m ''mi mmi iii s» ^ mm «^ m m^j:^m! ^^x 'mMMS ^Mxi' M:;'-^ ^^•i s." Concerning Atmospheres, loi Of course, to diffuse a powerful influence, whether towards evil or good, a man must possess great force and earnestness of character. Ordinary mortals are like the chameleon, which takes something of the colour of any strong-coloured object it is placed near. They take their tone very much from the more ener- getic folk with whom they are placed in contact. I daresay you have known a man who powerfully in- fluences for good the whole circle of men that sur- rounds him. Such a one must have a vast stock of vital and moral energy. Most people are like the elec- tric eel, very much exhausted after having given forth their influence. A few are like an electric battery, of resources so vast that it can be pouring out its energy without cease. There are certain physical character- istics which often, though not always, go with this moral characteristic. It is generally found in connexion with a loud, manly voice, a burly figure, a very frank address. Not always, indeed j there have been puny, shrinking, silent men, who mightily swayed their fellow- men, whether to evil or to good. But in the presence of the stronger physical nature, you feel something tending to make you feel cheerful, hopeful, energetic. I have known men who seemed always surrounded by a healthy, bracing atmosphere. When with such, T defy you to feel down-hearted, or despond- ing, or slothful. They put new energy, hopefulness, and life into you. Yes, my reader, perhaps you have found it for yourself, that to gain the friendship of even I02 Concerning Atmospheres. one energetic, thoughtful, good man, may suffice to give a new and healthier tone to your whole life. Yes, the influence of such a one may insensibly reach through all you think, feel, and do ; as the material atmosphere pervades all material things. And such an influence may be exerted either through a fiery energy, or by an undefinable, gentle fascination. I believe that most men felt the first of these, who knew much of Dr. Chalmers. I believe that many have felt the second of these, in their intercourse with Dr. Newman or Mr. Jowett. Possibly, we might classify mankind under two divisions : the little band whose pith or whose fascination is such that they give the tone, good or bad j that they diffuse the atmosphere \ and the larger host, whose soul is receptive rather than diffusive; the great multitude of human beings who take the tone, feel the atmosphere, and go with the cur- rent. It is probable that a third class ought to be added, including those who never felt anything, particularly, at all. When you first enter a new moral atmosphere, you feel it very keenly. But you grow less sensitive to it daily, as you become accustomed to it. It may be producing its moral effect as really; but you are not so much aware of its presence. Did you ever go to a place new to you, of very unusual and striking aspect; and did you wonder if people there live just as they do in the commonplace scenes amid which you live ? Let me confess that I cannot look at the pictures of Concerning Atmospheres, 103 the quaint old towns of Belgium, without vaguely ask- ing myself that question. In a lesser degree, the fancy steals in, even as one walks the streets of Oxford or of Chester. You feel how fresh and marked an atmos- phere you breathe, in a visit of a few days' length to either town. But of course, if you live in the strangest place for a long time, you will find that life there is very much what life is elsewhere. I have often thought that I should like to do my in-door work in a room whose window opened upon the sea; so close to the sea that looking out you might have the waves lapping on the rock fifteen feet below you ; and that when you threw the window up, the salt breeze might come into the chamber, a little feverish perhaps with several toil- ing hours. Surely, I think, some influence from the scene would mingle itself with all that one's mind would there produce. And it would be curious to look out, be- fore goingto bed, far over the level surface in the moon- light : to see the spectral sails passing in the distance ; and to hear the never-ceasing sound, old as Creation. I do not know that the reader will sympathize with me ; but I should like very much to live for a week or two at the Eddystone Lighthouse. There would be a delightful sense of quiet. There would be no worry. There would be plenty of time to think. It would be absolutely certain that the door-bell would never ring. And though there would be but limited space for exercise, there would unquestionably be the freshest and purest of air. No doubt if the wind rose at 104 Concerning Atmospheres, evening, you might through the night feel the light- house vibrate vv^ith the blow of the v/aves ; but you could recall all you had read of the magnificent en- gineering of Smeaton ; and feel no more than the slight sense of danger which adds a zest. I am aware that in a little while one would get accustomed to the whole mode of life. The flavour of all things goes with custom. When you go back to the seaside, how salt the breeze tastes, which you never remarked while you were living there ! And sometimes, look- ing back, you will wish you could revive the freshness and vividness of first impressions. We have been thinking of the atmosphere diffused by books and by persons : let it be said that the thing about a book which affects your mind and character most, is not its views or arguments : it is its atmosphere. And it is so also with persons. It is not what people expressly advise you that really sways you ; it is the general influence that breathes from all their life. A book may, for instance, set out sound religious views ; but in such a hard cold way that the book will repel from religion. That is to say, the arguments may push one way, and the atmosphere the opposite way : and the atmosphere will neutralize the arguments and something more. And you will find people, too, whose advices and counsels are good; who often counsel their children or their friends to duty, and to earnest- ness in religion ; but who neutralize and reverse the Concernhtg Atmospheres, 105 bearing of all these good counsels by the entire tone of their life. The words of some people say, Choose the good part, Ask for the best of all guidance and influ- ence day by day ; but their atmosphere says, Anything for money — for social standing — forspitefulness — for general unpleasantness. You will find various Phari- sees now-a-days who loudly exclaim, ' God be merci- ful to me a sinner:' but woe betide you if you venture to hint to such that anything they can do is wrong ! Let me say, that you may read and you may hear religious instruction, which without asserting anything expressly wrong, still deteriorates you. It lowers you ; you are the worse for it. There is an undefinable, but strongly-felt lack of the Christian spirit about it. Its views are mainly right ; but somehow its atmosphere is wrong. I do not say this in any narrow spirit : it is not against one party of religionists more than another that I should bring this charge. Perhaps the teaching which is soundest in doctrine, is sometimes the most useless, through its want of the true Christian life j or through merely giving you the metaphysics of Chris- tianity, without any real bringing of the vital truths of Christianity home to the heart, and to the actual case of those to whom they are told. I have read a book — a polished, scholarly tale, the leading character in which was a clergyman — but in reading the book you felt a strong smack of heathenism. I do not mean the savage, cannibal heathenism which still exists in the islands of the South Pacific j but the polished hea- io6 Concerning Atmospheres, thenism which was many centuries since in Greece and Rome. The clergyman was sound in dogma, I daresay, if you had asked him for a confession of his faith ; but his Christianity was an outside garment, while his whole nature was saturated with the old literature and mythology of that ancient day. Then you may find a book, a religious book, containing nothing on which you could well put your finger as wrong : yet you were left with a general impression of scepticism. 77i^/ was the atmosphere. The views and arguments are as the solid ground : but you touch the solid ground but at a single point — the circumambient ether is all around you, and within you. I have read pages setting out somewhat sad and discouraging views ; yet as you turned the pages you were aware of a general atmosphere of hopefulness and energy. And I have listened to what might have made pages, if it had been printed (pages which assuredly I should not have read), setting out the sublimest and most glorious hopes of humanity, in a way so dreary, dull, wearisome, and stupid, that the atmosphere was most depressing. You felt as though you were environed by a damp, thick fog. It would be an endless task to reckon up the moral atmospheres in which human beings live ; or even the moral atmospheres which you yourself, my friend, have breathed. But there are some that one remembers vividly ; they did not come often enough, Concerning Atmospheres, 107 or continue long enough, to lose their freshness. Such is the atmosphere which surrounds all opera- tions relating to the sale and purchase of horses. You remember how, when you went to buy one of those noble animals, you found yourself surrounded by a new and strongly-flavoured phase of life. Was there not a general atmosphere as of swindling ? You were surprised to hear lies, the grossest, told, even though they were sure to be instantly detected. You felt that your ignorance and capacity of being cheated were being gauged with great skill. It is a singular thing, indeed, that one of the most useful and beau- tiful of God's creatures should diffuse around him a most unhealthy moral atmosphere. You may have remarked that the noble steed is not merely sur- rounded by an ether filled with falsehoods ; but that a less irritating, though still remarkable, ingredient, mingles with it, like ozone — it is the element of slang. I have remarked this with great interest, and mused much on it without succeeding in satisfac- torily accounting for it. Why is it that to say a horse is a good horse should stamp you as a green hand ; but that to say the animal is no bad nag, or a fairish style of hack, should convey the idea that you know various things ? And wherefore should it be, that a shallow nature should be indicated by your saying you were willing to pay fifty pounds for the horse, while un- told depth and craft shall be held to be implied by the statement that your tether was half a hundred ? io8 Concerning Atmospheres, A very disagreeable atmosphere, diffused by various persons, is that of suspicion. Some one has done you a kind turn, and your heart warms to the doer of it. But Mr. Snarling comes in ; and you tell him, in hearty tones, of the kind turn, and of your warm feel- ing towards the man that did it. Mr. Snarling doubts ; hints ; insinuates ; suggests a deep and traitorous de- sign under that kind act : perhaps succeeds in chilling or souring your warm feeling ; till, on the withdrawal of the unhealthy atmosphere, your better nature gets the upperhand again. And when next you meet the kind, open face of the friend who did you the kind turn, your heart smites you as you think what a wicked suspicious creature you were while within the baneful atmosphere of Snarling. You have seen, I daresay, very shallow and empty individuals, who fancied that it made them look deep and knowing, to say that beggars, for the most part, live in great luxury, and have money in the bank. That may be so in rare cases ; but I know that the want of the poor is often very real. It comes, doubtless, in some measure, from their own sin or improvidence ; and as, of course, you and I never do wrong, let us throw a very large stone at the poor creature who is starving to-day, because she took a full meal of bread and butter and tea four days since. I have heard a man, with great depth of look, state that a certain cripple known to me could walk quite well. I asked the man for his authority. He had none, but vague suspicion. I told the man, with some acer- Concerning Atmospheres. log bity (whichldonot at all regret),that I knew the poor man well, and that I knew he was as crippled as he seemed. It looks knowing to declare of some poor starved creature that he is more rogue than fool. Whenever you hear that said, my reader, always ask what is the precise charge intended to be conveyed, and ask the ground on which the charge is made. In most cases you will get no answer to the second ques- tion J in very many no intelligible answer to the first. It would be a pleasant world to live in, if the people who dwell in it were such as they are represented by several persons known to me. I remember an out- spoken old Scotch lady, to whom I was offering some Christian comfort after a great loss. I remember how she said, with a look as if she meant it, ' If I did not believe all that^ I should take a knife and cut my throat ! ' It was an honest confession of her faith, though made in unusually energetic terms. And I might say for myself, if I had not some faith in my race, it would be better to beofFtothe wilderness at once, or, like Timon, to the desolate shore. The wants of beggars, even of the least deserving, are, for the most part, very real. As for their luxuries, they are gene- rally tea and buttered toast. Sometimes fried ham may also be found. Poor creatures ! These things are the only enjoyments they have; and I, for one, am not ready with my anathema maranatha. I have known very suspicious and uncharitable persons who were ex- tremely fat; doubtless they lived entirely on parched 1 1 o Concerning Atmospheres, peas. And all the sufferings of the poor are not shams paraded to the end of obtaining pence. I look back now, over a good many years, to the time when I was a youth at college. I remember coming home one night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, along a quiet street in a certain great city. I remember two poor girls standing in the shelter of the wall of a house, leaning against the wall, from the drenching rain. Neither noticed me. I see yet the deadly white face of one, — the haggard, sick look, as she crouched by the wall, and leant on the other's shoulder, as if just re- covering from a faint. I hear yet the anxious, despair- ing voice with which the other said to her, ' Are you better now ? ' The