spirit of Jesus.
Its perfume pervaded not the house only, but the
breath of the ages. He did not refuse his gratitude
to the sinner. She had befriended him, now he be-
friended her. She had outraged the sanctimonious
Simon, but he had outraged the Christ; and he got
rebuke such as man never had, and she got blessing.
“She hath done what she could.” There were not
many whom Jesus praised; and yet there are a few brief
and striking eulogies pronounced by him of which, per-
haps, this is the briefest, the simplest, and the grand-

est, the most remarkable and the most complete. You

remember the glowing eulogy upon John, in which
there is a something nigh enthusiasm; you remember
the eulogy upon Peter, in which there seems a some-
thing like overestimate of the man; you remember
that. upon the young lawyer, more in look and tone
than language. They are all remarkable as coming
from such a source,— from one who had no words of
ceremony, who did not waste himself upgn useless oc-
casion, but whose every tone had a purpose, and all
whose words, strong, emphatic, incisive as well as de-
cisive, were utterances of severe truth. He did not
hesitate to blame where blame was required, and as
little did he hesitate to encourage, and blessed were
they whose reward was his approval. One of the strik-
ing things about the Saviour was his oversetting of

; ;
7
é

WHAT SHE COULD. 239

values, his putting down what was high and exalting
what was low. He was never dazzled by name, posi-
tion, or deed, but judged everything by its own stand-
ard, and to each gave its special award, not as the
world gave. The one very noticeable thing with him
was the high virtue that he detected in little deeds,
the strong encomium he passed on things men had
never before noticed. Many widows had dropped their
two mites into the treasury; but the busy men had
never stopped to think that it was all their living, or
to commend the charity, while they had approved the
lordly gifts of lordly men, had worshipped all that
made loud pretence. The kingdom of Jesus was the
kingdom of circles, motives, not deeds, facts, not
sounds; and so, when Mary came with her costly un-
guent, he read at once the sentiment which inspired it,
and blessed her deed. It was not great and glittering
things that Jesus asked, only of each and all what they
could. | .

That is asking a good deal, however ; and it is saying
a good deal when you can say of any, ‘She hath done
what she could.” Who of us all comes up to the stand-
ard established by these words? Who exhausts the
capacity in him? Who, when he lies down at night, or
makes tne review of life honestly, can say that there
was no more he could do? We may have worked in-
dustriously, accumulated largely, got place and honor,
have worn ourselves out in doing with hands or brain,
while in the larger doing of the heart, in all the finer
sympathies and nobler charities, in all that tests hu-
manity and affiliates with God, we have done misera-
bly little, it may be absolutely nothing. The duty of

240 | WHAT SHE COULD.

doing, not great things, but what we can, is the very
top and sum of human obligation. One can’t get be-
yond it: one ought not to stop this side of it. It means
the doing of everything you can, and chiefly it means
the doing of things that issue out of the heart toward
God and toward man. It means the setting aside of
the self, and laying out one’s best energies in unselfish,
not to be requited, service. It means not merely occu-
pation, industry, attainment, but noble industry, occu-
pation, attainment; not merely busy hands, but busy
affections, sympathies, purposes. You cannot sum its
almost limitless significance. What one can do! —this
inspired, immortal principle, which God struck out in
the beginning, and eternity is to ripen,—this restless,
aspiring creation, we feel ourselves to be! What we
can do! Why, we put it asa child’s maxim, “There’s
no such word as can’t’’; and if we believe that, and
that there is such a word as cau, if we probe and know
ourselves, as we may know by probing, we shall see
that there is hardly height or depth impossible to a fear-
less, resolved soul, owning its allegiance and feeling its
accountability to God. The fact is, we do not do what
we can, because we will not tax our hearts. We tax
our brains, we tax our hands. We overload and wear
out mind and body. But we do not treat the heart that
way. There is not stress and strain of duty upon it.
We are too apt to shrink from anything that is going
to be a pain or a burden to it, and, instead of cultivat-
ing our sympathies, looking into distresses, visiting sick
and poor, widow and fatherless, we shut off our hearts
from any appeal, give a trifle, or send the suppliant on
to some other hand. A minister has a grand chance

WHAT SHE COULD. 241

to know how much of this sending people on is done,
how cheaply and how meanly sometimes people pass
along to him matters they should themselves, as men,
attend to; how ready other people are to think they do
all they are called to, if they send people to him. As if
it were any more his obligation to drop his work, take
up his time, spend his money, hunting up all manner
of cases, alleviating all manner of distresses! That is
a duty you cannot delegate, you do not pay for. It is
a duty which belongs to each. The suffering that is
about us loses largely its power as a moral agent, be-
cause even the best disposed of us-shrink so from see-
ing and knowing it, and in that shrinking learn to say,
in the words James condemns, “Be ye warmed and
filled,’ rather than ourselves seeing the hunger and
knowing the cold and understanding the actual thing
that suffers and asks. There could not open up a more
valuable chapter of human experience to any one than
that which would be revealed by the investigation of
any case of suffering. It is what all ought to face
themselves to, as a part of their training as brothers in
the human family, part of their debt to God for his
mercies. Not that every man may examine every case,
but that he should not content himself with turning
away, with giving a trifle, with belonging to a charity or
organization, but should keep his heart warm, his char-
ities broad, his sympathies true, by actual knowledge
of what poverty and pain are, that he may know that
all is not sin or shiftlessness, that he may realize
how misfortunes crowd upon and multiply in some
lives, and may so make himself a happier as well as
wiser man. If exemption from the like will not make

242 WHAT SHE COULD.

him both wiser and happier, why, he is not fit to be
the child of God, and cannot have great hope of the
kingdom,

But this will not cover the broad demand of the
phrase. Life has many spheres, many occasions, a
very various demand for doing. Every man has his
endowment, his ability, his talent, his gift. It is that
which marks him from every other man. It is that
which makes him-an agent in society, in the world, in
the universe. It is that which makes it possible to
meet and discharge all the complicated requirements
of life. How many of us do all that we can with our
abilities, push them to their best results, employ them
harmoniously, honestly, continuously, and so perfect not
ourselves alone, but help toward the brave and better
time, always coming in song and hope, always delaying
in fact? Can any of us sit down calmly with himself
at the end of the day, and give a searching to his day’s
employments, and acquit himself of some infidelity
somewhere, some want of scrupulous exactness in his
doing, of something undone which not only he could
have done, but could have done just as well as not,
and, as the school-boy used to say to me, weller? You
will be happier, truer than I am, happier, truer than I
think you, if you have never a darker curtain shutting
about your day than that the night draws, if your
prayers are not broken, ay, and forgotten in the rush
and rebuke that conscience ministers the moment we
will let the babble of world and sense hush. I think
I know to what grand heights severe, exact fidelity
would lead.us all; how we should be as giants far on
amid now impending and perhaps appalling difficulties,

WHAT SHE COULD. 243

treading among them as a giant treads, and working
our way toward the limit-goal of our ability. I think
I know how grand lives might become,—not lives
- grandly gifted, but ordinary lives, only were men doing
just what they can, what God sent them to do, what he
expects. I think I know what the napkin-folded talent
might have expanded into, and how mighty the using
one humble, fearlessly exerted ability might become.
Great gifts have not helped the world so much as little
ones thoroughly used, and humble lives lie as corner-
stones beneath the grand benevolences. of the world.
Dig down and lay bare what years have overlaid and
generations have forgotten, remove dust and rubbish
and all that time has done, and expose, as men expose
Pompeii and Nineveh and Jerusalem, the beginning of .
things, and it will amaze you to see what upholds some
of the honored institutions the world could not do
without. The Sunday-school system, with all its broad
inclusiveness, starts from the cobbler’s stall; and poor,
rude, illiterate Robert Raikes, building better than he
knew, creates that which follows round the world with
equal pace the advancing footsteps of the gospel.
Monasteries, which had their place and did their work
in the civilizing, if not the Christianizing of other cen-
turies, before they became infamous, were the labor
of one man. Wesley, revolting at what he saw in the
Church, and faithful to the guiding of his one convic-
tion,— doing what he could, in speech, in word, in peril,
and in persecution,—again, wiser than he knew, builded
the great power of Protestantism, which, had it been
true to his spirit, might have held in its broad embrace
all Protestant power, so elastic was his system as it got

244 WHAT SHE COULD.

shape from him. Four million freedmen to-day, ay,
and the millions more of whites who were never free
from thrall till the day the shackles fell from the limbs

of the slave, owe it to the one man who could not be

stopped by mob, by dungeon, or by law, who fearlessly
did what he could, and has lived to see a work done
more gigantic and more hopeless than all which have
made the fabled name of Hercules the marvel of the
past. Doing what she could, a sewing-girl established
a hospital for ‘“incurables,” a charity so needed, not in
Boston only, but everywhere; and a single woman, born
to and cradled in every luxury, doing what she can,
resides at and manages and gives her time, her purse,
her heart, to it, finding a mission where few would
look for it, and such as surprises every one who knew
her. Doing what she could, Florence Nightingale,
and then the whole crowd of our own women, tender
and true, threw down luxury, forgot the immunities of
class and sex; on battle-fields, into hospitals, bringing a
woman’s hand and a woman’s heart, opening the por-
tals of Paradise before many a glaring eye, telling it to
the world and leaving it written forever that tumults
nor alarms, dangers nor deaths, can keep a steadfast
soul away from duties; and, if you ask for the reward,
I cannot show you the account God keeps, but I can
show you graves, and in homes the suffering wrecks
which long-wearing service, the strain on body and
heart, has made.

Doing what she could in yon alleys and streets when
we first tried to do something for the colored people,
a sweet New England spirit of culture and grace fal-
tered and fell; and we just laid her under the old trees

WHAT SHE COULD. 245

of her old home, that they might bless her before she
passed away. And the colored people of this city*
built her monument.

And so one might go on, culling from history, cull-
ing from experience, the brave ones who have not sat
down and sighed, finding ‘‘nothing to do,” time weary,
life dull, but have evoked the spirit within them, and
with instant and reverent duty taken that which lay
near,— the thing they could do,— and have made ordi-
nary lives rich in experiences and blessings. You, no
doubt, know in homes the same things, facts never
known outside of homes, lives lived only for home, yet
lived out in fullest fealty to the idea of the words we
consider. You no doubt know, walking these streets
to-day, self-denials and activities that will outshine the
pampered selfishness that passes them unheeding, as
the star outshines the miner’s candle or the glow-
worm’s light, and will glitter all over with immortality
when rottenness hath seized on gold. And yet, with
all that, I fear much that we are like the men in the
market, standing all the day idle, not working out our
salvation through the gift given us,—doing what we
can,— not adorning, strengthening, ennobling the hu-
manity in which we are partners, but pushing away the
thought of obligation, and making of life only our own
pleasure and profit and ease.

Friends, we want to carry into our lives a realizing
sense of what this doing what we can amounts to. It
is the thing we shall be gauged by, it is the thing by
which we should gauge ourselves. It is just what more
than one parable teaches, more than one word of Jesus

* Boston.

246 WHAT SHE COULD.

teaches. It is immanent, imperative necessity. It
is not what we cannot do,— the impossible things men
dream of in their reveries, the shadows they chase in
their indolence, or the great things they waste life
waiting for,— but only and simply the things we caz
do, that which takes just the time we have got, just the
power we have got, just the place we have got, just the
opportunity we have got, is the demand upon the place,
the hour, the talent we have. We should never have
had the sweet perfume of Mary’s alabaster box perme-
ating the ages with its holy aroma, had she neglected
the power she had, the thing she could do, and done
nothing because that was no great thing to do, be-
cause she had only an alabaster bottle of ointment,
and “what was that?” :

[t ts the appropriate thing, the thing that just fills the
niche, the keeping time up to its demands, the deeds
up to ability, that make ample doing and secure great
reward,— not the seldom things men call great, but the
multitudinous things which are just as great to God,
whose value lies in their being just what God asks,
which, done, shall sparkle as gems forever in the coro-
net God sets on the brow of them he accepts as his.

By his evening fire, the artist
Pondered o’er his secret shame:

Baffled, weary, and disheartened,
Still he mused, and dreamed of fame.

*Twas an image of the virgin
That had tasked his utmost skill;

But, alas! his fair ideal
Vanished and escaped him still.

WHAT SHE COULD. 247

From a distant eastern island
Had the precious word been brought:
‘Day and night, the anxious master
At his toil, untiring, wrought

Till, discouraged and desponding,
Sat he now in shadows deep,

And the day’s humiliation
Found oblivion in sleep.

Then a voice cried, “ Rise, O Master!
From the burning brand of oak

Shape the thought that stirs within thee!”
And the startled artist woke,—

Woke, and from the smoking embers
Seized and quenched the glowing wood;
And therefrom he carved an image,

And he saw that it was good.

O thou, sculptor, painter, poet!
Take this lesson to thy heart:

That is best which liest nearest,
Shape from that thy work of art.

XXI.
TIBNI AND OMRI.

“So Tibni died, and Omri reigned.”— I. KINGs xvi., 22.

AFTER the revolt of the ten tribes and the estab-
lishment of the kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam, the
history of both monarchies is for a long period a series
of internal as well as external difficulties, until, carried
into captivity by the Assyrians, the ten tribes of Israel
“mysteriously and wholly disappear. They seem never
to have flourished after their separation; and their
departure from the laws of and allegiance to Jehovah
was more than that of the two tribes, the kingdom
of Judah suffering mainly from the character of its
kings, while in the kingdom of Israel the very institu-
tions themselves had become so vitiated that a good
king could’do nothing toward bringing the people
again to their allegiance. It was about fifty years
after the arbitrary and insulting words of Rehoboam
had sundered forever the splendid inheritance of his
father, and in consequence of the assassination by
Zimri of the King Elah, that Omri, who was engaged
as commander of the army against the Philistines, was
by the army made king, while at the same time the
people at home had elected Tibni. The kingdom, rent
by the contentions of these opposing factions, was
plunged into a civil war, and at the end of six years

TIBNI AND OMRI. 249

Omri prevailed, and Tibni was put to death. Accord-
ing to the Scripture, Omri did evil in the sight of the
Lord above all that had gone before him, and that
must have been bad enough.

All that was gained to the people of Israel, under
these circumstances, was a change of masters. They
were not benefited in any way. Perhaps the last mas-
ter was the worse.

Our lives long, we are changing masters, passing
from service to service, if not from bondage to bond-
age. In infancy, we come under the very lowest ani-
mal wants. The immediate, unreasoning demand of
the senses is then imperative. Hunger, momentary
pain, sleep, the instinctive craving of our little bodies,
are the ruling powers, whatever there is prophetic of
the future man being but the now-and-then utterance
of a better spirit which must bide its time, and for
the present serve. As childhood advances, we come
under the dominion of imaginations, of strange plans,
vague, boundless, impossible hopes. : We question,
examine, have theories, try experiments. Now we are
under the rule of this idea, now of that, ever busy,
ever satisfied, ever changing.

We pass rapidly from one stage to another, imper-
ceptibly, as the field of wheat does toward its ripeness.
Life begins to take definite shape, opinions are imbibed
which the strong man cannot shake off, habits are
formed which tyrannize over us till the grave is closed.
In what we more distinctively call youth, we are set-
tling down into the service of some one thing,—one
thing at a time; and we come to be distinguished, to
be spoken of, to be ranked by that leading trait or

250 TIBNI AND OMRI.

habit or ability which is felt to be characteristic, until
manhood finds us established, confirmed, in moral,
mental, physical habitudes, some one of which assumes
the mastery, and stamps us, so as all men recognize,
asitsown. You do not know the man or woman whose
place in life, whose functions, whose reliability, are not
all based upon, gauged by, that. When you speak of
another, it is as specially noted for some one thing.
Other things are mentioned, while there is some one
prevailing virtue or vice, strength or weakness, policy
or self-interest, which enters into, shapes, controls his
thought and deed, his-rising and his rest.

Under all modification of time and circumstance, you
see that men are, in certain points or traits, essentially
the same. They remain all life through under the
same service, their latest life bearing the same impress
with their earliest. The mastery is first of appetite: ©
that ripens into passion, that into habit, until habit, not
a mere mastery, but a tyranny, drags its victim chained
and helpless. You say of some men that they are just
what they were when they were boys; and you can
prophesy, pretty surely of some boys what they will be
when they are men. There is a fixedness that seems
almost inexorable about some traits. They stick like
that strange garment which caused the death of Her-
cules. So deep the poison they infuse into the moral
system that it never recovers. While all other things
within and about a man are changed, these maintain
the same pitiless attitude of mastery, before whose
despotic will the man crouches, abject as a slave. As
an instance, I have noticed in life that a mean boy
makes a mean man. It seems, usually, impossible that

AB «ws

TIBNI AND OMRI, 251

it should be otherwise. I have known great radical
changes in other respects; while this, as the spot of
the leopard, remained unchanged, the determined un-
der-current in all life, cropping out perpetually, and
marring a character that had otherwise grown to. much
vigor and worth. The same thing may be said of one
or two other moral qualities. They rule us to the end.
This is the half of the truth: the other half is this.
With all this fixedness in special, separate traits, there
is a constant change in the laws which govern, the
motives which influence, the purposes which shape life.
We are constantly passing out of the control of one,
under the control of another. Sometimes, this takes
place without our noticing it. We rouse to find that,
whilé our attention flagged or we were absorbed in
something else, we have come under wholly new laws
and conditions, are our old selves not at all. Some-
times, it is by deliberate effort: we make a change,
because we see that we must, that life is not going
right as it is. We see that we are wrong, mistaken.
Life’s experience and discipline bring continued dis-
satisfaction and disappointment, and we must change
its course, or life will be a failure. But we have not
courage to search far or to strike deep, to make the
change radical. Self-dissatisfied amid our self-satisfac-
tion, we will not sink the shaft of our search deep
enough. We only feel the tyranny of our old master,
and think that any change must be good. So we seize
the thing that promises immediate relief_—as men will
satisfy themselves sometimes with the immediate sooth-
ing of simples and salves, when a truer search would
show that only the probe and the knife can avail. Our

250 TIBNI AND OMRI.

growing years are years of great inward changes,— of
real struggles, of deep dissatisfactions, of earnest reach-
ing forward. Like the distracted kingdoms of Europe
and of South America, so many times in history, we
are throwing off the old and coming under new mas-
teries, while the real disease under which we suffer is
not touched: neither life nor liberty is secured. We
break the bondage of the old only to become bonds-
men to the new. We strike for freedom: it is not
freedom, only change, we get. Tibni indeed dies, but
then Omri reigns.

