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SERMONS OUT OF CHURCH. 
 
SERMONS OUT OF CHURCH. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OP 
 
 "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN," &c 
 
 L-- > ^*" 
 
 " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
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 1875. 
 
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 LITTLE SUNSHINE'S HOLIDAY. TWENTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 THE COUSIN FROM INDIA. . IS IT TRUE! 
 
 MISS MOORE. AN ONLY SISTER. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YOKE. 
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON PACK 
 
 I. WHAT is SELF-SACRIFICE ? 9 
 
 II. OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES 41 
 
 III. How TO TRAIN UP A PARENT IN THE WAY 
 
 HE SHOULD GO 75 
 
 IY. BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE ? . . . .117 
 
 Y. MY BROTHER'S KEEPER 145 
 
 YI. GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS 177 
 
Sermon JL 
 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
I. 
 
 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 T LATELY saw a drawing, not unknown to archseolo- 
 -- gists, which, though it might shock some people as 
 painfully profane, struck me with just the contrary feel- 
 ing, as being a solemn and touching confirmation, from 
 the outside, of that internal truth which we call Eevela- 
 tion. It was a copy of a street caricature, found, not 
 very long ago, on a newly discovered wall I think in 
 Rome where it had been hidden for eighteen hundred 
 years. Evidently the work of some J T oung gamin of 
 the ancient world, and depicting a man, after the most 
 primitive style of Art, with a round O for his head, an 
 oblong for his body, two lines for legs and arms, and 
 five-rayed fans for hands and feet. This creature stood 
 gazing in adoration upon a similar man, only with an 
 ass's head instead of a human one, who hung suspended 
 upon a cross. Underneath was scrawled in rude Greek 
 letters, "Alexaminos worships his God? 
 
 It set me thinking. "Alexaminos worships his god." 
 Not God, mind you, but his god : the divinity of his 
 
 A2 
 
10 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 own making, with an ass's head on. How many excel- 
 lent and earnest-minded people do much the same ! 
 
 To pull the ass's head off to show how many a ri- 
 diculous idol is esteemed divine ; how often a so-called 
 virtue is in reality a vice, or slowly corrupting into one ; 
 how the sublimest and holiest truths may be travestied 
 into actual lies this is the aim of my Sermons out of 
 Church. Out of Church : outside each and all of those 
 numerous and endlessly diversified creeds preached in 
 buildings made with hands ; but not, I hope, outside of 
 that universal Church God's consecrated Temple 
 built without hands, " eternal in the heavens." 
 
 Is this iconoclasm ? I can not think so. Is it irre- 
 ligious ? Surely not to those who believe that the 
 heart of all religion lies in the words I have put on my 
 title-page, " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heav- 
 en." But to find out what that will is, and so far as 
 the finite may comprehend the infinite Him who de- 
 clares it, this, and this alone, is real Christianity. 
 
 Let me begin "at the very beginning," as children 
 say children, in their holy ignorance, often so much 
 wiser and nearer heaven than we. 
 
 In first planning this first sermon, I entitled it " The 
 Sin of Self -sacrifice ;" because I have noticed, as one of 
 the sad and strange things in life, what folly, what mis- 
 ery, what actual wickedness, result from the exaggera- 
 tion of this particular virtue, esteemed the highest of 
 
WHAT IS SELF * SACRIFICE ? 11 
 
 all, the very key-stone and crown of our faith. But 
 considering the point, and feeling that such a title 
 might startle weaker brethren, and give an impression 
 that I meant what I do not mean, and that my Sermons 
 out of Church are also out of the pale of all Christiani- 
 ty, I have abstained, and simply commence with the 
 open question, What is self-sacrifice ? 
 
 The most obvious answer is this : Self-sacrifice means 
 the sacrifice of one's self, one's personal ego, with its 
 aims and desires, to something or somebody else. Then, 
 in this transaction, is the most important element the 
 self which is sacrificed, or the object which it is sacri- 
 ficed to ? In other words, granted that self-sacrifice is 
 a good thing, which side is to reap the good ? Or is 
 there to be a third consideration, more important than 
 either its end and aim? And what is its end and aim? 
 
 A moralist might answer, " Absolute truth, absolute 
 right." A Christian, knowing how difficult it is to de- 
 fine either, might reply, " God ;" which involves three 
 necessities the comprehension of Him, the worship of 
 Him, and the duty and delight of obeying Him. Brief- 
 ly, God and His will, so far as we know it, must be the 
 only right end of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Then, what is its beginning? the passion from which 
 it takes its rise ? Usually, nay, universally, that passion 
 which is the heart of the universe love. The root of 
 all true self-sacrifice is some strong affection which 
 
12 WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 
 
 makes the welfare of the beloved of more importance 
 to us than our own, or an equally strong devotion to a 
 principle, which is merely an abstract form of the same 
 emotion. Both these motives are noble and ignoble 
 likewise, sometimes ; for the latter is often alloyed by 
 ambition, egotism, obstinacy, love of power ; while the 
 former is seldom free from that recondite but very com- 
 mon selfishness, the hope of having our self-sacrifice duly 
 appreciated. Yery few of the most devoted of our lov- 
 ers and friends would come up to the standard I once 
 heard given of true affection : " He might die for you, 
 but he would never let you know it." 
 
 Now most of your self-sacrificers take abundant pains 
 to let you know it. When they offer themselves up, it 
 is with a lurking hope that not only the object of so 
 much devotion, but a select circle of sympathizing ad- 
 mirers, may be present at their immolation. The heroic 
 self-control which "dies and makes no sign" is a virtue 
 of which very few are capable. As I once heard com- 
 mented by a small but sage commentator on the poem 
 of " Enoch Arden :" " Yes, it was very good of Enoch 
 not to tell his story until he died ; but, mamma, what 
 a pity he didn't die and say nothing at all!" 
 
 There is another view of martyrdom which deserves 
 a word. It may be a very grand thing, despite its 
 pains, for the martyr, who has made his choice, accept- 
 ed his fate, and is prepared to go up in a cloud of glory 
 
WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 13 
 
 to heaven ; not unconscious, perhaps, of the eyes that 
 will be following him thither. But what of those who 
 have permitted or exacted the sacrifice ? And suppose 
 it has been offered foolishly, needlessly ; perhaps even 
 in some bitter outburst of feeling not quite so holy as 
 the act appears ? Before we lay ourselves down before 
 Juggernaut, is it not as well to see if he is a god, or 
 only an ugly idol ? And in preparing our suttee, should 
 we not pause to consider how far we are really benefit- 
 ing the affectionate friends who come to assist thereat ? 
 Possibly the role of victim which we are so anxious to 
 play may affix upon some one else the corresponding 
 title of murderer. 
 
 He who causes his brother to err is himself a sinner. 
 Now do you see what I mean by the sin of self-sacri- 
 fice? 
 
 A sin to which I fear women are much more prone 
 than men. It is apparently a law of the universe that 
 the male animal should be always more or less a selfish 
 animal. No doubt there is some reason in this some 
 good reason ; indeed, we can almost trace that. A large 
 ego is oftentimes necessary to enable a man to hold his 
 own in the hard battle of life, and the creed of " self- 
 preservation is the first law of nature," which presents 
 itself so forcibly to the mind of the ordinary man, in all 
 phases of society, from the savage to the sybarite, may 
 contribute a good deal to the advantage of the species. 
 
14 WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 
 
 Be that as it may be, I am afraid it must be owned that, 
 with some noble exceptions, men are, as a rule, ignobly 
 and incurably selfish. But it remains to be proved how 
 far they are so in themselves, or how far it is the women's 
 fault, who, by this exaggeration of unselfishness, this sin- 
 ful self-sacrifice, help to make them what they are. 
 
 Despite all the fancies of lovers and poets, throughout 
 life, women are the offenders, and men the accepters, of 
 an amount of devotion which would ruin an angel. They 
 are the slaves who manufacture the tyrants. 
 
 Yet how sweet and charming it is to be a slave at 
 first. To a loving-hearted woman for love's sake, to a 
 weak one because it saves trouble, lightens responsibil- 
 ity, and flatters that self-conscious vanity which, if we 
 tear off its saintly robes, underlies so much devotion, 
 amatory as well as religious, female devotion especially. 
 
 "He for God only she for God in him." 
 
 So wrote Milton, and few men ever wrote a more false 
 or dangerous line. Why though it may be less flatter- 
 ing to the man, less easy for the woman why should 
 not she as well as he live " for God only ?" Why in- 
 stead of seeing no medium between blind idolatry or 
 childish subserviency, and a frantic struggle after im- 
 possible "rights" should she not accept calmly her 
 plain duty, to be man's helpmeet, and assist him in 
 doing his duty before the world and before God? 
 
WHAT IS SELF - SACEIFICE ? 15 
 
 Instead, how many knowingly, or unknowingly, do 
 their very utmost not to amend, but to destroy the ob- 
 jects of their love ? For women will love men, and all 
 the philosophers in petticoats, or less graceful habili- 
 ments, who aim at remodeling society, free from the 
 old-fashioned folly of wifehood and motherhood, will 
 never succeed in conquering this amiable weakness. 
 It is all very well to pretend that women are the adored 
 and men the adorers so they are for a year or two, 
 and toward one or two women ; but at the beginning 
 and end of life, and all through it, save during the brief 
 courtship time, it is the business of their womenkind 
 mothers, sisters, wives, daughters to worship them, to 
 serve them, to obey them. Every man in his secret 
 heart recognizes this fact, and is complacently satisfied 
 that it should remain a fact forever. 
 
 Well, let it be so! Perhaps the "Whole Duty of 
 Woman " is man ; but it is in order that she may be 
 the agent for making him into a real man, fulfilling all 
 the noble aims of manhood. 
 
 Gay, in his "Acis and Galatea," has one fine line- 
 finer, perhaps, than he meant it to be. The nymph, 
 changing her dead shepherd into a fountain, says, 
 
 "Be thou immortal, since them art not mine." 
 
 And any woman who ever truly loved a man would de- 
 sire to make him so not " hers," perhaps, but " immor- 
 
16 WHAT IS SELF -SACRIFICE? 
 
 tal ;" that is, what he ought to be in himself, and to- 
 ward God and man. If, instead, she thinks only of what 
 he is to her, and what she wishes to be to him, her love 
 will prove, despite all its passionate or affectionate dis- 
 guises, not his blessing, but his lifelong curse. 
 
 This, though she may have shown toward him any 
 amount of self-sacrifice and blind devotion. If wom- 
 en's devotedness to men in any relation of life teaches 
 the latter to be selfish, lazy, exacting, imperious, the act 
 is not a merit but a sin, and causes their beloved ones 
 to sin. In the cant phrase, which while I use I detest, 
 they are " setting the creature above the Creator," and 
 will surely reap and deserve their punishment. Not, 
 as some theologians put it, in the divine revenge of a 
 jealous God, angry that any poor mortal is loved beyond 
 Himself, but as the inevitable result of that perfect 
 law "The soul that sinneth it shall die." It must; 
 for in all sin is the seed of death, and God Himself, 
 unless by changing His all-righteous essence, could not 
 make it otherwise. 
 
 Therefore, if a mother by overweening indulgence 
 helps her son to become a thoughtless scapegrace; if a 
 wife by cowardly subserviency converts her husband 
 into a selfish brute ; even if a daughter as in a late 
 case of somewhat notable literary biography sets up a 
 weak, luxurious, unprincipled father as the idol of her 
 life, and expects every body to bow down and worship 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 17 
 
 him all these foolish women have condoned sin, and 
 called vice virtue ; have left the truth, and believed, or 
 pretended to believe, a lie. When their false god falls, 
 or turns into an avenging demon, then they come to un- 
 derstand what means the sin of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Sinful, in one sense, because it is often only a dis- 
 guised form of a rather ugly quality self-will. 
 
 I heard the other day enthusiastic praises of a sister 
 in one of those Protestant communities who are trying 
 and not unwisely to emulate the Koman Catholic sis- 
 ters of mercy, by absorbing into useful work the many 
 waifs and strays of useless spinsterhood, eating their 
 hearts out in lonely, aimless idleness in the midst of a 
 struggling and suffering world. But this woman was 
 not lonely. She had a father, whom she paid a nurse 
 to take care of ; married sisters, who would have been 
 thankful for her occasional help in their busy, anxious 
 homes ; loving friends, to whom her influence and aid 
 might often have been invaluable. Yet she left them, 
 one and all, and went to spend her strength not so 
 very great upon strangers. She did expend it; for 
 she died, and was almost canonized by some people ; 
 but some others, with a simpler standard of holiness, 
 might question whether this devoted self-sacrifice should 
 not be called by another name self-will. She did the 
 thing she wished to do, rather than what seemed laid 
 before her to do ; and, though it is always difficult to 
 
18 WHAT IS SELF -SACRIFICE? 
 
 judge such cases from the outside without being unjust 
 to somebody, I think it is an open question whether she 
 did right or wrong. 
 
 The same doubt arises when one hears of soldiers vol- 
 unteering not sent, but volunteering on dangerous ex- 
 peditions, leaving young wives or helpless children to en- 
 dure at home the agony of suspense over a risk which 
 was not demanded by duty ; of missionaries quitting 
 the unobtrusive, useful work of a parish priest in trying 
 to win poor Hodge from his drink, or Black Jem from 
 his poaching, for the more exciting duty of converting a 
 handful of savages, at a cost of about three hundred 
 pounds per head, and at last making them not so very 
 much better Christians than either Hodge or Jem, if 
 these only had an equal chance of spiritual instruction. 
 
 Lastly, I own that I have no ardent admiration for 
 those religious devotees of any sort High Church, Low 
 Church, or no church at all who, obeying an often im- 
 aginary call, " Come out from among them, and be ye 
 separate," think that it is " the will of the Lord " they 
 should break the hearts of parents, alienate fond friends, 
 renounce the plain duties of daily life and all for 
 what ? To " save their soul," as they term it ! As if 
 the saving of their own petty individual soul whatever 
 that phrase may mean was a good worth the cost of 
 so much actual evil, and to so many other souls ! 
 
 Understand me. I do not deny that there is such a 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 19 
 
 thing as conversion nay, sudden conversion ; that even 
 in this noisy nineteenth century, as once on the silent 
 shores of Galilee, a man may hear the voice, " Follow 
 me," and, leaving all, may follow Him, to wearing life- 
 long work in East-end parishes, or in scarcely less bar- 
 barous foreign lands. But let him be quite sure first 
 who it is that calleth him, and let him take care that 
 the sacrifice offered is really to God, and not to his 
 own restless, excitable, unsatisfied imagination ; that, in 
 short, it is not a sacrifice to self, rather than a self-sac- 
 rifice. 
 
 For such, alas ! are a great many of the immolations 
 I am dealing with ; especially among women. Women, 
 who are so strong in their capabilities of loving, are, 
 above all, liable to that guiltiness in the form of loving 
 which does incalculable harm to its object. That is a 
 short-sighted affection, indeed, which causes us to help 
 another to do wrong instead of right. "When our unself- 
 ishness makes others selfish ; when we submit to their 
 injustice, condone their offenses, call their errors follies, 
 and follies pretty " lovablenesses ;" then we love them 
 in a mean, unworthy way ; we are not devotees, but 
 idolaters. 
 
 There are women sisters and wives tied to men so 
 unworthy of the bond, that their only safe course is, not 
 obedience, but a little righteous rebellion. There are 
 men, beginning life as very good men, who are seen 
 
20 WHAT IS SELF-SACKIFICE? 
 
 slowly growing into the bores, the torments, the laughing- 
 stocks of their more clear-sighted friends ; eaten up with 
 vanity, intolerable through self-assertion, just because 
 their womenkind love them not rationally, but irration- 
 ally ; put them on a pedestal and worship them, expect- 
 ing every body, else to do the same. But every body 
 does not, and so this self-devotion only makes its object 
 ridiculous, if not contemptible, except to the poor en- 
 thusiasts, who go on adoring him still, half from habit, 
 half from fear. 
 
 For fear is the root of many a so-called self-sacrifice. 
 Weak natures find it so much easier to submit to a 
 wrong than to fight against it. Less trouble also. Many 
 lazy women prefer getting their own way in an under- 
 hand, roundabout fashion, by humoring the weaknesses 
 of the men they belong to, instead of honorably and 
 openly resisting them, when resistance becomes neces- 
 sary. That is, using the right the only honest " right " 
 a woman has, of asserting her independent existence 
 before God and men as a responsible human being, 
 who will neither be forced to do wrong herself, nor 
 see another do wrong, if she can help it. 
 
 Yet how many women not only err themselves, but 
 aid and abet error, knowing it to be such under the 
 compulsion of that weak fear of man, which is called 
 or miscalled " conjugal obedience." 
 
 Here I can almost see my readers shudder " What ! 
 
WHAT IS SELF -SACRIFICE? 21 
 
 not obey one's husband ? What ! counsel rebellion in 
 our wives ?" 
 
 Stop a moment. I never said so. On the contrary, I 
 say distinctly Wives, obey your husbands, as children 
 your parents "in the Lord." But only "in the Lord." 
 Yield as much, as possible in ordinary things ; conquer 
 your tempers, modify your tastes ; give up every thing, in 
 short, that is not a compromise of principle. When it 
 comes to that, resist ! Whatever they may be to you, 
 and how great soever your love for them, resist them. 
 Never allow either father, husband, brother, son, to stand 
 between you and the clear law of right and wrong in 
 your own soul, which the God who made you has put 
 there. If you do, you fall into that sin of which I speak, 
 and wi]l assuredly, soon or late, earn its. bitter wages. 
 
 For how sad it is to see wives whose husbands are in- 
 clined to extravagance deny themselves not only lawful 
 luxuries, but needful comforts, in order to make up si- 
 lently for the willful waste against which they had not 
 the courage to protest ; when, perhaps, a few words, ten- 
 der as true, would have brought the man to his right 
 senses, and prevented his friends from calling him, as 
 of course they do (behind his back), a selfish, pleasure- 
 loving brute. And why should other men, crotchety, 
 worrying, or bad-tempered, though not really bad fellows 
 at heart, slowly become the torment of a whole house- 
 hold, because the mistress considers it her bounden duty 
 
22 WHAT IS SELF - SACEIFICE ? 
 
 to force every body into yielding to what she euphuistic- 
 ally terms " papa's little ways ?" Can she not see that she 
 is thereby destroying all domestic comfort, and teaching 
 both servants and children to avoid, to fear, nay, actual- 
 ly to dislike, one whom they ought to honor and love ? 
 A grain of moral courage on her part, an honest appeal 
 to that generosity which lies hid in most men's hearts, 
 would have helped the wife to help her husband, and by 
 teaching him to restrain himself, make him a far better 
 and happier man than if he had been tamely yielded to, 
 and so converted into a sort of family ogre, which, little 
 as they suspect it, a good many men really are in private 
 life. 
 
 And I think the ogre's wife in Hop-o'-my-Thumb is 
 a very good illustration of your meek, self-sacrificing, 
 self-devoted wives who after all sometimes end in as- 
 sisting themselves, as she did, to become happy widows. 
 Meantime they "do their duty" most obediently; will 
 even help in the fattening of children for their lord's 
 provender other people's children, certainly. But there 
 are women who consider it a point of duty to immolate 
 their own. 
 
 How many stories one could record in which a wife, 
 fancying herself a pattern of conjugal obedience, has 
 sacrificed her children just as much as Chaucer's " Gri- 
 seldis " detestable heroine ! sacrificed hers ; allowing 
 her whole family to be worried, bullied, and otherwise 
 
WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 23 
 
 evil-entreated, by him whom the law presumes to be its 
 guardian and head. 
 
 A misery which ends not even there. For in such 
 households brothers soon learn to treat sisters as papa 
 treats mamma, with rough words, ceaseless grumblings, 
 selfish exactingnesses. Daughters, brought up to hush 
 their voices or run away whenever the fathers step is 
 heard papa, who generally comes home cross, and re- 
 quires to be coaxed and " soothed " by mamma when- 
 ever she wants any thing these girls, accustomed to be 
 considered inferior animals, who must get their own 
 way by stratagem, grow up into those designing young 
 ladies who owe their power over men to first flattering 
 and then deceiving them. 
 
 But what a future for the new generation ! How 
 many unhappy girls have paid dearly for the early up- 
 bringing of their young husbands, who, the first glamour 
 of love passed, treat their wives as they were allowed to 
 treat their sisters, and as they saw their fathers treat 
 their mothers, carelessly, disrespectfully, with a total 
 want of that considerate tenderness which is worth all 
 the passionate love in the world. This though they 
 may pass muster outside as excellent husbands, never 
 doing any thing really bad, and possessing many good 
 and attractive qualities, yet contriving somehow quietly 
 to break the poor womanly heart, or harden it into that 
 passive acceptance of pain, which is more fatal to mar- 
 
24 WHAT IS SELF-SACEIFICE? 
 
 ried happiness than even temporary estrangement. An- 
 ger itself is a safer thing than stolid, hopeless indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 The best husbands I ever met came out of a family 
 where the mother, a most heroic and self-denying wom- 
 an, laid down the absolute law, " Girls first." Not in 
 any authority ; but first to be thought of, as to protec- 
 tion arid tenderness. Consequently, the chivalrous care 
 which these lads were taught to show to their own sis- 
 ters naturally extended itself to all women. They grew 
 up true gentlemen gentle men generous, unexacting, 
 courteous of speech and kind of heart. In them was 
 the protecting strength of manhood, which scorns to use 
 its strength except for protection ; the proud honesty of 
 manhood, which infinitely prefers being lovingly and 
 openly resisted to being " twisted around one's finger," 
 as mean men are twisted, and mean women will always 
 be found ready to do it ; but which, I think, all honest 
 men and brave women would not merely dislike, but 
 utterly despise. 
 
 It seems, hitherto, as if of this sin of self-sacrifice 
 women were oftenest guilty. Not always. 
 
 I have spoken of tyranny ; there is nothing so abso- 
 lute as the tyranny of weakness. Sometimes a really 
 good man will suffer himself to be so victimized by a 
 nervous, silly, selfish wife, that he dare not call his soul 
 his own. By a thousand underhand ways, she succeeds 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 25 
 
 in alienating him from his own family breaking his 
 natural ties, hindering his most sacred duties ; put- 
 ting a stop to his honest work in the world his right- 
 ful influence therein, and all the pleasures that belong 
 thereto. And these being, to a man, so much wider 
 than any woman's, the loss is the greater, the pain the 
 sharper. 
 
 One can imagine a large-minded, honorably ambitious 
 man actually writhing under the sacrifices forced from 
 him by a wife feeble in every way who destroys not 
 merely his happiness, but his good reputation. Since, 
 when it is seen that her merest whims are held by 
 him of paramount importance that her silly, selfish yes 
 or no is to decide every action of his life, do not his 
 friends laugh at him behind his back, even though be- 
 fore his face they may keep up a decorous gravity? 
 " Poor fellow ! with such a goose for his wife !" Yet 
 the pity is akin to contempt ; and something more than 
 contempt is felt especially by his mother, sisters, or 
 critical female friends toward that wife, who exacts 
 from him the renunciation of all his duties, except those 
 toward herself ; in plain English, " makes a fool of him," 
 because in his devotion he has offered every thing to 
 her, and she has meanly accepted the sacrifice. 
 
 He ought never to have made it. He ought to have 
 given her care, tenderness, affection all that man should 
 give to women, and strength to weakness; but there it 
 
 B 
 
26 WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 
 
 should have ended. No wife has a right to claim the 
 husband's whole life, its honorable toil, its lawful en- 
 joyments. If she can not share, she should learn at 
 least not to stand in the way of either. And the man 
 who submits to be so tyrannized over, as weak women 
 in their small way can tyrannize, with that " continual 
 dropping that weareth away the stone," deserves all he 
 gets : his friends' covert smiles, his enemies' uncon- 
 cealed sneer. 
 
 "We talk a great deal about the error of " spoiling " 
 our children ; may we not " spoil " our wives, our hus- 
 bands, not to speak of other less important ties, quite as 
 much, and as sinfully? For life is a long course of mut- 
 ual education, which ends but with the grave. If we 
 are wise enough to recognize this, and act upon it, nor 
 be afraid of that accidental attrition which only rubs off 
 inevitable angles if, in short, our aim in all the dear 
 bonds of existence is not so much to please either our- 
 selves or one another, but to do right which means 
 pleasing God then all is well. But we shirk the right, 
 and accept the agreeable ; if we expect life to be all 
 holidays and no school, then we shall soon begin to find 
 out its utter weariness and worthlessness, to blame the 
 faithless, ungrateful world as if good done with the 
 expectation of gratitude were ever worth any thing! 
 And we shall come to the end of it all with a dreary 
 sense of having renounced every thing and gained noth- 
 
WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 27 
 
 ing, except, perhaps, the poor consolation of considering 
 ourselves martyrs. 
 
 And why ? Because we mistook the boundary where 
 virtue passes into vice self-devotion into blind and 
 foolish, nay, sinful self-sacrifice. 
 
 There is a point beyond which we have no right 
 to ignore our own individuality that is, supposing we 
 have any. Many people have none. They get the 
 credit of being extremely self-denying, because they 
 really have no particular self to deny. Their feeble 
 nature is only capable of imitating others ; and their 
 stagnant placidity is no absolute virtue, but the mere 
 negation of a vice. Even as there are many most " re- 
 spectable" people, whom nothing keeps from being 
 villains, except one fortunate fact that they are such 
 arrant cowards. 
 
 But to those born with decided tastes, feelings, pos- 
 sibly talents, the exercise of all these is an actual ne- 
 cessity. And lawfully so. If God has given us our 
 little light, what right have we to hide it under a 
 bushel, because some affectionate, purblind friend dis- 
 likes the glare of it, or fears it will set the house on 
 fire ? No ; let us put it in its proper place, a safe 
 candlestick, if it be a light, but let nobody persuade or 
 force us to put it out. 
 
 What bitter sacrifices one member of a family gifted 
 with a strong proclivity, perhaps even a genius, for art, 
 
28 WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 
 
 music, or literature, sometimes has to make to the rest., 
 who can not understand it ! 
 
 Now a one-sided enthusiast a Bernard Pallissy, for 
 instance makes a very disagreeable husband and a 
 still worse father of a family ; and a modern Corinne, 
 with her hair down her back, sitting playing the harp 
 all day long, instead of going into her kitchen, order- 
 ing her dinner, and looking after her servants, would 
 be a most aggravating wife for any man to marry. 
 But, on the other hand, a gentleman with no ear for 
 music, married to a wife who is a born musician, may 
 make a very great victim of that poor lady. And the 
 pretty commonplace girl, whom a clever man of poet- 
 ical nature has idealized into an angel in the house, 
 sometimes succeeds in slowly but completely extin- 
 guishing in him that higher life of heart and intellect 
 the spiritual life, compared to which the worldly life 
 is mere dust and ashes, and even the domestic life, 
 sweet as it is, a body without a soul. 
 
 "We ought always to be chary in allowing ourselves 
 to be forced into sacrifices which do not benefit, but 
 merely gratify the persons exacting them. First, be- 
 cause a person who can be gratified by a self-sacrifice 
 is rather a mean person ; secondly, because to re- 
 nounce any innocent taste or pursuit is not merely 
 foolish, but wrong. All our talents were given us to 
 use ; not to bury in a napkin. If we do so bury them, 
 
WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 29 
 
 to please even the dearest friend on earth, we are guilty 
 of not merely cowardice, but infidelity to our trust ; 
 and depend upon it, the sacrifice will do no good to 
 that other person and great harm to ourselves. To say 
 nothing of the sneering comments of outsiders, and the 
 just condemnation of wiser folk, to which we expose 
 not ourselves : we are exalted into martyrs but those 
 we love, if we love them so foolishly as to suffer them 
 to victimize us unnecessarily. 
 
 And very sad to see is the extent to which some peo- 
 ple are victimized in domestic life ; from bad health, 
 bad temper, acting and reacting upon each other, and 
 both equally blamable ; for miserable as the sufferers 
 are, the cause of their sufferings is often nobody but 
 themselves. To maintain a sound mind in a sound 
 body, so as to be a help instead of a burden, not to say 
 a nuisance, to our family and friends, requires an 
 amount of self-control of which not every body is ca- 
 pable. Some people consider it "silly" to be careful 
 of health, and others find it so " interesting " to be ill 
 that the amount of pain, worry, and anxiety which 
 is inflicted by those who allow themselves to fall into 
 absolutely preventable illness is very great. Equally 
 great is the self-sacrifice entailed upon kindly people, 
 who can not stand by and see others suffer, although 
 deservedly, without coining to the rescue with every 
 help they can bring. 
 
30 WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 
 
 How often, too, do we see in a family, not otherwise 
 unamiable, one especial "root of bitterness," a thor- 
 oughly ill-conditioned person, of whom all the rest 
 stand in dread, to whom they give up every thing, and 
 for whom they will do any thing, just for the sake of 
 peace. Long habit has perhaps half accustomed them 
 to the torment ; they have learned to walk pretty stead- 
 ily under it, like a man with a nail in his shoe but 
 what a torment it is ! A person who takes every thing 
 amiss, whose mood you never can be sure of for a 
 single hour, whom you are obliged to propitiate, as the 
 savages their idols ; one whom you must be on your 
 guard with, and make perpetual apologies for, lest the 
 world outside should surmise any thing wrong with 
 whom you never can find any rest ; and though he or 
 she may be your nearest and dearest, ostensibly, you 
 are painfully conscious that the only relief is to get 
 away from him, or to get him away. 
 
 I have grave doubts whether in a case of this kind, 
 and we all know many such, though we are too polite 
 to say so, it is not the duty of a conscientious head of 
 a family, or its members, to take very strong measures. 
 There are some people so intolerable to live with that 
 nobody should be allowed to live with them. Every 
 effort should be made by the family which unhappily 
 owns them, to free itself from them, in any lawful w^ay, 
 and at any cost of money or inconvenience. Some, who 
 
WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 31 
 
 are an absolute torture to their own relations, do well 
 enough with strangers : the self -restraint they then are 
 obliged to exercise is a wholesome discipline for them, 
 and the people they afflict being farther off are not so 
 deeply afflicted as their own kith and kin. 
 
 Would it not be worth while if, instead of lauding 
 to the skies the self-sacrifice of a family in thus victim- 
 izing itself, we were to institute an Asylum for Family 
 Nuisances, to which could be removed the cross-grained 
 brother or sister, the cantankerous aunt, the " difficult " 
 relative of any sort, whom, if not a relative, the other 
 members of the household would fly from as from 
 something harmful and hateful ? Instead, they go on 
 enduring and enduring, till the harm becomes irreme- 
 diable. Which is the worst, to put a detestable thing or 
 person so far from you that you cease to feel any thing 
 toward him save a mild indifference? or to suffer your- 
 self and others to be so tormented by him that the sanc- 
 timonious "If it would please God to take him" 
 which is only an elegant form of murder ceases to 
 appear wrong, only natural ? 
 
 Yet this is what your vaunted self-sacrifice leads to, 
 when perpetrated for the sake of unworthy people. 
 
 But there are people, amiable, interesting, affectionate 
 (externally), to whom one sometimes sees, whole families 
 sacrificing themselves, without the slightest sense of the 
 harm they are doing I mean the "ne'er-do-weels." 
 