words were not spoken at me, or spoken for the ear of any passer-by. All this was on the dark midnight street, amid the drenching rain. It was a little thing ; but it brought home to one the suffering that is quietly undergone in thousands of places over Europe each day and night. Probably you have known people who were placed in a sphere where the atmosphere, moral and physical, was awfully depressing. They did their work poorly enough ; and many blamed them severely. For my- self, 1 was inclined to wonder that they did so well. Who could be a good preacher in certain churches of which I have known ? I think there are few men more sensitive to the moral atmosphere than the preacher. There are churches in which there is a hearty atmosphere j others, in which there is a chilly Concerning Atmospheres, ill atmosphere ; others, with a bitter, narrow-minded, Pharisaic ; others, with an atmosphere which combines the pragmatic, critical, and self-sufficient, with the densely stupid. But passing from this, I say that most men, even of those who do their work in life decently well, have only energy enough to do well if you give them a fair chance. And many have not a fair chance : some have no chance at all. There are human beings set in a moral atmosphere in which moral energy and alacrity could no more exist than physical life in the choke-damp of the mine. Be thank- ful, my friend, if you are placed in a fairly healthful atmosphere. You are doing fairly in it ; but in a dif- ferent one, you might have pined and died. You are leading a quiet Christian life, free from great sin or shame. Well, be thankful j but do not be conceited : above all, do not be uncharitable to those for whom the race and the warfare have been too much. I have said that it is the more energetic of the race that diffuse amoral atmosphere j the ordinary members ' of the race feel it. The energetic give the tone ; the ordinary take it. There are minds whose nature is to give out ; and minds whose nature is to take in. But most men have energy enough, if rightly directed, to affect the air somewhat ; and though the moral ingre- dient they yield may not be much in quantity, it may be able to supply just the precious ozone. Let us try to be like the sunshiny member of the family, who has the inestimable art to make all duty seem pleasant ; all I [ % Concerning Atmospheres, self-denial and exertion, easy and desirable ; even dis- appointment not so blank and crushing ; who is like a bracingjcrisp, frosty atmosphere throughout the home, without a suspicion of the element that chills and pinches. You have known people within whose in- fluence you felt cheerful, amiable, hopeful, equal to anything ! Oh, for that blessed power, and for God's grace to exercise it rightly ! I do not know a more enviable gift than the energy to sway others to good 5 to diffuse around us an atmosphere of cheerfulness, piety, truthfulness, generosity, magnanimity. It is not a matter of great talent ; not entirely a matter of great energy ; but rather of earnestness and honesty, — and of that quiet, constant energy which is like soft rain gently penetrating the soil. It is rather a grace than a gift: ; and we all know where all grace is to be had freely for the asking. You see, my reader, I have spoken of atmospheres and currents together. For every moral atmosphere is of the nature of a moral current. As you breathe the atmosphere, you feel that there is an active force in it : that you are beginning to drift away. It is not merely a present sense of something that comes overyou ; but you know that it sets you floating onward to something beyond your present feeling. The more frequent ten- dency of a moral atmosphere is to assimilate your moral nature to Itself. Perhaps all atmospheres, if you live in them long enough, tend to this. But there are Co7tcerning Atmospheres. 113 some atmospheres which, just at first, are so very dis- agreeable, that their effect is repellent ; they tend to make you wish to be just as different from themselves as you can. But the refined person, at first revolted by a rude and coarse atmosphere, will, in years, grow subdued to it ; and the pure young soul, shocked and disgusted at the first approach of gross sin, comes at last to bear it and to exceed it. Yes, the ultimate ten- dency of all moral atmospheres upon all ordinary people, is to assimilate them to the element in which they live. Let men breathe any atmosphere long enough, and this will follow ; save in the case of an exceptional man here and there. It is a very bad thing for a young person to be much among tho- roughly worldly people, or among mere money-making people. Let us not cry down money ; it is a great and powerful thing. You remember, it was not money, but the over love of money, that was ' the root of all evil.' But it is most unhappy to live among those from whose entire ways of thinking and talking you get the general impression, that money is the first and best thing ; and that the great end of life is to obtain it ; and that almost any means may be resorted to for that end. All this is not said in so many words, but it pervades you unseen ; you breathe it like an un- wholesome malaria. You take it in, not merely at every breath, but at every pore. And the result of years of this is, that the warm-hearted, generous youth 8;rows into the sordid, heartless old man; and that the I 114 Concerning Atmospheres, enthusiastic young Christian is sometimes debased into a very chilly, lifeless, and worldly middle age. And now, before I end, you must let me say this. And when I say it upon this page (which never formed any part of a sermon) you will know that I say it not because I think I must, but because I honestly believe it. There is a certain blessed influence which can mingle itself with every moral atmosphere that a hu- man being can honestly breathe ; and which can make every such atmosphere healthful. You know what I mean. It is the influence of that Holy Spirit, whose presence the Redeemer said was more valuable and profitable than even His own ; and who is promised without reservation to all who heartily ask his presence. And you know, too, that we have a sure promise, that if we build on the right foundation, the current of our whole life will tend towards what is happy and good. There may be a little eddy backwards here and there, and sometimes what seems a pause, but it is in the di- rection of these things that the whole current sets ; it is towards these that ' all things work together.' I firmly believe that the -natural tendency of all moral currents, apart from God's grace, is downwards. Apart from that^ we shall always grow worse ; with it, we shall always grow better. Believe me, my reader, when I say, that if all our life and all our lot be not hallowed by the presence in all of the Blessed Spirit, we may be sure that we are breathing a moral atmosphere which wants just the precious ozone that is needful to true Concerning Atmospheres, 115 health and life. And if we have not, penitently and humbly, confided ourselves to our Saviour, we may know that we are drifting with a current which is cer- tainly bearing us on towards all that is evil and all that is woful. It is sad to see the poor little pale and sickly children of some dark, stifling close in a large city ; poor little things who never breathe the free country air; who are living in an unwholesome atmosphere within doors and without, in which they are pining, and growing up weak and nerveless : but it is more sad to see the immortal soul stunted, emaciated, and dis- torted, through the unhealthy moral air it breathes. It must have been a miserable sight, the little boat with the man in it asleep, drifting smoothly and swiftly along, beyond human reach, towards the tremendous cataract : but it is more miserable, if we saw it rightly, to see a human soul, in spiritual sleep, drifting day by day towards the fearful plunge into final woe. Let us pray, my reader, for both of us ; that God would be with us by His Spirit, and keep us in all ways that we go ; that in all our life we may breathe the Atmosphere of His presence ; and by the Current of all our life be brought nearer to Himself ! ii6 CHAPTER V. CONCERNING BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. EVERYTHING in this world has a Beginning and an End. After writing that sentence, which (as you see) sets forth a great general principle, I stopped for some time, to consider whether it holds always true. As one grows older, one grows always more cautious as to general principles. My young friend, when you are arguing any question with an acute opponent, you should, as a rule, never assent to any general principle which he may state. He may ask you, with an indig- nant air, Don't you admit that two and two make four ? Let your answer be, No, I admit nothing, till I see how it touches the matter which concerns us at present. You do not know what may be involved in the admission sought ; or what may follow from it. The most innocent-looking general principle may lead to the most appalling consequences. The general principle which appears most unquestionably true, may prove glaringly false in some very ordinary case. Beginnings and Ends, 117 You should request time for consideration before you admit any axiom in morals, metaphysics, or politics : or you should ask your adversary what he means to build upon it, before you can say either yes or no to it. Do as the Scotch judges do when a difficult case has been argued before them. I discover from the news- papers that they are wont to say, that they will take such a case to avl%andum : which I suppose (no one ever told me) means that they must think twice, or even oftener, before deciding a matter like that. I have taken the general principle, already stated, to avizandum. It seems all right. But I remember, in thinking of it, at how great advantage a judge is placed, in trying to come to a sound decision. Very clever and well-informed men state the arguments on either side. And all the judge has to do, is to say which arguments seem to him the strongest. He has no fear that any have been overlooked. But a human being, weighing a general principle, must act as counsel on each side, as well as judge. He must call up before his mind, all that is to be said for and against it ; as well' as say whether the weightiest reasons make for or against. And he may quite over- look some important reason, on one side or other. He may quite forget something so obvious and familiar, that a child might have remembered it. Or he may fail to discern that some consideration which mainly decides his judgment, is open to a fatal objection, which every one can see is fatal the instant it is stated. [ 1 8 Concerning Was it not Sir Isaac Newton, who had a pet cat and kitten ? And did not these animals annoy him while busy in his study, by frequently expressing their desire to be let out and in ? The happy thought struck him, that he might save himself the trouble of often rising to open his study door for their passage, by providing a way that should always be practicable for their exit or entrance. And accordingly the great man cut in his door, a large hole for the cat to go out and in ; and a small hole for the kitten. He failed to remember, what the stupidest bumpkin would have remembered, that the large hole through which the cat passed, might be made use of by the kitten too. And the illustrious philosopher discerned the error into which he had fallen, and the fatal objection to the principle on which he had acted, only when taught it by the logic of facts. Having provided the holes already mentioned, he waited with pride to see the creatures pass through them for the first time. And as they arose from the rug before the fire, where they had been lying, and evinced a disposition to roam to other scenes, the great mind stopped in some sublime calcu- lation : the pen was laid down : and all but the greatest man watched them intently. They approached the door ; and discerned the provision made for their com- fort. The cat went through the door by the large hole provided for her; and instantly the kitten followed her THROUGH the same hole ! How the great man must have felt his error ! There was no resisting the Beginfiings and Ends. i \g objection to the course he had pursued, that was brought forward by the act of the kitten. And it ap- pears almost certain that if Newton, before committing himself by action, had argued the case : if he had stated the arguments in favour of the two holes ; and if he had heard the housemaid on the other side ; the error would have been averted. But then Newton had not the advantage which the Chancellor has ; he had not the matter argued before him. He argued the matter on either side, for himself: and he over- looked a very obvious and irrefragable consideration. You and I, my reader, have many a time done what was perfectly analogous to the doing of Sir Isaac Newton. We have formed opinions and expressed them : and we have done things, thinking we were doing wisely and right : just because we forgot some- thing so plain that you would have said no mortal could forget it — something which showed that the opinion was idiotic, and the doing that of a fool. You know, more particularly, how men who have com- mitted great crimes, such as murder, seem by some infatuation to have been able to discern only the one obvious reason that seemed to make the commission of that crime a thing tending to their advantage ; and to have been incapable of looking just a handbreadth farther on, so as to see the fatal, crushing objection to the course they took ; — the absolute ruin and destruc- tion that must of necessity follow. And the opinion of many men upon any subject, may often be likened to I20 Concerning a table which the art of the upholsterer has fashioned to stand upon a single leg. They hold the opinion for just one reason ; and that reason an unsound one. Give that reason a blow with the fatal, unanswerable objec- tion ; down comes the opinion : even as down would come the table, whose single leg was knocked away. I am well aware that the severe critic who has read the lines which have been written, may feel disposed to accuse the writer of a disposition to wander from his path. A great deal of what has been said, is as when you take a look over the stile at a footpath running away from the beaten highway you are to traverse ; and end by getting over the stile, and walking a little way along the footpath : intending, no doubt, ulti- mately to return to the beaten highway, and to plod