Plutarch, closing his sketch of Caius Marius, writes,
“On the seventeenth day of his seventh consulship,
he died, to the great joy and content of Rome, which
was thereby in good hopes to be delivered from the
calamity of a cruel tyranny; but in a small time they
found they had only changed their old, worn-out mas-
ter for another, young and vigorous, so much cruelty
and savageness did his son Marius show.” You will
find very much the same thing said by the historian
of the earlier convulsions among the half-barbarous
hordes out of whose contentions at last the stable
empire of England grew. And just that same human
experience runs down through the ages, enters into our
own personal history: we throw off an old, worn-out
master only to saddle ourselves with another, young
and vigorous. And so it is all the way through with
man. The invalid turns from physician to physician,
from allopathy to homceopathy, from regular to irregu-
lar practitioner. All the while, the secret of his disease
is not touched.. He has but changed his master. The
disquieted in religion runs from preacher to preacher,

TIBNI AND OMRI. 23

from sect to sect, from excitement to excitement; but
the disquiet spirit in him is not soothed. He has but
changed his master. The young man turns from place
to place, from calling to calling; but he does not have
success. He has only changed his master. Deep
down, where they do not suspect, lies the secret, potent
cause of all the trouble; and all these superficial appli-
cations will avail nothing. You may amuse, occupy;
deceive yourselves with these changes, and, as each
fails, flatter yourself that the sovereign efficacy lies
with the next; but you are only chasing shadows,
balking hope, insuring disaster. Often it is with us
morally as with the consumptive patient. We do not
detect the deep-seated, fatal malady. We only need a
little this or a little that, a slight change in condi-
tion, this tonic, that opiate; while all the time the
disease insidiously works at the foundations of life, and
the vigor of the system is gone before the true danger
is felt. Morally, we have this advantage: we can find
and remove the cause of all, and come again to health,
if we will.

It is this fact —that so much of our moral effort
results only in a change of masters — which causes me
to tremble for him who is undertaking to release him.
self from a bad way. The difficulty is that the man
does not understand the entireness of the change re-
quired, has no just idea of the thing he must change
to. The crisis of a moral change is a critical one,—
critical in ways that one does not often realize. It may
result to advantage: it may result in harm. It may
deliver ; but it may only substitute a living Omri fora
dead Tibni. Iam clearly of the opinion that, when one

254 TIBNI AND OMRI.

is breaking away from one evil habit, he is more likely

to embrace, to throw the old affection into some new ~

evil form, than he is honestly, steadily, persistently to
turn his back on all evil, and embrace only good. It is
the special thing, the form, from which we think it nec-
essary to be weaned, that definite thrall we are to
break, the relative, partial freedom at which we aim,
and not that absolute liberty which shall lift us above
all low and contaminating masteries. We break up the
habit, not the inward desire which feeds the habit: we
cut off the stream, but we leave the fount to flow, to
find new outlet, to push through new channels, and
flood the life with fresh shames. When the evil spirit
went out of the man, it was only to find seven others
worse than it. One thrall was broken, but the craving
for evil was not checked; and a sevenfold tyranny in
the end mastered and destroyed him. And so the dan-
ger lies with all of us, that we do not so occupy the
place of the exorcised evil that when it returns upon
us, as all these exorcised evils will, with coaxing and
promise and threat, it shall find no room, no compan-
ionship: it shall not merely find us empty of old sin,
but garnished with new virtue.

That which makes the reform of any of the desper-
ate or abandoned classes, of those who are neither des-
perate nor abandoned, so doubtful, is not so much the
intrinsic impossibility of reform—there is no such
intrinsic impossibility —as that, in reforming them or
in their reform of themselves, no care is taken that the
reform shall be radical, a placing under wholesome
and wholly opposite influences, so preoccupying heart,
hand, and soul that there shall be no time nor desire

for the old affection. They do not go to the right-
about, and so fortify themselves that they cannot fall.
They do not lay the axe at the root, but simply change
their allegiance, substitute one form of excitement for
another, lop off here a branch and there a twig, come
under some other thing they consider less objection-
able, grow more respectable, with the chances always
strong against them that their latter state will be
worse than the first. I know no experiment so hazard-
ous as that of the-man who turns from any sinful
thing which has degraded him in his own sight or that
of others, without a deep moral conviction, with only
the purpose of making himself more respectable.

Do you know the master that this kind of respecta-
bility is,—that it is the soulless tyrant, ruling with
threat and lash the multitude of men and women in
religion and in life who never pass beyond its bondage
into the glad liberty of the service of God? In our
greater, our lesser ‘sins, this grand mistake vitiates all
our efforts. It is not absolute liberty we seek, only
relative. The redemption that is nigh slips from our
grasp. Reaching toward a promised freedom, we find
ourselves held to another service, less galling it may
be, but none the less degrading, while it may be that
the silken cord of the new shall be even worse for the
soul than the harsh chain of the old. The hope to
improve by this sort of change, to be. happier, better,
under the influence of some new conditions, to become
all that one ought to be by some slight, here-and-there
improvement, is as fallacious as the hope that comes
to the hectic cheek and the wasting lungs that under
sunnier skies and balmier breezes the waste shall be

256 TIBNI AND OMRI.

repaired and a new vigor reinstall the man. The
very change may only accelerate the disease, and
plunge him into a ruin this had promised to avert.

‘ TI take it that no one will deny that living in the
world we do, and surrounded by influences such as
surround us all, it is impossible for us to remain
wholly stationary. There must be change. The soul
never outgrows its pupilage, but is always under mas-
ters, always in some service. Where one ends, another
begins. Tibni dies, but Omri reigns. The exchange is
not always gain, but it ought always to be. Man should
accept no master but such as he knows will lead him
in the way of safety. Now, it is an established thing,
established by experience as well as by the divine
word, that under one master only is the soul safe;
and the strife with every one should be to put himself
under that one. “One is your master, even» Christ, »
were the pungent words of Jesus, when he rebuked the
tendency of his day to put itself under the various
teachers of the law. And yet how strangely men hes-
itate about it! They will enter into every other ser-
vice, bind themselves to any other master, wear any
other livery. They will enslave themselves to that
which is most degrading, to that which they know
ensures death to soul and body, rather than come under
obligation to the law of Christ. When men had put
themselves to all other service and found no rest, then
Christ came to show what was the dominion under
which the soul should come. Paul recognized the
truth, and gloried to enlist himself under the banner
of the cross, despised and a thing of danger then, but
giving him a joy and peace he had not dreamed of

TIBNI AND OMRI. 257

at Gamaliel’s feet or found amid the fascinations of
Greek philosophy and art. Others, many— well known
as obscure—have since known and proved that, while
all other service rewards its followers with bondage,
this gives a perfect liberty; yet the generations halt,
hesitate, half-accept, and then fling away the offer.
Stifling, vacillating, the soul now pays its homage
here, now there; released from one thrall, it puts on
another; cheated here, it rushes to a new delusion there,
ever restless, ever changing, ever dissatisfied, yet reso-
lutely refusing the one only thing that’ can give it
satisfaction and rest.. Do you know why it is so per-
verse? I do not. I can only marvel that man, so
prone to seek his own comfort and good, baffled and
balked in all other things, should not earlier, out of
very selfishness, turn to that. Turn to it at some time
he does,— too late perhaps, and only with the shrill
shriek of despair, or when mid-life, sated with pleasure,
or age, powerless to enjoy, accepts it, “less because
it is heartily believed in and trusted than because a
distrust has risen of everything else.” The service
of Christ then becomes more “a memorial of pardon
addressed to an enemy than the guest of shelter with
an eternal friend,” giving but a too pungent sanction
to the sneer of the atheist,—that “religion is not the
hearty love of a fresh heart, but the resort of the jaded,
the enervated, and the unhappy.”

To avoid a disgrace like this, the taint of which must
inhere in the soul, let any one so soon as he comes to
the knowledge of good and evil, let any one who is
breaking away from evil, put himself at once solely
under the mastery of Christ. The varied vassalage

258 TIBNI. AND OMRI.

under which most lives waste may shift the burden of
unrest. They cannot remove it. The children of
Israel were no better off when Tibni died, for Omri
reigned. It was but a change in the scourge. Under
each, they were alike slaves. They had nohope. And
we, so long as we merely go from the service of one
pleasure, one habit, one form of excitement to another,
from one degrading thing to another a little less, so
long as we put ourselves under anything less than the
will of God and the way of Christ, shall only change
our yoke. We shall wear the collar still. Our new
master may seem a little better than the old. We may
be a little less at variance with God under his law.
The chances are all the other way; while, so sure as
there is truth, he who rejects all service but that of
Jesus, seeks and puts himself resolutely under that,
shall pass into that life of freedom which is the true
life of the soul, and establishes that oneness with God
for which the Saviour prayed, toward which all life
should lead.

S| aS ee See +

XXII.

SILENT: BUILDING.

“And the house which King Solomon built for the Lord was built of
stone, made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was
neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron, heard in the house while
it was in building. So was he seven years in building it.”-—I. Kincs
Wig 2 7535: |

THE idea of building a house for God seems to have
come first to the mind of David, when, resting from his
wars, he had brought the ark rescued from the hands
of the Philistines to its proper abode on Mt. Zion.
There, David had built for himself a house of cedars,
adorned with regal magnificence. The nearness of
the ark and its frail covering, the tabernacle,.its sim-
plicity and want of splendor compared with his own
abode, seem to have forcibly struck him. ‘What!
shall I, David, owing all that I am to the signal mer-
cies and blessings of Jehovah, dwell in this costly
house, while the ark of God dwelleth within curtains ?”
But God bade him desist. It was not for him to have
this high privilege of erecting the first temple to the
Most High. It was reserved for other more peaceful
times, for another, a wiser and a purer man. Deprived
by his wars and his sins of executing his purpose,
David employs the remainder of his reign in making
preparations for it, and solemnly enjoins it on his son

260 SILENT BUILDING.

and successor to go on and effect his cherished pur-
pose. |

We can form no just conception from the descrip-
tion of the character and appearance of a building
of materials and a method of architecture so wholly
unlike anything we have been accustomed to witness.
Splendid as it was for those barbaric days, it would
probably strike one accustomed to the later and more
exact styles as wanting in both dignity and grace. We
cannot fitly arrange all that mass of material collected
‘by David, increased by Solomon, elaborated by the
cunning hand of Hiram of Tyre, or comprehend the
glories of precious metals and stones in connection
with it. One fact in the enumeration arrests the eye
and the thought. It is that narrated in the words of
the text. Here was a vast building erected, materials
of brass, of stone, and of wood used, seven years was
it in building, and an almost innumerable company of
workmen about it, and yet never was there the sound
of a hammer or an axe or any iron tool heard upon it;
but its solid foundation was laid, and it grew into pro-
portion and glory, stone above stone, rafter beside
rafter, in solemn silence, as in the forest primeval the
mighty tree grows, roots itself, spreads and puts on
majesty and shape and power in a great and solemn
silence. Imagine it, all the work done afar, and
brought there, and heaved into place, while the move-
ments and the mien of every man indicate the sacred-
ness of the task, that busy crowd coming and going
in their labor, with the reverential awe that would
naturally characterize those possessed with the idea
that they built a house for God, in a very different

SILENT BUILDING. 261

sense from that in which we to-day use that phrase.
And this continued not for a brief season, but for
seven years,

That temple has passed away, and the glory and
the grace and the fashion thereof have perished. The
ploughshare of the foeman has passed over its founda-
tion, and the mosque of the heathen stands in its place,
It was the shrine and the pride and the hope of God’s
chosen people, and yet again, many think, shall on
that spot rise in fairer proportions another temple,
when this earth shall be the Lord’s, and he shall bring
again Zion. Meanwhile, another temple is building
in the heart and life that are loyal to God, and that,
like the first temple upon Zion, rises slowly, solemnly,
silently.

“My God! slow, silent, solemn to thee

It is not necessary to prove that every man does,
and must of necessity, build his own character. I
take it to be a recognized thing that a man zs only that
which he makes himself: that whatever he is made by
such external pressure and coercion as he can by no
human exertion and fidelity resist is no part of him-
self, nothing for which he can be considered account-
able.

Character ip not hereditary. We have that to make,
each man for himself. We may inherit talent, beauty,
fortune, but character cannot be transmitted. It fol-
lows no line of descent; it obeys no law of entail; it
inheres neither in blood nor estate. It is one’s own
- individual achievement, to be begun and builded up
from foundation corner to turret cap, from simplest
rudiment to the full and grand proportion of a divine

”
|

262 SILENT BUILDING.

completeness. Fathers and mothers and teachers, edu-
cation and circumstance and nature,—these are like

David and Hiram of Tyre, and the cunning workers in —

brass, and the hewers of stone, and the cedars upon
Lebanon. They hew and prepare and bring and lay
in order the material ; but the soul of man is as the
favored Solomon whom God had appointed to build his
house, who took these materials others had carefully
prepared and added to them, and himself built the
temple according to the planning of a divine architect.
More favored than Solomon, it is our task, after a
divine plan, to raise a holier fabric, one which shall
know neither deterioration nor decay.

In building, every one knows the necessity of a
foundation: that it should be deeply laid, and substan-
tial in its material. The Christian has his foundation
in faith in Christ. Many suppose this is all. If they
get what they consider saving faith, they rest. But,
at most and best, this is only the underpinning to char-
acter. To stop there would be as senseless as it would
be for an architect to stop when he had finished his
cellar. Character— man’s great work, that which is to
distinguish him here and hereafter, now and forever —
begins with the superstructure which a man places on
that foundation. Having that, his great work is, in
the language of an apostle, to take heed how he builds
thereupon.

Next to the foundation, we know that a prerequisite
to a firm, enduring fabric is exact and scrupulous
attention to every minute part, however trifling and
unimportant it may seem. There can be nothing com-
plete, nothing sure, else. Men, in building houses,

SILENT BUILDING. 263

often sacrifice substantial qualities to show; and, that
they may attract men’s eyes, much that is essential to
thoroughness and security is sacrificed,— the gay, elab-
orate front promising a perfect edifice, and within
showing slighting and slovenliness. The want of a
proper admixture of sand and lime —the very humblest
elements entering into the construction, which the
builder seemed to think he might disregard with impu-
nity —has in the end proved the cause of disastrous
fall and ruin; and the solidity of the foundation, the
beauty of the front facade, and all the elaborate chisel-
ling of cornice and architrave and the cunning plan-
ning of the architect cannot save it. It wanted that
which every joint should supply. The essential thing
was that little line of white lying between brick and
brick, the only thing that could be relied on to give
strength and security to the whole. Its necessity was
overlooked, and ruin followed. Just so it is in charac-
ter. Men think, if they make a good outside show,
establish a reputation for a few undeniable virtues, do
a few real deeds, their characters are made, and they
may fold their arms securely over the rest; and where
man’s eyes do not come, in the quarry of thought and
opinion and motive and feeling, in the little daily
detail of care and business and life, in the admixture
of these slightest elements out of which character
grows, they are heedless and indifferent, and leave
them to be decided by circumstance or by chance.
Most fatal is this. Life can have no coherence so.
Its parts, its separate virtues, cannot be relied upon.
Great, important, perhaps they are; but, like disjointed
stones and rafters, worthless for want: of that which

264. SILENT BUILDING.

shall bind all together, and cause all to grow into one
substantial structure.

A few isolated virtues or deeds in life, called out by
circumstance or chance, do not make character; but
character grows by the slow, imperceptible, silent ac-
cretion and inter-dependence of every day’s humble
efforts. Out of combined little, perhaps unseen, things,
its vastness and its value come, as those huge rocks
on which ships sometimes founder. It is these which
give integrity, which supply a hope, which make it
reasonable for a man to trust himself, which give secu-
rity ; and, in the beauty of compactness and complete-
ness, is a far higher beauty than that of any meretri-
cious ornament which glitters, but deceives. On this
foundation, by the careful building in of the most
trifling things, in work and deed, the character,— the
kingdom within,— without observation, grows, slowly,
little by little.

