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A Man's Value to Society

 By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS

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A Man's Value to Society

Studies in Self-Cultureand Character

Newell Dwight HillisAuthor of "The Investment of Influence, " "Foretokensof Immortality, " etc. 

"_Spread wide thy mantle while the gods rain gold. _" --FROM THE PERSIAN. 

TWENTY-FIFTH EDITION

Chicago New York TorontoFleming H. Revell CompanyMCMII

Copyright, 1896, byFleming H. Revell Company

Copyright, 1897, byFleming H. Revell Company

_TO MY WIFE_

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

 I The Elements of Worth in the Individual 9

 II Character: Its Materials and External Teachers 33

 III Aspirations and Ideals 55

 IV The Physical Basis of Character 77

 V The Mind and the Duty of Right Thinking 99

 VI The Moral Uses of Memory 123

 VII The Imagination as the Architect of Manhood 143

VIII The Enthusiasm of Friendship 165

 IX Conscience and Character 189

 X Visions that Disturb Contentment 213

 XI The Uses of Books and Reading 235

 XII The Science of Living with Men 259

XIII The Revelators of Character 281

 XIV Making the Most of One's Self 301

THE ELEMENTS OF WORTH IN THE INDIVIDUAL

 "There is nothing that makes men rich and strong but that which they carry inside of them. Wealth is of the heart, not of the hand. "--_John Milton. _

 "Until we know why the rose is sweet or the dew drop pure, or the rainbow beautiful, we cannot know why the poet is the best benefactor of society. The soldier fights for his native land, but the poet touches that land with the charm that makes it worth fighting for and fires the warrior's heart with energy invincible. The statesman enlarges and orders liberty in the state, but the poet fosters the core of liberty in the heart of the citizen. The inventor multiplies the facilities of life, but the poet makes life better worth living. "--_George Wm. Curtis. _

 "Not all men are of equal value. Not many Platos: only one, to whom a thousand lesser minds look up and learn to think. Not many Dantes: one, and a thousand poets tune their harps to his and repeat his notes. Not many Raphaels: one, and no second. But a thousand lesser artists looking up to him are lifted to his level. Not many royal hearts--great magazines of kindness. Happy the town blessed with a few great minds and a few great hearts. One such citizen will civilize an entire community. "--_H. _

I

THE ELEMENTS OF WORTH IN THE INDIVIDUAL

Our scientific experts are investigating the wastes of society. Theirreports indicate that man is a great spendthrift. He seems not so mucha husbandman, making the most of the treasures of his life-garden, asa robber looting a storehouse for booty. 

Travelers affirm that one part of the northern pineries has beenwasted by man's careless fires and much of the rest by his recklessaxe. Coal experts insist that a large percentage of heat passes out ofthe chimney. The new chemistry claims that not a little of theprecious ore is cast upon the slag heap. 

In the fields the farmers overlook some ears of corn and pass by somehandfuls of wheat. In the work-room the scissors leave selvage andremnant. In the mill the saw and plane refuse slabs and edges. In thekitchen a part of what the husband carries in, the wife's wastefulcooking casts out. But the secondary wastes involve still heavierlosses. Man's carelessness in the factory breaks delicate machinery, his ignorance spoils raw materials, his idleness burns out boilers, his recklessness blows up engines; and no skill of manager in jugglingfigures in January can retrieve the wastes of June. 

Passing through the country the traveler finds the plow rusting in thefurrow, mowers and reapers exposed to rain and snow; passing throughthe city he sees the docks lined with boats, the alleys full of brokenvehicles, while the streets exhibit some broken-down men. A journeythrough life is like a journey along the trackway of a retreatingarmy; here a valuable ammunition wagon is abandoned because a carelesssmith left a flaw in the tire; there a brass cannon is desertedbecause a tug was improperly stitched; yonder a brave soldier liesdying in the thicket where he fell because excited men forgot the useof an ambulance. What with the wastes of intemperance and ignorance, of idleness and class wars, the losses of society are enormous. Butman's prodigality with his material treasures does but interpret hiswastefulness of the greater riches of mind and heart. Life's chiefdestructions are in the city of man's soul. Many persons seem to betrying to solve this problem: "Given a soul stored with greattreasure, and three score and ten years for happiness and usefulness, how shall one kill the time and waste the treasure?" Man's pride overhis casket stored with gems must be modified by the reflection thatdaily his pearls are cast before swine, that should have been woveninto coronets. 

Man's evident failure to make the most out of his material lifesuggests a study of the elements in each citizen that make him ofvalue to his age and community. What are the measurements of mankind, and why is it that daily some add new treasures to the storehouse ofcivilization, while others take from and waste the store alreadyaccumulated? These are questions of vital import. Many and variedestimates of man's value have been made. Statisticians reckon theaverage man's value at $600 a year. Each worker in wood, iron or brassstands for an engine or industrial plant worth $10, 000, producing at 6per cent. An income of $600. The death of the average workman, therefore, is equivalent to the destruction of a $10, 000 mill orengine. The economic loss through the non-productivity of 20, 000drunkards is equal to one Chicago fire involving two hundred millions. Of course, some men produce less and others more than $600 a year; andsome there are who have no industrial value--non-producers, accordingto Adam Smith; paupers, according to John Stuart Mill; thieves, according to Paul, who says, "Let him that stole steal no more, butrather work. " In this group let us include the tramps, who hold thatthe world owes them a living; these are they who fail to realize thatsociety has given them support through infancy and childhood; hasgiven them language, literature, liberty. Wise men know that thenoblest and strongest have received from society a thousandfold morethan they can ever repay, though they vex all the days and nights withceaseless toil. In this number of non-sufficing persons are to beincluded the paupers--paupers plebeian, supported in the poorhouse bymany citizens; paupers patrician, supported in palace by one citizen, generally father or ancestor; the two classes differing in that one isthe foam at the top of the glass and the other the dregs at thebottom. To these two groups let us add the social parasites, represented by thieves, drunkards, and persons of the baser sort whosebusiness it is to trade in human passion. We revolt from the redaphides upon the plant, the caterpillar upon the tree, the vermin uponbird or beast. How much more do we revolt from those human verminwhose business it is to propagate parasites upon the body politic!The condemnation of life is that a man consumes more than he produces, taking out of society's granary that which other hands have put in. The praise of life is that one is self-sufficing, taking less out thanhe put into the storehouse of civilization. 

A man's original capital comes through his ancestry. Nature investsthe grandsire's ability, and compounds it for the grandson. Platosays: "The child is a charioteer driving two steeds up the longlife-hill; one steed is white, representing our best impulses; onesteed is dark, standing for our worst passions. " Who gave these steedstheir color? Our fathers, Plato replies, and the child may not changeone hair, white or black. Oliver Wendell Holmes would have us thinkthat a man's value is determined a hundred years before his birth. Theancestral ground slopes upward toward the mountain-minded man. Thegreat never appear suddenly. Seven generations of clergymen make readyfor Emerson, each a signboard pointing to the coming philosopher. TheMississippi has power to bear up fleets for war or peace because thestorms of a thousand summers and the snows of a thousand winters havelent depth and power. The measure of greatness in a man is determinedby the intellectual streams and moral tides flowing down from theancestral hills and emptying into the human soul. The Bach familyincluded one hundred and twenty musicians. Paganini was born withmuscles in his wrists like whipcords. What was unique in Socrates wasfirst unique in Sophroniscus. John ran before Jesus, but Zachariasforetold John. No electricity along rope wires, and no vital livingtruths along rope nerves to spongy brain. There are millions in ourworld who have been rendered physical and moral paupers by the sins oftheir ancestors. Their forefathers doomed them to be hewers of woodand drawers of water. A century must pass before one of their childrencan crowd his way up and show strength enough to shape a tool, outlinea code, create an industry, reform a wrong. Despotic governments havestunted men--made them thin-blooded and low-browed, all backhead andno forehead. Each child has been likened to a cask whose stavesrepresent trees growing on hills distant and widely separated; somestaves are sound and solid, standing for right-living ancestors; someare worm eaten, standing for ancestors whose integrity was consumed byvices. At birth all the staves are brought together in the infantcask--empty, but to be filled by parents and teachers and friends. Asthe waste-barrel in the alley is filled with refuse and filth, so theorphan waifs in our streets are made receptacles of all viciousthoughts and deeds. These children are not so much born as damned intolife. But how different is the childhood of some others. On the Easterday, in foreign cathedrals, a beauteous vase is placed beside thealtar, and as the multitudes crowd forward and the solemn processionmoves up the aisles, men and women cast into the vase their gifts ofgold and silver and pearls and lace and rich textures. The well-bornchild seems to be such a vase, unspeakably beautiful, filled withknowledges and integrities more precious than gold and pearls. "Lethim who would be great select the right parents, " was the keen dictumof President Dwight. 

By the influence of the racial element, the laborer in northernEurope, viewed as a producing machine, doubles the industrial outputof his southern brother. The child of the tropics is out of the race. For centuries he has dozed under the banana tree, awakening only toshake the tree and bring down ripe fruit for his hunger, eating tosleep again. His muscles are flabby, his blood is thin, his brainunequal to the strain of two ideas in one day. When Sir John Lubbockhad fed the chief in the South Sea Islands he began to ask himquestions, but within ten minutes the savage was sound asleep. Whenawakened the old chief said: "Ideas make me so sleepy. " Similarly, thewarm Venetian blood has given few great men to civilization; but thehills of Scotland and New England produce scholars, statesmen, poets, financiers, with the alacrity with which Texas produces cotton orMissouri corn. History traces certain influential nations back to asingle progenitor of unique strength of body and character. ThusAbraham, Theseus, and Cadmus seem like springs feeding great andincreasing rivers. One wise and original thinker founds a tribe, shapes the destiny of a nation, and multiplies himself in the lives offuture millions. In accordance with this law, tenacity reappears inevery Scotchman; wit sparkles in every Irishman; vivacity is in everyFrenchman's blood; the Saxon is a colonizer and originatesinstitutions. During the construction of the Suez Canal it wasdiscovered that workmen with veins filled with Teutonic blood had acommercial value two and a half times greater than the Egyptians. Similarly, during the Indian war, the Highland troops endured doublethe strain of the native forces. Napoleon shortened the stature ofthe French people two inches by choosing all the taller of his30, 000, 000 subjects and killing them in war. Waxing indignant, HoraceMann thinks "the forehead of the Irish peasantry was lowered an inchwhen the government made it an offense punishable with fine, imprisonment, and a traitor's death to be the teacher of children. " Awicked government can make agony, epidemic, brutalize a race, andreaching forward, fetter generations yet unborn. "Blood tells, " saysscience. But blood is the radical element put out at compound interestand handed forward to generations yet unborn. 

The second measure of a man's value to society is found in hisoriginal endowment of physical strength. The child's birth-stock ofvital force is his capital to be traded upon. Other things being equalhis productive value is to be estimated mathematically upon the basisof physique. Born weak and nerveless, he must go to society'sambulance wagon, and so impede the onward march. Born vigorous andrugged, he can help to clear the forest roadway or lead the advancingcolumns. Fundamentally man is a muscular machine for producing theideas that shape conduct and character. All fine thinking stands withone foot on fine brain fiber. Given large physical organs, lungs withcapacity sufficient to oxygenate the life-currents as they passupward; large arteries through which the blood may have full course, run, and be glorified; a brain healthy and balanced with a compactnervous system, and you have the basis for computing what will be aman's value to society. Men differ, of course, in ways many--theydiffer in the number and range of their affections, in the scope ofconscience, in taste and imagination, and in moral energy. But theoriginal point of variance is physical. Some have a small body and apowerful mind, like a Corliss engine in a tiny boat, whose frailstructure will soon be racked to pieces. Others are born with largebodies and very little mind, as if a toy engine were set to run amudscow. This means that the poor engineer must pole up stream all hislife. Others, by ignorance of parent, or accident through nurse, orthrough their own blunder or sin, destroy their bodily capital. Soonthey are like boats cast high and dry upon the beach, doomed tosun-cracking and decay. Then, in addition to these absoluteweaknesses, come the disproportions of the body, the distemperature ofvarious organs. It is not necessary for spoiling a timepiece to breakits every bearing; one loose screw stops all the wheels. Thus a veryslight error as to the management of the bodily mechanism issufficient to prevent fine creative work as author, speaker, orinventor. Few men, perhaps, ever learn how to so manage their brainand stomach as to be capable of high-pressure brain action for days ata time--until the cumulative mental forces break through all obstaclesand conquer success. A great leader represents a kind of essence ofcommon sense, but rugged common sense is sanity of nerve and brain. Hewho rules and leads must have mind and will, but he must have chestand stomach also. Beecher says the gun carriage must be in proportionto the gun it carries. When health goes the gun is spiked. Ideas arearrows, and the body is the bow that sends them home. The mind aims;the body fires. 

Good health may be better than genius or wealth or honor. It was whenthe gymnasium had made each Athenian youth an Apollo in health andstrength that the feet of the Greek race ran most nimbly along thepaths of art and literature and philosophy. 

Another test of a man's value is an intellectual one. The largestwastes of any nation are through ignorance. Failure is want ofknowledge; success is knowing how. Wealth is not in things of iron, wood and stone. Wealth is in the brain that organizes the metal. Pigiron is worth $20 a ton; made into horse shoes, $90; into knifeblades, $200; into watch springs, $1, 000. That is, raw iron $20, brainpower, $980. Millet bought a yard of canvas for 1 franc, paid 2 morefrancs for a hair brush and some colors; upon this canvas he spreadhis genius, giving us "The Angelus. " The original investment in rawmaterial was 60 cents; his intelligence gave that raw material a valueof $105, 000. One of the pictures at the World's Fair represented asavage standing on the bank of a stream, anxious but ignorant as tohow he could cross the flood. Knowledge toward the metal at his feetgave the savage an axe; knowledge toward the tree gave him a canoe;knowledge toward the union of canoes gave him a boat; knowledge towardthe wind added sails; knowledge toward fire and water gave him theocean steamer. Now, if from the captain standing on the prow of thatfloating palace, the City of New York, we could take away man'sknowledge as we remove peel after peel from an onion, we would havefrom the iron steamer, first, a sailboat, then a canoe, then axe andtree, and at last a savage, naked and helpless to cross a littlestream. In the final analysis it is ignorance that wastes; it isknowledge that saves; it is wisdom that gives precedence. If sleep isthe brother of death, ignorance is full brother to both sleep anddeath. An untaught faculty is at once quiescent and dead. An ignorantman has been defined as one "whom God has packed up and men have notunfolded. The best forces in such a one are perpetually paralyzed. Eyes he has, but he cannot see the length of his hand; ears he has, and all the finest sounds in creation escape him; a tongue he has, andit is forever blundering. " A mechanic who has a chest of forty toolsand can use only the hammer, saw, and gimlet, has little chance withhis fellows and soon falls far behind. An educated mind is one fullyawakened to all the sights and scenes and forces in the world throughwhich he moves. This does not mean that a $2, 000 man can be made outof a two-cent boy by sending him to college. Education ismind-husbandry; it changes the size but not the sort. But if no amountof drill will make a Shetland pony show a two-minute gait, neitherwill the thoroughbred show this speed save through long and assiduousand patient education. The primary fountains of our Nation's wealthare not in fields and forests and mines, but in the free schools, churches, and printing presses. Ignorance breeds misery, vice, andcrime. Mephistopheles was a cultured devil, but he is the exception. History knows no illiterate seer or sage or saint. No Dante orShakespeare ever had to make "his X mark. "

When John Cabot Lodge made his study of the distribution of ability inthe United States, he found that in ninety years five of the greatWestern States had produced but twenty-seven men who were mentioned inthe American and English encyclopedias, while little Massachusetts had2, 686 authors, orators, philosophers, and builders of States. Butanalysis shows that the variance is one of education and ideas. Bostondiffers from Quebec as differ their methods of instruction. The NewEngland settlers were Oxford and Cambridge men that represented thebest blood, brain, and accumulated culture of old England. Landing inthe forest they clustered their cabins around the building that was atonce church, school, library, and town hall. Rising early and sittingup late they plied their youth with ideas of liberty and intelligence. They came together on Sunday morning at nine o'clock to listen to aprayer one hour long, a sermon of three hours, and after a cold lunchheard a second brief sermon of two hours and a half--those who did notdie became great. What Sunday began the week continued. We may smileat their methods but we must admire the men they produced. Mark theintellectual history of Northampton. During its history this town hassent out 114 lawyers, 112 ministers, 95 physicians, 100 educators, 7college presidents, 30 professors, 24 editors, 6 historians, 14authors, among whom are George Bancroft, John Lothrop Motley, Professor Whitney, the late J. G. Holland; 38 officers of State, 28officers of the United States, including members of the Senate, andone President. [1] How comes it that this little colony has raised upthis great company of authors, statesmen, reformers? No mere chance isworking here. The relation between sunshine and harvest is not moreessential than the relation between these folk and their renowneddescendants. Fruit after his kind is the divine explanation ofNorthampton's influence upon the nation. "Education makes men great"is the divine dictum. George William Curtis has said: "TheRevolutionary leaders were all trained men, as the world's leadersalways have been from the day when Themistocles led the educatedAthenians at Salamis, to that when Von Moltke marshaled the educatedGermans against France. The sure foundations of states are laid inknowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at booklearning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting nationaldegeneration and ruin. "

Consider, also, how the misfits of life affect man's value. Thesuccessful man grasps the handle of his being. He moves in the line ofleast resistance. That one accomplishes most whose heart sings whilehis hand works. Like animals men have varied uses. The lark sings, theox bears burdens, the horse is for strength and speed. But men who arewise toward beasts are often foolish toward themselves. Multitudesdrag themselves toward the factory or field who would have movedtoward the forum with "feet as hind's feet. " Other multitudes fret andchafe in the office whose desires are in the streets and fields. Whoever scourges himself to a task he hates serves a hard master, andthe slave will get but scant pay. If a farmer should hitch horses to atelescope and try to plow with it he would ruin the instrument in thesummer and starve his family in the winter. Not the wishes of parent, nor the vanity of wife, nor the pride of place, but God and naturechoose occupation. Each child is unique, as new as was the firstarrival upon this planet. The school is to help the boy unpack whatintellectual tools he has; education does not change, but puts temperinto these tools. No man can alter his temperament, though trying tohe can break his heart. How pathetic the wrecks of men who have chosenthe wrong occupation! The driver bathes the raw shoulder of a horsewhose collar does not fit, but when men make their misfits and theheart is sore society does not soothe, but with whips it scourges theman to his fruitless task. This large class may be countedunproductive. John Stuart Mill placed the industrial mismatings amongthe heavier losses of society. 

To this element of wisdom in relating one's self to duties must beadded skill in maintaining smooth relations with one's fellows. Menmay produce much by industry and ability, and yet destroy more by themalign elements they carry. The proud domineering employer tears downwith one hand what he builds up with the other. One foolish man cancost a city untold treasure. How many factories have failed becausethe owner has no skill in managing men and mollifying difficulties. History shows that stupid thrones and wars go together, while skillfulkings bring long intervals of peace. Contrasting the methods of twoprominent men, an editor once said: "The first man in making onemillion cost society ten millions; but the other so produced his onemillion as to add ten more to society's wealth. " A most disastrousstrike in England's history had its origin in ignorance of thisprinciple. The miners of a certain coal field had suffered a severecut in wages. They had determined to accept it, though it took theirchildren out of school, and took away their meat dinner. When the hourappointed for the conference came, prudence would have dictated thatevery cause of irritation be guarded against. But the employerfoolishly drove his liveried carriage into the center of the vastcrowd of workmen, and for an hour flaunted his wealth before thesore-hearted miners. When the men saw the footman, the prancinghorses, the gold-plated harness, and thought of their starving wives, they reversed their acceptance of the cut in wages. They plunged intoa long strike, taking this for their motto: "Furs for his footmen andgold plate for his horses, and also three meals a day for our wivesand children. " Now, the ensuing strike and riots, long protracted, cost England £5, 000, 000. But that bitter strike was all needless. These are the men who take off the chariot wheels for God's advancinghosts. When one comes to the front who has skill in allaying friction, all society begins a new forward march. Skill in personal carriagehas much to do with a man's value. 

Integrity enhances human worth. Iniquities devastate a city like fireand pestilence. Social wealth and happiness are through right living. Goodness is a commodity. Conscience in a cashier has a cash value. Ifarts and industries are flowers and fruits, moralities are the rootsthat nourish them. Disobedience is slavery. Obedience is liberty. Disobedience to law of fire or water or acid is death. Obedience tolaw of color gives the artist his skill; obedience to the law ofeloquence gives the orator his force; obedience to the law of irongives the inventor his tool; disobedience to the law of morals giveswaste and want and wretchedness. That individual or nation ishastening toward poverty that does not love the right and hate thewrong. So certain is the penalty of wrongdoing that sin seemsinfinitely stupid. Every transgression is like an iron plate throwninto the air; gravity will pull it back upon the wrongdoer's head towound him. It has been said for a man to betray his trust for money, is for him to stand on the same intellectual level with a monkey thatscalds its throat with boiling water because it is thirsty. A drunkardis one who exchanges ambrosia and nectar for garbage. A profligate isone who declines an invitation to banquet with the gods that he maydine out of an ash barrel. What blight is to the vine, sin is to aman. When the first thief appeared in Plymouth colony a man waswithdrawn from the fields to make locks for the houses; when twothieves came a second toiler was withdrawn from the factory to serveas night watchman. Soon others were taken from productive industry tobuild a jail and to interpret and execute the law. Every sin costs thestate much hard cash. Consider what wastes hatred hath wrought. OnceItaly and Greece and Central Europe made one vast storehouse filledwith precious art treasures. But men turned the cathedrals intoarsenals of war. If the clerks in some porcelain or cut-glass storeshould attend to their duties in the morning, and each afternoon havea pitched battle, during which they should throw the vases and cupsand medallions at each other, and each night pick up a piece of vase, here an armless Venus and there a headless Apollo, to put away forfuture generations to study, we should have that which answersprecisely to what has gone on for centuries through hatreds and classwars. An outlook upon society is much like a visit to Lisbon after anearthquake has filled the streets with debris and shaken down homes, palaces, and temples. History is full of the ruins of cities andempires. Not time, but disobedience, hath wrought their destruction. New civilizations will be reared by coming generations; uprightnesswill lay the foundations and integrity will complete the structure. The temple is righteousness in which God dwelleth. 

"Have life more abundantly. " Man is not fated to a scant allowance nora fixed amount, but he is allured forward by an unmeasuredpossibility. Personality may be enlarged and enriched. It has beensaid that Cromwell was the best thing England ever produced. And themission of Jesus Christ is to carry each up from littleness tofull-orbed largeness. It has always been true that when some genius, e. G. , Watt, invents a model the people have reproduced it timesinnumerable. So what man asks for is not the increase of birth talent, but a pattern after which this raw material can be fashioned. Carbonmakes charcoal, and carbon makes diamond, too, but the "sea of light"is carbon crystallized to a pattern. Builders lay bricks by plan; themusician follows his score; the value of a York minster is not in thenumber of cords of stone, but in the plan that organized them; and thevalue of a man is in the reply to this question: Have the rawmaterials of nature been wrought up into unity and harmony by theExemplar of human life? Daily he is here to stir the mind with holyambitions; to wing the heart with noble aspirations; to inspire withan all-conquering courage; to vitalize the whole manhood. By makingthe individual rich within he creates value without. For all thingsare first thoughts. Tools, fabrics, ships, houses, books are firstideas, afterward crystallized into outer form. A great picture is abeautiful conception rushing into visible expression upon the canvas. Wake up taste in a man and he beautifies his home. Wake up conscienceand he drives iniquities out of his heart. Wake up his ideas offreedom and he fashions new laws. Jesus Christ is here to inflameman's soul within that he may transform and enrich his life without. No picture ever painted, no statue ever carved, no cathedral everbuilded is half so beautiful as the Christ-formed man. What is man'svalue to society? Let him who knoweth what is in us reply: "What shallit profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Northampton Antiquities. Clark. 

CHARACTER: ITS MATERIALS AND EXTERNAL TEACHERS

 "Character is more than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think. Goodness outshines genius, as the sun makes the electric light cast a shadow. "--_Emerson. _

 "What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others. "--_Confucius. _

 "After all, the kind of world one carries about in one's self is the important thing, and the world outside takes all its grace, color and value from that. "--_James Russell Lowell. _

 "Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny. "--_Anon. _

 "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. "--_Psalm 90. _

II

CHARACTER: ITS MATERIALS AND EXTERNAL TEACHERS

Dying, Horace Greeley exclaimed: "Fame is a vapor, popularity anaccident, riches take wings, those who cheer to-day will curseto-morrow, only one thing endures--character!" These weighty words bidall remember that life's one task is the making of manhood. Our worldis a college, events are teachers, happiness is the graduating point, character is the diploma God gives man. The forces that increasehappiness are many, including money, friends, position; but one thingalone is indispensable to success--personal worth and manhood. He whostands forth clothed with real weight of goodness can neither befeeble in life, nor forgotten in death. Society admires its scholar, but society reveres and loves its hero whose intellect is clothed withgoodness. For character is not of the intellect, but of thedisposition. Its qualities strike through and color the mind and hearteven as summer strikes the matured fruit through with juicy ripeness. 

Of that noble Greek who governed his city by unwritten laws, thepeople said: "Phocion's character is more than the constitution. " Theweight of goodness in Lamartine was such that during the bloody daysin Paris his doors were unlocked. Character in him was a defensebeyond the force of rock walls or armed regiments. Emerson says therewas a certain power in Lincoln, Washington and Burke not to beexplained by their printed words. Burke the man was inexpressiblyfiner than anything he said. As a spring is more than the cup itfills, as a poet or architect is more than the songs he sings or thetemple he rears, so the man is more than the book or business hefashions. Earth holds many wondrous scenes called temples, battle-fields, cathedrals, but earth holds no scene comparable formajesty and beauty to a man clothed indeed with intellect, but adornedalso with integrities and virtues. Beholding such a one, well didMilton exclaim: "A good man is the ripe fruit our earth holds up toGod. "

Character has been defined as the joint product of nature and nurture. Nature gives the raw material, character is the carved statue. The rawmaterial includes the racial endowment, temperament, degree of vitalforce, mentality, aptitude for tool or industry, for art or science. These birth-gifts are quantities, fixed and unalterable. Noheart-rendings can change the two-talent nature into a ten-talent man. No agony of effort can add a cubit to the stature. The eagle fliesover the chasm as easily as an ant crawls over the crack in theground. Shakespeare writes Hamlet as easily as Tupper wrote his tales. Once an oak, always an oak. Care and culture can thicken the girth ofthe tree, but no degree of culture can cause an oak bough to bringforth figs instead of acorns. Rebellion against temperament andcircumstance is sure to end in the breaking of the heart. Happinessand success begin with the sincere acceptance of the birth-gift andcareer God hath chosen. 

Since no man can do his best work save as he uses his strongestfaculties, the first duty of each is to search out the line of leastresistance. He who has a genius for moral themes but has harnessedhimself to the plow or the forge, is in danger of wrecking bothhappiness and character. All such misfits are fatal. No farmerharnesses a fawn to the plow, or puts an ox into the speeding-wagon. Life's problem is to make a right inventory of the gifts one carries. As no carpenter knows what tools are in the box until he lifts the lidand unwraps one shining instrument after another, so the instrumentsin the soul must be unfolded by education. Ours is a world where theinventor accompanies the machine with a chart, illustrating the use ofeach wheel and escapement. But no babe lying in the cradle everbrought with it a hand-book setting forth its mental equipment andpointing out its aptitude for this occupation, or that art orindustry. The gardener plants a root with perfect certainty that arose will come up, but no man is a prophet wise enough to tell whetherthis babe will unfold into quality of thinker or doer or dreamer. Toeach Nature whispers: "Unsight, unseen, hold fast what you have. " Forthe soul is shadowless and mysterious. No hand can carve its outline, no brush portray its lineaments. Even the mother embosoming itsinfancy and carrying its weaknesses, studying it by day and nightthrough years, sees not, she cannot see, knows not, she cannot know, into what splendor of maturity the child will unfold. 

Man beholds his fellows as one beholds a volume written in a foreignlanguage; the outer binding is seen, the inner contents are unread. Within general lines phrenology and physiognomy are helpful, but it iseasier to determine what kind of a man lives in the house by lookingat the knob on his front door than to determine the brain and heartwithin by studying the bumps upon face and forehead. Nature's dictumis, "Grasp the handle of your own being. " Each must fashion his owncharacter. Nature gives trees, but not tools; forests, but notfurniture. Thus nature furnishes man with the birth materials andenvironment; man must work up these materials into those qualitiescalled industry, integrity, honor, truth and love, ever patterningafter that ideal man, Jesus Christ. 

The influences shaping nature's raw material into character are manyand various. Of old, the seer likened the soul unto clay. The mudfalls upon the board before the potter, a rude mass, without form orcomeliness. But an hour afterwards the clay stands forth adorned withall the beauty of a lovely vase. Thus the soul begins, a mere mass ofmind, but hands many and powerful soon shape it into the outlines ofsome noble man or woman. These sculptors of character include home, friendship, occupation, travel, success, love, grief and death. 

Life's first teacher is the external world, with its laws. Man beginsat zero. The child thrusts his finger into the fire and is burned;thenceforth he learns to restrain himself in the presence of fire, andmakes the flames smite the vapor for driving train or ship. The childerrs in handling the sharp tool, and cuts himself; thenceforth helifts up the axe upon the tree. The child mistakes the weight ofstone, or the height of stair, and, falling, hard knocks teach him thenature and use of gravity. Daily the thorns that pierce his feet drivehim back into the smooth pathway of nature's laws. The sharp painsthat follow each excess teach him the pleasures of sound and rightliving. Nor is there one infraction of law that is not followed bypain. As sharp guards are placed at the side of the bridge over thechasm to hold men back from the abyss, so nature's laws are planted oneither side of the way of life to prick and scourge erring feet backinto the divine way. At length through much smiting of the body natureforces the youth into a knowledge of the world in which he lives. Manlearns to carry himself safely within forests, over rivers, throughfires, midst winds and storms. Soon every force in nature stands forthhis willing servant; becoming like unto the steeds of the plains, thatonce were wild, but now are trained, and lend all their strength andforce to man's loins and limbs. 

Having mastered the realm of physical law, the youth is thrust intothe realm of laws domestic and social. He runs up against his matesand friends, often overstepping his own rights and infringing therights of others. Then some stronger arm falls on his, and drives himback into his own territory. Occasional chastisement through theparent and teacher, friend or enemy, reveal to him the nature ofselfishness, and compel the recognition of others. Thus, through longapprenticeship, the youth finds out the laws that fence him round, that press upon him at every pore, by day and by night, in workshop orin store, at home or abroad. Slowly these laws mature manhood. Whenideas are thrust into raw iron, the iron becomes a loom or an engine. Thus when God's laws are incarnated in a babe, the child is changedinto the likeness of a citizen, a sage or seer. Nature, with her laws, is not only the earliest, but also the most powerful, of life'sinstructors. 

Temptation is another teacher. Protection gives innocence, butpractice gives virtue. For ship timber we pass by the shelteredhothouse, seeking the oak on the storm-swept hills. In that beautifulstory of the lost paradise, God pulls down the hedge built around Adamand Eve. The government through a fence outside was succeeded byself-government inside. The hermit and the cloistered saint end theircareer with innocence. But Christ, struggling unto blood against sin, ends His career with character. God educates man by giving himcomplete charge over himself and setting him on "the barebacked horseof his own will, " leaving him to break it by his own strength. Travelers to Alaska tell us that the wild berries attain a sweetnessthere of which our temperate clime knows nothing. Scientists say thatthe glowworm keeps its enemies at bay by the brightness of its ownlight. Man, by his love of truth and right, becomes his own castle andfortress. Cities no longer depend upon night-watchmen to guard againstmarauders and burglars. Once men trusted to safes and iron bars uponthe windows. Now bankers ask electric lights to guard their treasurevaults. 

For centuries Spain's paternal laws have compelled each Spaniard toask his church what to think and believe. This method has robbed thatpeople of enduring and self-reliant manhood, and made them a race ofweaklings. For over-protection is a peril. Strength comes bywrestling, knowledge by observing, wisdom by thinking, and characterby enduring and struggling. Exposure is often good fortune. EveryLuther and Cromwell has been tempted and tempered against the day ofdanger and battle. As the victorious Old Guard were honored inproportion to the number and severity of the wars through which theyhad passed, so the temptations that seek man's destruction, whenconquered, cover him with glory. Ruskin notes that the art epochs havealso been epochs of war, upheaval, and tyranny. He accounts for thisby saying that when tyranny was hardest, crime blackest, sin ugliest, then, in the recoil and conflict, beauty and heroism attained theirhighest development. 

Studying the rise of the Dutch republic, Motley notes how the shocksand fiery baptisms of war changed those peasants into patriots. Thisexplains society's enthusiasm for its hero, all scarred and gray. Weadmire the child's innocence, but it lacks ripeness and maturity; itis only a handful of germs. But every heart kindles and glows when thetrue hero stands forth in the person of some Paul or Savonarola, someLuther or Lincoln, having passed through fire, through flood, throughall the thunder of life's battle, ever ripening, sweetening andenlarging, his fineness and gentleness being the result of greatstrength and great wisdom, accumulated through long life, until hestands, at the end of his career, as the sun stands on a summerafternoon just before it goes down. All statues and pictures becometawdry in comparison with such a rich, ripe, glowing, and gloriousheart, clothed with Christlike character. 