32 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 Not the people who do actual evil, but the people who 
 never do good. Of such is the weak, amiable, impecu- 
 nious brother, who always comes back and back to drain 
 the last half-penny from his hard-working sisters. Per- 
 haps he has no vices whatever, is of a pleasant and not 
 unaffectionate nature, only somehow he contrives to let 
 every thing slip through his fingers money, time, op- 
 portunity. And as he in reality thinks of nobody but 
 himself, of course he marries early and rashly, and 
 brings his wife and family to be kept by his sisters, 
 who go on impoverishing themselves year by year, do- 
 ing not only their duty all sisters must do that but a 
 great deal more than their duty ; submitting to endless 
 exactions, allowing not only the feeble, who are a natu- 
 ral burden, but the strong, the self-indulgent, the extrav- 
 agant, to live upon them, and drain the life-blood out of 
 them, till death comes in mercy to end the never-ceasing 
 sacrifice. A sacrifice which has done no good to any 
 body ; for it has left the selfish selfish still, and the ex- 
 travagant as reckless as ever ; perhaps worse than ever, 
 from the long habit of receiving supplies from others, 
 instead of earning their luxuries, if they must have them, 
 for themselves. The life-long devotion of a whole fam- 
 ily to one unworthy member has been no more than 
 pouring water into a sieve ; it has never benefited him, 
 and it has ruined the rest. 
 
 Another, though rarer case, and less patent to the 
 
\VIIAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 33 
 
 world, we sometimes see, in which a number of unmar- 
 ried sisters hang around a kind brother as their natural 
 guardian ; which he is, within certain limits. But these 
 limits the amiable, helpless women do not see. He en- 
 ters the flower of his age, he passes it, yet still he can 
 not marry could not possibly do it, without turning his 
 sisters out of doors. He shrinks from that, shrinks, too, 
 from offering such an encumbered hand and heart to 
 any girl. And, besides, it is not every girl who in mar- 
 rying likes to marry a whole family. So time slips on ; 
 the more high-minded and generous the man is, the 
 more complete is his sacrifice. Perhaps he gets habitu- 
 ated to it, and almost content in it but it is none the 
 less a sacrifice. He may be a good and not unhappy 
 old bachelor, but lie would have been much better and 
 happier married, and in a home of his very own. His 
 sisters too, if, though poor, they had ceased to be help- 
 less, had gone out into the world and earned their own 
 living ; or, if rich, they had made for themselves an in- 
 dependent household, how much higher and more per- 
 fect lives they might have led. 
 
 Of course there are exceptions to every thing, and 
 sometimes a combination of sad destinies, mutual disap- 
 pointments, strong fraternal attachment, and great nat- 
 ural affinity, make these households of unmarried broth- 
 ers and sisters very peaceful and honorable substitutes 
 for the better and completer domestic life. One has 
 
 B2 
 
34 WHAT IS SELF -SACRIFICE? 
 
 seen more than one such, which is more than a resting- 
 place a visible haven of refuge ; not only to its inhab- 
 itants, but to all around. Yet there are others upon 
 which standers-by look with pity not unmixed with in- 
 dignation. And the nobler, the more silent the sacrifice, 
 the greater is the sadness of it even though it can not 
 quite come under the name of sin. 
 
 Self-devotion God forbid I should ever say a word 
 in condemnation of that ! It is the noblest thing in all 
 this world, and the rarest No, not rare ; few family 
 histories are without some heroic or pathetic instance 
 thereof, continued throughout whole lives with unflinch- 
 ing fortitude. And could death open the locked records 
 of many a heart, how often would some secret be found 
 there that would furnish a key to all the history of the 
 finished life some strong, one love some eternal faith- 
 fulness which all the chances and changes of exist- 
 ence could never shake, which was the impulse of every 
 thought, the motive of every action, the compelling force 
 of every line of conduct. A devotion, not a passion, 
 inasmuch as it was able to set itself entirely aside 
 absorb itself in the well-being of the other, whose good 
 it sought, without reckoning any personal cost, through 
 weal and woe, pleasure and pain, requital or non-requit- 
 al. This is a sight not to blame or weep over, but to re- 
 joice in ; for it is not blind self-sacrifice ; it is open-eyed 
 self-devotion blessed on both sides, both to the giver 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 35 
 
 and receiver. It has sharp agonies sometimes what 
 deep emotion is without them? but out of all come 
 peace and content. It is pleasing in God's sight as 
 lovely in man's, because there is no sin in it, no selfish- 
 ness on either side ; and in its very sadness it must of 
 necessity be often sad there is a sacredness beyond all 
 mortal joy. 
 
 Of all forms of self-devotion, the one which, even 
 when it amounts to absolute self-sacrifice, we can not 
 but regard with very tender and lenient eyes, is the de- 
 votion of the young to the old, of children to parents. 
 No doubt there is a boundary beyond which even this 
 ought not to be permitted ; but the remedy lies on the 
 elder side. There are such things as unworthy, selfish, 
 exacting parents, to whom duty must be done, simply 
 for the sake of parenthood, without regarding their per- 
 sonality. "Honor thy father and thy mother" is the 
 absolute command, bounded by no proviso as to whether 
 the parents are good or bad. Of course no one can lit- 
 erally " honor " that which is bad still one can respect 
 the abstract bond in having patience with the individual. 
 
 But I think every high or honorable instinct in human 
 nature will feel that there is hardly a limit to be set to 
 the devotion of a child to a good parent righteous de- 
 votion, repaying to failing life all that its own young 
 life once received of care and comfort and blessing. 
 And no good, or even moderately good parent is ever 
 
36 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 likely to allow this devotion to pass into self-sacrifice. 
 Surely, as long as consciousness and reason lasted, all 
 true fathers and mothers would prevent, in all possible 
 ways, the complete absorption of the younger life into 
 theirs; nor allow their poor expiring flame to be kept 
 alight a few years, a few months, by the vital breath of 
 a far more valuable existence. 
 
 But if such a case does happen the child alone, and 
 no outsider, has a right to decide upon the due extent 
 of the sacrifice, and how far it is necessary or beneficial, 
 even to the aged sufferers themselves. There may be a 
 point beyond which the most affectionate child has no 
 right to go but must pause and judge whether a duty, 
 which inevitably overrides all other duties, has not in it 
 something amiss ; even as a love which destroys all oth- 
 er loves can not fail to deteriorate the whole being. 
 
 And here, reasoning in a circle, we come round to 
 the point from whence we started "He that loveth 
 father or mother" or any other "more than me"- 
 that is, he who allows his love for them to make them 
 err against me " is not worthy of me." Therefore all 
 self-sacrifice, made solely for the love of man, or for the 
 gratification of some merely human ambition, is not a 
 righteous but a sinful thing and, as sin, will assuredly 
 find its punishment. 
 
 This furnishes, apparently, a solution to the great mys- 
 tery why so many noble self-sacrifices are so futile, so 
 
WHAT IS SELF - SACRIFICE ? 37 
 
 aimless, so positively injurious? "I am the Lord thy 
 God thou shalt have no other gods before me." If we 
 make to ourselves idols, of any sort that is, if we allow 
 love to conquer right, and set aside what we ought to do 
 in favor of what we like to do, we suffer accordingly 
 and God Himself, who is justice as well as mercy, can 
 not save us from suffering. And this is what I meant 
 when I first called this sermon the Sin of Self-sacrifice. 
 
Sermon 13f. 
 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
II. 
 
 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 DOES it ever occur to those of us who are no 
 longer young who begin to feel this wonderful 
 machine a little the worse for wear, while its spiritual 
 inmate is as fresh and strong as ever how low appar- 
 ently is the standard of health in this present gener- 
 ation ? How seldom among our friends and acquaint- 
 ances can we point out a thoroughly healthy person? 
 I will not even say a robust person, but one who has 
 sufficient vitality of body to keep up the daily require- 
 ments of his mental work, or any sort of work, without 
 complaining, without having continually to resort to ex- 
 traneous helps, medical or hygienic, wherewith to bol- 
 ster up his failing powers, and make him capable of 
 his necessary duties. 
 
 We do not need to reach the first half century of 
 life in order to see our compeers, and alas ! too often 
 others much younger in the race, drop out of it one 
 by one sink into miserable valetudinarians, or grow- 
 ing old before their time, slip from the active enjoy- 
 
42 OUK OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 ment of life into the mere endurance of it. How 
 many among us who only yesterday, as it were, seemed 
 ready for an eternity of youth and labor to whom 
 three-score years and ten appeared all too short for 
 what they had to do now consciously or unconsciously 
 echo the pathetic words of one whose name I this day 
 write with tears, for Charles Kingsley only yesterday 
 "fell on sleep:" 
 
 "Men must work, and women must weep, 
 And the sooner it's over the sooner to sleep." 
 
 Nay, all have not even strength to work, and some 
 scarcely enough strength to weep, but drop into help- 
 less silence and a weary looking forward to that death- 
 slumber which is to them the only possible rest. I 
 have heard people say they do not even want to "go 
 to heaven ;" they only want to go to sleep. They are 
 " so tired." 
 
 Why so ? Why, in an age supposed to be thus civ- 
 ilized over-civilized indeed ; which takes such exceed- 
 ing care of itself, mentally and physically ; writes cart- 
 loads of medical books and makes speeches by the horn- 
 on sanitary subjects is the old-fashioned health of our 
 forefathers a thing almost unknown ? True, we are 
 said to live longer than they did, but what sort of life 
 is it ? Do we enjoy the full vigor of a sound mind 
 in a sound body, to be used both for the service of God 
 
OUE OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 43 
 
 and man ; good at work, good at play ; able to make 
 the very most of every hour ? Are we wholesome trees 
 bearing fruit to the last, and still keeping " strong and 
 well -liking?" Or do we immediately after our first 
 youth, often before it is ended, begin to fade and fail, 
 to grumble at our work, to weary of our pleasures, to 
 be pestered ourselves, and, worse, to pester all our 
 friends, with our " often infirmities ?" Not actual sick- 
 nesses, but infirmities ; small sufferings of all sorts, and 
 a general sense of incapacity for the duties of life, 
 which entirely takes .away its happy normal condition 
 not to think about one's self at all. 
 
 When a man makes a habit of dwelling upon his 
 sins, depend upon it he has a good many sins to dwell 
 on ; and he who persists in " investigating his own in- 
 side " will very soon fall, if he have not already fallen, 
 into a thoroughly diseased state. Even as truly good 
 people are good without knowing it, so really healthy 
 people never notice their health. The perfect life is 
 the child's life of absolute unconsciousness. 
 
 But this is a condition so rare nowadays, whatever it 
 was in days past, that the question of our often infirm- 
 ities, to borrow an apostolic phrase, deserves a sermon 
 quite as much as many topics which are discussed in 
 pulpits, where it is mostly the fashion to attend to the 
 soul first and the body afterward. 
 
 Not very long ago I heard a clergyman seriously 
 
44: OUK OFTEN INFIKMITIES. 
 
 proclaim that " the Gospel " must first be given to the 
 starving, sinning, suffering denizens of London courts 
 and alleys the Gospel first, and food, clothes, soap and 
 water, and decent dwellings afterward. It is one of 
 the trying things of going to church that whatever a 
 man says one must hear him ; one can not stand up 
 and contradict him ; else I should like to have sug- 
 gested to this well-meaning but narrow-visioned preach- 
 er how much a man's moral nature depends npon his 
 surroundings. Diogenes might not have been a cynic 
 if he had not lived in a tub ; and I doubt if the no- 
 blest man alive, if compelled to inhabit a pig-sty, would 
 long remain much better than a swine. 
 
 Therefore it behooves us to take heed that the cor- 
 poreal habitation into which our spirit is put for this 
 life at least is dealt with as kindly as circumstances 
 allow, carefully cherished, swept and garnished, arid 
 made the most commodious residence possible, so as 
 to allow free play to its immortal inhabitant. 
 
 It is true too true, alas ! that in many instances this 
 desirable end is neutralized by hereditary weaknesses 
 the sins of the fathers inevitably visited upon the 
 children and by our own early faults ignorantly com- 
 mitted, and the unalterable circumstances in which our 
 lot is placed. We can not care for ourselves without 
 sacrificing more than ought to be sacrificed by any hu- 
 man being to his own individuality. But there is a 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 45 
 
 medium course always possible ; and sore let and hin- 
 dered as we may often be, I think some of us very 
 often create our own hinderances and add weight to 
 our natural burdens by the want of a certain respect 
 for the body, as a faithful servant, out of whom we 
 must get a good deal of work before we have done 
 with it. 
 
 We generally begin by working it a great deal too 
 hard. We rejoice in our youth ; we exult in our 
 strength ; we use both recklessly, boastfully, as if they 
 were wholly our own to do as we liked with, and could 
 never possibly wear out. So in a thousand careless 
 ways we squander vitality, never thinking that we 
 have only a certain quantity given us to last till death, 
 and that for every atom of wasted health heedlessly 
 wasted nature, that is God, will assuredly one day 
 bring us to judgment. 
 
 Still we are not wholly to blame. I believe many 
 feeble men or delicate women of to-day owe the help- 
 lessness of their lives to the ignorance of sanitary laws 
 of the parents of forty or fifty years ago. Even as fifty 
 years hence our children may have to reproach us for 
 that system of overfeeding, and especially overdrink- 
 ing, which many doctors now advocate for the young 
 generation. I doubt if even the calomel powders, jalap 
 and gin, brimstone and treacle of our tormented child- 
 hood, were worse than the meat three times a day, the 
 
46 CUE OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 brandy and the daily glass of wine, poured into inno- 
 cent little stomachs, which naturally would keep to the 
 infant's food of bread and milk, and almost nothing be- 
 sides. Certainly, not stimulants. 
 
 This is neither a medical treatise nor a teetotal essay ; 
 yet, as he is a coward who does not openly advance his 
 colors, I do not hesitate to say that I believe half the 
 bodily and spiritual ailments of this world spring from 
 that much misinterpreted and not by any means in- 
 spired sentence of St. Paul, "Drink no longer water, 
 but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine 
 often infirmities." How often do we hear it quoted. 
 But nobody considers that the advice was given because 
 of the " often infirmities," the origin of which we, of 
 course, do not know. That which is most valuable as a 
 medicine, is poison when, taken as a food. To accus- 
 tom a child or a youth to strong drinks is to institute 
 a craving after them a necessity for them almost 
 more dangerous than the temporary good, if it be a 
 good, effected by their use. 
 
 Most children have an instinctive dislike to alcohol 
 in any shape ; unless, indeed, there be an hereditary 
 predisposition toward it of all predispositions the most 
 fatal. Any one who knows the strong pureness of a 
 constitution which has received from two or three tem- 
 perate generations an absolute indifference to stimu- 
 lants, can hardly overvalue the blessing it is to a child, 
 
OUK OFTEN INFIKMITIES. 47 
 
 boy or girl, to bring it up from babyhood in the firm 
 faith that wine, beer, and spirits are only medicines, not 
 drinks ; that when you are thirsty, be you man, woman, 
 or child, the right and natural beverage for you is wa- 
 ter, and only water. If you require it, if you have been 
 so corrupted by the evil influences of your youth or the 
 luxurious taste of your after -years that you "can not 
 drink water," either there is something radically dis- 
 eased in your constitution, or you will soon bring your- 
 self to that condition. Long before you are middle- 
 aged you will have no lack of " often infirmities." 
 
 I could write pages on the folly the absolute mad- 
 ness of parents in allowing unlimited beer to growing 
 lads, daily glasses of wine to overworked, delicate girls. 
 Kay, descending to the very root of things, I would 
 implore all parents who wish their sons to have the 
 strength of a Samson to remember Manoah's wife, and 
 suffer neither doctors nor old women to persuade them 
 that strong drinks are essential to even a nursing moth- 
 er; but that that mother is specially wise, specially 
 blessed aye, and her children will rise up and call her 
 so who has had the self-restraint and courage to make 
 them, before their birth and after, in the solemn lan- 
 guage of Holy Writ, " Kazarites from their mother's 
 womb." 
 
 To " drink no wine nor strong drink," to be absolute- 
 ly independent of the need for it or the temptation to 
 
4:8 OUK OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 it any young man or woman brought up on tins prin- 
 ciple has not only a defense against many moral evils, 
 but a physical stronghold always in reserve to fall back 
 upon, when accidental sickness and the certain feeble- 
 ness of old age call for that resource, which I do not 
 deny is at times a most valuable one. But the advice 
 I would give to the young and healthy is this : Save 
 yourselves from all spirituous drinks, as drinks, as long 
 as ever you can ; even as you would resist using a 
 crutch as long as you had your own two legs to walk 
 upon. If you like wine well, say honestly you take it 
 because you like it, that you prefer indulging your 
 palate at the expense of your health ; but never delude 
 yourself, or suffer others to delude you, that alcohol is 
 a necessity, any more than stays or orthopoedic instru- 
 ments, or strong medicinal poisons, or other sad helps 
 which nature and science provide to sustain us in our 
 slow but sure decay. 
 
 Still, to retard that decay as much as possible, to keep 
 up to the last limit the intellectual and physical vigor 
 which is such a blessing, not only to ourselves but to 
 those about us, this is the religion of the body too 
 often lost sight of but which I for one count it no 
 heathenism both, to believe in and to preach. A re- 
 ligion, not a superstition ; the reverence and care for 
 the physical temple of the divine human soul, with- 
 out in the least sinking to that luxurious Greek 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 49 
 
 philosophy which considered the body only as worth 
 regarding. 
 
 On the contrary, if we must be either Sybarites or 
 Spartans, better be Spartans. The harsh and rough up- 
 bringing of our grandmothers probably did less harm 
 than the present system of mingled overcare and care- 
 lessness. If they thought too little of children, made 
 them often poor miserable victims to their elders, we 
 nowadays see ourselves victimized to the younger gen- 
 eration rather too much. They also suffer ; in fact, to 
 use the common phrase, are " killed with kindness." 
 Parents will not see that a child is safer turned out to 
 play in all weathers than shut up from the least breath 
 of wind in nurseries so ill-ventilated that the air is actu- 
 ally fetid. And people who would shudder at the idea 
 of their boys and girls running about barefooted, take 
 them (in low-necked, sleeveless muslin frocks, which 
 leave exposed the most sensitive region, the chest and 
 upper arm, or velvet tunics that do not reach to the 
 shivering little knees) take them to children's parties, 
 where they must necessarily encounter chills, which to 
 the young are absolute death, and eat food which to 
 their tender stomachs is all but poison. There they 
 stay in a heated room or in draughty passages, sitting 
 up till their innocent eyes are shutting with sleep, or 
 blazing with feverish and premature excitement, till 
 ten, eleven, and even twelve o'clock, and then are car- 
 
 C 
 
50 OUK OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 ried off to bed. Next morning the parents wonder that 
 poor little Tommy is cross, or Mary ill, or that Lucy 
 and Charlie can not attend to their lessons as they 
 ought to do. How should they ? Wholesome amuse- 
 ment and plenty of it is essential at all ages ; and 
 children's society most beneficial to children ; but that 
 pitiful imitation of the " show " society now cultivated 
 by fashionable elders, which is slowly drifting down- 
 ward to corrupt the children, ought to be resisted by 
 wise parents with all their might. Not merely on 
 moral, but on simply physical grounds. Any person 
 who gives or goes to ordinary " children's parties " of 
 this sort is, I think, guilty of a wholesale massacre of 
 the innocents. Worse than massacre slow murder ; 
 for such entertainments lay the foundations of half the 
 infirmities of which I write, which sap the very springs 
 of life, and embitter all its enjoyments. 
 
 If our parents sin against us in our childhood, how often 
 do we sin against ourselves in youth that daring youth, 
 which thinks it will always last, and resents the slightest 
 interference with its whims or its privileges? It will 
 have what.it likes, at any cost. What an endless and 
 thankless task it is to represent to a young girl the com- 
 mon-sense fact that to put on her warm jacket or water- 
 proof cloak, a sensible hat for her head, and a stout pair 
 of boots for her feet, and go cheerily out, even on the 
 wettest or coldest day, will do her no harm, but good ; 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 51 
 
 bring the roses to her cheeks and the sunshine to her 
 spirit ; whereas to cower over the fire in a warm woolen 
 dress, and then undress herself for a ball to dance till 
 she is heated and exhausted, and then go and sit on the 
 stairs or by an open window to cool herself is more 
 than folly it is insanity. But you, poor mother or aunt, 
 might talk yourself hoarse; she will not listen. The 
 one thing she likes, the other she does not like; and 
 therefore she does the first, and will not do the second. 
 
 Young men, also, they will go their own way ; sow 
 their wild oats and reap them. I do not speak of ex- 
 treme cases of reckless dissipation, upon which retribu- 
 tion follows only too swift and sure, but of small dissi- 
 pations, petty sins. A young fellow will dance till four 
 in the morning several times a week, when he knows 
 that every day in the week he must be at his office at 
 nine and is, being an honest fellow who wishes to get 
 on in the world. But he does not consider how much 
 he takes out of himself in life and health and strength ; 
 and sometimes out of his master's pocket too; for, with 
 the best intentions, he can not possibly do his work as 
 well as it ought to be done. But he, too, does what he 
 likes best to do, and deludes himself that it is the best ; 
 and all the arguments in the world will never convince 
 him to the contrary. 
 
 No more will they convince those other sinners 
 whose sin looks so like virtue the clever men who kill 
 
52 OUE OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 themselves with overstudy ; the ambitious men who sac- 
 rifice every thing to the mad desire of getting. on in 
 the world; of being not better or wiser or greater 
 but merely richer than their neighbors. 
 
 To do work for work's sake, moderately, levelly, ra- 
 tionally, so as to preserve the power of doing it for the 
 longest term that nature allows this, the noblest aim a 
 man can start with, becomes often swamped in the ig- 
 noble one of working merely to be superior to some- 
 body else. Thus many a man who has earned, or is 
 earning, enough to live comfortably, and bring up his 
 children \vell and sufficiently well off, too, to begin 
 with a fair start where their father did goes on slav- 
 ing and toiling, his wife aiding and abetting him, in or- 
 der to maintain them in the luxury to which he has ris- 
 en. A paternal devotion which has its touching phase ; 
 and yet it is as blind as it is foolish. The children 
 would be much better left to make their own way, and 
 earn their own bread, like their father before them. 
 And the father himself, by the time he has accumulated 
 the thirty, forty, or fifty thousand which he has gradu- 
 ally learned to consider essential to happiness she, sly 
 jade ! has slipped away from him. lie catches her, but 
 she is like the crushed butterfly that his boys catch un- 
 der their caps; all her beauty is gone. Utterly worn 
 out with work, he can neither enjoy life himself nor 
 give enjoyment to other people. The strain of occupa- 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 53 
 
 tion gone, his weariness becomes intolerable. The irri- 
 tability that an overtasked body and mind superinduces 
 in most men, makes him, not a delight, but an actual nui- 
 sance in his family. Those " often infirmities " which he 
 had once no time to think much about, now rise up like 
 ghosts of the murdered to torment him wherever he goes. 
 His handsome house, his country leisure or town pleas- 
 ure, his abundance of friends, and his flourishing fam- 
 ily, are to him no comfort, no resource. He has burned 
 the candle at both ends, and now there is no light left 
 in it; it just flickers a while, and then drops out. 
 
 I ask earnestly, Is this picture overdrawn ? Do I not 
 paint the likeness not of one, but of hundreds of 
 rich men among our acquaintance in this " golden age ?" 
 Midas himself could not have more bitterly applied the 
 word. The old king of fable, whose touch turned every 
 thing to gold, was not more wretched than some of our 
 would-be millionaires. 
 
 For what is the use of money ? Simply to be used ; 
 to gain a certain amount of bodily comfort, for which 
 the poor failing body is, as it gets older, only too thank- 
 ful; and an equal share of intellectual pleasures and 
 tastes, which money only can fully supply. Beyond 
 that no man can spend, or ought to spend, upon him- 
 self. And even this, carefully employed, will always 
 leave a large margin for the keenest pleasure of all 
 the money that is spent upon other people. 
 
54: OUE OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 Idleness may be a great folly, but overwork, to no no- 
 bler end than to get rich, is a great crime. And the 
 men who commit it, and the women who encourage them 
 in it, deserve all they get, in the secret miseries that un- 
 derlie all their splendors. What these are they know. 
 The indigestions of their dinner-parties, the weariness 
 of their balls, the worry of their servants, the rivalries 
 of their neighbors. Who that looks at them as sitting, 
 pallid and cross, in their grand carriages, or watches the 
 discontent into which their bland dinner-table face falls 
 the moment the smile is off it, or notices the scarcely 
 veiled relief of the polite adieu with which such an en- 
 tertainment is ended " and a good thing it's over," say 
 both host and guest in their secret hearts who that 
 takes quiet heed of all this can help feeling that such 
 magnificence has cost very dear 1 Le jeu ne vaut pas 
 la chandelle. The paradise may be fair enough outside, 
 but " the trail of the serpent is over it all." 
 
 This, without any complaints about " this poor dying 
 world," or the wickedness of the people that are in it. 
 It is a good world, a happy world. God meant it to be 
 happy. It is man only who makes it miserable. For 
 one half perhaps nearly the whole of these often in- 
 firmities which torment us so, Nature is not accountable; 
 Nature, always a wise and tender mother to those who 
 follow her dictates in the simplest way. For instance, 
 who will deny that a number of those illnesses which 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 55 
 
 we suffer from year by year, are absolutely preventable 
 illnesses ? 
 
 The common answer to that commonest of moans, " I 
 have such a bad cold" "Dear me! How did you 
 catch iU" often makes us cross enough. As if it 
 could be any consolation to our sufferings to investigate 
 how we got them. But the remark is not so ridiculous 
 as it seems. It would be a curious and useful register 
 of personal statistics if we were to count how many of 
 our illnesses we bring on ourselves by neglect of those 
 common sanitary laws which can never be broken with 
 impunity. Men of science, half of whom allege that 
 nature is all benign, the other half that she is wholly 
 cruel, seem to be both right and both wrong. She is 
 neither kind nor cruel ; she is only just. She or a 
 higher Power through her lays down laws, which, so 
 far as we see, are laws for the general good ; they must 
 be obeyed, and by all, or all suffer ; and neither God 
 nor nature can prevent this suffering. 
 
 Thus some illnesses are not preventable. They come 
 to us apparently "by the visitation of God," from no 
 cause at all ; that is, from recondite causes, too remote 
 for us either to detect or guard against, but no doubt 
 also the result of broken laws. We can but try to dis- 
 cover these laws, so as to obey them better another time. 
 But a large number of our lesser ailments are entirely 
 our own fault. We can trace in them cause and effect 
 
56 CUE OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 as plainly as that two and two make four. That severe 
 bronchitis which attacked us, because in the brilliant 
 March sunshine and fierce east wind we put off our 
 slightly shabby winter jacket in favor of more spring- 
 like attire. That horrible sick headache, which we 
 know as well as possible will follow after eating certain 
 foods or drinking certain wines; yet we can no more 
 resist either than our infant boy can resist clutching at 
 the lighted candle, or our drunken cabman at the gin- 
 bottle. We call the child an " ignorant baby," the 
 drunkard " a fool ;" yet in what are we better than 
 they ? For the sake of petty vanity, or still more petty 
 table-indulgence, we have punished ourselves, and tor- 
 mented our whole family. The sickness which comes 
 direct from heaven deserves all sympathy and tender- 
 ness; that brought on by mere folly or weak self-in- 
 dulgence, though it is obliged to be nursed and cared 
 for, is done so with a compassion bordering on con- 
 tempt. 
 
 Yes, even though we call our errors by grand names, 
 and almost boast of them " I never take care of my- 
 self ;" " I can't be bothered with my health ;" " What 
 does it matter to me if I am ill ?" are the remarks one 
 constantly hears, especially from the young, just old 
 enough to shirk authority and resent interference, 
 but still seeing only in the dim distance that dark 
 time which must come, sooner or later, when for 
 
(H'l: ol'TKN INKIUMITIES. 57 
 
 every ill-usage it has received the body avenges itself 
 tenfold. 
 
 Does it not matter indeed ? the extra labor thrown 
 on a whole family when one member is ill ? the heart- 
 ache of parents, the perplexity and distress of friends, tho 
 serious annoyance to put no stronger word thai, in- 
 valids always are in a household ? If, as to our would- 
 be suicides, the law of the laud, oven when it 
 them from the river half drowned or cuts them down 
 half hanged, sentences them to remorseless punishment, 
 should there not be found also some fitting condemna- 
 tion for those who commit the slow suicide of ruined, 
 health, for no cause but their own gratification ? 
 
 One of the worst forms of these is so countenanced 
 by society that he is a bold man who would lift. Ms 
 voice against it ; I mean the present system of dinner- 
 parties. And yet there can be no doubt that if it does 
 not kill wholesale, it injures the average constitutions of 
 wliat we call the " hotter classes," and causes them dys- 
 peptic and oilier torments to an extent worse perhaps 
 than even the hunger or the half-feeding which the 
 poor have to fight against. Nobody likes to be called 
 a glutton or a gourmand, yet the ordinary dinner 
 or diner-OUt of the pre-ent, day will find con;-ider;iMc, 
 dittir.ult.y in preventing himself from heeomin^; a lit lie 
 of both. 
 
 Now a good dinner is an excellent thin;/. A renllv 
 
 02 
 
58 OUE OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 elegant dinner, well cooked, well served, with tasteful 
 accompaniments of every kind, and with a moderate 
 number of pleasant people to enjoy it, is a most delight- 
 ful thing. It is right that those who can afford it 
 should give such, replete with " every delicacy of the 
 season :" the best food, the best wine, the most artistic,' 
 and beautiful table arrangements, and in sufficient 
 quantity to satisfy the guests. Sufficient time also 
 should be allowed fairly to enjoy the meal ; taking it 
 leisurely, and seasoning it with that cheerful conversa- 
 tion which is said to help digestion. In truth, there 
 can not be a pleasanter sight than an honest, honorable 
 man, at the head of his own hospitable board, looking 
 down two lines of happy-looking friends, whom he is 
 sincerely glad to welcome, and who are glad in return 
 to give him, according to the stereotyped phrase, " the 
 pleasure of their company," which really is a pleasure, 
 and without which the grandest banquets are weariness 
 inexpressible. But the dinner should be subservient to 
 the guests, not the guests to the dinner ; and every meal, 
 be it simple or splendid, is worthless altogether unless 
 eaten, as a good Christian has it, " in gladness and single- 
 ness of heart." Such a meal, taken among friends and 
 neighbors, with the faces of those you love or like, or 
 even only admire, gathered around you, not too many 
 of them, nor for too long a time, and moving early into 
 the drawing-room, to pass a social evening in con versa- 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 59 
 
 tion or music such a feast is truly a feast : the ideal 
 dinner-party, which does no harm to any one, and to 
 many a great deal of good. 
 
 But the ordinary " dinner-party " is eighteen or 
 twenty people chosen at random, without any regard to 
 their suiting one another, sitting down to eat and drink 
 without intermission for from two to three hours, say 
 from half-past seven or eight till nearly ten. A "feed" 
 lasting so long that however small may be the bits you 
 put into the unhappy stomach, it is kept working on at 
 the process of digestion till its powers are thoroughly 
 exhausted. And, eating over, drinking begins. 
 