Slowly, silently, did Solomon’s temple rise into the
proportion and dignity of a house for God. Slowly,
silently, these characters of ours emerge from weak-
ness and chaos, from vanities and triflings and fears:
slowly, silently, through each day’s invisible progress,
rise we into the proportion and grace of the Christian
life. Weary the task, no doubt, and discouraging, as
sun after sun sets, the allotted time grows less, while
we detect no advance, do not see that another course
has been laid. Yet the vine grows through the sum-
mer hours, though no man ever detected it; and the
soul, under the full sun of a serene purpose, must
unfold, never so slowly, mayhap, never so silently, yet
ever so sure. It is the work of the present to toil,

SILENT BUILDING. 265

have patience to wait. We gain if we do these,
always be sure of that; and remember the other life
only sees the perfectness of the house we have builded.
We are never quite wise, and have to be taught again
and again the old lessons.

Away back in the elder time, God had to teach the
prophet that himself was not in the storm or in the
earthquake ; and Christ said it— how vainly- that his
kingdom would not come with observation. We are
always seeking signs,—as they of old,— and again and
again have to learn that the living presence of the
divine spirit within us comes not with sweep of storm
and outpouring and demonstration, resistless as fate,
but gently as the spring life comes, which is to ripen
everything into the luxury and harvest of autumn.
We have to learn it, and we don’t learn it after all.

The greater demand of the Christian Church yet is
for that access of a life in the soul which shall be mani-
fest to sense,—immediate, abrupt, scenic, storm and
tear, and physical distress, and shout or groan. Not
as the holy dove dropped silently out of the clear sky
upon the newly baptized Jesus, do men look now for
the coming of the spirit of God, but by outward demon-
stration. I think God never reverses his laws. Once
the way, always the way. Ina great silence he comes
to man, in great silence works with and within him.
True life is still life, is secret life. That can’t be the
“Lo! here,” or “Lo! there,” of the street or of the
house-top. It is silent growths into life that our re-
ligion demands, not spasmodic grasps at emotion. It
is character which, in its highest reach, is the life of
God in the soul of man, that we need to be at.

266 SILENT BUILDING.

In the spring days, you are only conscious of the
exquisite life that is all about you. You do not see
how the petals of the rose unfold, how the violet grows,
or by what subtile process it distils and scatters its
perfume.. Day bathes it in light, night wraps it about
with shades, dews come to it, and breezes blow, and
the life circulates through and through plant, flower,
and tree; but silent and unseen it all goes on. You
see only result.. You hear no voice. So with the
approach of God to the soul, so when he possesses
us,—no outward manifestation, no rending, as when
evil spirits go out, no toss and tumult and conten-
tion,— the exaggerations of men’s device and substitu-
tion,— but God comes down and takes possession
silently and makes peace in us. Silence goes hand in
hand with all that is solemn and grand, abiding and
beneficent. You cannot imagine a world brought out
of its chaos with noise and commotion, but all things _
subsiding into their places beneath the potent charm
of that moving spirit. There may have been noise and
contention before, the rude crashing and jarring of
conflicting elements; but before that presence all these
fled, and order and beauty grew in silence out of
disorder and confusion. All that is truly beneficent
is still, moves without noise. The wrath of the thun-
der and the storm may sometimes go before, but the
real blessing lies in the quiet sunshine that looks out
upon cloud and flower after the storm has passed.
And so, when the empire of old sin dies in the human
breast, there may be contention, manifest, fierce; but
ever the new life grows up serenely and silently, in a
holiness of joy and peace the world may not meddle

SILENT BUILDING. 267

with, which cannot be known by or interpreted to
another.

Every one must know that his best life is his silent
life; his truest growth, his silent growth. What I
wear outside amounts to little. What I am, what is
my life, myself, is inside; and inside is all the work
done that fashions me.

The soul is not made as the statue is, with click of
hammer and chip of chisel from without; but the soul
is made of its own ingrowth, as a peach is. And no
man shall say: “See there! It grows!’ You shall
see that it as grown: that is all. Growing, you shall
not know or measure. The husbandman les down
and sleeps. He hears nothing of process, he sees
nothing; but in due time he reaps. It is all a solemn
silence, asis the movement of the stars. We live out
our more evanescent pleasures, our lesser joys, all the
mere surface things of every day. We show them,
we talk about them: they insist on being seen and
handled and heard. But when it comes to the real
things, the deep things, the things that make life, that
are ourselves, how silent we are! The honest mo-
ments of the soul are its voiceless moments. They
_ have in them what is unutterable by language, what
refuses to be phrased, what we never put into words
to ourselves, what the innermost of us understands by
that understanding which is deeper than all speech,
and makes known to God in that language, in that
speech, God comprehends. In the infinite silence, one.
is not merely alone, but in communion with the Infi-
nite, as the high priest in the holy of holies,— nor
voice, nor sound, but God, and the silence is the

268 SILENT BUILDING.

dialogue of the two. Unutterable joy or sorrow, how
it silences! When we are lifted to the highest rapture,
when we are bowed by crushing grief, not pazean nor
dirge satisfies, is craved, but silence; and in silence,
growth, expansion. God and ourselves, none other.
No distraction, we alone. Crises in spiritual being,
how breathless we await their issue, with a silence
so intense as almost to be audible!

New steps in faith or work,—how softly we take
them, putting the foot down painfully, lest some tru-
ant echo starting from its slumbers should proclaim
the fact! New experiences, new, unexpected, or long-
awaited results,— how we brood over them, cherishing
them as a parent bird, with protecting wings and
a fond gentleness! Our prayers, our purposes, our
doubts, our strifes, our days of darkness, our hours of
light, our conquests, our defeats, the glow of hope, the
bitterness of fear,— who knows them save Him whose
eye looks down in secret upon us? Not the friend
clasped closest to our bosoms dreams of all the alter-
nating life which goes on within the seclusion and
silence of the soul, and is- weaving into proportion that
thing we shall be. Our truest moments, moments of
realest fealty to principle, be they joyous or sad, we
cannot share. No word comes up from the deep foun-
tain to give a just significance to them. The word is
not coined that could. Only the Infinite, going down
under speech and understanding everything, compre-
hends.

And no one knows the amount and the worth of the
quiet lives that are grown into, all the time right about
us, who do their duty, have their trials, bear their bur-

SILENT BUILDING. 269

dens, make their growths, yet give no sign, unless at
some crisis moment when the ripe result surprises..
How little do they who only see results —who, per-
haps, will not even notice them —realize the process
‘and the cost of growth, through what silent agonies,
what resolute bearing we have come up, the price we
have paid for our power or our peace! Robertson
says in one of his letters: “How little we know one
another's bitternesses! How little we suspect the
hours of secret agony and cold struggle that every
earnest, living heart has to go through in this most
unintelligible world! To be where we and those around
us are living in two different worlds of feeling is tenfold
more intolerable than to be where a foreign language,
not one word of which we understand, is spoken all
day long.” And yet it is by just these things we get
our best growths, our true grapple, sinew, and power.
These secret, sacred, silent struggles are they which
lift us above the low average of man stature, and give
us proportions that ally us with God. Shall we not
accept the conditions for the sake of the product?
This life —the best of it, the best use and the best
end —is to ripen toward God; and, as the fruit could
not ripen for us were it all sunshine, no more can we
ripen for him except through some dark, some storm,
some anxiety, some doubt, some cross. And, if it took
the thirty years of Nazareth to grow the Christ of the
Jordan and the wilderness, shall we repine at the
years that it takes to grow the Christ-life in us, which
shall make us at our Jordans and our wildernesses
such as he? The familiar hymn has it,—

“Tn secret silence of the mind
My heaven and there my God I find,”

2/70 SILENT BUILDING.

And the other truth —I do not say the more important

truth —is that it is there that one finds self; and no |

true gain is made in living until the self be found.

How often in life we detect in others, by some sud-
den revealing, the extent and the result of this silent
life! Some circumstance —it is quite apt to be some
reverse, sickness, misfortune, disappointment — sud-
denly opens up to you the fact that some one at your
side, unsuspected of you, has grown into a great moral
strength. That calm, sustained life is revealed now:
that inner fabric is beautiful and complete; and the
graces you had loved as fitting ornaments to such a
spirit are found resting upon, and in turn upholding,
the more solid and substantial portions of character.

I remember one of those lovely ones everybody
loves to look at,— child of luxury and fashion, flattered,
caressed, adored, all bright before her, and much good
apparently for many years in store,— suddenly was laid
upon a bed of suffering, and told that she must die.

There was the greatest interest in her fate, and a cor-
responding desire to know in what spirit she would
meet it; for she-had seemed to live for the -world,
absorbed in the gayeties which her position and her
powers gathered around her. Others said she was too
beautiful to die; but, when the truth was told her, in
sweetest resignation and holiest confidence she heard
it, and said that never in all that fevered life she had
led had she forgotten that. She had made God her
friend, in her sphere had done her duty silently.
While all eyes gazed upon her, and many envied the
brilliancy of her career, she was working upon a temple
of God in her own heart, setting it in order that it

lO Se a ee

SILENT BUILDING. 271

might become a meet residence for him. It was a
most striking instance of a not uncommon fact,—one
which the lifted veil of history sometimes shows us,
one which we may often meet with in life, teaching us,
when we are tempted to doubt or condemn because we
cannot see, that there are deep things in human hearts
and human experiences,— too deep for the plummet of
moral fallibility to fathom,—that the deeper the spirit
life in many bosoms, the less the noise and show.

Slowly, with a solemn sense of the magnitude of his |
task, man toils at the temple he is to build and dedi-
cate to God,— the temple of a pure heart and a perfect
life. There may be noise in removing the rubbish of
an old carnal being in order that the foundations may
be laid; but, as it rises into sight and shape, the sound
of no hammer or axe or any tool is heard therein.
As they who labored upon Zion went with bended
heads and reverent air and silent steps, bearing the
material and laying it in place, so we reverently and
silently build up within a temple to the Lord,—-a tem-
ple fitiy framed together, goodlier than that of the wise
king, in which the Lord shall dwell, not as in mystery
between the cherubim or in the veiled secrecy of the
holiest place, but as he loves to dwell ever,—in open
communion with his children.

Herein lies a great truth. We are builders of our
own characters. We have different positions, spheres,
capacities, privileges, different work to do in the
world, different temporal fabrics to raise; but we are
all alike in this,— all are architects of fate,

XXITI.

JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL.

“John the Baptist, preaching in the willderness.”— MArT. iii, r.
“Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”— MARK i, I.
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.”— II. Cor. i., 1.

WueEn I see what is the ordinary paucity of man-
hood; how seldom one in a generation or a century
really outsteps his peers ; how uniform, low, dull, is the
average,—it is a marvel to me—and a marvel that
ever grows—that one and the same generation, one
and the same race, and under very adverse circumstance
(except that adverse circumstance is the real cause, and
of the best), should have produced three such men as
the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul. There is a great deal
perplexing about our gospel history, almost it perplexes
more than it clears; but in nothing am I more perplexed
than this, that the gospel should have had, at its early
starting, three such advocates,— more, that it should
have needed them. I may get some idea of the neces-
sity of a forerunner, but it is a puzzle that grows to
more and more why there was any need of an after-
runner. I can see what he did, what Christianity
would soon have become but for him, as well as what
it has become through him; but why there should have
been that work to do, why a man who had never seen
or known Jesus should be the man to do it, is ever a
perplexity, and ever will be.

JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. | 278

Let us see something of these three men, minds,
potential influences,—these very variant men with so
variant work and method,—and let us see if we can
arrange to ourselves the separate and well-divided parts
which they had in the great drama. 7

But let me first say that John and Paul were great
men. I see no signs of greatness anywhere among the
original twelve, not one of them men of mark; very
ordinary men, even the three best known; men well
enough for every day, but evidently no way great men,
not crisis men, not men on whom affairs turn, not men
to lead ages or guide) opinion; men not of the calibre
needed when times are changing, thought moulding,
action prospering; not one of them a man of power
in brain or character,— Peter, bold enough, but not
reliable, hot-headed, unbalanced, bigoted, and seeing
only narrowly; John, timid, effeminate, a man to lean
on Jesus’ bosom, not to lead in Jesus’ work; James
and the rest hardly more than names to us to-day.

But John the Baptist and Paul are really men.
They are the true workers and the true heroes: they
have power and character,— men to have made their
mark anywhere, at any time, in any genuine work;
men to admire and respect, fitting well into the niche
they occupy, and leaving behind a personality which
the world will always recognize; the one receding at
the advent of the greater one whose herald voice alone
he is, the other pushing himself well forward, taking
the aggressive, following after the great one, boasting
of himself in Christ, as zealously as the other timidly
declared himself unworthy to unloose his shoe-latchet ;
the one filled with a sturdy, unenthusiastic, prosaic pur-

274 JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL.

pose of duty, the other filled with a quickened spirit,
which led him among unseen things, snatching him
beyond the prosaic, and inspiring him with a kindling
enthusiasm to burn all through his own time, and to
make every reader in every age tingle with its unfail-
ing influence.

The Baptist was personally known to Jesus. If they
had not been brought up together,— as legend and art
would seem to suggest,—in education they must have
been similar; and with the general purport of the

mission of Jesus John must have been familiar,

though it is amply evident that the last and greatest
of the prophets had no real idea of what his mission
shadowed. He was Jew of the Jews. Nota touch of
the Christian about him. His the spirit of the proph-
ets only,— men from whom he legitimately descended,
in thought and dress and method. He is aman of the
Decalogue. No breath from the mount of the Beati-
tudes had touched, refreshed, fructified his spirit. Of
the old and the past was he, a lingerer in that twilight
that closes a night and preludes a day, a man of back-
ward look, who hoped for a renewed Israel, but never
knew one pulsing hope of the coming kingdom,— last,
best, greatest of prophets, less than the least of the
kingdom of God. He closes the long and honored line
of gifted men who had, through the many centuries of
misfortune and misrule, made luminous the pages of
Jewish history, and who, from time to time, like stars
upon a stormy sky, had shone out clear and strong,
proclaiming the survival of the better spirit, renewing
the hope that, at some time, a better day would come.
The better day was come. John was its herald, but

JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. | 27s,

the opening was neither to be seen nor to be for-
warded by him. Like another Moses, he was to die at
the threshold, not to pass over and possess.

It was his unique felicity to have pronounced upon
him such eulogy as never had fallen from human lips.
Jesus was not chary of commendation. It was one of
his graces that he spoke soothing words wherever he
saw honest purpose. What words approach that heart-
felt benediction which, if his disciples bore faithfully
back to his lone prison, must have been sweetest solace
for many a bitter hour. It is like a “Well done!”’ from
God. It puts the Baptist by himself: it stands him
high, and separates him from all other men. And what
ourselves we knew of him confirms the eulogy. He
called himself a voice, and he was that,—and not only
that, not a voice out of cities and cultures, but a voice
out of the wilderness, rousing the people, as the voice
out of the cloud precedes the storm. He was an old-
time ‘prophet, apart from men, save as he had a mes-
sage to bring. But he was more. None of his old-
time predecessors —the grand men of the gray past —
to stand by his side. Not the place he held, not the
work he did, but the man, a marvel. He was no.
part of a machine or of a drama, not merely a sharp,
warning cry, but, with all his rough exterior and
strange uncouthness and solitude of spirit, a rarely
lovable man, who would have repelled by his raiment,
but won by his heart. The tender consideration that
he had for Jesus; the unselfish way in which he thrust
himself aside; the calmness of his rebuke to his ex-
‘cited disciples; the modesty with which he declared ~
his own decrease; the willingness that Christ should

276 JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL.

grow,—all these rare qualities are the qualities indi-
cative of a rare soul. One of them almost enough,
many would think, but all bound up in one, making a
rare whole one rarely sees. It requires a large, full
nature, a sublime unjealousy, great self-control, and
great fidelity and genuine largeness, to yield one’s own
individual place, work, repute, to fall back, to consent
that one’s self and all one has done shall fade, be
forgotten, sunk into oblivion, while another takes the
honors ; to see a thing you have initiated, toiled for,
risked all for, been defeated in, go on to its success
through another. To feel warmly toward, welcome,
approve, rejoice in, and indorse that other unquali-
fiedly, is a virtue few of us reach up to. Yet this is
just what that man did, and did, apparently, without
hesitancy or demur. He had that hard form of trial,
—to see his disciples leave him and follow another,
—a thing which philosopher, teacher, preacher, never
faces but it cuts deep. Yet his great nature met it
and rose above it. The Christ was the worthier.
That settled it. No personal ends or hopes should
stand between. His very shoe-latchet was too sacred
a thing for him to touch. Without apparently know-
ing what, he did know that the Christ brought other
and more truth than he. He was but the dawn, the
Christ should be the full sun. He was but the voice,
Christ should be the life. He but prepared the way,
but the Christ with beautiful steps should show it.
It is a superb magnanimity in him, unconscious as a
child. A child he was, bred in deserts, and unused
to the diplomacies of men, but with all rugged manli-
ness and generosity, standing out perhaps from his

ee ee ee ee

JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 277

torture-house, his one querulous or doubting inquiry,—
as who would not who felt that the great movement
himself had proclaimed halted under the hands of the
very man ordained to push it to its success?