steadily along it. All this discussion of general prin- ciples ought to have been despatched in a line or two, analogous to the glance over the stile. But let the critic take into account the fact, that since the writer last sat down to write an essay, he has written a great many serious pages, which it cost hard work to write, and in which nothing in the nature of an intellectual frisk could be permitted. And thus it is, that with a great sense of relief, he finds himself writing a page whereon he may mildly disport himself; casting logical and other trammels aside ; and enjoying a little mental recreation. And now, going back from the path, and getting over the stile, we are in the highway again. We turned out of the highway, you remember, at the Beginnings and Ends, 1 2 1 point where it was said, that everything in this WORLD HAS A BEGINNING AND AN END : and that, upon reflection, it seemed that the general principle might be accepted as true. No doubt, in our early- days, we have heard sermons which we thought would never end ; yet ultimately, and after the expiration of long time, they did. And even those things within our recollection, which seem as exceptions to the great principle, are probably exceptions rather in appear- ance than in reality. I remember, indeed, an aged clergyman whom in my youth I occasionally heard preach ; who always began the first sentence of his sermon, but who never ended it ; at least not till the close of the sermon : and no human being could know when that sentence ended, or say at what point (if any point in particular) it ceased to be. Still even that first sentence of each discourse of that good man, came to a close somehow. It stopped, if it was not finished ; because the sermon stopped. So you see that even that indefinite sentence can hardly be regarded as an exception to the rule that all things in this world have a beginning and an end. And now, my friend, having laid down the broad principle with which this dissertation sets out ; let me proceed to say, that it is one of the greatest blessings of this life, as well as one of the saddest things in this life, that there are such things as beginnings and ends. We cannot bear a very long, uniform look-out. You may remember Miss Jane Taylor's pleasantly- 1ZZ Concerning told story concerning a certain clock. The pendulum of that clock began to calculate how often it would have to swing backwards and forwards in the week and the month to come : then, looking still farther into futurity, it calculated, by a pretty hard exercise of mental arithmetic, how often it would have to swing in a year. And it got so frightened at the awful pros- pect, that it determined at once to stop. There was something crushing in that long look-out. It was killing, to take in at once that unvaried way ; on, and on, and on. The pendulum forgot the blessed fact of beginnings and ends : forgot that to our feeling there are beginnings and ends even in the duration, the ex- panse, the employment, which in fact is most un- varying. It is an unspeakable blessing that we can stop, and start again, in everything : and that we can fancy we do so, even when we do not. The pendulum was not afraid of a hundred beats, or of a thousand : but the prospect of millions terrified it. Yet millions are just an aggregate of many hundreds : and the pen- dulum could without fatigue do the hundred ; and then set ofF again upon another hundred, and do that without fatigue. The journey, that crushes us down when we contemplate it as one long weary thing, cSn be borne when we divide it into stages. And one great lesson of practical wisdom is to train ourselves to mentally divide everything into stages : in short, to cling habitually to the invaluable doctrine and fact, of beginnings and ends. Begmntngs and "Ends, 123 There was a poor cabman at Paris who committed suicide, not long ago. He left behind him a letter, explaining his reasons for the miserable deed. His letter expressed no violent feeling : spoke of no great blow that had befallen him. It said that he ended his life, because he was 'weary of doing the same things over and over again every day.' The poor man's mind was doubtless unhinged. Yet you see what he did ; and how he nursed his insanity. He looked too far ahead. He saw all life as one expanse. He forgot that life is broken into many stages : that it is made up of beginnings and endings. He could not bring himself, for the time, to see it so. Each separate day he might have stood : but a thousand days held in prospect at once, beat him. It was as the bundle of rods was so impossible to break, though each single rod might easily enough be broken. It was the fallacy, which tells so heavily upon most public speakers : that you stand in great awe of a crowd of a thousand or two thousand men, each of whom individually would in- spire you with no awe at all. Now, my readers, I know perfectly well that you have all known a feeling of weariness and almost of despair arise, when you looked far forward, and saw the longweary way that seemed to stretch on and on before you in life. I believe that it is not so much what we are actually enduring at the time, that prompts the cry, * Now I can bear this no longer !' as some sudden vivid glimpse of all this, lasting on, and on, and on. There 124 Concerning are few lives in which it is not expedient to * take short views :' few minds that without weariness and depression can take in at one view any very great part of their life at once. Sometimes there comes on us the poor Frenchman's feeling : Here is this same round over, and over, and over : the occupations of each day are a circle, and we are just going round and round it, like a horse in a mill. To- morrow will be like to-day : and then to-morrow ; and the day after that : and so on, on, on. The feeling is a morbid one ; and a wrong one : but it is a common one. A little of the sea in a tumbler is colourless ; but a vast deal of the sea, seen in its ocean bed, is green. With life the case is re- versed. In the commonplace course of life, the path we are actually treading may look rather green —green, I mean, like the cheerful verdure of grass; but if you take in too great a prospect, the whole tract is apt to take the aspect of a desert waste, with only a green spot here and there. You will not add to the cheer- fulness and hopefulness of man or of child, by drilling into him : This morning you will do such and such things : and all day such other things : and in the evening such other things : then you will sleep. To- morrow morning you will rise: and then the same things over and over : and so, on, on. I have known a malignant person who enjoyed the work of present- ing to others such disheartening views of life. Let me, my reader, counsel the opposite course. Let us not look too far on. Let us not look at life as one Beginnings and Ends, 1 2,1^ unvaried expanse : although we may justly do so. Let us discipline our minds to look at life as a series of beginnings and ends. It is a succession of stages : and we shall think of one stage at a time. ' Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' Most people can bear one day's evil : the thing that breaks men down, is the trying to bear on one day the evil of two days, twenty days, a hundred days. We can bear a day of pain : followed by a night of pain : and that again by a day of pain : and thus onward. But we can bear each day and night of pain, only by taking each by itself. We can break each rod : but not the bundle. And the sufferer, in real great suffering, turns to the wall in blank despair, when he looks too far on : and takes in a uniform dreary expanse of suffering, unrelieved by the blessed relief of even fanciful beginnings and ends. I remember a poor woman whom I used often to visit and pray with, in my first parish. She died of cancer : and the excruciating disease took eight months to run its course, after having reached the point at which the pain became almost intolerable. In all that long time, the poor woman told me that she was never aware that she had slept ; it seemed to her that the time never came in which she ceased to be con- scious of agony. Her sufferings formed an unbroken duration, undivided by beginnings and ends. She was a good Christian woman : and had a blessed hope in another world. But I can never cease to remember 12,6 Concerning her despairing face, as she seemed to look onward to weeks of agony, always growing worse and worse, till it should wear her down to her grave. The power and habit of taking comprehensive views, is not in every case a desirable thing. It is well for us that we should look at our work in life in its parts, rather than as a whole. Of course you under- stand what I mean. I am far from saying that we ought not oftentimes to consider what is the drift and bearing of all our life, and of all we are doing in it. I mean that to avoid a fatiguing and disheartening result, we should for certain purposes, look not at the entire chain, but at each successive link of it. Of course, we know each link will be succeeded by the next : but let us think of them one at a time. Let us be thankful for Saturday night, and let us enjoy it : and let us hold at arm's length the intruding thought of Monday morning, when the shoulder must be put to the collar again. No doubt, in the work of life, every end is also a beginning. We rest for a little, perhaps only in thought and feeling ; and then we go at our work again. But it is a convenient thing, and it helps to carry us on in our way, to mark out a number of successive ends, and thus to divide our journey into successive stages. It is well for us that when v/e start, we cannot see how far we have to go. We should give up all effort in despair, if from the begin- ning we held in view all the interminable length of way, whose length we shall hardly feel when we are Beginnings and "Ends, 127 wiled away along it gradually, step by step. It has always appeared to me extremely bad policy in any preacher, who desires to keep up the interest of his congregation, to announce at the beginning of the sermon, that in the first place he will do so and so ; and in the second place such another thing ; and in the third place something else ; and finally close with some practical remarks. I can say for myself, that whenever I hear any preacher say anything like that, an instant feeling of irksomeness and weariness possesses me. You cannot help thinking of the long tiresome way that is to be got over, before happily reaching the end. You check off each head of the sermon as it closes : but your relief at thinking it is done, is dashed by the thought of what a deal more is yet to come. No : the skilful preacher will not thus map out his subject, telling his hearers so exactly what a long way they have to go. He will wile them along, step by step. He will never let them have a long out-look. Let each head of discourse be announced as it is arrived at. People can bear one at a time, who would break down in the simultaneous prospect of three, not to say of seven or eight. And then, when the sermon is nearly done, you may, in a sentence, give a connected view of all you have said : and your skill will be shown if people think to themselves, what a long way they have been brought without the least sense of weariness. I lately heard a sermon, which was divided into seven heads. If the preacher had named 1^8 Concerning them all at the beginning, the congregation would have ceased to listen : or would have listened under the oppressive thought of what a vast deal awaited them before they would be free. But each head was an- nounced just as it was arrived at : the congregation was wiled along insensibly : and the sermon was listened to with breathless attention from the first sentence to the last. Let it be so with life, and the work of life. It would crush down any man's resolution, if he saw in one glance the whole enormous bulk of labour, which he will get through in a lifetime : without feeling it so very much at each successive stage. It is well to break up our journey into separate portions : to take it bit by bit: to setourselves a number of successive ends: even though we knowthatwe are practising asortof decep- tion on ourselves ; and that when the end we have immediately in view is reached, our work will be just as far from being done, as ever. Your little boy has before him the mighty task of his education. You do not tell the little thing at once, the whole extent of toil that is included in that. No : you fix on a small part of the work that is to be done : you show the little man that as his first end. That is the first thing to be done; and then we shall see what is to come next. And yet you know, and the little child knows just as well, that after he has conquered that tremendous alphabet, he must just begin again with something else ; that by a hundred steps, each set out at first as Beginnings and Ends, 129 an end to be attained j and each indeed an end, but likewise a beginning ; he must mount from his first little book onwards and upwards into the fields of knowledge and learning. Let us, if we are wise men, hold by the grand principle of step by step : let us be thankful that God, knowing that weariness is a thing that must be felt at intervals by the minds and bodies of all His creatures, has appointed that they shall live in a world of Beginnings and Ends. Yes : we can stand a day at a time ; but if we forget the law of beginnings and ends, we shall come to be bearing the weight of a hundred days together. And that will crush the strongest. Many people of an anxious temperament are like the pendulum already mentioned. The pendulum looked ahead to the incalculable multitude of ticks, forgetting that there would always be a moment to tick in. And you can easily see that many human beings plod heavily and dully through their work in life, because instead of giving their mind mainly to the present tick, they are thinking of the innumerable ticks that are coming. You know quite well that the work of life is done by most animals that have to work, in a dull, spiritless way. Few go through their work in a cheerful, lively way. Even inferioranimals are coming to imitate their rational fellow-creatures. The other day, I was driving in a cab along a certain broad and ugly highway, which unites Athens with the Piraeus. I overtook and passed various drays, drawn by fine K 130 Concerning large horses. I carefully remarked the expression of the countenance of each successive horse. All of them had a very gloomy and melancholy look. They