 I beg pardon nobody ever "drinks" nowadays. 
 And, of course, nobody is so vulgar as to overeat him- 
 self. That enormity is left to the workhouse boy over 
 his Christmas plum-pudding, or the charity girl at a 
 school tea. Nevertheless one sometimes sees, even in 
 elegant drawing-rooms, gentlemen enter with fishy eyes, 
 and talk, not too brilliantly, to ladies with flushed cheeks 
 and weary smiles. Sometimes one would like to whis- 
 per, " My dear friends, you don't know it ; but have 
 you not both eaten and drank a little more than was 
 good for you ? You would have felt much better and 
 happier after a simple, short dinner, which instead of 
 the fifteen minutes that you stand sipping your tea, and 
 wondering if your carriage is come left you an- hour 
 or two to spend a pleasant, sociable evening. Has it 
 
60 OUR OFTEN INFIEMITIES. 
 
 been pleasant ? Have you really enjoyed yourself ? 
 How do you feel after it ? And how do you think 
 you will feel to -morrow morning?" 
 
 Ah, that to-morrow morning ! especially to those who 
 have to work with their brains, and in London, apart 
 from the wholesome country life, which neutralizes so 
 many evils. " I can't dine out," has said to me more 
 than one learned or literary man, or agreeable homme 
 de societe whom dinner -givers would give the world 
 to get. "It is absolute death to me or dyspepsia, 
 which is only a slow death to all one's faculties, and 
 perhaps one's moral nature too, for your dyspeptic is 
 usually the most ill-tempered and disagreeable fellow 
 going. And yet I am neither a glutton nor a wine- 
 bibber. I like a good dinner, and I like to eat it in 
 company with my fellow-creatures. But according to 
 the present system of dinner-parties, I can't do it with- 
 out absolute injury to myself: hindering my work, af- 
 fecting my health, and bringing on all sorts of infirmi- 
 ties that a man likes to steer clear of as long as he can." 
 
 Yes, if he have the strength of will to do it. But not 
 every man has, or woman either. Few people practice 
 that golden rule of health I think it was Luigi Corna- 
 ro's : " Always rise from table feeling that you could 
 take a little bit more." Yet if we did practice it, with 
 another very simple rule to eat always regularly, at the 
 same hour and as nearly as possible the same quantity 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIEMTTIES. 61 
 
 of food not doubling the quantity because it happens 
 to be " nice " we should soon lessen amazingly our 
 often infirmities. 
 
 Prevention is better than cure, and in most small ail- 
 ments there can not be a safer physic than abstinence. 
 Abstinence from overfood, overwork. How persistent- 
 ly we shut our eyes to the beginnings of disease, begin- 
 nings so trifling that we hardly notice them, until they 
 end in that premature decay which seems now only too 
 common among our best and greatest men, and those 
 whom the world can least spare. People rush to doc- 
 tors to cure them ; they never think of curing them- 
 selves by putting a stop to exciting causes of ill- 
 health. As a wise old woman said to a very foolish 
 young one, who brought her a heap of feeble manu- 
 scripts to look over and try to sell, on the pitiful plea 
 that she must have money in order to pay for her medi- 
 cine and her wine : " My dear, stop the wine and stop 
 the medicine, and then you will be able to stop the 
 writing also, which will be much the better for both 
 yourself and the public." 
 
 The selfishness of people who will not stop, who go 
 on indulging their luxurious, careless, or studious habits, 
 until they make themselves confirmed invalids, an anxi- 
 ety and a torment to those about them, can not be too 
 strongly reprobated. Aye, even though it takes the 
 form of a noble indifference to self, in pursuit of knowl- 
 
62 OUK OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 edge, wealth, ambition ; any of the pretty disguises in 
 which we wrap up the thing we like to do, and make 
 believe to other people, often almost to ourselves, that it 
 is the very thing we ought to do. 
 
 And here I must dwell a moment on a case in point, 
 the right and wrong of which is sometimes exceedingly 
 difficult to define how far it is allowable to run risks 
 of infectious diseases. 
 
 Formerly very good people regarded plague and pes- 
 tilence as coming direct from the hand of God, which 
 it was useless nay, worse, irreligious to fight against. 
 I have heard sensible and excellent persons say calmly, 
 as a reason for going, quite unnecessarily, into a fever- 
 stricken house, " Oh, I am not afraid ; if it is the will 
 of the Lord for me to catch it, I shall catch it ; if not, I 
 am safe." 
 
 Most true ; in fact the merest truism, like pious folks' 
 habit of writing D.Y., Deo volente, about any thing 
 they intend to do, as if they could possibly do it with- 
 out the will of God ! But is it the will of God that 
 infection should be spread from house to house by these 
 well-meaning individuals, who may indeed escape them- 
 selves, but can never tell how much misery they are 
 bringing on other people ? 
 
 Modern science has found out that, like many other 
 physical woes, epidemic or contagious diseases are prin- 
 cipally owing to ourselves, our own errors or careless- 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 63 
 
 nesses, not the will of God at all ; that He has provided 
 certain antidotes or remedies against them, and those 
 who neglect or refuse these lay themselves under the 
 lash of His righteous punishments, nor can they com- 
 plain of any suffering that follows. 
 
 Infectious diseases may be almost always put under 
 the category of preventable evils, and it is the duty of 
 all truly religious persons to help the Almighty, so to 
 speak that is, to make themselves His instruments in 
 stamping out evil wherever they find it. Aye, even 
 though it may be after His own mysterious way, as we 
 sometimes see it, or fancy we do, of sacrificing the few 
 to the many. 
 
 Disease must be stamped out, and its circle of misery 
 narrowed as much as possible, even at cost of individual 
 feeling. The primary thought of every person attacked 
 by an infectious illness ought to be, " Let me harm as 
 few people as I can." There is something particularly 
 heroic in the story of the East-end clergyman who, dis- 
 covering that he had caught small -pox, resolutely re- 
 fused to go home, would not even enter a cab which 
 was brought to take him to the hospital, but, hailing a 
 hearse passing by, crept into that, and so was carried 
 safely to the safe hospital door. 
 
 He was a noble instance, this man, of that prudence 
 which is compatible with the utmost courage, the deep- 
 est self-devotion, that benevolent caution which sees 
 
64: OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 other people's rights as clearly as its own. How differ- 
 ent from a certain affectionate mother who, when an- 
 other mother hesitated to enter a railway carriage full 
 of children because her little boy was recovering from 
 measles, answered, " Oh, how kind of you to tell me ! 
 for my little folks here have only just got through scar- 
 let-fever, and suppose they had caught measles on the 
 top of that ?" But it never occurred to her to prevent 
 somebody else's little boy from catching scarlet-fever 
 on the top of measles. 
 
 Absolute justice, beyond even sympathy, and far be- 
 yond sentimental feeling of any kind, should be the rule 
 of all who have to do with infection ; their one promi- 
 nent thought how to narrow its fatal work within the 
 smallest possible bounds. Doctors, nurses, and those 
 friends and relations who are naturally in charge of the 
 sick, must take their lives in their hands, do their duty, 
 and trust God for the rest. And happily there is sel- 
 dom any lack of such : brave physicians, who, having 
 voluntarily entered a profession which involves so much 
 risk to them and theirs, carry it out unflinchingly; nurses, 
 who to their own people or to strangers, for love or for 
 charity, which means for God, devote themselves open- 
 eyed to a righteous self-sacrifice. But there it should 
 end. Every one who heedlessly or unnecessarily, for 
 bravado or through thoughtlessness, or even from mis- 
 taken pious zeal, goes in the way of infection, or helps 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 65 
 
 in the spread of it, commits a crime against society, 
 which society can not too strongly protect itself from. 
 
 When I see rabid religionists carrying handfuls of 
 tracts into reeking, typhus-doomed cottages, where they 
 ought first to have carried food and clothes, or, better 
 still, have leveled them with the ground and built up in 
 their stead wholesome dwellings; when I hear clergy- 
 men with young families, and going daily into other fam- 
 ilies and schools, protest that it is '" their duty " to enter 
 infected houses in order to administer spiritual consola- 
 tion to people dying of small-pox or scarlet-fever, I look 
 upon them much as I would upon a man who thought 
 it " his duty " to carry a lighted candle into a coal-mine. 
 Nothing may happen ; but if any thing does happen, 
 what of him who caused the disaster by his fatal folly 
 misnamed faith ? As if " salvation " did not mean a 
 saving from sin rather than from punishment; and, 
 therefore, though men's souls may be in our hands dur- 
 ing life, they must be left solely in God's when death 
 comes -and after. These so-called religious persons 
 are apparently much more bent upon doing their own 
 will in their own way than the Master's in His way. 
 For the will of God, so far as we can trace it through 
 His manifestation of Himself in His Son, seems to be 
 the prevention and cure of not only moral but physical 
 evil by every possible means, prior to its total extinction. 
 
 Either Christ's doctrine is true or it is not ; but even 
 
66 OUR OFTEN INFIEMITIES. 
 
 those who aver that it is not true often mournfully ac- 
 knowledge that it ought to be that we should be better 
 if it were true. And He did not despise the body. He 
 held it to be the " temple of the Holy Spirit." Asceti- 
 cism was as far from Him as was luxurious living. He 
 went about, not only teaching, but doing good practi- 
 cal good. Before Pie attempted to preach to the multi- 
 tudej He fed them, remembering that " divers of them 
 came from far." When He raised from the dead Jai- 
 rus's daughter, He " commanded that something should 
 be given her to eat." And in revisiting His forlorn 
 disciples, His first tender words were, " Children, have 
 ye any meat ?" In no way, from the beginning to the 
 end of His ministry, does He disregard or despise those 
 bodily infirmities which we may conclude He shared, 
 though how much or how little we can never know. 
 
 One fact, however, is noteworthy He never com- 
 plained of them. At least the only record we have of 
 any murmur from His lips was made solely to His Fa- 
 ther : " Let this cup pass from me " followed quickly 
 by the acceptation of it " Not my will, but Thine be 
 done." A lesson to us, who are so prone to grumble 
 over the most trifling of our infirmities, the least of our 
 aches and pains ; so ready to blame every body for them, 
 except ourselves ; to rush for cure to every doctor we 
 hear of, instead of trusting to our own common-sense, 
 self-restraint, and, when all else fails, that quiet patience 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 67 
 
 which at least never inflicts its own sufferings upon its 
 neighbors. 
 
 Christ did not not to the very end. When dying 
 the most torturing of deaths, it was His mother and His 
 brethren that He thought of, not Himself. And so it 
 is with many a sick and dying person, who in life has 
 been a humble follower of Him. 
 
 Strange how in these sermons, professedly "out of 
 Church" holding up the banner of no set creed ap- 
 pealing especially to those who say they believe none, 
 and refuse to accept any foregone conclusions, or take 
 any thing granted in the " science of theology " so called 
 as if any finite being could learn the Infinite as he 
 learns astronomy or mathematics ! it is strange, I say, 
 how continually I find myself recurring to Christ and 
 His teaching ; which, whatever be the facts or misrep- 
 resentations of His personal history, shines out clearly 
 after the mists of nearly nineteen hundred years as the 
 only perfect righteousness the world ever saw: a stand- 
 ard which, consciously or unconsciously, all righteous 
 souls instinctively recognize. 
 
 It is easy for people to say they do not believe in 
 Christianity that is, in its corruptions ; but the spirit 
 of it has so permeated our modern world that many a 
 fierce skeptic is a good Christian without knowing it. 
 He can deny, but he can not get away from the influ- 
 ence of that divine morality which Christians recognize 
 
68 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 as their Sun of Righteousness. It may not shine mists 
 may obscure it, so that one is prone to doubt its very 
 existence ; but without it, daylight would not be there. 
 
 I am wandering a little from my subject, and yet not 
 far ; since what comfort is there, except in such thoughts 
 as these, when the dark time comes which must come 
 to us all when our infirmities are not " often," but con- 
 tinual ? How shall we bear them ? How shall we meet 
 that heavy season, when as I lately heard one lady an- 
 swer to another who was saying she felt better than she 
 had done for years " Ah, my dear, but I shall never 
 feel better any more." 
 
 Not very wonderful, considering the sufferer was sev- 
 enty-six; yet she evidently felt it a great hardship, a 
 cruel wrong. Even then she could not reconcile her- 
 self to old age, to the gradual slipping off of the worn 
 garment, meant tenderly, I think, as nature's prepa- 
 ration for the putting of it off altogether, and being 
 clothed afresh with something, we know not what, ex- 
 cept that it will be altogether new. 
 
 A hard time this to many: when all the sins they 
 ever committed against their bodies and you may 
 sin against your body just as fatally as you sin against 
 your soul rise up in judgment against them. The 
 season when we begin to feel that we are really grow- 
 ing old, and that every body sees it, but is too polite to 
 say so, or tries to gloss it under the unmeaning remark, 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 69 
 
 " How young you look !" indicating that we can not 
 reasonably be expected to look young any longer. This 
 is as painful a phrase as any our life goes through 
 more painful, I think, than absolute old age, which 
 gradually becomes as conceited over its many years as 
 youth is over its few ones. 
 
 Still I can not believe but that it is possible, by 
 extra care at the beginning of decay, to avoid its sad- 
 dest infirmities, and to make senility a comparatively 
 painless thing free from many of those weaknesses 
 and unpleasantnesses which cause so many unselfish 
 people to say honestly they never wash to live to be 
 old. 
 
 For instance, how few recognize the very simple and 
 obvious truth, that as the machinery of digestion be- 
 gins to wear out, it is advisable to give it a little less 
 work to do. A meal from which a young man would 
 rise up hungry is quite sufficient for the needs of a 
 man of seventy, and better for him than more. The 
 healthiest, most active, and most happy-minded of old 
 people, I have always found to be those who were ex- 
 ceedingly moderate in their food ; eating less and less 
 every year, instead of, according to the common fallacy, 
 more and more. And they who have longest retained 
 their hold on life and its enjoyments have been those 
 who in all their habits have gradually gone back to the 
 simplicity of childhood. Indeed, it seems as if nature, 
 
TO OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 when we do not foolishly resist her or interfere with 
 her, would fain bring us back quietly to all the tastes, 
 pleasures, and wants of our earliest youth its inno- 
 cent interests, its entire but not necessarily painful or 
 humiliating dependence ; would give us, in short, a lit- 
 tle tender rock in our second cradle before she lays us 
 in the grave. 
 
 And this, if we could only see it, is good for us, and 
 equally good for those who have to do it for us. It is 
 well for the younger generation to see how contentedly 
 w r e can loose our hold upon that world which is slow- 
 ly sliding from us. Though, unlike them, we can no 
 longer work all day and dance all night ; though we 
 require every year more care, more regularity of hours 
 and meals, more sleep at all events more rest ; can by 
 no means play tricks with ourselves, for any excuse 
 either of amusement or labor; are perhaps obliged to 
 spend one half the day in peaceful seclusion, or equally 
 peaceful endurance of pain, in order to qualify our- 
 selves for being cheerful with those we love for the 
 other half ; still life is not yet a burden to us, and we 
 try to be as little of a burden as possible to those about 
 us. We have had our day ; we will not grudge them 
 theirs. 
 
 I can not imagine an old age like this to be a sad 
 or undesirable thing. Infirmities it may have must 
 have ; but they need not be overwhelming, if the fail- 
 
ol It OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 71 
 
 ing body has been treated, and is still treated, with that 
 amount of respect which is its due. And at worst, per- 
 haps bodily sufferings are not harder to bear than the 
 horrible mental struggles of youth, with its selfish agony 
 of passion and pain ; or than the vicarious sufferings of 
 middle age, when we groaned under the weight of 
 other people's cares, mourned over sorrows that we 
 were utterly powerless to cure, and looked forward 
 with endless anxiety into an uncertain future, not con- 
 sidering how soon it would become the harmless past. 
 
 Now all that is over. The old never grieve much ; 
 at least, not overmuch. Why should they? It is 
 strange to notice how, even after a loss by death that 
 a few years before would have utterly crushed them, 
 they seem to rise up and go on their way only a few 
 steps more quietly, even cheerfully ; troubling no one, 
 complaining to no one, probably because it is only a 
 few steps more. Suffering itself grows calm in the 
 near view of rest. 
 
 Thus it is with people of restful and patient mind. 
 For others there is still something left. " I have had 
 all I wanted," said to me one of the most unquiet 
 spirits I ever knew, keenly alive still, even under the 
 deadness of seventy-odd years. "Life has been a long 
 puzzle to me, but I am coming to the end of it now. 
 There is one thing more I want to find out the great 
 secret, and I shall before long." 
 
72 OTJK OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 One can quite well imagine some people, to whom 
 the after-life was neither a certainty nor even a hope, 
 looking forward to death as a matter of at least curi- 
 osity. But for us, who believe that death is the gate 
 of life, it is quite a different feeling. Putting it on the 
 very lowest ground, to have all our curiosity gratified, 
 to know even as we are known, to feel nearer and 
 nearer to our hands the key of the eternal mystery, 
 the satisfying of the infinite desire ; this alone is con- 
 solation, in degree, for our own failing powers and flag- 
 ging spirits ; nay, even for the slowly emptying world 
 around us emptying of the wise and the good, the 
 pleasant and the dear, whom one by one we see pass- 
 ing " ad majores" 
 
 " If I could only get rid of my body, I should be all 
 right," sighed once a great sufferer. And there are 
 times when even the most patient of us feel rather glad 
 that we do not live forever. Respect our mortal tab- 
 ernacle as we may, and treat it tenderly, as we ought 
 to do, we may one day be not so very sorry to lay it 
 down, not only with all its sins, but with its often in- 
 firmities. 
 
Sermon 333. 
 
 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT IN 
 THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 
 
III. 
 
 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT IN THE WAY HE 
 SHOULD GO. 
 
 OH dear ! I'm afraid I shall never manage to bring 
 up my mother properly," was the remark once 
 made by a rather fast young lady, to whom the old- 
 fashioned institution of " mothers " was no doubt a 
 rather inconvenient thing. 
 
 " My friend," said an old Quaker to a lady who con- 
 templated adopting a child, " I know not how far thou 
 wilt succeed in educating her, but I am quite certain 
 she will educate thee." 
 
 Often when I look around on the world of par- 
 ents and children, I think of those two contradictory 
 speeches, and of the truth that lies between them. 
 
 The sentiment may be very heretical, but I have 
 often wondered how many out of the thousands of 
 children born annually in England alone come to par- 
 ents who at all deserve the blessing. Not one half, 
 certainly even among the mothers. Halve that again, 
 and I believe you will come to the right percentage as 
 regards the fathers. 
 
76 HOW TO TEAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 It is sometimes said that children of the present day 
 are made too much of. Perhaps so. They but follow 
 the fashion of the age any thing but a heroic or as- 
 cetic age. No doubt they are a little "spoiled." So 
 are we all. But the errors of the parents, from which 
 theirs arise, are a much more serious matter. How to 
 train up the parents in the way they should go is a 
 necessity which, did it force itself upon the mind of 
 any school-board, would be found quite as important as 
 the education of the children. 
 
 When we think of them, poor helpless little creat- 
 ures ! who never asked to be born, who from birth up- 
 ward are so utterly dependent upon the two other creat- 
 ures to whom they owe their existence a debt for 
 which it is supposed they can never be sufficiently 
 grateful do not our hearts yearn over them with pity, 
 or grow hot with indignation ? This even without 
 need of such stories as we are continually hearing I 
 take three at random from to-day's newspaper of the 
 drunken father who amused himself with dashing his 
 three-years-old child against the table till he accident- 
 ally dashed out its brains ; of the woman who thrice 
 in one afternoon tried to drop her baby among the 
 horses and carriages in High Holborn ; of the boy of 
 four and a half flogged almost to death by a school- 
 board teacher for not doing his sums and not answer- 
 ing when spoken to; which case the magistrate doubt- 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 77 
 
 less himself a father curtly dismissed, saying, " If dis- 
 cipline were not to be maintained, what was the educa- 
 tion of boys to come to ?" 
 
 However, putting aside these public facts, let us come 
 upon our own private experience, and ask ourselves 
 honestly how many people we know who are or are 
 likely to prove really good fathers and mothers ? wise, 
 patient, judicious? firm, watchful, careful, and loving? 
 Above all things, just ; since, so deeply is implanted in 
 the infant mind this heavenly instinct, that if I were 
 asked what was most important in the bringing up of 
 a child, love or justice, I think I should say justice. 
 
 To be just is the very first lesson that a parent re- 
 quires to learn. The rights of the little soul, which did 
 not come into the world of its own accord, nor indeed 
 was taken into consideration in the matter at all for 
 do any in marrying ever think of the sort of fathers or 
 mothers they are giving to their offspring? the rights 
 of this offspring, physical, mental, and moral, are at 
 once most obvious and least regarded. The new-born 
 child is an interest, a delight, a pride ; the parents ex- 
 ult over it, as over any other luxury or amusement ; 
 but how seldom do they take to heart the solemn re- 
 pponsibility of it, or see a face divine, as it were, look- 
 ing out at them from the innocent baby-face, or ponder 
 the warning of Christ Himself " Whoso shall offend 
 one of these little ones which believe in me, it were 
 
78 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 better for him that a millstone were hanged about his 
 neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." 
 
 There could hardly be a stronger expression of the 
 way in which God the Christian God views the re- 
 lation between parents and children. Yet most young 
 parents, who until now have been accustomed to think 
 only of themselves or of one another, take the intro- 
 duction of the unconscious third as their natural pos- 
 session, never doubting that it is wholly theirs to bring 
 up as they please, and that they are quite capable of so 
 doing. 
 
 Constantly one hears the remark, " Oh ! I would not 
 take the responsibility of another person's child." Does 
 that imply that they feel at liberty to do as they like 
 with their own ? I fear it does ; and that law and cus- 
 tom both appear to sanction this delusion. Nobody 
 must " interfere " between parent and child, at least not 
 till the case comes within a degree or two of child-mur- 
 der. The slow destruction of soul and body which, 
 through ignorance or carelessness, goes on among hun- 
 dreds of children, not only in humble, but in many re- 
 spectable and well-regulated households, society never 
 notices. I suppose even the most daring philanthropist 
 would never venture to bring in a bill for claiming the 
 children of unworthy parents, and snatching them from 
 ruin by annihilating all parental rights and making 
 them children of the State. Yet such a proceeding 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 79 
 
 would benefit the new generation to an incalculable 
 degree. 
 
 " Train up a child in the way he should go," is the ad- 
 vice in every body's mouth, but who thinks of training 
 the parents ? Does not every body strictly hold that 
 the mere fact of parenthood implies all that is neces- 
 sary for the up-bringing of the child ? all the love, all 
 the wisdom, all the self-denial ? Does it ever occur 
 to the average young man and young woman, bending 
 together over the cradle of their first-born, that the lit- 
 tle thing, whose teachers they are proudly constituting 
 themselves to be, is much more likely to be the uncon- 
 scious agent in teaching them ? 
 
 And the education begins at once. How. amusing 
 and at the same time how satisfactory it is to see a 
 young fellow, who throughout his bachelor days has 
 been a selfish egotist most young bachelors are 
 obliged now to think of something and somebody be- 
 sides himself; to give up not a few of his own per- 
 sonal comforts, and find himself forced to play second 
 fiddle in his own home where the one important ob- 
 ject, for the time being, is " the baby." 
 
 I have spoken of rights. This is the only instance I 
 know in which they are not mutual, but entirely one- 
 sided. The new-born babe owes absolutely nothing to 
 the parents beyond the physical fact of existence. All 
 moral claims are on its side alone. The parents are re- 
 
80 HOW TO TKAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 sponsible for it, soul and body, for certainly the first 
 twenty years ; nor even after that is it easy to imagine 
 circumstances which could wholly set them free. The 
 most sorely tried father and mother could hardly cast 
 adrift their erring offspring without a lurking uneasi- 
 ness of conscience as to how far these errors were ow- 
 ing to themselves and their up-bringing. For, save in 
 very rare cases, where far-back types crop out again, 
 and are most difficult to deal with, there is seldom a 
 " black sheep " in any family without the parents hav- 
 ing been to blame. 
 
 " Why, I brought up ray children all alike," moans 
 some virtuous progenitor of such. " How does it happen 
 that this one has turned out so different from the rest?" 
 
 Just, my good friend, because you did bring them up 
 all alike. You had not the sense to see that the same 
 training which makes one mars another ; or else that in 
 training them, it was necessary to train yourself first. 
 Meaning to be a guide, you were only a finger-post, 
 which points the way to others, but stands still itself. 
 
 The very first lesson a parent has to learn is that 
 whatever he attempts to teach, he must himself first 
 practice. Whatever he wishes his child to avoid, he 
 must make up his mind to renounce; and that from 
 the very earliest stage of existence, and down to the 
 minutest things. In young children the imitative fac- 
 ulty is so enormous, the reasoning power so small, that 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 81 
 
 one can not be too careful, even with infants, to guard 
 against indulging in a harsh tone, a brusque manner, a 
 sad or angry look. As far as is possible, the tender 
 bud should live in an atmosphere of continual sunshine, 
 under which it may safely and happily unfold, hour by 
 hour and day by day. To effect this there is required 
 from the parents, or those who stand in the parents' 
 stead, an amount of self-control and self-denial which 
 would be almost impossible had not Heaven implanted 
 on the one side maternal instinct, on the other- that ex- 
 traordinary winning charm which there is about all 
 young creatures, making us put up with their endless 
 waywardness, and love them all the better the more 
 trouble they give us. 
 
 That is mothers do. When I said "maternal in- 
 stinct" I spoke advisedly and intentionally. Of pater- 
 nal instinct there is almost none. A man is proud of 
 his sons and daughters because they are his sons and 
 daughters bound to carry down his name to posterity ; 
 but he rarely takes the slightest interest in any body 
 else's children, and in his own only so far as they con- 
 tribute to his pleasure, amusement, or dignity. The 
 passionate love a woman often has for another wom- 
 an's children, and for the feeblest, naughtiest, ugliest of 
 her own, is to men a thing entirely unknown. Two 
 thirds of paternal love is pure pride, and the remaining 
 third, not seldom, pure egotism. 
 
 D2 
 
82 HOW TO TKAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 Therefore for the first seven, nay, ten years of a child's 
 life, it should in most cases be left as much as possible 
 to the care of women. Not that every woman has the 
 motherly heart; but the fatherly heart is a rarer thing 
 still. 
 
 Besides, men's work in the world naturally unfits them 
 for the management of children. It is very hard for a 
 man, who has been worried in business all day long, to 
 come home and be pestered by a crying child ; even 
 though the poor innocent can not help itself is prob- 
 ably only tired or sick or hungry. But the father will 
 not see this ; he will only see that the child annoys him, 
 and must therefore be " naughty." 
 
 "And when naughty, of course it must be punished," 
 I heard a middle-aged father once say with virtuous 
 complacency. "My boy is only eleven months old 
 yet I assure you I have whipped him three times." 
 
 Whipped him three times ! And the mother allowed 
 it the young mother who sat smiling and beautifully 
 dressed at the head of the table. Why had she not the 
 sense to lock her nursery door against the brutal fool? 
 But what is the good of calling names ? the man was 
 simply ignorant. For all his grand assumption of pa- 
 rental authority, he had not the wit to see that for the 
 first year, perhaps two years of our life, there can be no 
 such thing as moral "naughtiness." Existence is so 
 purely physical that if we only take care of the little 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 83 
 
 body, the mind will take care of itself ; or, at worst, it 
 is so completely a piece of white paper that it will show 
 nothing save what we write upon it. Any body who 
 has had much to do with young children must acknowl- 
 edge that in spite of the doctrine of original sin, nearly 
 every childish fault is a reflected fault, the copy of some- 
 thing seen in other people. If any one will take the 
 trouble to notice his own faults or peculiarities which 
 we are all rather slow to do it may account for a good 
 many "naughtinesses" which he punishes in his off- 
 spring. 
 
 It is often strange and sad to see how hard grown-up 
 people especially men are upon children : expecting 
 from five or say ten years old an amount of patience, 
 diligence, self-control, and self-denial which they them- 
 selves at fifty-odd have never succeeded in attaining to. 
 But I repeat, so few men are by temperament, circum- 
 stances, or habits in the least fitted for the management 
 of children, that the advice I give to all sensible wives 
 and capable mothers concerning their little ones is this 
 Save their fathers from them, and save them from 
 their fathers. 
 
 Not but what there are fathers true and tender, firm 
 as a man ought to be, unselfish and patient as, happily, 
 most women are; to whose breast the youngest child 
 runs in any trouble " Oh, it's always papa who com- 
 forts us" and of whom the elder ones say fondly," We 
 
84 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 mind one look of papa's more than twenty scoldings." 
 But such are the exceptions. The average of men and 
 fathers are, I solemnly believe, quite unfitted, both by 
 nature or habit, for the upbringing of children. Thus, 
 necessarily the duty falls on the mother. And why not ? 
 What higher destiny ? 
 
 There is a class of women who consider that they 
 have a higher destiny ; that to help in the larger work 
 of the world, to continue their own mental culture, is 
 far more important than to bring up the next genera- 
 tion worthily. 
 
 Both duties are excellent in their way, but there are 
 plenty of unmarried childless women, and women with 
 no domestic instincts, to do the former mothers alone 
 can do the latter. True, it exacts the devotion of the 
 entire life : a real mother has no time for gay society, 
 nor intellectual development except such as she is al- 
 ways gaining through her children ; she must make up 
 her mind to the fact that they and her husband com- 
 pose her whole world and fill up her life. 
 
 And what better world ? what nobler life 3 Even if 
 she is worn out, " like a rose-tree in full bearing," and 
 drops off when her destiny is done ? ISTo matter, she 
 has fulfilled it, and she is and she will be blessed. 
 
 Not, however, unless she has thoroughly fulfilled it. 
 The mere fact of bringing eight or ten children into 
 the world does not in the least imply true motherhood. 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 85 
 
 If she leaves them to nurses and governesses ; if she 
 shirks any of the anxious cares, perpetual small worries, 
 and endless self-abnegations which are her natural por- 
 tion, the under-side to her infinite blessings, she does 
 not deserve these last. Not every mother is born with 
 the mother's heart ; I have known many an old maid 
 who had it, and I have heard of mothers of many chil- 
 dren who owned to " hating " every child as it came, 
 and only learning to love the helpless innocent from a 
 sense of duty. But duty often teaches love, and re- 
 sponsibility produces the capacity for it. Many a light- 
 minded, light-hearted girl, who has danced and flirted 
 and sentimentalized through her happy spring-time, 
 finds the sweet compulsion of nature too strong for 
 her ; very soon she forgets all her follies and settles 
 down into the real mother, whom love instructs in all 
 things necessary ; who shrinks from no trouble, is equal 
 to all duties ; is to her children nurse, companion, play- 
 fellow, as well as doctrcss, seamstress, teacher, friend 
 every thing in short. The father may be more or less 
 to the child, as his occupation and his own peculiarities 
 allow ; but the mother must be all in all, or God help 
 the children ! 
 