His the least pronounced work of the three, as from
his position was inevitable,— the closing, the concluding,
of the most magnificent epoch that any nation has pre-
sented ; for in true greatness there is in history noth-
ing anywhere to stand beside the history of the descend-
ants of Abraham,— not specially great in arms, traffic,
commerce, art, or man, but great in the fundamental
and broad principles which underlie the national moral-
ity, religion, and life. And, as Jesus showed, it was a
grand culmination in his single person. He stands
wreathed with the immortal chaplet of approval Jesus
wove and placed upon his memory. The great pro-
phetic caste closes and is crowned in him.

What shall I say of that other name before all other
names, man above all other men, whom centuries and
languages have been talking about and extolling, with-
out beginning really to give us the full glory that
shines out in his matchless manhood? Brains have
been busy conceiving and tongues busy proclaiming
him; but just what that hfe was, the crude outlines of
which meet us in the evangelic page, none have yet
succeeded in telling. And honest difference vibrates all
the way between the extremes of opinion, making him
God on the one hand and a very mistaken man on the
other. Under either extreme, we have one sure thing,
—a grand personality, a life, a power, that got itself into
the world’s experience, and changed the current of the
world’s flow. How to get at the pith and marrow of

OU Bens JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL,

that personality ; how to conceive and present it; how
to make it, to one’s own soul, the vital, inspiring energy ;
how to weave these few broken incidents into a unique
and satisfactory whole; and how to clothe the skeleton
they present in all the glow of life,— is the great inquiry,
the great desire, indeed it is the great need. I take it
that to-day the Christian cause has no more pressing
need than just this of an adequate conception and
portrayal of the Christ. Much thought has been turned
that way ; and men of practised skill, as men of journey-
work, have tried their hand at it, and we have many
lives of Jesus attempted. Mostly from the extreme of
Renan on the one hand to the extreme of the extrem-
est orthodox literalist on the other,—they strike you
as not so much attempting to develop a life as attempt-
ing to bolster a theory. Too much art confronts you,
and the dear simplicity of truth is wanting. As in the
ages only at rare intervals does the genius of painter
or sculptor assert itself, leaving behind it lineaments
touched as with some other than the ordinarily -human
power, so only is it at intervals that a master mind at-
tempts the rarer and grander work of bringing the
deepest thought out to man. And I -suppose we have
got to wait till all things shall consent to the moulding
of the mind which can grasp in harmonious whole the
disjointed, in some instances contradictory, in many
cases the perplexing, fragments of the Messiah’s life,
group and ‘grade and subdue them into proportion and
place, and then give us such an impersonation as man
must say, “‘‘ Ecce Homo,’— This indeed is he.” There
are approximations to this already, signs of a coming!
Many men have done well in greater or lesser part,—

JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 279

men of the broader school in Germany, England, in this
country,— who you feel have advanced the whole matter
beyond the stiff and stark presentation of creed; and,
for an effigy called Christ, have substituted a more hu-
man and living being. Still, we wait ; and that wonder
of all time no man satisfactorily conceives or delineates.

It does not need that I repeat the wondrous story,—
how a young man, low-born, child of a carpenter of
Nazareth of Galilee, himself of that same craft, came
in the might of a great spirit and under the benediction
of the opening heavens, and set himself to make men
see how, not as men had thought, but in a deeper
- spirit, he was the prophet who was to come. Without °
noise or observation, save such as tender words and
loving looks and the gracious carriage of his life called
out, he spent a few, active, harassed months, and de-
nied by one friend, betrayed by another, deserted by
all, died a death of ignominious agony; and, when he
has gone away, you feel that there is a change in life.
You sum it up, and you feel there is not a thing in it
history would care to save, not an incident it would
select to transfer to its pages. And yet at once you
say, as you close the record, ‘“ What a life was that!”
And, whenever you recur to it, that thought comes first,
last, always prominent. The fresh reading he gave to
old truths, the new things he told us of God and duty,
are there; but first and always is his life, with its life-
giving power. And, that he knew the secret of life, all
we know who have ourselves lived. When we get into
human experience and strait, and go to man, to philoso-
phies, they fail; when we turn to ourselves, we fail;
to what nature says of God, it fails; while the turning

280 JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL.

to Jesus, ultimately, if we are honestly true, brings to
us, out of his life, the guiding, the teaching, the sup-
port we need. ‘The one striking thing about Jesus is
that, apart from his mere teaching, he never lost his
sweetness, as philanthropists, men who put themselves
forward as social and moral and religious leaders, so
almost invariably do. We find it that the pressure and
conflict sour and harden, make irascible and unjust,
vindictive and termagant. On their reformatory side,
repulsive, how sweet soever in all else. Jesus was alto-
gether lovely, and the same to the end. He never let
his own sufferings or non-success, other men’s opposi-
- tions or hates, interfere with his single purpose, with
the sweet tenderness of his spirit. Smite him on the
cheek, deride him, betray him, take up stones to stone
him, crucify him, misunderstand, desert, ridicule, scoff
at him, he never moves from that one temper. Amid
all, he pursues his even course, calm as the mid-day sun,
and conquers as he seems to fail. The light that he
brought by his word is fully equalled by the sweetness
he showed in his life.—the one no richer legacy than
the other, himself the centre of an influence not yet
felt as it should be, but yet—who can doubt ?—
mightily to prevail.

I never know exactly what to say or think of Paul,
as unique a character as either of the others, the first
man who had caught the Christ spirit and fire, the real
baptism of the Holy Ghost, as John had been the last
man who had lived after the prophets, was himself the
uttermost of their teachings and hope. As John
bridges the chasm between the prophet and the
Christ, so Paul bridges the chasm between the Christ

JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 281

and the Christian. On the one side Jesus teaches the
Baptist, on the other the great apostle. He was the
only one of them who had any culture,—a man of re-
finement, letters, society, though I have doubts if he is
to be considered as the finished scholar many would
have him. Evidently a somewhat scholar, more evi-
dently is he a man of affairs, who loves power and
place, to lead, to rule, to force; quick to conceive, bold
to perform, tenacious of purpose as of principle, a tor-
rent or tornado swiftly striking at the point he would
make, regardless of bearing down all intervening obsta-
cle; politic, plausible, ingenious in treating a topic or
dealing with men, his policy sometimes overriding the
moral courage which marks his usual conduct; fearless
‘before a foe, a mob, the Jewish hierarchy, or the Roman
law ; of a matchless, womanly tenderness, a quick, full’
sympathy, and a certain delicate, courtly friendliness,
never forgetting his salutes at the end of the most hur-
ried or impassioned epistle, to older or younger, lower
or higher, any who might have just reason to be remem-
bered or might be hurt by forgetfulness. I think what
we call distinctively the Christian graces first began to
take shape in him, and have left us the figure of a man
animate with whatever trait we most desire to find or
rejoice in in the best manhood. It was no easy thing
for one so full of passion, of so impetuous impulses, to
calm himself from the ruthless bigot and persecutor to
the man of so eager and deep affection and self-forget-
ting service; to pass from the rooted narrowness of
the straitest Pharisee to the perfect liberty of a son
of God; to see how utterly the spirit of Jesus de-
manded not merely the obliteration of all Jewish rit-

282 JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL.

ual, but of mere Jewish morality and putting away of
the old man after Moses, as well as after sin, and the
putting on of the new man, which should only and
utterly be after Christ. Whether you take him as in
council with the Christian college at Jerusalem, or
before the culture of Athens, or at the bar of Agrippa,
or disputing with and parting from Peter, or hurrying
through long journeys to bring aid to feeble churches,
or inditing elaborate epistles to wayward churches, ex-
horting, rebuking, commending, or standing before the
high priest, or reassuring frightened sailors, or instruct-
ing Timothy, his loving friend,—in every position,
under whatever stress or disadvantage, you feel the man
equal to the occasion, as if he were set aside for just
the one immediate purpose,—a military commander, a’
courtier, an orator, a bishop of churches, a giver of law,
a leader of forlorn hope; brusque, exacting, tender, im-
perious, submissive; a man to cower before, to take to
your heart; to plan and to carry out; a man of affairs,
and a man of so sublime a spirit of devotion and self-
abnegation as to confess of himself that he really did
not know whether he was in the flesh or out of it,
blending the common-sense of every day with the ec-
static vision of a devotee. So compact and sinewy
every way, so morally and spiritually gigantic, that of
yourself you figure him a model of physical perfectness,
and it is with a shock of incongruity that you are told
that these traits attach to no Colossus, but are asso-
ciated with a contemptible, personal presence, waned
by some distressing and always obtrusive physical lack ; _
shamed by its presence, yet but the more, because of it,
abounding in all desirable virtue, One sees specks in

JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 283

the sun, and easily you may find motes, flaws in him,
but, take him for all in all, a man for the world to wait
long before it shall produce his mate; the man who
saved. Christianity to the world almost at the cost of
the Christ, through whose fiery conception and rhetoric
men have rather been moulded than by the gentler
words of Jesus; the man militant, who set in array the
gospel against the serried ranks of both Judaism and
heathenism, and, as the old Highland warrior with clay-
more in hand, hewed a way for the truth, or a Coeur de
Leon with swinging battle-axe struck to the death
what hierarch or dynasty opposed him. Crusader,
knight-errant, troubadour, he entered the lists against
all comers, bore down all opposers ; and not -David, by
his casement on Zion, sung to the night heavens more
devoutly than he poured the rich deeps of his heaven-
touched spirit into his letters, some of whose passages
are unmatched for tender sublimity of sentiment, and
lift the man of a keen and remorseless logic into the
highest realms of delicate, poetic conception and ex-
pression, and ‘a singer of the soul’s sweetest things,—
faith and trust and love and yearning,—as well as
David, while his thought, touched to higher issue by
other faith, leads us where David never essayed, among
experiences David never knew. You may recall pas-
sages which should fairly entitle him to the claim of
the first singer of Christian sweetness,—to our relig-
ion, what David was to the Jewish faith.

A marvellous trio surely, to have been men of the
same country and the same generation,— men so unlike,
yet combining upon one work, each a lively stone in
the new edifice which was to rise sublimer and.more

284 JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL,

enduring than Solomon’s temple, in whose service of
sacrifice and faith all nations were to join, and halle-
lujahs from all discordant tongues to blend in one
grand, harmonizing choral to God, who not so much
of all blood made all peoples as purposes that they all
be of one faith.

And so we well see how, in God’s plans, divine harmo- -

nies work themselves out through seemingly contending
discords. Three so unlike men, differing in themselves
and in gift, inaugurate a new mission to the human
soul. The hair shirt and the locusts and the solitary
life and the ascetic mood and the shrill cry precede
Him whose feet, shod with glad tidings, make beautiful
the way amid sin, sickness, and sorrow, bringing peace
and quiet and hope; while he who will not cry aloud
himself precedes, the spirit militant, the Charles Martel,
before whose sturdy blows you hear the crash of falling
gods, while the wail of their devotees is covered and
quelled by the jubilant shouts of conquest and the
peeans that lift themselves as the truth in Jesus makes
its glorious way. Forerunner and successor do their
faithful work. John prepares, Jesus tells it all with
holy lips and holy life, Paul follows and applies. John
breaks up the ground, Jesus casts in the seed, Paul
covers it in. The blade has sprung, and the nations
wait and toil for the coming of the full corn in the ear,
the precursor and prophecy of the harvest.

March 16, 1879.

XXIV.

LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES.

“The brook in the way.”— PSALM cx,, 7.

A BROOK is a stream of living, running water, born
among the hills or of unseen springs in meadows. It
has a life all its own; and in its moods, its wanderings,
its rise and flow, and end, it epitomizes the life all lead.
Born tiny and helpless, it pushes itself and grows by
pushing; it dances and gurgles and sparkles, is bright
and glad; it is surly and clouded and impetuous and
mischievous; it is parched and shrunken; it creeps
along under rocks, quiet and deep; it dashes over
rocks, shallow and noisy; it sleeps under the shadow
of trees its own moisture has created; and it sweeps
grandly into the broad glare of the sun. It is shy, it
is bold, it is a joy, it is a fear, a thing of beauty,
mayhap a thing of terror, in bounds a’ blessing, out
of bounds a horror and a curse; and that is pretty
much what man is.

Up among the hills, away off from man, where only
winds and bird notes and snapping twigs break the
silence, how one welcomes the voice of a brook, and
leaves his way to follow its calling! What a joy it is,
—the fall from rock to rock, the white glitter as it
washes down the precipice, the dash and leap, the
laugh, the prattle! A wild, untamed thing of beauty

286 LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES.

and of solitude, it fascinates the man of civilization,
who, somehow, never gets beyond, away from, the ad-
miration and the craving for pure, simple, untutored
nature.

Nor only when a wild thing of solitudes, to be
sought and enjoyed alone in off hours, but the brook in
our way, crossing our daily paths. It adds to the pict-
ure of the landscape: none is perfect without it. It
groups and feeds trees, and drapes them as no upland
can; it twists and winds itself in and out, a sparkling
ribbon on a verdant field; it breaks the monotony of
other beauty by its own, fills in and fills out, com-
pletes the scene. A meadow with a brook in it and
a meadow without, what unlike things!

More than beautiful, the brook in the way is a thing
of delightsome memory to those of us whose thought
runs back to school-boy days, of skipping stones, and
wading, and tempting fish with pin and worms,—a joy
old Izaak Walton never knew,— who have, through long
summer hours, teased some sober, reverend minnow,
beneath the cool shadow of a rock, in whose head was
cunning ‘too subtle for our shallow craft, or have
stooped just as far as we dared, and a good deal farther
than was safe, over the brink, that the school-girl at
our side should have the elderberry or flower she ad-
mired, or, in less amorous venture, the bird’s nest our-
selves coveted; whose later years, loitering or lying on
the ground, have gazed in lazy wistfulness at sparkling
waters whirling away, and ever-repeated eddies, while
the subdued melody filled not ear only, but the heart
with that lotus-like oblivion into which no voice nor
language obtrudes, from whose restfulness one rouses

x
4
ie
A

ee ee!

LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES. 287

sharply and shakes himself again, before he can quite
take up the burden and the staff.

More than a beauty or a memory, the brook in the
way is a refreshing, not to eye and ear alone, but to
weary feet and heated brow and swollen hands and
parching lips of the wayfarer. In the true travel days,
what a god-send to the lagging horse a wayside brook!
And how he stood, and stood, and drew in huge sighs
of comfort, and drank with all the measured tasting
of the water that the connoisseur gives his wine, with
muzzle well plunged, and dilated nostril and twinkling
eye and restless ear and quivering frame, the whole
dumb eloquence of grateful satisfaction, needing some
coaxing before he could bring himself to feel again the
bearings and stress of his load and the tedium of the -
hot and dusty way. And, when the summer noon is
hot and sluggish, nature takes her siesta, the cows
stand deep in the running water, chewing the cud in
measured cadence, and with lazy monotony switching
the tail, so wise, so mute, so comfortable! Among the
hills or over beyond the fences, in meadow or woods,
or by the roadside or across the way, to beast, to men,
a grateful blessing is the brook.

And so the brook is a picture, a synonyme, a just
figure of speech, of restful pleasure, of genial beauty
and refreshing. It crosses dry and arid highways,
and they lose their uninteresting tameness. We rest
beside them, or we take fresh courage for our way, as
we cross them.

In the journey of life, our ways are crossed by
brooks ; that is, to our weary feet and heavy eyes and
worried heads, in the dull monotony of duty and of

288 LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES.

being, there come refreshing places,— not nooks and
dells and loitering places, but places of flowing water,
crossing our paths, oftentimes in unexpected places.
Weare too apt not to see that these are brooks, alive
with nourishment for us. Wecall them something else,
and get some other teaching from them. It depends
a good deal upon the names we give things, what is the
manner of effect they produce upon us. And we go
on in life, giving things wrong names or unwise names,
receiving wrong or unwise impressions; and mostly the
wrong names and impressions are bad, and not good.
Why should we make.all halts in life into glooms, and
every tryst of the soul a sadness? Why make the
things that strike across our path into checks, barriers,
thwartings, disappointments,— hardness of fate to our-
selves or others,— flaws, chasms, gulfs, or, if we be
sometimes led up to things which are really these, why
not see how many times it is that which crosses our
way is a brook, living and limpid with its refreshing?
Here is the going of the old year, the coming of
the new. Why not think of it as a brook crossing
pleasantly the pathway of our pilgrimage,— not a dark,
depressing, lugubrious thing, but a thing bright with
beauty and with joy? Very much we are made to feel
as if it were a portentous and unpleasant something
that yawns before our feet, as we cross the wholly
artificial barrier which separates two calendar years.
The people who pray and weep and sob, and call up
memories, and drape with funereal glooms the depart- ~
ing hours in their own secret chambers, or those in
more public exhibitions of the watch-meeting, even
those who spend the hours in frolic, and salute the new

4
:

a ee ee ae eS ee eT

LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES, 289:

year, as the new king is saluted before the old is
well gone,—carry over into the new, deeper down
than superficial salutation or gift, a secret weariness,
an ill-defined dissatisfaction, a teasing restlessness, be-
cause of movements and monitions of the within man,
rebuking and haunting and discomforting. We are
rather rasped by pulpit and by monitor and by con-
science urging us to look at the past, and bring it up
in sharp contrast with what should have been,—the
warning as to the future, and imperative with the
urgency of ¢ke now. It isa dark line drawn across our
way, a deep ditch, a gulf fixed,— on one side one eter-
nity, on the other side another. There is too much
demand for the gloom about it, as if here were a halt,—
the soul must call for introspection and contrition and
self-weighing and measurement. Whatever we may
throw into tone and gift, into salutation and occasion,
it is rather a cheerless time we have of it inside,
that we think we ought to have. Let it be these self-
considerations in some wholesome sort, nothing exag-
gerated, morbid, purely occasional, and then let the
crossing the meridian be as the crossing a_ brook
in one’s way,— encouragement, stimulant, refreshing,
sending us forward on our journey.