seemed as though they were enduring. They could stand it ; and that was all. And I thought, here is an example of the way in which this world mainly goes on. It goes on : it gets through : but not cheerfully. You could know, even if you had no better means of know- ing, that there is something wrong. And the working bees of the human race, do, for the most part, go through their work like the dull, down-looking horse. The horses were plump and sleek : they were plainly well fed and well groomed : yet their expression was sorrowful, or at least apathetic. It would have struck you less, to have seen that dull look on the face of some poor, half-starved screw. And you know that it is generally the human beings whose material advan- tages are the greatest, who have the most unsatisfied and unhappy expression of countenance. Look at the portraits of cabinet-ministers and the like. Few work with a light heart, and with enjoyment in their work. Many forebodings, and many cares, sit heavily upon the heart and brain of most. Oh for more practical belief in Beginnings and Ends ! It is characteristic of those things which possess a Beglnningand an End, that they also possess a Middle, of greater or less extent. But we do not mind about the middle nearly so much. The middle is much less affecting and striking. It is the first start, and then Beginnings and Ends, 131 the close, that we mainly feel. You know the peculiar interest with which we look at the setting sun of summer, in his last minutes above the horizon. Of course he was going on just as fast through all the day : but at mid-day, we did not know the value of each minute, as we do when he is fast going down. I have been touched by the sight of human life, ebbing almost visibly away : and you could not but think of the sun in his last little space above the mountains, or above the sea. I remember two old gentlemen, great friends : both on the extreme verge of life. One was above ninety : the other above eighty. But their wits were sound and clear ; and, better still, their hearts were right. They confessed that they were no more than strangers and pilgrims on the earth : they declared plainly that they sought a country, far away, where most of those they had cared for were waiting for them. But the body was very nearly worn out : and though the face of each was pleasant to look at, paralysis had laid its grasp upon the aged machinery of limb and muscle which had played so long. I used, for a few weeks, to go one evening in the week and sit with them, and take tea. They always had tea in large breakfast cups : other cups would not have done. I remember how the two paralytic hands shook about, as they tried to drink their tea. There they were, the two old friends : they had been friends from boyhood, and they had been over the world together. You could not have looked, my friend, but with eyes some- i^Z Concer?iuig what wet, at the large tea-cups, shaking about; as the old men with difficulty raised them to their lips. And there was a thing that particularly struck me. There was a large old-fashioned watch, always on a little stand on the tea-table, ticking on and on. You seemed to feel it measuring out the last minutes, running fast away. It always awed me to look at it and hear it. Only for a few weeks did I thus visit those old friends, till one died : and the other soon followed him, where there are no palsied hands or aged hearts. No doubt, through all theyears the old-fashioned watch had gone about in the old gentleman's pocket, life had been ebbing as really and as fast as then. And the sands were running as quickly for me, as for the aged pil- grims. But then with me it was the middle ; and to them it was the end. And I always felt it very solemn and touching, to look at the two old men on the confines of life ; and at the watch loudly ticking ofF their last hours. One seemed to feel time ebb- ing ; as you see the setting sun go down. Beginnings are difficult. It is very hard to begin rightly in a new work or office of any kind. And I am thinking not merely of the inertia to be overcome, in taking to work : though that is a great fact. In writing a sermon or an essay, the first page is much the hardest. You know. It costs a locomotive engine a great effort to start its train : once the train is off, the engine keeps it going at great speed with a tenth, Beginnings and Ends. 133 or less, of the first heavy pull. But I am thinking now of the many foolish things which you are sure to say and do in your ignorance, and in the novelty of the situation. Even a Lord Chancellor has behaved very absurdly in his first experience of his great eleva- tion. It would be a great blessing to many men to be taken elsewhere, and have a fresh start. As a general rule, a clergyman should not stay all his life in his first parish. His parishioners will never forget the foolish things he did at his first coming, in his inexperienced youth. There, he cannot get over these : but else- where he would have the good of them, without the ill. He would have the experience, dearly bought : while the story of the blunders and troubles by which it was bought, would be forgotten. I daresay there are people, miserable and useless where they are ; who if they could only get away to a new place, and begin again, would be all right. In that new place they would avoid the errors and follies by which they have made their present place too hot to hold them. Give them a new start : give them another chance : and taught by their experience of the scrapes and unhappiness into which they got by their hasty words, their ill temper, their suspicion and impatience, their domineering spirit, and their determination in little things to have their own way j you would find them do excellently. Yes, there is something admirable about a Beginning ! There is something cheering to the poor fellow who has got the page on which he is writing, hopelessly 134 Concerning blotted and befouled, when you turn over a new leaf, and give him the fresh unsullied expanse to commence anew ! It is like wiping out a debt that never can be paid, and that keeps the poor struggling head under water : but wipe it out ; and oh with what new life will the relieved man go through all his duty ! It is a terrible thing to drag a lengthening chain : to know that, do what you may, the old blot remains, and cannot be got rid of. I know various people, soured, useless, and unhappy, who (I am sure) would be set right for ever, if they could but be taken away from the muddle into which they have got themselves, and allowed to begin again somewhere else. I wish I were the patron of six livings in the Church. I think I could make something good and happy of six men who are turned to poor account now. But alas, that in many things there is no second chance ! You take the wrong turning ; and you are compelled to go on in it, long after you have found that it is wrong. You have made your bed, and you must lie on it. And it is sad to think how early in life, all life may be mar- red. A mere boy or girl may get into the dismal lane which has no turning : and out of which they never can get, to start afresh in a better track. How many of us, my readers, would be infinitely better and happier, if we could but begin again ! An End is sometimes a very great blessing. I have no doubt, my readers, that in your childhood you >" Beginnings and 'Ends, i '7^^ have often felt this when a sermon was brought to a close. Perhaps in maturer years you have experienced a like emotion of relief under the like circumstances. I can say deliberately that never in my youth did I once wish that such a discourse should be longer than it was. Yet we all remember how we have shrunk from Ends. You may have read a fairy tale by Mr. Thackeray, with illustrations by its author. One of these is a cartoon, representing a boy eating a bun, apparently of superior quality ; and at the same time expressing a sentiment common to early youth. He eats : and as he eats, he speaks as follows : ' Oh what fun! Nice plum-bun! How I wish it never was done ! ' I remember the mental state. I have known it well. In my mind it is linked with the thought of plum-pudding and of other luxuries and dainties. It was sad to see the object lessen, as it was enjoyed : to see it melt away, like a summer sunset ! And about Christmas-time, one had sometimes a like feeling as to the appetite and relish for plum-pudding and the like. Would it were unceasing ! I mean the appetite. But you remember how it flagged. And though you stimulated it with cold water, yet the fourth supply beat you : and had to be taken away. And you re- member, too, how you shrunk from the end of your holiday season : and wished that time would stand still. You may have read the awful scene in Christopher Marlowe's Faustus^ where the hapless philosopher, on the verge of his appointed season, seems to cling to 136 Concerning each moment as It passes away from him. And oh my reader, if the great work of life have not been done while the day lasted, think how awful it will be to feel that the end of the day of grace is here ! Think of poor Queen Elizabeth in her dying hour, offering all the wealth of her kingdom for another day of life ! We cannot,in the commonplace days of ordinary health and occupation, rightly realize the tremendous fact : but think of the End of this life, to the man who has no hope beyond it ! To feel that all in the world you have toiled for and loved is going from you: to feel your feeble hand losing its grasp of all : to see the faces around grow dim through the mists of death : to feel the weary heart pausing, and the last chill creeping upwards : to feel that you are driven irre- sistibly to the edge of the awful gulf, — and no hope beyond ! But remember, reader, it will be your own fault if you come to that. It is the end of a career that gives the character to It all. We feel as if a life, however honourable and happy, were blighted by a sorry ending. The thought of Napoleon at St. Helena squabbling about the thick- ness of his camp soup, and the number of clean shirts to be allowed him, casts back an impression of petti- ness upon the man even in his mid-career. There is a graver consideration. If a man had lived many years in usefulness and honour, but finally fell into grievous sin and shame, we should think of his life as on the whole a shameful one. But if a man end his career Beginnings and Ends, 137 nobly: If his last years are honourable and happy: we should think of his life on the whole as one of hap- piness and honour, though its beginning were ever so lowly and sad. You remember how a great king of ancient days asked a philosopher to name some of the happiest of the race. The philosopher named several men, all of whom were dead. The king asked him why he did not think of men still living : ' Look at all my splendour,' he said to the philosopher : ' why do you notthink ofme V ' Ah,' said the wise man ; ' who knows what your life and your lot may be yet ? I call no man happy before he dies ! ' [Distinguished classical scholar, I am not telling the story for you.] And, sure enough, that monarch was reduced to cap- tivity and misery ; and died a miserable captive : and so you would not say that his life was a happy or a prosperous one on the whole. But in the most im- portant of all our concerns, my friend, the End is far more important than that. You know that though the monarch, vanquished and uncrowned, died in a dungeon, that could not blot out the years of royalty he had actually lived. He had been a king, once ; how- ever fallen now. The man who sits by his lonely fire- side, silent and deserted, can yet remember the days when that quiet dwelling was noisy and gladsome with young voices : they were real days, when his children were round him ; and it does him good yet to look back on them, — though now the little things are in their graves. But the fearful thing about the christian 138 Concerning who ends in sin and shame, is this : He dare not comfort himself under the present wretchedness, by- looking back to better days, when he thought he was safe. The fearful thing is that this present end of sin has power to blot out those better days : if a man, however fair his profession, end at last manifestly not a christian, this proves that he never was a christian at all ! You see what tremendous issues depend upon the christian life ending well ! It is little to say that ending ill is a sad thing at the time : it is that ending ill flings back a baleful light on all the days that went before ! If the end be bad, then there was something amiss all along, however little suspected it may have been. It is only when the end is well over, that you can be perfectly sure you are safe. You remember Mr. Moultrie's beautiful poem, about his living children and his dead child. The living children were good : were all he could wish : but God only knew how temptation might prevail against them as years went on : but as for the dead one he was safe. ' It may be that the Tempter's wiles their souls from bliss may sever: But if our own poor faith fail not, he must be ours for ever ! ' Yes : that little one had passed the End : no evil nor peril could touch him more. I daresay you have sometimes found that for a day or two, a line of poetry or some short sentence of prose would keep constantly recurringto your memory. Beginnings and Ends, 139 I find it so ; and the line is sometimes Shakspere's ; sometimes Tennyson's : often it is from a certain Volume (the Best Volume) of which it is my duty to think a great deal. And I remember how, not long since, for about a week, the line that was always re- curring was one by Solomon, king and philosopher (and something more) : it was ' Better is the end of a thing than the beginning.' And at first I thought that the words sounded sad : and more heathen-like than christian. Has it come to this, that God's Word tells us concerning the life God gave us, that the best thing that can happen to us is soonest to get rid of that sad gift ; and that each thing that comes our way, is something concerning which we may be glad when it is over ? I thought of Mr. Kingsley, and wondered if the sum of the matter, after all, is ' The sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep : ' and of Sophocles, and how he said ' Not to be, is best of all : but when one hath come to this world, then to return with quickest step to whence he came, is next.' But then 1 saw, gradu- ally, that the words are neither cynical nor hopeless ; that they do but remind us of the great truth, that