 Granting that the mother-love is there, is love suffi- 
 cient ? Not 'always. It will not make up for the 
 lack of common-sense, self-control, accurate and orderly 
 ways : 
 
86 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PAEENT 
 
 "The reason firm, the temperate will; 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill." 
 
 Nor does the mere fact of parenthood by a sort of di- 
 vine right constitute all parents infallible, as they are 
 so apt to suppose, and by their conduct expect their 
 children to believe. 
 
 The child will not believe it, not after the very first, 
 unless the parent prove it : and this by something 
 stronger than bare assertion or natural instinct. It 
 may be a dangerous thing to suggest, but I am afraid 
 the idea of some mysterious instinctive bond between 
 parent and child is a mere superstition. No doubt the 
 feeling is there, but it may be exercised equally with 
 or without the tie of blood. Suppose, unknown to 
 these tender young parents,- another infant, a " change- 
 ling child," were to be secretly popped into the cradle 
 over which they bend so fondly ? They would feel 
 toward it exactly the same sensations. Also, if any 
 aunt, grandmother, or even ordinary stranger, should 
 fulfill toward that child all the duties of a parent, the 
 love won, and deserved, would be a true filial affection. 
 The instinct of blood, as people call it, acts admirably 
 as a cement to other ties ; but of itself, save in poetical 
 fancy, it has no existence whatever. Nothing but the 
 wildest imagination could have made George Eliot's 
 " Spanish Gypsy," tenderly reared and betrothed to the 
 man she loved, elope at once with her Zingaro father, 
 
IN THE WAT HE SHOULD GO. 87 
 
 whom she had never seen in her life before. And 
 nothing but the most extraordinary moral twist could 
 make people condemn, as I have heard condemned, 
 Silas Marner's beloved Eppie, because, placed between 
 her adopted father, to whom she owed every thing, and 
 her flesh -and -blood father, to whom she owed noth- 
 ing but her birth, she never hesitated in choosing the 
 former. 
 
 A parent, unlike a poet, is not bom he is made. 
 There are certain things which he has at once to learn, 
 or he will have no more influence over his child than 
 if he were a common stranger. First, he must institute 
 between himself and his child that which is as impor- 
 tant between child and parent as between man and 
 God the sense, not of absolute . obedience, as is so 
 often preached, but of absolute reliance, which produces 
 obedience. To gain obedience, you must first set your- 
 self to deserve it. Whatever you promise your little 
 one, however small the thing may seem to you, and 
 whatever trouble it costs you, perform it. Never let 
 the doubt once enter that innocent mind that you say 
 what you do not mean, or will not act up to what you 
 say. Make as few prohibitory laws as you possibly 
 can, but, once made, keep to them. In what is granted, 
 as in what is denied, compel yourself, however weary 
 or worried or impatient, to administer always even- 
 handed justice. " Fiat justitia, mat coslum," is a sys- 
 
88 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 tern much more likely to secure your child's real affec- 
 tion than all the petting and humoring so generally in- 
 dulged in, to give pleasure or save trouble, not to your 
 little ones, but to yourself. 
 
 A very wise woman once consoled an over-tender 
 mother, who was being blamed for " spoiling " her lit- 
 tle girl "Never mind. Love never spoiled any child. 
 It is the alternations, the kiss on the one cheek arid 
 the blow on the other, which ruin." 
 
 And this is what I often notice in extremely well- 
 meaning parents : their love is not a steady love, but 
 continually 
 
 "Eoughened by those cataracts and breaks, 
 Which humor interposed too often makes." 
 
 They can not keep that sweet, level calm which above 
 all things is necessary for the government of children. 
 The same playful wiles which amuse one day irritate 
 the next. Not that the child is different, but they are 
 in a different rnood themselves, which important fact 
 the poor little thing is expected at once to recognize, 
 and act accordingly. 
 
 And here the second great mistake is made. "We ex- 
 pect too much from our children. We exact from 
 them a perfection which we are far from carrying out 
 in ourselves ; we require of them sacrifices much heav- 
 ier, comparatively, than those of any grown-up person. 
 
IN TITE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 89 
 
 And they soon find that out. A child's eyes are very 
 sharp. Any flaw in one's argument, any lapse in one's 
 conduct, is caught up by them and reproduced with 
 alarming accuracy. 
 
 " Mr. A. ? is that the Mr. A. whom papa dislikes so ?" 
 said an innocent enfant terrible before a whole din- 
 ner-table. And papa, who had let his prejudices run 
 away with him, so as to speak a great deal more strong- 
 ly than he meant of harmless Mr. A., felt that after this 
 there would be some difficulty in teaching his child to 
 obey the ninth commandment and bear no false witness 
 against its neighbor. 
 
 The intense truthfulness and straightforwardness of 
 children, when not crushed by fear or corrupted by pre- 
 cocious deceit, is a perpetual lesson to elder people, who 
 have learned to disguise their feelings ; as, I suppose, 
 we all must in degree. 
 
 " Mamma, I don't like that gentleman ; when is he 
 going away ?" observed the same painfully candid child 
 concerning a morning visitor, who had the grace to say 
 politely, " My dear, I am going away directly," and dis- 
 appear. But then it was necessary to take the matter 
 in hand. And never, perhaps, did the mother feel so 
 strongly that courtesy is a Christian virtue, and Chris- 
 tian charity the basis of all good-breeding, than when 
 she had to explain to her little daughter that it was not 
 "kind" to make such a remark; that whether we like 
 
90 HOW TO TEAIN UP A PAEENT 
 
 people or not, whether they are agreeable or disagree- 
 able, we are equally bound to show them civility, since 
 by incivility we disgrace not them, but ourselves. And 
 this, without advocating any insincerity or hypocrisy, or 
 even " company manners," which no child is ever likely 
 to assume except.in imitation of its elders. 
 
 To be perfectly true, perfectly just, perfectly loving 
 to our children, is the only way of teaching them to be 
 the same to other people. The very tone of voice, the 
 turn of phrase, the trick of manner of their elders and 
 (so-called) superiors, are often imitated by them with 
 such a frightful accuracy that it is necessary to be con- 
 tinually on our guard. One sees one's own reflection in 
 these awful little people as startlingly as if one were liv- 
 ing in a room of looking-glasses. And therein lies the 
 continual education which, whether or not the parent 
 gives to the child, the child unconsciously gives to the 
 parent. Happy he who is clear-sighted enough to read 
 the lesson, and wise enough to profit thereby. 
 
 On this head let me suggest that, if the children miss 
 much, the parents miss more, by the fashion exacted, I 
 suppose, by our ever-growing luxurious habits of keep- 
 ing children so much in the nursery, and under an array 
 of nursemaids. Yet I have heard very sensible mothers 
 advocate this; declaring that it "rests" the little brain 
 to be left to the company of servants. 
 
 The French people think differently. In French 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 91 
 
 domestic life provincial life, for France is more dis- 
 tinct from Paris than England is from London in 
 that cheerful, affectionate, happy home -life which is, 
 I believe, far commoner with them than with others, 
 one of the brightest and most wholesome elements is 
 the children. They have no nursery, and, after the very 
 earliest infancy, they have no bonne. The little people 
 are always with the big people father and mother, 
 grandfather and grandmother for the French house- 
 hold is often made up of several generations. As soon 
 as they can sit at table, they take their place there ; in 
 the salon they are as welcome as in the salle-a-manger ; 
 and thus, unconsciously brought into training by the 
 good manners of those about them, they learn to be 
 little ladies and gentlemen almost before they can 
 speak. 
 
 " But," I have heard people argue, " how can you pos- 
 sibly have children, always beside you ? As babies you 
 might, if you could put up with the trouble of them ; 
 but when they grow older it would be so very awkward. 
 For their own sakes even, you ought not to let them hear 
 their elders' conversation." 
 
 What an admission ! Does it occur to any of these 
 arguers that, except in very rare and solemn instances, 
 the talk which is unfit for the ears of children ought 
 never to be talked at all ? For what does it usually con- 
 sist of? Criticising one's neighbors; sneering at one's 
 
92 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PAKENT 
 
 friends; ridiculing behind their backs those whom we 
 praise to their faces; telling secrets which ought never 
 to be told; making bitter or equivocal or ill-natured 
 remarks, which we are afraid to hear repeated. If so, 
 to keep our children always in the room with us would 
 be a very wholesome discipline, making us much better 
 folks than some of us are now. 
 
 'Not that I by any means wish to take a sentimental 
 or picturesque view of the rising generation. It is often 
 a very aggravating generation indeed. Without any act- 
 ual naughtiness, the restlessness which is natural to a child 
 indeed, a portion of its daily growth -is most trying to 
 elder people, who have come to feel the intense blessed- 
 ness of mere rest. And when it becomes worse than 
 recklessness actual willfulness and mischievousness 
 even the strongest opponents, theoretically, of corporal 
 chastisement, will at times feel their fingers tingling with 
 an irresistible inclination to box their darling's ears. 
 
 The more reason, therefore, that they should restrain 
 themselves, and not do it. For punishment is not for 
 the good of the punisher, but the punished ; and no pun- 
 ishment inflicted in a moment of irritation can ever be 
 of the smallest good to either side. 
 
 And this brings us to a widely discussed question 
 whether corporal punishment should ever be inflicted 
 on children. For me, I answer decidedly, Never! 
 
 My reasons are these. To the very young the eleven- 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 93 
 
 months-old infant, for instance such a chastisement is 
 simply brutal ; to a child old enough to understand the 
 humiliation of it, a whipping can rarely do good, and 
 may do incalculable harm. Besides, the degradation 
 rests not alone with the child. A big creature beating 
 a little one is always in a position very undignified, to 
 say the least of it. Also, there is a certain difficulty in 
 making the victim comprehend that the same line of 
 conduct which his parents exercise toward him is utter- 
 ly forbidden him to exercise toward his younger broth- 
 ers and sisters. 
 
 It is possible, I grant, that there may be cases of act- 
 ual moral turpitude lying, theft, and the like when 
 nothing short of physical punishment will affect the 
 culprit, and the parent has to stand forth as the stern 
 administrator of justice; but it must be clearly shown 
 to be justice, not revenge. I have known men so self- 
 con trolled, so tender, and withal so unswervingly just, 
 that the inevitable whipping being inflicted, and sub- 
 mitted to, with a mournful solemnity, the instant it was 
 over the boy's arms were around the father's neck, and 
 both wept together. But such cases are so exceptional 
 that they can not be taken as a guide. The ordinary 
 rule is, that when a child is bad enough to deserve a 
 whipping, the infliction of it will likely only harden 
 him ; and if he does not deserve it, his whole nature 
 will revolt in fury at the punishment. 
 
94: HOW TO TRAIN UP A PAKENT 
 
 I shall never forget once seeing a small boy of ten, 
 the inheritor of his father's violent temper, whom that 
 father for some trivial fault seized and struck. The 
 little fellow raised himself on tiptoe, and, doubling his 
 small fist, with all his might and main struck back 
 again : a proceeding which so astonished the father 
 who, like all tyrants, was rather a coward that he 
 shrank back, and retired from the field. He hated his 
 boy ever after, but he never more attempted to thrash 
 him. 
 
 You will perceive I hold that, in the training of the 
 young, example is every thing, precept almost nothing. 
 Half the good advice we give, certainly more than half 
 of our scoldings, just " goes in at one ear and out at 
 the other." The continual reproach of " You naughty 
 child!" the seldom - fulfilled threat of "I'll punish 
 you !" come in time to fall quite harmless upon hard- 
 ened ears. But a child to whom fear is absolutely un- 
 known as unknown as punishment whose naughti- 
 ness is met solely by silence, feels this silence alone to 
 be the most terrible retribution for ill -doing. The 
 withdrawal of the parent's smile is to it like the hiding 
 of God's face. " Oh, mamma, don't look so ! I can't 
 bear it. It kills me !" is the cry of such a child, fall- 
 ing on its bended knees in an agony of contrition and 
 tears. 
 
 It is not the preaching, not the teaching, not the con- 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 95 
 
 tiiiual worry of " Don't do that !" " Why didn't you do 
 this ?" wliich makes children what we call " good " 
 children that is, honest, truthful, obedient ; trouble- 
 some, perhaps all children are troublesome but 
 guilty of no meanness, deceitfulness, or willful mis- 
 chievousness. It is the constant living example of 
 those they are with. They get into the habit of being 
 " good," which makes this line of conduct so natural 
 that they never think of any other. 
 
 And here we come upon another moot question 
 whether or not there should be exacted from children 
 blind obedience ? Sometimes, perhaps ; there may be 
 cases where such is the only safety. But ordinarily 
 speaking, while, as I have said, a child should be first 
 trained into that implicit reliance on the parent which 
 of necessity induces obedience, I think the parent ought 
 to be exceedingly cautious how he exacts this obedi- 
 ence without giving a sufficient reason for it. At an 
 incredibly early age the reasoning powers of a child 
 can be developed, if the parent will take a little 
 trouble to do it ; and how very much trouble it saves 
 afterward he will soon find out. Three words of gen- 
 tle explanation "Don't do that, my child, because," 
 etc., 'etc. will give him a stronger influence, a com- 
 pleter authority over the little mind than any harshly 
 iterated, unexplained prohibitions. And the good of 
 this works both ways ; while it gives the child confi- 
 
96 HOW TO TKAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 dence in the parent, it teaches the parent his most dif- 
 ficult part, to exercise authority without tyranny. That 
 barbaric dictum, " Do this, because I choose it," be- 
 comes softened into the Christian command, " Do this, 
 because I wish it," or the still higher law, " because it 
 is right." I have never yet known a child " naughty " 
 enough deliberately to refuse to do a thing when asked 
 to do it simply on the ground " that it was right." 
 
 This, again, leads us to a point upon which I think 
 many, nay, most parents grievously err the system of 
 rewards and punishments. It is like bringing into in- 
 nocent child-life that terrible creed which makes re- 
 ligion consist, not in the love of God, and the obeying 
 Him because we love Him, but in finding out the best 
 and easiest way to take care of ourselves to keep out 
 of hell and get into heaven. 
 
 A principle which, put thus into plain English, we 
 start at, yet whether or not believing in it ourselves we 
 practice it fatally with our children. " Do this, and I'll 
 give you such and such a thing." " Dare to do that, 
 and I will take from you so and so, which you delight 
 in." A method which, like some forms of theology, 
 may be convenient and effective at the time, but which 
 afterward is most ruinous, inasmuch as it entirely abro- 
 gates that doctrine upon which I base the whole mutual 
 training of parents and children the doctrine of abso- 
 lute right for right's sake. 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 97 
 
 For how, if you have brought up young creatures on 
 the principle of " Behave well, and you shall have a 
 sweetie " " Behave ill, and I'll whip you or send you 
 to bed," can you follow it out by teaching your grow- 
 ing boy or girl to " eschew evil and do good " purely for 
 the love of good and the hatred of evil ? How, above 
 all, can you put into their hearts the love of God, when 
 in after-life He hides His face in so many dark ways 
 when His teachings seem often so mysterious, nay, cruel 
 except by saying, " Love Him, because He is perfect 
 Love ; adore Him, because He is absolute Justice ?" 
 
 Next to that justice, which is, I believe, a heavenly 
 instinct with almost all young children, their strongest 
 need, and the most powerful influence with them, is 
 sympathy. And this the wise parent will give at all 
 times and under all circumstances. A child accus- 
 tomed to find in the mother's bosom a perpetual ref- 
 uge, to bring there all its little woes so small to us, to 
 it so large to get answers to all its questions, interest 
 in all its discoveries, sympathy in all its amusements 
 over a child so trained the influence of the mother is 
 enormous, nay, unlimited. What a safeguard to both ! 
 not only in childhood, but in after-years. To feel that 
 she is an absolute providence to her child that from 
 babyhood it has clung to the simple belief that mamma 
 must be told every thing, and can right every thing. 
 What an incalculable blessing ! lasting till death, and 
 
 E 
 
98 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 after the remembrance of a mother from whom the 
 child has never received any thing but love. 
 
 Love, the root of sympathy, is the most powerful 
 agent in the bringing up of children. Not mere 
 caresses ; yet these are not to be despised, as being 
 " the outward and visible sign of an inward and spirit- 
 ual grace." The earliest development of our nature is 
 so entirely objective rather than subjective, practical 
 rather than ethical, that a kiss or a cuddle at all times 
 is a much more potent agent in moral education than 
 stern elder folk believe. Love, not in word only, but 
 in action ; love, ever at hand to remove small evils, to 
 lessen great ones ; to answer all questions, and settle 
 all difficulties ; to be a refuge in trouble, a sharer in 
 joy, and a court of appeal where there is always cer- 
 tainty of sympathy if not redress ; this is the sort of 
 thing which gives to parents their highest, noblest in- 
 fluencebeginning with birth and ending only with 
 the grave. 
 
 An influence which alone can knit anew the pa- 
 rental and filial tie at the time and this time comes 
 in all lives when it is so apt to loosen ; I mean when 
 the child, which at first had seemed a mere mirror re- 
 flecting the objects placed before it, develops into an 
 individual character, sometimes a character as differ- 
 ent as possible from both father and mother. 
 
 This is a hard crisis, common though it be. Fathers, 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 99 
 
 who see their boys growing up without a single habit 
 or taste resembling their own ; mothers, who perplex- 
 edly trace in their young daughters some type of wom- 
 anhood totally distinct from, and perhaps very distaste- 
 ful to themselves, are surely much to be pitied. But 
 so are the children, especially those who with their 
 originality, impetuosity, and passionate impulses after 
 unknown good, have all the ignorance of youth con- 
 cerning the known good the patience, the wisdom, 
 the long-suffering, which is, or ought to be, the strong- 
 est characteristic of parents. 
 
 It has been learned by them through years of sore 
 teaching. That perpetual self-denial, which, as I have 
 said, begins at the very cradle that habit of instinct- 
 ively thinking, in all things great and small, not of 
 their own pleasure, not even of their child's pleasure., 
 but of that child's ultimate good, has been in all par- 
 ents who really deserve the name a training they can 
 never forget. It helps them now, in this difficult time 
 which, I repeat, comes soon or late in almost all fam- 
 ilies ; when there is a grand clashing of rights and 
 conflict of duties, occasionally ending in a general up- 
 breaking of both. 
 
 A child's first rights are, I have said, plain enough : 
 as plain as the parents' duties. Afterward they be- 
 come less clear. The extent to which a parent should 
 put up with a child, or a child withstand a parent, is 
 
100 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 most difficult to decide. Equally difficult is it to say 
 how far both are right or both wrong in the sad season 
 when one side becomes exacting and the other careless ; 
 when, despite all outward show of respect and affec- 
 tion, the father feels indignantly that his influence 
 over his boys is almost nothing, and the mother, with 
 a sharp pang at her heart, which she vainly tries to 
 hide, is conscious that her young daughter, who for 
 twenty years has been the delight of her eyes, prefers 
 being the delight of other eyes, and, though very kind 
 to her, finds her just a little uninteresting. 
 
 The time it must come to us all when we cease 
 to be a sort of lesser providence to our children, who 
 cease in their turn to look up to us and lean all their 
 troubles upon us; when they begin to think and act for 
 themselves, and, quite unconsciously perhaps, put us a 
 little on one side as old and odd and out of date ; un- 
 questionably this is a bitter climax to our years of pa- 
 tient love. Yet it is but a portion of the training 
 usually the highest and best training we ever get 
 which God gives to us through our children. And 
 it is not impossible to be passed through, and safely, 
 too, on both sides ; especially in families which have 
 been brought up on the principle I have before up- 
 held of absolute right, to be followed without regard 
 to either benefit or injury, pleasure or pain. 
 
 The doctrine with which I started of the child's 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO 101 
 
 claims upon the parent being far stronger than those 
 of the parent upon the child teaches us, to the very 
 last, at least tolerance. If our sons resist us in choos- 
 ing a career, or, still worse, in choosing companions 
 that we believe will ruin that career ; if our daugh- 
 ters will go and fall in love with the last man in the 
 world we would have desired for their husbands 
 well, why is this ? These young souls were given to us 
 apparently an absolute blank page, upon which we 
 micrht write what we chose. We have written. It is 
 
 O 
 
 we who have formed their characters, guided their ed- 
 ucation, governed their morals. Every thing they are 
 now we have or are supposed to have made them ; at 
 least, we once thought we should be able to make them. 
 If they turn out well we shall assuredly take the credit 
 of it ; if they turn out ill what say we then ? That 
 it is their fault, or ours ? 
 
 As a general rule, if, as soon as time has enabled 
 our sons and daughters to escape out of our authority, 
 they escape out of our influence also if, having ceased 
 to rule, we have no power to guide there must be 
 something wrong somewhere ; somebody has been to 
 blame. Can it possibly be ourselves \ 
 
 The system that prevention is better than cure is 
 infallible with little children no one doubts that. 
 Any parents who for want of rational precaution al- 
 lowed their children to fall into the fire or the water, 
 
102 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 or to do one another some serious bodily harm, would 
 be stigmatized as either wicked or insane. Yet, when 
 the young people are growing up and just at the 
 most critical point of their lives how often do these 
 parents shut the stable-door after the steed is stolen ? 
 
 " Sir," said a shrewd old gentleman, when questioned 
 as to the character of one of his guests " Sir, do you 
 think I would ever let a young man inside my doors 
 who was not fit to marry my daughter ?" 
 
 And the same principle might apply to sons : not 
 only as to their marriage which is a later affair, and 
 one which after all they must settle for themselves 
 but as far as possible with regard to their ordinary 
 associates and associations. Even as a wise mother 
 makes her nursery one of the cheerf ullest rooms in the 
 house, a wise father will in after -years try to make 
 his house one of the pleasantest places in the world 
 to his grown-up sons a home from which they will 
 never care long to stray, and to which they will look 
 back, amid the storms of the world, as a happy haven, 
 where was neither dullness nor harshness ; where the 
 reins of authority were prudently and slowly relaxed, 
 until nothing remained of the necessary absolute con- 
 trol of childhood, save the tender reasoning "for 
 your own good, my boy " which boys so seldom fully 
 prize until they have it no longer. 
 
 Girls too, who may have lovers in plenty, but have 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 103 
 
 only one mother ; perhaps some of them think, or have 
 once thought, that a mother's sympathy and advice is 
 the most intolerable thing imaginable in love affairs, 
 which generally between parents and children are one 
 long worry from beginning to end. This, even when 
 the end is happy marriage. But how often do we see 
 parents looking irritably or anxiously upon a long string 
 of unmarried daughters, wondering mournfully what in 
 the world is to become of them by and by. 
 
 And here I must give utterance to another heresy. I 
 think there are too many parents who do not take half 
 enough trouble to marry their children that is, to give 
 them fair opportunity of marriage. They are so apt to 
 consider them exclusively their own property, and to 
 feel personally aggrieved when they wish to strike into 
 new ground, or form new ties for themselves. Or else 
 they are weary and lazy; life is not to them what it 
 once was what it now is to their children ; they prefer 
 to sit at ease by the fireside ; visitors rather trouble 
 them ; they grudge their young people the society they 
 naturally crave, and in which, rationally guided, they 
 would find their best chance of choice. 
 
 Consequently our sons often make rash mistakes in 
 marriage, and our daughters not unfrequently do not 
 marry at all. This is no dire misfortune. Any thing 
 less than a thoroughly happy marriage is to women 
 much worse than celibacy; but still it is a sad thing 
 
104 HOW TO TEAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 to parents to watch a family of girls " withering on the 
 virgin thorn," with no natural outlet for their affections ; 
 themselves a little soured and their elders just a little 
 disappointed ; for no doubt there is a certain dignity in 
 "my married daughter," perhaps as being an uncon- 
 scious tribute from the son-in-law to the parent of his 
 wife, never attained by the mother of unappreciated 
 old maids. 
 
 If foreign parents are to be blamed for the "ar- 
 ranged" or compelled marriages which we so strongly 
 condemn, I think we are also to blame when we either 
 deliberately stand in the way of our children's happi- 
 ness, or tacitly let it slip by, giving them no oppor- 
 tunity of making a rational choice in marriage. Surely 
 it is the bounden duty of wise elders not to ignore 
 nature, but to accept the inevitable cares of " pairing- 
 time," when the young birds, fully fledged, will de- 
 sire to leave the nest, however soft it is made; when 
 that overpowering instinct before which the warmest 
 filial love sinks cold and colorless will assert itself, aye, 
 and guide itself too ; unless we have strength and self- 
 denial ah, no end to parental self-denial! to forget 
 our personal pain, and throwing ourselves heartily into 
 the young folks' place, succeed in guiding it a little also. 
 
 At best this love-season is a sad one, since few love 
 affairs are perfectly smooth and happy, and to see our 
 children suffer is sharper than to suffer ourselves ; espe- 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 105 
 
 cially when we can no longer help them. While they 
 arc babies, there is a certain omnipotence about parent- 
 hood ; but when the time comes that the child's unfail- 
 ing shelter is no longer the mother's heart, when the 
 father's strong right arm of guidance and protection 
 sinks absolutely powerless then things grow hard. 
 
 Harder still when, as sometimes happens, the parents' 
 will pulls one way and the child's another. One side 
 or other must yield. It is the last and sorest lesson in 
 the parents' training, to feel that in most cases it is they 
 who will have to yield. 
 
 I do not uphold marriages against the consent of par- 
 ents. I believe they never happen without something 
 a little wrong on both sides ; and when they do happen, 
 they always bring with them their punishment to both. 
 This even when things smooth down, as they most often 
 do. But the act itself remains, and the result of it 
 even as I heard a young daughter lately protest, when 
 her lover was interdicted the house "Why do you 
 blame me, mamma ? You married papa in direct op- 
 position to your parents." 
 
 And this must sometimes be done. Both the laws 
 of our country, and the honest moral sense thereof, 
 allow it. Abroad, it is more difficult. But here, after 
 the age of twenty-one, any young man or woman may 
 deliberately walk out of the father's house and into 
 the nearest church, and be married to whom he or she 
 
 E2 
 
106 HOW TO TEAIN UP A PAEENT 
 
 pleases. But, I think, the only permissible way of so 
 doing lies in doing it thus openly and deliberately, and 
 after all rational submission and persuasion have failed. 
 Such a marriage can not be a happy thing ; it will be a 
 sore thing in many ways to all parties, as long as they 
 live. But it may be a necessary and not unrighteous 
 thing, and it may turn out a portion of that salutary 
 training which is given us, not by our children, but by 
 Heaven through them. 
 
 Looking at things in this light, we can better learn to 
 bear the griefs and perplexities of that troublous time 
 to which I am referring. It may be lightened, if we 
 take care to keep for our grown-up sons and daughters 
 the same key which unfailingly unlocked the baby-heart 
 sympathy. A broken doll a broken heart has not 
 the mother's heart balm for both ? That is, if we still 
 have strength not to think of ourselves first, but of our 
 children. Above all, not to be vexed or irritated, as we 
 sometimes are, even at their happiness. For under the 
 most favorable circumstances, what son ever brought to 
 his mother a daughter whom she really considered wor- 
 thy of him ? And what father ever gave his consent to 
 the addresses of the most unexceptionable of sons-in-law 
 without a secret wish to shut the door in his face ? 
 
 Yes, there may be wounds there must be ; but they 
 will not be poisoned wounds, if the parents have done 
 their duty. And by and by the reward will come, if 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 107 
 
 reward ever does come as a complete thing, or is ever 
 meant to do so in this world. Certainly not parental re- 
 ward. If parents work for that they will fail. " Take 
 this child and nurse it for me"- is God's command 
 concerning every little soul put into life. How few 
 parents either hear, believe, or obey it, He knows. 
 
 Yet the truth remains a truth still, and likewise a 
 consolation. Even as a young mother sees,, and will 
 often have to see, her little one turn from her to some 
 more amusing person, who perhaps is less strict, less 
 wise, merely thinking of her or his own pleasure with 
 the child, and not the child's real good; so many a 
 mother, well on in years, may have to be taught the 
 sad but wholesome lesson that her children were not 
 merely her children, made exactly after her pattern, 
 and bound to minister solely to her comfort and carry 
 out her wishes, but were also meant to be, so to speak, 
 the children of heaven. If they continue such, living 
 out their life in righteous and honorable fashion, even 
 though it may not be her life, nor carried out after her 
 fashion still she will accept the will of Heaven, and 
 learn to be content. The mental training has been 
 gone through ; she has educated her children, and they 
 have educated her; all may not be perfectly smooth 
 and happy, but still all is well. 
 
 Every mother must be in degree a sort of Hannah. 
 She may bring her son his little coat she may come 
 
108 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 up to see him yearly in the Temple ; but with all that 
 she must give him to God. To give our children up 
 to God, to end with a training totally different from 
 that with which we began, to be obliged to recognize 
 our own powerlessness, and learn to sit still with folded 
 hands, resigning them and their fortunes into their own 
 hands or rather into higher hands than either theirs 
 or ours this is no easy lesson for parents. And yet 
 we must learn it the sharpest and the last. 
 
 No, not quite the last. As said a little girl of six 
 whose only idea of death was of "going up into the 
 sky," and being made perfectly happy and lovely and 
 good after being taken to see an old woman of ninety- 
 nine, " Oh, mamma, please don't live to be ninety-nine. 
 You'll be so ugly!" 
 
 Alas, there comes a time when we know we must be 
 " ugly," more or less ; physically, and perhaps morally 
 too ; when the worn-out body will not respond to the 
 mind, or, may be 3 even the mind is wearing out, so that 
 by no possibility can we give pleasure, and may give 
 much pain, even to our best beloved. 
 
 This is a hard time ; nor is it wonderful that parents 
 and children sometimes succumb to it, and the relation, 
 once so sweet and easy, becomes a heavy burden. But 
 there are parents who make it much heavier than it 
 need to be by their extreme selfishness, their utter want 
 of recognition of the fact that the most duteous child 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 109 
 
 that ever was born can not live forever in a sick-room 
 or beside an arm-chair. The younger life has to last 
 long after the elder one is ended. To blight it, even 
 for a time, by any unnecessary suffering, is a cruelty, 
 which not even the sternest upholder of filial duty can 
 ever justify. 
 
 I have seen parents, not intentionally selfish, who, 
 when old age came upon them, grew so exacting, fret- 
 ful, irritable, compelled such constant attendance, and 
 insisted on such incessant sacrifices, as literally to take 
 the life or at least all that life was worth out of 
 their children, whom every -body but themselves saw 
 were being " killed by inches," as the phrase is. Only 
 fancy ! living till one's best friends say with bated 
 breath, " If it would but come to an end " that is, our 
 life ; as the only means of saving other and more pre- 
 cious lives. 
 
 But this need not be it ought never to be. A little 
 self-control at the beginning, a steady, persistent recog- 
 nition of the fact that the young are young, and we are 
 old ; they blooming, we fading ; they going up the hill, 
 and we down it that this is God's will, to be accepted 
 placidly and cheerfully, and made as little trouble about 
 as possible, and we need not fear ever becoming very 
 " ugly." Especially since, as the mother answered that 
 little girl, we need not have much fear of living till 
 ninety-nine. 
 