And this season ought to be that. Do you suppose
God delights in lead colors,—in the bowed heads, in
the perturbed spirits, in the long faces, and the dreary
hearts? He has no taste for glooms. The only thing
he has made black he has hidden away from sight, and
has ordained it should minister light and heat and joy.
Do you believe that discipline and experience — the
hard times and the hard lots which we more complain of

290 LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES.

than have —are the unrelieved things we make them
by the aid of theology and our own selfishness? Are
there not more times of refreshing than of repressing
in the average human lot, more brooks in the way
than ditches or gulfs? It isa thing to be remembered
that we cross the threshold of another year; but shall
I only think of my sins and my shortcomings, count
up my losses, renew my sorrows, and re-shed my tears ?
Shall I not also think of my hopes, my great opportu-
nities, and my advance? Shall I say in my greeting,
“T wish you a happy New Year,” and yet feel in my
soul, a good deal uncomfortably, that I ought not to
make it a happy day to myself,—but atime of mor-
tification and penance, a river of Babylon and my harp
upon the willows, rather than a brook in my way, sug-
gestive of elastic life and hope and a great beyond joy
of ever-increasing power and broadening expanse, ere
it shall empty the full volume of its waters in the wait-
ing sea?

We do not take refreshing enough. J do not mean
mere holiday, but a better rest, a truer strengthening.
We keep ourselves in the worry and fret of life. We
see things as blanks, as barriers, not as brooks; as dis-
turbances, not as helps; as hindrances, not as profits.
We never take off harness. We unyoke the ox, we
strip and rub down the horse, we let out for his run the
cosseted dog; but we do not take off the harness from
self, strip and rub and give it a run,—no genuine sea-
sons of refreshing. People used to run through a life
of every indulgence, and then go and shut themselves
up in convents or hermitages, and make it all square.
A people jaded nowadays with the world’s wear snatch

LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES. 291

little occasions for dainty penance and seclusion, and
try to make the soul’s refreshing out of restrictions,
as if that were the best way to serve God.
“Shall fasts and penance reconcile

Thy favor, and obtain thy smile?”
the hymn asks; and the old prophet sternly says: “ In-
cense is an abomination unto me I cannot away with.
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to
me?” And the other prophet grandly asks, ‘ What
doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly
and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?”

Morally, existence is with us a penance, a task-work
of God imposed upon us, worse than an Egyptian or
American slavery: We do not recognize or will not
stop at the brooks which cross our way ; or, if we cross
them, we lap, as the men of Gideon, and rush on, in-
stead of cooling our limbs and quenching our thirst by
generous draughts, and getting the inspiration of fresh
courage for fresh travel.

All this is wrong, and making life into something
God did not ordain. It is easy enough to see the earth- .
face all gashed and seamed with ravines and earthquake
foot-prints and ragged steps of torrents and glaciers,
torn and rent and distorted by avalanche and whirl-
wind, barren with desert sand and mountain preci-
pice; and so it is easy enough to see human life all
defaced by scars of misery and ignorance and want and
suffering and woe, to dwell upon the shadows and mis-
haps of our own lives. But the earth-face is better;
and human life is not what we paint, when we paint
it in the shadows and paint out the light. There were
those, the Psaimist said, who, passing through the val-

252. LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES.

ley of Baca, made it a well; and Baca was “astony place
where there was no water and no herbage and no
trees.’ They made the dull, dreary place beautiful
with life.

There are those passing through life who make it a
Baca, a stony place “where there is no water, no trees,
no herbage”’; and again, others passing the same way,
and under similar circumstances, make it glad in
springs of renewing water, welling up from all manner
of hidden places, and pouring themselves out in streams
to refresh parched places, and make the very deserts of
life to blossom.

And it takes so little to do this, only one has the true
spirit! It is amazing,—the little things that give great
refreshing, the constant need we all stand in of other
people’s kindness, courage, or faith, brightness in word
and deed, and at how small an outlay from them isa
great blessing to us, how small outlay from us might
give great refreshing to them. Whatever we may
make the pathway of childhood, the broad road of
. maturer. life is apt to be dry and dusty, and heavy with
burden, to lack refreshing watercourses. We all get
so earnestly into the “struggle for existence,’ so much
of one’s own success is by the pulling down of another,
— your gain, somebody’s loss,—that the charity of
Paul, “the enthusiasm for humanity,” gets mighty little
chance with us.

We are contestants for a prize, and it is not Be
things, but men, that are in our way, that we must get
one side. Despite us, the sweetness goes from us; and
we get hard and inconsiderate and selfish,—at any rate,
thoughtless. When I recall the heartiness of a simpler

LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES. 293

time, as we still find it among the poor, I but feel that
the advantage of civilization and culture is purchased
at loss of the finer thing we should be. Culture and
civilization make us critical; and to be critical is soon
_ to be captious, if not cynic. Everything reduces itself
to-criticism in our day. We are nothing except we
are critical; and criticism, to be criticism, must be de-
structive, if not detractive. We criticise; that is, pick
flaws in, find fault with. One suspects his neighbor
of having no real opinion, unless he takes exception.
Art and books, sermons, and all manner of work, and
men, are handled a good deal by a cold or cutting
measurement, by an arbitrary standard, rather than by
a generous valuing at their best, putting in best light.
It is only now and then, in our present and self-ab-
sorbed lives, that a man feels he has hospitality at the
hands of his fellows, a fair show. It is the “outs”
about him that are marked and re-marked. And so
we journey, chafed and sore and alone,— not, as they
tell us, men journeyed in the old caravan time, when the
missing Christ child could be supposed among friends,
put as solitary pilgrims, each eager for his own goal,
leaving others to their own mishaps. And yet so
little a thing might change all that! It would be so
easy to turn a brook, with its cheer and refreshing,
right across the way. There came to me alittle rill out
of a human heart, a thoughtful deed and a tender word,
when I was parched and weary and desponding, and
feeling it were better to give it all up, the odds were so
great, the struggle too hard, the bearing down of hu-
man opposing and detraction too heavy; and it trickled
and bubbled, and sang and laughed, and dropped down

294 LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES.

into my heart, and percolated through weariness, and
faint-heartedness, and cheered and braced, reconciled
and encouraged my wilting manhood. And every man-
ner of hope sprang by it, with every beauty of blossom ;

and I, too, sang, and the way was all changed, the day |

made light, the way desirable and even enviable, the
dust and the heat, the burden and distance, forgotten.
And nothing seemed impossible, and everything accept-
able; and the whole soul went upward, and the whole
heart outward,—the one God-ward, the other man-
ward. : |
Every one knows that the great encouragements in

life and the great helps that come to him come just

that way,— that herein is life’s refreshing, its needed,
its available helps. I know men who have, all through
life, made the mistake of waiting for other people to
wait on them. They only disappoint themselves, and
really do nothing broad and valuable. What we want
is not the lift, which shall prevent our bearing the load,
but the cheer which shall help us along, and make us
feel that.our load is not so heavy after all, which shall
send us back to our burden again, the way of our duty,
with cheery feelings of that courage which comes
from the least expression of appreciation or good-will.
It is wzappreciation which makes the large part of the
heaviness of life. We more waste under it and grow
more and more hopeless than under positive opposi-
tion. To carry an honest self-consciousness — which
is no conceit —of real integrity and ability and de-
sert, to find it never acknowledged even negatively, or
more than vaguely doubted, more depresses than much
other that is more pronounced, We need the brooks

:
}

LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES, 205

in the way, the cheering and refreshing. And these
not the divine beneficence alone can send. They may
have human source. They flow by no miracle power.
It is said of Howard and his wife that they had a pas-
sion for seeing happy human faces, and that after her
marriage she sold all her jewels that she might the
more indulge the luxury. A little of that kind of
luxury would not hurt any of us. To see happy human
faces, were our hearts right, would be chiefest among -
delights; the first among efforts, the effort to create
them. And many people lay themselves out upon it
a good deal, and we hear about rides for the sick, and
a day in the country for poor children, and Christmas
trees, and visiting the squalid, and it is all well; but
we are running into a sentimental philosophy, at the
expense of a nearer charity. It is not North Street
and Albany Street only that need to be visited, nor
Provident Institutions, nor diet kitchens, nor soup-
houses, by which the more pressing human wants are
met. These things may be as brooks in the way to
many a truly needing life, and none would grudge
them to honest worth. But you and I have pressing
upon us other and nearer duties.

We do not need to be enrolled on committee or
made visitors or to cross the street. No man need
hunt for his mission. His mission comes to him. It
is not above, it is not below, itis not far. The hard
and dry and weary way, craving the blessing of the
brook, is right here in the lives nearest, at our right
hand and our left, and ministries which only we can
minister cry out for our doing. We are dazzled or
dazed by the thing that gets into reports, makes a cry

206 LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES.

in newspaper, shocks public sentiment, rouses general
interest; but the great, silent aches and wants, with
dumb entreaty pleading for sympathy, weary with wait-
ing, and growing toward strong despair; the neglects
of ours in daily, home, and homely duties, which write
in their indelible tale, and leave their haggard furrows

on the heart,— these, the mission so rarely undertaken,
constitute our simple, human duty,— not to make happy
human faces now and then among the children of mis-
ery, but to eep happy human faces about us all the
time, to see that across the daily path that must have
weariness and travail in it some brook shall run its
bright and cheering course.

Could we do a better thing for the new year than
keep it before our minds that we will not so much seek
pleasure in our own lives as to put pleasant things into
the lives of others,— the daily lives just around us? It
is not a very easy thing to do. It will require great
watchfulness and self-control,—a habit we are slow to
form, of living by the golden rule. It is much easier
to do other things outside, out-doors, which shall attract

-and satisfy other people, and lull any suspicion that
may come to ourselves of other duties. But, if we are
really and wisely and wholly to discharge our obliga-
tions as men and women, that discharge must lie among
the little and the near things; and no great fidelity in
things great and far will atone for infidelity here. To
be fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and
wives, in all the full meaning of those relations; to see
that the watercourses of truest sympathy and love
cross and refresh the daily path; to feel that the whole
way of life, narrow or broad, level or steep, bright or

LIFE’S BROOK-SIDES. 207

dark, has yet the babble of melody, the shine and the
song of your helping love and sympathy and cheering |
spirit,—I suspect that is to do the best with life, and
that the charity or love which so sweetly begins there
cannot content itself till its circling and well shall touch
and embrace the woe that wants and waits outside.

Get the inner and the nearer graces, and the farther
away and outer follow. The heart strikes outward, and
carries to every part life. With New Year’s saluta- |
tions for each and all, let us make fair start and see
what we can do, not so much to make it a happy year
to ourselves as a year happy to others. If we succeed
in the one, we secure the other.

Jan. 2, 1876.

XXV.
THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN.

“The things which remain.” — REV. iii., 2.

[Preached Nov. 17, 1872, at the Arlington Street Church, the Sunday
following the “Great Fire.”’]

I po not know how it is that men so generally over-
look the value of remainders. In my days of arithmetic,
I never quite understood the recklessness with which
the master would say, “Throw away the remainder,”
and in life the little men everywhere set by remainders
shows unwise prodigality. Almost it seems as if they
had a grudge against the thing that is left, wanted to
forget it, thrust it out of sight, instead of trying to
discover its value and putting it to use. The taking
away of a part is virtually many times the taking away
of the whole, so little count is made of what remains.
Men are like vexed children, who throw away what
they have because they cannot have what they want,
or the large class of beggars who refuse the essential
thing offered because they cannot have the thing fan-
cied. They gauge what is in hand not by actual
merit, but by that artificial standard of desire or whim
they measure by. Not what we have our prize, but
what we have not our complaint. Everybody has
something of Haman’s spirit. The thing deprived of
outweighs all favors: the things remaining are without

———————————eeee eee

THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 299

value. Our habit is to exaggerate that thing which is
taken, so soon as it is taken,— worse, our habit is to
exaggerate that thing, or part of a thing, it is possible
to take. Not only thoughtless people, but some who
at least give themselves credit for being fairly thought-
ful, persistently see the side of loss, as persistently
ignore the side of gain, wail over what is taken, and
fail to grasp the beatitude in what remains, the more
heavenly part. It very seldom happens that the re-

' mainder is nothing: it most often is of that better part

which cannot be taken away. I remember it in the
old nursery rhyme, _

“Take the worst, and leave the best,”

and not only that lower thing which we call misfortune,
but that higher thing which we call Providence, often
acts that way,—takes the worst and leaves the best.
It is evidently ¢#e way. That which remains is intrin-
sically best, however our more superficial feelings may
at first measure it. God seems to have willed no be-
reavement to be absolute. In his economy, the brighter
and broader revealing lies in the remainder left after
some going away, even that going away which has
seemed to take all hope with it. Moses, the hope of
the Hebrews, slept on Nebo, yet the tribes crossed
Jordan and possessed the land. Jesus, the hope of the
disciples, slept in Joseph’s tomb, yet his spirit went out
into all the world. Some we loved or leaned upon
have gone away: we call them dead, but their dying
has been life to us, more left than was taken. The
Lord took, but he gave more. So, all down the long
line, out of destructions everywhere, not annihilation, ,
but vigor and life. The world’s progress, man’s growth

300 THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN,

through the remainders that everywhere mark the path
of destruction and decay,— they the working capital of
new civilization or character. Annihilation is for those
things only that ought to die. Causes, nations, truths,
men, are sometimes riven as the bolt rives the oak;
but the very mightiness of disaster seems to evoke a
life the sunshine never developed. It astonishes you
to know into how small a space life may contract itself.
Branches, trunk, and all their brave power may be gone,
but, in the far root, other branch and trunk. A spark
quick with life, that is enough. Rightly conditioned,
it will kindle, will glow, will bless: wrongly directed,
it will devastate,—a terrible or a blissful remainder.
I think it is told of a brave man on the wrong
side in our late war that, finding himself terribly
maimed, he wrote to his betrothed, releasing her from
her engagement. The answer came back braver than
his offer, “If there is body enough left to hold your
soul, I will marry you.” The remainder of more worth
in her sight than everything that had been taken.
What were body. graces gone, when soul graces were
left? In them remaining enough. Something of that
same bravery we may at times need, a bravery to start
again with seemingly diminished resource, conscious
that the soul of resource is still ours. Is it not-mistake
of ours not to see where the soul of resource lies, to
need special revelation of that we should ourselves dis-
cover? A man mourns the health gone,—if he only
had that! But that he has not. His resource is in
the health that is left. Let him be grateful and use
that. Another croaks about the years that are past, as
if his capital of life were in them. Let him go to work,

THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 301

and in. the years left find capital no by-gone years
took away. People a little sick, a little discouraged,
talk about days of usefulness as over, themselves as
only a burden to others, nobody likes them. Let them
stop whining and making others uncomfortable and
themselves unhappy, accept the fact, and go to work to
make the best out of that which remains. Splendid
things these remainders may grow to.

Paul, Augustine, Loyola,—think what the remainders.
of their lives grew to after the hot mistakes of youth
were passed. The friends,.the years, the privileges,
the hopes, the opportunities of the past, are not the
only values. Oftentimes these are exaggerated, often-
times fictitious, as the years and blessings of childhood
are to memory. The value, the soul of resource, is in
the friends, years, privileges, hopes, opportunities that
remain,—things that never fail resolved men. I find
it everywhere that the lowest ebb precedes and proph-
esies new flood. Histories and biographies tell us that,
discoveries and inventions. In school-boy days, I re-
member we read it as part of a poem on the battle of
Bunker’s Hill.