God would have our life here one of constant pro- gress from good to better, and so the End best of all. We are to be ' forgetting those things which are be- hind, and reaching forth unto those which are before,' because the best things are still before us. If things in this world go as God intended they should, then everything is a step to something else ; something farther : which ought to be an advance on what went 1 40 Concerning before it ; which ought to be better than what went before it. And above all, the End of our life here (if it end well), so safe and so happy, is far better than its Beginning, with all the perils of the voyage yet to come. I thought of these things the other Sunday after- noon, seeing the Beginning and the End almost side by side. At that service I did not preach : and I was sitting in a square seat in a certain church, listening to a very good sermon preached by a friend. A cer- tain little boy, just four years old, came and sat beside me, leaning his head on me as a pillow : and soon after the beginning of the sermon, the little man (very properly) fell sound asleep. And (attending to the sermon all the while) I could not but look down at the fat rosy little face, and the abundance of curly hair; the fresh, clear complexion, the cheerful, inno- cent expression ; and think how fair and pleasing a thing is early youth ; — how beautiful and hopeful is our life's Beginning. And after service was over, on my way home, I went to see a revered friend, who, at the end of a long christian life, was dying. There was the worn, ghastly face, with its sharp fea- tures : the weary, worn-out frame ; the weakened, wandering mind, so changed from what it used to be. And standing by that good christian's bed, and think- ing of the little child, I said to myself. There is the Beginning of life : Here is the End : what shall we say in the view of that sad contrast ? And I thought, there and then, that ' Better is the end of a thing Beginnings and Ends, 141 than the beginning ! ' Yes : better is the end of a dangerous voyage than its outset. You have seen a ship sailing aw^ay upon a long, perilous voyage over the ocean : the day was fair and sunshiny, and the ship looked gay and trim, with her white sails and her freshly painted sides. And you have seen a ship coming safe into port at the end of her thousands of miles over the deep, under a gloomy, stormy sky, and with hull and masts battered by winds and waves. And you have thought, I dare say, that better far was this ending, safe and sure, than even that sunshiny beginning, with all the risks before it. And here, in the worn figure on the weary bed, here is the safe end of the voyage of life ! Oh what perils are yet before the merry little child ! Who can say if that little one is to end in glory ? But to the dying christian all these perils are over. He is safe, safe ! And then, re- member, this is not yet the end, you see. It is not the end, that weary figure, lying on that bed of pain. It is only the last step before the end. A very little : and how glorious and happy that sufferer will be ! You would not wish to keep him here, when you think of all the blessedness into which the next step from this pain will bear him. Nay : but you may take up, in a sublimer significance than that of deliverance from mere earthly ill, the beautiful words of the greatest poet : Vex not his soul : oh let him pass ! He hates him, That would, upon the rack of this rough world, Stretch him out longer ! H^ CHAPTER VI. GOING ON. ^ I ''HERE are many things of which you have a ■*- much more vivid perception at some times than at others. The thing is before you ; but some- times you can grasp it firmly, sometimes it eludes you mistily. You are w^alking along a country path, just within hearing of distant bells. You hear them faintly ; but all of a sudden, by some caprice of the wind, the sound is borne to you with startling clearness. There is something analogous to that in our perceptions and feelings of many great facts and truths. Commonly, we perceive them and feel them faintly ; but sometimes they are borne in upon us we cannot say how. Sometimes we get vivid glimpses of things which we had often talked of, but which we had never truly discerned and realized before. And for many days it has been so with me. I have seemed to feel the lapse of time with startling clearness. I have no doubt, my reader, that you have sometimes done the like. You have seemed to actually Going On, 143 perceive the great current with which we are all gliding steadily away and away. Rapid movement is a thing which has a certain power to disguise itself from the person who is in- volved in it. Every one knows that if you are travel- ling in an express train at sixty miles an hour, you do not feel the speed nearly so much as the man does who stands beside the track and sees the great mass sweep by like a hurricane. Have you ever thought it would be curious if we could for a few minutes be made sen- sible of the world's motion ? Here we are, tearing on through space at an inconceivable speed. We do not feel it, of course ; we could not stand it. I should like to feel it for half a minute — not for more. But it is not //2<7/ motion we are to think of at present. No special illumination has been accorded to me, making me feel that fact which we all know without feeling. But there is another rapid motion, common to all of us as is the motion of the earth which bears us all. There is a great current bearing us along and all things about us, which is commonly not much felt. But it seems to me that for several weeks I have been actually feeling it. I have been excessively busy ; living in a great pressure and hurry of occupations. In that state, my reader, you feel Sunday after Sunday re- turn with a rapidity which takes away your breath ; and let me say that if you have to provide one sermon, and still more if you have to provide two, against the return of each, you will in that fever of work and haste come 144 Going On. to look from one Sunday to the next till you will come to find them flying past you like the quarter-mile posts on a railway. You will find that you can hardly be- lieve, walking into church on Sunday morning, that a week has gone since the last Sunday. And in such a time you will realize much more distinctly than you usually do, that all things are going on — drifting away — all in company. These April days are taking life away from you, from me — from prince and peasant. There is one thing at least which all human beings are using up at exactly the same rate. We can all get out of the day just twenty- four hours, neither more nor less. One man may live at the rate of a hundred pounds a year, and another at the rate of a hundred thousand ; but each expends his time at the rate of three hundred and sixty-five days a year. What- ever other differences there may be between the lots of human beings, we are all drifting on with the current of time, and drifting at the same rate exactly. And we are certainly drifting. We are never quite the same in two successive weeks. One Sunday is not like the last. Look closely, and you will see that there is a difference — slight perhaps, but real. Each time you sit down to your Saturday Review you feel there is a difference since the last time. Still more do you feel it as you read the return- ing Fraser^ coming at the longer interval of a month. Things never come back again quite the same. And indeed in Nature there is a singular dislike to unifor- Going On, 145 mity. If to-day be a fine day, look back ; it is almost certain that this day last year was rainy. If to-day you are in very cheerful spirits, it is probable that on the corresponding day in the year that is gone you were very dull and anxious. No doubt human beings some- times successfully resist Nature's love of variety. Some men have an especial love for having and doing things always in the same way. They walk on special days always on the same side of the street ; perhaps they put their feet, like Dr. Johnson, on the same stones in the pavement. They dress in the same way year after year. They maintain anniversaries, and try to bring the old party around the table once more, and to have the old time back. But we cannot have things exactly over again. There is a difference in the feeling, even if you are able precisely to reproduce the fact. And indeed the wonder is that things are so much like, as they are to-day, to what they were a year ago, when we think of the innumerable possibilities of change that hang over us. Yes, we are drifting on and on, down to the great sea. Sit down, my friend, to write your article. You have written many. The paper is the same ; the table on which you write is the same ; the inkstand is the same ; and the pen is made by the same mender that made all the rest. And it is possible enough that when the article is printed at last, your readers will say that it is just the same thing over again ; but it is not. To your feeling this day's work is quite different from the work of all preceding days. L 146 Going On. There is an undefinable variation from what ever was before. And as weeks and months go on, there come to be differences which some may think more real than any in the comparatively fanciful respect of feeling. The hair is turning thin and gray ; the old spirit is subdued. There are changes in taste, in judgment, in feeling, in many ways. Yes, we are all Going On. I wish to stop. There is something awful in this perpetual progression. If the current would slacken its speed, at least, and let one quietly think for a little while. Let us sit down, my friend, by the wayside. We are old enough now to look back, as well as to look round ; and to think how life is going with us, and with those we know. We are now in the middle passage : perhaps farther on. And if we are half-way in fact, assuredly we are far more In feeling. Though a man live to seventy, his first thirty-five years are by far the longer portion of his life. Let us think to-day, my reader, of ourselves and of our friends ; and of how it is faring with us as we go on. It is a curious thing now, when we have settled to our stride, and are going on (in most cases) very much as we probably shall go on as long as we live, to com- pare what we are, with what we promised at our entrance on life to be. You remember people who began with a tremendous flourish of trumpets : people of whom there was a vague Impression, more or less general, that they were to do great things. Sometimes Going On, 147 this Impression was confined to the man himself. Not unfrequently it was shared by his mother and his sisters. It occasionally extended to his father and his brothers. And in a few cases, generally in these cases not without some reason, it prevailed in the mind of his fellow-students. And it may be said, that a belief that some young lad is destined to do considerable things, if it be anything like universal among his col- lege companions, must have some foundation. A belief to the same effect with regard to any young man, if confined to two or three of his intimate companions, is generally quite groundless ; and if it exist only in the heart of his mother and of himself, it is quite sure to be absurd and idiotic. We can all, probably, remember individuals who, without any reason apparent to on- lookers, cherished a most extraordinarily high opinion of themselves ; and one which was not at all taken down by frequently being beaten, and even distanced, in the competitions of College life. Such individuals, for the most part, indulged a very bitter and malicious spirit towards students more able and successful than themselves. I wish I could believe that modesty always goes with merit. I fear no rule can be laid down. I have beheld inordinate self-conceit in very clever fellows, as well as in very stupid ones. And I have beheld self-conceit developed in a degree which could hardly be exceeded, in individuals who were neither very clever nor very stupid, but remarkably ordinary in every way. Let me here remark, that I 148 Going On. have known the most enthusiastic admiration excited in the breasts of one or two individuals by a very com- monplace man. I mean admiration of his talents. And I beheld the spectacle with great wonder, not un- mixed with indignation. I can quite understand man or woman feeling enthusiastic admiration for a great and wonderful genius. I can feel that warm admira- tion myself. And I can imagine its existing in youthful minds, even when the genius is dashed with great failings, or is of a very irregular nature. But the thing I wonder at, and cannot understand, is enthu- siastic admiration professed and felt for dreary com- monplace. I am not in the least surprised when I hear a young person, or indeed an old one, speaking in hyperbolical terms of the preaching of Bishop Wilberforce. I have heard it myself, and I know how brilliant and effective it is. But I really look with wonder at the young woman who professes equally enthusiastic admiration of the sermons of Dr. Log. I nave heard Dr. Log preach. I could not for my life attend to his sermon. It was horribly tiresome. There was not in it a trace of pith or of beauty. It approached to the nature of twaddle. I was awe-stricken when I heard it described in rap- turous phrases. I recognised a superior intelligence. 