Life's teachers also includes newness and zest. First, man lives hislife in fresh personal experiences. Then, by observation, he repeatshis life in the career of his children. A third time he journeysaround the circle, re-experiencing life in that of his grandchildren. Then, because the newness has passed away and events no longerstimulate his mind, death withdraws man from the scene and enters himin a new school. Vast is the educational value therefore attaching tothe newness of life. God is so rich that no day or scene need repeat aformer one. The proverb, "We never look upon the same river, " tells usthat all things are ever changing, and clothes each day with freshfascination. "Whilst I read the poets, " said Emerson, "I think thatnothing new can be said about morning and evening; but when I see theday break I am not reminded of the Homeric and Chaucerian pictures. Iam cheered by the moist, warm, glittering, budding, melodious hourthat breaks down the narrow walls of my soul, and extends its life andpulsations to the very horizon. "

Thus, each new day is a new continent to be explored. Each youth is anew creature, full of delightful and mysterious possibilities. Eachbrain comes clothed with its own secret, having its own orbit, attaining its own unique experience. Ours is a world in which eachindividual, each country, each age, each day, has a history peculiarlyits own. This newness is a perpetual stimulant to curiosity and study. Gladstone's recipe for never growing old is, "Search out some topic innature or life in which you have never hitherto been interested, andexperience its fascinations. " For some, once a picture or book hasbeen seen, the pleasure ceases. Delight dies with familiarity. Suchpersons look back to the days of childhood as to the days of wonderand happiness. But the man of real vision ever beholds each rock, eachherb and flower with the big eyes of children, and with a mind ofperpetual wonder. For him the seed is a fountain gushing with newdelights. Every youth should repeat the experience of John Ruskin. [2]Such was the enthusiasm that this author felt for God's world, thatwhen he approached some distant mountain or saw the crags hanging overthe waters, or the clouds marching through the sky, "a shiver of fear, mingled with awe, " set him quivering with joy--such joy as the artistpupil feels in the presence of his noble master, such a kindling ofmind and heart as Dante felt on approaching his Beatrice. PhillipsBrooks grew happier as he grew older, and at fifty-seven he said:"Life seems a feast in which God keeps the best wine until the last. "Up to the very end the great preacher grew by leaps and bounds, because he never lost that enthusiasm for life that makes zest andnewness among life's best teachers. 

By a strange paradox men are taught by monotony as well as by newness. Ours is a world where the words, "Blessed be drudgery, " are full ofmeaning. Culture and character come not through consuming excitementsnor the whirl of pleasures. The granary is filled, not by thethunderous forces that appeal to the eye and ear, but by the secret, invisible agents; the silent energies, the mighty monarchs hidden inroots and in seeds. What rioting storms cannot do is done by thesilent sap and sunshine. All the fundamental qualities calledpatience, perseverance, courage, fidelity, are the gains of drudgery. Character comes with commonplaces. Greatness is through tasks thathave become insipid, and by duties that are irksome. The treadmill isa divine teacher. He who shovels sand year in and year out needs notour pity, for the proverb is "Every man has his own sand heap. " Thegreatest mind, fulfilling its career, once the freshness has worn off, pursues a hackneyed task and finds the duties irksome. It is betterso. A seer has suggested that the voices of earth are dulled that wemay hear the whisper of God; earth's colors are toned down that we maysee things invisible. 

Solitude is a wise teacher. Going apart the youth grows great. Emersonspeaks of sailing the sea with God alone. The founders of astronomydwelt on a plain of sand, where the horizon held not one vine-cladhill nor alluring vista. Wearying of the yellow sea, their thoughtsjourneyed along the heavenly highway and threaded the milky way, untilthe man became immortal. Moses became the greatest of jurists, becauseduring the forty years when his mind was creative and at its best, hedwelt amid the solitude of the sand hills around Sinai, and was freefor intellectual and moral life. History tells of a thousand men whohave maintained virtue in adversity only to go down in hours ofprosperity. That is, man is stimulated by the crisis; conflictprovokes heroism, persecution lends strength. But, denied the exigencyof a great trial, men who seemed grand fall all to pieces. Triumphantin adversity, men are vanquished by drudgery. An English author hasexpressed the belief that many men "achieve reputations when all eyesare focused upon them, who fall into petty worthlessness amidobscurity and monotony. Life's crowning victory belongs to those whohave won no brilliant battle, suffered no crushing wrong; who havefigured in no great drama, whose sphere was obscure, but who haveloved great principles midst small duties, nourished sublime hopesamid vulgar cares, and illustrated eternal principles in trifles. "

Responsibility is a teacher of righteousness. God educates men bycasting them upon their own resources. Man learns to swim by beingtossed into life's maelstrom and left to make his way ashore. No youthcan learn to sail his life-craft in a lake sequestered and shelteredfrom all storms, where other vessels never come. Skill comes throughsailing one's craft amidst rocks and bars and opposing fleets, amidststorms and whirls and counter currents. English literature has aproverb about the incapacity of rich men's sons. The rich man himselfbecame mighty because he began in poverty, had no hand to help himforward, and many hands to hold him back. After long wrestling withopposing force he compacted within himself the strength andforesight, the frugality and wisdom of a score of ordinary men. Theschool of hard knocks made him a man of might. But his son, cradled ina soft nest, sheltered from every harsh wind, loving ease more thanindustry, is in danger of coming up without insight into the secretsof his profession or industry. 

Responsibility alone drives man to toil and brings out his best gifts. For this reason the pensions given to scholars are said to haveinjured some men of genius. Johnson wrote his immortal Rasselas toraise money to buy his mother's coffin. Hunger and pain drove Lee tothe invention of his loom. Left a widow with a family to support, inmid-life Mrs. Trollope took to authorship and wrote a score ofvolumes. The most piteous tragedy in English literature is that ofColeridge. Wordsworth called him the most myriad-minded man sinceShakespeare, and Lamb thought him "an archangel slightly damaged. " Thegenerosity of his friends gave the poet a home and all its comfortswithout the necessity of toil. Is it possible that ease and lack ofresponsibility, with opium, helped wreck him? What did that criticmean when he said of a rich young friend, "He needs poverty alone tomake him a great painter?" It is responsibility that teaches caution, foresight, prudence, courage, and turns feeblings into giants. 

The extremes and contrasts of life do much to shape character. Ours isa world that moves from light to dark, from heat to cold, from summerto winter. On the crest to-day, the hero is in the trough to-morrow. Moses, yesterday a deserted slave child, to-day adopted by a king'sdaughter; David, but yesterday a shepherd boy with his harp, andto-day dwelling in the King's palace; men yesterday possessed ofplenty, to-day passing into penury--these illustrate the extremes oflife. These contrasts are as striking as those we find on the sunnyslopes of the Alps. There the foothills are covered with vineyards, while the summits have everlasting snow. In Wyoming hot springs gushclose beside snowdrifts. During man's few years, and brief, heexperiences many reverses. He flits on between light and dark. It ishard for the leader to drop back into the ranks. It is not easy forhim who hath led a movement to its success to see his laurels fallleaf by leaf. After a long and dangerous service men grown old andgray are succeeded by the youth to whom society owes no debt. Thus manjourneys from strength to invalidism, from prosperity to adversity, from joy to sorrow, or goes from misery to happiness, from defeat tovictory. 

Not one single person but sooner or later is tested by thesealterations. God sends prosperity to lift character to its highestlevels. It is an error to suppose that the higher manhood flourishesin extreme poverty. Watkinson has beautifully said that "humility isnever so lovely as when arrayed in scarlet; moderation is never soimpressive as when it sits at banquets; simplicity is never sodelightful as when it dwells amidst magnificence; purity is never sodivine as when its unsullied robes are worn in a king's palace;gentleness is never so touching as when it exists in the powerful. When men combine gold and goodness, greatness and godliness, geniusand graces, human nature is at its best. " On the other hand, adversityis a supplement, making up what prosperity lacks. The very abundanceof Christmas gifts ofttimes causes children to forget the parents whogave them. Some are adorned by prosperity as mountains are adornedwith rich forests. Others stand forth with the bareness, but also withthe grandeur and enduring strength, of Alpine mountains. Character islike every other structure--nothing tests it like extremes. 

When friendship and love have enriched man, and deepened all thesecret springs of his being, when grief hath refined and sufferingmellowed him, then God sends the ideals to stimulate men to newachievements. An ideal is a pattern or plan held up before the man'seye for imitation, realization and guidance. In the heart's innermosttemple of silence, whither neither friend nor enemy may ever come, there the soul unveils its secret ideal. The pattern there erected atonce proclaims what man is and prophesies what he shall be. In old agemen think what they are, but in youth, what we think, we come to be. Therefore must the pattern held up before the mind's eye be of thehighest and purest. The legend tells us of the master's apprentice, who, from the small bits of glass that had been thrown awayconstructed a window of surpassing loveliness. The ideal held upbefore the boy's mind organized and brought together these brokenbits, and wrought them into lines of perfect beauty. 

Thus by his inner aspirations, man lives and builds. The inner eyereveals to the toiler a better tool or law or reform, and therealization of these visions gives social progress. The vision ofconscience reveals new possibilities of character, and these giveduty. The vision of the heart reveals new possibilities offriendship, and these give the home. As the sun standing upon thehorizon orbs itself, first in each dewdrop, and afterward lifts thewhole earth forward, so the ideal repeats itself, first in theindividual heart, and afterward lifts all society forward. Thus untoman slowly building up his character comes the supreme ideal, whenJesus Christ stands forth fully revealed in His splendor. He is noempty abstraction, no bloodless theory, but bone of our bone, brotherof our own body and breath, yet marred by no weakness, scarred by nosin, tossing back temptations as some Gibraltar tosses back the sea'sbillows and the bits of drift-wood. Strong, He subdued His strength inthe day of battle, and bore Himself like iron. Yet He was so gentlethat His white hand felt the fall of the rose leaf, while He inflectedHis gianthood to the needs of the little child. Nor could He be holdenof the bands of death, for He clove a pathway through the grave, andmade death's night to shine like the day. "I have but one passion, "said Tholuck. "It is He! it is He!" As Shakespeare first reveals tothe young poet his real riches of imagination, as Raphael firstunveils to the young artist the possibilities of color, so man knowsnot his infinite capabilities until Jesus Christ stands forth in allHis untroubled splendor. Having Him, man has not only his Teacher andSaviour, but also his Master and Model, fulfilling all the needs ofthe highest manhood and the noblest character. 

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Modern Painters, vol. III, pg. 368. 

ASPIRATIONS AND IDEALS

 "As some most pure and noble face, Seen in the thronged and hurrying street, Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace, A flying odor sweet, Then passing leaves the cheated sense Balked with a phantom excellence. 

 'So in our soul, the visions rise Of that fair life we never led; They flash a splendor past our eyes, We start, and they are fled; They pass and leave us with blank gaze, Resigned to our ignoble days. "

 --_The Fugitive Ideal, by Wm. Watson. _

 "Contentment and aspiration are in every true man's life. "

 "No bird can race in the great blue sky against a noble soul. The eagle's wing is slow compared with the flight of hope and love. "--_Swing. _

 "We figure to ourselves The thing we like, and then we build it up-- As chance will have it, on the rock or sand; For time is tired of wandering o'er the world, And home-bound fancy runs her bark ashore. "

 --_Taylor. _

III

ASPIRATIONS AND IDEALS. 

Man is a pilgrim journeying toward the new and beautiful city of theIdeal. Aspiration, not contentment, is the law of his life. To-day'striumph dictates new struggles to-morrow. The youth flushed withsuccess may couch down in the tent of satisfaction for one night only;when the morning comes he must fold his tent and push on toward somenew achievement. That man is ready for his burial robes who lets hispresent laurels satisfy him. God has crowded the world with antidotesto contentment and with stimulants to progress. The world is not builtfor sluggards. The earth is like a road, a poor place for sleeping in, a good thing to travel over. The world is like a forge, unfit forresidence, but good for putting temper in a warrior's sword. Life isbuilt for waking up dull men, making lazy men unhappy, and thelow-flying miserable. When other incitements fail, fear and remorsefollowing behind scourge men forward; but ideals in front are thechief stimulants to growth. Each morning, waking, the soul sees theideal man one ought to be rising in splendor to shame the man one is. Columbus was tempted forward by the floating branches, the driftingweeds, the strange birds, unto the new world rich in tropic-treasure. So by aspirations and ideals God lures men forward unto the soul'sundiscovered country. In the long ago the star moving on before guidedthe wise men of the East to the manger where the young child lay; andstill in man's night God hangs aspirations--stars for guiding men awayfrom the slough of content to the hills of paradise. The soul hungersfor something vast, and ideals lure to the long voyage, the distantharbor, and are the stars by which the pilgrim shapes his course. 

Life's great teachers are friendship, occupation, travel, books, marriage, and chiefly heart-hungers. These yearnings within are thesprings of all man's progress without. Sometimes philosophers say thatthe history of civilization is the history of great men. Confessingthis, let us go on and note that the history of all great men is thehistory of their ideal hours, realized in conduct and character. Waking at midnight in his bleak garret, the vision splendid rosebefore John Milton. The boy of twelve would fain write a poem thatthe world would not willingly let die. He knew that whoever wouldwrite a heroic poem must first live a heroic life. From that hour theyouth followed the ideal that led him on, pursuing knowledgeunceasingly for seven years, never closing book before midnight, leaving Cambridge with the approbation of the good, and without stainor spot upon his life. Afterward, making a pilgrimage to Italy forstudy in that land of song and story, he heard of the civil wars inEngland, and at once returned, putting away his ambition for culturebecause he thought it base to be traveling in ease and safety abroadwhile his fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home. When heresisted a brutal soldier's attack who lifted his sword to say, "Ihave power to kill you, " the scholar replied: "And I have power to bekilled and to despise my murderer. " Growing old and blind, and fallingupon evil days and tongues, out of his heroic life he wrote hisimmortal poem. Dying, he still pursued his ideal, for moving into thevalley and shadow, the blind poet whispered: "Still guides theheavenly vision!"

Did men but know it, this is the secret of all heroic greatness. Hereis that matchless old Greek, Socrates, sitting in the prison talkingwith his friends of death and immortality, of the truth and beauty hehopes to find beyond. With one hand he rubs his leg, chafed by theharsh fetters, with the other he holds the cup of poison. When the suntouched the horizon he took the cup of death from the jailer's hand, and with shining face went down into the valley, and midst the thickshadows passed forever from mortal sight, still pursuing his visionsplendid. And here is that pure-white martyr girl, painted by Millais, staked down in the sea midst the rising tide, but looking toward theopen sky, with a great, sweet light upon her face. Here is Luthersurrounded by scowling soldiers and hungry, wolfish priests, lookingupward and then flinging out his challenge, "I cannot and I will notrecant, God help me. " Here is John Brown, with body all pierced withbullets and grievously sore, stooping to kiss the child as he went onto the gallows, with heart as high as on his wedding day. And here isthat Christian nurse who followed the line of battle close up to therifle-pits, and kindled her fire and prepared hot drinks for dyingmen; who, when asked by the colonel who told her to build those fires, made answer: "God Almighty, sir!" and went right on to fulfill hervision. And here is Livingstone, with his grand craggy head anddeep-set eyes, found in the heart of Africa, dead beside his couch, with ink scarcely dry on words that interpreted his vision: "God blessall men who in any way help to heal this open sore of the world!"Chiefly, there is Christ, who, from the hour when the star stayed byHis manger in Bethlehem, and the light ne'er seen on land or sea shoneon the luminous and transfigured mount, on to the day of His upliftedcross, ever followed the divine vision that brought Him at last toOlivet, to the open sky, the ascending cloud, the welcoming heavens. 

But God, who hath appointed visions unto great men, doth set eachlesser human life between its dream and its task. Deep heart-hungersare quickened within the people, and then some patriot, reformer, orhero, is raised up to feed the aspiration. Afterward history stores upthese noble achievements of yesterday as soul food for to day. Theheart, like the body, needs nourishment, and finds it in the highestdeeds and best qualities of those who have gone before. Thus theartist pupil is fed by his great master. The young soldier emulateshis brave general. The patriot is inspired by his heroic chief. History records the deeds of noble men, not for decorating her pages, but for strengthening the generations that come after. The measure ofa nation's civilization is the number of heroes it has had, whosequalities have been harvested for children and youth. 

Full oft one hero has transformed a people. The blind bard singingthrough the villages of Greece met a rude and simple folk. But Homeropened up a gallery in the clouds, and there unveiled Achilles as theideal Greek. It became the ambition of every Athenian boy to fix theIliad in his mind and repeat Achilles in his heart and life. Soon theAchilles in the sky looked down upon 20, 000 young Achilles walkingthrough the streets beneath. With what admiration do men recall theintellectual achievements of Athens! What temples, and what statues inthem! What orators and eloquence! What dramas! What lyric poems! Whatphilosophers! Yet one ideal man who never lived, save in a poet'svision, turned rude tribes into intellectual giants. Thus each nationhungers for heroes. When it has none God sends poets to invent them assoul food for the nation's youth. The best gift to a people is notvineyards nor overflowing granaries, nor thronged harbors, nor richfleets, but a good man and great, whose example and influence repeatgreatness in all the people. As the planet hanging above our earthlifts the sea in tidal waves, so God hangs illustrious men in the skyfor raining down their rich treasure upon society. 

Moreover, it is the number and kind of his aspirations that determinea man's place in the scale of manhood. Lowest of all is that greatunder class of pulseless men, content to creep, and without thought ofwings for rising. Mere drifters are they, creatures of circumstance, indifferently remaining where birth or events have started them. Having food and raiment, therewith they are content. No inspirationsfire them, no ideals rebuke them, no visions of possible excellence oradvancement smite their vulgar contentment. Like dead leaves sweptforward upon the current, these men drift through life. Not reallybad, they are but indifferently good, and therefore are the materialout of which vicious men are made. In malarial regions, physicianssay, men of overflowing health are safe because the abounding vitalitywithin crowds back the poison in the outer air, while men who live onthe border line between good health and ill, furnish the conditionsfor fevers that consume away the life. Similarly, men who live anindifferent, supine life, with no impulses upward, are exposed to eviland become a constant menace to society. 

Higher in the scale of manhood are the men of intermittentaspirations. A traveler may journey forward guided by the light of theperpetual sun, or he may travel by night midst a thunder-storm, whenthe sole light is an occasional flash of lightning, revealing the pathhere and the chasm there. But once the lightning has passed thedarkness is thicker than before. And to men come luminous hours, rebuking the common life. Then does the soul revolt from any evilthought and thing and long for all that is God-like in character, forhonor and purity, for valor and courage, for fidelity to the finerconvictions deep hidden in the soul's secret recesses. What heroes arethese--in the vision hour! With what fortitude do these soldiers bearup under blows--when the battle is still in the future! But once theconflict comes, their courage goes! On a winter's morning the frostupon the window pane shapes forth trees, houses, thrones, castles, cities, but these are only frost. So before the mind the imaginationhangs pictures of the glory and grandeur and God-likeness of thehigher life, but one breath of temptation proves their evanescence. Better, however, these intermittent ideals than uninterruptedsupineness and contentment. But, best of all, that third type of menwho realize in daily life their luminous hours, and transmute theirideals into conduct and character. These are the soul-architects whobuild their thoughts and deeds into a plan; who travel forward, notaimlessly, but toward a destination; who sail, not anywhither, buttoward a port; who steer, not by the clouds, but by the fixed stars. High in the scale of manhood these who ceaselessly aspire towardlife's great Exemplar. 

Consider the use of the soul's aspirations. Ideals redeem life fromdrudgery. Four-fifths of the human race are so overbodied andunder-brained that the mind is exhausted in securing provision forhunger and raiment. No to-morrow but may bring men to sore want. Poverty narrows life into a treadmill existence. Multitudes ofnecessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustomthemselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morningtill night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all hisyears sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhoodthreatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the testexhibition of a machine was successful, and those present gave theinventor heartiest congratulations. But one man was present whose facewas drawn with pain, and whose eyes were wet with tears. Explaininghis emotion to a questioner he said: "One hour ago I entered this rooma skilled workman; this machine sends me out that door a commonlaborer. For years I have been earning five dollars a day as an expertmachinist. By economy I hoped to educate my children into a highersphere, but now my every hope is ruined. " Life is crowded with thesedisappointments. A journey among men is like a journey through aharvest field after a hailstorm has flailed off all the buds andleaves, and pounded the young corn into the ground. Fulfilling such alife, men need to be saved by hopes and aspirations. Then God sendsvisions in to give men wing-room, and lift them into the realm ofrestfulness. Some hope rises to break the thrall of life. The soulrises like a songbird in the sky. 

Disappointed men find that food itself is not so sweet as dreams. Theseamstress toiling in the attic stitches hope in with each thread, anddreams of some knight coming to lift her out of poverty, and herreverie mocks and consumes her woe. The laborer digging in his ditchsweetens his toil and rests his weariness by the dream of the humblehome labor and love will some day build. Many in middle life, when itis too late, find themselves in the wrong occupation, but maintaintheir usefulness and happiness by surrounding themselves with thethoughts of the career they love and beyond may yet fulfill. How doesimagination enterprise everywhither! By it what ships are built, whatlands are explored, what armies are led, what thrones are erected inthought! When the seed sprang up in the prison cell, the scholarconfined there enlarged the little plant until in his mind it became avast forest, where all flowers bloomed and spiced shrubs grew andbirds sang, and where brooks gurgled such music as never fell onmortal ear. Innumerable men endure by seeing things invisible. Theyretire from the vexations and disappointments without to theirhidden-vision life. Their inner thoughts contrast strangely with theouter fact and life. During the Middle Ages, when persecution brokeout against the Jews, these merchants were oppressed and robbed, andsaved themselves from destruction only by living a squalid lifeoutside and a princely life in hidden quarters. It has been said: "Youmight follow an old merchant, spotted and stained with all the squalorof beggary upon him, through byways foul to the feet and offensive toevery sense, and through some narrow lane enter what looks like theentrance of an ill-kept stable. Thence opens out a squalid hall ofnoisome odors. But ascending the steps you come to a secret passage, when, opening the door, you are blinded with the brilliancy thatbursts upon you. You are in the palace of a prince. The walls arecovered with adornments. Rare tapestries hang upon the walls. Thedishes that bespread the table are of silver and gold, and thehousehold, who hasten to receive the parent and strip off his outwarddisguise, are themselves arrayed like king's children. " Thus theideals make a great difference between the man without and the hiddenlife within. Seeing unseen things, the heart sings while the handworks. The vision above lifts the life out of fatigue into the realmof joy and restfulness. 

It is also the office of these divine ideals to rebuke the lowerphysical life, and smite each sordid, selfish purpose. The vision houris the natural enemy of the vulgar mood. Men begin life with the highpurpose of living nobly, generously, openly. Full of the choicestaspirations, hungering for the highest things, the youth enterstriumphantly upon the pathway of life. But journeying forward he meetsconflict and strife, envy and jealousy, disappointment and defeat. Hefinds it hard to live up to the level of his best moods. Self-interestbiases his judgment. Greed bribes reason. Pride leads him astray. Selfishness tempts him to violate his finer self. The struggle tomaintain his ideals is like a struggle for life itself. Many, alas!after a short, sharp conflict, give up the warfare and break faith andfealty with the deeper convictions. They quench the light that shoneafar off to beckon and cheer them on. Persuading themselves that theideal life is impracticable, they strike an average between theirhighest moods and their low-flying hours. Then is the luster of lifeall dimmed, and the soul is like a noble mansion in the morning aftersome banquet or reception. In the evening, when making ready for thebrilliant feast, all the house is illuminated. Each curio is in itsniche. The harp is in its place. The air is laden with the perfume ofroses. But when the morning comes, how vast is the change! The windowsare darkened and the halls deserted; the wax tapers have burned to thesocket, or flicker out in smoke; the flowers, scorched by the heatedair, have shriveled and fallen, and in the banquet-room only the"broken meats" remain. Gone is all the glory of the feast! Thus, whenmen lay aside their heroic ideals and bury their visions, the lusterof life departs, and its beauty perishes. Then it is that God sends inthe heavenly vision to rebuke the poorer, sensuous life and man'smaterial mood. Above the life that is, God hangs the glory, andgrandeur, and purity of the life that might be, and the soul lookingup scorns the lower things, and hungers and thirsts for truth andpurity. Then man comes to himself again, and makes his way back to hisFather's side. 

Moreover, these vision hours come to men to give them hints and gleamsof what they shall be when time and God's resources have wrought theirpurpose of strength and beauty upon the soul. Man is born a long wayfrom himself and needs to see the end toward which he moves. He has abody and uses a lower life, but man is what he is in his best hoursand most exalted moods. The measure of strength in any living thing isits highest faculty. The strength of the deer is swiftness, of a lionstrength; but to the power of the foot the eagle adds wings, andtherefore is praised for its swift flight. To the wing the bee addsgenius for building with geometric skill, and its praise lies in itsrare intelligence. Thus man also is to be measured by his highestfaculty, in that he has power to see things unseen and work in realmsinvisible. We are told that Cicero had three summer villas and awinter residence, but he prided himself not upon his wealth, but uponhis oratory and eloquence. The grand old statesman of England hasskill for lifting the axe upon the tall trees, but he glories in hisskill in statecraft. Incidentally man reaps treasures from the fields, finds riches in the forests, and wealth in the mountains; yet his realmanhood resides in reason and moral sentiment, and the spirit thatsaith, "Our Father. " For him to live for the body is as if one whoshould inherit a magnificent palace were to close the galleries andlibraries and splendid halls, and opening only the eating-room, thereto live and feed. 

Happy the man who is a good mechanic or merchant; but, alas! if he isonly that. Happy he who prospers toward the granary and thestorehouse; but, alas! if he is shrunken and shriveled toward thespiritual realm. To all rich in physical treasure, but bankrupt towardthe unseen realm, comes some divine influence arousing discontent. Then lower joys are seen to be uncrowned, and sordid pleasures to haveno scepter. The soul becomes restless and disappointed where once itwas contented. Looking afar off it sees in its vision hours the goodlyestate to which God shall some day bring it. Here we recall thepeasant's dream. His humble cottage while he slept lifted up itsthatched roof and became a noble mansion. The one room and smallbecame many and vast. The little windows became arched and beautiful, looking out upon vast estates all his. The fireplace became an altar, o'er which hung seraphim. The chimney became a golden ladder like thatwhich Jacob saw, and his children, living and dead, passed like angelsbringing treasure up and down. And thus, while the human heart musesand dreams, God builds His sanctuary in the soul. The vision the heartsees is really the pattern by which God works. These fulfill thetransformation wrought in the peasant's dream. 

Seeking to fulfill their noble ministry, ideals have grievous enemies. Among these let us include vanity and pride. When the wise man said, "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit, there is more hope of afool than of him, " he indicated that he had known fools cured of theirfolly, but never a vain man cured of his vanity. Pliny said: "It is ashard to instruct pride as it is to fill an empty bottle with a cork init. " Some men are constitutionally vain. They think all creationconverges toward one center, and they are that center. The rash ofconceit commonly runs its course very early in life. With most it islike the prancing and gayety of an untrained colt; the cure is theplow and harness. Failure also is a curative agent, and so also issuccess. But chiefly do the ideals rebuke conceit. The imagination isGod in the soul, and lifting up the possible achievement, the glory ofwhat men may become, shames and makes contemptible what men are. 

Indolence and contentment also antagonize the ideals. Men bringtogether a few generosities and integrities. Soul-misers, men gloatover these, as money-misers over their shining treasure, content withthe little virtue they have. But no man has a right to fulfill astagnant career; life is not to be a puddle, but a sweet and runningstream. No man has a right to rust; he is bound to keep his toolsbright by usage. No man has a right to be paralyzed; he is bound toenlarge and grow. So ideals come in to compel men to go forward. It iseasier to lie down in a thorn hedge, or to sleep in a field ofstinging nettles, than for a man to abide contentedly as he is whilehis ideals scourge him upward. 

Chiefly do the malign elements oppose the ideal life. There is enmitybetween vulgarity and visions. If anger comes, mirth goes; when greedis in the ascendency, generosity is expelled. If, during a chorus ofbird-voices in the forest, only the shadow of an approaching hawkfalls upon the ground, every sweet voice is hushed. Thus, if but oneevil, hawk-like note is heard in the heart, all the nobler joys andaspirations depart. The higher life is at enmity with the lower, andthis war is one of extermination. 

Oh, all ye young hearts! guard well one rock that is fatal to allexcellence. If ever you have broken faith with your ideals, lift themup and renew faith. Cherish ideals as the traveler cherishes the northstar, and keep the guiding light pure and bright and high above thehorizon. The vessel may lose its sails and masts, but if it only keepsits course and compass, the harbor may be reached. Once it loses thestar for steering by, the voyage must end in shipwreck. For when theheroic purpose goes, all life's glory departs. Let no man think theburial of a widow's son the saddest sight on earth. Let men not mournover the laying of the first born under the turf, as though that wereman's chiefest sorrow. Earth knows no tragedy like the death of thesoul's ideals. Therefore, battle for them as for life itself! Thecynic may ridicule them, because, having lost his own purity andtruth, he naturally thinks that none are pure or true; but wise menwill take counsel of aspirations and ideals. Even low things havepower for incitement. No dead tree in the forest so unsightly but thatsome generous woodbine will wrap a robe of beauty about itsnakedness. No cellar so dark but if there is a fissure through whichthe sunlight falls the plant will reach up its feeble tendrils to beblessed by the warming ray. Yet the soul is from God, is higher thanvine or tree, and should aspire toward Him who stirs these mysteriousaspirations in the heart. 

The soul is like a lost child. It wanders a stranger in a strangeland. Full oft it is heartsick, for even the best things content itfor but a little while. Daily, mysterious ideals throb and throbwithin. It struggles with a vagrant restlessness. It goes yearningafter what it does not find. A deep, mysterious hunger rises. It wouldfain come to itself. In its ideal hours it sees afar off the visionthat tempts it on and up toward home and heaven. The secret of man isthe secret of his vision hours. These tell him whence he came--andwhither he goes. Then Christ became the soul's guide; God's heart, thesoul's home. 

THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CHARACTER

 "Health is the vital principle of bliss. "--_Thompson. _

 "Good nature is often a mere matter of health. With good digestion men are apt to be good natured; with bad digestion, morose. "--_Beecher. _

 "A man so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with equal ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of, --whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic-engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order, ready like a steam engine to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind. "--_Huxley. _

 "Finally, I have one advice which is of very great importance. You are to consider that health is a thing to be attended to continually, as the very highest of all temporal things. There is no kind of an achievement equal to perfect health. What to it are nuggets or millions?"--_Carlyle's Address to Students at Edinburgh. _

 "Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty: For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood: Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility; Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty but kindly. "

 --"_As You Like It_, " ii: 3. 

IV

THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CHARACTER

Ancient society looked upon the human body with the utmost veneration. The citizen of Thebes or Memphis knew no higher ambition than acompetency for embalming his body. Men loved unto death and beyond itthe physical house in which the soul dwelt. Every instinct ofrefinement and self-respect revolted from the thought of discardingthe body like a cast-off garment or worn-out tool. In his dying hourit was little to Rameses that his career was to be pictured on obeliskand preserved in pyramid, but it was very much to the King that theembalmer should give permanency to the body with which his soul hadgone singing, weeping and loving through three-score years and ten. The papyrus found in the tombs tells us that the soldiers of thatfar-off age did not fear death itself more than they feared falling insome secluded spot where the body, neglected and forgotten, wouldquickly give its elements back to air and earth. How noble thesentiment that attached dignity and honor to hand and foot! Sacred, doubly sacred, was the body that had served the soul long andfaithfully!

The soul is a city, and as Thebes had many gateways through whichpassed great caravans laden with goodly treasure, so the five sensesare gateways through which journey all earth's sights and sounds. Through the golden gate of the ear have gone what noble truths, companying together what messengers of affection, what sweetfriendships. The eye is an Appian Way over which have gone all theprocessions of the seasons. How do hand and vision protect man?Hunters use sharp spears for keeping back wild beasts, butLivingstone, armed only with eye beams, drove a snarling beast intothe thicket, and Luther, lifting his great eyes upon an assassin, madethe murderer flee. What flute or harp is comparable for sweetness tothe voice? It carries warning and alarm. It will speak for you, pleadfor you, pray for you. Truly it is an architect, fulfilling Dante'sdictum, "piling up mountains of melody. " Serving the soul well, thebody becomes sacred by service. Therefore man loves and guards thephysical house in which he lives. 

Always objects and places associated with life's deep joys and sorrowsbecome themselves sacred through these associations. The flockpassing through the forest leaves some white threads behind. The birdlines its nest with down from its own bosom. Thus the heart, goingforward, leaves behind some treasure, and perfumes its path. Memoryhangs upon the tree the whispered confession made beneath itsbranches. No palace so memorable as the little house where you werereared, no charter oak so historic as the trees under which youplayed, no river Nile so notable as the little brook that once sung toyour sighing, no volume or manuscript so precious as the letter andTestament your dying father pressed into your hand. Understanding thisprinciple, nations guard the manuscript of the sage, the sword of thegeneral, the flag stained with heroes' blood. Memorable forever thelittle room where Milton wrote, the cottage where Shakespeare dwelt, the spot where Dante dreamed, the ruin where Phidias wrought. But nobuilding ever showed such comely handiwork as the temple built bydivine skill. God hath made the soul's house fair to look upon. Deathmay close its doors, darken its windows, and pull down its pillars;still, its very ruins are precious, to be guarded with jealous care. How sacred the spot where lie the parents that tended us, the bosomthat shielded our infancy, the hands that carried our weaknesseverywhither. Men will always deem the desecration of the body or thegrave blasphemous. The physical house, standing, is the temple of God;falling, it must forever be sacred in man's memory. 