“Fen then our fallen fortunes lay

in light.”
What men say about its being darkest just before
dawn may or may not be true in the universe of
nature, but all over the universe of experience we find
that the darkest hour of betrayal or defeat retains
somehow the germ of a new and brighter hope; and
we mark the human eras by the phcenix spirit that
springs from ashes. You can crush no vitality. ‘‘We
still live,’ men say. That is the only thing a man can

302 THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN,

do. Catastrophes, misfortunes, deaths, strip externals
only. Souls of things, as of men, remain. Nothing
touches them, smell of smoke or breath of flame.
Their life is charmed as that of the men in the fur-
nace. Of all life, the germ is immortal. It holds all
the future needs, more than any past has seen or fore-
told. If it remain abundant, life shall come. There
was, one time, not a single Hebrew man-child as the
prophet thought, except himself, that had not bowed to
Baal. Only a tomb was the rally-centre of the Christ’s
beloved. Behold in the sacred writings the victories
of the things that remained, and in our own time mark
the rebirth of a world out of the remainder, which
through Holland fled from Scrooby village, and planted
on Pilgrim Rock seed whose life device of man could
not destroy, to which the will of God gives ever-spread-
ing harvest. The germ-life men thought they had killed
lived, confounding the wise of the world. God elabo-
rates his great purposes from the little things they
forget, out of despised remainders works his sovereign
will. The thoughts of many of you since you were last
here have been drawn to, absorbed, in the things that
are gone. To many, the last week’s disaster is a per-
sonal thing. It has inserted itself between the very
joints and marrow. Your pressing, present sense is
loss. Your thought has been not so much of the
things that remain as of the things that are taken.
That is natural, and you cannot help it. In the order
of Providence, the sense of loss must come first, only
it must not all be that. For it is not all loss to any.
Greater the things that remain than the things taken:
nothing of real value gone, everything of real value

|
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THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 303,

left. Not afew have been quick to call the fire God’s
lesson and wrath to a wicked people. I will not take
God wholly out of it, because he is everywhere, in all.
I believe that he who makes the winds his messengers
also makes the flames his ministers. These flames
have been his ministers,—not in the way these, his
swift traducers, would say, but in ways more consonant
with his majesty and honor, not to speak of his care
and love. They have been telling some things we
have been told many times before, and shall have to be
told many times again, before we shall learn or God
weary in telling. They are revealing things hidden
before, or known only here and there to some wise and
prudent, but scattered broadcast now for everybody’s
picking up. What Boaz ordered his reapers to do,
God does for his sufferers. Unexpected handfuls of
mercies we glean from the most stricken fields. Broad
acres, lately the city’s pride and confidence, the chosen
place of commerce and traffic and industry, are to-day
_ something more than a wilderness,—and, for beauty,
ruin and ashes. Some of you, in the wild havoc of
that night, parted from the honorable reward of years
of integrity and toil; and some who had supposed that
there was the securest place for the bestowal of earthly
goods have learned that nothing is secure from man’s
accidents, if from God’s providence. I will not sit
down by your ashes and be mourner with you. I will
not try word-painting of scenes of destruction, or grope
with you amid glooms. All is not lost. The best
remains. All did not go up into the night. The
stately edifice, the garnered treasures, the implements
of trade and industry, the results of skill and labor,

304. THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN,

fabrics and material and art, are gone,—a mighty holo-
caust ; but the solid earth remains, the standing-place
for new activities, all that courage and faith ever need.
And more stately will men build, and more rare fabric
will they store, and greater treasure will they gather,
and broader industries will they protect and reward,—
all these coming out of what remains, the foundation
untouched for the new building again. At its grossest,
most material point, that which remains is greater than
that which is taken. The superstructure has passed.
The flame consumed it, not by fiat of an angered God,
but by fiat of a broken law. The foundation remains,
like some men’s faith, saved so as by fire. The sub-
stance stands. As men say that in the seed lies traced
out all the delicate outline of the future tree, as the
artist told me that in a jagged piece of marble lay the
thing of beauty he had told me of, and he had only to
go to work and find it, so in these obliterated streets
and choked cellars and fallen walls and faithless safes,
and water and ashes and mud, and desolate and hope-
less remainder, lies the great mart of the future, the
Boston to be.

Before we get into the more directly personal bear-
ing of our topic, look at the city, and remember the
things that remain, and thank God,— old historic build-
ings which even the iconoclastic spirit of this matter-of-
fact day idolizes. Bad enough to think of Boston
without the Hancock House, but imagine a Boston
without the Old South or Faneuil Hall. They remain,
and what the flame spared may not hand of man de-
stroy. Our public buildings remain,—churches and
schools and libraries and art treasures. The media of

THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN, 305

supply of daily food remain, our homes remain. Think
of what it might have been. No horror like that of
Chicago has come near us,—none of that awful fear
for the lives of those we love. To weary and troubled
men, the sanctuary of home is yet intact; and, when I
think of that one thing, I feel that no tongue can voice
the hallelujahs that surge within our grateful hearts.
Besides these material things, notice in the commu-
nity what remains,— despite hasty words and deeds, |
raw and excited plans and measures, good sober sense,
some possessing themselves, nothing of panic, broad
views of future public good, honest pride and self-reli-
ance, active benevolence, self-forgetfulness, and a host
of virtues that keep shy under the sunlight, but in the
darkness twinkle and glow, and guide and comfort.
The aggregate, the average of manhood and of woman-
hood, is higher. There is a new outgrowth of good-will,
and people have surprised themselves as well as others
by their endurances and unselfishness and activity of
charity and zeal. I don’t know. I suppose it is a some-
thing hard in me, but I have not felt one whit, as
people say they have, the telegrams and speeches and
expressions of sympathy and offers of money this side
and the other. Had not Boston earned all that, grand
leader in every good work that she has been in all
these years, sneered at and derided, as so long I have
been compelled to hear her, yet in the day of her disas-
ter garnering back to herself the bread she had so
thrown to the waters? I may be all wrong, but I
haven’t felt a touch of sentiment in it all; but as I was
reading of one of our firms, burnt out, caring at once
for their girls out of employ, and ready to employ other

306 THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN.

girls, those very girls in the mean time meeting and
resolving not to take the money due them, their sep-
arate littles amounting to a sum that might assist,
somehow there came over my eyes that which pre-
vented my seeing to the end of the period, and for my
manhood I would not have liked to try reading the
passage aloud. When a spirit like that remains, God
help us and forgive us, friends, if we consent to be
mourners over what has been taken away, rather than
rejoice at that which remains to bring out the finer
qualities of the nature men treat too roughly, too
seldom see the divine side of. With such virtue left,
with the courage and the cheer and the disposition to
assist, the new tie of brotherhood disaster has: forged
bringing men together as ‘no years of success could,
everything substantial remains. Mere riches, as all
divine and human teaching has assured, have taken
flight; but flight has revealed what we had allowed to
be concealed,— the value and the permanence of the
things really worth possessing. The great possessions
are not taken, cannot be. ‘They remain, are revealed,
are glorified. Ina few words last Sunday, I said that
the really great possessions had not been touched.
Such always defy time and death. The young man
turned from Jesus, sorrowing when he was told to
sell what he had and give to the poor; “for he had
great possessions.” Didn’t he mistake? Jesus did
not ask him to part with his great possessions. -
Suppose he had done as Jesus wanted him to, would
not his great possessions have remained and been
added to? He had kept great commandments from
his youth. Were not these and their results beyond

THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 307,

‘ the sum of flock and vintage and granary? And is
not it true of every man and woman here to-day and
everywhere, whom this disaster has touched, that the
smell of its smoke even has not passed on their best
possession, that the best they have, the best they are,
is the better for it?

We are always speaking of the value of character to
ourselves and to others, but only at crises like this do
we realize the priceless thing it is. Suppose it possible |
that some convulsion, some wave of disaster, could
have swallowed the character of this city, of the men
and women of it, and this day’s sun had looked down
upon Franklin and Pearl and Summer and Milk Streets
standing in all the glory we loved so well, while the
people stood a moral ruin, blackened and disgraced
before the world: you might call that a disaster.
Nothing could repair it. Granite column and _ bank-
vault, raw material, cunning fabric, never could have
replaced that loss. There had been no remainder to
work with. It was the character under these, behind
these, which made their worth; and the same character
is to-day the immortal spark that makes ruin and ashes
not eloquent of faded prosperity, but instinct with life
and hope. They represented moral worth more than
money value. And the well-earned character of our
city for mercantile honor and moral probity and out-
flowing charity is returning to her usury in the day of
her visitation. It is not her prosperity, her energy,
her wealth, her misfortune even, that draw the hearts
-of all sections toward her, and make the wires electric
with proffers of good-will, which as a Boston boy, if
I may not speak as a Boston man, I trust she may

308 THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN.

never be compelled to accept. Character only could ~ 7
do that,—a respect men may keep out of sight or
deny in the prosperous day, but which they are glad
to let shine out in the night-time of trial. That char-
acter is not gone, friends. Our fathers bequeathed it.
We have guarded it. May it be our bequest to our
children’s children. It is to build the new city,—
build it in marble and granite and brick and iron,—
while it is itself builded newly into the confidence and
respect of the world. .-
What is true of the city is true of every individual.
Those of you who suffer most have undisturbed that
which is most yours. It is capital for you in the marts
of the world, capital for you in the esteem of men. I
know there are exceptions, some who rate men only by
bank account, society position, political honor, power, —
place. One I love, suffering misfortune, writes that he
has few friends now. Put away the fact that losses
make men morbid and sensitive, too many have wrong
estimates of values. Thank God, there are foul
weather friends, and they are of the best. If we have
character, our part, they will not desert us, their part.
In certain things you are to be crippled: no crippling
here. Mere dollars are going to be at a discount.
Character is on the rise. Men see more clearly
through the shams society makes them yield to. In
character, they detect fine gold without alloy, and they
will not forget it. That is to-day ata premium; and
there is not a merchant, a laborer, a sewing-girl, who
has that, but finds in it to-day a peace that were cheaply
purchased at the price of every worldly gain. More
than its worth with men is its inward solace and sup-

THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 309

port. In saddest, silent hours, in despair moments,
in weariness and heavy plodding, it shall be the many
times comforter, verifying by experience the old hymn
words,—

“ And, having nothing, yet hath all.”

I want now to say a word of a quality everywhere
prominent and invaluable. I know how dainty people
are as to pulpit danguage, and I feel how emasculate
has pulpit language got to be by yielding to that dainti-
ness. Daintiness of speech in the pulpit has been well-
nigh its death. The pulpit should use the best word
to express the thing it means, no matter if it can’t show
_a biue-blood pedigree. Courage is a good word and
reputable; but there is a quality that is not just it,
which such times demand and such times develop, and
at such times is good to draw upon. I mean pluck.
It is courage in homespun, without broadcloth or vel-
vet. We used to get it in army times. A plucky man
was a something other thana brave one. In hin, in.
eredients, and a mixture of them, unlike the other.
Pluck is a thing of resource, of will, of endurance, as of
action. That quality of manhood disaster has never
power over. It rises with occasion. The brave man
may yield, the man of pluck never.

And I see it everywhere how this thing is up and
will abide. I catch it in hand-grasp, in expression of
face and voice, in plan for the future, in the very strug-
gles that may for a moment master. I do not think
the battle-fields of any nation have seen a heroism
truer than that the past week has developed. On roofs,
heroes; at hose and pipe, on ladder and amid flame,
heroes,— pluck; but among men and women, among

310 THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN,

you, heroism not of devotion, but of endurance, such as
lifts manhood and womanhood, and makes us care little
for theology’s descent of our race or science’s ascent,
grateful only that we can touch quality so near divine.
I honor, I bow, I am abashed before the will, resolute
to endure, that I have seen,— to endure neither doggedly
-nor selfishly, but with heart touched to finer issues, self
held back, the woes of others ramembered. There is
a word that even this spirit needs. Somebody says,
“The real, stern part of any duty commences with the
first positive sacrifice it demands, not in the making
up of one’s mind to perform it.” Who of us that have
resolved almost joyously on a hard course of duty but
have realized that,—some of us with such force as to
make us not coward, but renegade under the first actual -
pressure? It is one thing to believe in a huge aggre-
gate of duty or resolve, to have a vague sense of some-
thing immense to face and determine to face it, and
another thing to actually meet the first little detail. It
will be likely to floor you. The first hunger or weari-
ness or blood-letting takes all the romance out of the
young soldier, and dulls his keen-sensed patriotism.
Facts are not only stubborn, but awfully prosaic things.
They are like many common-sense people,— very good,
but very hard. And the little daily, unexpected, uncal-
culated-upon detail of hard facts that is going to swarm
innumerable and petty as Liliputian hosts upon you,
with invisible but exasperating sting,—dear friends,
these are to be your trials, here in the dead pull and
pressure, when excitement is passed, and every man
is gone to his own, and the buoyancy that comes of suf-
fering with many has lapsed into the sense of suffering

THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 311

alone. I think it were wise at once to face that inevi-
table truth which all experience verifies, and hold a
reserve of power; for it is not one emergency which is
yours, but every hour possibly for years will bring up
its little loss, and the little thing will be the hard thing.
It is there that courage, principle, hope, faith, often fail.
It is there that despair comes in, doubt, shame of self,—
there that you will need a watchful and stubborn guard.
And I think you will find it one of the blessed things
that remain,— the only disaster ever reveals to us the
blessing,— the power to bear suffering and loss. Friends,
God does not send us suffering, discipline, disappoint-
ment, but with them, more than they, the power to
bear, the power to look serenely, cheerfully, hopefully
at the facts as they are, even by slow gradation and
‘increment, rising to the height other men besides Jesus
have been lifted into, the height in which the garden-
prayer becomes the soul’s own will. We have it now
-almost as a household word what the poet has phrased,

“Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer, and be strong”

I do not know about its being sublime,—I do not
think it worth while to consider that,— but I do know
that there is a certain satisfying in the strength God
gives us to suffer. There may be nothing sublime
about it, but there is something for our working pur-
poses better,— encouraging. We do not want to be
buoyed by the idea of sublimity as the soldier is nerved
by the idea of glory, but to set ourselves at the resolute
pull of duty, as sons of God should. Suffering of any
sort crushes only those who will to be crushed. It

312 THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN.

lifts those who will to be lifted. That which is mani-
fest in the Christ’s career of the power to suffer —not

to be crushed by, but to resist and rise under, suffer-

ing —is no exceptional result, not his only, but ours.
To us also is that power which carries through trials

and obstacles, and over what threatened to be de-

spairs and defeats writes victory. And there remains
ever, over and above all, God,— with no averted face,—
God, the comforter and the strength-giver. He never
fails. All else gone, he remains; and the more things
beside him go, the more he stands revealed.

This is lame and impotent, I know: at God’s crises,
men’s words always are. It is only what I think I get
of God that I dare to voice. The occasion is beyond
man. The city that on her hills had sat secure, ashes
are upon her, and in her streets is desolation. A
providence of God, behind the mistake of man, has
visited her. The mistake of man wastes, the provi-
dence of God renews. From him are the things that
remain, and greater are they than the things that are
taken. Only will we walk with him, only will we be
patient’and brave, and the night shall end, as all nights
end, in the joy of day. If it be high faith to see the
arm of God by day, to feed it in the gloom, that is the
very central essence and self of faith.

Nobody believes that the future is to be less than
the past. The after-glory and prosperity of our city is
assured. The thing is to tide over these intervening
times —days and nights, and worries and cares, the
set of things that will delay, and will go wrong — with
a good, broad, sturdy, Christian manhood and woman-
hood. Let me emphasize the last adjective, Chris-
tian. If Christianity is any worth, now is its crucial

THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN, 313

test to many. I have no doubt as to what it can stand,
as to what any of you can bear, standing by it. With
that there remains more than enough to carry the
weakest and the most sore-pressed through. The
grandest opportunity many have ever had to make
themselves into broad and hearty manhood and woman-
hood is before them, an opportunity none may neg-
lect. Already, Christian virtues shine with a calmer,
clearer light. Already, men and women see them-
selves nobler and stronger than they were. Self is
less: others are more. Hands are more ready, hearts
are more open, souls are more sensitive, more respon-
sive. The wide, tender thing brotherhood is shows
itself. Community in suffering begets community of
sympathy; and sympathy is expansive, and, once called
out, never creeps back to the cold cradle of its birth.
With the best of human nature called to the front, with
the worst of it crowded back, with courage and strength,
and hope and character, and human sympathy, and
God, remaining by us, what, really, has been lost?
Weigh it, measure it, estimate it! Let us thank God,
let us consider and strengthen the things that remain,
and take courage. Let our courage be the cheerful
courage that is above despairs.

Let us stand in our lot, learn to suffer and to wait ;
and, dear friends, it takes no prophet and no prophet’s
son to say that, though there should be no new dawn
to a destroyed prosperity, there shall be a dawn bright-
ening toward, glowing into day, in the heart and life
of every humblest God’s child, who, seeking and cling-
ing to the things that remain, shall try to build him-
self up into that which God will accept, which thief,
rust, moth, flame, convulsion, time, cannot take away.

XXVI.

THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST ai

“Two or three berries on the top of the uppermost bough.” — ISAIAH
Xyil., 6.”

THAT was a most remarkable polity which Moses
had given his people, as remarkable in what it was
manward as in what it was Godward.

Of the great men of the ages, he stands foremost. I
think we must feel so, when we regard him as a purely
historical character, and come to see how it was the
fashion, the credence, the superstition of the time to
attribute to leaders in action and thought supernatural
help. The Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian, the Per-
sian, had their mythologies, their troops of all manner
of assisting deities. Their great men were but the
media for the transmission of the superior will. In.
their great enterprises, one and the other deity acted
or spoke through or controlled them. In a more
marked way, because of the exceptional character of
his faith, the Jew regarded his great men; and we
have caught our faith from his record and belief. But,
more and more, as we become more and more ready to
face the difficulties about the old conception, shall we
become willing frankly to admit that the great wants
and mistakes of the Mosaic law, side by side with its
great virtues, go to disprove the idea that Moses acted

THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED, S15

and taught only under ‘the inspiration and governance
Or the great “I am.”

No one who has really looked into the subject will
be ready to commit himself to a belief of the Mosaic
code, in outline and in detail, as a divine work.