110 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 But before the " ugly " time there is another, which 
 must be rather sweet than sad the silent time "be- 
 tween the lights " when the labor of the day is over, 
 and the rest of the night not yet come ; when the house 
 is empty of little feet and noisy, tumultuous voices, and 
 the parents, who once thought they would have giv- 
 en any thing in the world for quiet, now have quiet 
 enough ; only too much perhaps. All the obstreper- 
 ous young flock are grown up and gone away, some 
 into married homes, some into the work of the busy 
 world, some into a silenter world, where earthly work 
 is over. And these, I think, are the only children par- 
 ents keep forever. The others come and go, returning 
 to the old home merely for a little while ; but still it is 
 plain to see often they allow it to be seen a little too 
 plainly that the parents' house is their real home no 
 more. 
 
 And so the two old folks fortunate if there are still 
 two must learn to sit together by their silent fireside, 
 remembering that they have but gone the way which 
 their parents did before them, and their children must 
 follow after ; that all is quite natural, quite right, and 
 there is nothing to complain of only, sometimes, it 
 feels just a little hard. 
 
 Or it would feel hard had we not strength to take in 
 that consolation which I have spoken of that our chil- 
 dren are God's children as much as ours lent, and not 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. Ill 
 
 given. " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of 
 these, ye have done it unto me." 
 
 And He never denies us the reward. It comes, in a 
 certain degree, from the very first ; for amid the end- 
 less trouble they give, the almost unbearable trials to 
 patience and temper that they bring, every child brings 
 its own blessing likewise. A daily blessing refresh- 
 ing, soothing, cheering for the companionship of an 
 ordinarily good and intelligent boy or girl is often 
 better than that of any grown-up person. And the 
 love of a child, its absolute unshaken trust when it 
 has always met trust for trust and love for love how 
 sweet both are ! How perfect is the delight, the per- 
 fection of all human delights, of those years when par- 
 ents have their little flock around them, and watch 
 them grow up day by day, like the Holy Child of Naz- 
 areth " in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with 
 God and man." 
 
 There is a joy, greater than even the joy of a mother 
 over her first-born, or the exultation of a man over the 
 baby-son to whom he hopes to bequeath his honor, his 
 worldly goods, and his unblemished name ; and that is, 
 to have arrived at old age and seen this child, from 
 its own day of birth to its parents' death-day, living the 
 life they would have it live, carrying out the principles 
 they taught it, and being in every way what I have 
 called " the child of heaven " God's child as well as 
 
112 HOW TO TEAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 theirs. Then all the training, bitter and sweet, which 
 they have undergone, and made their child undergo 
 for no parents are worth the name who have not 
 strength sometimes to wring their own hearts, and 
 their child's too, for a good end will have been soft- 
 ened down into permanent peace. A peace enduring 
 even amid all the trying weaknesses of old age, all the 
 probable sufferings of the failing body and worn-out 
 mind ; lasting even to the supreme moment, when the 
 aged, dying head rests on the still young breast, and the 
 child kisses the closed eyes, which, through all anxiety, 
 pain, even displeasure, never lost their look of love- 
 never till now. And now it is all ended. No, not 
 ended God forbid. 
 
 There was a parent I knew one who had been both 
 father and mother to his children (as some fathers can 
 be, and are, thank God!) for nearly half a century. 
 Passing away, in the ripe perfectness of a most noble 
 life, he was heard to whisper feebly, " Adieu, ma fille !" 
 She sobbed out, " Non, non, mon pere !" He lifted him- 
 self up in the bed, and with the old gleam in his eyes, 
 the old force in his voice, to an extent of which those 
 present had hardly believed a dying man capable, ex- 
 claimed, " Non, non. Pas adieu ! Au revoir !" 
 
 And surely if there are any meetings, any reunions 
 granted in the other world, they will be granted to par- 
 ents and children. 
 
 * #* * * * * * 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 113 
 
 " Train up a parent in the way he should go " was 
 the queer title I gave to this sermon. You may have 
 begun it with a smile ; perhaps you will have ended it, 
 as I do, with something more like a tear. That is just 
 what I meant. Farewell. 
 
Sermon it). 
 BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
IV. 
 
 BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 " T DO believe that one half the so-called ' charity ' 
 -* going is, in its results, worse than an error an 
 actual crime. Suppose you were to write an essay 
 upon ' The Crime of Benevolence !' '' 
 
 The arch-heretic who suggested this had been spurred 
 on thereto by a recent visit to a very " benevolent " par- 
 ish, probably one of the richest and most charitable par- 
 ishes in Great Britain. It possessed possesses still, for 
 aught I know within a very moderate area, not too 
 densely populated, three churches, one chapel, and two 
 iron rooms for mission services. It had clothing clubs, 
 coal clubs, blanket clubs, provident and work societies. 
 At its parish school an admirable education could be 
 got for threepence a week. Its penny readings for the 
 men, its mothers'-meetings for the women, gave every 
 opportunity of mental and moral improvement to that 
 class which we patronizingly term "our poorer breth- 
 ren." In short, every thing was done that could be 
 done to make poverty unnecessary and vice impossible. 
 
118 - BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 Yet, my informant confessed, both abounded. Pub- 
 lic-houses stared you in the face at every corner, and 
 were always full of women as well as men. Con- 
 sequently wretched homes, neglected children, young 
 women, whom no wise mistress of a house ever thought 
 of taking into her service, middle-aged women, whom 
 to employ as laundresses, seamstresses, or even charwom- 
 en was hopeless : their characters were so bad. Even 
 the long-suffering clergymen's wives and district visitors, 
 trying continually to do good, were as continually baf- 
 fled. Nobody, having once employed the objects of 
 their hopeless compassion, ever did it again. Charity 
 these people were always open to receive, but the best 
 kind of charity work it was useless to give, if the 
 giver wished it to be any thing better than a disguised 
 form of almsgiving. 
 
 And yet this place was an El Dorado of benevolence ; 
 where the poor not only got their daily bread, but got 
 it buttered on both sides. An opportune death or for- 
 tunate accident would bring to the spot half-a-dozen 
 clergymen with prayers and purses; half-a-dozen la- 
 dies following with tracts and clothes; until the suf- 
 ferers, becoming quite important people, realized fully 
 the advantage of being "afflicted," and continuing to 
 be. One story I heard of a laborer's household, which, 
 deprived suddenly of its drunken head, found itself " as- 
 sisted " so much, that when it went to church next Sun- 
 
BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 119 
 
 day in its new clothes, a shrewd neighbor declared it 
 reminded her of Mrs. Hofland's tale, " The Clergyman's 
 "Widow, and her Young Family." And the youngest child 
 being met afterward, " Yes, ma'am," said the mother, in 
 a whining tone, " I've just been taking Bobby to the 
 doctor, and he orders him wine," with a glance thatj 
 meeting no response, dropped immediately. But the 
 habit of begging was too strong to be resisted. "Do 
 you think, ma'am," with an additional whine of humil- 
 ity, " you've got such a thing as a pot of strawberry jam 
 for Bobby to take his physic in ?" 
 
 It is these sort of people who harden one's heart, 
 and incline one to rank our benevolent friends with 
 two other classes, equally injurious I was going to 
 write obnoxious the folk who pride themselves on 
 the fact that, if they have a fault, it is being too " ten- 
 der-hearted ;" and those weak fools, the scourge and 
 torment of society, who are politely said to be " no- 
 body's enemy but their own." 
 
 To call benevolence a crime! To say that benevo- 
 lent people actually injure those they attempt to aid! 
 It seems a curious paradox; but does not experience 
 prove it to be very near the truth? And why? 
 
 This question is best answered by another "What is 
 benevolence ? Literally, the word means " wishing well ;" 
 and I suppose we must take for granted that all benev- 
 olence really wishes well to its object : that is, it would 
 
120 BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 rather do good than not, provided the thing costs little 
 trouble. Beyond that well, let any one of us try 
 honestly, as honestly as if we all lived in the Palace of 
 Truth, to analyze the motive of his next act of charity : 
 say, the next sixpence he gives to a street-beggar. 
 
 Why does he give it ? First, probably, to save him- 
 self pain. It is decidedly painful to look upon distress, 
 and troublesome to be followed down the street with 
 whining petitions for aid. Also a kind action gratifies 
 our self-love, and makes us generally comfortable ; and 
 to be thanked is more than comfortable agreeable. 
 So he extracts the coin from his pocket, throws it to the 
 beggar, and goes his way ; but of the various complex 
 motives for this benevolent action, almost all concern, 
 not the object of it, but his own self. Except, indeed, 
 the natural motive of all benevolence, for which we 
 ought in justice to give all benevolent people the credit, 
 a general kindly feeling to their species, and a wish to 
 benefit them rather than do them harm. But the ques- 
 tionjust as I argued in relation to self-sacrifice 
 whether the important element in a gift is the advan- 
 tage of the donor or the recipient, does not occur to 
 them. 
 
 Not when the good deed is private and small, like 
 the eleemosynary sixpence referred to ; still less when 
 the benevolence is public : say, a church collection 
 when the churchwarden, our neighbor and friend, is 
 
BENEVOLENCE OB BENEFICENCE? 121 
 
 holding the plate ; or a subscription to a charity, in 
 which every body will see our name, and the sum ap- 
 pended thereto. 
 
 Now I do not mean to be severe upon the many 
 rich people in rich England, whose purses are always 
 open to public or private charity. They do their duty. 
 Society expects it of them, and they know it does. 
 Besides, they really like to do good, and the easiest 
 way of doing it is through their pockets. Any other 
 way takes such a world of trouble ; and they dislike 
 trouble most people do. They give to any body or 
 any thing of what costs them nothing, and which they 
 never miss. They enjoy all the credit of doing a gen- 
 erous action, and the burden of really doing it falls 
 upon other people. What matter ? they argue ; it is 
 only division of labor. So others do the work, and 
 they the magnificence. It is so easy to be magnificent, 
 when one is either a spendthrift or a millionaire. The 
 difference looks very small ; only a word, or a few let- 
 ters in a word ; yet if we examine it, it is enormous. 
 It is the difference between Benevolence and Benefi- 
 cence. 
 
 An extravagant person may be as extravagant in his 
 charities as he is in his luxuries ; for charity is, in truth, 
 a sort of luxury. Many a man called benevolent is 
 simply wasteful, and the cause of waste in others ; for 
 to give away money without considering how far the 
 
 F 
 
122 BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE? 
 
 recipient has a right to it, or will benefit by it, is no 
 more an act of benevolence than is throwing down a 
 handful of coppers to be scrambled for in the street. 
 
 Another of the most dangerous and difficult sort of 
 benevolent people are those who are always, willing to 
 do every thing for every body, who go about with a 
 long string of jproteges, whom they are ready to foist 
 upon us on the smallest excuse. These general ac- 
 cepters and protectors of waifs and strays are very 
 troublesome folk. In the first place, because so evenly 
 is desert and deserving apportioned, even in this life, 
 that I believe few people remain waifs and strays per- 
 manently without there being some inherent cause for 
 that condition. Trouble comes alike to all ; but some 
 deserve it others do not. Some rise out of it have 
 the faculty to rise out of it ; others never rise, and ap- 
 parently have no care or wish to rise. And your care- 
 lessly benevolent people refuse to draw the distinction. 
 Even if you draw it for them, they meet you with an 
 avalanche of texts, such as " He maketh His sun to shine 
 upon the just and the unjust," etc., etc. 
 
 They forget that they are not Providence. Besides, 
 according to them, their proteges are never bad, only 
 unfortunate. Their geese are always swans in their 
 eyes, simply because they patronize them. Patronage 
 is so pleasant, and to be followed by a little crowd of 
 admirers is so soothing to the benevolent mind. So 
 
BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE ? 123 
 
 they annoy us unjpenevolent people at their pleasure, by 
 supplying the best of characters to incompetent serv- 
 ants, offering as candidates for important situations per- 
 sons who have no recommendation whatever for the 
 position, except the need of it, and so on. These are 
 they who entreat us to get published feeble manuscripts 
 on the feebler plea that the authors " wish to add a lit- 
 tle to their income," or have experienced reverses, or 
 would like to earn something for a benevolent purpose. 
 As if these were any reasons for trying to do what they 
 can not do, or for others aiding them therein ; since, as 
 a rule, good work deserves good pay, and will get it ; 
 bad work should get nothing, however great the need 
 of the doer of it. 
 
 But our short-sighted, kindly meaning friends can 
 not see this. They still keep urging us to employ un- 
 suitable servants, who want our place so badly ; to send 
 our children to a particular school, or to deal at some 
 special shop, not because it is the best school or the best 
 shop, but because " the poor things are so ill off, you 
 see ; it is quite a charity." 
 
 Why are they so ill off? Is there not a cause for it ? 
 Accidental misfortune will happen to all ; but, as I 
 have said, and the observation of life forces me to be- 
 lieve it more firmly every year, no one ever remains un- 
 fortunate without there being, generally speaking, some 
 recondite reason, some " screw loose " somewhere, ac- 
 
124: BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE ? 
 
 counting for the fact. It may be a l^ard saying, but I 
 fear it is only too true, that nobody ever becomes a per- 
 manent "object of charity" without having ceased to 
 deserve it. 
 
 This rule especially applies to the large class of 
 which all of us know so many, who are said to live 
 " from hand to mouth," the mouth being usually their 
 own, and the hand that of their friends ; or rather the 
 acquaintances who successively acquire and renounce 
 the title. 
 
 " Neither a borrower nor a lender be, 
 For debt oft loses both itself and friend." 
 
 Itself, because the borrower seldom becomes such till 
 he is in circumstances which make repayment at least 
 doubtful ; the friend, because two friends who have 
 been placed in that position together rarely recover the 
 old relation entirely. A gift, out and out, is often a 
 real pleasure, an exceeding boon ; but a loan, if ever 
 repaid, or very long of repayment, always places both 
 parties in a false position. There is a sense of humilia- 
 tion on the one side, of being made use of on the other, 
 which creates reserve at any rate, even between sincere 
 friends ; and if there has been in the transaction the 
 slightest insincerity, is fatal in its results. You pity, 
 you pardon ; you regret, you apologize ; but you two 
 are never quite as you were before. Of course there is 
 
BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 1^5 
 
 no rule without exceptions; still, ordinarily speaking, 
 they are the wisest people who follow Polonius's advice, 
 and as long as possible preserve themselves from being 
 either borrowers or lenders. 
 
 But there is a form of borrowing and lending which 
 becomes, on both sides, an error so great as to be little 
 short of an actual crime : in the borrower, who bor- 
 rows without hope or intention of repayment ; in the 
 lender, who does what he is asked to do from no sense 
 of kindness or justice, or even charity, but just "to 
 get rid of the fellow," or from being himself " a fel- 
 low that can't say No." Worse sometimes, a fellow 
 who from some business or worldly reason concerning 
 the borrower and himself, is afraid of the consequences 
 of saying No. Therefore he allows himself to pay a 
 sort of black-mail to the unworthy levier thereof ; hat- 
 ing and grudging, but still paying it, and flattering 
 himself that it looks like benevolence. 
 
 The cowardice of such conduct is only equaled by 
 its folly. If my friend, so called, writes to me again 
 and again, "Lend me five pounds to save me from 
 ruin,*' the only rational reply is, "If only five pounds 
 stands between you and ruin, you had better be ruined, 
 and have done with it." To be perpetually stopping 
 up a hole, which yawns the next day wider than ever, 
 is the act, not of generosity but of stupidity. Many 
 a man has gone to ruin, the real ruin he first made 
 
126 BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE ? 
 
 a pretense of, because some weak, foolish relative or 
 friend to whom he applied for money had not the 
 sense to refuse it at once ; absolutely, remorselessly, 
 at all cost of pain and wounded feeling between him- 
 self and his would-be debtor. Better a passing cool- 
 ness than an enmity for life. 
 
 They who, for any of the motives here named mo- 
 tives, you will observe, which affect their own person- 
 ality more than the borrower's continue lending to 
 unfortunate people, simply because they are unfortu- 
 nate, are guilty on three counts : first, toward them- 
 selves, for a pretense of generosity which is only ego- 
 tistic selfishness; secondly, toward the person they at- 
 tempt to benefit, whom they do not benefit, but rather 
 injure ; thirdly, toward other and worthier persons, 
 whom they lose the power of helping, by having helped 
 unworthy ones. 
 
 For the really deserving neither beg nor borrow 
 they suffer silently ; while the loud-complaining, ever- 
 greedy applicants for aid always get the best of what 
 charity is going. I often think that much of the be- 
 nevolence in this world is poured out like pig- wash ; 
 the pig who makes most noise, or who succeeds in get- 
 ting his two feet in the trough while the others have 
 but one, is the animal who swallows most and fattens 
 fastest. 
 
 That before-mentioned sixpence thrown to a mendi- 
 
BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE ? 127 
 
 cant, only to be converted into gin or beer, that five 
 pounds lent to a needy acquaintance, who always has 
 been needy and always will be, because he has not 
 the slightest sense of the value of money, nor the least 
 conscience in obtaining it or spending it ; these, with 
 a hundred similar cases, are specimens of what I call 
 the crime of benevolence. The donors err, not only 
 iu what they do, but in what they leave undone. They 
 may be benevolent in vague intention, but of true be- 
 neficence they have not the slightest idea. 
 
 The difference is this: Benevolence consists in mere 
 kind feeling ; doing good certainly sometimes, but in 
 a vague and careless way, and more for its own pleas- 
 ure than for another's benefit ; giving, because to give 
 is agreeable, but taking little pains to ascertain what 
 has been the result of the gift. The donor has done 
 his part, and that is enough. It may be another her- 
 esy, but I am afraid the reason that our charitable in- 
 stitutions are so numerous, and our subscription -lists 
 so easy to fill up, is because, of all modes of benevo- 
 lence, giving of money is the one which involves least 
 trouble. 
 
 But beneficence does cost trouble. It requires in 
 the individual some rather rare qualities ; powers of 
 administration and patient investigation ; clear judg- 
 ment and capacity for work ; a kind heart, and a cool 
 head aye, and a hard head, too. The power of saying 
 
128 BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE ? 
 
 No, and the will to say it, with a steady, strong, un- 
 varying justice, are as necessary as quick sympathy 
 and ready help. 
 
 Though, in the main, true beneficence aims less at 
 helping people than at enabling them to help them- 
 selves, there will always be in the world a large amount 
 of those who can not possibly help themselves : the 
 sick, the aged, the young, the hopelessly feeble and 
 incapable. It is the more necessary that any body 
 who can do any thing should be left to do it, or taught 
 to do it, for Beneficence is always more of a teacher 
 than a preacher. She would be more prone to set up 
 a cookery-school than a soup-kitchen ; and would con- 
 sider the building of a row of workmen's cottages, 
 well -arranged, well -drained, well - ventilated, of rather 
 more importance than the erection of the finest church 
 imaginable. 
 
 I think it is an open question how far real benefi- 
 cence has to do with charity, i.e., giving of money, at 
 all. Secondarily, of course, it must, but primarily. I 
 was once talking with a lady whose name is sufficiently 
 well known, though I will not give it here, and who 
 has done more good in ameliorating the condition of 
 the London poor than all the philanthropists, religious 
 and otherwise, who have flooded the metropolis with 
 their bounty, and left it, people say, especially at the 
 East-end, rather worse than they found- it in a condi- 
 
BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE? 129 
 
 fcion of expectant pauperism, which is forever crying, 
 " Give, give, give." Now this lady told me that dur- 
 ing all the years of her dealings with the poor the 
 very poor whom she has slowly lifted from the con- 
 dition of savages, the savagery of London courts and 
 alleys, into intelligent human beings during all these 
 years, she said, she had never given, in mere charity, 
 one single shilling. Fair payment for fair work was 
 the principle she invariably went upon. She planned 
 houses, with every comfort that a working man's fam- 
 ily could require, but she exacted from her tenants 
 the weekly rent, and when they did not pay she turned 
 them out ; she found employment for all that would 
 do it, but if not done it was not paid for ; she assisted 
 the women in their efforts to become good housewives, 
 taught them to cook, to sew, to make clothes ; she went 
 from house to house, leaving behind her plenty of good 
 advice and kindly sympathy, but never either a tract 
 or a half-penny. She took endless trouble, ran no end 
 of risks, and exerted an influence, almost miraculous, 
 over her rough community ; but from first to last, she 
 said, her experience was this, "Help the poor to help 
 themselves. Give them advice, instruction, work 
 mixed with plenty of sympathy. Sometimes, in very 
 hard cases, money's worth, such as clothes or food, but 
 never under any circumstances give them money." 
 Yet this lady is one of the very few philanthropists 
 F2 
 
130 BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE? 
 
 who have really met their reward, and seen the work of 
 their hands prosper. Her little kingdom, which she 
 rules with a kindly though most firm hand, is full of 
 subjects who not only obey but love her. She enters 
 fearlessly into courts and alleys of the lowest class, 
 known hitherto only to the inspector of nuisances and 
 the police detective ; she commences her reforms, and 
 by and by the wild inhabitants are found as decent 
 folk, living in decent dwellings, amenable to law, com- 
 mon-sense, and kindly feeling. 
 
 Moreover, she succeeds in what almost all charities 
 fail in she actually makes it pay. She has gained 
 a small percentage on the money employed, of which 
 she has been so long the wise administrator. And this 
 fact is confirmatory of another axiom of hers, proved by 
 her own experience, that no charity effects so much per- 
 manent good as one which is, or soon can be made, self- 
 supporting. In short, such is the necessary mutual re- 
 lation between the helped and the helpers, the poor and 
 the rich, that the former cease to value what they can 
 get for nothing, and the latter soon find that while they 
 think they are assisting the poor, they are only sinking 
 them from honest independence to weak dependence, 
 from mere poverty into absolute pauperdom. 
 
 I can not more clearly describe what I mean by be- 
 nevolence and beneficence than by putting this lady's 
 work the work of a lifetime side by side with that in 
 
BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE? 131 
 
 the " charitable " parish I have mentioned also anony- 
 mously where money was poured out like water, and 
 the needy had but to ask and to have. Here, on the 
 contrary, nothing was done from charity, every thing 
 from justice : the common justice between man and man, 
 which makes the laborer worthy of his hire, the rent- 
 payer deserving of a decent house to live in as good 
 a house of its kind for a mechanic as for a gentleman ; 
 but at the same time exacting from the poor man, in 
 proportion to his means, precisely the same honesty, so- 
 briety, and conscientiousness that is exacted in the class 
 above him. 
 
 Until " gentlefolk " believe this, and cease to regard 
 their servants, clerks, etc., as inferior beings, from whom 
 nothing is to be expected but a hand-to-hand struggle 
 between rich and poor, employer and employed, as to 
 who shall have the best of it; until they give up the 
 system of treating their dependents as mere machines, 
 out of whom as much work is to be got as possible ; or 
 as brute beasts, for whom no training answers but whip- 
 ping or feeding, and to whom they may throw their 
 charity as they would throw a bone to a dog, with as 
 little care for the result of it ; until this state of things 
 ends, there must be always that secret enmity between 
 class and class, that half -concealed, half -acknowledged 
 difference in morals, feelings, and principles, which con- 
 stitutes the main difficulty of those who would fain have 
 
132 BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 but one law of right for all, and look upon every man 
 who fulfilled it as "a man and a brother." 
 
 There is another phase of the crime of benevolence, 
 unconnected with money, which ought not to be passed 
 over: that is the leniency with which some very well- 
 disposed people get to look on moral turpitude. Some 
 do it through mere laziness or indifference. " It is not 
 my business; why should I give myself any trouble 
 about it?" So they shut their eyes to wickedness in 
 their rich neighbor, whom they ask to dinner, though 
 they are not quite sure he was too honest in that busi- 
 ness transaction of last week; in their poor domestic 
 say, their coachman who they know gets drunk every 
 Saturday night, and beats his wife ; but the lodge is too 
 far off to hear her cries, and, the carriage not being out 
 on Sundays, John can not drive his master into a ditch. 
 So, since John is a good servant, and knows his business 
 well, the master ignores the whole matter of the drunk- 
 enness; to notice it .would be so very inconvenient. 
 And Mr. Blank, whose acquaintance it would be so 
 awkward to give up, is smiled upon blandly ; until 
 some day he happens to be taken up for forgery. 
 
 Others take their stand upon the divine saying, "I 
 came not to call the righteous but sinners to repent- 
 ance;" and obeying it in their imperfect, finite way, 
 gradually cease to take interest in any except sinners. 
 All the drunkards of the parish, the un wived mothers, 
 
BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 133 
 
 the scapegrace children, come to them, and by canting 
 phrases of oft-repeated contrition, and voluble promises 
 of never-fulfilled amendment, coax out of them the ben- 
 efits that honest people never get. The greater the sin- 
 ner the greater the saint, is either really or ostensibly 
 their permanent creed. They take up with all the 
 scamps in the parish, while the respectable x working 
 man thank Heaven, there is still many a one in En- 
 gland, as honorable as any working gentleman, and 
 often as true a gentleman at heart! has with them 
 no chance at all. 
 
 True, these so-called Christians have always plenty of 
 arguments on their side ; especially the parable of the 
 Prodigal Son, and the "joy in heaven over one sinner 
 that repenteth." But they forget that the prodigal 
 when his father met him was no longer a prodigal : 
 he had forsaken his evil ways, never to return to them 
 more. Also, that the "joy" is supposed to be over a 
 repentant sinner, not a sinner who still remains in sin. 
 Christ, in His diviriest charity, never docs more for of- 
 fenders than to pardon them, until they cease to offend. 
 " Go," He says ; " go and sin no more, lest a worse thing 
 happen unto thee." But for those who continue to sin 
 there is, even according to the qnoters of Holy Writ 
 often so egregiously twisted and misapplied a worse 
 thing ; even as in the parable of the fig-tree : " Cut it 
 clown ; why cumbereth it the ground ?" And sometimes 
 
134 BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 the kindest, wisest, most Christian act is to let it be 
 cut down. 
 
 For instance, every one who gives money to a con- 
 firmed drunkard or profligate, thereby encouraging him 
 in his vices ; every one who, for any reason, however 
 compassionate, speaks what is called " a good word " 
 for a person whom he knows to be bad, condones sin, 
 and is guilty of the result that follows. His lazy laxity 
 allows these cumberers of the ground to take the life 
 from wholesome trees. And, even as a man who sits 
 with his hands folded, and allows his humble neighbors 
 to wallow in dirt like pigs, saying, " I can't help it ; it 
 is not my affair," may one day have to see ghastly fever, 
 bred in those back slums, stalk in at his own front door, 
 and carry off his best-beloved child ; so any one who 
 laughs at error as mere " folly," and puts a plaster 
 upon ugly sin, connives dangerously at both. He has 
 shirked what was unpleasant ; he has been too lazy to 
 take trouble ; he has done his benevolence in the easi- 
 est way. He may yet have to pay for his mistaken 
 mercy by being ground under the ever-moving wheel 
 of an unerring justice; justice which, though it does 
 not always reward, assuredly knows the way to punish. 
 
 He is punished, this pseudo-benevolent person. He 
 is eaten up by grasping, needy, ravenous dependents. 
 He has often to stand helplessly by and watch the 
 widening spread of evils which he might have stopped 
 
UKNEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 135 
 
 at once if he Lad only had the courage to take hold of 
 vice and slay it with a strong, firm hand. He thinks 
 himself bitterly wronged, and accuses the world of 
 shameful ingratitude ; it does not strike him that the 
 world really owes him nothing, since what he did was 
 done to please himself. 
 
 This especially applies to certain people, who for a 
 time may gain much outside credit, which is indeed the 
 thing they most desire those who delight in what they 
 call " magnificence." They it is who always give a 
 cabman half-a-crown when a shilling is his right fare ; 
 who distribute money right and left in gratuities to 
 servants ; who always make the handsomest of presents 
 (especially to their rich friends), and like to head every 
 subscription-list far above the rest. They never think 
 that the cabman they overpay will grumble at the next 
 person who pays him his right fare and no more ; that 
 nothing so degrades or even offends a good servant as 
 to be requited in money for a simple kindness ; that 
 the worth of a gift is nothing the spirit of it every 
 thing ; and that to see your neighbor's name down in 
 a charity-list for a larger sum than either he or you can 
 afford is much more apt to make you close your purse- 
 strings than open them. 
 
 Your "magnificent" people are in some things worse 
 than the merely lavish, who give recklessly of that 
 which costs them nothing; they give deliberately, for 
 
136 BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 the mere credit of giving, and for their own glorifi- 
 cation. The praise of men is mostly their sole aim. 
 That "cup of cold water" which the Divine Master 
 named so tenderly would be a drink quite too mean, 
 too discreditable (to themselves) to offer unto any body. 
 It must be the best of wine, in a jeweled goblet, or 
 must not be offered at all. 
 
 Their notions of a present, too, and they give a good 
 many of them, is the handsomest thing that money can 
 purchase. A much handsomer thing than any body 
 else has given, and something that will make people 
 cry out, " Whose gift is that ? What a very generous 
 person he must be !" But the suitableness of the pres- 
 ent, and whether the recipient needed it or wished for 
 it, is quite another thing. And unless the said recipi- 
 ent, whether pleased or not, pretends to be so, and over-- 
 whelms him with gratitude and delight, our " magnif- 
 icent " friend is exceedingly offended. 
 
 Speaking of this matter of giving presents, it is cu- 
 rious how few know how to bestow or to accept one, 
 whether it be a kindly benefaction, from him who 
 does not need to him who does, or a cadeau^ as the 
 French term it, in their nice distinction of language, 
 . a " keepsake " between two people who are equals, if 
 not friends. 
 
 I remember being much astonished (it was in the 
 simple days of youth, when a good deal astonished 
 
BENEVOLENCE OK BENEFICENCE? 137 
 
 one that does not astonish now) by hearing a conver- 
 sation between a husband and wife, who had just re- 
 ceived a present from a near relative whom they did 
 not very much care for. They criticised it, they found 
 fault with it ; they speculated as to what was the per- 
 son's intention in sending it, and what was to be sent 
 back in return. 
 
 " Of course we must send something, and immedi- 
 ately," said the gentleman, who was of the " magnif- 
 icent" order; "I wish we could find out exactly what 
 it cost, and then we could give them back one worth 
 as much and a little over." " Just as much will do, I 
 think, my dear," added the wife, who, like most wives 
 of " magnificent " men, was obliged to think of econ- 
 omy. " But we must give something ; they will ex- 
 pect it." 
 
 This expecting something in return for a present is 
 surely one of the meanest of feelings ; yet it is at the 
 root of half the gifts given. Marriage, christening, 
 birthday presents are made, not because people wish 
 to give, but because they think they ought, and that 
 other people will expect it of them. Gifts, irksome 
 to receive, and sometimes actually wrong to offer, as 
 either draining purses already too slender, or irritat- 
 ing those who can afford it by a kind of feeling that 
 as every body knows they can afford it, they must give 
 more than any body else. If the " happy pair " who 
 
138 BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 exhibit a roomful of such offerings could know all that 
 they subject their friends to, or their friends foolishly 
 subject themselves to, in this matter, they would turn 
 with disgust from most of the presents they receive. 
 I am not sure that it is not the truest kindness as well 
 as wisdom to say point-blank, " I never give any thing 
 to any body." 
 