1 thought to myself, reversing Mr. Tickell's lines, * You hear a voice I cannot hear ; you see a hand I cannot see.' It is right to add, that the enthusiastic appreciators of Dr. Log were very few in number, Going On, 149 and that they appeared to me nearly as stupid as Dr. Log himself. But leaving Dr. Log and his admirers, let me say that very clever fellows, very stupid fellows, and very commonplace fellows, have started in life with a great flourish of trumpets. The vanity ofmany lads, leaving the University, is enormous. They expect to set the Thames on fire : to turn the world upside down. A few takings-down bring the best of them to modesty and sense. And the men for whom the flourish was loudest do sometimes, when all find their level, have to rest at a very low one. Many painful mortifications and struggles bring them to it. Oh ! if talent and ambition could always be in a man, in just proportion ! But I have known the most commonplace of men, with ambition that would have given enough to do to the abilities of Shakspeare. And we may perhaps say, that no one who begins with a great flourish ever fails to disappoint himself and his friends. He may do very well: he may do magnificently; but he does not come up to the great expectations formed of him. I was startled the other day to hear a certain man named as a failure, who has attained supreme eminence in his own walk in life, and that a conspicuous one. I said No : he is anything but a failure : he has attained extraordinary eminence: he is a great man. But the reply was, * Ah, we expected far more ! We thought he would leave an impression on the age, and he has certainly not done that ; while it seems certain he has 150 Going On. done the best he Is ever to do.' But look round, my friend, and think how the world goes with those who set out with you. They are generally, I suppose, jogging on humbly and respectably. The present writer did not in his youth live among those from whom the famous of the earth are likely to be taken. One or two of the number have risen to no small eminence ; but the lot of most has circumscribed their ambition. It is not in the senate that he can look to find many of the names of his old companions. It is not likely that any will be buried in Westminster Abbey. The life of two or three may perhaps be written, if they leave behind them a warm friend who is not very busy. It does not matter. The nonsense has been taken out of us by the work of life. And on the whole, we are going creditably on. It is worthy of notice, that things which at the beginning were very bad, may be made good by a very small change wrought upon them. You see this in human beings, as they go on through life. You remember, I have no doubt, how various passages in the earlier writings of Mr. Tennyson, on which the Quarterly Review savagely fixed at their first publi- cation, and which Mr. Tennyson's warmest admirers must admit to have been in truth very weak, affected, and ridiculous, have by alterations of wonderfully small amount been brought to a state in which the most fastidious critic could find no fault in them. Just a touch from the master-hand did it all. You Going On, ' 15 1 have in a homelier degree felt the same yourself, in correcting and re- writing your own crude and imma- ture compositions. Often a very small matter takes away the mark of that Beast whose name shall not be mentioned here. I know a very distinguished preacher, really a pulpit orator, whose manner at his outset was remarkably awkward. No doubt he has devoted much pains to his manner since : though his art is high enough to conceal any trace of art. I heard him preach not long since : and his manner was singularly graceful ; while yet there was no great change materially. You have remarked how the features of a girl's face, very plain at fourteen, have at twenty grown remarkably pretty. And yet the years have wrought no very great change. The face is unquestionably and quite recognisably the same: yet it has passed from plain- ness into beauty. And so, as we go on in life, you will find a man has got rid of some little intrusive folly which just makes the difference between his being very good and his being very bad. The man whose tendency to boast, or to exaggerate, or to talk thoughtlessly of others, made him appear a fool in his youth, has corrected that one evil tendency, and lo ! he is quite altered — he is all right ; he is a wise and good man. You would not have believed what a change for the better would be made by that little thing. You know, I dare say, how poor and bad are the first crude thoughts for your sermon or your article, thrown at random on the page. Yet when you have arranged i^Z Going On. and rounded them into a symmetrical, and accurate, and well-considered composition, it is wonderful how little change there is from the first rude sketch. Look at the waste scraps of paper before you throw them into the fire, and you will find some of your most careful and best sentences there, word for word. You have not been able to improve upon the way in which you first dashed them down. There is a sad thing which we are all made to feel, as we are going on. It is, that we are growing out of things which we are sorry to outgrow. The firmest conviction that we are going on to what is better, cannot suppress some feeling of regret at the thought of what we are leaving behind. When I was a country parson, I used to feel very sorry to see a laurel or a yew growing out of the shape in which I remembered it ; and which was associated with pleasant days. There was a dull pang at the sight. I remember well a little yew I planted with my own hand. It looks like yesterday since I held its top, while a certain man filled in the earth, and put the sod round its stem. For some time it appeared doubtful if that yew would live and grow ; at last it was fairly established, and it began to grow vigorously the second year. For a year or two more, it was a neat, shaggy little thing ; but then it began to put out tremendous shoots, and to grow out of my acquaintance. I felt I was losing an old friend. Many a time I had stood and looked at Going On, 153 the little yew; I knew every branch of it; and always went to look at it when I had been a few days away. No doubt it was growing better ; it was progressing with a yew's progress ; I was getting a new friend better than the old one ; yet I sighed for the old one that was gradually leaving me. You do not like to think that your little child must grow into something quite different from what it is now ; must die into the grown up man or woman; must grow hardened to the world, and cease to be loveable as now. You would like to keep the little thing as it is ; when it climbs on your knee, and lays a little soft cheek against your own. Even in the big girl of seven, that goes to school, you regret the wee child of three that you used to run after on the little green before your door; and in the dawn of cleverness and thought, though plea- sant to see, still you feel there is something gone which you would have liked to keep. But it is an inevitable law, that you cannot have two inconsistent good things together. You cannot at once have your field green as it is in spring, and golden as it is in autumn. You cannot at once live in the little dwelling which was long your home, and which is surrounded by the memories of many years ; and in the more beautiful and commodious mansion which your increasing wealth has been able to buy. You cannot at once be the merchant prince, wealthy, influential, esteemed by all, though gouty, ageing, and careworn ; and the hopeful, light-hearted lad that came in from the country to push 1^4 Going On, his way, and on whose early aspirations and struggles you look back with a confused feeling as though he were another being. You cannot at the same time be a country parson, leisurely and quiet, Hving among green fields and trees, and knowing the concerns of every soul in your parish j and have the privilege and the stimulus of preaching to a congregation of educated folk in town. Yet you would look round in silence and regret, when you look for the last time upon the scenes amid which you passed some considerable part of your life; even though you felt that the new place of your labours and your lot were ever so much better. And though you know it is well that your children should grow up into men and women, still you will sometimes be sorry that their happy childhood must pass so swiftly and so completely away ; that it must be so entirely lost in that which is to come after it ; that even in the healthy maturity of body and of mind, there is so little that recalls to you the merry little boy or girl you used to know. Yes ; we may have got on to something that is unquestionably better ; but still we miss the dear old time and way. It is as with the emigrant, who has risen to wealth and position in the new world across the sea; but who often thinks, with fond regret, of the hills of his native land ; and who, through all these years, has never forgotten the cottage where he drew his first breath, and the little church- yard where his father and mother are sleeping. Yes ; you little man with the very curly hair, standing at Going On. 155 that sofa turning over the leaves of a large Bible with pictures ; stay as you are, as long as you can ! For I may live to see you grow into something far less pleasant to see j but I shall never live to see you Lord Chancellor ; though that distinguished post (it is well known) is the natural destination of a Scotch clergyman's son. There is something rather awful implied In going on. Its possibilities are vast ; you may yet have greatly to modify your opinion of any man who is still going on. The page is not finished yet ; and it may be terribly blotted before it is done with. But the man who is no longer going on ; the man who has finished his page and handed it in; is fixed and statuesque. There he is, for ever. You may finally make up your mind about him. He can never do anything to disappoint you now. But very many men do live on, just to dis- appoint. They have done their best already ; and they are going on producing work very inferior to what they once did, and to what we might expect of them. You go and hear a great preacher; not upon a special occasion, but in his own church upon a common Sunday. You have read his published sermons, and thought them very fine ; some sentences from them still linger on your ear. Unhappily, he did not stop with these fine things. He is going on still ; and what he is turning off now is quite different. There is httle to remind you of what he was. Your lofty idea of that 156 Going On great and good man is sadly shattered. No doubt, this isnot always so. There are men who go on through life; and go on without deterioration. There are men who are always themselves ; always up to the mark. But for the most part, going on implies a great falling off. Think of Sir Walter Scott's last novels. Think of Byron's last poetry. Compare The Virgin Widow with Philip Van Jrtevelde, Think of the latter pro- ductions of the author of Festus, Think of the last squeezings from the mind of Dr. Chalmers. Think of the recent appearances, intellectual and moral, of Mr. Walter Savage Landor. Think how roaring Irish patriots have become the pensioners of the Saxon, after having publicly sworn never to touch the alien coin. Think how men who bearded the tyrant in their youth, have ended in contented toadyism. We are never perfectly safe in forming a judgment of any man who is still going on ; that is, of any living man. We shall not call him good, any more than happy, till we have seen the last of him. His very ending may be enough to blight all his past life. You cannot as yet settle the mark of a man who is still painting pictures, still publishing poems, still writing books, still speak- ing in parliament, still taking a prominent part in public business. He may possibly rise far above any- thing he has yet done. He may possibly sink so far below it, as to lower the general average of his entire life. As regards fame, the right thing Is an end like Nelson's. He ended at his best ; and ended defini- Going On, i^y tlvely. Even Trafalgar would have been overclouded, if the hero had still kept going on. Think of him perhaps coming back; being made a duke ; evincing great vanity ; trying to become a leader among the Peers, and showing his lack of business aptitude and of sound judgment in politics ; coming to be occasion- ally hissed about the streets of London: getting involved in discreditable tricks to gain office. Now, Nelson might have done none of these things. But I believe any one who reads his life will feel that he might have done them all. And was it not far better that the weak, but great man; the true hero; the warm-hearted, loveable, brave, honest admiral ; should be taken away from the petty and sordid possibilities of Going On ; that it should be made sure he should never vex or disappoint us ; that he should die in a blaze of glory, and leave a name for every Briton to cherish and to love ? There are living men, concerning whom we might regret that they are still going on. They can- not rise above their present estimation ; they may well sink below it. It would be a great thing if some means could be devised, by which a man might stop, without dying. A man might say, after having done some difficult and honourable work, reaching over a large portion of his life, ' Now, I stop here. I take my stand on what I have done; judge of me by that. I must still go on breathing the air as before ; but I fear I shall let myself down; so don't inquire about me any farther.' We all know that great and good men 158 Going On. have sometimes, In the latter chapters oftheir life, done things on which we can but shut our eyes, and which we can but strive to forget. It seems quite certain that Solomon, albeit the wisest of men, became a weak old fool in his latter days ; nor does the only reliable history say anything of final repentance and amend- ment. And silly or evil doings early in life, may be effaced from remembrance by wise and good doings afterwards; while silly and evil doings in the last stage of life, appear to stamp the character of it all. It is this thought which sometimes makes the recol- lection that we are still going on, weigh heavily on one. There is no saying how the page of our life may be blotted before it is finished : and you must let me say, my friend, that the wise man will stand in great fear and suspicion of himself; and will very earnestly apply for that sacred influence which alone can hold him right to the end, where alone it is to be found. There are many things to make one thoughtful, as we remember how we are going on ; but the great thing (as regards oneself) is, after all, the sight of the gloom before us, into which we are advancing day by day; not seeing even a step a-head. And to that may be added the occasional examples which are pressed upon us in the case of others, who once seemed very much like ourselves, of what human beings may come to be. And that which man has done, man may do. I see various things that are worthy of note, as I look round on the procession Going On, 159 of the human beings I know and remember, and think what comes as we go on. I see some who are rather battered and travel-stained. The greatness of the way is beginning to tell. I see some who look somewhat' worn and jaded. There are little physical symptoms of the wear of the machine. The hair of certain men is going, or eveh gone. The teeth of some are not complete, as of yore. On the whole, I trust, we are gaining. I do not think there is any period of life that one would wish to live over again ; no period, at least, of more than a very few