Science teaches us to look upon the body as a thinking machine. As amental mechanism it exhibits the divine being as an inventor, who hasproduced a machine as much superior to Watt's engine, as that engineis superior to a clod or stone. In this divine mechanism all intricateand enduring machines are combined in one. Imagine an instrument sodelicate as to be at once a telescope and microscope, at one momentwitnessing the flight of a sun hundreds of millions of miles away, then quickly adjusted for seeing the point of the finest needle!Imagine a machine that at one and the same moment can feel thegratefulness of the blazing fire, taste the sweetness of an orange, experience the æsthetic delights of a picture, recall the events inthe careers of the men the artist has delineated, recognize theentrance of a group of friends, out of the confusion of tongues leadforth a voice not heard for years, thrill with elation at theunexpected meeting! The very mention of such an instrument, combiningaudiphone, telephone, phonograph, organ, loom, and many othermechanisms yet to be invented, seems like some tale from the "ArabianNights. " Yet the body and brain make up such a wondrous mental loom, weaving thought-textures called conversations, poems, orations, makingthe creations of a Jacquard loom mere child's play. The body is like avast mental depot with lines running out into all the world. Everything outside has a desk inside where it transacts its specialline of business. There is a visual desk where sunbeams make up theiraccounts; an aural desk where melodies conduct their negotiations; amemory desk where actions and motives are recorded; a logical deskwhere reasons and arguments are received and filed. Truly God hathwoven the bones and sinews that fence the soul about into a mechanism"fearfully and wonderfully made. "

To-day science is writing for us the story of the ascent of the body. Scholars perceive that matter has fulfilled its mission now that duststands erect, throbbing in a thinking brain, and beating in a glowingheart. Ours is a world wherein God hath ordained that acorns should goon toward oaks, huts become houses, tents temples, babes men, and thegenerations journey on to that sublime event "toward which the wholecreation moves. " In this long upward march science declares the humanbody has had its place. Professor Drummond, famed for his Christianfaith, in his recent volume tells us that man's body brings forwardand combines in itself all the excellencies of the whole lower animalcreation. As the locomotive of to-day contains the engine of Watt andthe improvements of all succeeding inventors; as the Hoeprinting-press contains the rude hand-machine of Guttenberg and thebest features of all the machines that followed it; so the human bodycontains the special gift of all earlier and lower forms of animallife. In making a reaper the machinist does not begin with the sickle, and then unite the hook with the scythe, afterward joining thereto therude reaper and so move on through all the improving types. But in thegerminal man, nature does adopt just this method. As the embryo lifedevelops it passes into and through the likeness of each lower animal, and ever journeying upward carries with it the special grace and giftof each creature it has left behind, "sometimes a bone, or a muscle, or a ganglion, " until the excellencies of many lower forms arecompacted in the one higher man. In the human body there are nowseventy vestigial structures, e. G. , vermiform appendices, useful inthe lower life but worse than useless in man. When an anatomistdiscovered an organ in a certain animal he foretold its rudimentaryexistence in the embryonic man, and we are told his prophecy wasfulfilled through the microscope, "just as the planet Neptune wasdiscovered after its existence had been predicted from thedisturbances produced in the orbit of Uranus. " As some noble galleryowes its supremacy to centuries of toil and represents treasuresbrought in from every clime and country, so the human body representscontributions from land and sea, and members and organs frominnumerable creatures that creep and walk and fly. 

Thus man's descent from the animals has been displaced by the ascentof the human body. This is not degradation, but an unspeakableexaltation. Man is "fearfully and wonderfully made. " God ordained thelong upward march for making his body exquisitely sensitive and fittedto be the home of a divine mind. How marvelously does this viewenhance the dignity of man, and clothe God with majesty and glory! Itis a great thing for the inventor to construct a watch. But what ifgenius were given some jeweler to construct a watch carrying the powerto regulate itself, and when worn out to reproduce itself in anotherwatch of a new and higher form, endowing it at the same time withpower for handing forward this capacity for self-improvement? Is notthe wisdom and skill required for making a watch that isself-adjusting, self-improving, and self-succeeding vastly more thanthe wisdom required to construct a simple timepiece? Should sciencefinally establish the new view, already adopted by practically allbiologists, it will but substitute the method of gradualism and anunfolding progression for a human body created by an instantaneous andperemptory fiat. But this is a question for specialists and experts. Those scholars who accept this view, including such thinkers as thelate President McCosh, of Princeton; Dana, of Yale; such teachers asCaird, Drummond, and scores who could be named, all renowned for theirChristian belief and life, find that these new views do not wastefaith, but rather nourish it. Formerly men feared and fought Newton'sdoctrine of gravity, trembling lest that principle should destroybelief. To-day many are troubled because of the new views ofdevelopment. But it is possible for one to believe in evolution, andstill believe in God with all the mind and soul and strength. Strangely enough, some are unwilling to have ascended progressivelyfrom an animal, but quite willing to have come up directly from theclod. But either origin is good enough providing man has ascended farenough from the clod and the animal, and made some approach to theangel. Some there are for whom no descent seems possible--they can gono lower; dwelling now with beasts; others seem to have made no ascentwhatever, but to be even now upon the plane of things that crawl andcreep. Let us leave the question to the scientists. By whatever waythe body came, mentality and spirituality have now been engrafted uponit. Man is no longer animal, but spiritual; and the wondrousdevelopment of man upon this side of the grave is the pledge andpromise of a long progress beyond the grave, when the divine spirit byhis secret resources shall lead forth from men, emotions, dispositions, and aspirations as much beyond the present thought andlife as the tree is beyond the seed and the low-lying roots. 

In this new view of the human body, science not only exhibits thegrowth and perfection of man as the goal toward which God has beenmoving from the first, but also throws light upon the sinfulness ofman and the conflicts that rage within the soul. Man is seen to be adouble creature. The spirit man rides a man of flesh and is oftenthrown thereby and trampled under foot. There is a lower animal naturehaving all the appetites and passions that sustain the physicalorganization; but super-imposed thereon, is a spiritual man, withreason and moral sentiment, with affection and faith. The union of thetwo means strife and conflict; the doing what one would not do and theleaving undone what one would do. The poet describes the condition bysaying: "The devil squatted early on human territory, and God sent anangel to dispossess him. " The animal nature foams out all manner ofpassions and lusts. From thence issue also lurid lights and murkystreams. But the under man is not the true man. The soldier rides thehorse, but is himself other than his beast. Man uses an animal at thebottom, but man is what he is at the top. Sin is the struggle forsupremacy between the animal forces and the higher spiritual powers. The passions downstairs must be subordinated to the people upstairs. In some men the animal impulses predominate with terrible force, andtheir control is not easy. It is as if a child should try to drive achariot drawn by forty steeds of the sun. When a man finds that he cannot dam back the mountain stream, nor stop up its springs, he learnsto use the stream by building a mill, and controlling the pressure ofthe flood for grinding his corn. Similarly, the problem of life is forthe upper man to educate, control, and transmute the lower forcesinto sympathy and service. The combative powers once turned againsthis fellows must be turned against nature and used for hewing down theforests, bridging rivers, piercing mountains. Thus every animal forceand passion becomes sacred through consecration to mental andspiritual ends and aims. 

Sin therefore ceases to be philosophy or mediævalism; it becomes aconcrete personal fact. Daily each one comes under its rule and sway. The mind loves truth, and the body tempts man to break truth. The soulloves honor, and passion tempts it to deflect its pathway. Man goesforth in the morning with all the springs of generosity open; butbefore night selfishness has dammed up the hidden springs. In themorning man goes out with love irradiating his face; he comes back atnight sullen and black with hatred and enmity. In the morning the soulis like a young soldier, parading in stainless white; at night hisgarments are begrimed and soiled with self-indulgence and sin. Asthere is a line along the tropics where two zones meet and breedperpetual storm, so there is a middle line in man where the animal manmeets the spiritual man, and there is perpetual storm. There cloudsnever pass away, and the thunder never dies out of the horizon oftime. [3] This view, appealing to universal reason, appeals also todivine help. In his daily strife man needs the brooding presence andconstant stimulus of the divine being. Man waits for God's stimulus asthe frozen roots wait the drawing near of God's sun. The soul looksever unto the hills whence cometh its help. In the morning, at noon, and at night, man longs for a deliverer. God is the pledge of thesoul's victory over the body. For men floundering in the slough of sinand despond these words, "Ye may, ye must be born again, " are sweeterthan angel songs falling from the hills of Paradise. 

Consider the uses of the body. It is God's schoolmaster teachingindustry, compelling economy and thrift, and promoting all the basalmoralities. It contains the springs of all material civilization. Ifwe go back to the dawn of history we find that hunger and the desires, associated with the body, have been the chief stimulants towardindustrial progress. Indolence is stagnation. Savages in the tropicsare torpid and without progress. Hunger compels men to ask what foodis in the river, what roots are in the ground, what fruits are on thetrees, what forces are in the air. The body is peremptory in itsdemands. Hunger carries a stinging scourge. Necessity drives out theevil spirits of indolence and torpidity. The early man threading thethickets in search of food chanced upon a sweet plum, and because thebush grew a long way from his lodge he transplanted the root to a valenear his home. Thence came all man's orchards and vineyards. Shiveringwith cold, man sought out some sheltered cave or hollow tree. But soonthe body asked him to hew out a second cave in addition to the onenature had provided. Fulfilling its requests, man went on in theinterests of his body to pile stone on stone, and lift up carvedpillars and groined arches. Thence came all homes. For the body thesower goes forth to sow, and the harvester looks forward to the timeof sheaves and shoutings. For strengthening the body the shepherdleads forth his flocks and herds, and for its raiment the weaver makesthe looms and spindles fly. For the body all the trains go speeding inand out, bringing fruits from the sunny south, and furs from thefrozen north. All the lower virtues and integrities spring from itsdesires. As an engine, lying loose in a great ship, would have novalue, but, fastened down with bolts, drives the great hull throughthe water, so the body fastens and bolts the spirit to field, forest, and city, and makes it useful and productive. Material life andcivilization may be said to literally rest upon man's bones andsinews. 

The body is also the channel of all the knowledges. How scant is thechild's understanding of the world-house in which he lives! There areshelves enough, but they are all empty. In the interest ofintelligence his mind is sheathed in this sensitive body and the worldforces without report themselves to this sensitive nerve mechanism. Fire comes in to burn man's fingers and teach him how to make the firesmite vapor from water. Cold comes in to nip his ears and pinch hischeeks until he learns the economy of ice, snow and rain. Steel cutshis fingers and the blood oozes out. Thenceforth he turns the axetoward the trees and the scythe toward the standing grain. The stonefalling bruises him, compelling a knowledge of gravity and the use oftrip-hammer, weights and pulleys. Looking downward the eye discernsthe handwriting on the rocks and the mind reads earth's romanticstory. Looking upward, the vision runs along the milky way formeasuring the starry masses and searching out their movements. The earstrains out sweet sounds, and St. Cecilia hears melodies from the sky. Bending over the cradle, the parent marvels at God's bounty in theface of a babe. When the little one goes away the parent copies itsface in rude colors, or carves its form in marble. Thus all the arts, sciences and inventions are gifts of the body to man's mental andmoral life. 

There is a beautiful story of a company of celestial beings, who, indisguise, entered an ancient city upon a mission of mercy. Departinghurriedly, in some way a fair young child was left behind and lost. Inthe morning when men came upon the streets they found a sweet boy withsunny hair sitting upon the steps of the temple. Language had he none. He answered questions with streaming eyes and frightened face. Whilemen wondered a slave drew near, carrying a harp. Then the heavenlychild signaled for the instrument, for this language he could speak. He threw his arms about the harp as the child about its mother's neck. He touched one string. Upon the hushed air there stole out a notepure, clear, and sweet as though amethysts and pearls were melted intoliquid melodies. It was music, but not such music as mortals give tomortals. It was such a song as spirit would sing to spirit, signalingacross the streets of heaven. It was a hymn to the mother whom he hadloved and lost. With tearful eye and smiling face the little strangerand the harp together wept, and laughed, and sobbed out their griefand song. It was the speech of a child homesick for heaven. What thatharp was to the silent boy, the human body is to man's soul within. The soul teemed with thoughts. Fancies surged and thronged within. Then God gave the soul a body, as a harp of many strings. Through itthe soul finds voice and pours forth its rich thoughts and variedemotions. 

Consider, also, how nature has ordained the body as a system of moralregistration. Nature has a record of all men's deeds, keeping heraccounts on fleshly tablets. The mind may forget, the body never. Thebrain sees to it that the thoughts within do immediately dispose offacial tissue without. Mental brightness gives facial illumination. The right act or true thought sets its stamp of beauty in thefeatures; the wrong act or foul thought sets its seal of distortion. Moral purity and sweetness refine and beautify the countenance. Thebody is a show window, advertising and exhibiting the soul's stock ofgoods. Nature condenses bough, bud and shrub into black coal; compactsthe rich forces of air and sun and soil into peach and pear. In thekingdom of morals, there are people who seem to be of virtue, truthand goodness all compact. Contrariwise, every day you will meet menupon our streets who are solid bestiality and villainy done up inflesh and skin. Each feature is as eloquent of rascality as an ape'sof idiocy. Experts skilled in physiognomy need no confession fromimpish lips, but read the life-history from page to page written onfeatures "dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, branded byremorse; the body consumed with sloth and dishonored with selfishuses; the bones full of the sins of youth, the face hideous withsecret vices, the roots dried up beneath and the branches cut offabove. " It is as natural and necessary for hidden thoughts and deedsto reveal themselves through cuticle as for root or bud in spring tounroll themselves into sight and observation. Here and now everythingtends to obscure nature's handwriting and to veil it in mist anddisguise. But the body is God's canvas, and nature's handwriting goesever on. Each faculty is a brush, and with it reason thinks out theportrait. Even the wolf may give something to the features, and alsothe snake and scorpion. Soon will come an hour when men will hear notthe voice of the sirens singing praises in the ear, nor the plauditsof men of low deeds and conscience, but an hour when men shall standin the presence of the all-revealing light and see themselves as theyare and review the life they have embodied and emportraited. Happy, thrice happy, those who have traversed all life's pathway and come atlast to the hour when they stand face to face with themselves, then tofind therein a divine image like unto the comeliness and completion ofHim whose face was transfigured and shone as the light. 

At length has dawned the day when science strengthens the argument forimmortality. The dream of the prophet and seer is confirmed in thelight of modern knowledge. "Each new discovery, " says John Fiske, "butplaces man upon a higher pinnacle than ever, and lights the futurewith the radiant color of hope. " Leaving his body behind, man journeyson toward an immortal destiny. Science has emptied a thousand newmeanings into the words of Socrates: "The destruction of the harp doesnot argue the death of the harpist. " Nature decrees that the flowermust fall when the fruit swells. If the winged creature is to comeforth and increase, the chrysalis must perish and decrease. When thelong journey is over it is natural that the box in which the richlycarved and precious statue is packed should be tossed aside. Swiftlyyouth goes on toward maturity, age toward old age, and the scytheawaits all. But sickness and trouble can do nothing more than dim theeye, dull the ear, weaken the hand. Dying and death avail not forinjuring reason, affection, or hope, or love. 

At the close of a long and arduous career the famous Lyman Beecherpassed under a mental cloud. The great man became as a little child. One day after his son, Henry Ward, had preached a striking sermon, hisfather entered the pulpit and beginning to speak wandered in hiswords. With great tenderness the preacher laid his hand upon hisfather's shoulder and said to the audience: "My father is like a manwho, having long dwelt in an old house, has made preparations forentering a new and larger home. Anticipating a speedy removal, he senton beforehand much of his soul-furniture. When later the day ofremoval was postponed the interval seemed so brief as to render itunnecessary to bring back his mental goods. " Oh, beautiful wordsdescribing those whose strength is declining, whose spirit is ebbingand senses failing, because God is packing up their soul-furniturethat they may be ready for the long journey that awaits us all. Butman's journey is not unto the grave. Dying is transmutation. Dying isnot folding of the wings; but pluming the pinions for new and largerflight. Dying is not striking an unseen rock, but a speedy entranceinto an open harbor. Death is no enemy, letting the arrow fly towardone who sits at life's banquet-table. Death is a friend coming on anerrand of release and divine convoy. For God's children "to bedeath-called is to be God-called; to be God-called is to beChrist-found; to be Christ-found is hope and home and heaven. "

FOOTNOTES:

[3] See Symposium on Evolution, Homiletic Review, May, 1894. 

THE MIND: AND THE DUTY OF RIGHT THINKING

 "All ye who possess the power of thought, prize it well! Remember that its flight is infinite; it winds about over so many mountain tops, and so runs from poetry to eloquence, it so flies from star to star, it so dreams, so loves, so aspires, so hangs both over mystery and fact, that we may well call it the effort of man to explore the home, the infinite palace of his heavenly Father. "--_Swing. _

 "Men with empires in their brains. "--_Lowell. _

 "'Tis the mind that makes the body rich. "--_Taming of the Shrew. _

 "Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality. "--_Wordsworth. _

 "Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me that a scholar is the favorite of heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. "--_Emerson. _

 "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. "--_Solomon. _

V

THE MIND; AND THE DUTY OF RIGHT THINKING

With fine imagery the seer of old likened the mind unto a tree. Thetree shakes down its fruits, and the mind sheds forth its thoughts. The boughs of the one will cover the land with forests; the facultiesof the other will sow the world with harvests that blight or harveststhat bless. The measure of personal worth, therefore, is the numberand quality of thoughts issuing from man's mind. For all the doingcalled commerce, and all the speaking called conversation and books, begin with the thinking called ideas. Each thing was first a thought. A loom is Arkwright's thought dressed up in iron clothes. Books arethe scholar's thoughts caught and fastened upon the white page. As ourplanet and the harvests that cover it are the thoughts of God rushinginto visible expression, so all houses and ships, all cities andinstitutions, are man's inner thoughts, taking on outer and materialembodiment. 

When thoughts compacted into habits have determined character anddestiny for the individual, they go on and secure their socialprogress. When God would order a great upward movement for society, Hedrops a great idea into the mind of some leader. Such energies divinehave these thoughts that they create new epochs in history. ThroughLuther the thought of liberty in church and state set tyrantstrembling and thrones tottering. Through Cromwell the thought ofpersonal rights became a weapon powerful enough utterly to destroythat citadel of iniquity named the divine right of kings. It was agreat moral thought called the "Golden Rule" that shotted the cannonof the North for victory and spiked the cannon of the South fordefeat. Measureless is the might of a moral idea. It exceeds the forceof earthquakes and the might of tidal waves. The reason why no scholaror historian can forecast the events and institutions of the nextcentury is that none can tell what great idea God will drop into thesoul of some man ordained to be its voice and prophet. 

Now the omnipotence of thoughts is not without reason. Man is thechild of genius because he is the child of God. Those beautiful words, "made in His image, " tell us that the human mechanism is patternedafter the divine. Reason and memory in man answer to those facultiesin God, as do conscience and the moral sentiments. In creative geniusman alone is a sharer with God. As the Infinite One passing throughspace leaves behind those shining footsteps called suns and stars, glowing and sparkling upon planets innumerable, so man's mind, movingthrough life, leaves behind a pathway all shining with books, laws, liberties and homes. Of all the wonderful things God hath made, manthe wonderer is himself the most wonderful. No casket owned by a king, filled with gems and sparkling jewels, ever held such treasure as Godhath put into this casket of bones and sinew. The imagination cannotpaint in colors too rich this being, who is a miniature edition ofinfinity. It is not fiction, but fact, to say that reason is a loom;only where Jacquard's mechanism weaves a few yards of silk and satin, reason weaves conversation, sympathy, songs, poems, eloquence--texturesall immortal. And memory is a gallery; only where the Louvre holds afew pictures of the past, memory waving her wonder-working wand bringsback all faces, living and dead, causing mountains and battle-fields, with all distant scenes, to pass before the mind in solemn procession. 

The Bank of England has indeed a mechanism that tests coins and throwsout all light weights. But judgment is an instrument testing thingsinvisible, weighing arguments and motives, testing principles andcharacters. And the desires, are they not like unto the richly ladenargosies of commerce? And fancy, hath it not the skill of artist andarchitect? Imagination, working in the realm of the useful, turns ironinto engines. Imagination, working in realms of the beautiful, turnspigments into pictures. Imagination, working in the realms of thought, can turn things true into sciences, and things good into ethicalsystems. Well did the philosopher say that the greatest star is theone standing at the little end of the telescope, the one looking, notlooked at nor looked for. When some Agassiz dredging the Atlantictells us what animals lived there a million years ago, the scientist'smind seems an abyss deeper than the sea itself; and when Tyndall, climbing to the top of the Matterhorn, reads on that rock-page all theevents of the ancient world, the mountain is dwarfed to an ant hilland becomes insignificant in the presence of the mountain-mindedscholar. Hunters tell us that when crossing a swamp they leap from onehummock of grass to another. But Herschel and Proctor, exploring theheavenly world, step from star to star. The husbandman, squeezing acluster of grapes in his cup, does but interpret to us the way inwhich the scholar squeezes planets and suns to brim the cup ofknowledge for man's thirsting soul. This vast and wondrous worldwithout is matched by man's rich and various mind within! Well didEmerson exclaim, "Man, thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thysenses the nights and mornings, the summers and winters; carrying inthy brain the geometry of the City of God, in thy heart all the bowersof love, and all the realms of right and wrong. "

Such being the nature of the mind, consider its prodigiousfruitfulness in thought. If all the processes of the mind were reducedto material volume, the thoughts of each moment would fill a page, thethoughts of each hour would fill a chapter, the thoughts of each daywould fill a volume, the emotions of a year would fill a small libraryof many volumes. Value might be wanting, but not bulk. It is given tothe eye to behold the harvests wrought by the secret force of rootsand sunbeams. But if all the products of the soul could be madevisible to the eye and ear, how marvelous would be these exhalations, rising and filling all the air. Were all the emotions and passionsand dreams of one single day fully revealed, what dramas would therebe beyond all the tragedies man's hand hath ever indicated! Considerwhat fertility the mind hath! Consider how many trains of thoughtreason takes up each hour. Consider all that belongs to a man as ananimal, his fears and passions, defensory in nature. Consider hissocial equipment, with all the possible moods and combinations ofaffections. Consider the vast activities of his reason workingoutward, and the imagination working upward. Sometimes in the morningman's thoughts are for number and strength like unto the strength ofarmies. Sometimes in the night his aspirations exhale heavenward withall the purity and beauty of the clouds. Consider also how life'sconflicts and warfare inflame man's faculties and hasten theirprocess. 

Consider how courage, despondency, hope and fear, friendship andenmity, increase the activities. Consider man's ambitions--steeds ofthe sun with incredible swiftness dragging forward the soul's chariot. Consider the rivalries among men. What intensities of thought areinduced thereby! Consider that toward one's friends the mind sendsforth thoughts that are almoners of bounty and angels of mercy. Butconsider that man is over against his enemy, with a mind like unto awalled city filled with armed men. Consider how in life's conflicts, thoughts become the swords of anger, the clubs of envy, stings forhissing hatred. Consider that in times of great excitement the soulliterally blazes and burns, exhaling emotions and thoughts as a planetexhales light and heat. Wondrous the power of the loom newly invented, that with marvelous swiftness weaves in silk figures of flowers andtrees and birds. But the uttermost speed of those flying shuttles isslowness itself compared to the swiftness of the mental loom, thatwithout noise or clangor weaves fabrics eternal out of the warp andwoof of affection and thought, of passion and purpose. Consider thatevery man is not simply two men, but a score of men. All the climaticdisturbances in nature, all distemperatures through heat and cold, wetand dry, summer and winter, do but answer in number and variety to themoods in man's brain. Not the all-producing summer is so rich inbounty as the mind is rich in thought when working its regnant andcreative moods. Vast are the buildings man's hands have reared; sweetare the songs man's mind hath sung; lovely the faces man's hand hathpainted; but the silent songs the soul hears, the invisible picturesthe mind sees, the secret buildings the imagination rears, these area thousand-fold more beautiful than any as yet embodied in thismaterial world. 

The Spanish have a proverb that "He who sows thoughts will reap acts, habits, and character, " for destiny itself is determined by thinking. Life is won or lost by its master thoughts. As nothing revealscharacter like the company we like and keep, so nothing foretellsfuturity like the thoughts over which we brood. It was said of JohnKeats that his face was the face of one who had seen a vision. So longhad his inner eye been fixed upon beauty, so long had he loved thatvision splendid, so long had he lived with it, that not only did hissoul take on the loveliness of what he contemplated, but the verylines of the poet's face were chiseled into beauty by those sculptorscalled thoughts and ideals. When Wordsworth speaks of the girl'sbeauty as "born of murmuring sound, " the poet indicates his beliefthat the girl's long love of the sweet briar and the thrush's song, her tender care of her favorite flowers, had ended in the saturationof her own face with sweetness. Swiftly do we become like the thoughtswe love. Scholars have noticed that old persons who have "lived longtogether, 'midst sunshine and 'midst cloudy weather, " come at lengthto look as nearly alike as do brother and sister: Emerson explainsthis likeness by saying that long thinking the same thoughts andloving the same objects mould similarity into the features. Nor isthere any beauty in the face of youth or maiden that can long survivesourness in the disposition or discontent in the heart. 

Contrariwise, all have seen faces very plain naturally that havebecome positively radiant because the beautiful soul that is enmeshedin and stands behind the muscles has shone through and beautified allof the facial tissues. Two of our great novelists have made a specialstudy of the architectural power of thoughts. Dickens exhibits Monksas beginning his career as an innocent and beautiful child; but asending his life as a mass of solid bestiality, a mere chunk of fleshediniquity. It was thinking upon vice and vulgarity that transformed theangel's face into the countenance of a demon. Hawthorne has made asimilar study of Chillingworth, whose moral deterioration beganthrough evil thinking when face and physique were fully matured. Chillingworth stood forth in middle life a thoughtful, earnest, andjust man; but, during his absence, he suffered a grievous wrong. Notknowing the identity of his enemy, the physician came to suspect hisfriend. By skillful questions he digged into Dimmesdale's heart asthe sexton might delve into the grave in search of a possible jewelupon a dead man's breast. When suspicion had strengthened intocertainty, enmity became hatred. Then, for two years, Chillingworthtortured his victim as once inquisitors tortured men by tweaking theflesh with red-hot pincers. Soon the face of the physician, once sogentle and just, took on an aspect sinister and malign. Childrenfeared him, men shivered in his presence--they knew not why. Once themagistrate saw the light glimmering in his eyes "with flames thatburned blue, like the ghastly fire that darted out of Bunyan's awfuldoorway on the hillside and quivered in the Pilgrim's face. " All thisis Hawthorne's way of telling us how thoughts determine character andshape destiny. He who thinks of mean and ugly things will soon showmud in the bottom of his eye. Ugliness within soon fouls the facialtissues. But he who thinks of "things true and just and lovely" will, by his thinking, be transformed into the image of the ideal hecontemplates, even as the rose becomes red by exposing its bosom tothe sunbeams and soaking each petal in the sun's fine rays. 

Not only are thoughts the builders of character for the individual;they are also the architects of states and nations. All thiswonderful fabric lying over our land like a beautiful garment is afabric spun and woven out of ideas. Each outer substance was buildedby an inner sentiment. What the eye sees are stone and brick and ironunited by masons and carpenters, but the forces that hold thesematerial things together are not iron bands, but thoughts and beliefs. Destroy the life-nerve running up through the tree, and the rings ofwood will soon fall apart. Destroy the thoughts and beliefs of ourpeople, and its homes, colleges and institutions will decline anddecay. Thrust a million Mohammedans into our land, and their innerthoughts will realize themselves in mosques, minarets, and harems. Butthrust a million Americans into Asia Minor and straightway theirthoughts will take on these visible shapes called houses andfactories, temples of learning, altars of praise and prayer. For whatwe call Saxon civilization is only a magnificent incarnation of acertain mental type and a moral character. Not only individuals, butnations are such stuff as thoughts are made of. 

In his famous story of archery Virgil represents Acestes as shootinghis arrow with such force that it took fire as it flew and went upinto the air all aflame, thus opening from the place where the archerstood a pathway of light into the heavens. Now it is given to man'sthoughts to fulfill this beautiful story, in that they open up shiningpathways along which the human steps may move. On the practical side, it is by the thinking alone that man solves his bread-winning problem. Standing, each in his place, using his strongest faculty and workingin the line of least resistance, each must conquer for himself foodand support. To say that society owes us a living or to consume morethan we produce is to sink to the level of pauper and parasite. Thesuccessful man is one whose thoughts about his bread-winning problemhave been wise thoughts; paupers and tramps, with their hunger andrags, are men who have thought foolishly about how they could bestearn a livelihood. 

He who has one strong faculty, the using of which would give delightand success, yet passes it by, to use a weaker faculty, is doomed tomediocrity and heart-breaking failure. The eagle has powerful musclesunder the wings, but slender and feeble legs; the fawn lacks theweight of the draught horse, but has limbs for swiftness. Now, if aneagle should become a competitor in a walking race and if the fawnshould enter the list of draught horses, we should have that whichanswers precisely to the way in which some men seek to gain theirlivelihood, by tying up their strongest gift and using their feeblestfaculties. When it is said that only five merchants out of a hundredsucceed we perceive that the great majority of men do not think to anypurpose in choosing an occupation. Recalling his friends who hadmisfitted themselves, Sidney Smith once said: "If we represent theoccupations of life by holes in a table, some round, some square, someoblong, and persons by bits of wood of like shapes, we shall generallyfind that the triangular person has got into the square hole, theoblong into the triangular, while the square person has squeezedhimself into the round hole. " For lack of wise thinking beforehand, multitudes have died of broken hearts midst failure and misery whomight have achieved great happiness and success had they used theirthoughts in choosing their life-work. He who approaches his task witha leaden heart is out of the race before he is in it. Success meansthat the heart loves what the hand does. The bread-winning problem isthe one that touches us first and most closely, and to wise thoughtsonly is it given to solve that problem. 

The number and value of our thoughts determine a man's value tosociety. No investments bring so high a rate of interest asinvestments of brain. Hand work earns little, but head work much. In aWestern camp one miner put his lower brain into the pickaxe and earned$2. 00 a day; another miner put his higher brain into the stamp-milland soon was receiving a score of dollars daily for his work; a thirdyouth, toiling in the same mine, put his genius into an electricprocess for extracting ore, and sold his invention for a fortune. Itseems that wealth was not in the pick, but in the thoughts thathandled it. Had God intended man to do his work through the body, man's legs would have been long enough to cover leagues at a stride, his biceps would have been strong enough to turn the crank forsteamships, his back would have been Atlantean for carrying freightcars across the plains. 

But, instead of giving man long legs, God gave him a mind able to makelocomotives. Instead of telescopic eyes, he gave man mind to inventfar-seeing glasses. Instead of a thousand fingers for weaving, he gaveman five fingers and genius for inventing a thousand steel fingers todo his spinning. Wealth is not in things, but in the brain that shapesraw material. Vast was the sum of gold taken out of California, butthis nation might well pay down a hundred Californias for a man toinvent a process to make coal drive the engine without theintervention of steam. That inventor would enable the street cars forone cent to carry the people of the tenement-house district ten milesinto the country in ten minutes, and thereby, through sunshine andfresh air and solitude, would solve a hundred problems that now vexthe statesman and the moralist. A young botanist in Kansas has justannounced his purpose to cross the milkweed and the strawberry, sothat hereafter strawberries and cream may grow upon the same bush. Histask may be doomed to failure, but that youth at least understandsthat thought turned the wild rice into wheat; thought turned the sweetbriar into the crimson rose; brains mixed the pigments for PaulVeronese, and gave the canvas worth a few florins the value of tens ofthousand of dollars. Already wise thoughts have turned the barbarianinto a gentleman and citizen, and some glad day thoughts will crownman with the attributes and qualities of God. 

Of old, the Greek philosopher described the origin of man. One dayCeres, in crossing a stream, saw a human face emerging from the soil. It was the face of a man. Standing by this earth-born creature, thegoddess extricated his head and chest; but left his legs fastened inthe soil. Now, the invisible friends that free man from his earthfetters are those divine visitors called ideas and thoughts. God hathmade thoughts to be golden chariots, in which the soul is swept upwardinto the heavenly heights. 

When thoughts have sown man's pathway with happiness and peace they goon to determine character and futurity. Each life memorable forgoodness and nobility has for its motive power some noble thought. Each hero has climbed up to immortality upon those golden roundscalled good thoughts. Here is that cathedral spirit, John Milton. Inhis loneliness and blindness his mind was his kingdom. He loved tothink of things true and pure and of good report. Oft at midnight uponthe poet's ear there fell the sound of celestial music, that afterwardhe transposed into his "Paradise Regained. " Dying, it was given him toproudly say: "I am not one of those who have disgraced beauty ofsentiment by deformity of conduct, nor the maxims of the freeman bythe actions of the slave, but by the grace of God, I have kept my soulunsullied. " Here is the immortal Bunyan, spending his best years inBedford jail because he insisted on giving men the message God hadfirst given him; but he, too, opened his mind only to good thoughts. For him, also, dawned the heavenly vision. As the prison doors openedbefore Peter and the angel, so the dungeon walls parted before histhoughts. Walking about in glad freedom, he crossed the portals of thePalace Beautiful. From its marble steps he saw afar off the DelectableMountains. Hard by ran the River of the Water of Life. The breezes ofthe hills of Paradise cooled his hot temples and lifted his hair. Hisregal thoughts crowned the Bedford tinker and made him king in Englishliterature. 