 Yet a gift is a pleasant thing, rightly given ; most 
 pleasant and dear and sacred, whether its value be 
 much or little, if only it is offered with the heart, and 
 chosen from the heart chosen with care and pains, 
 and a tender anxiety that it should be exactly the thing 
 we liked and wanted. It is so sweet to be remem- 
 bered and taken trouble over, even in the smallest 
 things. But gifts carelessly given merely to gratify 
 a love of giving, which some people have even to a 
 disease given without thought of whether they will 
 be useful or not, whether the receiver will care for 
 them or not, are, between friends, often a great vex- 
 ation ; between strangers, or any who are not exactly 
 equals, a burden of obligation simply intolerable. 
 
 The child, with its innocent sudden kiss, and its ear- 
 nest, " Thank you so much 1" for a doll's sash, or a pen- 
 ny toy, which it really wanted, comes much nearer 
 the true theory of giving and receiving than hundreds 
 of people who weary themselves in choosing handsome 
 presents, or in returning equivalents for the same 
 
BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE ? 139 
 
 presents which, the instant after they are made, be- 
 come, like stopped checks, " of no value to any body," 
 not even to the possessor. 
 
 These like the charity which is indifferent to error, 
 and ready to overlook every sin that is not personally 
 inconvenient to itself, as well as the generosity which 
 looks not to the advantage of its object, but its own 
 these three may all go under the head of that sort of 
 benevolence which, if not an actual crime, is a very 
 great mistake and an egregious folly. 
 
 Why ? 
 
 Here, again, we come to the root of things. Why ? 
 Because it is content \vith wishing well, instead of 
 doing well. Because whatever good it does is done, 
 not for duty's sake, for righteousness' sake, for God's 
 sake, but merely for its own sake ; to gratify its vanity, 
 to ease its conscience, to heal up its wounded self-es-- 
 teem with the smooth cataplasm of gratitude. 
 
 But true beneficence never looks for gratitude at alL 
 What it does is not done with a view to itself, but 
 solely for the sake of that other whom it desires to ben- 
 efit ; and above all for His sake who is the source of 
 all charity. There is a deep truth in the passionate 
 pleading of the Irish beggar : " Shure, sir, ye'll do 
 it ; not for the love o' me for the love o' God." 
 Therefore real beneficence, which does all its good 
 deeds for the love of God, is neither vainglorious nor 
 
140 BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE ? 
 
 exacting ; not easily wounded, and never offended. It 
 goes straight on, doing what it believes to be right and 
 best, without any reference to what people may say of 
 it, and whether the recipients of its bounty are grate- 
 ful or not. 
 
 A word about gratitude, which some people seem to 
 think the natural result and reward of benevolence 
 to follow as unerringly as day follows night. Alas ! 
 they had much better say as night follows day ; for 
 kindly deeds as often end in darkness as in light at 
 least what seems like darkness to our human eyes. Un- 
 less benevolence, like virtue, can be its own reward, it 
 must often rest satisfied with no reward at all. 
 
 What matter ? Of course, gratitude is a welcome 
 thing ; in this weary world a most refreshing thing ; 
 but it is not an indispensable thing. It warms the 
 heart and cheers the spirit, but it has nothing to do 
 with either benevolence or beneficence, nor is it the ori- 
 gin or end of either. The wisest people are they who, 
 though happy to get thanks, never expect them, and can 
 do without them. Such may be deceived and disap- 
 pointed, but they are never embittered ; because their 
 motive lay deeper, and is higher than any thing belong- 
 ing to this world. The truly benevolent man is he 
 who, looking on all his charities great or small, says 
 only in devout repetition of his Master's words " I 
 have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do," 
 
BENEVOLENCE OR BENEFICENCE ? 141 
 
 not that which I gave myself to do, and not that 
 which I did for myself, but that which Thou gavest 
 rne and I have done for Thee. To such the ..answer 
 cornes, even as in Lowell's touching ballad of "Sir 
 Launfal :" 
 
 "The Holy Supper is kept indeed 
 In what we share with another's need 
 Not what we give, but what we share, 
 For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
 Who gives himself with his alms, feeds three : 
 Himself his hungering neighbor and ME." 
 
Qcrttum 1). 
 
 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
V. 
 
 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 A EE we, or are we not our brother's keeper ? That 
 ? is, to what extent are we responsible for those 
 beneath us, or dependent upon us, or connected with us 
 by any link which gives us power with regard to them 
 or influence over them ? 
 
 This is, I think, the point at issue between those who 
 are called philanthropists, and those others well, I sup- 
 pose no one would voluntarily dub himself misanthro- 
 pist but those who refuse to " bother " themselves with 
 their brother's affairs ; to whom the question, " Who is 
 my neighbor ?" is as indifferent as the naturally succeed- 
 ing one, " What have I to do for him ?" In fact, peo- 
 ple who, though they would be much offended if you 
 said so, are of the same type as the most respectable 
 priest and Levite who preceded the good Samaritan in 
 passing by him who " fell among thieves." 
 
 A parable often misapplied, since many of the way- 
 laid sufferers for whom our sympathy is demanded are 
 very often thieves themselves : the weak, the selfish, the 
 
 G 
 
146 
 
 un principled ; who live by robbing honest people, and 
 by laying on others the burden of their self-created 
 woes. But it is not of them I have now to speak, but 
 of those designated by the word " brother." 
 
 In the first place, who is our brother ? 
 
 There are those who w T ill tell us it is the negro the 
 South Sea Islander the " heathen Chinee ;" whom, as 
 the first of moral duties, we must try to convert (of 
 course, to our own special form of Christianity, any 
 other being worse than none, which a little complicates 
 matters). Nevertheless, it must be done. And conver- 
 sion gained, all else will follow. 
 
 Be it so. Let those go proselyting who feel them- 
 selves thereto called. There is work enough in the 
 world for all; innumerable "brothers" and very few 
 who are fit, in any sense, to be their " keepers." But let 
 not this interesting black or brown brother far away 
 shut out from our sight the white brother who stands 
 at our very door. Stand, did I say ? He crawls he 
 grovels not only outside, but actually within our doors. 
 We can scarcely take a step without treading upon him 
 even though we may shut our eyes to the sight of 
 him. 
 
 And we do shut our eyes, either intentionally or unin- 
 tentionally. We prefer looking a long way off upon 
 objects picturesque and heroic. The "noble savage" 
 running wild in his " native woods " is a much more in- 
 
H7 
 
 teresting subject of civilization than Billy the washer- 
 woman's boy, especially when entering our family as 
 William the boy in buttons. Yet, perhaps, he no less 
 needs the care, and could be developed into at least as 
 good a Christian, and at a somewhat cheaper rate. And 
 the feminine hearts who yearn over the " condition of 
 women in India" would find as worthy an object for 
 their reformatory sympathy in Jane the gardener's wife, 
 with six children, living in two rooms upon a pound a 
 week ; or Emma the housemaid, insanely spending all 
 her large w r ages upon dress, and leaving herself not a 
 half-penny for sickness or old age. 
 
 "Charity begins at home" the old-fashioned prov- 
 erb used to say. But the peculiarity of our large-mind- 
 ed modern society is that " home " either does not ex- 
 ist, or that it is the last place in the world about which 
 charity ever troubles itself. 
 
 I have been led to this train of thought by two arti- 
 cles which appeared lately in a well-known magazine 
 on the much-vexed question of domestic servants. The 
 writers took opposite sides: one defended the lower 
 class against the upper ; protested against the extreme 
 ill-usage sustained by servants in general, and contend- 
 ed for their " privileges," averring that they ought to be 
 allowed full time to cultivate their intellects and that, 
 among other refinements, there should be a library in 
 every pantry and a piano-forte in every kitchen. The 
 
148 
 
 opposing paper took the mistresses' side tlie much- 
 tried, rnuch-enduring mistresses ; and, so far from al- 
 lowing our domestics any rights, would fain have re- 
 duced servitude to its original meaning, and consider- 
 ed servants somewhat as the ancients considered their 
 slaves an altogether different order of beings from 
 themselves. The first protested loudly that we were all 
 brothers ; though the great point which of us was to 
 be " our brother's keeper " was left untouched. The 
 second, so far as I remember, almost denied that there 
 was a common human nature between the kitchen and 
 the parlor. 
 
 Both meant well, I verily believe ; and both had a 
 certain justice in their arguments. But the real truth, 
 as in most contests, lay between the two. Let us consid- 
 er it a little. 
 
 Few will deny the melancholy fact that the servant 
 question is growing more difficult year by year. Per- 
 haps naturally so, since every class is rising and trying 
 to force itself into the class above it a not ignoble 
 aim, if it at the same time educate and fit itself to en- 
 ter that class; but it mostly does not do this. There- 
 fore a continual struggle goes on a continual pushing 
 up of heterogeneous elements into the already wildly 
 seething mass and the result is chaos ? Let us hope 
 not. Let us trust that all will settle in time. Provi- 
 dence knows its own business much better than we do. 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 149 
 
 Still we must do our business, too, and do it our very 
 best. Any thing short of our best is setting ourselves in 
 opposition oh, how futile ! to Providence, and conse- 
 quently to our own selves. He only who works with 
 God, so far as he sees, works for God, and for himself 
 at the same time. 
 
 Those who remember the servants of even twenty-five 
 years ago can not fail to discover a great change in the 
 whole class as a class. For less work is done by each 
 
 L individual ; and far more wages expected. The most 
 faithful, intelligent, and clever servant I ever knew be- 
 gan life at thirteen years old as maid-of -all- work in the 
 family of a gentleman a poor one certainly, still it 
 was " a gentleman's family," consisting of himself, his 
 wife, and three children. Her wages, the first year were 
 three pounds per annum. What would be thought of 
 such a " place " nowadays ? Yet it turned out not a 
 bad one. The girl was taken literally as "one of the 
 family." The mistress trained her; the little ones loved 
 her ; the eldest daughter educated her aye, up to a 
 point that even the aforesaid article would approve, for 
 she could read and understand Shakespeare, arid write 
 as good a letter as most young ladies when they leave 
 school and marry. She never married, but she remained 
 faithful to the family in weal and woe far more woe 
 than weal, alas ! until she died, but not until she had 
 served two generations. Her grave has been green now 
 
150 
 
 for many a year, yet the last remnant of that family 
 never hears the sound of her name a very common 
 one, " Bessy " without a throb of remembrance too 
 sweet for tears. 
 
 This is what servants used to be, as many an old fam- 
 ily tradition will prove. What are they now ? 
 
 As an answer I could put forward two illustrative 
 anecdotes : of the butler who threw up his place be- 
 cause he had " always been accustomed to have a sofa 
 in his pantry ;" and the parlor-maid who, having accept- 
 ed a situation, declined to go because she and her lug- 
 gage were to be carried from the station in a spring- 
 cart, whereas in her last place they had sent the carriage 
 and a footman to meet her. These are, I hope, excep- 
 tional instances, but we all know what our own and our 
 friends' servants are in the main. 
 
 As to dress, for instance. If extravagant folly of 
 toilet were not becoming so common in all ranks, we 
 should be absolutely startled by the attire of our cooks 
 and parlor-maids on Sundays especially. And it is so 
 utterly out of proportion to their means. Fancy our 
 grandmothers giving Jenny the housemaid to Thomas 
 the gardener to settle down in holy matrimony upon 
 say a pound a week; and they are seen walking to 
 church he in a fine black suit, and she in a light silk 
 gown, tulle bonnet and veil, and a wreath of orange 
 blossom ! Yet such has been the costume at more than 
 
151 
 
 one wedding which, has lately come under my notice ; 
 and I believe it is the usual style of such in that class. 
 
 Then as to eating and drinking ; the extent to which 
 this goes on in large and wealthy families is something 
 incredible. Stout footmen, dainty ladies'-maids, and 
 under servants of all kinds, expect to be fed with the 
 fat of the land, and to drink in proportion. It is not 
 enough to say that they live as well as their masters and 
 mistresses they often live much better ; the kind of 
 fare that satisfied twenty or forty years ago would be 
 intolerable now. Expense and waste they never think 
 of ; they are only comers and goers according to their 
 own convenience, and the more they get out of their 
 " places " during their temporary stay the better. 
 
 This, too, is another sad change. A house where the 
 servants remain is becoming such an exception as to be 
 quite notable in the neighborhood. 
 
 "Why did I come after your place, ma'am ?" answered 
 a decent elderly man, applying for a situation as garden- 
 er. " To tell you the truth, I heard yours was a place 
 where the servants stayed ; so I thought it would suit 
 me, and my wife too, and I came after it." Of course, 
 he was taken, and will probably end his days there. 
 
 But most servants are rolling stones which gather no 
 moss. Nor wish it even ; they prefer moving about. 
 They change their mistresses as easily as their caps. 
 The idea of considering themselves as members of the 
 
152 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 family to stick to it, as it to them, through all difficul- 
 ties not absolutely overwhelming would be held as 
 simply ridiculous. To them " master " is merely the 
 man who pays, and " missis " the woman who " wor- 
 rits." That between these and themselves there could 
 be any common interest, or deep sympathy of any kind, 
 never enters their imagination. Nor, alas ! does it into 
 that of the upper half of the household. If the mis- 
 tress, with a child dangerously ill up-stairs, is shocked to 
 hear the unchecked merriment in the servants' hall, why 
 does she forget that not long ago she refused to let her 
 cook away to see a dying sister because of that day's 
 dinner-party. " It would have been so very inconvenient, 
 you know. Afterward, I let her go immediately/' Yes, 
 but the sister was dead. 
 
 This may be a sharply drawn picture, but, I ask, is it 
 overdrawn? Is it not the average state of the relation 
 nowadays between masters and servants? There may 
 be strict uprightness, liberality, even kindness on the one 
 side, and duty satisfactorily done on the other ; but of 
 sympathy the common human bond between man and 
 man, or woman and woman there is almost none. No- 
 body gives it, and nobody expects to find it. 
 
 Why is this ? Or can it be the reason there must be 
 a reason that every body declares it is almost impossi- 
 ble to get good servants ? 
 
 May I suggest that perhaps this may arise from the 
 
153 
 
 fact of servants finding it so exceedingly difficult to get 
 good masters and mistresses ? 
 
 By good I mean not merely good-natured, well-mean- 
 ing people, but those who have a deeply rooted conscien- 
 tious sense of responsibility who believe themselves to 
 be, as superiors, constituted by God, not merely the rul- 
 ers, but the guide and guard of their inferiors; and 
 whose life is spent in finding out the best way in which 
 that solemn duty can be fulfilled. 
 
 In every age, evil as well as good takes root down- 
 ward and bears fruit upward. All reformations, as well 
 as all corruptions, begin with the upper class and de- 
 scend to the lower. Even as there is seldom an irre- 
 deemable naughty child without the parents being in 
 some way to blame, so we rarely hear of a household 
 tormented by a long succession of bad servants without 
 suspecting that possibly the master and mistress may 
 not be altogether such innocent victims as they imagine 
 themselves. 
 
 For it is from them, the heads of the house, that the 
 house necessarily takes its tone. If a lady spends a 
 large proportion of her income on milliners and dress- 
 makers, how can she issue sumptuary laws to her cook 
 and housemaid ? If a gentleman habitually consumes 
 as much wine as he can safely drink perhaps a little 
 more, though he is never so ungenteel as actually to get 
 "drunk" --how can lie blame John the coachman or 
 
 G2 
 
154: 
 
 William the gardener that they do get drunk they 
 who have nothing else to amuse themselves with ? For 
 their master takes no care to supply any thing that they 
 rationally can amuse themselves with, being as indiffer- 
 ent to their minds as he is to their bodies. So that both 
 are kept going like machinery, ready to do their neces- 
 sary work, nothing else is needed, and nothing ever in- 
 quired into. They, the master and mistress, are not 
 their " brother's " keepers they are only his employers. 
 They use him, criticise him, control him, are even kind 
 to him in a sort of way, but they have no sympathy with 
 him whatever. 
 
 This is apparently the weak point the small wheel 
 broken which produces most of the jarring in the pres- 
 ent machinery of society. The tie between upper and 
 lower classes has become loosened has sunk into a mere 
 matter of convenience. Not that the superior is inten- 
 tionally unkind ; in fact, he bestows on his inferiors 
 many a benefit ; but he does not give it, or exchange it ; 
 he throws it at him much as you wo uld t throw a bone at 
 a dog, with the quiet conviction, " Take it it is for your 
 good; but you are the dog and I am the man, for- all 
 that." 
 
 Is this right or necessary ? That there should be 
 distinctions of classes is necessary. Rich and poor, 
 masters and servants, must always exist; but need they 
 be pitted against each other the one ruling, the other 
 
155 
 
 resisting ; the one exacting, the other denying, to the ut- 
 most of their mutual power? That mysterious link, 
 which can bind together the most opposite elements, and 
 which, in default of a better term, I have called sympa- 
 thy though using it more in the French than English 
 meaning of the word is altogether wanting. 
 
 Was it always so? In olden times, when the primi- 
 tive institution of rude slavery softened into feudal serv- 
 itude the weak hiding together under shelter of the 
 strong, and the ignorant putting themselves under the 
 guidance of the educated undoubtedly the relation was 
 very different. The line of division between class and 
 class was drawn as distinctly as now, and yet the bond 
 was much closer and tenderer. The feudal lord had his 
 retainers, the lady her serving-maids. These she in- 
 structed in all domestic duties, even as he trained his 
 men in the field. The root of the relationship was, of 
 course, mutual advantage ; but it blossomed into mutual 
 kindliness, and bore fruit in that fidelity which is not 
 lessened but increased by the consciousness of mutual 
 dependence. The difference of rank was, so far as we 
 can discover, maintained in those old days as strongly as 
 now; but it was like the difference between parent and 
 child where the one exercises, and the other submits to, 
 an authority which is not mere arbitrary rule, but wise 
 control and generous protection. 
 
 This, I think, is the point which all shoot wide of now- 
 
156 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 adays; the magic charm which nobody can find. They 
 will not recognize that the kingly relation for every 
 head of a household must be a king therein; nay, an 
 autocrat, since a wise autocracy is the safest and sim- 
 plest form of government the regal relation also in- 
 cludes the parental. The Romans understood this in the 
 words " paterfamilias," " materf amilias :" " f amilias " im- 
 plying not only the children, but the servants. Is it too 
 startling a theory to assert that the heads of a large 
 household are nearly as responsible for their servants as 
 they are for their children ? and that the servants owe 
 them the same kind of duty faithfulness, gratitude, 
 loving obedience ? Not blind obedience, but a clear- 
 sighted submission ; which must be won, not compelled ; 
 and can only be won by the exercise of those qualities 
 the only qualities which justify one human being in 
 being the master of another. This, I believe, is the 
 principle upon which we are constituted " our brother's 
 keeper." A principle which modern masters and mis- 
 tresses, who take their servants from the nearest regis- 
 ter-office, and return them thence w r hen they have done 
 with them, will call perfectly Utopian. Did they ever 
 try to put it in practice ? 
 
 In the first place, what is their definition of a servant ? 
 A person who will do the prescribed work in the most 
 satisfactory manner for reasonable wages, and beyond 
 that give as little trouble as possible. Somebody who 
 
157 
 
 comes when convenient, is treated as convenient, and got 
 rid of also when convenient to the establishment. If 
 servants "suit" the place, or the place suits them, they 
 stay ; if not, they go ; and there is an end of it. The 
 idea that they " enter a family," as the phrase is, to be- 
 come from that day an integral portion of it; to share 
 its joys and sorrows, labors and cares, and to receive 
 from it a corresponding amount of interest and sympa- 
 thy, thereby commencing and cementing a permanent 
 tie not to be broken except by serious misconduct or 
 misfortune, or any of those inevitables which no one can 
 guard against this old-fashioned notion never occurs 
 to any body. 
 
 Hence the rashness with which such engagements are 
 formed. The carelessness manifested by most people in 
 engaging their servants is almost inconceivable. The 
 " place " is applied for or the mistress applies at a reg- 
 ister-office. Out of numerous candidates she selects 
 those she thinks most likely ; the " character " is sought 
 and supplied ; if that is satisfactory, all is settled ; and 
 a man or woman, whom nobody knows any thing of, 
 is thereupon brought into the family, to hold in it the 
 most intimate relation possible. Of course, such an ar- 
 rangement may succeed ; but the chances that it will 
 not succeed are enormous. 
 
 This formality of "getting a character" has often 
 seemed to me one of the most curious delusions that 
 
158 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 sensible people labor under. When written, it is almost 
 valueless : any body can forge it, or even giving it lona 
 fide, may express it in such a way as to convey any thing 
 but the real truth. Besides, is that truth the real truth ? 
 When we consider the prejudices, the vexations, on both 
 sides,- which often arise in parting with a servant, can 
 we always depend upon a faithful statement, or upon 
 those who make it ? I have often thought that instead 
 of inquiring any servant's character, we ought rather to 
 inquire the character of the late mistress. 
 
 Besides, as a rule, a really efficient servant needs no 
 character at all. Such a one on leaving a situation is. 
 sure to have half-a-dozen families eager to secure so rare 
 and valuable a possession. A good servant never lacks 
 a place; a good master or mistress rarely finds any 
 want of good servants. Temporary difficulties may be- 
 fall both; but in the long run it is thus. Even as if 
 one carefully notices the course of the world every 
 man, be he religious or irreligious, will come, at the mid- 
 dle or end of life, to the same conclusion as David : " I 
 have been young, and now am old ; yet have I not seen 
 the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." 
 Not that all is smooth or easy or fortunate ; on the con- 
 trary, " Many are the afflictions of the righteous ; but 
 the Lord delivereth him out of them all." 
 
 And so, to measure small things by great, I believe 
 that though accidental difficulties may arise, a good 
 
159 
 
 servant may drift into a bad place ; a conscientious 
 master or mistress may be cheated here and there by 
 unfaithful servants still, in the long run, things right 
 themselves. No law is more certain in its ultimate 
 working than that which affirms that all people find 
 their own level and reap their own deservings. 
 
 But to come to practicalities and yet I believe no 
 practical work is ever done so well as when it has a 
 strong spiritual sense at the core of it what is thefirst 
 thing to be considered in choosing one's servants ? I 
 answer, unhesitatingly their moral nature. 
 
 "What!" I hear some fashionable mistress exclaim, 
 " trouble myself about the moral nature of John the 
 footman or Sarah the cook or even, though they cotne 
 Closer in contact with me, of my housemaid, nurse, or 
 lady's-maid ? Impossible ! simply ridiculous ! So that 
 they do their work well, and don't trouble me, that is 
 all I require." 
 
 Is it all ? You are then content to have about you 
 continually mere machines, the motive power of whose 
 existence you are utterly ignorant of? What hold 
 have you upon them ? what guard against them ? what 
 guarantee for virtue or preservative from vice ? Yice 
 which, say what you like, must affect you and yours, 
 sometimes in the very closest way. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the extreme fool- 
 hardiness, to say the least of it, with which respectable 
 
160 
 
 families put themselves at the mercy of strange serv- 
 ants, of whose antecedents they know nothing, or know 
 only that they are capable of doing their allotted work, 
 are " trained parlor-maids," " good plain cooks," and so 
 on. But of their moral characteristics, their tempers, 
 principles, habits all that constitutes the difference be- 
 tween bad people and good, those who are a comfort 
 and help, or else an absolute torment and curse in a 
 household the heads of that household are in entire 
 ignorance. Yet they expect, besides efficiency in work, 
 all the fidelity, conscientiousness, and other good quali- 
 ties which they would have found in a person whom 
 they had known all their lives, who was trained in all 
 their ways, and accustomed to all their peculiarities. 
 
 Do they never consider that in this, as in most things, 
 we only get what we earn, and get nothing without 
 earning it ? That if we want really good servants, we 
 must make them such ? We must bring them up, even 
 as we bring up our children, with the same care and 
 patience, making allowance for the nice distinctions of 
 character in every human being ; and, above all, having 
 the same sense of responsibility, though in a lesser de- 
 gree, that we have concerning our own family. 
 
 To this end it is advisable to take young servants, 
 which most people object to. They prefer domestics 
 ready-made that is, made by other people, who have 
 had all the trouble of training them. But these can 
 
161 
 
 never suit us so well, or have the same personal attach- 
 ment for us, as those we have trained ourselves. 
 
 For I hold strange doctrine nowadays ! that per- 
 sonal attachment is the real pivot upon which all do- 
 mestic service turns. It may sound very ridiculous 
 that a lady should try to win the hearts of her cooks 
 and housemaids, and a gentleman trouble himself as to 
 whether his coachman or gardener had a respectful re- 
 gard for " master." Yet otherwise little real good is 
 effected on either side. 
 
 "Without love, all service becomes mere eye-service, 
 or at best a cold matter-of-fact doing one's duty ; any 
 attempts at training are almost useless ; and with al- 
 ready trained and efficient servants, their very efficiency 
 is, the heart being wanting, an unsatisfactory thing, like 
 being served by the two hands which waited upon the 
 Prince in the fairy tale of the White Cat. Admi- 
 rably competent hands, no doubt, but a poor exchange 
 for the bright face and pleasant voice of what children 
 call " a person," and a person that loves us. 
 
 I am bold enough to say that in a really happy and 
 well-arranged household it is absolutely indispensable 
 that the servants should really love " the family," and 
 be loved by them. Under no other conditions can the 
 duty which is laid upon us of being our brother's keep- 
 er be thoroughly fulfilled. And how is this to be 
 done? 
 
162 
 
 MY BROTHER S KEEPEK. 
 
 " I can't imagine why it is that my servants never 
 take to me," said a very kind but reserved mistress, 
 complaining to another who was more happily circum- 
 stanced ; " I am sure I mean them well would do all 
 I could for them, only somehow I never know how to 
 talk to them." 
 
 That is the very reason. Most people never talk to 
 their servants at all. They " speak " to them with pat- 
 ronizing benignity, they order them, find fault with 
 them, or sharply scold them ; but any thing beyond 
 that, any thing that brings the two human beings face 
 to face as human beings, such as cordial praise for well- 
 doing ; quiet, serious, sorrowful rebuke for ill-doing ; 
 sympathy in trouble ; and last, not least, an equally 
 quick sympathy in their pleasures and amusements is 
 a thing unthought of on either side. Class and class 
 go on their parallel lines, close together, yet eternally 
 apart. 
 
 It is sad as strange sometimes to notice the way in 
 wilich presumably good people speak to servants, either 
 with a cold, repellent reserve, or a furious unreserve, 
 such as they would never use toward any other. Now 
 he who flies into a rage and insults an equal may be a 
 fool, but he who insults an inferior is worse he is a 
 coward. Many a gentleman in his stable, and many a 
 lady in her kitchen or nursery, would do well to pause 
 before condemning: themselves as such. 
 
163 
 
 Nevertheless, to " spoil " a servant is as dangerous as 
 spoiling a child. In both cases discipline must be kept 
 up. The head of a household is justified in laying 
 down for it the strictest laws, and insisting that they 
 shall not be broken. Mistresses might with advantage 
 be very much severer than many now take the trouble 
 to be against waste, overdressing, overfeeding, perqui- 
 sites, visitors, and all the luxurious items which make 
 servants so expensive to the family's injury and their 
 own. And, laws once laid down, no alternative must 
 be accepted. " Obey, or you leave my service," is the 
 only safe rule. 
 
 But this strictness is compatible with the utmost kind- 
 liness nay, even familiarity. A mistress who is sure 
 of her own position, and safely intrenched in her own 
 quiet dignity, may be almost a mother to her servants 
 without fearing from them the slightest over-familiarity. 
 Kay, she will not lose their respect by actually helping 
 in their work, or at least showing them that she knows 
 how the work should be done, as was the habit with the 
 ladies of olden time. A cook will not think the worse 
 of her mistress if, instead of ringing the bell and scold- 
 ing violently over an ill-cooked dinner, she descends to 
 the kitchen and takes the pains to explain all the defi- 
 ciencies of to-day, showing how they may be remedied 
 to-morrow. And if this is done carefully and kindly, 
 the chances are that they will be remedied ; and a lit- 
 
164 
 
 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 tie temporary trouble will avoid endless trouble after- 
 ward. 
 
 Fault-finding is inevitable ; reproof, sharp and unmis- 
 takable, is sometimes necessary nay, salutary ; dismis- 
 sion, instant and sudden, without hope of reprieve or 
 forgiveness, may occasionally be the only course possi- 
 ble ; but no head of a household is justified in using to- 
 ward any of its members one rough or harsh or con- 
 temptuous word. The mistress who scolds, and the 
 master who swears at a servant, at once put themselves 
 in a false position, sink from their true dignity, and de- 
 serve any impertinence they get. 
 
 " Impertinence !" I once heard remarked by a lady, 
 a house-mother for many years; "why, I never had an 
 impertinent word from a servant in my life." 
 
 Of course not, because in all her dealings with them 
 
 J O 
 
 she herself was scrupulously courteous as courteous as 
 she would have been to any of her equals, friends, or ac- 
 quaintances. She had sense to see that, putting aside 
 the duty of it, one of the chief differences between class 
 and class, superior and inferior, educated and unedu- 
 cated, is this unvarying politeness. I shall never forget 
 watching an altercation between two London omnibus 
 drivers the one heaping on the other every opprobri- 
 ous name he could think of ; while his rival, sitting 
 calmly on the box, listened in silence, then turned round 
 to reply, " And you you're a " he paused " you're 
 
165 
 
 a gentleman !" The satire cut sharp. Omnibus No. 1 
 drove away amid shouts of laughter, mingled with hiss- 
 es ; omnibus No. 2 remained master of the field. 
 
 So, whatever may be the conduct of her servants, the 
 " missis " loses her last hold over them if, however pro- 
 voked, she allows them by any word or deed of hers to 
 doubt that she is a lady. 
 
 And servants have a far keener appreciation of a 
 " real lady," as they call it, than we give them credit 
 for. They seldom fail to distinguish between the born 
 gentlewoman, however poor, and the nouveau riche, 
 whom only her riches make different from themselves. 
 They are sharp enough to see that, as a rule, the born or 
 educated gentlewoman, sure of herself and her position, 
 will treat them much more familiarly and kindly than 
 the other. And this kindness, even unaccompanied by 
 tangible benefactions, what a powerful agent it is ! 
 
 Of course, there are those whom we may emphatical- 
 ly term " the lower classes," who seem to consider the 
 upper class not only their keepers, but their legitimate 
 prey. But there are others, over whom gentleness of 
 speech, thoughtf ulness in word and act, a desire to save 
 them trouble, a little pains taken to procure them some 
 innocent pleasure, has a thousand times more influence 
 than gifts, or even great benefits carelessly bestowed. 
 
 And here, among the duties of heads of families I 
 would include one, too often overlooked that of giving 
 
166 
 
 their servants a fair amount of actual pleasure. " All 
 work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and the 
 kitchen requires relaxation as well as the parlor. Not 
 an occasional " day out," grudgingly given, and with a 
 complete indifference as to where and how it is spent, 
 but a certain amount of variety and amusement regu- 
 larly provided. 
 
 The question is what this should be ; and there each 
 individual family must decide for itself. I differ from 
 that eloquent defender of servants' rights who would 
 put the piano-forte side by side with the dresser, and 
 mix elegant literature with the cleaning of saucepans ; 
 but I do think that any servant with an ear for music 
 or a taste for reading should be encouraged in every 
 possible way that does not interfere with daily duty. 
 " Work first, pleasure afterward," should be the mis- 
 tress's creed, for herself, her children, her servants ; and 
 she will generally find the work all the better done for 
 not forgetting the pleasure. 
 