The tender humanity of this code, the regard even
‘for the brute manifest in it, fill one with wonder and
admiration. He finds much of the same which he
misses out of our ordinary Christianity showing itself
in faiths like those of the Moslem and the Persian,—
faiths which, unquestionably, have got shaping from
contact with the old Mosaic influence. Most wonder-
ful as ubiquitous of peoples, while Christendom has
been content to deride and despise and oppress them,
they have been, in every onward, civilizing step made
by the ages, among the motor powers, suggesting,
shaping, controlling, leading, and saving. Some day,
and at the hands of the great future, they will receive
not the indolent and half-contemptuous dole of pity,
but free and full sympathy, admiration, and gratitude.
It does not need a Daniel Deronda to show us what
is the devout home faith and the tender home life that
the great Law-giver enjoined and the people follow.
Our Bibles, and all history, show us the same; while,
in all his wanderings, amid all his degradations, under
all his peculiarities, in reverent fidelity to the instruction
given, in steadfast allegiance to God and the duties
prescribed to man, the Jew stands without peer in all
the world’s history. Where the question of fidelity is
raised, all Christian peoples must hang their head.

No injunction of Moses was more admirable than .
that which related to the harvest. It shows how broad

316 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED.

his thought, as his heart. Among a people, many of
whom were inevitably to be poor, he desired to culti-
vate the largest sympathy and charity, to bind together
the more and the less prosperous by these cords. The
harvests should be thanksgiving times, not to the rich
only, but to the needy. It should be the poor man’s
festival and jubilee as well as the rich man’s. The
fields were not to be gone over a second time. The
gleanings were for the unfortunate and the widow. On
the outmost branch of the vine a few grapes, in the top
of the uppermost bough of the olive two or three ber-
ries, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches, should
be left, the poor man’s harvest, his ingathering. And
so, through changes and through years, the beneficent
law ran; and what Boaz did for Ruth, many another
did, and many another sad and desolate lot was relieved
and blessed. | |

And the chances were that the poor man got best
fruit; for out at the end of the vine and up at the top
of the branches, where the fruit lies in the unobstructed
sun and wind, the grape would purple and the plump
olive ripen as not lower down where thick leaves and
interlacing twigs would choke the air and shut off the
light and smother the product, that, like all other things, ~
to its perfection requires air and light and room,—
“latitude,” without which neither fruit nor man, truth
nor life, ripen.

The use to which I shall put the text is somewhat
this,— to try to make it tell a fact. JI think we need to
care more about that in all directions and in all things.
After we have done what seems our duty, our best, done ©
the most with it, got the most out of it, have ripened

THRE Brot PRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 317

and gathered our harvest, there are left two or three
berries in the top of the uppermost bough, and that,
gleaners after ourselves as we all always should be, we
shall find that our best is undone, the thing attempted
not carried to its legitimate issue, so long as those two
or three flaunt in the wind, upbraid our slovenliness
and herald our incompleteness. Slovenly and incom-
plete are we in most of our living: how generally and
deeply so, we have little conception.

As men and women, we have a pretty general feeling
that we do about all we can do. We pride ourselves
on the things done. In the very vague kind of confes-
sion we at times make, which we never accept literally
ourselves and do not mean that others shall, we accuse
- ourselves roundly of every manner of shortcoming; but
“the miserable sinners” that we call ourselves is more
a matter of routine and of rhetoric than of positive
conviction. Generally, we assume, with a good deal of
comfort to ourselves, that we have done our best, that
there is no more to be reasonably expected, no more
to be actually accomplished. The boy says it about
his lessons, the man about his virtues. ‘The mechanic
and laborer and domestic have it to say about their
duties and jobs. You never have fault to find at any
shortcoming but that is the reply of others to you, of
yourself to yourself, and in the larger and graver and
more responsible duties of life that is the plea.

I doubt if it be so in truth,— indeed, I know it not to
be so. We are never up to our ability. We never live
life out to the full, its whole, its parts. Talent, virtue,
never have the best of us. There never comes the
time when there is no more that we can do, Beyond

318 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED,

where we stop, infinite capabilities lie,a broad domain

into which God meant we should enter and possess.
Always there are unreached, unachieved possibilities.

We halt too soon, fail to pursue, tethered like some do- i

mestic animal who must not stray beyond bound, rather
than free, as the bird, to range through’ limitless spaces
among most refined and exquisite virtues, which, like
flowers of Paradise, were meant to have their ripeness
and their fragrance and their beauty this side the eter-

nal city; to brighten and cheer the way, not to wel-—

come and to crown our entering in. We rob ourselves,
we rob earth of its best possessions,— reaches of human
attainment, the native air and sphere of which is now
and here; we attain and keep content in a dull and low
life rather than aspire to a life of full proportion and
richness and finish. These human capacities are not
worked up to their honest, reasonable limit, and we do
not guess how near the divine the best humanity may
be. I do not mean to say that there has not been too
much in business, in study, in statesmanship, in poli-
tics, nor deny that men have burned up life in the hot
and restless career of its ambitions, displacing vigor
and life with decrepitude and death. Even of that
overwork there is much less than has been assumed.

It is bad working, injudicious working, not overworking
that wrecks and slays. I say it of our virtues, of our —

mental as moral capacities, that we keep them curbed
into about what we suppose they should be, never let
them out, and compel them, unchecked, to the very
uttermost ; and so there is this great broad and black
and yawning chasm, distressing and benumbing us,
between virtue’s self and the virtues ourselves attain,

pine BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 319

a chasm between man and God. His virtue and our
virtue, infinite that might be, not bridged but almost
closed. I want to keep my thought to the more per-
sonal relations and attitudes of the soul, and of these
you will come to own it true that we never push them
‘to possible, to demanded ultimates. I do not suppose
that a man ever lifted himself up to a height of virtue,
that there did not at the same time come to hima
consciousness of other heights possible, and possible
for him,—things not only for vision, but for occupa-
tion. ‘The more you do, the more you may,” is what
we tell children, but it is at that that manhood balks
in the higher things. The virtues are not put at their
Stiesey that Which is their just exercise. There are
two or three berries always at the top of the outmost
boughs untouched. Let us see this by example.

In a time of business stagnation like this we now
have, the reply that is at once made to every charita-
ble effort is: “It is no use to try to get money now.
Our merchants are feeling poor. There is nothing
doing. There is no money to be had.” And so that
very hard road which he who would establish or foster
a charity has, at best times, to travel, is badly blocked
at the start. When you are leading a forlorn hope, I
have found the forlorner the hope, the more the de-
mand for you to lead. If the forlornness do not kill
you outright, or make the worst of cowards of you, it
inspires you with a confidence that compels victory.
The cry all round now is: “It isnouse. Everybody is
poor, there is no money.” I have it direct the past
week from some of the prominent dressmakers that
they were never so driven, never found it so hard to

320 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED.

please customers, and that dresses were never more
elaborate and costly. Unless my eyes deceive me and
my knowledge is vain, there is an immense amount of
selfish, extraordinary extravagance among the men
as the women of this needy time. That there are
grave and unwonted economies —some of them borne
sweetly and serenely and silently —I know; and, to all
such, sympathy and respect and honor. The fact is,
friends,— and let us be men enough to own it,—that, ©
even in these straitened times, we all find two or
three berries on the top of the outmost branches which
we can pluck for the sating of our selfishness. Poor
as we may feel, there they are, ready to our craving.
The thing we want, that we are going to have, we
somehow manage to have the means of getting. The
exchequer is not so low but it will honor the draft.
The means will be devised to meet the cormorant that |
craves, covets, and consumes,— shall I add, corrupts?
It is always noted that, in seasons of distress, indul-
gence and extravagance reign. When there are de-
clared to be no means for better, more honorable
things, the means are abundant for them.

This is the lower side, the darker view. No time is
so good time for the charities as the hard time. The
charity that never faileth fails not then. The pinch
that a true man feels, he realizes that another must feel,
and it thaws him and broadens him; and, while he
straitens himself, he remembers the strait of another.
Some of the best things that have ever been done by
that spirit of charity so generally felt to have its head-
quarters in our city have been done since the times of
shrinkage, uncertainty, and stagnation set in; and I

THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED.. 321

have no doubt but, poor as people say they are, if
to-morrow some great, unquestionable, genuine benefi-
cence were made known, it would be cheerfully and
| amply and immediately responded to. Inspire people
with confidence in the good, the claim, the necessity
announced, and they at once begin to look about and
see if it be not practicable for them to do something,
stripped and poor as they feel; and they always find,
and surprise themselves with finding, two or three
berries at the top of the outmost branch, overlooked
while the harvest was full, that have been hanging
there, ripe and rich, till the Lord’s need should call for
them. I don’t know, but somehow this quenchless
spirit of humanity, in all but the mean and the stingy
and the narrow and the cold, gets a microscopic vision
and a great and vital warmth at every cry and pressure
of misfortune, and springs up to say, “I am my
brother’s keeper,” and finds the means where under
only the ordinary pressure of life; but now it seemed
as if no means were possible. No skilful operator
so touches the eyes of the blind as the spirit of right
brotherhood touches the vision of the soul. No fire-
heat so thaws the torpor of the freezing body as the
fire-heat of a right humanity thaws the torpid sympa-
thies, compelling the heart to say: “After all, in dis-
tresses of others, nothing that I have is mine. Let me
be straitened, let me suffer, rather than that they
perish.” ;

{ think that the handful that Ruth gleaned for
Naomi made the sweetest of home-bread,— sweet with
a sweetness sweeter than that of the finest wheat.
I think that the olive and the grape plucked from the

R22 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED.

outmost branches warmed the heart of the eater and
helped keep warm the heart of the owner; and that —

which a man finds he can do for another, after he sup- 4
poses he has already done all that he can, makes more
man of him, thrills him, and broadens and blesses him,

takes the ugly selfishness out of him, and stands the ~
manhood in him up straight before his own gaze, without
a bend or a falter or a flaw. ‘More blessed is it to

give than to receive,” are words that have come to us

from the lips of the Teacher,— not through the Gos-

pels, but almost as a chance remembrance of the apos- Ee -

tle,— a little waif fraught with richest worth, caught up
and borne to the generations for their seeding and

harvest, as the winged seeds of fields and gardens are, @

Every man who honestly gives—not with a fling, but —
with a sympathy, not with a grudge, but with a glad-

ness, not because he must, but because he loves to, not _

as a get-off, but as a true giving — tests the veracity of
the Christ-word, tastes the beatitude. And it most

blesses him whose giving is of the two or three berries

on the top of the outmost branches, as it is when the
humblest poor divide and subdivide their money with
those poorer than themselves; and God, who watches
all things, will see to it that the increase of their seed
shall not be lost in the future harvests.

Let us take a yet more private and personal, and it ss

shall be a really cardinal virtue. In the multitude of
human duties, we may not speak of this and the other
as prominent and paramount in necessity. What we
want to think about the virtues is our obligation to
them all,— even to pluck the two or three berries on
the top of their outmost branches.

ToS beESTeOPRUIT THE (LAST. PLUCKED. 323

But for the moment let me present to you the so-
much-needed, so-much-neglected virtue, patience. It
is a virtue which has a great deal more of the power
of endurance than men allow, which we never wait to
see fairly out, never come to where there is no more
that it can do. Job, our favorite picture and symbol
of a patient man, did not see his way to the end of it.
He did not exhaust it. There were two or three ber-
ries even he did not gather. And when we have
borne and forborne to the utter, even the bitter end,
with man, with things, with self, with God, as we think,
there is yet more that the spirit of patience may bear.
And we catch ourselves confessing it the very moment
after we have let go our hold of it, and have sent our
released, imperious will crashing down in among the
courtesies of intercourse or the affections of home.
We see that we might have held out yet longer, that it
would have been easy to have done it, and that the two
or three unplucked berries would have yielded a more
luscious fruit than all the before-gone harvest. We
begin to be impatient and irritable and unreasonable
long before there is the shadow of excuse for it; and
they are most so who have kept patient up to a certain
point, and then have removed restraint, given it and
themselves up. As the waters dribbling through the
dam, neglected, pour and tear and sweep and devastate,
and carry ruin and wreck, so with the impetuousness
that has burst the bounds of patience. It had been
better to have been impatient all along than by letting
go to have brought, in flood and overthrow, disaster so
grave. There are three things to be observed with
patience,— to hold in, to hold on, and to hold out.

324 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED.

So with any virtue, with all the virtues. They have

a wonderful elasticity. Each one, like charity, covers a
its multitude. You can go on and on, and still its

power holds. There is always something more it can
do, some new ground it can occupy, some other work

it can accomplish. There is literally no end to its — ‘

mission. I think what the life of Christ did, over and

above all other living, was not the introducing us to 4

new graces of character so much as the making us

cognizant of the new reaches to which well-known a

graces were capable of being strained. As-into old
words, by his new spirit, he put new life, so into

old graces, and made a Gospel seem to be studded 4

with new virtues, as the heavens seem to be studded
with new constellations to the novice who first handles
the telescope, when it is only the new vision in him.
The stars were there. Men did not know them. Only
he took old traits, familiar duties, and transfigured
them by the way in which he pushed them,— treated
them as things not to be carried a certain convenient
distance and then to be dropped, or to be stood by, as
the soldier stands by his ordered musket at parade
rest, but to be carried the more firmly and resolutely.
from the point of ordinary halt,— carried till the Great
Commander should order the laying down of all arms —
and the rest that comes of victory. It was the two or

three berries on the top of the outmost bough that

made the difference. Where men left off, he the more a

zealously worked; what they neglected to pluck, he
gathered into the garner, left nothing to the birds or
to other men’s gleaning,—sowed and reaped and
gleaned himself.

fire peot PRUE THE LAST PLUCKED. 325

So it is again with the bearing of pain, the burden
of sorrow. There are two or three berries yet, after we

have reached the bounds of supposed endurance. A

little holding out shows us that we can bear a little
more; and, when that little more is borne, the brave
soul, the soul whose courage is ‘a cheerful courage,”
no dull despair without hope, finds there is power still
to bear a little more. In the old Inquisitions, when
brave men died and tortured men would not recant,

they relaxed the boot and the screw and the wheel a

little, that the man whose pain had mastered conscious- —
ness might come to, and save himself by retracting;
but the wheel turned again, and the screw wound, and
the boot pressed, for the revived man had taken new
lease to bear,— there was yet more that he could suffer
in the thought of the Master suffering behind him, and
the crown that he saw ready to crown him before.
And when we come to the great griefs and aches, and,
sore-bruised, it seems impossible for one moment
longer to bear even a divine will, somehow, before we
quite yield, we catch sight of the two or three berries
at the top of the outmost bough, and gird anew our
wasting powers and cry the old cry, and submit, till
the submission surely, slowly, sweetly grows into the
acquiescing that brings at one our will with God’s.
And so I have given you my reading of the Script-
ure word, a hint which you may take and apply very
broadly for yourselves and very helpfully. What we
want to know in life— not to say that we know, but to
know as the heart knows beyond peradventure — is
that there is a great deal more to life in all directions
than we allow, and that we can grow to a great deal

ae0 THE BEST FRUIT THE’ LAST PEUG.

more in life than we do. Itisa very much broader, as
grander, thing to live than we make it. Virtues and
duties cover more demand, and lift us to other levels;

and man, instead of the pigmy he is content to be,— — on

“an infant crying in the night,’’—is created to be
colossal, compact, and well-developed every how,— capa-
ble, not like fabled Atlas, of carrying the round orb on
his shoulders, but of carrying in his life the microcosm of
all truth and virtue and endurance, making it the reflex
of the all-perfectness which flashed out for a little time
from Judea and Galilee, leaving not darkness again
at its going away, but: the remainder of influence to
lighten, to lead, to sanctify, to save. } 7

By the wayside or on the edges of the autumn woods,
left by truant boys or the gatherers for the market; at
the top of the outmost branches the red berry sways
to and fro. On the outmost branches of apple-trees
hang the remainder glories overlooked by the gatherer,
greeting the eye, tempting the palate, as not those
carefully garnered at the foot. A savory imagination
invests them with a desire that the ready-to-hand does
not provoke. They are both the remainder and the
record of harvest, the mute ‘“ Well done!” In the
autumn of life, one sees all along, swaying and ruddy,
out at the end of topmost branches, ripe fruits which
he might have gathered in to himself by only more of
persistence and courage. The best things are not the
things harvested, but the things ungarnered, the things
beyond where he stopped work; and only could he go
gleaning over his whole life, into the treasury of God,
as well as of his own satisfaction, what other harvest
would he gather! In some things, he may yet; but it

f27e BEST PRUITS THE LAST PLUCKED. 327

is for the young to remember that the Lord of the har-
vest asks of his workers that they be gleaners too,
and that the two or three berries, the very outmost
and uttermost, be brought in with the rest, that, in the
taking of the account, it may be seen that theirs has
been thorough work,— the ploughing, the planting, the
reaping, and the gleaning.

Nov. 26, 1876.

KV
OUR YEARS.

“The days of our years.”— PSALM xc., Io.

Tue Psalmist speaks of the days of our years as
being about so many. It is a time-measure that he is
giving us. And avery solemn measure it is, because
it is the suggestion of the limit beyond which one can-
not expect that the days of his years shall take him,
or, if he do, that it is to be at the expense of labor and
sorrow. Somewhat sombre the words are, and I think
paint the picture a little darkly ; for sometimes the best
power and beauty of a life are the climax and finish
that come after the threescore and ten have passed,—
the halo years, as we not infrequently find them in a
serene and beautiful age, the ripened coloring of the
time behind, mellowed and enriched by the mingling
with foregleams of the everlasting time before.