days. There are wrecks, no doubt : some who broke down early, and have quite disappeared, one does not know where; and among these, more than one or two whose pro- mise Was of the best. Thinking of this one day, I was walking along a certain street, and came to a place where it was needful to cross. A carriage stopped the way, if that indeed can be called a carriage which was no more than a cab. And my attention was attracted by the cab- horse, which was standing close by the pavement. He was a sorry creature ; but, as you looked at him, there was no mistaking the thoroughbred. There was the light head, once so graceful : the dilated, sensitive nostrils were still there, and the slender legs. But the poor legs were bent and shaky ; the neck was cut into by the collar ; the hair was rubbed off the skin in many places ; and the sides were going with that peculiar motion which indicates broken wind. r6o Going On, Here was what the poor horse had come to. At first doubtless he was a graceful, cheerful creature, petted and made much of in his youth. Probably he proved not worth training for a race-horse ; and a thorough- bred without sufficient bone and muscle is very useless for practical purposes; though it may be remarked that a thoroughbred with sufficient bone and muscle is the best horse for every kind of work except drawing coals or beer. So the poor thing became a riding- hack, and having fallen a few times, was sold for a cab-horse. And it was plain that for many days he had been poorly fed, and hardly worked ; and that now the cab-proprietor was taking all he could out of him, before giving him over to the knacker, to be made into sausages. It is a popular delusion that the last stage in a horse's existence is to go to the dogs. There are some districts in which he goes to the pigs ; and others in which he ends by affording nutriment, in a disguised form, to human beings. I am no alarmist, and I believe horse-flesh is quite salutary. All I have to add is, that persons having an antipathy to that article of food, had better inquire where their bacon was fed, and had better keep a sharp eye upon their sausages. This, however, is a digression from a sad reflection. That poor cab-horse suggested various human beings whom I once knew. We have all known clever and promising youths who became drunken wrecks, and who deviated into various paths of sin, shame, and Going 0?t, i6i ruin. I laid down my pen when I had written that sentence, and thought of four, five, six, who had ended so, thijiking of them not without a tear. Some were the very last you would have expected to come to this. There are indeed men whose career as youths is quite of a piece with their after career of shame ; but my early friends were not such as these. I can think of some, cheerful, amiable, facile in the hand of com- panions good or bad, who bade fair for goodness and happiness, yet who went astray, and who were wrecked very soon. I knew of one, once a man of high character and good standing, who had to become as one dead, and who was long afterwards traced, a sailor in distant seas. He had a beautiful voice; and I have heard that it was fine to hear him singing on the deck by moonlight as he kept his watch. Poor wretch, with what a heavy heart ! The change that passes upon one's self, as we go on through life, comes so gradually through the wear of successive days, that we are hardly conscious how perceptibly we are getting through all that we have to get through here. We fancy, quite honestly, that we do not look any older in the last ten years, and that we are now just the same as we were ten years since. We fancy that, intellectually and morally, we are better ; and physically, just the same. People whose character and history are commonplace at least fancy this in their more cheerful hours. But sometimes it M i6z Going On, comes home to us what a change has passed on us, perhaps in not a very long time. You will feel this especially in reading old letters and diaries ; the letters you wrote and the diary you kept long ago. You probably thought that your present handwriting is exactly the same as your handwriting of ten years since ; but when you put the two side by side, you will see how different they are. And in the perusal of these ancient documents, it will be borne in upon you how completely changed are the things you care for. The cares and interests, the fears and hopes, of the old days, are mainly gone. You have arrived at quite different estimates of people and of things ; and if you be a wiser, you are doubtless a sadder man. And when you go back to the schoolboy spot, or to the house where you lived when you were ten years old, it will be a curious thing to contrast the little fellow of that time, with your own grave and sobered self. And you will do so the more vividly in the presence of some well-remembered object, which has hardly changed at all in the years which have changed you so much. It is a commonplace 5 but commend me to commonplaces for reaching the common heart: the picture of the aged man, or even the man in middle age, standing beside the tree or the river by which he played when he was a little child. The hills, the fields, the trees around, are the same j and there is he, so changed ! You remember Wordsworth's beautiful ballad, in which the old schoolmaster is lying beside Going On. 163 the fountain, by which he was used to lie in his days of youthful strength : you remember the same old man, looking back, from a bright April morning, to another April morning exactly like it, but past for forty years. We may well believe, that there is not a human being but knows the feeling. It is some little thing in our own history that we remember ; but it has touched the electric chain of association, and wakened up the past. There is a rude song current among the coal-miners of the north of England, in which an old man is standing by an old oak tree, and speaking to that unchanged friend of the change that has passed upon himself; and though the chorus, recurring at the end of each verse, is not so graceful as the lines which Wordsworth gives to Matthew, the thought is exactly the same. The words are, ' Sair failed, hinny, sair failed now : sair failed, hinny, sin I kenned thou.' But of all the poems which contrast the much-changed man and the little-changed tree, I know of none more touching than one I lately read in an American magazine. It is called The Name in the Bark. Here is a part of the poem : — The self of so long ago, And the self I struggle to know, I sometimes think we are two, — or are we shadows of one? To-day the shadow I am. Comes back in the sweet summer calm. To trace where the earlier shadow flitted awhile in the sun. Once more in the dewy morn, I trod through the whispering corn : Cool to my fevered cheek soft breezy kisses were blown : M 2 164 Going On. The ribboned and tasselled grass Leaned over the flattering glass ; And the sunny waters trilled the same low musical tone. To the gray old birch I came, Where I whittled my schoolboy name : The nimble squirrel once more ran skippingly over the rail : The blackbirds down among The alders noisily sung, And under the blackberry-trees whistled the serious quail. I came, remembering well. How my little shadow fell. As I painfully reached and wrote to leave to the future a sign ; There, stooping a little, I found A half-healed, curious wound j — An ancient scar in the bark, but no initial of mine ! I shall not add the verses in which the poet wisely moralizes on this instance how fast the traces we leave behind us pass away. Is it because I can remember how my little shadow fell, many years since, that the last-quoted verse touches me as it does ? We cast a different shadow now, my friend, from that little one we remember well ; and it will not be very long till the shadows that fell and the substance that cast them shall have left here an equal trace. Yes, my readers, we are all changed, as we are going on, from what we used to be. And it is no wonder we are changed. The wonder is that we are not changed a great deal more. How much hard work we have done ; how much care, trouble, anxiety, disappointment, we have come through ! What painful lessons we have been obliged to learn. >" Going On, i6 every one of us ! A great deal of the work we do is merely to serve the purposes of the time, and it leaves no trace ; but when the work done leaves its tangible memorial, it often strikes us much ; and we wonder to see how fresh and unwearied the man looks who did it all. I have seen the accumulated stock of sermons of a clergyman of more than forty years in the Church. It was awful to see what a vast mass they were. And even when we look not at the work of a lifetime, but at the results of what was no more than part of the work of a few years, we do so with a feeling of surprise that the man who did it was not at the end of his work much changed to appearance from what he was when he began it. Some time since I got back for a short time the prize essays I wrote while at college. They filled a whole shelf, and not a very small shelf. It was awful to look at them. They were all written before the writer was twenty-two. They were great heavy volumes — heavy physically ; and intellectually and aesthetically still heavier. I tried to read one, but could not, because it was so tiresome ; and I may therefore fairly conclude that no one will ever read them. Yet let me confess, that having arranged them on a lower shelf, I sat down on a rocking-chair immediately in front of them, and Igoked at them with great interest and wonder. In such a prospect, what could one do but shake one's head and sigh ? The essays were all successful, Mr. Snarling. Everyone of those prize essays got its prize. i56 Going On. It is not In mortification that one sighs, but vaguely In the view of such an immense deal of hard work done to so very small purpose. And when you look at a man advanced in life, whose whole life has been one of hard work, you cannot but confusedly wonder to see him looking as he does. To see Lord Campbell walking about at Hartrigge, when he had reached the highest place that a British subject can reach — to see the benignant and cheerful face of that remarkable man — and then to think of the tremendous amount of mental labour he had gone through in his long life, was a most perplexing and bewildering sight. When you are shown a ship that has come back from an Arctic voyage, you will generally remark that the ship looks like It ; It has a weatherbeaten and bat- tered aspect, suggestive of crunching against ice- bergs and the like. But when you are shown a man whose voyage in life has been a long and laborious one, you are sometimes surprised to find that he looks as fresh and unwearied as if he had done nothing all his life but amuse himself. I have already said that it Is a great blessing that in this world there are such things as Beginnings and Ends. It is a blessing that we can divide our way, as we go on, into stages — that we are saved the wearying and depressing effect of a very long uniform look-out. We begin a succession of tasks: we end them; and then we begin afresh. And even those things In which, in fact, there are no beginnings nor ends, have them in Going On, 167 our feeling. The unvarying advance of time is broken into days and weeks ; and we feel a most decided end on Saturday night, and we make a new start on Mon- day morning. It must be dreadful for a man to work straight on, Sunday and all other days. I believe it is impossible that any man should do so long. The man who refuses to observe a weekly day of rest will knock his head against the whole system of things, to the detriment of his head. But even more valuable than this obvious result of the existence of Beginnings and Ends is another. It is an unspeakable blessing that a man who has got him- self thoroughly into a mess anywhere or in any occu- pation, should be able to get away somewhere else and begin again. If Mr. Snarling, who has quarrelled with all his parishioners m his present charge, were removed to another a hundred miles off, I think he would take great pains to avoid those acts of folly and ill-temper which have made him so unhappy where he is. And let me say in addition, that most of us, as we go on, are always in our hearts admitting the im- perfection and unsatisfactorinessof our past life. We are every now and then, in thought and feeling, beginning again. Men are every now and then cutting off the past; and acknowledging that they must start, or (more commonly) that a little while back they did start, anew. You occasionally avow to yourself, my reader, though not to the world, that you were a blockhead even two or three years ago. You occa- t68 Going On, sionally say to yourself that your real life begins from this day three years. From that date you think you have been a great deal wiser and better. That course of conduct five years ago ; those opinions you held then ; that poem, essay, or book you w^rote then ; you are willing to give up. You have not a word to say for them. But that was in a former stage — in a different life. You have begun again since that ; you have cut connexion with it. You say to your- self, ' It may be thirty years since I came into the world ; but my real life — the part of my life I am willing to avow and to answer for — began on the 1st of January, i860. I cut off all that preceded. I began again then; and as for what I have said and done since then, I am ready (as Scotch folk say) to stand on the head of it. It is only in a limited sense that I admit my identity with the individual who before that date bore my name and wore my aspect. I disavow the individual. I condemn him as severely as you can do.' Tell me, my reader, have you not many a time done that ? Have you not given up one leaf as hopelessly blotted, and tried to turn over a new one — cut off (in short) the preceding days of life and resolved to begin again ? Do so, my friend. You may make something of the new leaf, but you will never make anything of the old one. And whenever you find any human being anxious to begin again, always let him do it, always help him to do it. Don't do as some malicious wretches do, try to make it as difficult Going On, 169 and humiliating as possible for him to turn over the new leaf. Don't try to compel him to a formal decla- ration in words that he sees his former life was wrong, and wants to break away from it ; it was bitter enough for him to make that avowal to himself. You will find malicious animals who, if man or child has done wrong, and is