 Ignorance is at the root of half the errors of this 
 world errors which soon develop into actual sins. In 
 spite of the not unfrequently given opinion that it is a 
 mistake to educate our inferiors, and that the march of 
 intellect of late years has been the cause of most of the 
 evils from which we now suffer, I think it will always be 
 found that the cleverer and better educated servants are, 
 the greater help and comfort they prove in a household. 
 
167 
 
 And oh, what a help, what a comfort ! " Better is a 
 friend that is near than a brother afar off," says Solo- 
 mon. And often, in the cares, worries, and hard experi- 
 ences of life, far better than even the friends outside 
 the house are the faithful servants within it, who offer 
 us no obtrusive sympathy, no well-meant yet utterly use- 
 less and troublesome advice, but simply do what we tell 
 them, or know us well enough to do what we want with- 
 out our telling; and by their regular mechanical ways 
 make things smooth and comfortable about us, thereby 
 creating an unconscious sense of repose amid the sharp- 
 est trials. If I were to name the greatest domestic bless- 
 ing that the mother of a family can have next to a 
 good and dutiful child, it is a faithful servant. 
 
 But, as I have said before, the blessing must be earn- 
 ed. And even in these days it is in every one's power 
 to earn it. Even if the present generation has so great- 
 ly deteriorated that a satisfactory trained servant is al- 
 most impossible to find, there is always the raw mate- 
 rial, the new generation, to work upon. Every mistress 
 of a household, every clergyman of a parish, with other 
 responsible agents who form the centre of a circle of 
 dependents, may with a little pains keep their eyes upon 
 all the gro wing-up girls and boys around them ; catch 
 them early and guide them for good in all sorts of prac- 
 tical ways. Of course this gives trouble every thing 
 in life gives trouble ; it requires common-sense and pa- 
 
168 
 
 tience, qualities not too abundant in this world. But 
 the thing can be done, and those who do it will rarely 
 fail to reap the benefit. For it is one of those forms of 
 charity which pays itself " small profits and quick re- 
 turns." And though this may be a mean reason to urge, 
 just like the maxim that honesty is the best policy, still 
 there are people in this world who will not be the less 
 charitable for knowing that charity is a good invest- 
 ment. 
 
 It is especially so when beginning at home it goes 
 on to widen into the circles nearest home. There is a 
 subject which has been well talked over in public meet- 
 ings, well discussed in newspapers, for the last few 
 years, yet remains pretty nearly where it stood when 
 well-to-do-people first began to open their eyes to it 
 the condition of the poor at their gates. 
 
 The question, Am I my brother's keeper ? is as seri- 
 ous to the rich man with regard to the dependents out- 
 side his doors as within them. This, setting aside the 
 question of their spiritual state. I do not hold with 
 those who administer tracts first and food afterward ; 
 and I incline to believe that the washing of the soul is 
 very useless until the body has been well treated with 
 soap and water. Each earnest man has his own pet 
 theory for dealing with the spiritual condition of those 
 about him, but for their physical state, so far as he can 
 affect it, every man is answerable. 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 169 
 
 Not in a large way. The great error of benevolent 
 people nowadays is that they will do every thing largely. 
 They begin far off, instead of near at hand. They will 
 subscribe thousands of pounds for the famine in India, 
 the widows and orphans of a shipwreck or a colliery ac- 
 cident, the presenting of a testimonial to the widow and 
 children of some notable man, who in most cases ought 
 to have himself provided for his belongings; but the 
 duty of seeing that the two or three families w r ho de- 
 pend on them have enough wages to live upon, a decent 
 house to live in, and some kindly supervision and in- 
 struction to help them to live a sanitary and virtuous 
 life, is far too small a thing for your great philanthro- 
 pists. 
 
 Yet if they would manage to do this, and only this 
 just as every one in a large city is compelled to sweep 
 the snow from his own door-step what an aggregate of 
 advantage would be reached ! Each large household is 
 a nucleus, around which gather, of necessity, several 
 smaller ones. Coachman, groom, gardener, laborer, out- 
 door servants of every sort, must all trust for their sub- 
 sistence to the great family. Thus every man with an 
 income of from one thousand to indefinite thousands per 
 annum has inevitably a certain number, more or less, of 
 human souls and bodies dependent on him for their well- 
 being. Is he conscious of the responsibility ? Does he 
 recognize that in this, at least, he is his brother's keeper ? 
 
 H 
 
170 MY BEOTHEE'S KEEPEE. , 
 
 In large towns things are different. Though the poor 
 hang festering upon the very robe's hem of the rich, and 
 scarcely any grand street or square but has a wretched 
 mews or back alley behind it, still the gulf between the 
 two is so great that it is difficult to pass it. Then, too, 
 the population is so migratory here to-day, gone to- 
 morrow that any lasting influence is almost impossible. 
 The evils only too possible and rich neighbors would 
 do well for their own sakes not to forget this are the 
 crimes that lurk, the diseases that breed, in these miser- 
 able, homeless homes. 
 
 Some people have been bold enough to attempt a 
 remedy. Some noble, self-denying souls have gone 
 from end to end of these courts and alleys, cleansing 
 and reviving, pouring through them a wholesome stream 
 of beneficence, which God grant may never run dry. 
 For in our large cities this melancholy condition of 
 things is inevitable. All honor be to them who at- 
 tempt not a cure, alas ! but even an amelioration. 
 
 However,- in the country our landowners and large 
 householders have no excuse for their sins. For years, 
 ever since Charles Kingsley wrote his " Yeast," in which 
 the noble girl, Argemone, dies of a fever caught at the 
 miserable cottages which had been left year after year 
 undrained, unrepaired, a hot-bed of disease and conta- 
 gion, the same thing has been going on in country vil- 
 lages, lovely and picturesque to the eye, but, if you look 
 
171 
 
 further, full of all things foul and vile. It is as bad 
 or worse in new-built suburban neighborhoods, where 
 wealthy residents have been so anxious to drive uncom- 
 fortable neighbors away that there are literally no cot- 
 tages. The mechanic has to go to his work, or the out- 
 door servant to his daily calling, miles and miles; and 
 even then house accommodation is as wretched as it is 
 limited ; several families not of the very poor, but of 
 people able to pay for decent accommodation, if they 
 could only get it are huddled together in some ill- 
 drained, ill-ventilated, and worse built house, subdivid- 
 ed and sublet to the last possibility. 
 
 As the neighborhood increases, and with it the abso- 
 lute necessity for a certain number of the poor to serve 
 the rich, their need of house-room increases too. So 
 great is the press of tenants that rents rise; grasping 
 builders run up, on speculation, wretched strings of cot- 
 tages, bran-new and taking on the outside quite " gen- 
 teel residences " to look at but within every conceiva- 
 ble want and abomination. However bad great towns 
 may be, any body who examines the dwelling-houses of 
 I will not say the poor, but the working classes in 
 the country, has good need to turn to all their " breth- 
 ren " who have money in hand, and ask why, when 
 building "palatial mansions" for themselves, or even 
 stately churches for is it for Him who expressly says 
 He " dwells not in houses made with hands ?" they 
 
172 
 
 can not spare a few hundred pounds to build a few de- 
 cent cottages for their humbler neighbors? Simple, 
 solid cottages, where the wind does not whistle through 
 one-brick walls, nor the rain soak through leaky win- 
 dows, and the gaudy papering drop off with damp ; 
 where water supply and house drainage do not mingle 
 even as the respectable and the vile, the provident 
 and the improvident, the sober and the drunkard, are 
 often forced to mingle in these wretched homes. Con- 
 sequently the best-intentioned helper, the most judicious 
 friend, find it difficult to choose between the bad and the 
 good, the careful and the untidy, those who deserve to 
 be aided and encouraged and those whom any assist- 
 ance makes only more helpless and more undeserving. 
 
 Nevertheless, we are still our brother's keeper. Not 
 our seventeenth cousin black, olive, or brown but our 
 brother who lives next door to us, and for whom we 
 ought to do our very best before we go further. There- 
 fore, I say, let every man sweep his own door-step clean. 
 Let him take a little trouble to use among his immediate 
 dependents all the influence his position gives him. Let 
 him try to make them good, if he can ; but at any rate 
 let him do his utmost to make them comfortable. I 
 have heard it said that a thief is not half so likely to 
 steal when he has got a clean shirt on ; and I believe 
 the master who takes pains to provide his servants with 
 decent houses, safe from malaria, free from overcrowd- 
 
 
173 
 
 ing nay, who even condescends to look in and see that 
 every thing is neat and convenient, taking an interest in 
 the papers on the walls and the flowers in the gardens 
 would soon cease to complain that they wasted or pec- 
 ulated his substance, or spent their own in the skittle- 
 ground and the tap-room. 
 
 But in this matter no absolute laws can be laid down, 
 no minutiae particularized. The subject is so wide, and 
 each case must be judged on its own merits. Every 
 man and woman must decide individually how far for- 
 tune has constituted them their brother's keeper, and to 
 what extent they are fulfilling that trust. How it should 
 be fulfilled they alone can tell. It lies between them 
 and their consciences ; or, to speak more solemnly, be- 
 tween them and their God. 
 
 " Those whom Thou hast given me," said the divinest 
 Master that ever walked this earth, of the men who in- 
 stinctively called Him by that name. And though in 
 this cynical generation it may provoke a smile the 
 mere notion that our hired servants, our followers and 
 dependents, are given to us by God, that we may be His 
 agents in guiding and helping them still the fact, if it 
 be a fact, remains the same, whether we believe it or 
 not. And I think it would be a consolation at many a 
 death-bed death-beds watched and soothed by some 
 long-tried, faithful servant, and oftentimes only a serv- 
 ant to look back through the nearly ended life upon a 
 
174: 
 
 MY BKOTIIER S KEEPER. 
 
 few waifs and strays rescued, a few young souls guided 
 in the right way, sufferers saved from worse suffering, 
 honest " brothers " and sisters helped, strengthened, and 
 rewarded. The w r orld may never know it, for it is a 
 kind of beneficence which does not show outside ; but I 
 can imagine such a man or woman master or mistress 
 echoing without any pride, but with a sort of thank- 
 ful gladness, the momentous words, " Those that Thou 
 gavest me I have kept : and none of them is lost." 
 
Sermon t)Jf. anb Cast. 
 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
VI. 
 
 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 T SHOULD premise of tins sermon that it is not a 
 -*- very cheerful one, nor meant for the very young. 
 They, to whom joy seems as interminable as sorrow at 
 the time, will neither listen to it nor believe it. But 
 their elders who may have experienced its truth, and 
 had strength to accept it as such, may find a certain 
 calm even in its sadness. For these I write ; not those, 
 until in their turn they have proved the same. 
 
 " Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing 
 be lost." So once said the Divine Master, after feeding 
 His hungering five thousand. How often, even without 
 relation to the circumstances under which they were 
 first uttered, do the mere words flash across one's mind 
 in various crises of life ; words full of deep meaning 
 solemn with pathetic warning. 
 
 For to how few has existence been any thing like per- 
 fect, leaving no fragments to be gathered up ! Who 
 can say he has attained all his desires, fulfilled all his 
 youth's promises? looks back on nothing he regrets, 
 
 11 a 
 
178 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 nor desires to add any thing to what he has accom- 
 plished ? 
 
 How many lives are, so to speak, mere relics of an 
 ended feast, fragments which may be either left to waste, 
 or be taken up and made the most of. For we can not 
 die just when we wish it, and because we wish it. The 
 fact may be very unromantic, but it is a fact that a too 
 large dinner or a false step on the stairs kills much 
 more easily than a great sorrow. Nature compels us to 
 live on, even with broken hearts as with lopped-off mem- 
 bers. True, we are never quite the same again ; never 
 the complete human being ; but we may still be a very 
 respectable, healthy human being, capable of living out 
 our three-score years and ten with tolerable comfort 
 after all. 
 
 Of course this is very uninteresting. It is not the 
 creed of novels and romances. There every body is hap- 
 py and married, or unhappy and dies. A cynic might 
 question whether, in his grand solution of all mundane 
 difficulties, to transpose the adjectives, retaining the 
 verbs, would not be much nearer the truth ; since death 
 ends our afflictions, and marriage very often begins them. 
 But your cynics are the most narrow-visioned of all phi- 
 losophers. Let them pass. Safer and better is it to be- 
 lieve that every one may, if he choose, attain to a cer- 
 tain amount of happiness enough to brighten life, and 
 make it not only endurable, but nobly useful, until the 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 179 
 
 end. But entire felicity is the lot of none, and more- 
 over was never meant to be. 
 
 Until we have learned to accept this fact, reverently, 
 humbly, not asking the why and wherefore, which we can 
 never by any possibility find out until then our soul's 
 education, the great purpose of our being in the body 
 at all, is not even begun. We are still in the ABC 
 of existence, and many a bitter tear shall we have to 
 shed, many an angry fit of resistance to both lessons and 
 Teacher, many a cruel craving after sunshiny play and 
 delicious laziness, will be our portion till we are ad- 
 vanced enough to understand why we are thus taught. 
 
 It is curious, if it were not so sad, to notice how many 
 years of fruitful youth we spend less in learning than in 
 wondering why we are compelled to learn w r hy we can 
 not be left to do just as we like, having every thing to 
 enjoy and nothing to suffer. For, whether we confess 
 it or not, most of us start in life with the conviction that 
 Providence somehow owes us a great debt of felicity, 
 and if He do not pay it, there must be something rad- 
 ically wrong not with ourselves, of course: in youth 
 the last person we doubt is ourself but with the whole 
 management of the universe. "Here I am," the young 
 man or maiden soliloquizes. " I wish to be happy ; it is 
 Heaven's business to make me happy me individually, 
 without reference to the rest of the world, and whether 
 or not I choose to obey the laws laid down for the gen- 
 
180 GATHER UP THE FEAGMENTS. 
 
 eral good. I am I; every blessing sent me I take as 
 my right ; every misfortune that befalls me is a cruelty 
 or an injustice." 
 
 Odd as this reads, put so plainly, still I believe it is, if 
 the/ will seriously examine themselves, the attitude that 
 most young people take toward Providence and the 
 world in general while they are still young. 
 
 A comfortable doctrine, but haying one fault, in com- 
 mon with many other doctrines conceived out of the ar- 
 rogant egotism of the human heart it is not true. 
 
 " This God is our God," exclaims the Psalmist, add- 
 ing, joyfully, " He will be our guide unto death." Aye, 
 but He will also be the guide of millions more, equally 
 His children, with whom we must take our lot ; every 
 minute portion of His creation being liable to be made 
 subservient to the working of the whole. A working 
 which, if not entirely by chance and for evil, must nec- 
 essarily be by design, and for the general good of the 
 whole. Any other theory of happiness strikes a blow at 
 the root of all religious faith the sense of a divine 
 Fatherhood, not limited or personal, but unlimited and 
 universal. 
 
 For it is God's relation to us, not ours to Him, which 
 is the vital question. The great craving of humanity is 
 we want a, God to believe in. What He wants with 
 us or does with us is a secondary thing ; being God, He 
 is sure to do right. I have sometimes smiled to hear 
 
GATIIEK UP THE FRAGMENTS. 181 
 
 deeply religious people bless the Lord " for saving my 
 poor soul." Why that is the very last thing a creature 
 with a spark of His nature dwelling in it would dream 
 of blessing Him for, or that He would accept as a fit 
 thanksgiving. Especially if that salvation involved, as 
 it usually does, the supposed condemnation of unknown 
 millions, including many dear friends of the devout 
 thanksgiver. That all religion should consist merely in 
 the saving of one's own individual soul ! Such a creed 
 is, simply the carrying out spiritually of that much de- 
 spised sentiment, " Self-preservation is the first law of 
 nature ;" and the followers of it are as purely selfish as 
 the wrecked sailor who, seizing for himself a spar or a 
 hencoop nay, let us say at once, a comfortable boat 
 calmly watches all his mates go down. For this, plainly 
 put, is the position of many an earnest worshiper to- 
 ward his self-invented God. But what a worshiper! 
 and oh, not to speak it profanely, what a God ! 
 
 You will perceive this sermon is clearly "out of 
 church," and would put me outside the pale of many 
 churches. Not, I trust, outside that of the Church invis- 
 ible, spread silently over the whole visible world. Be- 
 cause "Gather up the fragments" is a text which it is 
 useless for me to preach upon or you to listen to unless 
 we both have a strong spiritual sense a conviction of 
 the nothingness of all things human, except those which 
 bind the soul to its Maker, which we call religious faith. 
 
182 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 And though I am far from believing that the present 
 world is nothing, and the world to come every thing ; 
 that we are to console ourselves for every grief, and re- 
 pay ourselves for every resignation, by the idea that 
 thereby we somehow or other make God our debtor, 
 ready to requite us in another existence for all we have 
 lost or willfully thrown away in this ; still it is hopeless 
 either to teach or learn the difficult lesson, which in 
 plain words I may call "making the best of things," 
 without a firm trust, first in His love who bids us do it ; 
 secondly in our own duty of obedience to His para- 
 mount will, in great things and small, simply because it 
 is His will, whether we understand it or not. 
 
 Therefore I am no heretic, though I may say things 
 that make orthodoxy shudder; perhaps because it has a 
 secret fear that they may be true after all. 
 
 These "fragments" of lives how they strew our 
 daily path on every side ! Not a house do we enter, not 
 a company do we mix with, but we more than guess 
 we know that these our friends, men and women, who 
 go about the world, doing their work and taking their 
 pleasure therein, all carry about with them a secret bur- 
 den of bitter disappointments, vanished hopes, unful- 
 filled ambitions, lost loves. Probably every one of them, 
 when his or her smiling face vanishes from the circle, 
 will change it into another, serious, anxious, sad happy, 
 if it be only sad, with no mingling of either bitterness 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 183 
 
 or badness. That complete felicity, winch the young 
 believe in, and expect almost as a matter of certainty to 
 come, never does come. Soon or late, we have to make 
 up our minds to do without it ; to take up the fragments 
 of our blessings, thankful that we have what we have, 
 and are what we are; above all that we have our own 
 burden to bear, and not our neighbor's. But, whatever 
 it is, we must bear it alone ; and this gathering-up of 
 fragments, which I am so earnestly advising, is also a 
 thing which must be done alone. 
 
 The lesson is sometimes learned very early. It is 
 shrewdly said, "At three we love our mothers, at six our 
 fathers, at twelve our holidays, at twenty our sweet- 
 hearts, at thirty our wives, at forty our children, at fif- 
 ty ourselves." Still, in one form or other, love is the 
 groundwork of our existence. 
 
 So at least thinks the passionate boy or sentimental 
 girl who has fallen under its influence. For I suppose 
 we must all concede the every-day fact that most people 
 fall in love some time or other, and that a good many 
 do it even in their teens. You may call it " calf-love," 
 and so it often is; and comes to the salutary end of 
 such a passion : 
 
 "Which does at once, like paper set on fire, 
 Bum and expire." 
 
 But it gives a certain amount of pain and discomfort 
 
184 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 during the conflagration, and often leaves an ugly little 
 Leap of ashes behind. 
 
 Also, it is well to be cautious ; as the foolishest of 
 fancies may develop into a real 'love the blessing or 
 curse of a lifetime. 
 
 " Fond of her ?" I heard an old man once answer, as 
 he stood watching his wife move slowly down their 
 beautiful but rather lonely garden ; they had buried 
 eight of their nine children, and the ninth was going to 
 be married that spring. "Fond of her ?" with a gentle 
 smile, " Why, I've been fond of her these fifty years !" 
 
 But such cases are very exceptional. It is so seldom 
 that one love a happy love runs like a golden thread 
 through the life of either man or woman, that we ought 
 to be patient even with the most frantic boy or forlorn 
 girl who has " fallen in love," and is enduring its first 
 sharp pleasure or pain for both are much alike. 
 
 When they come and tell you that their hearts are 
 broken, it is best not to laugh at them, but to help them 
 to " gather up the fragments " as soon as possible. At 
 first, of course, they will not agree that it is possible. 
 " This or nothing !" is the despairing cry ; and though 
 we may hint that the world is wide, and there may be 
 in it other people, at least as good as the one particular 
 idol, still we can not expect them to believe it. Disap- 
 pointed lovers would think it treason against love to 
 suppose that life is to be henceforward any thing than 
 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 185 
 
 a total blank. It is so, sometimes ; Heaven knows ! I 
 confess to being one of those few who, in this age, dare 
 still believe in love, and in its awful influence, for good 
 or for evil, at the very outset of life. But it is not the 
 whole of life ; nor ought to be. 
 
 The prevention of a so-called " imprudent " marriage 
 namely, an impecunious one and the forcing on of 
 another, which had nothing in the world to recommend 
 it except money, has often been the ultimate ruin of a 
 young man, who would have been a good man had he 
 been a happy man had he married the girl he loved. 
 And in instances too numerous to count, have girls 
 through the common but contemptible weakness of not 
 knowing their own minds, or the worse than weakness 
 of being governed by the minds of others in so exclu- 
 sively a personal matter as marriage driven honest 
 fellows into vice. Or else into some reckless, hasty 
 union, whereby both the man himself and the poor 
 wife, whom he never loved but only married, were made 
 miserable for life. 
 
 Generally speaking, men get over their love-sorrows 
 much easier than women. Naturally ; because life has 
 for them many other things besides love ; for women, 
 almost nothing. But still one does find occasionally a 
 man, prosperous and happy, kind to his wife, and devot- 
 ed to his children, in whom the indelible trace of some 
 early disappointment is that one name is never men- 
 
186 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 tioned, one set of associations entirely put aside. He is 
 a good fellow a cheerful fellow too ; he has taken up 
 the fragments of his life, and made the very best of 
 them. Yet sometimes you feel that the life would have 
 been more complete, the character more nobly devel- 
 oped, -if the man had had his heart's desire, and mar- 
 ried his first love. 
 
 Which nobody does, they say ; certainly, almost no- 
 body ; yet the world wags on ; and every body seems sat- 
 isfied at least in public. Nay, possibly, in private too; 
 for time has such infinite power of healing or hiding. 
 There is nothing harder than a lava stream grown cold. 
 
 Those of us who have reached middle age without 
 dropping who would ever drop? the ties of our 
 youth, move about encircled by dozens of such secret 
 histories, forgotten by the outside world half forgot- 
 ten, perhaps, by the very actors therein with whom we, 
 the spectators, had once such deep sympathy. Now, we 
 sometimes turn and look at a face which we remember 
 as a young face, alive with all the passion of youth 
 and we marvel to see how commonplace it has grown ; 
 reddening cosily over a good dinner, or sharp and eager 
 over business greed ; worn and wrinkled with nursery 
 cares, or sweetly smiling in a grand drawing-room, ready 
 to play its 
 
 "Petty part, 
 With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart." 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 187" 
 
 A sort of gathering-iip of fragments which those who 
 are weak enough or strong enough still to believe in 
 love will think far worse than any scattering. 
 
 The young will not believe us when we tell them that 
 their broken hearts may be mended ought to be ; since 
 life is too precious a thing to be wasted over any one 
 woman, or man either. It is given us to be made the 
 most of ; and this, whether we ourselves are happy or 
 miserable. The misery will not last the happiness 
 will ; if only in remembrance. No pure joy, however 
 fleeting, contains any real bitterness, even when it is 
 gone by. 
 
 But time only will teach this. At first there is noth- 
 ing so overwhelming as the despair of youth, w T hich sees 
 neither before it nor behind ; refuses to be laughed out 
 of or preached out of its cherished woe, which it deems 
 a matter of conscience to believe eternal. 
 
 It will not be eternal ; but best not to say so to the 
 sufferer. Best to attempt neither argument nor conso- 
 lation, only substitution. Hard work, close study, a sud- 
 den plunge into the serious business of life, that the vic- 
 tim may find the world contains other things besides 
 love, is the wisest course to be suggested by those long- 
 suffering, much-abused beings parents and guardians. 
 Love is the best thing few deny that ; but life contains 
 many supplementary blessings too : honorable ambition, 
 leading to a success well-earned and well-used ; to say 
 
188 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 nothing of that calm strength which comes into a young 
 man's heart when he has fought with and conquered 
 fate by first conquering himself, the most fatal fate of 
 all. 
 
 Commonplace preaching this ! Every body has heard 
 it. Strange how seldom any body thinks of acting upon 
 it. In the temporary madness of disappointment a poor 
 fellow will go and wreck his whole future ; and when 
 afterward he would fain build up a new life alas ! 
 there is no material left to build with. 
 
 Therefore it is the duty of those older and wiser, who, 
 perhaps, themselves have waded through the black river 
 and landed safe on the opposite shore, to show him that 
 it is not as deep as it seems, and that it has an opposite 
 shore. He may swim through, with the aid of a stout 
 heart and an honest self-respect : self-respect, not selfish- 
 ness for the most selfish creature alive is a young man 
 in love, except toward the young woman he happens to 
 be in love with. Not seldom, the very best lesson of 
 life bitter but wholesome is taught to a young man 
 by a love disappointment. 
 
 Not so with women ; they being in this matter pas- 
 sive, not active agents. So few girls are "in love" now- 
 adays ; so many set upon merely getting married, that I 
 confess to a secret respect for any heart which has in it 
 the capacity of being " broken." Not that it does break, 
 unless the victim is too feeble physically to fight against 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 180 
 
 her mental suffering ; but the anguish is sore at the 
 time. There is no cure for it, except one, suggested by 
 a little girl I know, who with the innocent passion of six 
 and a half adored a certain " beautiful Charlie" of nine- 
 teen. Some one suggested that Charlie would marry 
 and cease to care for her. " Then I should be so unhap- 
 py," sighed the sad little voice. " What, if he married a 
 wife he was very fond of, and who made him quite hap- 
 py would you be unhappy then?" "No," was the 
 answer, given after a slight pause, which showed this 
 conclusion was not come to without thought "No; I 
 would love his wife, that's all." 
 
 The poor little maid had jumped by instinct wom- 
 anly instinct to the true secret of faithful love the 
 love which desires, above all, the good of the beloved, 
 and therefore learns to be brave enough to look at 
 happiness through another's eyes. 
 
 This is the only way by which any girl can take up 
 the fragments of a lost or unrequited affection : by 
 teaching herself, not to forget it that is impossible 
 but to rise above it ; until the sting is taken out of her 
 sorrow, and it becomes gradually transformed from a 
 slow poison into a bitter but wholesome food. 
 
 Besides, though the suggestion may seem far below 
 the attention of poetical people, there are such things as 
 fathers and mothers, brothers arid sisters, and other not 
 undeserving relations, to whom a tithe of the affection 
 
190 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 wasted upon some (possibly) only half-deserving young 
 man would be a priceless boon. And so long as the 
 world endures there will always be abundance of help- 
 less, sick, and sorrowful people calling on the sorrow- 
 stricken one for aid, and ready to pay her back for all 
 she condescends to give with that grateful affection 
 which heals a wounded heart better than any thing 
 except work. 
 
 Work, work, work ! That is the grand panacea for 
 sorrow ; and, mercifully, there is no end of work to be 
 done in this world, if any body will do it. Few house- 
 holds are so perfect in their happy self-containedness 
 that they are not glad oftentimes of the help of some 
 lonely woman, to whom they also supply the sacred 
 consolation of being able to help somebody, and thus 
 perhaps save her from throwing herself blindly into 
 some foolish career for which she has no real vocation, 
 except that forced upon her by the sickly fancy of sor- 
 row. For neither art nor science nor religion will really 
 repay its votaries, if they take to it, like opium eaters, 
 merely to deaden despair. 
 
 And here I must own to a certain sympathy with 
 those sisterhoods yes, even Roman Catholic sisterhoods 
 who hold out pitying arms to sufferers like these: 
 disappointed maidens, unhappy wives, childless widows ; 
 struck by some one of the many forms of incurable 
 grief which are so common among women, whose des- 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 191 
 
 tiny generally seems less to conquer than to endure. 
 Of course, the natural duties, those which lie close at 
 hand, are safest and best ; but such do not come to all, 
 and any duties are better than none ; any work, even 
 the painful and often revolting toil of a sister of char- 
 ity, is safer than idleness. 
 
 For, say what' you will, and pity them as you may, 
 these broken hearts are exceedingly troublesome to the 
 rest of the world. We do not like to see our relatives 
 and friends going about with melancholy faces, per- 
 petually weeping over the unburied corpse of some 
 hopeless grief or unpardonable wrong. We had much 
 rather they buried it quietly, and allowed us after a due 
 season of sympathy to go on our way. Most of us pre- 
 fer to be comfortable if we can. I have always found 
 those the best-liked people who have strength to bear 
 their sorrows themselves, without troubling their neigh- 
 bors. And the sight of all others most touching, most 
 ennobling, is that of a man or woman whom we know 
 to have suffered, perhaps to be suffering still, yet who 
 still carries a cheerful face, is a burden to no friend, 
 nor casts a shadow over any household perhaps quite 
 the contrary. Those whose own light is quenched are 
 often the light-bringers. 
 
 To accept the inevitable ; neither to struggle against 
 it nor murmur at it, simply to bear it this is the great 
 lesson of life above all to a woman. It may come 
 
192 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 late or early, and the learning of it is sure to be hard ; 
 but she will never be a really happy woman until she 
 has learned it. I have always thought two of the most 
 pathetic pictures of women's lives ever given are Ten- 
 nyson's " Dora " 
 
 " As time 
 
 Went onward, Mary took another mate ; 
 But Dora lived unmarried to her death" 
 
 and Jeanie, in " Auld Robin Gray," who says, with the 
 grave simplicity of a God-fearing Scotswoman 
 
 ' ' I daurna think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin ; 
 So I will do my best a gude wife to be, 
 For Auld Eobin Gray is vera kind to me." 
 
 Besides lost loves, common to both men and women, 
 there are griefs which belong perhaps to men only 
 lost ambitions. It is very sore for a man just touching, 
 or having just passed, middle age, slowly to find out 
 that he has failed in the promise of his youth ; failed 
 in every thing aspirations, hopes, actions ; a man of 
 whom strangers charitably say, " Poor fellow, there's 
 a screw loose somewhere ; he'll never get on in the 
 world." And even his nearest friends begin mourn- 
 fully to believe this ; they cease to hope, and content 
 themselves in finding palliatives for a sort of patient 
 despair. That "loose screw" Heaven knows what it 
 is, or whether he himself is aware of it OK not always 
 seems to prevent his succeeding in any thing ; or else, 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 193 
 
 without any fault of his own, circumstances have made 
 him the wrong man in the wrong place, and it is too 
 late now to get out of it. Pride and shame alike keep 
 him silent ; yet he knows and his friends know, and 
 he knows they know it that his career has been, and 
 always will be, a dead failure ; that the only thing left 
 for him is to gather up the fragments of his vanished 
 dreams, his lost ambitions, his wasted labors, and go on 
 patiently to the end. He does so, working away at a 
 business which he hates, or pursuing an art which ne is 
 conscious he has no talent for, or bound hand and foot 
 in a mesh of circumstances against which he has not 
 energy enough to struggle. Whatever form of destiny 
 may have swamped him, he is swamped, and for life. 
 