Here also is the carpenter's Son rising before each earthly pilgrimlike a star in the night. A man of truly colossal intellect, incomparable as He strides across the realms and ages, yet alwaysthinking the gentlest, kindliest thoughts; thoughts of mildness aswell as of majesty; thoughts of humanity as well as divinity. Histhoughts were medicines for hurt hearts; His thoughts were wings toall the low-flying; His thoughts freed those who had been snared inthe thickets; His thoughts set an angel down beside each cradle; Histhoughts of the incarnation rendered the human body forever sacred;His thoughts of the grave sanctified the tomb. Dying and rising, Histhoughts clove an open pathway through the sky. Taught by Him, thepeople have learned to think--not only great thoughts, but good ones, and also how to turn thoughts into life. 

Bringing their thoughts to God, God has turned thinking intocharacter. Each spinner who in modesty and fidelity tends his loom, spins indeed, garments for others, but also weaves himself invisiblegarments of everlasting life. Each shipbuilder fastening his timberstogether with honest thoughts will find that his thoughts have becomeships carrying him over the sea to the harbor of God. Each workerputting integrity into gold and silver will find that he has carvedhis own character into a beauty beyond that of gems and sapphires. Forhis thoughts drag into futurity after them. So deeply was St. GeorgeMivart impressed by this that he said: "The old pauper woman whom Isaw to-day in the poorhouse, in her hunger saving her apple to give tothe little orphan just brought in, and unraveling her stocking andbending her twisted old fingers to knit its yarn into socks for theblue feet of the child will, I verily believe, begin her life at deathwith more intellectual genius--mark the words, intellectualgenius--than will begin that second life any statesman or primeminister or man famed in our day. For I know of none who hath beenfaithful in his much after the fashion of the pauper woman's fidelitywith her little. "

For intellect weighs light as punk against the gold of character. Should God give us to choose between goodness and genius, we may wellsay, "Give genius to Lucifer, let mine be the better part. " Intellectis cold as the ice-palace in Quebec. Heart-broken and weary-worn bylife's battle, men draw near to some great-hearted men, as pilgrimscrowd close to the winter's fire. Men neither draw their chairs closearound a block of ice, nor about a brilliant intellect. Our quarrelwith the foolish scientist is that he makes God out as infinite brain. We rejoice at the revelation of Christ, because He portrays God asheart and not genius. 

God be thanked for great thoughts, but a thousand times more, God bepraised for good thoughts! They are fuel for the fires of enthusiasm. They are rudders that guide us heavenward. They are seeds for greatharvests of joy. They fulfill the tale of the fairies who in the nightwhile men slept bridged chasms, builded palaces, laid out streets andlined them with homes, built the city around with walls. For everythought is a builder, every purpose a mansion, and every affection acarpenter. As the builders of the Cologne Cathedral were guided by theplan and pattern of Von Rile, so man's thoughts are builded after thatmatchless model, Jesus Christ. And while our thoughts work, Histhoughts work, also adding beauty to the soul's strength. In the oldentale the artist pupil through very weariness fell asleep before thepicture that disappointed him. While he slept his master stole intothe room, and with a few swift touches corrected the errors andbrought out the lines of lustrous beauty, kindling new hope within theboy's heart. And there are unexpected providences in life, strangeinfluences, interventions and voices in the night. These events overwhich we have no control, these thoughts of the Master above, shape usnot less than the thoughts that build from within. It seems that notone, but two are working upon the soul's structure. As one day in thepresence of his master Michael Angelo pulled down the scaffolding inthe Sistine Chapel, and the workmen cleared away the ropes and plasterand litter, and looking up men saw the faces of angels and seraphs, with their lustrous and immortal beauty, so some glad day will thatangel named Death pull down life's scaffolding and set forever in thesunlight that structure built of thoughts, the stately mansion rearedin the mind, the building not made with hands, the character, eternalin the heavens. 

THE MORAL USES OF MEMORY

 "Without memory, man is a perpetual infant. "--_Locke. _

 "The memory plays a great part in ranking men. Quintilian reckoned it the measure of genius. The poets represented the muses as the daughters of memory. "--_Emerson. _

 "Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out. "--_Richter. _

 "A land of promise, a land of memory, A land of promise flowing with the milk And honey of delicious memories. " --_Tennyson. _

 "I have a room wherein no one enters save I myself alone; There sits a blessed memory on a throne. There my life centers. " --_C. G. Rosetti. _

VI

THE MORAL USES OF MEMORY

The soul is a monarch whose rule includes three realms. Its throne isin the present, but its scepter extends backward over yesterday andforward over to-morrow. The divinity that presides over the past ismemory; to-day is ruled by reason, to-morrow is under the regency ofhope. In every age memory has been an unpopular goddess. The poetByron pictures this divinity as sitting sorrowing midst moulderingruins and withering leaves. But the orators unveil the future as atropic realm, magical, mysterious and surpassingly rich. The templewhere hope is worshiped is always crowded; her shrines are neverwithout gifts of flowers and sweet songs. 

But at length has come a day when man perceives that the vast treasureto which the present has fallen heir was bequeathed by that friendcalled yesterday. The soul increases in knowledge and culture, becauseas it passes through life's rich fields memory plucks the ripetreasure on either hand, leaving behind no golden sheaf. Philosophy, therefore, opposes that form of poetry that portrays yesterday by thefalling tower, the yellow leaf, the setting sun. Memory is a galleryholding pictures of the past. Memory is a library holding wisdom forto-morrow's emergencies. Memory is a banqueting-hall on whose wallsare the shields of vanquished enemies. Memory is a granary holdingbread for to-morrow's hunger, seed for to-morrow's sowing. That manalone has a great to-morrow who has back of him a multitude of greatyesterdays. 

Aristotle used memory as a measure of genius. He believed that everygreat man was possessed of a great memory in his own department. Hewas the great artist whose mind searched out and whose memory retainedthe beauty of each sweet child, the loveliness of each maiden andmother. He was the great scientist who remembered all the facts, forgot no exception, and grouped all under laws. The great orator washe whose memory stood ready to furnish all truths gleaned from booksand conversation, from travel and experience--weapons these with whichthe orator faces his hearers in a noble cause, controls and conquersthem. 

After driving through Windsor Park, Doré, the artist, recognized hisdebt to memory by observing that he could recall every tree he hadpassed, and draw each shrub from memory. We are indebted to themechanical genius of Watt for the steam engine; but, before beginninghis work, the inventive faculty asked memory to bring forward allobjects, forces and facts suggested by and relating to that steamingtea kettle. Genius cannot create without material upon which to work. It is given to the eye and the ear and the reason to obtain the facts;memory stores these treasures away until they are needed; and, selecting therefrom, the inventive faculty fashions physical thingsinto tools, beautiful things into pictures, ideas into intellectualphilosophies, morals into ethical systems. The architect is helplessunless he remembers where are the quarries and what their kinds; wherethe marbles and what their colors; where the forests and what theirtrees. 

Thus all the creative minds, from Phidias to Shakespeare, have unitedstrength of memory with fertility of invention. As the Gobelintapestry, depicting the siege of Troy, is woven out of myriads oftinted threads, so each Hamlet and each "In Memoriam" is anintellectual texture woven out of ideas and aspirations furnished bymemory. Indeed, without this faculty there could be no knowledge orculture. Destroy memory and man would remain a perpetual infant. Because the mind carries forward each new idea and experience, therecomes a day when the youth stands forth a master in his chosen craftor profession. It is memory that unifies man's life and thought, andbinds all his experiences into one bundle. 

In a large sense civilization itself is a kind of racial memory. Moving backward toward the dawn of history, we come to a time when manstood forth as a savage, his house a cave, his clothes a leathergirdle, his food locusts and berries. But to-day he is surrounded byhome, and books and pictures, by looms and trains and ships. Nowyesterday was the friend that gave man all this rich treasure. Wepluck clusters from vines other generations planted. We ride in trainsand ships other thinkers invented. We admire pictures and statuesother hands painted and carved. Our happiness is through laws andinstitutions for which other multitudes died. We sing songs that thepast did write, and speak a language that generations long dead didfashion. 

When De Tocqueville visited our country, he journeyed westward untilhe stood upon the very frontier of civilization. Before him lay theforests and prairies, stretching for thousands of miles toward thesetting sun. But what impressed him most deeply was the civilizationbehind him, reaching to the Atlantic--a civilization including townsand villages, with free institutions, with schoolroom and church andlibrary. With joy he reflected that the mental and moral harvestsbehind him were sufficient to sow the vast unconquered land withtreasure. Thus each to-day is a frontier line upon which the soulstands. It is the necessity of life for man to journey backward intothe past for food and seed with which to sow the unconquered future. For each individual yesterday holds the beginnings of art andarchitecture. Yesterday holds the beginnings of reform andphilanthropy. Yesterday contains the rise and victory of freedom. Yesterday holds the first schoolroom and college and library. Yesterday holds the cross and all its victories over ignorance andsin. Yesterday is a river pouring its rich floods forward, lendingmajesty and momentum to all man's enterprises. Yesterday is a templewhose high domes and wide walls and flaming altars other hands andhearts have built. For the individual, memory is a granary for mentaltreasure; and, for the race, civilization is a kind of social memory. 

Consider the task laid upon memory. The activity and fruitfulness ofthe human mind are immeasurable. Reason does not so much weavethoughts as exhale them. Objects march in caravans through the eyegate and the ear gate, each provoking its own train of thought. Andthe unconscious processes of the mind are of even greater number. Thesilent songs that genius hears, the invisible pictures that geniuspaints, the hidden castles that genius builds--no building of a citywithout can compare for wonder and beauty and richness with thebuilding processes of the soul within. If some angelic reporter couldreduce all man's thoughts to physical volume, how vast the book wouldbe! Thoughts do not go single, but march in armies. Feelings andaspirations move like flocks of caroling songsters. Desires swarmforth from the soul like bees from a hive. The soul is a city throughwhose gates troop innumerable caravans, bearing treasure within, carrying treasure forth without. No Great Eastern ever carried a cargothat was comparable for vastness and richness with that voyagingforward in the mind. 

Now the power and skill of God is nowhere more manifest than in this. He has endowed the mind with full power to carry forward all its joys, its friendships and victories. It is given to man to journey in asingle summer over that pathway along which the human race haswalked. For happiness and culture the traveler lingers by someRunnymede or Marston Moor; stays by castle or cathedral, remains longin gallery or museum. It is the necessity of his body for the travelerto leave the mountain behind him when he returns to the city in theplain. But it is the privilege of the mind to take up these sights andscenes and carry them away as so much treasure made portable bymemory. By a secret process mountains and valleys and palaces arereduced in size, photographed and put away ready to be enlarged to theoriginal proportions. 

We have already heard of the inventor who planned an engine that laidits track and took it up again while it journeyed forward. But thismechanical dream is literally fulfilled in memory. Grown old andblind, each Milton may pass before his mind all the panorama of thepast, to find the events of childhood more helpful in memory than theywere in reality. Looking backward, Longfellow reflected that the pathsof childhood had lost their roughness; each way was bordered withflowers; sweet songs were in the air; the old home was more beautifulthan king's palaces that had opened to his manhood's touch. 

Similarly, Dante, storm-beaten, harassed, weary of selfishness, voyaged and traveled into that foreign land that he called "youth. "There he hid himself until the storms were passed. For him memory heldso much that was bright and beautiful that it became to him aportfolio of engravings, a gallery of pictures, a palace of manychambers. Hidden therein, earth's troubles became as harmless as hailand snow upon tiled castle roofs. Men wonder oft how statesmen andgenerals and reformers, oppressed beyond endurance, have borne upunder their burdens. This is their secret: they have shelteredthemselves in the past, found medicines in memory, bathed themselvesin old-time scenes that refreshed and cleansed away life's grime. Fromthe chill of arctic enmity, it is given to the soul through memory torise above the storm and cold and in a moment to enter the tropicatmosphere of noble friendship, where are fragrance and beauty, perpetual warmth and wealth. 

It was a favorite principle with Socrates that the lesser man nevercomprehends the latent strength in his reason or imagination until hewitnesses its skill in the greatest. He implies that the eloquence, art, and skill that crown the children of genius exist in rudimentaryform in all men. In order, therefore, to understand memory in itsordinary processes, let us consider its functions in those in whom itis unique. Fortunately scholars in every age have preserved importantfacts concerning the power of recollection. The classic oratorscontain repeated reference to traveling singers, who could recite theentire Iliad and Odyssey. In his "Declamations, " speaking of theinroads disease had made upon him, Seneca remarks that he could speaktwo thousand words and names in the order read to him, and that onemorning he listened to the reading of two hundred verses of poetry, and in the afternoon recited them in their order and without mistake. 

Muretus remarks that the stories of Seneca's memory seemed to himalmost incredible, until he witnessed a still more marvelousoccurrence. The sum of his statement is that at Padua there dwelt ayoung Corsican, a brilliant and distinguished student of civil law. Having heard of his marvelous faculty of memory a company of gentlemenrequested from him an exhibition of his power. Six Venetian noblemenwere judges, though there were many other witnesses of the feat. Muretus dictated words, Latin, Greek, barbaric, disconnected andconnected, until he wearied himself and the man who wrote them down, and the audience who were present. Afterward the young man repeatedthe entire list of words in the same order, then backward, then everyother word, then every fifth word, etc. , and all without error. 

Sir William Hamilton says that the librarian for the Grand Duke ofTuscany read every book and pamphlet in his master's library and tooka mental photograph of each page. When asked where a certain passagewas to be found, he would name the alcove, shelf, book, pagecontaining the passage in question. Scaliger, the scholar, who hasbeen called the most learned man that ever lived, committed the Iliadto memory in three weeks and mastered all the Greek poets in fourmonths. Ben Jonson could repeat all he had ever written and manyvolumes he had read, as could Niebuhr, the historian. Macaulaybelieved that he had never forgotten anything he had ever read, seen, or thought. Coleridge tells of an ignorant family servant, who inmoments of unconsciousness through fever, recited passages of Greekand Hebrew. The explanation was that the servant had been long in thefamily of an old clergyman whose habit it was to read aloud the Biblein the originals. 

Physicians have noted instances where a foreigner coming to thiscountry at the age of four or five has completely forgotten hisnative tongue. Grown old and gray, in moments of unconsciousnessthrough fever, the aged man has talked in the forgotten language ofinfancy. Our best students of mental philosophy believe that nothought or feeling, no enmity or aspiration, is ever forgotten. Thesentiments written on clay harden into granite. Dormant memories arenot dead. At a touch they return in their old-time power and vigor. Science tells us that the flight of a bird, the falling of a leaf, thelaughter of a child, the vibration of song, changes the wholeuniverse. The boy shying a stone from one tree to another alters thecenter of gravity for the earth. And if the movements of dead leavesand stones are events unchangeably written down in nature, how muchmore are living hopes and thoughts. The soul is more sensitive thanthe thermometer, more delicate than the barometer, and all itsprocesses are registered. Thoughts are events that stain the mindthrough in fast colors. Did man but know it, no event falls throughmemory's net. 

It helps us to understand the immortality of memory to notice theprovision made in nature for revealing hidden facts and forces. To-daychemistry shows us how events done in darkness shall be revealed inlight, and the deeds of the closet be proclaimed from the housetop. In olden times princes communicated with each other by messengers. Then it was necessary to guard against the dispatch falling into thehands of the enemy, so between the lines of the apparent message was adispatch traced in letters as colorless as water. But when the sheetwas held before the blazing fire, the secret writing appeared. Thus inthe kingdom of the soul, nature has provided for causing events tostand forth from the past. Under stimulus the memory performs the mostastonishing feats. Excitement is a fire that causes the dim record tostand forth in clearness. 

A distinguished lawyer of an Eastern city relates that while engagedin an argument upon which vast issues depended he suddenly realizedthat he had forgotten to guard a most important point. In that hour ofexcitement his faculties became greatly stimulated. Decisions, authorities and precedents long since forgotten began to return to hismind. Dimly outlined at first, they slowly grew plain, until at lengthhe read them with perfect distinctness. Mr. Beecher had a similarexperience when he fronted the mob in Liverpool. He said that allevents, arguments and appeals that he had ever heard or read orwritten passed before his mind as oratorical weapons, and standingthere he had but to reach forth his hand and seize the weapons as theywent smoking by. All public men have had similar experiences--witnessthe testimony of Pitt, Burke and Wendell Phillips. But what event hassuch power to restore the records of memory as that secret excitementwhen the soul is like an ambassador returned home from a foreignmission to report before the throne of God? Thus, giving in itsaccount, what sacred stimulus will fall upon memory!

In every age poets and philosophers have made much of associations asa restorer of dim memories. Porter has a story of a dinner party inwhich a reference to Benedict Arnold was immediately followed bysomeone asking the value of the Roman denarius. Reflection shows thatthe question was directly suggested by the topic under discussion. Benedict Arnold suggested Judas Iscariot and the thirty pieces ofsilver given him, and therefore the value of the coin which hereceived as reward. Similarly there is a tradition that Peter's facewas clouded with sorrow whenever he heard the crowing of a cock. Bulwer Lytton represents Eugene Aram as scarcely able to restrain ascream of agony when a friend chanced to drive in near the spot wherein murderous hate he had struck a fatal blow. 

Thus, no sin is ever buried, save as a murderer buries his victimunder a layer of thin sand. But let him pass that way, and a skeletonarm starts up and points to heaven and to the evil doer. Thephilosopher affirms that the "memory of the past can never perishuntil the tree or the river or the sea" with which the dark memory isassociated has been blotted out of existence. Thus, the law ofassociation ever works to bring back the ghastly phantom, to chill theblood and sear the brain. Nothing is ever forgotten. One touch, onesight, one sound, the murmur of the stream, the sound of a distantbell, the barking of a dog in the still evening, the green path in thewood with the sunlight glinting on it, the way of the moon upon thewaters, the candlestick of the Bishop for Jean Valjean, the passing ofa convict for Dean Maitland, the drop of blood for Donatello--thesemay, through the events associated therewith, turn the heart to stoneand fill the life with a dumb agony of remorse. 

Moreover, Shakespeare indicates how conscience in its magisterialaspects has skill for reviving forgotten deeds. In the laboratoryscientists take two glasses, each containing a liquid colorless aswater and pour them together, when lo! they unite and form a substanceblacker than the blackest ink. As the chemical bath brings out thepicture that was latent in the photographic plate, so in its highermoods events half-remembered and half-forgotten rise into perfectrecollection. History tells us of the Oriental despot who in an hourof revelry commanded his butler to slay a prophet whom he hadimprisoned and bring the pale head in upon a charger. Long afterwardthere came a day when, sitting in the seclusion of his palace, asoldier told those around the banqueting-table the story of awonder-worker whom he had seen upon his journey. When the banqueterswere wondering who this man was, suddenly the king arose pale andtrembling and cried out. "I know! It is John the Baptist whom I havebeheaded; he is risen from the dead!"

This old-time story tells us that dormant memories are not dead, butare like hibernating serpents that with warmth lift their heads tostrike. It fulfills, as has been said, the old-time story of the mangroping along the wall until his fingers hit upon a hidden spring, when the concealed door flew open and revealed the hidden skeleton. Ittells us that much may be forgotten in the sense of being out of mind, but nothing is forgotten in the sense that it cannot be recalled. Every thought the mind thinks moves forward in character, even asfoods long forgotten report themselves in flesh and blood. Memory is acanvas above and the man works beneath it. Every faculty is a brushwith which man thinks out his portrait. Here and now, deceived bysiren's song, each Macbeth thinks himself better than he is. But thetime comes at last when memory cleanses the portrait and causes hisface to stand forth ineffaceable in full revelation. 

But memory also hath aspects gracious and most inspiring. "I havelived well yesterday, " said the poet; "let to-morrow do its worst. " Tothis sentiment the statesman added: "I have done what I could for myfellows, and my memories thereof are more precious than gold andpearls. " Thus all they who have loved wisdom and goodness will findtheir treasures safe in memory's care. Perhaps some precious things doperish out of life. The melody trembling on the chords after the songis sung sinks away into silence. The light lingering in the cloudsafter the day is done at last dies out in darkness. But as the soul isconsciously immortal through personality, it has an unconsciousimmortality through its tool or teaching, through its example orinfluence. Time avails not for destroying. God and the soul neverforget. 

Wisdom comes to all young hearts who as yet have no past, before whosefeet lies the stream of life, waiting to bear them into the future, and bids them reflect that maturity, full of successes, is only theplace where the tides of youth have emptied their rich treasures. Hewhose yesterday is full of industry and ambition, full of books andconversation and culture, will find his to-morrow full of worth, happiness and friendship. But he who gives his memory no treasure tobe garnered, will find his hopes to be only the mirage in the desert, where burning sands take on the aspect of lake and river. Wisdom comesalso to those who in their maturity realize that the morrow is veiledin uncertainty, and their tomb is not far distant. It bids themreflect that their yesterdays are safe, that nothing is forgotten;that no worthy deed has fallen out of life; that yesterday is a refugefrom conflict, anxiety and fear. 

To patriot and parent, to reformer and teacher, comes the inspiringthought that God garners in His memory every helpful act. No goodinfluence is lost out of life. Are David and Dante dead? Are notTennyson and Milton a thousandfold more alive to-day than when theywalked this earth? Death does but multiply the single voice andstrengthen it. God causes each life to fulfill the legend of theGrecian traveler, who, bearing homeward a sack of corn, sorrowedbecause some had been lost out through a tiny hole; but, yearsafterward, fleeing before his enemies along that way, he found thatthe seed had sprung up and multiplied into harvests for his hunger. Thus yesterday feeds in each pilgrim heart the faith that goodnessshall triumph. For memory that is little in man is large in God. TheInfinite One forgets nothing save human frailty and sin. Rememberingthe great mind, the eloquent tongue, the large purse, God remembersalso the cup of cold water, and causes the humblest deed to follow itsdoer unto the heavenly shores. 

THE IMAGINATION AS THE ARCHITECT OF MANHOOD

 "Imagination rules the world. "--_Napoleon. _

 "The imagination is the very secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. "--_Beecher. _

 "In such natures the imagination seems to spire up like a Gothic cathedral over a prodigiously solid crypt of common sense, so that its lightness stands secure on the consciousness of an immovable basis. "--_Lowell. _

 "Man's reason is overhung by the imagination. It rains rich treasures for fertilizing the barren soul. "--_Anon. _

 "By faith Abraham went forth, not knowing whither he went. "--_Hebrews. _

VII

THE IMAGINATION AS THE ARCHITECT OF MANHOOD

Measured by whatsoever standard, Moses was the one colossal man ofantiquity. It may be doubted whether nature has ever produced agreater mind. When we consider that law, government and education tooktheir rise in his single brain; when we remember that thecommonwealths of to-day rest upon foundations reared by this jurist ofthe desert; when we recall his poetic and literary skill, Moses standsforth clothed with the proportions and grandeur of an all-comprehendinggenius. His intellect seems the more titanic by reason of the obstaclesand romantic contrasts in his career. He was born in the hut of aslave, but so strikingly did his genius flame forth that he won theapprobation of the great, and passed swiftly from the slave market tothe splendor of Pharaoh's palace. 

Fortunately, his youth was not without the refinements andaccomplishments of the schools. For then Egypt was the one radiantspot upon earth. At a time when Greece was a den of robbers and Romewas unheard of, Memphis was gloriously attractive. Schools of art andscience stood along the banks of the Nile. From Thebes Pythagorascarried mathematics into Greece. From Memphis Solon derived his wisepolitical precepts. In Luxor, architecture and sculpture took theirrise. From Cleopatra's kingdom men stole the obelisks now in New Yorkand London. Moses' opportunities were fully equaled by his energy andambition to excel. Even in his youth he must have been renowned forhis administrative genius. 

But his moral grandeur exceeded his mentality. When events compelled achoice between the luxury of the court and the love of his own people, he did not hesitate, for he was every inch a hero. In that crisis heforsook the palace, allied himself with his enslaved brethren, andwent forth an exile of the desert. Nor could any event be moredramatic than the manner of his return to Pharaoh's palace. Single-handed, he undertook the emancipation of a nation. Our leaders, through vast armies, achieved the freedom of our slaves; this soldier, single-handed, freed three millions of bondsmen. Other generals, withcannon, have captured castles; this man beat castles down with hisnaked fists. And when he had achieved freedom for his people he ledthem into the desert, and taught the crude and servile slaves theprinciples of law, liberty and government. Under his guidance the mobbecame an army; the slaves became patriots and citizens; the savageswere clothed with customs and institutions. His mind became auniversity for millions. And from that day until now the columns ofsociety have followed the name of Moses, as of old the pilgrimsfollowed the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Greater name history does not hold, save only the Name that is aboveevery name. 

Wise men will ask, where were the hidings of this man's power? Whencecame his herculean strength? Moses was the father of a race of giants. He was the representative of brave men in every age, who have laidfoundations upon which others have builded; he was the prototype ofnoble leaders who have scattered everywhere the seeds of civilization, and left others to reap the harvests; he was the forerunner ofinnumerable reformers and inventors, to whom it was never given toenter into the fruit of their labors; of soldiers and heroes whoperished on the scaffold that others might be emancipated; of men likeHuss and Cranmer, whose overthrow and defeat paved the way for others'victories. Dying, no other man has left behind influences that havewrought so powerfully or so continuously through the centuries. Butwhen we search out the springs of his power we are amazed at hissecret. We are told that he endured his tremendous burdens andachieved the impossible through the sight of the invisible. The senseof future victory sustained him in present defeat. Through the rightuse of the vision faculty he conquered. 

Imagination was the telescope by which he saw victory afar off. Imagination was the tool with which he digged and quarried hisfoundations. Imagination was the castle and tower under which he foundrefuge from the storms, attacks and afflictions of life. No wing everhad such power for lifting, no spring ever had such tides forassuaging thirst. He bore with savages, because afar off he saw theslaves clothed with the qualities of patriots. He endured the desert, because imagination revealed a fruitful land flowing with milk andhoney. He survived lawlessness, because he foresaw the day of law andliberty. He bore up under weight of cares, discouragements andresponsibilities heavy enough to have crushed a score of men, becausehe foresaw the day of final triumph. Of old, when that legendary herowas in the thick of his fight against his enemies, an invisiblefriend hovered above the warrior, handing forth spear and sword asthey were needed. So for the great jurist imagination reached up eveninto the heavenly armory and plucked such weapons as the hero needed. 

Our intellectual tread will be firmer if we define the imagination andconsider its uses. The soul is a city; and the external senses aregateways through which sweep all the caravans of truth and beauty. Through the eye gate pass all faces, cities and landscapes. Throughthe ear gate pass all sweet sounds. But when the facts of land and seaand sky have reported themselves to the soul, reason sweeps theseintellectual harvests into the granary of memory for future sowing. But these harvests must be arranged. In the Orient the merchant whokeeps a general store puts the swords and spears upon one shelf; thetapestries and rugs upon another; the books and manuscripts upon athird; and each thing has its own shelf and drawer. So judgment comesin to sort knowledges, and puts things useful into one intellectualshelf, things beautiful upon another shelf, and puts things true apartby themselves. 

Afterward when the under-servant, called reason, has accumulated thematerials, when memory has taken care of them, and judgment hasclassified all, then the constructive imagination comes in to createnew objects. Working in iron and steel, the imagination of Wattorganizes an engine; working midst the colors beautiful, theimagination paints pictures; working upon marble it carves statues;working in wood and stone it rears cathedrals; working in sound itcreates symphonies; working with ideas it fashions intellectualsystems; working in morals it constructs ethical principles; workingtoward immortality, it bids all cooling streams, fruitful trees, sweetsounds, all noble friendships, report themselves beyond the grave. Forfaith itself is but the imagination allied with confidence that God isable to realize man's highest ideals. Imagination therefore is aprophet. It is a seer for the soul. It toils as artist and architectand creator. It plants hard problems as seeds, rears these germs intotrees, and from them garners the ripe fruit. It wins victory beforebattles are fought. Without it, civilization would be impossible. Whatwe call progress is but society following after and realizing thevisions, plans and patterns of the imagination. 

Now our busy, bustling age is inclined to under-estimate theimagination. Men cavil at castle-building. The pragmatist jeers atreveries. Men believe in stores, and goods in them; in factories, andwealth by them; men believe in houses and horses, but not in ideals. Nevertheless, thoughts and dreams are the stuff out of which towns andcities are builded. We may despise the silent dreamer, but in the lastanalysis he appears the real architect of states! Immeasurable thepractical power of the vision faculty! The heroes of yesterday haveall been sustained--not by swords and guns, but by the sight of theinvisible!

Here is the old hero in his dungeon in Florence. While he dozed, thenight before he was to be burned, the jailer saw a rare, sweet smileupon his face. "What is it?" the guard asked. "I hear the sounds offalling chains, and their clangor is like sweet music in my ears. "Then, with smiling face he went to his martyrdom. And here is MichaelAngelo. Grown old and blind, he gropes his way into the gallery of theVatican, where with uplifted face his fingers feel their way over thetorso of Phidias. Lingering by him one day the Cardinal Farnese heardthe old sculptor say: "Great is this marble; greater still the handthat carved it; greatest of all, the God who fashioned the sculptor. Istill learn! I still learn!" And he too went forward sustained by hisvision of perfect beauty. 

And here is John Huss, looking between the iron bars of his prisonupon an army of pikes and spears, massed before his jail; but themartyr endured his danger by the foresight of the day when the swordsthen wielded for repression of liberty of thought would flash for itsemancipation. And here is Walter Scott ruined by the failure of hispublishers, just at the hour when nature whispered that he hadfulfilled his task and earned his respite. But he girded himself anewfor the battle, and sustained his grievous loss through the foresightof the hour when the last debt would be paid and his again would be aspotless name. And here is that youth, Emerson, looking out upon aworld full of noise and strife, full of the cries of slaves and thewarfare of zealots. He was sustained by the foresight of a day whenGod would breathe peace o'er all the scene. With hope shining in hisface, he began to "take down men's idols with such reverence that itseemed an act of worship. " And what shall we more say? By the sight ofthe invisible, Dante endured his scaffold; the heroes, hunted likepartridges upon the mountains, endured their caves and the winter'scold; martyrs endured the scourge and fagot. In every age, the great, by the sight of the invisible, have been lifted into the realms oftranquillity. Outwardly, there may have been the roar and boom ofguns, but inwardly men were lutes with singing harps. As thehouseholder sitting by his blazing hearth thinks not of the sleet andhail falling on the roof of slate, so the soul abides in peace overwhich has been reared the castle and covert of God's presence. 

How signal a place does the imagination hold in the realm of scienceand invention! Reason itself is only an under-servant. It has nocreative skill. Memory makes no discoveries. But the imagination is awonder-worker. One day, chancing upon a large bone of the mammoth inthe Black Forest, Oken, the German naturalist, exclaimed: "This is apart of a spinal column. " The eyes of the scientist saw only one ofthe vertebræ, but to that one bone his imagination added frame, limband head, then clothed the skeleton with skin, and saw the giant ofanimals moving through the forest. In that hour the imaginationwrought a revolution in the science of anatomy. Similarly, thiscreative faculty in Göethe gave botany a new scientific basis. Sittingin his favorite seat near the castle of Heidelberg one day, the greatpoet was picking in pieces an oak leaf. Suddenly his imaginationtransformed the leaf. Under its touch the central stalk lifted itselfup and became the trunk of the tree; the veins of the leaf wereextended and became boughs and branches; each filament became a leafand spray; the imagination revealed each petal and stamen and pistil, as after the leaf type, and gave a new philosophy to the science ofherbs and shrubs. When a pistachio tree in Paris with only femaleblossoms suddenly bore nuts, the mind of a scientist suggested thatsome other rich man had imported a tree with male flowers, and carefulsearch revealed that tree many miles away. 

And in every department of science this faculty bridges over chasmsbetween discovered truths. Even Newton's discovery was the gift ofimagination. When the eyes of the scientist saw the falling apple itwas his vision faculty that leaped through space and saw the fallingmoon. When the western trade winds, blowing for weeks, had cast thedrift wood upon the shores of Spain, Columbus' eyes fell not only uponthe strange wood but also upon a pebble caught in the crevice. But hisimagination leaped from the pebble to the Western continent of whichthe stone was a part, and from the tree to the forest in which itgrew. 

This faculty has performed a similar work in the realm of mechanics. Watt tells us that his engine worked in his mind years before itworked in his shop. In his biography, Milton recognizes the beauty ofthe trees and flowers he culled from earth's landscapes and gardens, but in his "Paradise Lost, " his imagination beheld an Eden fairer thanany scene ever found on earth. Napoleon believed that every battle waswon by the imagination. While his soldiers slept, the great Corsicanmarshaled his troops, hurled them against the enemy, and won thevictory in his mind the night before the battle was fought. Even theorator like Webster must be described as one who sees his argument inthe air before he writes it upon the page, just as Handel thought heheard the music falling from the sky more rapidly than his hand couldfasten the notes upon the musical bars. Thus every new tool andpicture, every new temple or law or reform, has been the imagination'sgift to man. 

Nor has the case been different with men in the humbler walks of life. Multitudes are doomed to delve and dig. Three-fourths of the race liveon the verge of poverty. The energies of most men are consumed insupporting the wants of the body. It is given to multitudes to descendinto the coal mine ere the day is risen, to emerge only when night hasfallen. Other multitudes toil in the smithy or tend the loom. Thedivision of labor has closed many avenues for happiness and culture. The time was when the village cobbler was primarily a citizen, andonly incidentally a shoemaker. In the old New England days the cobblerowned his garden and knew the orchard; owned his horse and knew thecare of animals; had his special duties in relation to school andchurch, and, therefore, was a student of all public questions. Buttending a machine that clinches tacks, cabins and confines the soul. The man who begins as a citizen ends an appendage to a wheel. The lifeof many becomes a treadmill existence. Year in and year out they tendsome spindle. Now this drudgery of modern life threatens happiness andmanhood. Therefore it was ordained that while the hand digs the mindmay soar. 