The days of our years! The phrase has been telling
itself to me for a long while, nor have I been well able
to get my thought beyond the phrase. Do you not
sometimes find that a compact form of words, embrac-
ing a full truth, will arrest your attention and impress
you with majesty and weight, with force and truth, with
vast, thorough completeness, so as to cut off, to forbid
anything more than their repetition, while you are filled
with, possessed by a great conviction, voiceless, lan-

OUR YEARS. ; | 329

guageless? There are many texts of Scripture one
hesitates to handle, to enlarge upon, which one attempts
to speak of in vain, so mighty are they, so inclusive, so
exhaustive, so all in all, so wide, so deep, so beyond
shaping into words,—and these the most satisfying,
the most nourishing, the most tenderly cherished, reit-
erating themselves to us, and leaving us in the great
silence that is not mere dumb void, but thick-peopled
with unutterable emotion, belief, satisfying. I feel as
if this, our to-day text, preached itself through its sharp
terseness more directly to our convictions than any
enlargement I can give it; and that to sit here, as our
good friends the Quakers would, in silence, pondering
the few, full words, were of more value, that for each
one to be his own preacher were to his better good,
than only to glean after such words as the preacher may
be able to drop. The plummet that any one may drop
into any other one’s soul is many fathom short of that
which each may drop into his own.

It is very difficult, under whatever mood ei mind, to
sit down and look justly at the days of one’s years, to
get at one’s unbiassed impression, so much inevitably
we surge one side or the other of the exact line of
the truth.

One hardly knows what to say of them, or when he
begins to say does not know where to end. It is as if
one were looking into a mist to recall, if he cannot see,
the way he has come; to shape, where there are no defi-
nite landmarks, the way he is to go. One gets bewil-
dered as he repeats and re-repeats, so vast is their
suggestion of what has been, what has failed to be,
their immense, their momentous doings and undoings

330 OUR YEARS.

and misdoings. Wordsworth says that we come trail- —

ing clouds of glory, and that heaven lies about us in “
our infancy; and Job has it that man is born to ~

trouble; and theology has it that he is born in sin and
is sinful altogether, his days few and evil, and under
that conviction generations have shivered as they
have come and gone, the cold chill of such belief un-

nerving the better thing they would love to be. We a

need something other than either or than all such
teaching, to have some thought of the days of our
years somewhat more wholesome, more true than the
word of either modern or ancient poet, or any theology.

The days of our years, looked at as time, are days of

a first feebleness, when innocence is only ignorance, a ‘ —
negation of virtue, where sleep, mutter, burst the em- __

bryonic passions,— days in which the child prophesies of
the man in part, in which, whatever trail of glory comes

with it soon gets merged and commingled with things — q

not heavenly, and the great spirit struggle begins.
Then, the days of our years are growing days, expanding
days, in which, under the glow of the morning sun, we
put away the child, put out strength by pruning as by
spreading, develop into our earlier manhood. Then
they are maturing days, days of drill, experience, duty,
when the great subject in every heart, though it never
be outspoken, is life, what to do with it, what to be in
it, what to make of it, when we would welcome the
egress of all low as the ingress of all high, yet are
swept from the sheltering rock of our better desire by
the strong, swift currents that eddy about us, and ever
and anon, in some moment of fiercer swirl, are swept
from our protection and hurried within the embrace of

OUR YEARS. 331

the vortex that remorselessly forbids our landing again,
and keeps us within the hurrying eddy; and then ae
are the silvered days of age, of meee ce, of waning
and of waiting.

What the days of our years, looked at as character, to
any of us are it is easy enough to declare. The verdict
is immediate and unanimous. If it should find voice
from you as I speak, it would be without dissent. The
good man, the bad man, the careful and thoughtful, the
careless and thoughtless, the earnest as the indifferent,
—each and every would say they have been unsatisfac-
tory. Looking them over cursorily, thoroughly, “I am
not satisfied with them,” we all say inside, where
speech so much seems more to our conscience and con-
sciousness than when it gets sound, losing the sacred-
ness of power as it puts off the sacredness of silence.
The most self-satisfied person loses every particle of
self-satisfaction, as he answers before his own soul what
the days of his years have been,— what he has been in
them, with his obligations, his opportunities, his abili-
ties; how he has met divine command and human
expectation ; how he has answered his own aspirations ;
with what measure he has filled his time; of what
material builded his existence ; how fashioned, fed his
soul. As the leper drew the cloth about his lip and
went wandering in solitary places, startling the unwary
traveller with the wailing monotone, “ Unclean! un-
- clean!” so the soul, wandering solitary amid the relics
of its past, startles itself by the hopelessness of the cry
that unbidden invades its silences,— unsatisfied, unsat-
isfied. ‘Vanity, vexation, weariness, dross, nothing,
in our agony we cry; and the wail of our despair

332 OUR YEARS.

drowns the promptings of our hope. But despairs —
never win the kingdom of heaven. To despair is to be =
coward, renegade. It is the crime of an alien, not the
attitude of a son. oe

No one will, I suppose, be tempted to contradict me
when I assert of the days of our years that they are —
days of struggles. So men are wont to esteem them. —
Call life whatever else you will, it is a struggle; call
man whatever else you please, he is a wayfarer amid _
snares and pitfalls, opposed by secret and by open foes, -
with weight upon him and toil before him to keep —
a narrow track through a broad country, over which
storms sweep, and blinding lights, alternating with —
midnight darkness, dazzle and confound. Poets and
painters join with Scripture and experience to show
life to us as astruggle. We who spend our summers _
by the sea are familiar with that peculiar troubling of
the water which tells of the pressure and crowd and
struggle for existence beneath, as the lesser fish at-
tempt to escape the jaws of the stronger enemy; and
everywhere in crowded cities and countries, it has
been in’ history, it is in observation, the struggle of —
the many not for the right to live, so much as for that
support to life without which the right is little. Every-
where, in the waters beneath, in the air around, in the
existence about us, in savage, in civilized as in animal
and insect life, first, always, last, this strife. Men call
it part, product of a primal curse. JI call it part, a step.
in development, outgrowth, ripening, something in the ~
progress which is to ripen ultimately into order and
quiet and harmony and completeness. And this strug-
gle is not confined to the lower species, ts, to

OUR YEARS. 333

fish, to beasts, to insects, to primordial germs, not to
that outer life of man which after threescore years and
ten is rounded by a sleep.

It follows man into the deeper life of his soul, where
the aspiring is not for the meat that perishes, the sub-

“stance which is temptation to the moth and the rust

and the thief, but for the higher, the divine life. That
life of Jesus — which was no brilliant meteor flashing
across a world’s amazement, but the established light
at the zenith for every generation’s blessing — was no
exceptional dower of a parental love, or miracle,— wit-
ness to an exceptional ambassador,— but outgo, out-
growth of a struggling soul, whose fealty drew him
back into the infinite bosom whence he issued; whose
strengths were struggles issuing into victories ; whose
completed, harmonized being grew by and because of
struggle into that so fair transfiguring, which before the
wakened gaze of all true spirits glistens with a more
exceeding whiteness than did his living body, what
time Moses and Elias talked with him before drowsy

‘and wondering and misunderstanding disciples. As

fair buildings, under wise designings of the architect
and the accurate cunning of the mechanic, grow in
beauty and proportion and strength out of uncouth
stones, unsightly mortar, and stubborn lumber, out of
brawny muscle and unseemly sweat of ignorant and
unsavory workmen, out of the struggles of man against
harsh and unyielding conditions, so is the symmetry

_of every human life builded out of man’s struggles, only

he submit to the plan of the great Architect, only work
he as God’s workman, and fitly clip and square and
frame together his raw material. It is not the swift-

334 | OUR YEARS,

growing mushroom, which, while the dews wake and —
watch, grows to its perfection, that stands head of —
God’s great plantage, but the century-grown tree
that has struggled against storm and wind, and heat —
and cold, and wet and dry, and light and dark; and no —
swift-crown, carefully tended soul is type and excel- —
lence of the true man, but that scarred and furrowed — q
by the ultimate defeats and victories, despairs and —
hopes of the struggles which God plants before his
prize, as he plants thorns before his rose. |

It is not only that God does not let one sparrow fall Z
to the ground without him, but not one good thought, —
feeling, purpose, deed. Our smiles, our tears, our —
prayers, our hopes, our efforts, are all numbered, as well _
as the hairs of our heads. The grass for to-morrow’s |
oven is not alone clothed, but every righteous intent; —
and we are little of faith, if we do not comprehend it. —
Nothing that is genuine is naked, fruitless. The strug-
gle that almost costs your life, which prostrates your —
_ very soul, which draws the thick curtain of darkness —
that you feel to joint and marrow, though it seem to —
have no adequate issue, is not void, is not lost. It is
an immortal integer in the life you would growto. It
is not void, it is not vain, it does not return upon you —
empty. Trust God for that, and turn to struggle —
again, not cast down, not in despair, not to murmur, ~
doubt, give all up, but to continue the pilgrim’s plod- —
ding way, conquering the opposition, removing the ob- —
struction, toiling along the plain, struggling up the
height, sure that every well-intended endeavor lessens —
the weight and the length, while it brings nearer to ~
that goal, whose this side ends all struggle, whose ~

OUR YEARS. : an

other side begins reward. For you, for all, struggle is
the day’s duty. The days of our years must be that.
Accept the law, and do your best under it, with no re-
pining at unattained result. Result is attained at
once, and in every active effort, though you cannot see,
measure, gauge it. Faith is your need, not sight.
You do not, you cannot see result, for you are only
the sower, It is the reaper who knows results, not the
man who stalks over rough earth, and casts the seed
into the open and hungry furrow, but he who garners,
when the suns have left their golden smilé upon
ripened ear or fruit. Who are we that we should de-
mand to know the product of these days of our years?
The demand on us is faithful sowing, each day’s toil,
conscience work that we may earn conscience wage.

It is ours —as the workman of the spring —to be
steadfast, enduring, seeking each day the means by
which to grow toward the higher life: it is God’s, as
the harvestman, to stand at the gate in at which, the
increase goes, and take account of result, and charge it
in his book of reckoning. It is not ours to quarrel
with conditions, but to meet and answer them ; to fill,
being full even with the humblest elements of the
higher life ; to accept the fertilizing helps of discipline
and experience, of providence and life, by which they
shall germinate and grow, and ripen into the desired
consummation. For, if life be struggle, it is struggle as
the law of growth. Better than the fact of struggle
_in these days of our years is the fact that struggle
never dies out in struggle, but takes new form in
growth, not so much a resurrection of that which once
has been as a prolonging into farther life of that which

330 OUR YEARS.

is. Struggle is one law of being, but not a dead, fruit- —
less law. Without it, only stagnation, death. With —
it, possibility, growth, life. We murmur at, we quarrel
with, what we call destiny. .We reluct at discipline, and
refuse our shoulders to the yoke. These are the con-
ditions of our being: refused, souls die; accepted, they
live; spurned, life becomes, amid all painted pleasures,
dry, juiceless, withered,— and worse, not only hopeless
of, but incapable of desiring as of reaching noble ends. —
Embraced, they show themselves —what Jesus was to ~
them on the way to Emmaus, even while their eyes
were holden, and they knew him not—the Saving
Power. While we may, one way, say of struggle what
Arnold in his great poem says of sorrow: struggle is

“Shadow to life, moving where life doth move ;
Nor to be laid aside until one lays
Living aside, with all its changing states,—
Birth, growth, decay, love, hatred, pleasure, pain,
Being and doing,”—

another way, in the same author's words, we may
speak of struggle as doing its work upon us and within _

us
“Till all the sum of ended life,
All that total of a soul,
Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,
The self it wove, with woof of viewless time
Crossed on the warps invisible of acts,—
The outcome of him on the universe,—
Grows pure and sinless.”

To grow pure and sinless! What pearl of price E
would not one sacrifice for that? For what gem of so |
pure a ray serene as the soul made lowly-wise by the
noble living which ripens into the more and more in >

OUR YEARS. 337

him who, wiser than the knight of old, refusing to
judge the shield by the side of brass it presents, rides
round, and finds the obverse glittering with pure gold,
accepts not the dark and frowning side of discipline,
but holds it till he can see the benign intent and ex-
tract the blessing? Men go mourning all their days,
and speak of the universe of God as a valley of shadows
and tears, and lose the whole significance, as magnifi-
cence, of the culture God has established for us; and
we graduate out of this his school not with the honors,
ripened in manhood and ready to be saint, but puny
and enfeebled and dissatisfied and sour, earth and
its teachings having never lifted us to a conception of
the things of an immeasurable glory, which he becomes
capable of possessing who works mightily the will of
God while, mightily, the will of God works in him.
Say of it as we will, the struggle of the soul for its exist-
ence always carries with it a sense of satisfaction,
though it see not positive award. Every fidelity has
that much. Beside, behind, independent of award is it,
a something that gives a great content, that makes
a sure joy, that upholds and cheers, even while the
battle is waged and the sore-pressed spirit struggles
against the mustering of heavy odds. It is not when
the night comes and he gets his penny of award at the
hands of the master that the true workman has his joy
and content. He does not have to wait for them; but,
as every honest blow in the burden and heat of the day
tells of honest work, they follow, consequent of cause.
It is not as the victory-shout succeeds to the deafening
roar of cannon that the exultation leaps to the heart of
the soldier ; but that is part with every fierce and stern

338 OUR YEARS,

moment of conscious discharge of duty. It is not as 4
we grasp prizes, wear laurels, receive plaudits, that the
great surges of satisfaction come, but in the moments
of devotion and fealty, while the strife goes, the end is
unattained, the day uncertain. Socrates claimed to be
always in communion with his demon, his guardian

spirit. Every man has his attending guardian, which

at the moment of true endeavor, even when sorest
pressed and visibly accomplishing least, upbears him,
and puts new and redoubling energy into his spirit.

The days of man’s years are not mere years of com-
pelled endurance: he is not a moping, tottering, un-
hoping burden-bearer, but, inspired by convictions of
his duty, as God’s child, conscious of fealty what-
ever of momentary dereliction creep in now and then,
he grows day by day, by and through his struggles,
against adversities and evils without, propensities and
passions within, singing silent hallelujahs in his heart,
even as the toiling laborer whistles at his task, or the
sailor, tugging at anchor or at rope, lightens the strain
upon his muscles with snatches of cheery song. It is
a great guerdon of God that we are not carried to the
skies on beds of ease, but that every man’s sky is
reached through perversities and antagonisms such as
would break one only a man, such as make a son of
God. Ifat the Jordan Jesus had asked that the cup
might pass from him, fainting at its first presentation,
the evil wiles that clustered about his early manhood

never had fled from him. Beginning there the never-

intermitted struggle, his perfected manhood —man-
hood grown out of the struggles of the days of his
years — uttered only the grandly qualified prayer of so

OUR YEARS. 339

rich experience, ‘‘ Nevertheless, not as I will, but as
thou wilt!’ Such divine mastery was there through
the trials he has borne!

The kingly warrior, in the heat of the battle, is said
to have seen in the clouds above him the glorified
symbol, and its hallowing legend, “By this conquer.”
Upon every cloud, in our every encounter with which
these days of our years are checkered, each one may
find the same symbol, illumined by the same.

They are his stimulus and hope, whatever the peril
of his fight. It is faith in the spirit of that which the
emblem typifies that consecrates struggle, that out of
struggle compels victory, and by victory, growth. The
days of the years of a man’s life are growing years, if
he so will. Growth is not through grace, divine gift ;
but growth is through struggle, human fidelity, the
shaping and training one’s self by and because of what
one calls hard things. It is the mission of hard things
to prevent the soul from losing itself amid the little-
nesses of ordinary life; to exalt it into that power and
might which, without fear or trembling, shall enable
one to secure to himself things high, pure, noble,
enduring, to run with patience his race, and finish his
course with joy.

And, if we are to regard the new days of the new
year as the renewal of struggle, let us learn the other
wisdom, and regard them as also the renewal of hope.
Hope should be never dead. It is immortal. Does
not the poet say that it “springs eternal” ?

The past is a record: you cannot help, alter -that.
What is writ is writ. The best that you can do with
most of it is to bury it and forget it. At any rate, get

>»

340 OUR YEARS,

the tease and fret out of it. It can be only healthy to

you so. The future is an opportunity; and, as the old
monks used to write new words over old and once-used
parchments, I think we may hope, in the days of the
years to be, to write out some of the sad things of the
days of the years that have been by the better thing

from the tablets of memory and being, we can write
upon the fading page a brighter and braver record.
In a true human life there is never place for long
despondency, much less for despairs, for regrets, peni-
tence, resolve, never for ‘suicides,— those moral, spirit-
ual suicides men unconsciously commit, when they
allow themselves to be overcome by the struggles
that were never sent as masters, tyrannies, only to
be servants, means to victories and growths.

Those of you who chanced to be abroad at the mid-
hour on the last night of the year must have felt the
beauty. The storm was over, the air was still, the
earth, a calm white, lay and rested beneath the calmer

blue. Stately stars kept silent watch; and a silver =m

moon walked as queen through the great space above,
bathing the broad, untrodden- white with floods of —
light. And this peace, this beauty, was but the out-
‘growth of struggle, what the storm and contention of
the day had culminated in. And so no calm but out
of storm, no growth but out of struggle, fierce pains
of birth, fiercer conflicts of experience, growth by
these, then peace.

Jan. 4, 1880.

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