 Yet even in a case like this, and there are few sad- 
 der, lies a certain consolation. People prate about 
 heroes ; but one sometimes sees a simple, commonplace 
 man, with nothing either grand or clever about him, 
 who, did we only know it, is more worthy the name of 
 hero than many a conqueror of a city. Aye, though all 
 the dream -palaces of his youth may have crumbled 
 down ; or, like the Arabs, he may have had to build 
 and live in a poor little hut under the ruins of temples 
 that might have been. But One beyond us all knows 
 the story of this pathetic " might-have-been," and has 
 pity upon it the pity that, unlike man's, wounds not, 
 only strengthens and heals. 
 
 I 
 
194 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 For, after all, patience is very strong. Making a mis- 
 take in the outset of life is like beginning to wind a 
 skein of silk at the wrong end. It gives us infinite 
 trouble, and perhaps is in a tangle half through, but it 
 often gets smooth and straight before the close. Thus 
 many a man has so conquered himself, for duty's sake, 
 that the work he originally hated, and therefore did ill, 
 he gets in time to do well, and consequently to like. In 
 the catalogue of success and failure, could such be ever 
 truthfully written, it would be curious to note those who 
 had succeeded in what they had no mind to, and failed 
 in that which they considered their especial vocation. 
 A man's vocation is that to which he is " called ;" only 
 sometimes he mistakes the voice calling. But the voice 
 of duty there is no mistaking, nor its response in the 
 strong heart, the patient mind, the contented spirit ; es- 
 pecially the latter, which, while striving to the utmost 
 against what is not inevitable, when once it is proved to 
 be inevitable, accepts it as such, and struggles no more. 
 Still to do this requires not only human courage, but 
 superhuman faith; the acknowledgment of a Will di- 
 viner than ours, to which we must submit, and in the 
 mere act of submission find consolation and repara- 
 tion. 
 
 This is above all necessary in the most irreparable 
 shattering of any lot an unhappy marriage. A sub- 
 ject so difficult, so delicate, that I would shrink from 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 195 
 
 touching on it, were it not so terribly common, so mourn- 
 fully true. 
 
 Yes ; optimists may deny, and pessimists exult in the 
 fact but I am afraid it is a fact that few marriages 
 are entirely happy. As few, perhaps, as those single 
 lives which are proverbially supposed to be so miser- 
 able. This because the average of people are, volun- 
 tarily or involuntarily, only too prone to be miserable ; 
 and those that are unhappy single will not be cured by 
 marriage, but will rather have the power of making 
 two people wretched instead of one. Add to this the 
 exceeding rashness with which people plunge into a 
 " state " which, as Juliet says 
 
 "Well thou knowest is full of doubt and fear." 
 
 The wonder is not that some married people are less 
 happy than they hoped to be, but that any married peo- 
 ple, out of the honeymoon, or even in it, are ever happy 
 at all. 
 
 Also it is curious to observe how many persons seem 
 actually to enjoy misery ; to throw away their good 
 things, and fasten deliberately on their evil things ; so 
 that each day instead of being a rejoicing over bless- 
 ings that, possibly, are like daily bread, only for the day 
 is wasted in dreary complainings; regrets for what 
 is not, rather than thanksgivings for what is. It all 
 springs from the strange idea before adverted to tlmt 
 
196 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 Heaven is somehow our debtor for endless felicity, which 
 if we do not get, or getting, waste and lose, we cry like 
 Jonah over his withered gourd, " I do well to be angry." 
 
 As men do no, not men ; they are mostly silent, ei- 
 ther from honor or pride but women, when, having 
 made a rash or loveless marriage, they wake up to find 
 themselves utterly miserable, and causing misery all 
 the sharper because it is irretrievable. 
 
 And yet that very irretrievableness is its best hope. 
 Heretical as the doctrine may seem, I believe if one 
 half of the ordinary marriages one sees could have been 
 broken without public scandal, they would have been 
 broken, sometimes even within the first twelve months. 
 But the absolute inevitableness of the bond, at least in 
 our English eyes, makes it fix itself like an iron band 
 around a tree trunk the very bark which it pierces 
 grows over it in time. With the woman, at least ; the 
 man is rather different. .But with both, if truly honor- 
 able men and women, having made a mistake in mar- 
 riage, which was presumably a voluntary act, they must 
 abide by it till death. Death, that remorseless breaker 
 of bonds alike awful to contemplate by love or by hate. 
 Since I suppose the most brutally treated wife, the most 
 heavily bound and sorely tried husband, would never 
 contemplate that release without sensations little short 
 of those of a murderer. 
 
 You perceive I am not one of those who uphold di- 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 197 
 
 vorce. I believe that from no cause, except that which 
 the New Testament gives as a reason for a man's put- 
 ting away his wife or a woman her husband, should the 
 tie be allowed to be broken ; at least, not so as to ad- 
 mit of either party marrying another. The Catholic 
 Church is not far wrong in holding marriage to be a 
 sacrament, and its dissolution impossible; though there 
 are cases in which we must admit the right nay, the 
 necessity of total and lifelong separation. But only in 
 extreme cases, and when to go on enduring hopeless 
 misery would sacrifice others besides the parties them- 
 selves. These two, undoubtedly, alas! fall under the 
 lash of that grim truth, "If you make your own bed, 
 you must lie upon it." 
 
 And is it not sad if it were not often so heroic the 
 way people do lie on it ? with the iron spikes eating into 
 their very flesh ; making no complaint, keeping a fair 
 outside to the world, and telling heaps of innocent lies, 
 which deceive nobody, except perhaps those who tell 
 them. 
 
 A perfect marriage is as rare as a perfect love. 
 Could it be otherwise, when both men and women are 
 so imperfect ? Could aught else be expected ? .Yet all 
 do expect it. Does not every young couple married be- 
 lieve that they are stepping from the church door into en- 
 tire felicity, to end only with their lives ? Yet, look at 
 them ten, fifteen, twenty years after, and how have those 
 
198 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 lives turned out? Should some old friend pay them a 
 visit, will he or she return envying their felicity, as per- 
 haps on that wedding morning or hugging themselves 
 in their own independent old-bachelorship or peaceful 
 old-maidism, thinking happiness is, after all, a much 
 more equally spread thing than they once supposed ? 
 
 So it is. Though, according to the old joke, married 
 people are often like little boys bathing, who cry with 
 chattering teeth to the boys on the shore, " Do come in, 
 it's so warm" it is not always warm. There is no sad- 
 der picture if it were not such an every-day picture' 
 than two young people, married perhaps for love, at any 
 rate for liking, but married in haste, to repent at leisure ; 
 which they piteously do. Knowing little or nothing of 
 each other's temper, taste, character, they slowly wake 
 up to find these so diverse, that it was morally impossi- 
 ble they could have been happy for very long ; and here 
 they are, tied together in the most intimate union that 
 life stilowBJ forever. A thought absolutely maddening 
 at first, and with people of sensitive or impulsive natures. 
 I fear, if we could look into our neighbors' hearts, the 
 catalogue of suicides never committed, of elopements 
 unaccomplished, even of unperpetrated murders, would 
 be, to those who see no difference between the thought 
 and the act, something startling nay, appalling. 
 
 But these tragedies do not happen at least, not often. 
 They drop into " genteel comedy." " Can two walk to- 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 199 
 
 gether, unless they be agreed ?" Yery many couples are 
 not "agreed" far from it; yet seeing they must walk 
 together somehow, they make up their minds to do it, 
 and they do do it. Aye, in spite of good-natured friends, 
 who can not help observing how unhappy they are, and 
 perhaps how happy they might both have been if each 
 had been married to a different sort of person. But this 
 is not the case they are married to the person whom 
 they themselves chose, or fate chose for them. The 
 thing is done, and there is no undoing it. 
 
 None; for the unavoidable bigamies and innocent 
 adulteries so popular nowadays are to all right-minded, 
 I will not even say Christian people, actual sin : simple, 
 absolute, inexcusable sin. No nonsense about " elective 
 affinities " and " Platonic friendships " can excuse the 
 smallest trifling with the sanctity of the marriage bond. 
 The empty heart must remain empty forever. 
 
 Yet it is pitiful most pitiful ! especially if the couple 
 are not bad, only ill-assorted, and young still; young 
 enough to make a possible future of twenty or thirty 
 years look so black in the distance ! haunted by the pale 
 phantom of dead love, the wretched will-o'-the-wisp of 
 a lost happiness. God help them, poor souls ! No won- 
 der such a lot should drive men wicked and women 
 mad ; as it does, of tener perhaps than the world knows. 
 
 For such a grief is of necessity a secret one. The 
 husband pays all outward respect to his silly, bad-tern- 
 
200 . GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 pered wife the wife hides all her husband's faults and 
 exalts his virtues. Both do their best to take up the 
 fragments that remain, pretending all is exactly as they 
 desire; throwing dust in their neighbors' eyes; and, 
 partly from pride, partly from shame, sometimes from 
 mere worldly prudence, keeping up appearances before 
 the world. Whatever the motive, it answers the purpose 
 a righteous purpose too. Society is not scandalized, 
 the home is not broken up, friends and kindred are not 
 troubled. They only guess they really know nothing. 
 And if guessing something, they look on in compassion- 
 ate sympathy they attempt no help or advice, for none 
 is asked : it would be rather resented than not. The 
 fragments must be gathered up alone, by each forlorn 
 sufferer, out of the depths of the suffering heart. And 
 how? 
 
 It is a curious opposite picture to our vaunted English 
 " love " marriages that the French " arranged " mar- 
 riages often turn out so well. The reason is apparent. 
 Two people can not live long together in indifference. 
 The tie between a married pair, howsoever married, 
 must be one of either love or hate ; and, being an indis- 
 soluble tie also, few people being wholly wicked or en- 
 tirely detestable the chances are that in time it be- 
 comes the former. One by one they discover each oth- 
 er's virtues, and learn to be tender over each other's 
 faults. Having, unlike lovers, only the future to deal 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 201 
 
 with, no dead past to bury out of sight, they are kinder 
 to one another even than those who were once much 
 more than kind. For there is no injustice deeper than 
 the conscience-stricken injustice of a waning love no 
 cruelty sharper than that of apostates to a forsaken idol. 
 And it might be a nice question for some modern Court 
 of Love to decide which is the bitterest lot, to cling 
 through life to a love unfulfilled, or to have attained 
 one's heart's desire, and found the object not worth 
 possessing ? 
 
 Nevertheless, the saving fact which I have acknowl- 
 edged and accounted for concerning these " mariages de 
 convenance," which we in England condemn so much, 
 gives a hope for those almost more hopeless " love " 
 marriages, which, beginning so brightly, sink slowly into 
 permanent gloom, and end who knows how? unless 
 there come to the rescue that "stern daughter of the 
 voice of God " Duty which is still " loved of love " 
 and has oftentimes the power to revive love, even when 
 to all outward eyes it is dead forever. 
 
 Duty pure duty without any thought of personal 
 reward or personal happiness is the strongest, sweetest, 
 most sacred force that domestic life possesses. And it 
 brings with it its own consolations ; not perhaps the con- 
 solation it craves it is strange how seldom Heaven gives 
 us poor mortals exactly what we desire but something 
 else, in substitution. How many a sorrowful woman 
 
 12 
 
202 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 heals her bruised heart beside her baby's cradle ! How 
 many a disappointed, lonely man to whom his wife is 
 no companion and no helpmeet takes comfort in his 
 baby daughter, and looks forward hopefully to the time 
 when she will be a grown w T ornan ; his friend and solace, 
 the sharer of his tastes and humorer of his innocent hob- 
 bies all, in short, that her mother might have been, but 
 is not! Yet he will not love her mother the less, but 
 rather the more, for the child's sake. 
 
 He is right, and the forlorn woman is right, who, hav- 
 ing missed the highest bliss, has strength to take up the 
 fragments of a secondary one; so that, in the divine and 
 comforting words before referred to, " nothing be lost." 
 If she has children, she loves them, often passionately; 
 not, alas! for the father's sake; but they teach her to 
 be patient with the father for the sake of his children. 
 While the man who, however inferior his wife may be 
 and, the glamour of passion ended, he knows her to 
 be, and knows that all the world knows it too never al- 
 lows her to suffer for his own rash mistake, but pays her 
 all tender respect as the mistress of his house and the 
 mother of his offspring that man, who, whatever his in- 
 ward sufferings, betrays nothing, and makes no one mis- 
 erable but himself, will have at least the peace of a quiet 
 conscience. As he goes about the world, doing his duty 
 therein, with a calm brow and a reticent tongue what- 
 ever people suspect, be sure they will say nothing. He 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 203 
 
 has accepted his lot, taken up his burden ; and will 
 carry it through life, steadily, nobly, uncomplainingly. 
 Therefore man will honor him, and God will sustain 
 him to the end. 
 
 Also burdens lighten or else the back gets used to 
 them by degrees. How many a house do we enter, and 
 witnessing its secret cares, think not without thank- 
 fulness that we can bear our own troubles, but we 
 could not bear theirs. Yet we see they are borne, even 
 with apparent unconsciousness, by those accustomed to 
 them. The endless snarling and pitiless fault-find- 
 ing of a bad-tempered man passes harmlessly over his 
 placid, brave -hearted wife ; the intolerable silliness or 
 churlishness or selfishness of one member of a family 
 is perhaps hardly noticed by the rest. We have all so 
 much to put up with from other people and other 
 people the same, or worse, from us that even love it- 
 self will not stand upright. That is (if I can put it 
 clearly without falling into cant phraseology) unless in 
 great things and small we are guided by a motive be- 
 low and above ourselves and our personal interests ; un- 
 less, in short, every love we have is made subservient to 
 the love of God. 
 
 If this be so, surely it is possible, even after ship- 
 wrecks like these, not to let ourselves drift away into a 
 sea of despair. The vessel has gone down, but there 
 may be a little boat somewhere ; our sail may be torn 
 
204 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 to ribbons, but we have oars still ; if we can not row, 
 perhaps we can swim. Somehow or other we may 
 touch land. 
 
 But there is one wreck in which the sufferers can 
 never touch land, unless it be the Land Eternal I 
 mean the fate of those who find themselves smitten 
 with incurable disease or doomed to hopeless invalid- 
 ism. It may be exalting matter over mind, placing the 
 physical above the spiritual, but I think to be impris- 
 oned for life in a miserable body which hampers and 
 paralyzes the soul, is as sad a lot as any of the senti- 
 mental sorrows which are here chronicled. The more 
 so as it is such an every-day occurrence that it excites 
 little compassion. 
 
 We lavish great sympathy upon sudden, accidental ill- 
 nesses ; but the chronic sufferers, those who carry about 
 with them some perpetual pain, for which there is no 
 ease but death ; or even the mere valetudinarians, who 
 " never feel quite well," can not do things which other 
 people do, and have continually to give up things they 
 would like to do, for fear of being a trouble to others 
 these we get so used to that we often cease to pity 
 them, or to consider what a heavy burden they have to 
 bear, and how much courage they need in order to sus- 
 tain it all. 
 
 For it is such an essentially solitary burden. No 
 healthy person can understand even the small misery 
 
GATHER TIP THE FRAGMENTS. 205 
 
 of feeling " always tired ;" and when it comes to worse 
 than this, when one has to sit still and gaze into long 
 years of helplessness, perhaps acute pain, and though it 
 is still noonday, face the certainty that no genial sun 
 will ever burst into that dim twilight then life grows 
 very difficult, very dark. To most the future is so ob- 
 scure that they can build it up in any fanciful way 
 they please ; but to these it is like a blank wall with 
 nothing beyond. To sit down and face it, knowing 
 that our small round of interests, pleasures, or labors 
 can never be wider than now nay, will probably nar- 
 row day by day ; that we can give no pleasure to any 
 body, and receive little from any body ; that some- 
 how or other, we know not why, God has made us 
 separate from our kind ; to invent a poor fragment- 
 ary life for ourselves, and bear it by ourselves, until 
 death comes to untie the knot and lift off the burden 
 this, I think, is as sad a fate as can befall any hu- 
 man being. 
 
 The only way to meet it is that which I have already 
 counseled in other but scarcely sharper sorrows. Ac- 
 cept it. Cease trying to get well, and worrying about 
 each small symptom of being worse or better. Re- 
 member Hezekiah, who " sought not the Lord but the 
 physicians." Not that I defend the Peculiar People, 
 who hold that prayers are to supersede mustard plas- 
 ters, and esteem anointing with oil a substitute for good 
 
206 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 food and wholesome water. Still I do think there is 
 something in the solemn peace of a soul that has ceased 
 to struggle with its body, but takes cheerfully the mod- 
 icum of health allowed it, which actually conduces to 
 that very health which is resigned. 
 
 When once an invalid has strength to say, " It does 
 not much matter ; at worst I can but die," sickness and 
 death itself lose their terrors. An old man, a cruel 
 sufferer, once said to me, " If my pain is tolerable, I 
 must bear it ; if it is intolerable, I shall not have to bear 
 it long." Nor had he ; and when, not many days after, 
 I stood looking down on the peaceful face, so grand in 
 its everlasting calm, with the wrinkles all smoothed out, 
 and the irritable contractions of pain forever gone, I 
 wished that to the end of my days I might have strength 
 to remember those words. 
 
 Remember them too, you whose life is but the frag- 
 ments of what it might have been, either in mind or 
 body for the mind is so strangely affected by the 
 body. Yet try to gather up these fragments they 
 may be worth something still. Try to separate the 
 spiritual from the physical as much as you can, and 
 when you grow irritable, exacting, prone to see every 
 thing in an exaggerated light, and to think that never 
 was any one so afflicted as you, say to yourself, " It is 
 only my body ; I, the real me, must not let it conquer 
 me. This flesh is my temporary dungeon, yet 
 
GATHER UP THE FEAGMENT8. 207 
 
 " 'Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars a cage ' 
 
 the c mind, innocent and quiet,' may abide with me 
 still." 
 
 Aje, and so it often is. Are not some of the very 
 sweetest faces we know faces that memory falls back 
 upon and recalls in the tumult of life with a sense of 
 rest and peace those of confirmed invalids, who may 
 have spent years of such imprisonment, perhaps only 
 moving from bed to sofa, and back to bed ; well aware 
 that they never will move elsewhere except to the one 
 narrow couch where we all must lie, yet never com- 
 plaining, never craving after the outside world, which 
 circles noisily around their perpetual silence ; exacting 
 no sympathy, on the contrary, giving it to all and any 
 who need. 
 
 " I have no troubles," said, smiling, one of those sweet 
 saints whom most people would have considered " a 
 great martyr." " It is you others who come to me with 
 all yours." 
 
 So we do we who are still in the thick of the fight 
 to these, who seem as if their battle were done forever. 
 How often do we find counsel and comfort by the couch 
 of some dear woman it is generally a woman whom 
 the world calls " a terrible sufferer," but whose suffer- 
 ings are the last thing she talks about. She has let her- 
 self go, and is absorbed in the interests of other people. 
 
208 GATHEK UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 The fragments of her life that remain to her she has 
 made so beautiful that you almost forget it was ever 
 meant to be like other lives, a perfect whole ; that the 
 wasted frame before you was ever a merry baby, a hap- 
 py girl, a young woman looking forward to woman's nat- 
 ural destiny. All that is over, yet she is not unhappy ; 
 nay, she is actually happy in her own way; no one 
 could look in her face and doubt it. But it is a happi- 
 ness quite different from and beyond ours; something 
 which naught earthly can either give or take away. 
 This is a bright picture, which I would fain place op- 
 posite to the dark pictures I have drawn, compromis- 
 ing nothing and denying nothing ; yet saying after all, 
 " Take courage. God never leaves Himself without a 
 witness. In the deepest darkness is a possibility of 
 light." 
 
 For there is that in the human soul which will not 
 die. Neither mental nor physical suffering will kill 
 it before its time. And neither will extinguish in it 
 the germ of possible happiness, in this world at least ; 
 whether or not in other worlds, God knows. But He 
 has said enough to prove to us two things, that here on 
 earth sin is the only absolute death, and " Deliver us 
 from evil " the only true salvation. 
 
 Therefore, mere pain, in all forms, becomes a tempo- 
 rary and endurable thing, if we will only try to see it as 
 such, accustoming our eyes to behold the good rather 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 209 
 
 than the bad ; choosing in our daily life to eat the food 
 and reject the poison. 
 
 Easy enough, one would say, yet nobody does it. 
 People sit and mourn over the fragments of their scat- 
 tered joys, blind to the blessings they have, seeking 
 madly for blessings denied. The rich complain of their 
 responsibilities, the poor of their renunciations. The 
 single think they would have been happy married, the 
 married reply warningly, " Keep as you are." Many- 
 childed parents groan under the burden of that bright 
 troop of boys and girls, whom some empty household 
 longs enviously for, with an angry protest against Prov- 
 idence, whose gifts are so unequally divided. Nobody 
 will see his own blessings, or open his heart to enjoy 
 them, till the golden hour has gone by forever, and he 
 finds out too late all that he might have had and might 
 have been. 
 
 A discovery made sometimes in an empty room or 
 by a graveside, knowing that all the tears in the world 
 will never lift that stone or fill that vacant chair ; that 
 all our ceaseless complainings, our angry fault-findings, 
 even our real wrongs, sink into nothing before the re- 
 morseless stillness of death. Even if life were not the 
 absolute whole we expected it to be, if our friends were 
 not perfect, nor ourselves neither, why did we fall into 
 despair, instead of quietly setting to work to gather 
 up the fragments that remained, suffering nothing to be 
 
210 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 lost ? Now we never can gather them up any more. 
 The great Destroyer has passed by, and there they lie- 
 must lie forever. 
 
 Gather up the fragments. In every human life there 
 are sure to be some. Every one of us has a secret 
 chamber somewhere, filled with inhabitants whom none 
 but himself can see ; it rests with himself alone wheth- 
 er they shall be decaying corpses, or only beautiful 
 ghosts. 
 
 " God made me what I am, and made my lot what 
 He willed it to be," is a truth not inconsistent with the 
 other truth that He gives us the materials to work with, 
 but leaves the workmanship in our own hands. Every 
 man can make or mar his own life ; at any rate, it ap- 
 pears so. The fact that we know nothing of the results 
 of our acts, makes them, as regards ourselves, absolutely 
 independent ; and the impossibility of gazing one inch 
 into the impenetrable future comes to the same thing 
 as if we beheld it all. 
 
 " Lead Thou me on : I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene : one step's enough for me." 
 
 But that one step must be taken steadily, firmly, relig- 
 iously. There must be no looking back, no mourning 
 over the inexorable past. Each day such a little day, 
 and every one circling around so quietly that they mount 
 into weeks and months and years before we know what 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 211 
 
 we have lost or gained ! each day must be filled up, 
 minute by minute, with those duties which are in them- 
 selves joys, or grow to be. If among them ever rises 
 the spectral face of the never-forgotten might-have-been 
 beautiful in its eternal youth, perfect in its unattain- 
 ed felicity why fear ? It is but a ghost, and life is a 
 reality. 
 
 Aye, a useful, usable, noble reality. Happy, too, when 
 once the grim idol Self has been dethroned forever. 
 For it is a truth which we all have to learn oftentimes 
 through many a bitter lesson that we never can be 
 happy until we cease trying to make ourselves so. 
 
 I said that this would be a rather sad sermon to the 
 young ; but it is not so sad as it seems. There comes a 
 time to some earlier, to others later when faith has to 
 take the place of hope, and better even than bliss is con- 
 solation. Surely, then, it is something to know, on look- 
 ing around on those about us, men and women, that the 
 lives which seem the most complete that is, have most 
 perfectly fulfilled the end for which they were given 
 are very seldom what we call " fortunate " lives. Few 
 have been carried out exactly as they began, fewer still 
 have attained the felicity they expected. Some and 
 those often the noblest and highest have been sadden- 
 ed by one or other of those secret, silent tragedies which 
 are always happening around us, which we all know, 
 or at least guess at, but never speak of; nor do they. 
 
212 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 I once knew a dear old lady so sweet, so bright, 
 so clever; wearing her eighty years "as lightly as a 
 flower." When yon talked with her you would have 
 thought her a woman of thirty, so full was she of all the 
 quick sympathy of youth, the wise tenderness of middle 
 age. Of. the weaknesses of old age she had absolutely 
 none. Her interest in all those about her was such that 
 she never seemed to think of herself at all. No com- 
 plaint, no murmur at her own ailments and she had 
 ailments, and sorrows too ever fell from her lips ; her 
 only anxiety was about the cares of other people, and 
 how she could lighten them, in great things and small. 
 Her bounty knew no limits except her means, which 
 were not great ; " but," she once said, smiling, " I need 
 so little ; and then you see, my dear, I always pay my 
 bills every week, so as to give no trouble to any body 
 afterward." Thus she kept house, with the utmost order, 
 yet with ceaseless hospitality. It was indeed the House 
 Beautiful, to whose gates all who came departed re- 
 freshed and strengthened, and whence no creature who 
 came in want or grief was ever sent empty away. 
 
 I need not name it ; many now living will remember 
 it ; and none who were familiar there could ever forget 
 it, or her, as she sat in her quiet corner, with her sweet 
 old face, and her lovely little ringed hands peaceful, 
 idle hands; since for some years before she died she 
 was nearly blind. Yet her blindness though, coming 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 213 
 
 so late in life, it made her very helpless never made her 
 sad or dull ; she could still listen to and join in conver- 
 sation, and she greatly liked society, especially that of 
 the young. There was always a tribe of young people 
 coming about her, telling her all their doings and plan- 
 nings, their amusements and their troubles. She was 
 fond of them, and they they adored her ! One girl in 
 particular owned that the first time this dear old lady 
 voluntarily kissed her, she felt "as if she had been 
 kissed by her first love." 
 
 When she died at over eighty, certainly, but her ex- 
 ecutors had to guess at the date, for she was an old 
 maid, without any near relations, and had often said she 
 did not even know her own age, it was so long since she 
 was born when she died there was found among her 
 private papers a portrait of a young man in a foreign 
 military dress. No one could guess who it was ; the 
 name there was a name no one had ever heard of. 
 At last some old acquaintance recalled a far-away tradi- 
 tion of her having been once about to be married ; some- 
 how the marriage was broken off, but the two remained 
 friends, and, it was believed, corresponded and occasion- 
 ally met, till his death, which happened when she was 
 about fifty years old. For his nephew and heir, he hav-- 
 ing died unmarried had then been to see her ; some- 
 body recollected having met the young man at her house, 
 and her introducing him by the name on the miniature. 
 
214 
 
 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 After that all was silence. She was never heard to 
 name the name again. Yet she lived on for thirty more 
 years. 
 
 "What do you do when you are quite alone?" was 
 once asked anxiously of her, when she was too blind 
 either to write or sew or read. 
 
 " What do I do ? My dear, I sit and think. I have 
 so much to think about and so many." 
 
 " And are you never dull ?" 
 
 " Dull ? Oh, no ! I am quite happy." 
 
 She was, I am sure. You could see it in her face ; 
 the peaceful happiness of a soul which has ceased " 
 bother itself " about itself at all, and is absorbed in kind- 
 ly cares for other people. Her last act the last time she 
 ever crossed her threshold was, I remember, a visit of 
 kindness, partly as an excuse to take for a drive a person 
 who was too feeble to walk much. She was then ex- 
 tremely feeble herself; and climbing a steep stair, one 
 who assisted her said anxiously, " I fear you are very 
 tired?" "Yes," she replied, "I am always tired now. 
 But," turning suddenly around with the brightest of 
 smiles, " never mind ; it will be all right soon." Four 
 weeks after she lay in her final rest, looking so young, 
 so pretty, so content, that those who best loved her 
 choked down their sobs and smiled, saying, " It was like 
 putting a baby to sleep." 
 
 This is but one story out of many which I could tell, 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 215 
 
 even out of my own knowledge, to prove that the frag- 
 ments of a broken life can be so gathered up as to make 
 a noble and even a happy life unto the end. Many a 
 time, as we go on our troublous way through the world, 
 are we cheered and encouraged by the sight of such : 
 old men who have done their work, and for whom is 
 come the time of rest the "blind-man's holiday" be- 
 tween the lights, when they do nothing, and nobody 
 expects them to do any thing but to look back on the 
 fruits of their labor and rejoice; old women who have 
 their children around them, and grandchildren, in whom 
 they take over again all a mother's delight freed from a 
 mother's anxiety. Lastly and these are not the least 
 numerous, and perhaps the most touching of all un- 
 married women, whose lives must necessarily have been 
 incomplete, barren of joy, or clouded with incurable 
 grief ; yet one has but to look on their faces, sweet and 
 saintly, to perceive that their evil has brought forth 
 good that, whatever their own lot may have been, to 
 others they have proved a continual blessing. How 
 can those fail to be blessed, who are every body's com- 
 fort and every body's help ? 
 
 Occasionally, too, we meet persons, still in middle age, 
 for whom, it is easy to see, the sun has gone down at 
 noon. Something has happened we know not what, 
 or perhaps we do know, but never mention it some- 
 thing which will make their future like that of a tree 
 
216 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 with its " leader " broken ; it may not die, it may grow 
 up green and strong, but it will never grow tall, it will 
 never be a perfect tree. With them, too, life in its high- 
 est sense is over ; the play is played out the feast is 
 ended ; there is nothing left but to gather up the frag- 
 ments and endure. 
 
 And they are gathered. Slowly, painfully may be 
 but it is done. Nothing is lost. Nothing remains to 
 cumber, corrupt, or decay. Every thing available to 
 use still, is used strength, talents, energies, affections ; 
 all that God gave has been given back to Him; not 
 perhaps in the way the offerer once desired to give it, 
 but nevertheless in the right way, as the final result 
 proves. And He has accepted the sacrifice; and re- 
 quited it, too. Not perhaps with earthly felicity ; not 
 at all with the sort of felicity longed for ; but with some- 
 thing better than happiness peace ; that peace which 
 one sees sometimes on very suffering faces it was seen 
 continually on the dear old face I have spoken of " the 
 peace of God which passeth all understanding." 
 
 There is a psalm of David poor King David, who 
 paid so dearly in sorrow for every sin he committed, yet 
 who had strength over and over again to gather up the 
 fragments of his piteous, errorf ill life, and live on aye, 
 and to die in faith, and in hope of his never-builded 
 temple ; there is a psalm, I say, in which he speaks of 
 those who " have their portion in this life." He never 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 217 
 
 blames them ; lie envies them not. Neither does lie 
 murmur at the will of God, who sees fit to fill them with 
 His " hid treasure," and to give them the Jew's crown- 
 ing blessing, " children at their desire ;" that they may 
 " leave the rest of their substance to their babes." 
 
 But "as for me," he continues, and you can almost 
 hear the ringing of the triumphant harp " David's harp 
 of solemn sound " " as for me, I will behold Thy face 
 in righteousness : I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with 
 Thy likeness." 
 
 Thoroughly " satisfied." Nothing lost. Nothing scat- 
 tered or wasted. No fragments to be gathered up ; ev- 
 ery thing perfect and complete in Him in the fullness 
 of Him which filleth all in all. 
 
 May it one day be so with us, my brethren and sisters ! 
 Amen. 
 
 ###*#**# 
 
 These Sermons out of Church are ended. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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