While Henry Clay's hands were hoeing corn in that field in Kentucky, through his imagination the young orator was standing in the halls ofCongress. What orations he wrote! What arguments he fashioned! Eachtime his hoe cut down a weed, his mind with an argument hewed down anopponent. Never was there a tool for hoeing corn like unto theimagination! Christine Nilsson tells that once she toiled as a flowergirl at the country fairs in Sweden. But all the time she delved shewas dreaming, and by her very dreams making herself strong againstthe day when she would charm vast audiences with celestial music. Whatbattles the plowboys have fought in dreams! What orations they havepronounced! What reforms they have achieved! What tools invented! Whatbooks written! What business reared! Thus the imagination shortens thehours of labor and sweetens toil. While the body tires, the soul soarsand sings. 

This young foreigner newly arrived in our city digs downward with hisspade, but his imagination works upward into the realm of theinvisible. He endures the ditch and the spade through foresight of theday when his playmate will come over the sea; when together they willown a little house, and have a garden with vines and flowers, with alittle path leading down to "the spring where the water bubbles outday and night like a little poem from the heart of the earth;" whenthey will have a little competence, so that the sweet babe shall notwant for knowledge. By that dream the youth sustains his lonelinessand poverty; by that dream he conquers his vices and passions; at lastthrough that dream he is lifted up to the rank of a patriot and worthycitizen. Nor shall you find one hard-worked man caught to-morrow inlife's swirl who does not endure the strife, the rivalry and theselfishness of the street with this gift divine. It is the noblestinstrument of the soul. Thereby are the heavens opened. Imagination isthe poor man's friend and saviour. Imagination is God whispering tothe soul what shall be when time and the divine resources haveaccomplished their work upon man. 

And when imagination has achieved for man, his progress, happiness, and culture, it goes on to help him to gain personal worth andcharacter. Above every noble soul hangs a vision of things higher, better and sweeter. It causes the best men even in their best moods tofeel that better things still are possible. By sweet visions it temptsmen upward, just as of old the bees were lured onward by the honeydropped through the hunter's hands. The vision of a higher manhooddiscontents men with to-day's achievement and takes the flavor out ofyesterday's victory. In such hours it is not enough that men havebread and raiment, or are better than their fellows. The soul isfilled with nameless yearnings and longings. The deeper convictions, long hidden, begin to stir and strain, even as in June the seed acheswith its hidden harvest. 

Though the youth still pursues, he never overtakes his ideal. In theprocess of transmutation into life the ideal is injured and dwarfed. Just as the poet's vision is transcendently more beautiful than thesong he writes upon the page; as the artist's dream is aglorious-creation, but his picture is only a photograph thereof; asthe musician's song or symphony is but an echo of the ethereal musiche heard in his soul, so every purpose and ideal is marred in theeffort to give it expression and embodiment. 

These children of aspiration hold the secret of all progress forsociety. Just as of old artists drew the outline of glowing andglorious pictures, and then with bits of colored glass and preciousstones filled up the mosaic, causing angels and seraphs to stand forthin lustrous beauty, so imagination lifts up before the youth itsglowing plans and purposes, and asks him to give himself to thedetails of life in filling it up and perfecting a glorious character. The patterns of life are only given upon that holy mount where, midstclouds and darkness, dwell God and the higher imagination. 

But if the imagination has its use, it has its abuse also. If visionsof truth and beauty can exalt, visions of vice can debase and degrade. In that picture where Faust and Satan battle together for thescholar's soul, the angels share in the conflict. Plucking the rosesof Paradise, they fling them over the battlements down upon the headsof the combatants. When the roses fall on Faust they heal his wounds;when they fall on Satan they turn into coals of fire. Thus theimagination casts inspirations down upon the pure, but smites the evilinto the abyss. The miseries of men of genius like Burns are perpetualwarnings to youth against the riotings of imagination. There arepoems, also novels and lurid scenes in the city, hanging picturesbefore the imagination and scorching the soul like flames of fire. Foras of old so now, what a man imagineth in his heart that he is. Fornot what a man does outwardly, but what he dreams inwardly, determineshis character. 

Most men are better than we think, but some men are worse. As steam inthe boiler makes itself known by hisses, so the evil imaginings heaveand strain, seeking escape. Many forbear vice and crime through fear;their conscience is cowardice; if they dared they would riot throughlife like the beasts of the field; if all their inner imaginings wereto take an outward expression in deeds, they would be scourges, plagues and pests. In the silence of the soul they commit every vice. But they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind; the revealing daywill come when the films of life shall be withdrawn, and thecharacter shall appear faithful as a portrait, and then all themeanness and sliminess shall be seen to have given something to thesoul's picture. Oh, be warned against these dreams, all ye younghearts! The indulgence of the imagination is like the sultriness of asummer's day; what began so fair ends with sharp lightnings andthunder. How terrible is this word to evil-doers! "As a man thinkethin his heart, so is he. "

It is also given to this vision faculty to redeem men out ofoppression and misfortune, and through its intimations of royalty tolend victory and peace. Oft the days are full of storms andturbulence; oft events grow bad as heart can wish; full oft the nextstep promises the precipice. There are periods in every career whentroubles are so strangely increased that the world seems like an orblet loose to wander widely through space. In these dark hours someendure their pain and trouble through dogged, stoical toughness. Thenmen imitate the turtle as it draws in its head and neck, saying tomisfortune: "Behold the shell, and beat on that. " But, God be thanked!victory over trouble has been ordained. In the blackest hour of thestorm it is given to the vision faculty to lift man into the realm oftranquillity. As travelers in the jungle climb the trees at night anddraw the ladder up after them, and dwell above the reach of wildbeasts and serpents, so the soul in its higher moods ascends into therealms of peace and rest. In that dark hour just before Jesus Christentered into the cloud and darkness, and fronted His grievoussuffering, He called His disciples about Him and uttered thatdiscourse beginning: "Let not your hearts be troubled. " Strange wonderwords; words of matchless genius and beauty. 

Moreover, the vision faculty furnishes man his idea and picture ofGod. Many suppose that all that is necessary to understand the divinenature is that it should be stated distinctly in language. Greatererror there could not be. There can be no language for causing alittle child to understand the larger truths of heroism, art orgovernment. The unripe cannot understand the mature. Each mind mustpaint its own picture of God. Nature itself is but a palette uponwhich God draws her portrait. Reason furnishes the materials andtruths about God, and the imagination unites them in some nobleconception of His all-helpful nature. Everything in nature that haspower or beauty or benefit has received it from God. Moving along theAlpine valleys the traveler sees huge bowlders lying in the stream, and, looking to the mountain side, his eye rests upon the very clifffrom which the bowlder fell. Thus discerning the noble qualities inmother or patriot, in hero or friend, we trace their beautifulqualities back to God, from whom all noble souls borrow theirexcellence. In the largest sense all the elements of power in sea andsky and sun, all the beauty of the fields and forests, of summers andwinters, are letters in nature's alphabet for spelling out the name ofGod. As a diamond has many facets, and every one reflects the sun, sothe universe itself is a gem whose every facet reflects the mind andgenius of God. 

When reason has culled out of life and nature everything that excitesawe or admiration, everything that represents bounty and beauty, thenimagination lifts up all these ideals and sweeps them together andmelts them into one glowing and glorious conception of the God ofpower, wisdom and love. But even then the heart whispers: "He is that, and infinitely more than that, even as the sun is more than the littletaper man has made. " But if the reason and memory, through misuse, furnish but few of the truths about God, and if the imagination hasbeen weakened in its power, then how poor the picture the soul paints!

What scant, feeble portraits of God some men have! What can an Eskimo, whose highest conception of summer is a stunted bush, know of tropicalorchards, of luscious peach, pear and plum? If the student has seenonly the broken fragments of Phidias, what can he know of theParthenon as it once stood in the zenith of its perfection, in thesplendor of its beauty? But if man's reason can cull out all thelustrous facts of nature and history, and if his imagination hasstrength and skill to bring them all together, then how beautiful willbe the face and name of God! That name will fill his soul with music. That thought will set his heart vibrating with tumultuous joy. If allthe air were filled with invisible bells, and angels were the ringers, and music fell in waves as sweet as melted amethyst and pearl, weshould have that which would answer to the sweetness that by day andnight rains down upon the hearts of those who approach God--notthrough the eye nor ear, not through argument nor judgment, butthrough the heart, through the imagination, as they endure, beholdingHim who is invisible. 

THE ENTHUSIASM OF FRIENDSHIP

 "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. "--_Solomon. _

 "The only way to have a friend is to be one. "--_Emerson. _

 "A talent is perfected in solitude; a character in the stream of the world. "--_Göethe. _

 "It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take heed of their company. "--_Shakespeare. _

 "Beyond all wealth, honor or even health, is the attachment we form to noble souls, because to become one with the good, generous and true, is to become, in a measure, good, generous and true ourselves. "--_Thomas Arnold. _

 "Cicero said: 'Friendship can make riches splendid. ' Friendship can plan many things for its wealth to execute. It can plan a good winter evening for a group, and it can plan an afternoon for a hundred children. It can roll in a Christmas log for a large hearth. It can spread happiness to the right and left. It can spend money most beautifully and make gold to shine. Civilization itself is of the heart. "--_Swing. _

VIII

THE ENTHUSIASM OF FRIENDSHIP

Destiny is determined by friendship. Fortune is made or marred whenthe youth selects his companions. Friendship has ever been themaster-passion ruling the forum, the court, the camp. The power oflove is God-breathed, and life has nothing like love for majesty andbeauty. Civilization itself is more of the heart than of the mind. Asan eagle cannot rise with one wing, so the soul ascends borne upequally by reason and affection. Plato found the measure of greatnessin a man's capacity for exalted friendship. All the great ones ofhistory stand forth as unique in some master passion as in theirintellectual supremacy. Witness David and Jonathan, with lovesurpassing the love of women. Witness Socrates and his group ofimmortal friends. Witness Dante and his deathless love for Beatrice. Witness Tennyson and his refrain for Arthur Hallam. Witness thedisciples and Christ, with "love as strong as death. "

Sweetness is not more truly the essence of music than is love the verysoul of a deep, strong, harmonious manhood. Friendship cheers like asunbeam; charms like a good story; inspires like a brave leader; bindslike a golden chain; guides like a heavenly vision. To love alone isit given to wrestle victoriously with death. 

Lord Bacon said: "He who loves solitude is either a wild beast or agod. " The normal man is gregarious. He wants companionship. The verycattle go in herds. The fishes go in shoals. The bees go in swarms. And men come together in families and cities. As men go up towardgreatness their need of friendship increases. No mind of the firstorder was ever a hermit. Modern literature enshrines the friendshipsof the great and makes them memorable. While letters last, societywill never forget Charles Lamb and his companions; Dr. Johnson and hisimmortal group; Petrarch and his helpless dependence upon Laura; whilethe letters of Abélard and Héloise enshrine them in everlastingremembrance. 

In all literature there is no more touching death-bed scene than thatof the patriarch Jacob. Dying, the Prince forgot his gold and silver, his herds and lands. Lifted up upon his pillows, in tremulousexcitement he took upon his lips two names--God and Rachel. More thana score of years had passed since her death, but in that memorablehour the great man built a monument to her who had fed his joy anddeepened his life. 

Friendship carries a certain fertilizing force. All biographers tellus that each epoch in a hero's life was ushered in by a new friend. When Schiller met Göethe every latent talent awakened. The poet'sfriendship caused the youth to grow by leaps and bounds. Once, returning home after a brief visit to Göethe's house, one exclaimed:"I am amazed by the progress Schiller can make within a singlefortnight!" Perhaps this explains why the great seem to come ingroups. Thrust an Emerson into any Concord, and his pungent presencewill penetrate the entire region. Soon all who come within the radiusof his life respond to his presence, as flowers and trees respond withboughs brilliant and fragrant to the sunshine when spring replaces theicy winter. After a little time, each Emerson stands girt about withHawthornes, Whittiers, Holmeses, and Lowells. The greatness of eachMilton lingers in his friends, Cromwell and Hampden, as the sunlingers in the clouds after the day is done. Therefore the great epicsand dramas, from the Iliad to the Idylls of the King, are stories offriendships. Take love out of our greatest literature, and it is liketaking a sweet babe out of the clothes that cover it. Man listenseagerly to tales of eloquence and heroism, but loves most of all thestories of the heart. God is not more truly the life of dead matterthan is love the very life of man. 

Now, the secret of eminence in the realm of industry or art orinvention is this: that the worker has wrought in his luminous mentalmoods. In its passive, inert states, the mind is receptive. Thenreason is like a sheathed sword. Thought must be struck forth as fireis struck from flint. But under inspirational moods the mind begins toglow and kindle. Then the reason of the orator, the poet or reformerceases to be like a taper, needing a match to light it, and becomes asun, blazing with its own radiance. Spencer wrote: "By no politicalalchemy can we get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. " Thus thereis no necromancy by which the mind can get superior work out of itsinferior moods. 

When, then, reason approaches its task under the inspiration ofenthusiasm and love, nature yields up all her secrets. Here is theauthor sitting down to write. Memory refuses facts, and reasondeclines to create fictions. The mind is dull and dead. Suddenly thestep of some friend long absent is heard at the door. Then how do thefaculties awake! Through all the long winter evening, the mind bringsforth its treasures of wit, of anecdote, of instructive fact andcharming allusion. Here is some Edison, with an enthusiasm forinvention, who found his electric lamps that burned well for a monthhad suddenly gone out, and read in the morning paper the judgment ofthe scientist that his electric bulb was a good toy but a poor tool. 

In his enthusiasm for his work, the man exclaimed, "I will make astatue of that professor, and illumine him with electric lamps, andmake his ignorance memorable. " Then Edison went away to begin a seriesof experiments that drove sleep from his eyes and slumber from hiseyelids through five successive days and nights, until love andenthusiasm helped reason to wrest victory from defeat. 

Here is the boy Mozart, with his love of music, toiling through thelong days at tasks he hated, and in the darkening twilight stealinginto the old church, where he poured out his very soul over the organkeys, sobbing out his mournful melodies. Here is Lincoln, with hisenthusiasm for books, coming in at night all aching with cold and wet, and rising when parents slept, to roll another log upon the blazinghearth, while midst the grateful heat his eager eyes searched out thetreasures that lay along the line of the printed page, until his mindgrew rich and strong. And here are the Scottish clansmen and patriots, for love's sake, following the noble chieftain, their hearts allaflame, who, if they had a hundred lives, would gladly have given themall for their heroic leader. And here is the orator rising to pleadthe cause of the savage, and of the slave, before men who feel nosympathy, and are as castles locked and barred. But the love for thepoor shines in Wendell Phillips' eyes, trembles in his voice, pleadsin his thinking, until the multitude become all plastic to histhought, and his smile becomes their smile, his tear their tear, thethrob of his heart the throb of the whole assembly. Here is theScottish girl, in love with truth, standing midst the sea, within theclutches of the incoming tide. She is bound down midst the risingwaters. Doomed is she and soon must die. But her eyes are turnedupward toward the sky, and a great sweet light is on her face thattells us enthusiasm and love in her have been victorious over death. Truly, that Greek did well to call enthusiasm "a god within, " for loveis stronger than death. 

The historian tells us that all the liberties, reforms and politicalachievements of society have been gained by nations thrilling andthrobbing to one great enthusiasm. The Renaissance does not mean asingle Dante, nor Boccaccio, but a national enthusiasm and a "godwithin all minds. " The Reformation is not a single Savonarola, norLuther, but a universal enthusiasm and "a god within, " all heart andconscience. If we study these movements of society as typified bytheir leaders, these heroes stand forth before us with hearts allaflame and with minds that grow like suns. In times of great dangermen develop unsuspected physical strength, and the force of the wholebody seems to rush upward and compact itself with the thumb or fist. And in the mental world lawyers and orators tell us that at heatedcrises, when great issues hang upon their words, the memory achievesfeats otherwise impossible. In these hours the mind becomes luminous. All the experience of the past passes before the orator with themajesty of a mighty wave or a rushing storm. Similarly, the heroinflamed with love or liberty becomes invincible. When some Garibaldior Lincoln appears, and the people behold his greatness and beauty andmagnanimity, every heart catches the sacred passion. Then thenarrow-minded youth tumbles down his little idols, sets up divinerideals, and finds new measurements for the thrones of heaven andearth. Then, in a great abandonment of love, the nation pours out itsheart for the cause it loves. 

Froude tells us that self-government has cost mankind hundreds of warsand thousands of battle-fields. Tennyson writes of the boy who wasfollowing his father's plow when the share turned up a human skull. There, where the plow stayed, the patriot had fallen in battle. Sitting upon the furrow with the child upon his knee, the fathercaused his boy to see a million men in arms fighting for some greatprinciple; to see the battle-fields all red with blood; the hillsidesall billowy with graves; caused him to hear the shrieking shot andshell; pointed out the army of cripples hobbling homeward. When thechild shivered in fear the father whispered, "Your ancestors wouldhave gladly died daily for the liberty they loved. " And if to-day goodmen brood over the wrongs of Armenia, and breathe a silent prayer forthose who struggle against desperate odds and "the unspeakable Turk, "and if to-morrow and on the morrow's morrow editors and orators unitein words of sympathy and encouragement for the patriots fighting insome Cuba, it is because we believe the love of liberty implies theright to liberty; that despotism corrupts manhood; thatself-government is the best for industry, the best for integrity, thebest for intelligence. If the red plowshare of war must pass throughthe soil of the nations, may it bury forever the seeds of oppressionand injustice, and sow for future generations the seeds of liberty, intelligence and religion!

Moreover, an overmastering passion is the secret of all eminence inscholarship. Each autumn the golden gates of learning swing wide towelcome the thousands who enter our colleges and universities. If itwere possible for each young student to sit down and speak with thelibrary and laboratory as with a familiar friend, we would hearwisdom's voice uttering one report: "I love them that love me. " Noneof those forms of mental wealth called art or science or literature, enters the mind unasked or stays unurged. All the shelves are heavywith mental treasure, but only the eager mind may harvest it. Beautysleeps in all the quarries, but only the eager chisel wakens it. Wealth is in every crack and crevice of the soil, but nature forbidsthe sluggard to mine it. Those forms of paradise called fame, position, influence, stand with gates open by day and night, but thecherubim with flaming swords wave back all idle youth. When theGrecian king set forth upon his expedition he stayed his goldenchariot at the market-place. Lifting up his voice he forbade any man'sbody to enter his chariot whose heart remained behind. Thus the mindis a chariot that sweeps no unwilling student upward toward thoseheights where wisdom and happiness dwell. 

To-day our young men and women stand in the midst of arts, vast, beautiful and useful; they are surrounded by all the facts of man'smarvelous history; they breathe an atmosphere charged with refinement. But the youth who hates his books might as well be the poor savagelying on the banks of the Niger, whose soul sits in silence andstarves to death in a silent dungeon. Should a kind heaven give us thepower to select some charmed gift to be dropped down upon our youth, parents and teachers could ask nothing better than that each youngheart should storm the gates of learning with such enthusiasm asbelonged to Milton or Epictetus. The Roman slave had one leg brokenand twisted by a cruel master, but in his enthusiasm for knowledge heused the dim light of his cell for copying the thoughts of greatauthors, and lay awake at night reflecting upon the problems of lifeand death with man's mysterious nature, and so made himself immortalby his devotion to the truth. For the student, enthusiasm is indeed "agod within. " Ignorance is want of mental animation. The scientisttells us the Patagonians sleep eighteen hours each day, with atendency to doze through the other six. Their minds are unable to makeany kind of movement, and the chief once told Sir John Lubbock that hewould love to talk were it not that large ideas made him very sleepy. 

But it is all in vain that man has reason or learning or imaginationif these talents lie sleeping. Not long ago the ruins of an old templewere discovered in Rome. When the spade had turned up the soil, lo, seeds long hidden awakened to cover the soil with rich verdure. For2, 000 years these germs had slept, waiting for the day of warmth andquickening. Thus each faculty of man is latent, until some powerfulenthusiasm passes over it. Indeed, mental power is not in themultitude of knowledge acquired, but in the powerful enthusiasms thatdrive the informed soul along some noble path. Power is not in theengine, but in the steam that pounds the piston; and the soul is amechanism driven forward by those motives called enthusiasm forlearning or influence or wealth. Success might be defined as a fullcasting of the heart into some worthy cause. 

It is high time that our young men should recognize that prosperityand wealth are won only when the mind moves enthusiastically along thepathway of industry. Our young men have been deeply injured by thefact that now and then some one stumbles upon sudden wealth, or byaccident gains great treasure. But for every one such fortunateperson, there are ten thousand who have failed of success for want ofa purposeful enthusiasm. 

The Persians have a strange story of the Golconda diamond mines. OnceAli Hafed sat with his wife looking out upon the river that flowedthrough their farm. Soon their children came through the treesbringing with them a traveler. In confidence the stranger showed AliHafed a diamond that shone like a drop of condensed sunshine. He toldhis host that one large diamond was worth whole mines of copper andsilver; that a handful would make him a prince; that a mine ofdiamonds would buy a kingdom. That night wealthy Ali Hafed went to beda poor man, for poverty is discontent. When the morning came he soldhis farm for gold, and went forth in search of diamonds. Years passed. Old and gray he returned in rags and poverty. He found his dear oneshad all died in penury. He also found that the peasant who bought hisfarm was now a prince. One day, digging in the white sand in thestream at the foot of the garden, the peasant saw a shining somethingthat sent his heart to his mouth. Running his hands through the sand, he found it sown with gems. Thus were discovered the Golconda mines. Had Ali Hafed dug in his own garden, instead of starvation, povertyand a broken heart, he would have owned gems that made nations rich. 

This legend reminds us how youth constantly throws away itsopportunities. Each day some man exchanges a farm in Pennsylvania forthe prairies of Dakota, only to find that the hills he despised havedeveloped oil that makes his successor rich. Each year purposeful mengrow rich out of trifles that the careless cast away. The sewers ofParis have made one man wealthy with treasure beyond that of goldmines. The wastes of a cotton mill founded the fortune of one of thegreatest families in England. Peter Cooper used to say that he builtthe Cooper Institute by picking up the refuse that the butcher shopsthrew aside. A boy tugging over a shoe-last in Haverhill, Mass. , wastold by his mother to give himself to making better and strongerlasts. Twenty years of enthusiastic study ended, and he was presidentof one of the greatest of our railways. In 1870, a youth sat upon theslag heap of a mine in California. But he gave his full mind to eachclod, and going away for a few weeks he returned with a machine thatextracted greater treasure from the slag than men had ever gained fromthe mines. All wise men unite in telling us that ours is a world whereprosperity is won by fidelity to details, and that wealth comesthrough little improvements. But, best of all, a purposeful enthusiasmgives mental wealth, and achieves a treasure beyond gold and rubies--aworthy character. 

Nor is there any dross that love will not refine away, nor any vicethat love can not expel from the heart. Wordsworth was so impressedwith the evil of avarice that he could compare it only to a poisonedvine that wrapped itself so tightly about his favorite tree that vineand tree became one life, and the removal of the one meant the deathof the other. But in her most famous story George Eliot tells us thatavarice passes utterly away before the touch of love. Silas Marner wasthe victim of blackest ingratitude. His friend was a thief, who thrustupon him the blame of a black crime. Suddenly, this innocent man foundall homes closed to his hand, all shops locked to his tools, whileeven the market refused his wares. Through two years and more, rightbravely he held his head aloft and looked all men in the face. Atlength hunger and want drove him forth a wanderer. Then he shook offthe dust of his feet against his false friends, and cursed theirfiresides. Kindness in him soured into cynicism, his sweetness becamebitterness, his faith in God and man fluttered feebly for awhile, thenlay without a single pulse-beat. In anger he cursed God, but could notdie. 

Journeying afar, the traveler at length stayed his steps in a distantvillage. Then in toil he sought to forget. Rising a great while beforeday, he wrought with the activity of a spinning insect; and while menslept, his loom hummed far into the night. When fifteen years hadpassed, he had much gold and was a miser. Under the brick floor hesecreted his treasure. Each night he locked the door, shuttered hiswindows, and poured upon the table his gold and silver. He bathed hishands in the yellow river. He piled his guineas up in heaps. Sometimeshe slept with arms around his precious money-bags. One evening helifted the bricks of the floor, to find that the hole was empty. Benumbed with terror, he went everywhither seeking his treasure. Hekneaded his bed, swept his oven, peered into each crack and crevice. When the full truth fell upon the miser, he sent forth a wild, ringingscream--the soul's cry of desolation. Then in his grief he rushed intothe rain and the wild night, and wandered on and on, stupefied withpain. Not until morning came did he stagger in out of the storm. Entering, he saw the glint of yellow by his hearth. With a wild cry hesprang forward and clutched it. But it was not gold; it was somethingbetter--it was the yellow locks of a sleeping child. Broken-hearted, with nothing else to live for, Silas Marner took the deserted babeinto his bosom. As the weeks went on, the little creature nestled intohis heart. For the child's sake he turned again to his loom; lovetaught him thrift and industry. For the child's sake he bought booksand hived knowledge; love made a scholar of him. For the child's sakehe planted vines, roses and all sweet flowers; love made him anartist. For the child's sake he bought carpets for the bare floors andpictures for the wall; love had made him generous. For the child'ssake he knelt one night and recited her prayer; love would fain makehim a Christian. But he hated men, and could not forget theiringratitude. One day a rich man's carriage stopped before his cottage. The lord of the mansion told a strange story--how this beautiful girlof eighteen was his daughter. In that hour the girl, tall andbeautiful, turned away from palace, lands, position, and, for the loveshe bore him, put her arms around Silas Marner and refused to leavehim. Then something in him gave way, and Silas Marner wept. Thenconfidence in man and God was his again. Love had destroyed avariceand purged away his sin. For love is a civilizer; it makes saints outof savages. As an armor of ice melts before the sun, so all vice andiniquity disappear in the presence of an overmastering affection. 

It remains for us to consider that the absence of an enthusiasticdevotion to integrity and the law of God explains the moral disastersand shipwrecks that have increased the tears and sorrows of mankind. Recently the people of this land opened their morning papers only tobe deeply shocked by a rehearsal of grievous disasters, not all ofwhich were physical. It seems that an awful cyclone had swept througha Western community, twisting the orchards, destroying houses andbarns, and leaving behind a swath wide and black with destruction. Inaddition, the foreign news told of a volcano whose crater had suddenlypoured forth a river of lurid lava, which, sweeping down the mountainside, consumed the homes of the flying multitude. But the saddestdisaster was reserved to the last. It told of the shame and sorrow, from which there is no recovery, that had befallen the parents andfriends of three young men, hitherto held in high honor. It seems thatfor many years these men had been honored by their friends, andtrusted by the banks in which they were employed. But in a dark hourthey determined to cease to be gentlemen, preferring, rather, to jointhe ranks of thieves. Despising every principle of honor, the goldwhich employers committed to their care was taken, not to the safetyvault, but distributed among gamblers and evil persons. And our heavysorrow is increased when we read in our commercial reports that lastyear 625 men went astray as embezzlers, robbing the people inforty-five states of $25, 234, 112. The time seems to have come for thisnation to sit down in sackcloth and ashes. 

To all good men comes the reflection that either this immorality mustcease its ravages, or this nation will be irretrievably disgraced. Were it possible to search out these unhappy men, some of them wearingthe convict's garb, and some wandering as fugitives in foreign lands, henceforth to be men "without a country, " and question each for thecause of his deep disgrace, from all would come this shamefulconfession: "I loved evil and hated the law of God. " Not one couldconfess to passionate, enthusiastic devotion to the divine laws. Butevery tree not rooted goes down before the storm, and every shipunanchored midst the rocks will go to pieces when the wind rises. Would that we could to-day cause the laws of God to stand forth assharply defined as mountain peaks before the eyes of all young men;would that we could also kindle in each a passionate love and loyalaffection for these holy laws. If the youth of to-day are to be theleaders of to-morrow, and are ever to have power to stir theirfellows, to correct abuses, revolutionize society, or organizehistory, they must, with the enthusiasm of love, ally themselves withGod and His law, clothing that law with flesh until it becomesvisible, clothing it with voice until it becomes eloquent, thrillingit with power until it becomes triumphant. Only love fulfills law!

Most of all does man need the enthusiasm of love toward his God andSaviour. In the olden time Plato expressed a wish to have the morallaw become a living personage, that beholding, mankind might standamazed and entranced at her beauty. The philosopher felt thatabstractions were too cold to kindle the soul's enthusiasm. Asplanets are removed from the sun, their light and heat lessen; theirflowers fade; their fruits lack luster; their summers shorten. ThusNeptune stands in the midst of perpetual ice and winter, without treeor bird or human voice. But as our earth approaches the direct rays ofthe sun, its beauty increases, its harvests grow heavy. 

As if to fulfill Plato's desire, Jesus Christ drew near to our world, not to chill man's heart, but to strengthen his affection, refine hisreason, enlarge his horizon. How admirable Christ's words, howillustrious His work, how divine His character! The philosopherdescribes man, but Jesus Christ loves man, weeps for man, dies forman. Dante inspires, but Jesus Christ gives life. Shakespeare shines, but Jesus Christ uplifts. History causes the heroes of yesterday topass before the mind, surrounded by applauding multitudes. WhenNapoleon entered Paris the people ran together with one accord, andthe tides of enthusiasm rose like a mountain freshet. When Garibaldientered Florence, when Kossuth passed up Broadway in New York, whenGrant, returning homeward, entered our own city, the streets werefilled solidly with multitudes who forgot hunger and exhaustion, exalted by hero-worship. 

But the divine man never stood forth in full proportion until JesusChrist stepped upon this planet. What strength! What gentleness!Behold His exquisite sympathy! Behold the instinct of confidence, thatdrew little children to His arms! How did men, defiled within andwithout, throng round Him, while His presence wrought the miracle ofmiracles in cleansing them! Then for the first time in history diddisheveled ones so feel the beauty of goodness that an irresistibleenthusiasm drew them about Him to kiss the very hem of His garment. All the excellencies of life, and more, unite in Him; the orator'spersuasive speech; the artist's love of beauty; the scholar's passionfor truth; the patriot's love of country. His also is more than thelove of mother, lover, friend, for his is the love of Saviour. To-dayHe rises over each soul in such majesty of excellence as to includethe excellencies of everything in heaven and everything on earth. Asthe clouds sometimes, after hanging for days and nights in theatmosphere, at length come together and pour down their refreshingshowers, so let all that is deepest and richest and sweetest in man'sthought and affection pour itself out before Him who is worthy of theworld's anthem. For His mind will guide, His mercy forgive, His loveredeem, His hand lead--not into the abyss of death, but unto theheavenly heights. He who with Dante looks upward to-day may behold theSaviour's divine chariot "sweeping along the confines of heaven, asweet light above it, its wheels almost blocked with flowers. "

CONSCIENCE AND CHARACTER

 "There is a higher law than the constitution. "--_Seward. _

 "Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod, Man's conscience is the oracle of God. " --_Byron. _

 "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. "--_Washington. _

 "Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything. "--_Sterne. _

 "If you can find a place between the throne of God and the dust to which man's body crumbles, where the fatal responsibilities of law do not weigh upon him, I will find a vacuum in nature. They press upon him from God out of eternity and from the earth out of nature, and from every department of life, as constant and all-surrounding as the pressure of the air. "--_Beecher. _

IX

CONSCIENCE AND CHARACTER

Von Humboldt said that every man, however good, has a yet better manwithin him. When the outer man is unfaithful to his deeperconvictions, the hidden man whispers a protest. The name of thiswhisper in the soul is conscience. And never had monarch aspect somagisterial as when conscience terrified King Herod into confession. The cruel, crafty despot had slain John the Baptist to gratify therevenge of the beautiful Jezebel, his wife, reproved of John for heroutrageous sins. But soon passed from memory that hateful night whenthe blood of a good man mingled with the red wine of the feast. Luxuryby day and revelry by night caused the hateful incident to beforgotten. Soon a full year had passed over the palace with its silkenseclusion. One day, when the dead prophet had long been forgotten, acourtier at the king's table told the story of a strange carpenter, whose name and fame were ringing through the land. 

Who is He? asked the feasters, pausing over their spiced wine. Who isHe? asked the women, gossiping over the new sensation. Suddenly, conscience touched an old memory in Herod's heart. In terror thedespot rose from the banquet. As in the legend, when the murderer'sfinger touched the gaping wound the blood began again to flow--asilent witness against the unsuspected but guilty friend, so Herod'sconscience opened up again his guilty secret. Memory, thrusting ahooked pole into "the ocean of oblivion, brought up the pale anddrowned deed. " The long-forgotten sin was revealed in all its ghastlyatrocity. It availed nothing that Herod was a Sadducee--the agnosticof antiquity. For, when conscience spake, all his doubts fell away. Immortality and responsibility were clear as noonday. Holding athousand swords in her hand, conscience attacked the guilty king. Thenwere fulfilled Plato's words: "If we could examine the heart of aking, we would find it full of scars and black wounds. " For no slavewas ever marked by his master's scourge as Herod's heart was lashed byhis conscience. 