sorry for it, and wishes to turn into a better way, will do all they can to prevent the poor creature from quietly turning away from the blurred page and beginning the clean one. If there be joy in heaven over the repenting sinner, it cannot be denied that there is vicious spite over the repenting sinner in cer- tain hearts upon earth. Let us not seek to make repentance harder than it is by its nature. Unhappily there are cases in which neither in fact nor in feeling is it possible to begin again — at least upon an unsullied page. There are many people who never have a second chance. They must go deeper and deeper ; they took the wrong turning, and they can never go back. Such is generally the result of crime. There is one sex, at least, with which the one wrong step is irretraceable. And even with the ruder half of mankind, there are some deeds which, being done, shut you in like the spring-lock in poor Ginevra's oak-chest. There is no repassing ; and often the irreversible turning into the wrong track was not the result of anything like crime ; often the cause was no more than ill-luck, or some foolish word or doing. What disproportionate punishment often follows on little acts of haste or 170 Going On. folly ! In the order of Providence folly is often punished much more severely than sin. A young fellow, foolishly thinking to gain the favour of a sport- ing patron by exhibiting an extraordinary knowledge of the turf and the chase, cuts himself off from the living on which his heart was set. A flippant word, hardly spoken till it was repented, has prejudicially affected a man's whole after career. Various men, in pique and haste, have made marriages which blighted all their life, and which brought an actual sorer punish- ment than that with which the law visits aggravated burglary or manslaughter. It is well in most cases to keep a way of retreat. It is well that before entering in you should see if you can get out, should it prove desirable. You must be very confident or very des- perate if you cut off the bridge behind you, when in front there is but to do or to die. No doubt a habit of keeping the retreat open is fatal to decision of action and character. There is good, in one view, in feeling that we have crossed the Rubicon and are In for it ; then we shall hold stoutly on ; otherwise, we may be advancing with only half a heart. And there are important cases in which the difference between half a heart and a whole one makes just the difference between signal defeat and splendid victory. It is to be admitted, my friends, that as we go on, the nonsense is being taken out of us. You have seen a horse start upon its journey in a very frisky con- Going On, 171 dition, kicking about and prancing ; but after a few miles it settles into doing its work steadily. That is the image which to my mind represents our career, going on. The romance has mainly departed. We look for homely things, and are content with them. Once, too, we expected todo great achievements, but not now. We know, generally, our humble mark. Indeed, the question as to the earning of bread and butter has utterly crowded out of our hearts the ques- tion as to the attainment of fame. We would not give one pound six and eightpence for wide renown. We would not give the eightpence for posthumous cele- brity. We know our humble mark, I have said. I mean intellectually. And it is a great comfort to know it. It saves us much fever of competition, of suspense, of disappointment. We cannot possibly be beaten in the race of ambition ; we cannot even injure our lungs or our heart in the race of ambition; because we shall not run it at all. A wise man may be very glad, and very thankful, that he does not think himself a great genius, and that he does not think what he can do very splendid. For if a man thought himself a great genius, he would be bitterly mortified that he was not recognised as such. And if a man thought his sermons or his books very fine, he would be morti- fied that his church was not crammed to suffocation, instead of being quite pleased when it is respectably filled ; and he would be disappointed that his books do not sell by scores of thousands of copies, instead of 1"]% Going On, being joyful that about half the first edition sells, leaving his publishers or himself only a little out of pocket, besides all their time and trouble. I know a man of highly respectable talents, who once published a theological book. Nobody ever bought a copy except himself. But he bought a good many, which he gave to his friends. And then he was extremely pleased that so many copies were sold. Was he not a wise and modest man ? Among other follies, I think that in going on, men, if they have any sense at all, get rid of Affectation. Few middle-aged men, unless they be by nature in- curably silly and conceited, try to walk along the street in a dignified and effective way. They wish to get quickly and quietly along ; and they have utterly discarded the idea that any passer-by thinks it worth while to look at them. Generally speaking, they sign their names in a natural handwriting. They do not, as a rule, look very cheerful. They seem, when silent, to fall into calculations, the result of which is not satisfactory. The great tamer of men is, doubtless, the want of money. That is the thing that brings people down from their airy flights and romantic imaginations ; especially when there are some depen- dent on them. You may dismiss the very rich, who never need think and scheme about money, and how it is to be got, and how far it can be made to go, as an inappreciable fraction of the human race. Care sits heavy upon the great majority of those who are going Going On, ly^ on. You know the anxious look, and the inelastic step, of most middle-aged people who have children. All these things are the result of the want of money. Probably the want of money serves great ends in the economy of things. Probably it is a needful and essential spur to work; and a useful teacher of modesty, humility, moderation. No man will be blown up with a sense of his own consequence, or walk about fancying that he is being pointed out with the finger as the illustrious Smith, when (like poor Leigh Hunt) the fears lest the baker should refuse to send him bread, or that the washerwoman should impound his shirts. It is a lamentable story that is set out in the latter por- tions of the Correspondence of that amiable but unwise man. And human vanity needs a strong pressure to keep it within moderate limits. Even the wise man, with all his unsparing efforts to keep self-conceit down, has latent in him more of it than he would like to confess. I lately heard of an outburst of the vanity latent in a decent farmer of moderate means. One market day he got somewhat drunk, unhappily. And walking home, on the country road, he fell into a ditch, wherein he remained. Some of his friends found him there, and proceeded to rescue him. On approaching him, they found he was praying. For though drunk that day, he was really a worthy man: it was quite an exceptional case; I suppose he never got drunk again. They caught a sentence of his prayer. It was, ' Lord^ as Thou hast made me great ^ J 74 Going On. so do Thou make me goodP His friends had no idea of the high estimation in which the man held himself. He was, in the matter of greatness, exactly on the same footing with the other people round him. But he did not think so. In his secret soul he fancied himself a very superior man. And when his self- restraint was removed by whisky, the fancy came out. But he must have been at least a well-to-do man, who had this idea of his own importance. Many men are burdened far too heavily for that. Very many men in this world are bearing just as much as they can. A little more would break them down, as the last pound breaks the camel's back. When a man is loaded with as much work, or suffering, or disappointment, as he can bear, a very trifling addition will make his burden greater than he can bear. I remember how a friend told me of a time when he was passing through the greatest trouble of his life. He had met a very heavy trial, but was bearing up wonderfully. One day, only a day or two after the stroke had fallen,he was walking along a lonely and rocky path, when he tripped and fell down, giving his knee a severe stunning blow against a rock. He had been able to bear up before, though his heart was full. But that was the drop too much : and he broke down and cried like a child, though before that he had not shed a tear. There are various conclusions at which men arrive as they go on, which at an earlier part of their journey Going On, 175 they would have rejected with indignation. One thing you will learn, my reader, as you advance, is, what you may expect. I mean, in particular, how much you may expect from the kindness of your friends ; how much they are likely to do for you ; how much they are likely to put themselves about to serve you. I do not say it in the way of finding fault ; but the ordinary men of this world are so completely occupied in looking to their own concerns, that they have no time or strength to spare for those of others. And, accordingly, if you stick in the mud, you had much better, in all ordinary cases, try to get out yourself. Nobody is likely to help you particularly. Good Samaritans, in modern society, are rare ; priests and Le vites are frequent. I lately came to know a man who had faithfully and effectually served a certain cause for many years. He came at last to a point in his life at which those interested in the cause he had served might have greatly helped him. He made sure they would. But they simply did nothing. Nobody moved a finger to aid that meritorious man. He was mor- tified ; but after waiting a little, he proceeded to help himself; which he did effectually. I do not think he will trust to his friends any more. The truth is, that beyond the closest circle of relationship, men in general care very little indeed for each other. I know men, indeed— and I say it with pride and thankfulness — with whom the case is very different : I remember one who loved his friends as himself, and who stood 176 Gohtg On, up for them everywhere with a noble devotion : I think a good many of them caught from him the impulse that would have made them do as much for him\ but he was one of the truest friends and the noblest-hearted men on this earth. Many months are gone since he was laid in his grave ; but how many of those who will read this page cherish more warmly than ever, the memory of John Parker! ' If I forget thee,' my beloved friend, — you remember David's solemn words. But, compared with the chance acquaintances whom every one knows, he was a Man among Gorillas. And I recur to my principle, that beyond closest ties of blood, men in general care very little for one another. You have known, I dare say, an old gentleman, dying in great suffering through many weeks ; but his old club friends did not care at all ; at most, very little. His suffering and death caused them not the slightest appreciable concern. You may expect certain of your friends to be extremely lively and amusing at a dinner party, on the day of your funeral. I remember, a good many years ago, feeling very indignant at learning about a gay entertainment, where was much music and dancing, attended by a number of young people, on the evening of the day on which a fair young companion of them all was laid in her last resting- place. I am so many years older; yet I confess I have not succeeded in schooling myself to feel none of the indignation I then felt; though I have Going On, 177 thoroughly got rid of the slightest tendency to the surprise I felt in that inexperienced time. For, since then, I have seen a young fellow of six- and-twenty engaged in a lively flirtation with two girls who were in a railway carriage while he was standing on the platform, just the day after his mother's funeral. I have beheld two young ladies decked to go out to a ball. Their dresses happily combined a most becoming aspect with the expression of a modified degree of mourning. They had recently lost a relative. The relative was their father. I have witnessed the gaiety and the flirtations of a newly-made widow. It appeared to me a sorry sight. There are human beings, it cannot be denied, whose main characteristics are selfishness and heartlessness. For it is unquestionably true, that the most thorough disregard for the feelings, and wishes, and interests of others, may coexist with the keenest concern for one's self You will find people who bear with a heroic constancy the sufferings and trials of others ; but who make a frightful howling about their own. And singularly, those who never gave sympathy to another mortal, expect that other mortals shall evince lively sympathy with them. Commend me to a thoroughly selfish person, for loud complaints of the selfishness of others. As you go on, you will come to understand how well you can be spared from this world. You re- member Napoleon's axiom, that No man is necessary. There is no man in the world whom the world could 178 Going On, not do without. There are many men who, if they were taken away, would be missed ; would be very much missed, perhaps, by more or fewer human beings. But there is no man but what we may say of him that, useful and valuable as he may be, we might, sooner or later, with more or less difficulty, come to do without him. The country got over the loss of Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington ; it misses Prince Albert yet, but it is getting over his absence. I do not mean to say that there are not hearts in which a worthy human being is always remembered, and always missed ; in which his ab- sence is felt as an irreparable loss, making all life different from what it used to be. But in the case of each, these hearts are few. And it is quite fit that they should be few. If our sympathy with others were as keen as our feeling for ourselves, we should get poorly through life : with many persons, sym- pathy is only too keen and real as it is. But though you quite easily see and admit that human beings can be spared without much inconvenience, when you think how the State comes to do without its lost political chief, and the country without its departed hero, you are somewhat apt, till growing years have taught you, to cherish some lurking belief that you yourself will be missed, and kindly remembered, longer and by more people than you are ever likely to be. A great many clergymen, seeing the strong marks of grief evinced by their congregation a