Socrates told his disciples that the facts of conscience must bereckoned with as certainly as the facts of fire or wood or water. Nonemay deny the condemnation that weighed upon the soul of Herod orJudas, or the approval of conscience that transfigured the face of themartyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only throughpeace with one's self, one's record, and one's God. All the great, from Æschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasizedman's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Hereis the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty tosentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before theastounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dockbeside the prisoner. He stated that, thirty years before, in a distantprovince, he had taken the life and property of his master, andthereby gained his present position and influence. Though he had neverbeen suspected of crime, he now begged his fellow Judges to condemnhim to the death unto which his conscience had long urged him. Here isthe student of man and things, Dr. Samuel Johnson: In his old andhonored age he goes back to Litchfield to stand with uncovered headfrom morning till night in the market-place on the spot where fifteenyears before he had refused to keep his father's book-stall. Despitethe grotesque figure he made, midst the sneers and the rain, conscience bade him expiate his breach of filial piety. And here isChanning, the scholar and seer: A child of six years, he lifted hisstick to strike the tortoise, as he had seen older boys do. But inthat moment an inner voice whispered loud and clear: "It is wrong. " Inhis fright the boy hastened home to fling himself into his mother'sarms. "What was the voice?" he asked. To which his mother answered:"Men call the voice conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice ofGod. And always your happiness will depend upon obedience to thatlittle voice. "

Here also is the great Persian Sadi. One day he found a good man inthe jungle, who had been attacked by a tiger and horribly mutilated. Despite his dreadful agony, the dying man's features were calm andserene. "Great God, " said he, "I thank thee that I am only sufferingfrom the fangs of the tiger and not of remorse. " And here is ProfessorWebster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning hesent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "Atmidnight, " he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the walland whisper, 'Thou art a murderer. '" Now there were no prisoners inthe next cell. The whispers were the echoes of a guilty conscience. 

Daniel Webster also testifies: Once he was asked what was the greatestthought that had ever occupied his mind. "Who are here?" "Only yourfriends. " Then this colossal man answered: "There is no evil we cannot face or flee from but the consequences of duty disregarded. Asense of obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell in theuttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is stillwith us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darknessshall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations areyet with us. We can not escape their power nor fly from theirpresence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther onwe shall find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty--to painus forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as Godhas given us grace to perform it. " Weighed against conscience theworld itself is but a bubble. For God himself is in conscience lendingit authority. 

We also owe the great dramatists and novelists a debt, in that theyhave portrayed and analyzed the essential facts of man's moral life. That which Shakespeare does for us in "Macbeth, " Victor Hugo does inhis "Les Misérables. " The latter work, always ranked as one of theseven great novels, exhibits happiness and character as fruits ofobedience to the soul's inner circle. Jean Valjean was an escapedconvict. Going into a distant province he assumed a new name and beganlife again. He invented a machine, amassed wealth, became mayor of thetown, was honored and beloved by all. One evening the good mayor heardof an old man in another town who had been arrested for stealingfruit. The officer apprehending him perceived in the old man astriking resemblance to Jean Valjean. Despite his protests he wastried as Jean Valjean, and was about to be remanded to prison--thistime for life. Unless some one cleared him he must go to the galleys. Only Jean Valjean himself can clear the stranger. How clear him? Byconfessing his identity and going himself. 

In that hour the mayor's brain reeled. He retired to his inner room. Then the tempest raged in his brain as a cyclone rages through thetrees, twisting off the branches and pulling up the roots. Must he goback again to the galleys with their profanity and obscenity? Must heresign his mayoralty and his wealth? Must he give up his life, souseful and helpful, and all to save a possible year or two of life forthis old man? Were not these two young wards whom he was supportingmore than this one old wreck? Fate had decided. Let the old man go tothe galleys. 

Then with muscles tense as steel, with jugular vein all swollen andpurple, Jean Valjean took the two candlesticks given him by theBishop, his thorn cane, the coin taken from the boy, and cast all uponthe blazing coals. Soon the flames had licked all up. Then Victor Hugosays: "Jean Valjean heard a burst of internal laughter. " What was itin him jeering and mocking? At midnight from sheer exhaustion themayor slept. Dreaming, he seemed to be in a hall of justice where anold man was being tried. There were roses in the vase, only sin hadbleached the crimson petals gray. The sunlight came through thewindow, only sin had washed the color from the sunbeam and left thegolden rays ashen pale. All the people were silent. At length anofficer touched the mayor and said: "Do you know you have been dead along while? Your body lives, but you died when you slew yourconscience. " Suddenly a voice said: "Jean Valjean, you may melt thecandlestick, burn your clothes, change your face, but God sees you. "Afterward came a second burst of internal laughter. Then the mayorarose swiftly, took his horse, drove hard all night and reached thedistant village to enter the courtroom just as the old man was aboutto be sent to the galleys. Ascending the prisoner's dock, he confessedhis identity. Victor Hugo tells us that in that hour the judge and thelawyer saw a strange light upon the mayor's face, and felt a lightwithin dazzling their hearts. It was the same light that fell on theGerman monk's face when before the Emperor at Worms he said: "I cannotand will not recant!" and then boldly fronted death. Conscienceshining through made Luther's face luminous, as it had made the faceof Moses before him!

As obedience to the behests of conscience has always yielded happinessand formed character, so disobedience has always destroyed manhood. The great novelists have exhibited the deterioration of character intheir hero as beginning with a sin against the sense of duty. InRomola, George Eliot exhibits Tito as a gifted and ideal youth. Theorphan child was adopted by the Greek scholar, who lavished upon himall the gifts of affection, all the culture and embellishments of theschools, all the comforts of a beautiful home; and when the longingfor foreign travel came upon the youth the foster-father could notdeny him, but took passage for Tito and himself and sailed forAlexandria. But the motto of Tito's life was, get all the pleasureyou can, avoid all the pain. Soon the old scholar became a clog and aburden. One night, conscience battled for its life with Tito. Atmidnight the youth arose, unbuckled from his father's waist theleather belt stuffed with jewels, and fled into the night, leaving thegray-haired man among strangers whose language he could not speak. 

Then this youth sailed away to Florence. There his handsome person, his Southern beauty, his grace of address, his aptitude for affairs, won him the admiration of the wisest statesmen and the heart of one ofthe noblest of women. But all the time we feel toward this beautifulyouth that same loathing and contempt that we feel toward a beautifulyoung tiger. Tito had no conscience toward Romola, no consciencetoward her father's priceless library, no conscience toward thepatriots struggling for the city's liberty; he played the traitortoward all. His soul was, indeed, sheathed in a glowing and beautifulbody; but it was the corpse sheathed over with flowers and vines; andso conscience becomes an avenger upon Tito. When the keystone goesfrom the arch, all must crash down in ruins. Unconsciously but surelythe youth moved toward his destruction. The day of doom was delayed, but there came an hour when conscience first drove Tito into theArno's swift current, and then became a millstone, that sunk him intothe deep abyss. For ours is a world in which nature and God cannotafford to permit sin to prosper. Conscience is God's avenger. 

Open all the master books, and they portray the same truth. Three ofthe seven greatest novels deal with conscience. Seven of the world'sgreatest dramas are studies of conscience and of duty. Themasterpieces of Sophocles and Æschylus, of Dante and Milton, of Göetheand Byron, are all studies of the soul's oracle, that, disobeyed, hurls man into the abyss, or, followed, becomes wings, lifting himinto the open sky. 

Demosthenes said that knowledge begins with definition. What, then, isconscience? Many misconceptions have prevailed. Multitudes suppose itto be a distinct faculty. The eye tests colors for beauty, the eartests sounds for harmony, the reason tests arguments for truth, andthere is a popular notion that conscience is a distinct faculty, testing deeds for morality. Many suppose that, when God made man, Heimplanted conscience as an automatic moral mechanism, a kind of innermind, to act in his absence; but conscience is not a single faculty. It includes many faculties, and is complex in nature. It has anintellectual element, and this is distinctly fallible and capable ofeducation. Witness the Indians, believing it to be right to kill agedpersons. Witness savages of old, sacrificing their children to appeasethe gods. Just as there has been an evolution in tools, in laws and ininstitutions, so has there been an evolution of the intellectualelement in conscience. Thucydides tells us that the time was in Spartawhen stealing was right. In that far-off time a boy was praised forexhibiting skill and dexterity in pilfering. Stealing was disgracefuland wrong only when it was found out, and, if the theft was large andskillfully done, it won honor--a condition of things that stillprevails in some sections. 

Never since man stepped foot upon this planet has there been a timewhen conscience, the judge, has praised a David when sinning againstwhat he believed to be the law of right; never once has it condemned aDaniel in doing what he believed to be right. In this sense conscienceis, indeed, infallible and is the very voice and regent of God. 

Since, therefore, conscience partakes of this divine nature and speaksas an oracle, what are its uses and functions? Primarily, the moralsense furnishes a standard and tests actions for righteousness oriniquity. To its judgment-seat comes reason, with its purposes andambitions. When his color sense is jaded the artist uses the sapphireor ruby to bring his tints up to perfection. And when contact withselfishness or sordidness has soiled the soul's garments, dulled itsinstruments, and lowered its standards, then conscience comes in tofreshen the ideals and to smite vice and vulgarity. In these luminoushours when conscience causes the deeper convictions to prevail, howbeautiful seem truth and purity and justice! How does the soul revoltfrom iniquity, even as the eye revolts from the slough or the nostrilfrom filth!

Conscience has also relations to judgment. It pronounces upon theinner motive that colors the deeds, for it is the motive within thatmakes the actions without right or wrong. When Coleridge, theschoolboy, was going along the street thinking of the story of Heroand Leander and imagining himself to be swimming the Hellespont, hethrew wide his arms as though breasting the waves. Unfortunately, hishand struck the pocket of a passer-by and knocked out a purse. Theouter deed was that of a pickpocket and could have sent the youth tojail. The inner motive was that of an imaginative youth deeplyimpressed by the story he was translating from the Greek, and thatinner motive made the owner of the purse his friend and sent youngColeridge to college. Thus, the philosopher tells us, the motive madewhat was outwardly wrong to be inwardly right. 

Memory, too, is influenced by the moral Faculty. Memory gathers up allour yesterdays. Often her writing is invisible, like that of a penmanwriting with lemon juice, taking note of each transgression andrecording words that will appear when held up to the heat of fire. Very strangely does conscience bring out the processes of memory. SirWilliam Hamilton tells of a little child brought to England at fouryears of age. When a few brief summers and winters had passed over hishead, the language of far-off Russia had passed completely out of thechild's mind. Seventy years afterward, stricken with his last illness, in his delirium the man spoke with perfect ease in the language ofchildhood. In moments of extreme excitement, when ships go down ordeath is imminent, conscience doth so quicken the mind that all thedeeds and thoughts of an entire career are reviewed within a fewminutes. Scholars have been deeply impressed with this unique fact. Seeking to interpret it, Walter Scott takes us into the castle where afoul murder was committed. So deeply did the red current stain thefloor that, though the servants scrubbed and scrubbed and planed andplaned, still the dull red stains oozed up through the oaken planks. This is the great Scotchman's way of saying that our deeds stainthrough the very fiber and substance of the soul. 

Looking backward, we see only here and there a peak of remembrancestanding out midst the sea of forgetfulness, even as the islands inthe West Indies stand out midst the ocean. But each of these islandpeaks represents a submerged continent. Drain off the sea, and themountains ease off toward the foothills and the hills toward the greatplains that make up the hidden land. Thus the isolated memories of thepast are all united, and will at length stand forth in perfectrevelation. Verily, conscience is a witness, secretly taking notes, even as good Latimer in his cell overheard the scratching of the penin the chimney behind the curtain. Conscience is a judge, and, thoughjuries nod and witnesses may be bribed, conscience never slumbers andnever sleeps. Conscience is a monarch, and, though to-day the soul'sking be deposed from its throne, to-morrow it will ascend to thejudgment-seat and lift the scepter. For conscience represents God andacts in His stead. 

Consider the workings of conscience in daily life. The ideal man is hewho is equally conscientious toward intellect and affection, towardplan and purpose. But in practical life men are Christian only inspots and departments. The soul may be likened unto a house, andconscience is the furnace thereof. Sometimes the householder turns theheat into the sitting-room and parlor, but in the other rooms he turnsoff the warm currents of air. Sometimes heat is turned into the upperrooms, while the lower rooms are cold. Thus conscience, that shouldgovern all faculties alike, is largely departmental in its workings. Some men are conscientious toward Sunday, but not toward the weekdays. On Sunday they sing like saints, on Monday they act like demons. On the morning of St. Bartholomew's massacre, Charles IX wasconscientious toward the cathedral and attended mass during threehours; in the evening he filled the streets of Paris with rivers ofblood. John Calvin was conscientious toward his logical system. He wasvery faithful to his theology, but he had no conscience toward hisfellows, and burned Servetus without a sympathetic throb. 

In the Middle Ages conscience worked toward outer forms. In those daysthe baron and priest made a contract. The general led his peasantsforth to burn and pillage and kill, and the priest absolved themurderers for five per cent of the profits. Men were veryconscientious toward absolution, but not at all toward the neighbor'sflocks and barns. In others conscience is largely superstition. Recently an officer of our army found himself sitting beside his hostat a table containing thirteen guests. The soldier, who perhaps wouldhave braved death on the battle-field, was pricked by his consciencefor sitting at table where the guests numbered thirteen. But he wasafraid to die at the dinner-table. He believed that the great God whomakes suns and stars and blazing planets to fly from His hand assparks beneath the hammer of a smith, the god of Sirius and Orion, always stopped his work at six o'clock to count the guests around eachtable, and if he found perchance there were thirteen, then would lifthis arrow to the bow to let fly the deadly shaft upon these awfulsinners against the law of twelve chairs or fourteen. 

Singularly enough, now and then an individual is conscientious towardsome charm, as in the case of a merchant who presently discovered thathe had left his buckeye at home. He had carried this for twenty years. Had he forgotten to pray he would not have gone home to fall upon hisknees. Nature and God were in the merchant's counting-room, but notthe buckeye. So he hurriedly left his office to bring back the agentthat secured all his success and prosperity. 

Then, there is a commercial conscience. Some men feel that the law ofright is chiefly binding upon a man in his business relations. Theyexile themselves from home, break the laws of love and companionshipwith the wife whom they have engaged to cherish and love, until theybecome strangers to her. But conscience does not prick them. Home, friends, music, culture, all these may be neglected--but the business, never. Others there are whose consciences work largely toward thehome. When they cross their own thresholds they are genial, kind anddelightful. As hosts they are famed for their companionship. Dying, their fame is gathered up by the expressions, "good husband, goodfather, good provider. " But they have no conscience toward the street. They count other men their prey, being grasping, greedy andavaricious. They feel about their fellows just as men do about thetimber in the forest. When a man wants timber for his house, he says, "That is the tree I want, " and the woodsman fells it and squares itfor the sill. Does he want stone for his foundations or marble for hisfinishings? There are the rocks; quarry them. Men go into inanimatenature and get the materials they need. Nor is it very different inthe great world of business and ambition. The giant takes one man forthe foundation and cuts him down and builds him into the walls; heselects another man and uses him up, building his substance into thestructure; he looks upon his fellows as the shepherd upon hisflocks--so much wool to be sheared. 

Nor is the work of conscience very different in the moral andspiritual realm. Here is one man who is conscientious towardyesterday. Ten years ago, he says, "while kneeling in the field lightbroke through the clouds" and he obtained "a hope. " And every Sundaysince that day he has not failed to recall that scene. He is notconscientious about having a new, fresh, crisp, vital experience forto-day, but he is conscientiously faithful in recalling that oldexperience. It is all as foolish as if he should say that ten yearsago he had a bath, or ten years ago he drank at the bubbling spring, or ten years ago he met a friend. What about to-day's purity, to-day'sloaf and to-day's friendships? The heart should count no manna goodthat is not gathered fresh each morning. Others there are whoseconscience works largely toward doctrine and intellectual statements. With them Christianity is a function of thought in the brain. Theseare they who want every sermon to consist of linked arguments. Thegood deacon sits in his pew and listens to the unfolding of proofs ofelection or foreordination. When the arguments have been piled up tosixteen or eighteen, the good man begins to chuckle with delight, saying, "Verily, this is a high day in Israel; my soul feasts on fatthings. " Other men want some flesh on their skeletons, but he is fedon the dry bones of logic. 

Sometimes conscience affects only the feelings. Fifty years ago therewas a type numbering hundreds of thousands of persons whose religionwas largely emotional. In great camp-meetings filled with a warmatmosphere men showed at their best. The sunny spot of all the yearwas the month of revival meetings. Then they experienced the luxury ofspiritual enjoyment. They lived on the top of some Mount ofTransfiguration, while the world below was thundering with wickednessand tormented with passion. Men became drunk with emotions. Religionwas an exquisite form of spiritual selfishness. Afterward came an erawhen men learned to transmute feelings into thoughts and fidelitiestoward friendships and business and duty. At other times consciencehas had unique manifestations in fidelity toward creeds. Now onedenomination and now another, forgetting to be conscientious inmeeting together for days and weeks to plan in the interests of thepauper, the orphans, the tenement house or the foreign district in thegreat city, will through months of excitement exhibit consciencetoward some doctrinal symbol. Witness the recent upheaval aboutinspiration. As water bubbling up through the spring was once rainthat fell from the sky, so the truth coming through the lips of poetor prophet was first breathed into the heart by God. Recently a goodprofessor thought more emphasis should be laid upon the human spring. But his opponents thought the emphasis should be placed upon the sky, from which the rain fell. In the broil about the nature of the water, the spring itself was soiled, much mud stirred up, until multitudeswholly forgot the spring, and many knew not whether there was anywater of life. 

But conscience in some, means fidelity to what man and God did--notwhat God is doing or will do. When the flowing sap under the stimulusof the sun causes the tree to grow and splits the bark, men rejoicethat the bark is rent and that new and larger growths must beinserted. Sometimes a child, long feeble and sickly, enters upon aperiod of very rapid growth. Soon the boy's old clothes are too small, and so is his hat. But what if the parents should remember only thatthe clothes and hat came from some famous pattern? What if in theirzeal to preserve the hat they should put an iron band about the boy'sforehead and never permit it to increase so that the hat would notfit? What if they should put a strait-jacket about the chest torestrain the stature? This would show great zeal toward the hat andthe coat, but meanwhile what is to become of the boy? Strange that menshould be so conscientious toward an intellectual symbol, but forgetto give liberty to other men's consciences who day and night seek toplease God and be true to their beliefs. Thus in a thousand waysconscience is partial and fragmentary in its workings. Only onefull-orbed man has ever trod our earth!

God's crowning gift to man is the gift of conscience. Reason is anoble and kingly faculty, turning reveries into orations andconversations into books. Imagination is a stately and divine gift, turning thoughts into poems and blocks of stone into statues. Great isthe power of an eloquent tongue instructing men, restraining, inspiring, stimulating vast multitudes. Great are the joys of memory, that gallery stored with pictures of the past. But there is no geniusof mind or heart comparable to a vigorous conscience, magisterial, clear-eyed, wide-looking. He who gave all-comprehending reason, all-judging reason, reserved his best gift to the last--then gave thegift of conscience. 

Man is a pilgrim and conscience is the guide, leading him safelythrough forests and thickets, restraining from the paths of wrong, pointing out the ways of right. Man is a voyager and conscience is hiscompass. The sails may be swept away, and the engines stopped, but thevoyager yet may be saved if only the compass is kept. In time ofdanger man may be careless about his garments, but not about his handor foot or eye. It is possible to sustain the loss of wealth, friendsand outer honors, but no man can sustain the loss of conscience. It isthe soul's eye. Afar off it sees the face of God. Instructed, guided, loved, and redeemed by Jesus Christ, he who while living is at peacewith his Master and with his conscience will, when dying, find himselfat peace with his God. 

VISIONS THAT DISTURB CONTENTMENT

 "Like other gently nurtured Boston boys, Wendell Phillips began the study of law. Doubtless the sirens sang to him, as to the noble youth of every country and time. Musing over Coke and Blackstone, perhaps he saw himself succeeding Ames and Otis and Webster, the idol of society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion of the elegant ease, and the cultivated conservatism of Massachusetts. * * * But one October day he saw an American citizen assailed by a furious mob in the city of James Otis for saying with James Otis that a man's right to liberty is inherent and inalienable. As the jail doors closed upon Garrison to save his life, Garrison and his cause had won their most powerful and renowned ally. With the setting of that October sun, vanished forever the career of prosperous ease, the gratification of ordinary ambition, which the genius and the accomplishments of Wendell Phillips had seemed to foretell. Yes, the long-awaited client had come at last. Scarred, scorned and forsaken, that cowering and friendless client was wronged and degraded humanity. The great soul saw and understood. "--_Oration on Wendell Phillips by George Wm. Curtis. _

X

VISIONS THAT DISTURB CONTENTMENT

Every community holds a few happy and buoyant souls, that are sosustained by inner hope and outer prosperity as to seem the electchildren of good fortune. These are they who are born only to the bestthings, for whom, as life goes on, the years do but increase happinessand success. For other men happiness is occasional, and life offersnow and then a bright interval, even as an open glade is found hereand there in the dark forest. Among these sunny souls, dwelling midstconstant prosperity, let us hasten to include that youth to whomChrist made overtures of friendship. His was a frank and open nature, his a fresh and unsullied heart. He had also a certain grace andindescribable charm that clothed him with rare attraction. Wealth, too, was his, and all the advantages that go therewith. Yet ease hadnot enervated him, nor position made him proud. He had indeed passedthrough the fierce fires of temptation, but had come out withspotless garments. 

Beholding him, Christ loved him; nor could it have been otherwise. Some men we force ourselves to like. For reasons of finance or socialadvantage, men ignore their faults, while cherishing a secret dislike. But others are so attractive, they compel our friendship by a certainsweet necessity. The eye must needs like the rich red rose, and theear can not but enjoy the sweet song. And this youth stood forthclothed with such rare attraction that it is said Christ cast one longlingering look of affection upon him; then widening the circle offriendship, he offered the young ruler a place therein. It was anoverture such as Socrates made to the boy Plato; it was a proffer suchas Michael Angelo made to the poor young artist who knocked at hisdoor. Recalling the day when he met Göethe, Schiller was accustomed tosay his creative literary career began with Göethe's proffer offriendship. 

Carlyle tells us that each new epoch in his life began with theacquaintance of some great man. For it is not given to books norbusiness, to landscapes nor clouds nor forests, to have full powerover the living man. Only mind can quicken mind, only heart canquicken heart. What would the youth of genius not give for thefriendship of some Bacon or Shakespeare? But when this youth wonChrist's regard, it was as if all the children of genius had cometogether in Christ's single person, to proffer intimacy andcompanionship. His great soul overhung his friends as the harvestsoverarch the fields, "filling the flowers with heat by day, andcooling them with dews by night. " His friendship is like a mother's, alover's, a friend's, but larger than either, and deeper than all. Therising of a star, that glows and sparkles with ten thousand effects, can alone be compared to this Son of Man, who flamed forth upon hisfriends such majesty of beauty, such royalty of kindling influences. 

For centuries scholars have spoken of this interview between Christand the young ruler as "the great refusal. " Dante, wandering withVirgil through the Inferno, thought he saw this young ruler searchingfor his lost opportunity. For this ruler was the Hamlet of the NewTestament. Like the Prince of Denmark, he stood midway between hisconscience and his task, and indecision slew him. It has been saidthat Hamlet could have been happy had he remained in ignorance of hisduty, or had he boldly obeyed the vision which called him to action. It was because he knew more than he had the courage to do that adiscord arose, which destroyed the symmetry and sanity of his mind. His madness grew out of the breach between his enlarged and hauntingsense of right and his faltering ability to face and fulfill it. Thusalso the tragedy of this young ruler's life grew out of the fact thatthe new aspiration made his old contentment impossible, and compelledhim either to go on with boldness to better things, or to go back toemptiness and misery. Beholding him, Christ loved him for what he was, and pointed out what he might become. He knew that the better was agreat enemy of the best. For Christ had the double vision of thesculptor. 

Before him was the mass of marble, rude and shapeless. But the outershapelessness concealed the inner symmetry. Only the flying chipscould let loose the form of glowing beauty hidden within. And beforethat youth he lifted up a vision of still better things. He set theyouth midway between the man he was and the man he might become. Hehad achieved so much that Christ would fain lead him on to perfectionitself. When the husbandman beholds his vines entering into leafageand blossom, he nurtures them on into fruitage. When Arnold finds someyoung Stanley ready to graduate, he whispers: "One thing thoulackest; let all thy life become one eager pursuit of knowledge. " Andto this youth who had climbed so high came the vision of somethingfairer and better still. 

Going on before, Christ lured him forward, even as of old the goddesslured the Grecian boy forward by rolling rosy apples along the path. But the interview ended with the "great refusal. " And the youth wentaway, not angry nor rebellious, but sad and deeply grieved at himself. For now he knew how far his aspiration outran performance. LikeHamlet, indecision palsied action. Contentment perished, for thevision of perfection ever haunted him. At first Christ's words andlook of earnest affection filled his heart with a tumult of joy: buthaving fallen back into the old sordid self, the very memory of hismaster's face became a curse and torture. And so the vision blightedthat should have blessed. 

Now, the lives of great men tell us that God has always used visionsfor disturbing contentment, destroying ease, and securing progress. Witness the life of that young patrician, Wendell Phillips. Hiscollege mates love to describe him as they first saw him in the hallsof Cambridge. His elegant person, his accomplished manners, hisrefined scholarship, made him the idol of the Harvard boys. Even inhis youthful days he excelled as an orator, and was the easy master ofthe platform. But to him came the sirens singing of leisure, ofopulence, and ambition. Full oft he looked forward to the day when hewould be the champion of "elegant repose and cultivated conservatism"of the patrician element in his patrician state. But suddenly theChrist, in the person of one of his little ones, crossed the youngscholar's path. One golden October afternoon, while Wendell Phillipswas sitting in his office, he heard the noise of a strange disturbancein the street. Looking out he saw the mob maltreating Garrison, as, with blows and kicks, they dragged him toward the jail. All that nightyoung Phillips lay tossing on his couch, thinking ever of this man whohad been mobbed in the city where Otis had said "Liberty of speech isinalienable. "

All that night the vision of the slave, scarred and scorned andforsaken, stood before his mind, while ever he heard a voicewhispering: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least ofthese my brethren, ye have done it unto me. " In that vision hourperished forever all his dreams of opulence and ease. He decided toturn his back upon all preferment and ambition, all comfort andleisure, and follow his vision whithersoever it led. Soon the visionled him to the platform of Faneuil Hall, where an official wasjustifying the murderers of Lovejoy. "Mr. Chairman, " he said, "when Iheard the gentleman lay down principles which placed the murderers ofAlton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, Ithought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke therecreant American, the slanderer of the dead. " And that vision lenthis words such burning eloquence that Wendell Phillips' speech inFaneuil Hall ranks with Patrick Henry's at Williamsburg and AbrahamLincoln's at Gettysburg--and there is no fourth. His vision led himunto obloquy also. What revilings were his! What bitter hatred! Whatinsults and scoffs! At last the vision led him unto fame. The verycity that would have slain him builded his monument, and men who oncewould not defile their lips with his name taught their children thepathway to his tomb. It was that vision splendid that saved Phillipsfrom sodden contentment. Had Christ never crossed his path, hisimagination would have lost its brightest picture, his life itsnoblest impulses, its most energetic forces. 

And not only have visions power to shape young men's lives. To themature and the great also come dreams of ideal excellence, smitingselfishness, rebuking sin, taking the sweetness out of sordid success, and urging men on to higher achievements. The biographers have neverbeen able to fully account for the pathetic sadness and gloom of theclosing days of Daniel Webster. Horace Greeley once said that"Webster's intellect is the greatest emanation from the Almighty mindnow embodied. " For picturesque majesty and overpowering mentality heis doubtless our most striking figure. That enormous and beautifulhead, those wonderful eyes, that stately carriage, that Jove-likefront, led men to call him "the godlike Daniel. " When he appeared uponthe Strand in London a great crowd followed him, and a Britishstatesman described Webster as one describes a majestic landscape orthe sublimity of a mountain. But during the last years of his life hisface took on a strangely pathetic sorrow. With the language of a Dantehis biographer has pictured for us an Inferno, in which we see one, sublime of reason, walking in the very prime and strength and grandeurof full manhood, yet walking in a round of night, in a realm ofbitterness, ever gnawed by disappointment and consumed by fierceambition. He sank into his grave, says the historian, "under aheart-crushing load of political despair. "

But disappointed ambition cannot account for Daniel Webster's sadnessand woe. Strength was his for supporting the loss of a nomination. Heknew that his title, "Defender of the Constitution, " was fully equalto the title of President. He was too great a man to have his heartbroken by the loss of political honor. What was his woe? Let usremember the young ruler who was sad and grieved after he met Christ, and had refused to obey the heavenly vision. Let us remember the dreamthat came to Pilate, and how, afterward, the great Roman was uneasyand restless. And to Daniel Webster there came the memory of hisspeech in favor of a law compelling men in the North to send fugitiveslaves back to their masters; and there also came the words of Christ, who said: "I am come to give deliverance to the captive. " And lookingforward, Webster anticipated the judgment of the generations upon thebreach between his duty and his performance. That vision of higherthings haunted him. Oft he heaved sighs of bitter regret. DanielWebster was saddened and deeply grieved at what he himself had done. For the hope of the Presidency he sacrificed his convictions as to theslave. The heavenly vision bade him deliver the captives, not sendthem back into slavery. No political disappointment crushed DanielWebster. The consciousness of duty performed would have sustained himunder any sorrow. It was the consciousness of having sinned againstthe heavenly vision that broke his heart, and brought Webster's grayhairs down with sorrow to the grave!

Plutarch tells us that the finest culture comes from the study of menin their best moods. But always life's best moods come through theseheavenly visions. George Eliot makes the destiny of each hero orheroine to turn upon the use of those critical hours when some idealfronts the soul for acceptance or rejection. To Maggie Tulliver came adelicious moment when her lover offered her honorable marriage, andwould have led her into a perfumed garden of perfect happiness. Butjust in that hour when joy bubbled like a little spring in her heart, there came the memory of the crippled boy, to whom years before in herchildhood she had plighted her troth. And the vision of her duty andthe thought of his disappointment led her to refuse pleasure's spicedcup, and choose self-renunciation and a life for others. That heavenlyvision saved her from plunging into the abyss of selfishness, even asthe lightning's flash in the dark night reveals the precipice to thestartled traveler. 

And when the visions divine have rebuked selfishness, they go on toconquer sin. Hawthorne uses the vision for redeeming his hero. ToArthur Dimmesdale, pursued by his enemy, came the dream of freedom, when, journeying to a foreign land with Hester and Pearl, he mightregain health and happiness and find peace again in walking in thedear old paths of wisdom and study. But the day before his ship sailedcame the vision splendid, bidding him mount the scaffold, confess hiswrong, and free his conscience of its guilt. And it was obediencethereto that redeemed his life from hypocrisy. 

And, having saved men from wrong, the vision goes on to secure theirservice for the right. Here is that colored woman, Harriet Tubman, whom John Brown introduced to Wendell Phillips as the best and bravestperson upon our continent. If Frederick Douglass wrought in the day, Harriet Tubman toiled at night; for when the man had praise and honor, the black woman had only obscurity and neglect. When this bravest ofher race escaped from slavery in 1850 and reached Canada she exclaimedexultingly, "I have only one more journey to make--the journey toheaven. " But in that hour when the tides of joy rose highest therecame the vision calling her back to danger and service. She was notdisobedient thereto, but turned her face again toward the cottonfields. Between 1850 and 1860 she made nineteen trips into the South, and rescued over three hundred slaves. One day while lying in a swampwith her band of fugitives, a black man brought her word that a rewardof $40, 000 had been offered by the slave dealers of Virginia for herapprehension. Hard pressed by her pursuers, she sent her fugitives onby a secret route and went herself to the train. But when she saw inthe car advertisements for her arrest she left the Northern train andtook the next one going south, thinking by her fearlessness to escapedetection, and also to collect a new band of fugitives. And so herpeople came to call Harriet Tubman the Moses of the black race. And, following on, the vision lifted her to a place among those whom theworld will not willingly let die. 

When the vision has redeemed bad men to good deeds it goes on toredeem good ones unto perfection. Here is Channing, with his culturedscholarship, his refined manners, his gentle goodness. So heavy werethe drafts study made upon his strength that at length came a day whenthe mere delivery of his sermons and orations left him physicallyexhausted. But he went smilingly and forever from the pulpit, and gaveup also the use of his pen. In that hour, when sorrow and gloom restedheavily upon those who loved him, the vision shone clearly forChanning. He determined to turn his whole life into a sermon and poem. With pathetic eloquence he said, "It is, indeed, forbidden me to writeor speak, but not to aspire and be. To live content with small means;to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather thanfashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to doall cheerfully, bear all bravely; to listen to stars and birds, tobabes and sages, with open heart; to study hard, think quietly, actfrankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never--in a word, to letthe spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through thecommon--this is to be my symphony. "

Into our nation also has come the disturbing vision. Ours is called anage of unrest. We hear much about social discontent. Beneath all theouter activity and bustle there is an undertone of profound sadness. Neither wealth, pleasure, nor politics has availed to conceal theworld's weariness. Strangely enough, just at a time when prosperity isgreatly increased, when our homes are full of comforts andconveniences, when all the forces of land and sea and sky have lentthemselves to man as willing servants, to carry his messages, run hiserrands, reap his harvests, pull his trains, and push his ships; in anage when a thousand instruments that make for refinement and culturehave been invented, just at this time, strangely enough, unrest anddisquietude have fallen upon our people. Why is our age so sad? HasSchopenhauer carried the judgment of mankind by his favorite motto, "It is safer to trust fear than faith?" Is it because our age has lostfaith in God? Have doubt and skepticism burned the divine dew off thegrass, and left it sere and brown? Nay, a thousand times nay!

The world is sad because it has found God, not lost him. Man is wearyin the midst of his wealth and pleasures for the same reason that theyoung ruler was grieved and sad in the midst of his great possessions. Our age has seen the vision splendid, but halts undecided, being yetunwilling to go on and fulfill its new ideals. For those who have eyesto see, Jesus Christ stands again in the market and the street. He hasgiven society a new vision of the earth as a possible paradise, filledwith the fruits of peace and plenty where none know surfeit, and noneknow want. He has given a vision of the brotherhood of man and thefatherhood of God, and that vision has destroyed the old contentment. Our fathers were happy because what they did kept pace with what theysaw. And we are unhappy because we are unwilling to do what we see. 

This vision of possible excellence will continue to haunt ourgeneration until performance shall have overtaken the ideal promise. All the processes of buying and selling without must be carried up tomeet the requirements of the vision within. Just as in Luther's daythe vision divine disturbed Germany and filled the land with unrestuntil the people achieved spiritual freedom; just as in Cromwell's daythe vision of freedom in political relations came to England and gavedisturbance until the doctrine of the divine right of kings wasoverthrown; just as in our own day the vision of liberty for all, without regard to race or color, disturbed our land and filled ourcouncil chambers with conflict and strife, and turned the South intoone immense battle-field, until the laws of the Nation matched theideals of God--so to-day, the vision of the brotherhood of man inJesus Christ has fallen upon the home, the market, and the forum, andbrought restlessness and discontent to our people. 

Our colleges are restless, and by the university extension plans areseeking to fulfill their vision of wisdom for all. The church hathseen the heavenly vision, and, restless and grieved at its ownfailures, is rewriting its creeds, inventing new methods of socialsympathy and social help, and is seeking eagerly to fulfill itsvision. Wealth too, is discontented, and by manifold gifts is becomingthe almoner of universal bounty toward school and college, and galleryand church. Looking toward the council chamber, society is becomingrestless, and feeling that the council chamber should be as sacred asa temple, and that as of old so now evil men have turned the templeinto a place for money-changing, and made the house of God a den ofthieves. Good men are again lifting the scourge of small cords. Thediscontent is becoming universal. This vision of a new order willcontinue to haunt and disturb men, until at length society will makeall its activities without correspond to the heavenly vision within. 

The tradition tells us that when the young ruler who made the "greatrefusal" had returned home he found the old zest of life had gone. Gone forever his contentment in fields and flocks, in houses andhorses and goods; in books and pictures! He himself seemed but ashadow moving through a phantom world. Struggle as he would, he couldnot forget the new vision, nor find the old joy. At last he ceasedstruggling, and, fulfilling his vision, he found the cross was themagic key that opened the door of happiness. 

And to the youth of this far-off day, the vision splendid doth comeagain. In strange ways come these luminous hours and exalted moods. Sometimes they come through memory, and then the tones of a voice longstill fall softly upon the ear like celestial bells calling usheavenward. Sometimes these luminous hours come through theaffections, when anticipations of joy are so bright that it seems asif the youth reaching forward had plucked beforehand the fruit fromthe very tree of life. For some they come through sorrow, when thesoul stands dissolved in tears, even as some perfumed shrub stands inthe June morning making the very ground wet with falling raindrops. Then the soul wanders here and there, all dumb with grief, seekingcomfort, yet finding none. Then sitting near the much-loved grave, thesoul hears the night winds whispering, "Not here, not here!" to whichthe murmuring sea replies, "Not here, " while the weeping vines and themournful pines ever answer, "Not here, not here!" But softly fallingthrough the pathless air comes a voice murmuring, "Here! Here! Comeup hither!"

Oh, these luminous hours! These hours of deeper conviction are life'sreal hours! Summer is sunshine and beauty, not storm and snow. Thereare dark and wintry days in March, when spring seems a delusion. Thereare days in April so cold that summer seems a snare. But between thestorms there are brief warm intervals when the sun falls soft on thesouth hillsides, and the roots begin to stir and the seeds to achewith harvests, and all the air is vocal. The fitful snows in April arebut reminders of what the dying winter was; but these occasional sunnydays are prophecies of what summer hath accomplished in its fullministry upon the fields and forests. 

And after long periods of sodden selfishness and clouded sin, suddenlythe vision of better things breaks through the cloud and storm. Thenthe vision strikes clarity into reason, memory and imagination. Inthese hours the soul scoffs at sordid things. As the flower climbsupward to escape from the slough, as the foot turns away from themire, as the nostril avoids the filth, as the ear hates discord, so inthese hours the soul scoffs at selfishness and sin. Oh, how beautifulseem purity and gentleness, and sympathy and truth! And these hoursare big with prophecy. They tell us what the soul shall be when timeand God's resources have wrought their will upon man. They are to becherished as the mariner cherishes the guiding star that stands uponthe horizon; they are to be cherished as some traveler, lost in aclose, dark forest, cherishes the moment when the sun breaks through arift in the clouds and he takes his bearings out of the swamp andtoward his home. Visions are God within the soul. They come to leadman away from sin and sorrow. They come to guide him to his heavenlyhome. 

THE USES OF BOOKS AND READING

 "Bring with the books. "--_Paul. _

 "A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. "--_Milton. _

 "God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts and pour their souls into ours. "--_Channing. _

 "All that mankind has done, thought or been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. They are the chosen possession of men. "--_Carlyle. _

 "We need to be reminded every day how many are the books of inimitable glory, which, with all our eagerness after reading, we have never taken into our hands. It will astonish most of us to find how much of our very industry is given to the books which have no worth, how often we rake in the litter of the printing press, whilst a crown of gold and rubies is offered us in vain. "--_F. Harrison. _

XI

THE USES OF BOOKS AND READING

Paul was at once a thinker, a theologian, and a statesman, because hewas always a scholar. One duty he never neglected--the duty ofself-culture through reading. Certain companions were ever withhim--his favorite authors. Imprisoned in Rome, the burden of hisletters to his young friend in Ephesus was books and the duty ofreading. Himself a Hebrew, by much study he became a cosmopolitan anda citizen of the wide-lying universe. Like Emerson, he believed that"the scholar was a favorite of heaven and earth, the excellency of hiscountry, and the happiest of men. " Saner intellect than his never trodthis earth, and could he speak to our age, with its fret and fever, his message would certainly include some words about the companionshipof good books. 

The supreme privilege of our generation is not rapid transit, nor theincrease of comforts and luxuries. Modern civilization hath its flowerand fruitage in books and culture for all through reading. Should thedream of the astronomer ever come true, and science establish a codeof electric signals with the people of Mars, our first message wouldnot be about engines, nor looms, nor steamships. Not the telephone bywhich men speak across continents, but the book by which living menand dead men converse across centuries, would be the burden of thefirst message. President Porter once said that the savage visitingLondon with Livingstone appreciated everything except the libraries. The poor black man understood the gallery, for the face of his childanswered to that of Raphael's cherub and seraph. He understood thecathedral, with its aisles and arches, for it reminded him of his ownaltars and funeral hymns. He understood the city, for it seemed likemany little towns brought together in one. But the great library, crowded from floor to ceiling with books, the strange, white pagesover which bowed the reader, while smiles flitted across his face asone sun-spot chases another over the warm April hills, the black markscausing the reader's tears to flow down upon the open page, made up amystery the poor savage could not understand. No explanation availedfor the necromancy of the library. 

For wise men the joys of reading are life's crowning pleasures. Booksare our universities, where souls are the professors. Books are thelooms that weave rapidly man's inner garments. Books are thelevelers--not by lowering the great, but by lifting up the small. Abook literally fulfills the story of the Wandering Jew, who sits downby our side and like a familiar friend tells us what he hath seen andheard through twenty centuries of traveling through Europe. Newton's"Principia" means that at last stars and suns have broken into voice. Agassiz's zoölogy causes each youth to be a veritable Noah, to whom itis given to behold all insects and beasts and birds going two by twointo the world's great ark. God hath given us four inferior teachers, including travel, occupation, industry, conversation, and fourteachers superior, including love, grief, death--but chiefly books. 

Wisdom and knowledge are derived from sources many and various. Likeancient Thebes, the soul is a city having gates on every side. Thereis the eye gate, and through it pass friends, a multitude ofstrangers, the forests, the fields, the marching clouds. There is theear gate, and therein go trooping all sweet songs, all conversationand eloquence, all laughter with Niobe's woe and grief. There isconversation, and thereby we cross the threshold of another's mind, and wander through the halls of memory and the chambers ofimagination. But these faculties are limited. The ear was made for onesweet song, not for a thousand. Conversation is with one friendliving, not with Pliny and Pericles. The vision stays upon yonderhorizon; but beyond the line where earth and sky do meet are distantlands and historic scenes; beyond are battle-fields all stained withblood; beyond are the Parthenon and the pyramids. So books come in toincrease the power of vision. Books cause the arctics and the tropics, the mountains and hills, all the generations with their woes and wars, their achievements for liberty and religion, to pass before the mindfor instruction and delight. And when books have made mencontemporaneous with Socrates and Cicero, with Emerson and Lowell, when they have made man a citizen of every clime and country, they goon to add advantages still more signal. When the royal messengerbrought Newton the announcement of the honor bestowed upon him by theQueen, the astronomer was so busy with his studies relating to the"Principia" that he begrudged his visitor even an hour of his time. 

The great man was too busy writing for thousands to talk long with asingle individual about his discoveries of light and color and hisproofs of the moon ever falling toward the earth. Not even to his bestfriends could the astronomer unfold through conversation what he givesus in his "Principia. " When an American author called upon Carlyle hefound him in a very peevish mood. Through two hours he listened tothis student of heroes and heroism pour forth a savage tirade againstall men and things. Never again was the American poet able toassociate with Carlyle that fine poise, sanity, and reserve power thatbelong to the greatest. In his books Carlyle gives his friends, notthe peevishness of an evening, but the best moods of all his life, winnowing his intellectual harvests. 

Recently an author has given the world reminiscences called "Evenings"with Browning and Tennyson, with Bright and Gladstone. Yet an eveningavails only for a few pleasantries, a few anecdotes, a fewreminiscences. As well speak of spending an afternoon with Egypt ormaking an evening call upon Rome. Yet a volume of "In Memoriam" or"The Idylls of the King" enables one to overhear the richest and mostmasterly thoughts that occupied Tennyson through the best creativeyears in his career. So striking are the advantages books have overconversation that the brief biography of the Carpenter's Son makes usbetter acquainted with Jesus Christ than the citizens of Samaria orBethlehem could possibly have been. To some Nicodemus it was given tohear Him discourse on the new heart; some lawyer heard His story ofthe good Samaritan; others midst the press and throng caught a part ofthe tale of the prodigal son. But the momentary glimpse, thefragmentary word, the rumors strange and contradictory, yielded onlyconfusion and mental unrest. But this brief biography exhibits to usHis entire career, sets each eager listener down beside Christ whileHe unrolls each glowing parable, each glorious precept, each call toinspiration and the higher life. Thus books acquaint us with the bestmen in their best moods. 

Books have two advantages. Chiefly they are tools for the mind. Thefoot's step is short, but the engine lengthens the stride and hastensit. The smith's blow is weak, but the trip-hammer multiplies the mightof man's hand. Thus books are mental machines, enabling the mind ofman to reap in many harvest fields and multiply the mental treasures. It takes years for Humboldt to search out the wonders of the AndesMountains and other years for Livingstone to thread his way throughthe jungles of Africa. But a book, during two or three evenings by thefireside, enables man to journey through the Dark Continent withoutthe dangers of fever, without experiencing the pain from the lionleaping out of the thicket to mutilate the arm of Livingstone. With abook we tramp over the mountains of two continents without oncesuffering the heavy fall over the precipice that weakened Humboldt. Books enable us to visit climes, cities, civilizations ancient andmodern, that without them could never be seen during man's years, sofew, and by man's strength, so insufficient. Great men and richincrease their influence by surrounding themselves by servants whofulfill their commands. 

Each president and prime minister strengthens himself by a cabinet. But what if the peasant or workman could surround himself with a groupof counselors and advisers that included a hundred of the greatestintellects of his generation? What if some Herschel should approachthe youth to say, "You need your night's rest for sleep; but for you Iwill give the years for studying the stars and their movements?" Whatif some Dana should say, "For you I will decipher the handwriting uponthe rocks, trace the movement of the ice plows, search out theinfluence of the flames as they turn rocks into soil for vineyards?"What if some Audubon should say, "For you I will go through all theforests to find out the life and history of the winged creatures, fromthe humming-bird to hawk and eagle?" What if Niebuhr should say, "Foryou I will decipher the monuments, all ruins and obelisks, all man'sparchments and manuscripts for setting forth man's upward progressthrough the centuries?" But this is precisely what books do for us. 

Saving man's time and strength, books also increase his manhood andmultiply his brain forces. With them, a man of fourscore years endshis career wiser than, without them, he could have been, though he hadlived and wrought through ten thousand summers and winters. This iswhat Emerson means when he says, "Give me a book, health and a Juneday, and I will make the pomp of kings ridiculous. " When the Athenianyouth, beloved of the gods, went forth upon his journey, one friendbrought him a wondrous armor, proof against arrows; another brought ahorse of marvelous swiftness; another brought a bow of great size andstrength. Thus armed, the youth conquered his enemies. But when bookshave armed man against his foes, they go on to change his enemies intofriends; they shield him against ignorance; they free him fromsuperstition; they clothe him with gratitude. Thank God for books, cheering our solitude, soothing our sickness, refining our passions, out of defeat leading us to victory! That youth can scarcely fail ofcharacter, happiness and success who, day by day, goes to school tosages and seers; who by night hears Dante and Milton discourse uponParadise; who has for his mentors in office and counting-room someFranklin or Solomon. Experience, supplemented by books, teaches youthmore in one year than experience alone will teach him in twenty. 

Books also preserve for us the spirit of earth's great ones, just asthe cellar of the king holds wines growing more precious with thelapse of years. From time to time God sends to earth some man with asupreme gift called genius. Passing through our life and world, hesees wondrous sights not beholden of our eyes, hears melodies too finefor our dulled hearing. What other men behold as bits of coal, hisgenius transmutes into diamonds. In the darkness he sleeps to see some"Midsummer Night's Dream;" in the day he wakens to behold the tragedyor comedy in his friend's career. While he muses, the fires ofinspiration burn within him. When the time comes, the inner forcesburst out in book or song or poem, just as the tulip bulb when Aprilcomes publishes its heart of fire and gold. The book he writes is thechoicest wine in life, "the gold made fine in the fires of hisgenius. " Seldom come these elect ones, just as the bush burned onlyonce during Moses' many years in the desert. Many foot hills must beunited to produce one vast mountain. Only one range of Rockies isneeded to support many states. One Mississippi also can drain acontinent. 

Thinking of these great ones, Milton said: "The book is the life-bloodof the master spirit. " Just as the wisdom spoken into the phonographmakes marks there to be reproduced at will, so books preserve andrepeat the eloquence of the greatest. Through his "Excursion, " whenWordsworth says, "I go to the fields to-day, " the youth may whisper, "and I go with thee. " He may also accompany Layard, going forth tostudy the old tablets and the monuments; with Scott he may ride withIvanhoe to castle and tournament; with Virgil and Dante he may shiverat the brink of the inky river or exult over the first glimpse ofParadise. 

Well did Charles Lamb suggest that men should say grace--not only overthe Christmas festival, but also over the table spread with goodbooks. For man has no truer friends, Earth offers no richer banquet. When Southey grew old and dim of vision, he was seen to totter intohis library. Moving about from shelf to shelf the aged scholar laidhis hand upon one favorite book and then upon another, while a raresweet smile passed over his face, just as we lay hand tenderly uponthe shoulder of some dear friend. Through their books his old friends, the heroes of the past, had told Southey of their innermost dreams, their passions, their aspirations, what braced them in hours ofbattle, how they endured when death robbed them of their best. Poorand lonely, full oft the poet had talked with these volumes as withfamiliar friends. So before he died Southey said to his books "Goodnight, " ere in that bright beyond he said "Good morning" to theirauthors. 

This divine injunction as to the companionship of books bids us searchout the use and purpose of reading. Primarily, books are to be readfor information and mental strength. The hunger of the body for breadand fruit is not more real than the hunger of the intellect for factsand principles. Knowledge stands in as vital relation to the growth ofreason as iron and phosphate to the enrichment of the blood. Ignoranceis weakness. Success is knowing how. Ours is a world in which the lastfact conquers. In addition to his own experience and reflection, theyoung artist must stand in some gallery that brings together all thebest masters. Standing beside the Elgin marbles in the British Museum, the sculptor must bathe and soak himself in the Greek ideal andspirit, until the Greek thought throbs in his brain, and he feels theGreek enthusiasm for strength in round, lithe arms, and limbs madeready for the race. 

But in a large, deep sense, books are the galleries in which spiritsare caught and fastened upon the pages. Books are storehouses intowhich facts and principles have been harvested. Just as a bit of coaltells us what ferns and flowers grew in the far-off era, so the bookgives us the very quintessence of man's thoughts about life and dutyand death. Nor is there any other way of gaining these vitalknowledges. Life is too short to obtain them through conversation ortravel. Nor is any youth ready for his task until he has traced therise and growth of houses, tools, governments, schools, industries, religions. He must also compare race with race, land with land, andstar with star. Asked about his ideas of the value of education, a mandistinguished in railway circles answered: "I have learned that eachnew fact has its money value. Other things being equal, the judgmentof the man who knows the most must always prevail. " But books alonecan supplement experience, and give the information that makes manready against his day of battle. 

It has been said, "For a thousand men who can speak, there is only onewho can think; for a thousand men who can think, there is only one whocan see. " Since, then, the greatest thing in life is to have an openvision, we need to ask the authors to teach us how to see. EachKingsley approaches a stone as a jeweler approaches a casket to unlockthe hidden gems. Geikie causes the bit of hard coal to unroll thejuicy bud, the thick odorous leaves, the pungent boughs, until the bitof carbon enlarges into the beauty of a tropic forest. That littlebook of Grant Allen's called "How Plants Grow" exhibits trees andshrubs as eating, drinking and marrying. We see certain date groves inPalestine, and other date groves in the desert a hundred miles away, and the pollen of the one carried upon the trade winds to the branchesof the other. We see the tree with its strange system of water-works, pumping the sap up through pipes and mains; we see the chemicallaboratory in the branches mixing flavor for the orange in one bough, mixing the juices of the pineapple in another; we behold the tree asa mother, making each infant acorn ready against the long winter, rolling it in swaths soft and warm as wool blankets, wrapping itaround with garments impervious to the rain, and finally slipping theinfant acorn into a sleeping bag, like those the Esquimos gave Dr. Kane. 

At length we come to feel that the Greeks were not far wrong inthinking each tree had a Dryad in it, animating it, protecting itagainst destruction, dying when the tree withered. Some Faraday showsus that each drop of water is a sheath for electric forces sufficientto charge 800, 000 Leyden jars, or drive an engine from Liverpool toLondon. Some Sir William Thomson tells us how hydrogen gas will chewup a large iron spike as a child's molars will chew off the end of astick of candy. Thus each new book opens up some new and hithertounexplored realm of nature. Thus books fulfill for us the legend ofthe wondrous glass that showed its owner all things distant and allthings hidden. Through books our world becomes as "a bud from thebower of God's beauty; the sun as a spark from the light of Hiswisdom; the sky as a bubble on the sea of His Power. " Therefore Mrs. Browning's words, "No child can be called fatherless who has God andhis mother; no youth can be called friendless who has God and thecompanionship of good books. "

Books also advantage us in that they exhibit the unity of progress, the solidarity of the race, and the continuity of history. Authorslead us back along the pathway of law, of liberty or religion, and setus down in front of the great man in whose brain the principle had itsrise. As the discoverer leads us from the mouth of the Nile back tothe headwaters of Nyanza, so books exhibit great ideas andinstitutions, as they move forward, ever widening and deepening, likesome Nile feeding many civilizations. For all the reforms of to-day goback to some reform of yesterday. Man's art goes back to Athens andThebes. Man's laws go back to Blackstone and Justinian. Man's reapersand plows go back to the savage scratching the ground with his forkedstick, drawn by the wild bullock. The heroes of liberty march forwardin a solid column. Lincoln grasps the hand of Washington. Washingtonreceived his weapons at the hands of Hampden and Cromwell. The greatPuritans lock hands with Luther and Savonarola. 

The unbroken procession brings us at length to Him whose Sermon on theMount was the very charter of liberty. It puts us under a divinespell to perceive that we are all coworkers with the great men, andyet single threads in the warp and woof of civilization. And whenbooks have related us to our own age, and related all the epochs toGod, whose providence is the gulf stream of history, these teachers goon to stimulate us to new and greater achievements. Alone, man is anunlighted candle. The mind needs some book to kindle its faculties. Before Byron began to write he used to give half an hour to readingsome favorite passage. The thought of some great writer never failedto kindle Byron into a creative glow, even as a match lights thekindlings upon the grate. In these burning, luminous moods Byron'smind did its best work. The true book stimulates the mind as no winecan ever quicken the blood. It is reading that brings us to our best, and rouses each faculty to its most vigorous life. 

Remembering, then, that it is as dangerous to read the first book onechances upon as for a stranger in the city to make friends with thefirst person passing by, let us consider the selection and thefriendship of books. Frederic Harrison tells us that there are now2, 000, 000 volumes in the libraries, and that every few years the pressissues enough new volumes to make a pyramid equal to St. Paul'sCathedral. Lamenting the number of books of poor quality now beingpublished, this author questions whether or not the printing press maynot be one of the scourges of mankind. He tells that he reads but fewbooks, and those the great ones, and describes his shipwreck on theinfinite sea of printer's ink, and his rescue as of one escaping bymercy from a region where there was water, water everywhere but not adrop to drink. Let us confess that books by their very multitudebewilder, and that careless and purposeless reading destroys the mind. Let us admit, too, that books no more mean culture than laws meanvirtues. 

Doubtless, individuality is threatened by the vast cataract ofliterature. As children, we trembled needlessly when the nurse told usthat skies rained pitchforks, but as men we have a right to fear whenthe skies rain not pitchforks but pamphlets. Multitudes are in thecondition of the schoolboy who, when asked what he was thinking about, answered that he had no thoughts, because he was so busy reading hehad no time to think. Like that boy, multitudes to-day cannot see thewood for the trees. Many stand before the vast abyss of literature asBunyan's pilgrim stood before the Slough of Despond, crying: "Whatshall I do?" The necessity of severe selection is upon us, but certainthings all must read. 

First of all, every year each young man and woman should take a freshlook about the world house in which all live. When Ivanhoe waked tofind himself a prisoner in a strange castle he straightway exploredthe mansion, passing from chamber to banquet hall, and from tower tomoat, and the high walls that shut him in. If, indeed, God did sodearly love this star as to use its very dust for making man in Hisown image, we ought to love and study well this world house, whereinis enacted the drama of man's life and death. Longfellow thought ofour earth as a granite-sheathed ship sailing through air, with plateof mail bolted and clamped by the Almighty mechanism, the throbbingsof Vesuvius hinting at the deep furnaces that help to drive herforward upon the voyage through space. But God's name for this earthhouse was Paradise. And a veritable paradise it is, with its vegetablecarpet, soft and embroidered, beneath man's feet; with its valleyscovered with corn until they laugh and sing; with its noblearchitecture of the mountains covered with mighty carvings and paintedlegends. Verily, it would be an ungracious thing for us to go onliving here without taking the trouble to look upon this earth'sfloor, so firm and solid, or study the beauteous ceiling lighted withstar lamps by night. And the evenings of one week with Geikie or Danawill tell us by what furnaces of fire the granite was melted, by whatteeth of glaciers and weight of sea-waves the earth's surface wassmoothed for the plow and the trowel. How long it has been since theglacier was a mile thick upon the very spot where we stand, how longsince the waters of Lake Michigan, now flowing over Niagara, ceasedflowing into the Mississippi. 

The evenings of another week with Professor Gray or Grant Allen willtell us how all the trees and plants live and breathe and wax great;how the lily sucks whiteness out of the slough, and how the red roseuntwists the sunbeam and pulls out the scarlet threads. The eveningsof another week with Ball or Proctor or Langley will exhibit the sunpulling the harvests out of our planet, even as the blazing log pullsthe juices out of the apples roasting before the hot coals; how largea house on the moon must be in order to be seen by the new telescopeat Lake Geneva; whether or not the spots on the sun represent greatchunks of unburned material, some of which are a full thousand milesacross, materials thrown up by gaseous explosions. While Maury willtake us during another week, in a glass boat that is water-tight, upon a long cruise more than three thousand leagues under the sea, showing us those graveyards called sea shells, those cities calledcoral reefs, those strange animals that have roots instead of feet, called sponges. 

Having journeyed around the earth house, each should study himself;his body as an engine of mental thought, an instrument of conduct andcharacter; the number and nature and uses of the forty and morefaculties of mind and heart with which he is endowed. From the studyof the soul the mind moves easily to the upward movement of the race, as man journeys from hut to house, from tent to temple, from force toself-government and education and literature, from his flaming altarto the rising hymn and aspiring prayer. This tells us whatcontribution each race, Hebrew and Greek, Roman and Teuton, has madeto civilization. Then come the books of life, wherein the qualities tobe emulated are capitalized in the lives of the great, for biographyis one of man's best teachers. Therein we see how the hero bore upagainst his wrongs, his sorrows and defeats, and how he sustainedhimself in times of triumph. Phillips Brooks thought that the basis ofevery library should be biography, memoirs, portraits and letters. Norshould we forget the books of art, wherein the facts of life areidealized and carried up to beauty. Witness the dramas, poems, or theseveral great novels. 

But apart from and above all others is the book, the Bible. Alone ithas civilized whole nations. Be our theories of inspiration what theymay, this book deals with the deepest things in man's heart and life. Ruskin and Carlyle tell us that they owe more to it in the way ofrefinement and culture than to all the other books, _plus_ all theinfluence of colleges and universities. Therein the greatest geniusesof time tell us of the things they caught fresh from the skies, "thethings that stormed upon them, and surged through their souls inmighty tides, entrancing them with matchless music"; things soprecious for man's heart and conscience as to be endured and died for. It is the one book that can fully lead forth the richest and deepestand sweetest things in man's nature. Read all other books, philosophy, poetry, history, fiction; but if you would refine the judgment, fertilize the reason, wing the imagination, attain unto the finestwomanhood or the sturdiest manhood, read this book, reverently andprayerfully, until its truths have dissolved like iron into the blood. Read, indeed, the hundred great books. If you have no time, make timeand read. Read as toil the slaves in Golconda, casting away therubbish and keeping the gems. Read to transmute facts into life, butread daily the book of conduct and character--the Bible. For the bookDaniel Webster placed under his pillow when dying is the book allshould carry in the hand while living. 

THE SCIENCE OF LIVING WITH MEN

 "There is an art of right living. "--_Arthur Helps. _

 "The supreme art life above all other arts is the art of living together justly and charitably. There is no other thing that is so taxing, requiring so much education, so much wisdom, so much practice, as the how to live with our fellow-men. In importance this art exceeds all productive industries which we teach our children. All skill and knowledge aside from that is as nothing. The business of life is to know how to get along with our fellow-men. "--_H. W. Beecher. _

 "As all the stars are pervaded by one law, in one law live and move and have their being, so all minds that reason and all hearts that beat, act in one empire of one king; and of that vast kingdom, the law the most sweeping, the most eternal, is the law of loving kindness. "--_Swing. _

 "The nations have turned their places of art treasure into battle-fields. Fancy what Europe would be now if the delicate statues and temples of the Greeks--if the broad and massive walls of the Romans, if the noble and pathetic architecture of the Middle Ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of time and the tooth of time; I tell you time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm, we who smite like the scythe. All these lost treasures of human intellect have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction; the marble would have stood its 2, 000 years as well in the polished statue as in the Parian cliff; but we men have ground it to powder and mixed it with our own ashes. "--_Ruskin. _

XII

THE SCIENCE OF LIVING WITH MEN

The great writers of all ages have held themselves well away from anyformal discussion of the art of right living and the science of askillful carriage of one's faculties. Government, war and eloquencehave indeed received full scientific statement, and those arts calledmusic and sculpture have obtained abundant literary treatment. But, for some reason, no philosopher has ever attempted a formal treatiseteaching the youth how to carry his faculties so as to avoid injuringhis fellows and secure for them peace, happiness and success. Nevertheless, the art of handling marble is nothing compared to theart of handling men. Skill in evoking melody from the harp is lessthan nothing compared to skill in allaying discords in the soul andcalling out its noblest impulses, its most energetic forces. 

Nor is there any science or any productive industry whatsoever that isat all comparable to the science of just, smooth and kindly living. For the business of life is not the use and control of winds andrivers; it is not the acquisition of skill in calling out the secretenergies contained in the soil or concealed in the sky. The businessof life is the mastery of the art of living smoothly and justly withone's fellows and the acquisition of skill in calling out the bestqualities of those about us. Indeed, the home and the market do butfurnish practice-ground for developing expertness in carrying one'sfaculties. Sir Arthur Helps first coined the expression, "the art ofright living, " and society can never be sufficiently grateful to thisdistinguished scholar for reminding us that when every other art hasbeen secured, every other science achieved, there still remains formastery the finest of all the fine arts, the science of a rightcarriage of one's faculties midst all the duties and relations of homeand school, of store and street. 

Searching out for some reason why scientists have discussedfriendship, reform, or patriotism, but have passed by the science ofright living, we shall find the adequate explanation in the fact thatthis is the largest subject that can possibly be handled. It concernsthe right carriage of the whole man, the handling of the body, and themaintenance of perfect health; the control of the temperament, withits special talent or weakness; the use of reason, its developmentand culture; the control of judgment, with the correction of itsaberrations; it involves such a mastery of the emotions as men haveover winds and rivers; it concerns conscience and conversation, friendship and commerce, and all the elements affectional and social, civic and moral. 

For man stands, as it were, in the center of many concentric circles. About himself, as a center, sweeps the home circle; his immediateneighborhood relations describe a wider circle; his business careerdescribes one larger still; then come his relations to the communityin general, while beyond the horizon is a circle of influence thatincludes the world at large. When the tiny spider standing at thecenter of its wide-stretching and intricate web, woven fordestruction, chances to touch any thread of the web, immediately thatthread vibrates to the uttermost extremity. And man stands at thecenter of a vast web of wide-reaching influence, woven not forblighting, but for blessing, and every one of these out-running lines, whether related to friends near by or to citizens afar off, thrillsand vibrates with secret influences; and there is no creature in God'suniverse so taxed as man, having a thousand dangers to avoid, andfulfilling ten thousand duties. He who would adequately discuss thescience of right living must propose a method that will enable man tocarry his faculties midst all the conditions of poverty or riches, ofsickness or health, of the friendship of men or their enmity. 

Discerning the largeness of this theme, many question whether rightliving can be reduced to a science, and, if so, whether it ever can beacquired as an art. We know that there is a science of government, ascience of wealth, a science of war, and mastery in each departmentseems possible. Moreover, long practice has lent men skill in thearts. Even Paganini was born under the necessity of obtainingexcellence in his art through practice. Titian also was a tirelessstudent in color, and Macaulay himself toiled hard over his alphabet. Printers tell us that practice expels stiffness from the fingers andmakes type-setting an automatic process. Daniel Webster was countedthe greatest orator of his time; but there never lived a man whodrilled himself in solitude more scrupulously, and his excellence, hesays, was the fruit of long study. 

Henry Clay had a great reputation as a speaker; but when the youth hadthrough years practiced extemporaneous speech in the cornfields ofKentucky, he went on to train himself in language, in thought, inposture, in gesture, until his hand could wield the scepter, or beckonin sweet persuasion, until his eye could look upon his enemies andpierce them, or beam upon his friends and call down upon them all thefruits of peace and success. Nor has there been one great artist, onegreat poet, one great inventor, one great merchant, nor one great manin any department of life whose supremacy does not, when examined, stand forth as the fruit of long study and careful training. Men areborn with hands, but without skill for using them. Men are born withfeet and faculties, but only by practice do their steps run swiftlyalong those beautiful pathways called literature or law orstatesmanship. Man's success in mastering other sciences encourageswithin us the belief that it is possible for men to master the scienceof getting on smoothly and justly with their fellow men. In importancethis knowledge exceeds every other knowledge whatsoever. To know whatarmor to put on against to-morrow's conflicts; how to attain the endsof commerce and ambition by using men as instruments; how to be usedby men, and how to use men, not by injuring them, not by cheatingthem, not by marring or neglecting them; but how through men toadvance both one's self and one's fellows--this is life's task. Forskill in getting on with men is the test of perfect manhood. 

No other knowledge is comparable to this. It is something to know howto sail a vast ship; it is important to understand the workings of aCorliss engine; man does well to aspire to the mastery of iron andwood, and the use of cotton and wool; most praiseworthy the ambitionto master arguments and ideas; but it is a thousand times moreimportant to understand men. To be able to analyze the underlyingmotives; to attain skill in rebuking the worst impulses in men, andskill in calling forth their best qualities; to distinguish betweenselfishness and sincerity; to allay strife and promote peace; tomaintain equanimity midst all the swirl of passion; to meet those whostorm with perfect calm; to meet scowling men with firm gentleness; tomeet the harshness of pride with a modest bearing; to beself-sufficing midst all the upheaval and selfishness of life--this isto be a follower of Christ, and He is the only gentleman our world hasever seen. Oh, for some university for teaching the art of rightliving! Oh, for some college teaching the science of attaining thepersonal ends of life without marring one's ideals! For life has onlyone fine art--the art of getting along smoothly with ourselves and ourfellows. 

Let us confess that man easily masters every other art and science. His discoveries as to stars and stones and shrubs provoke ever freshsurprise. His inventions, who can number? He easily masters winds andrivers. He takes the sting out of the thunderbolt and makes itharmless. Afterward with electric lamps he illumines towns. Withinvisible sunbeams he paints instantaneous pictures of faces, palaces, mountains, and landscapes. With the dark X-rays he photographs thebone incased in flesh, the coins contained in the purse. With hismagnet the scientist throws a rope around the cathode rays and dragsthem whithersoever he will. In the field the inventor uses an electrichoe to kill the germs of the thistle and deadly nightshade. Strangethat he cannot invent an instrument for killing the germs of hatredand envy in his own heart! The gardener easily masters the art ofcultivating roses and violets, but breaks down in trying to produce inhimself those beauteous growths called love, truth, justice--flowers, these, that are rooted in heaven, but blossom here on earth. 

An expert driver will hold the reins over six fiery steeds, or eveneight, but he descends from his coach to find that his own passionsare steeds of the sun that run away with him, bringing wreckage andruin. Man has skill for turning poisons into medicines. He changesdeadly acids into balms, but he has no skill for taking envy's poisonsout of the tongue, or sheathing the keen sword of hatred. As tophysical nature, man seems rapidly approaching the time when all theforces of land and sea and sky will yield themselves as willing andobedient servants to do his will. But, having made himself monarch inevery other realm, man breaks down utterly in attempting the task ofliving peaceably with his friends and neighbors. Sublime in hisintegrity and strength, he is most pitiable in the way he wrecks hisown happiness, and ruins the happiness of others. Pestilence in thecity, tornado in the country, the fire in the forest--these are butfeeble types of man as a destroyer. One science is as yet unmasteredby man--the science of right living and the art of getting alongsmoothly with himself and his fellows. 

To-day the new science explains the difficulty of right living, by thelargeness of man's endowment. There are few failures in the animal orvegetable world. Instinct guides the beast, while the shrub attainsits end by automatic processes. No vine was ever troubled to decidewhether it should produce grapes or thorns. No fig tree ever had togo to school to learn how to avoid bearing thistles. The humming bird, flying from shrub to shrub, hears the inner voice called instinct. These instincts serve as guide books. The animal creation that movesthrough the air or water or the forests experiences but littledifficulty in finding out the appointed pathway. But the problem ofrose, lark or lion is very simple and easy, compared with the problemof man. If the oak must needs bear acorns, man is like a vine that canat will bring forth any one of a hundred fruits. He is like an animalthat can at its option walk or fly, swim or run. The pathway openedbefore the brute world is narrow and its task therefore is verysimple, while the vast number of pathways possible to man oftenembarrasses his judgment and sometimes works bewilderment. 

After thousands of years man is still ignorant whether it is best forhim to eat flesh or confine himself only to fruit; whether the juiceof the grape is helpful or harmful; whether the finest culture comesfrom confining one's study to a single language, as did Socrates andShakespeare, or through learning many languages, as did Cicero andMilton; whether a monarchy or democracy is better suited for securingthe people's happiness and prosperity; whether the love of God infront is a motive sufficient to pull a man heavenward, or whether fearand fire kindled in the rear will not lend greater swiftness to hisfootsteps. It is wonderful how many problems yet remain to be solved. 

Nor could it be otherwise. As things increase in size and complexitythe difficulty of handling them increases. It is easy to manage aspinning-wheel, but difficult to handle a Jacquard loom havinghundreds of delicate parts. It is easy to use a boy's whistle, buthard to master the pipe organ with keys rising bank upon bank. Out ofan alphabet numbering six and twenty letters all the sciences and artscan be fashioned; but the alphabet of man's faculties numbers four andforty letters. Who shall measure the divine literatures possible toall these combinations of thought, feeling and aspiration?

The scientist tells us that all of the instruments and excellencesdistributed among the animals are united in man. 

Man has the beaver's instinct for building, the bee's skill forhiving, the lion's stroke is less than man's trip-hammer, the deer'sswift flight is slowness to man's electric speed, the eagle itselfcannot outrun his flying speech. It is as if all the excellences ofthe whole animal creation were swept together and compacted in man'stiny body, with the addition of new gifts and faculties; but thisconcentration of all the gifts distributed to the animal world in manmeans that the dangers and difficulties that are distributed over allthe rest of the animal creation will also be concentrated upon hissingle person. The increase of his treasure carries with it theincrease of danger and difficulty. The vastness of his endowment opensup the possibilities of innumerable blunderings and stumblings andwanderings from the way. By so much, therefore, as he is above thebird and the beast, by that much does the task of carrying aright hisfaculties increase in magnitude. 

Moreover, smooth living with men is difficult because of the continualconflict with evil. Integrity can never be good friends with iniquity, nor liberty with tyranny, nor purity and sweetness with filth andfoulness. There is no skill by which John can ever live in peace withHerod. Paul, the author of the ode to love, was always at war withNero, and at last had his head shorn off. William Tell could not getalong smoothly with Gesler, the tyrant who robbed the Swiss of theirrights. When doves learn to live peaceably with hawks, and lambs learnhow to get along with wolves, good men and true will learn how tolive in peace with vice and crime. Wickedness means warfare, notpeace. 

Deviltry cannot be overcome by diplomacy. Not embassies, butregiments, overcome intrenched oppression. Men of integrity andrefinement can have but one attitude toward corruption, drunkenness, parasitism, gilded iniquity--the attitude of uncompromising hostility. Languorous, emasculated manhood may silently endure great wrongs forthe sake of peace and quiet; but robust manhood never. One of thedangers of our age and nation is a tendency to conciliate wrong andsmooth over wickedness through a spurious sense of charity. Geniusgilds vice, and wit and brilliancy transform evil into an angel oflight. Only expel dullness and make evil artistic, and it is condoned;but vice attired in the garb of a queen is as truly vice as whenclothed in rags and living in squalor. To become accustomed to evil, to garnish sin, to dim and deaden sensibility to what is right andbeautiful, is to extirpate manhood and become a mere lump of flesh. Noman has a right to be good friends with iniquity. In a wicked worldthe only people who are justified in peaceable living are the peoplein graveyards. In an age and land like ours only men of mush andmoonshine can be friends with everybody. 

In view of the crime, poverty and ignorance of our age, for a man tolive so that his friends can truthfully write on his tombstone, "Henever had an enemy, " is for him to be eternally disgraced. Such a manshould never be guilty of showing his face in heaven, for he will findthat the angels, at least, are his enemies. Looking toward integrity, Christ came to bring peace. Looking toward iniquity, Christ came tobring the sword. Not until every wrong has been turned to right, notuntil every storm has been stilled into peace, not until thefatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man have been incarnated ininstitutions, will conflict cease and smooth living toward all menbecome an actuality. 

Ambition and the clashing of interests also mitigate against smoothliving. Perhaps no age has offered more powerful stimulants toambition. The field is open to all, and the rewards are great. Therefore Emerson's phrase, "infinite aspiration and infinitesimalperformance. " Contentment is the exception, aspiration is universal. Indeed, the national temptation is ambition. An American merchantlives more in a year than an Oriental in eighty years; more in an hourthan an Indian merchant in twenty-four. So powerful are theprovocatives to thinking and planning that cerebral excitement iswell-nigh continuous. Moving forward, the youth finds every pathwayopen and is told that every honor and position are possibleachievements; the result is that the individual finds himselfcompeting with all the rest of the nation. How fierce the strife! Whatintense rivalries! What battles between opponents! What conflicts inbusiness!

In politics, coveting national honors, men spend months in laying outa campaign. A vast human mechanism is organized with ramificationsextending through the nation. As in the olden times in the court ofKing Arthur, knights entered the tournament and some Lancelot clothedin steel armor rode forth to meet some Ivanhoe in mortal combat; so itis to-day when one plumed knight meets another in the politicalarena--one conquers, and one is killed, in that he suffers a brokenheart. 

In commerce the strife is not less fierce. Men literally stand overagainst each other like gunboats, carrying deadly missiles. Ifto-morrow conflict and strife should spring up in each garden--if therose should strike its thorn into the honeysuckle; if the violet fromits lowly sphere should fling mire upon the lily's whiteness; if thewheat should lift up its stalk to beat down the barley; if the robinshould become jealous of the lark's sweet voice, and the orioleorganize a campaign for exterminating the thrush, we should have aconflict in nature that would answer to the strife and warfare insociety. The universality of the conflicts in society is indicated bythe fact that England's national symbol is not a dove, but a lion;America's is an eagle, and other nations' are the leopard and thebear. In national wars, where men by years of toil have plantedvineyards, reared orchards, builded houses and cities, they proceed toburn up the homes, destroy the granaries, cut down the vineyards andorchards; and these periodic public quarrels do but typify the equallydestructive private feuds and troubles. Darwin thought that men havedescended from animals, and some men have so literally descended. Someseem to have come through the wolf; some have the fox's cunning; somehave the lion's cruelty, and some are as combative as bull-dogs. Now, it is not easy to maintain one's dignity when a little cur nips yourheels behind, and a mastiff threatens you before. And some men seem tounite both elements; they run behind you and nip, they go before tobark and threaten. Under such circumstances it is not easy to livesmoothly and charitably. It is easy to tame lions, but to tame men isnot easy. It is easy to breast the current of rivers, but to standagainst the full force of public opinion is hard. But midst all life'sconflicts and clashings this task is upon us. We are to maintainpeace, love our enemies, and ultimately master the art of right livingwith our fellows. 

To all persons interested in the betterment of society comes thereflection that getting on with men is life's abiding aim and end. Schools can teach no other knowledge comparable to this. It isimportant to train the child in music, to drill him in public speech, to teach him how to handle the horse and dog, how to swim and ride, the use of tools and engines, the nature and production of wealth; butit is of far greater importance that youth should be given a knowledgeof men, and become a skillful student of human nature; to learn how toread the face as an open book. If the jurist studies men and theirmotives to find out the truth; if the physician studies men forreasons of diagnosis; if the merchant studies thinking of his profit, and the politician thinking of preferment, the citizen must understandhis fellows in the interest of securing their happiness and highestwelfare. Incidentally, it is important that a man should be wellgroomed and well kept; should be educated and refined, just as it isproper that the pipes of an organ should be decorated on the outside. 

Nevertheless, the test of an organ is the melody and harmony within. And the test of manhood is not outer polish, but inner skill incarrying his faculties. Man is only a rudimentary man when in thosestages he blunders in all his meetings with his fellows, and cannotbuy nor sell, vote nor converse, without harming, marring, depressing, discouraging his fellow men. In our age many books have been writtensimilar to Lyman Abbott's volume called "The Study of Human Nature, "and the time has fully come when each child should be made ready forlife's battle beforehand, and taught how to armor himself against thetournament. When the schools have trained the child to the use oftools, given the tongue skill in speaking and the mind skill inthinking, it remains to teach him the study of men, the peculiaritiesof each of the five temperaments; the nature and number of the animalimpulses; the use of the social and industrial impulses; the controlof the acquisitive and the spiritual powers. For man's carriage ofhimself in the presence of fire and forest is the least of his duties. That which will tax him and distress, and perhaps destroy him, will bethe carriage of his faculties midst all the clash and conflict, thedin and battle of market and street. And midst all the strife, this isto be his ideal--to bear himself toward his enemies and toward hisfriends, after the pattern of Him who "makes His sun to shine upon theevil and the good, His rain to fall upon the just and the unjust. "

The measure of manhood is the degree of skill attained in the art ofcarrying one's self so as to pour forth upon men all the inspirationsof love and hope, and to evoke good even from the meanest andwickedest of mankind. Passing through life, the soul is to be ahappiness producer and a joy distributer. Without conscious thoughtthe violets pour forth perfume; without volition the magnet pulls theiron filings; with no purpose the candle pushes its beams of lightinto the darkness; and such is to be the weight of goodness in eachman, that its mere presence will be felt. For the soul carries powerto bless or blight; it can lift up its faculties for smiting, as anenemy lifts the hammer above the fragile vase or delicate marble;through speech man can fill all the sky with storms, or he can sweepall clouds from the horizon. The soul can take the sting out of man'sanger, or it can stir up anger; it can allay strife or whet the keenedge of hatred. The thermometer is not so sensitive to heat, thebarometer to weight, the photographer's plate to light, as is the soulto the ten thousand influences of its fellow men. 

For majesty and beauty of subtle influence, nothing is comparable tothe soul. Not the sun hanging upon the horizon has such power forflower and fruitage as has a full-orbed Christian heart, rich in allgood influences, throbbing with kindness and sympathy, radiant as anangel. Great is man's skill in handling engines of force; marvelousman's control of winds and rivers; wondrous the mastery of engines andideas. But man himself is greater than the tools he invents, and manstands forth clothed with power to control and influence his fellows, in that he can sweeten their bitterness, allay their conflicts, beartheir burdens, surround them with the atmosphere of hope and sympathy. Just in proportion as men have capacity, talent and genius, are theyto be guardians, teachers, and nurses for men, bearing themselvestenderly and sympathetically toward ignorance, poverty and weakness. All the majesty of the summer, all the glory of the storms, all thebeauty of galleries, is as nothing compared to the majesty and beautyof a full-orbed and symmetrical manhood. Should there be in everyvillage and city a conspiracy of a few persons toward this refinementand culture, this beauty and sweet Christian living, the presence ofthese Christ-formed persons would transform the community. One suchharvestful nature carries power to civilize an entire city. We no moreneed to demonstrate the worth of the sane, sound, Christ-likecharacter than we need to prove the value of the all-glorious summer, when it fills the earth with fragrance, the air with blossoms, and allthe boughs with luscious fruit. Each Christian youth is to be aman-maker and man-mender. He is to help and not hurt men. This is towalk in love. This is to overcome evil with good. This is to be not aprinted but a living gospel. This is to be a master of the art ofright living and a teacher of the science of character building. 

THE REVELATORS OF CHARACTER

 "Some men move through life as a band of music moves down the street, flinging out pleasure on every side through the air, to every one far and near, that can listen. "--_Beecher. _

 "Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body. No man need be deceived who will study the changes of expression. When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, and sometimes asquint. "--_Emerson. _

XIII

THE REVELATORS OF CHARACTER

In ancient times personal property bore the owner's trademark. Allflocks and herds fed together upon the common. That each might knowhis own, the herdsman slit the ears of his sheep, or branded his oxenwith the hot iron. Afterward, as wealth increased, men extended themarks of ownership. The Emperor stamped his image into the silvercoin. The Prince wrought his initial into the palace porch. Thepeasant moulded his name into the bricks of his cottage. One form ofproperty was slaves. Athens had 80, 000 free citizens and 400, 000bondmen. As these slaves were liable to run away, their owners brandedthem. Sometimes a circle was burned into the palm, or a cross upon theforehead; and often the owner's name was tattooed upon the slave'sshoulder. One of the gifts of antiquity to our modern life is the useof the trademark. To-day manufacturers blow their initials in theglass; they mould the trademark in steel, and weave it in tapestries. 

Lying in his dungeon, everything reminded Paul of these marks ofownership. His chains bore the Emperor's initials. The slaves thatbrought him food carried Nero's brand. The very bricks of his dungeonfloor were stamped with the tyrant's name. But, moving out from thesemarks of servitude, his vision swept a wider horizon. He, too, wasproperty. A freeman, indeed, was he, yet he was not his own. Mind andheart were stamped with God's image and superscription. No hot ironhad mutilated him, but trouble had wrought refinement, and love divinehad left its indelible stamp. Gone indeed the fresh, bright beautythat was his when he sat a boy at Gamaliel's feet! Since the day whenthe mob in Lystra had lifted stones upon him; since the time of hisscourging at Philippi, he had carried the marks of martyrdom. Suffering had plowed deep furrows in his face. But honorable were allhis scars. They bore witness to his conquest over ease andself-indulgence. Dear to him these marks--they bound him to hisMaster, the Lord Jesus. They filled him with high hopes, for the samemarks that made him a bond slave to God and immortality freed him fromearth and earthly things. Musing, in kingly mood, the scarred heroexclaimed: "Let not hunger nor cold, let not the scourge nor thetyrant's threat trouble me, for I bear about in my body the marks ofthe Lord Jesus. "

Now, God hath ordained that, like Paul's, every human body shallregister personal history, publishing a man's deeds, and proclaiminghis allegiance to good or evil. The human face and form are clothedwith dignity in that the fleshly pages of to-day show forth the soul'sdeeds of yesterday. Experience teaches us that occupation affects thebody. Calloused hands betray the artisan. The grimy face proclaims thecollier. He whose garments exhale sweet odors needs not tell us thathe has lingered long in the fragrant garden. But the face and form areequally sensitive to the spirit's finer workings. Mental brightnessmakes facial illumination. Moral obliquity dulls and deadens thefeatures. There never was a handsome idiot. There never can be abeautiful fool. But sweetness and wisdom will glorify the plainestface. 

Physicians tell us that no intensity of disease avails for expellingdignity and majesty from a good man's countenance, nor can physicalsuffering destroy the sweetness and purity of a noble woman's. It issaid that after his forty days in the mount Moses' face shone. All thegreat artists paint St. Cecilia with face uplifted, listening tocelestial music, and all glowing with light, as though sunbeamsfalling from above had transfigured the face of the sweet singer. Those who beheld Daniel Webster during his delivery of his oration onthe Pilgrim Fathers say that the statesman's face made them think of atransparent bronze statue brilliantly lighted from within, with theluminosity shining out through the countenance. 

But the eyes are the soul's chiefest revelators. Tennyson spoke ofKing Arthur's eyes as "pools of purest love. " As there is sediment inthe bottom of a glass of impure water, so there is mud in the bottomof a bad man's eye. Thus, in strange ways, the body tells the story ofthe soul. Health hangs its signals out in rosy cheeks; disease anddeath foretell their story in the hectic flush, even as reddeningautumn leaves foretell the winter's heavy frost; anxious lines uponthe mother's face betray her secret burdens; the scholar's pallor isthe revelation of his life, while the closely knitted forehead of themerchant interprets the vexing problems he must solve. 

Thinking of the pathetic sadness of Lincoln's face, all seamed as itwas and furrowed with care and anxiety, Secretary Stanton said thatthe President's face was a living page, upon which the full historyof the nation's battles and victories was written. We are told thatwhen the Waldenses could no longer bear the ghastly cruelty of theinquisitors, they fled to the mountain fastnesses. There, worn out bysuffering, the brave leader was stricken by death. Coming forth fromtheir hiding-places, the fugitives gathered around the hero's bier. Stooping, one lifted the hair from the forehead of the dead youth andsaid: "This boy's hair, grown thin and white through heroic toil, witnesseth his heroism. These, the marks of his fidelity. " Thus, forthose who have skill to read the writing, every great man's face iswritten all over with the literature of character. His body condenseshis entire history, just as the Declaration of Independence iscondensed into the limits of a tiny silver coin. 

Calm majesty is in the face of Washington; pathetic patience anddivine dignity in that of Lincoln; unyielding granite is in JohnBrown's face, though sympathy hath tempered hardness into softness;intellect is in Newton's; pure imagination is in Keats' and inMilton's; heroic substance is in the face of Cromwell and in that ofLuther; pathetic sorrow is found in Dante's eyes; conscience and loveshine in the face of Fénelon. Verily, the body is the soul'sinterpreter! Like Paul, each man bears about in his body the marks, either of ignorance and sin, of fear and remorse, or the marks ofheroism and virtue, of love and integrity. To the gospel of the pagelet us add the gospel of the face. 

But let none count it a strange thing that the soul within registersits experiences in the body without. God hates secrecy and lovesopenness. He hath ordained that nature and man shall publish theirsecret lives. Each seed and germ hath an instinctive tendency towardself-revelation. Every rosebud aches with a desire to unroll itspetals and exhibit its scarlet secret. Not a single piece of coal butwill whisper to the microscope the full story of that far-off scenewhen boughs and buds and odorous blossoms were pressed together in asingle piece of shining crystal. The great stone slabs with the bird'strack set into the rock picture forth for us the winged creatures ofthe olden time. When travelers through the Rocky Mountains behold theflaming advertisements written on the rocks, the reflection comes toall that nature also uses the rock pages for keeping her privatememoranda of all those events connected with her history of fire andflood and glacier. When we speak of a scientific discovery, we meanthat some keen-eyed thinker has come upon a page of nature's diary andcopied it for his printer. The sea shells lying upon the crest of thehigh hills make one chapter in the story of that age when the ocean'swaves broke against the peaks of the high mountains. 

Journeying in his summer vacation into the region about Hudson Bay, the traveler brings back pieces of coal containing tropic growths. These carbon notebooks of nature tell us of a time when the regions ofice and snow were covered with tropical fruits and flowers, andsuggest some accident that caused our earth to tip and assume a newangle toward the sun. Indeed, our earth bears about in the body themarks of its entire history, so that the scientist is able to tellwith wondrous accuracy the events of a hundred thousand years ago. Already the Roentgen ray foretells the time when "nothing shall becovered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not beknown; when that which was done in secret shall be proclaimed from thehousetops. " Professor Babbage, the mathematician, has said that theatmosphere itself is becoming one vast phonograph upon whose sensitivecylinder shall be written all that man hath said, or woman whispered. Not a word of injustice spoken, not a cry of agony uttered, not anargument for liberty urged, but it is registered indelibly, so thatwith a higher mathematics and a keener sight and sense, the futurescientist may trace each particle of air set in motion with as muchprecision as an astronomer traces the pathway of a moving star or adistant planet. 

Recently the story has been told of a burglar who accidentlydischarged a magnesium light connected with a kodak on the shelf. Thehour was midnight and everyone in the house was asleep. But the kodakwas awake and at work. Frightened by the sudden light, the thief fled, leaving his spoil behind. But he also left his face. The next day inthe court the kodak convicted him. Thus the new science is causingeach man to stand in the center of an awful photographic andtelegraphic system which makes an indelible record of man's words anddeeds. No breath is so faint that it can escape recording itself; nowhisper so low, no plan so secret, no deed of evil so dark and silent. Memory may forget--but nature never. Upon the pages of the physicaluniverse the story of every human life is perpetually before the judgeof all the earth. 

It is deeply interesting to see how each living thing bears about inits body the story of its degradation, or the history of its rise andexaltation. Even in things that creep and crawl, the wholelife-history is swept together in the animal body. The ship barnaclebegan its career with two splendid eyes. But it used its vision tofind an easy place upon the side of pier or ship. Giving uplocomotion, it grew sleek and fat, and finally its big eyes grew dullthrough misuse, and now they are dead. When the squirrels left theforests in the west and journeyed out upon the open prairies, theybegan to burrow in the ground. Finally, for want of use, they lost allpower of climbing. Among the birds the lazy cuckoo began by stealingthe nest another bird had built. But it paid a grievous price for itstheft, for now when the cuckoo is confined by man and wants a nest ofits own it toils aimlessly, and has lost all power to make for itselfa soft, warm nesting-place. 

In northern climes the mistletoe has a healthy normal taproot. But inour rich soil it became too dainty for dirt, and chose the life of aparasite. So the little seed struck its outer roots into the bark ofthe oak, and lazily sucked away the tree's rich sap. Soon luxury andliving upon another's life ruined the mistletoe, just as thegeneration of young Romans was ruined by the father's wealth; just asan active and healthy boy is wrecked when he begins to be a sluggardand goes to the aunt--some rich aunt--and waits for her to die. Andsince all the lower creatures bear about in the body the marks of thefull life-history, it seems natural to expect that man's body, throughits health and beauty, or weakness and decay, should tell the story ofhow the soul within has lived and wrought. A short journey through ourstreets will prove to us that iniquity sets its mark in the face. Dickens describes Fagin as a man who was solid bestiality and villainydone up in bone and tissue. Each feature was as eloquent of rascalityas an ape's of idiocy. Contrariwise, in the kingdom of morals thereare men who seem solid goodness, kindness, and virtue, bound togetherwith fleshly bands. Even distant ancestors leave their marks in man'sbody. 

It has recently been discovered that the handwriting of one of ourpresidents was almost exactly that in his grandfather's will. TheBourbon family has always been distinguished by the aquiline nose. Oneof the oldest New England families is known for its singular lengthand strength of arm. Beauty is a mark in one family, and size is amark in the other. Because man is made in the image of God wenaturally look for those divine trademarks in man's body calledcomeliness and complexion, just as we look for the artist's name onthe corner of his picture, or the sculptor's name on the pedestal ofhis statue. By so much as a babe's cheek is higher than the blushingpeach, it ought to be more beautiful. And because the trees of theforest go forward toward October and death arrayed in their brightestrobes, we have a right to expect that man in his old age also willreach the highest beauty and perfection. 

But not so. Man's history has been a history of selfishness and sin, and his body bears the marks thereof. His features are "seamed bysickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched bypoverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded by remorse. " Men's bodies areconsumed by sloth, broken down by labor, tortured by disease, dishonored by foul uses, until beholding the "marks" of character inthe natural face in a glass multitudes would fain forget what mannerof men they are. For the human face is a canvas, and nature's writinggoes ever on. But as the wrong act or foul deed sets its seal ofdistortion on the features, so the right act or true thought sets itsstamp of beauty. There is no cosmetic for homely folks like character. Even the plainest face becomes beautiful in noble and radiant moods. He who ever beholds the vision of Christ's face will at last so takeon the likeness of his Master as to bear about in his body also "themarks of the Lord Jesus. "

Consider the habits and the unconscious desires as marks of character. When Arnold of Rugby took his boys for a holiday to London he foundthe revelators of personality in the objects which they first visited. The youth who had spent each spare moment in sketching made his wayimmediately to the gallery. Young Stanley, even then brooding uponmoral themes, turned his face toward the abbey, whose fame he was toaugment. The eager aspirant for political honors rushed toward thehouses of Parliament. Thus also the students of physiognomy try tocatch the subject off his guard, when the unconscious and habituallines appear in the face. The kind of books one loves to read, theamusements one seeks, the friends he chooses, are all revelators. Recently an English traveler published a volume of impressionsconcerning America. Finding little to praise, the traveler finds muchto criticise and blame. During his two or three weeks' sojourn in ourcities, he tells us that he found sights and scenes that would shameSodom and Gomorrah, and bemoans the fact that in this young, freshland things should be as bad as in London and Paris, whither the scumand wrecks of society have drifted. 

What a revelation! not of the city, but of the critic himself. Butbecause he was interested in other things, the editor of an EnglishReview found here material for a fruitful discussion of "The HigherLife of American Cities. " Multitudes have sojourned here during ascore of years and have not so much as heard of orgies and excesses. Yet if the bee is blind to all save flowers; if the worm cares onlyfor rotten wood; if the mole bores downward, so there are natures thatcannot rest until they have ferreted out that which they lovingly seekand eagerly desire to find. Habits also reveal personality. First theriver digs the channel, then the channel controls the river, and whenthe faculties, by repetition, have formed habits, those habits becomegrooves and channels for controlling the faculties. What grievousmarks were in poor Coleridge! Once this scholar spent a fortnight uponan annual address. But while the audience was assembling Coleridgeleft his friends and stepped out the rear door of the hall to go insearch of his favorite drug, leaving his audience to master itsdisappointment as best it could. 

And here is Robert Burns, bearing about in his body also the marks ofhis ownership. For this matchless genius was wrecked and ruined not bythe wiles of him of the cloven foot, but by temptations that have beencalled "godlike. " This glorious youth was not beguiled from the pathby a desire to be a cold and calculating villain in his treatment ofJean, or to die of drink in his prime, or to leave his widow andorphans in poverty. Burns loved upward, loved noble things andbeautiful; and his very love of beauty and grace, his love of goodcompany, of wit, laughter and song, and all the stormy splendors ofyouth at springtide--these are the snares and wiles that caught hisbeautiful genius and led it away captive. 

To-day, for him who hath eyes to see, the marks of a like immoderationare upon our generation also. What a revelation of the taste of ourage is found in the new love of highly spiced literature! All historyholds no nobler literature than that in the English tongue. Our poetryfurnishes nectar for angels! Our philosophies bread for giants! Theessayists furnish food for the gods! Nevertheless, a multitude haveturned from this glorious feast to the highly spiced literature offiction. 

A traveler tells of watching bees linger so long beside the vats ofthe distillery that they became maudlin. And the love of highstimulants in literature is one of the character marks of ourgeneration. Excess threatens our people. Men are anxious to bescholars and hurry along a pathway that leads straight to the grave. Men are anxious to find pleasure, but they find the flowers were grownin the church-yard. Men are feverishly anxious for wealth, and, coining all time and strength into gold, they find they have no healthwith which to enjoy the gathered sweetness. Haste in cooking thedinner has destroyed the appetite. We are told that "moderation andpoise are the secrets of all successful art, " as they are of allsuccessful life. Give the rein to appetite and passion, and satiety, disenchantment, and the grave quickly come. Health, happiness, andcharacter are through restraint. Thus truly, habit and trait in theindividual or the generation become a mark in the body that is therevelator of character. 

What men call character to-day is really another one of the marks ofthe Lord Jesus. Now and then a man appears in society from whose verypresence there emanates an atmosphere and a sense of power--power thatseizes upon the imagination of the beholder and holds him breathless, even as one stands breathless when overtaken by some sense in natureof overmastering sublimity. These strangely gifted men have appearedonly at intervals of centuries. If an ordinary man is attacked in alonely spot by armed footpads, he finds himself helpless. But historytells of a man who carried such reserves that, bound and unaided, hecould deliver himself from an entire band of robbers. Surprised oneday by a company of bandits, he was knocked down, robbed, and bound. But when he recovered consciousness, he argued the ropes off hiswrists, talked his purse and rings out of the robbers' pockets backinto his, bound his enemies--not with cords, but with linkedwords--led them back to the city instead of away from it, and landedthe waylayers in jail. 

Similarly, history tells us of half a score of men during the past twothousand years who have carried this same all-commanding atmosphere. For over a century students of oratory have been endeavoring toexplain the eloquence of Whitefield. Such power had this man that thestatesmen and philosophers of London used to leave the metropolis onSaturday and journey far into the country to join the crowds, oftennumbering twenty thousand people, that followed this preacher fromvillage to village. David Hume, the skeptic, explained Whitefield'scharm by saying that the preacher spake to his audience with the samepassionate abandon with which an ardent lover speaks to his sweetheartwhen he pleads for her hand. But Benjamin Franklin tells us that thecharm in Whitefield's speech was not his musical voice, not his streamof thought running clear as crystal, not his sudden electricoutbursts, when the great man seemed on fire; the something that menhave tried in vain to analyze, was his character--goodness andsincerity glowing and throbbing in and through words, just as theelectric current glows and throbs through the connecting wires. Another such man, but lesser, was Lamartine. During the FrenchRevolution, when the mob poured through the streets, sweeping beforeit the soldiers who opposed its progress, Lamartine made his way tothe middle of the street and stood before the brutal leaders. Sopowerful was the influence of the good man's character, that, when theleader said, "Soldiers, we are in the presence of a man who representsseventy years of noble living, " the rude mob uncovered. Afterward, when the insurgents laid down their arms, it was as a tribute to thesuperiority of character to guns and brute force. 

But when we read of these all-commanding natures, we are not to thinkthat these inspirational beings had their influence through somestrange magnetic power, nor that they cast a spell over people likeunto the spell that the cat casts over the mouse with which it plays. Their might has, for the most part, been the might of goodness. Thechief mark that Paul and Wesley and Wilberforce, and all the greathave carried about in the body has been the mark of character. Whatbeauty is to the statue; what ripeness is to the fruit; what strengthis to the body; what wisdom is to the reason--that character is to thesoul!

Great is the power of bonds and gold! Mighty the influence of customsand institutions! But the greatest force that can exist in society isthe presence and power of good men. As rain and soil and sunbeams areonly raw materials, to be brought together and condensed into the ripefruit, so tools, knowledge, goods, are but raw materials, to bewrought up into the fine substance of character. Happy all who havesubordinated the animal impulses and the industrial faculties to themoral sentiments. Thrice happy they who have carried all theirfaculties up unto harmony and symmetry. All such, like Paul, bearabout in the body the marks of the Lord Jesus. 

MAKING THE MOST OF ONE'S SELF

 "Till we all come unto the perfect man. "--_St. Paul. _

 "_Every soul is a seed. _ It does not yet appear what it shall be. "--_H. _

 "'Very early, ' said Margaret Fuller, 'I perceived that the object of life is to grow. ' She herself was a remarkable instance of the power of the human being to go forward and upward. Of her it might be said, as Göethe said of Schiller: 'If I did not see him for a fortnight, I was astonished to find what progress he had made in the interim. '"--_James Freeman Clarke. _

 "Persons who are to transform the world must be themselves transformed. Life must be full of inspiration. If education is valuable, the age must double it; if art is sweet and high, we must double its richness and might; if philanthropy is divine, we must double its quantity and tenderness; if religion is valuable, double its truths and hasten with it unto more firesides; if man's life is great, let him count more precious all its summers and winters. The one duty of life is, lessen every vice and enlarge every virtue. "--_David Swing. _

XIV

MAKING THE MOST OF ONE'S SELF

Two great principles run through all society. First comes theprinciple of self-care and self-love. Each man is given charge of hisown body and life. By foresight he is to guard against danger. Byself-defense he is to ward off attack. By fulfilling the instincts forfood, for work and rest he is to maintain the integrity of his being. Upon each individual rests the solemn obligation to make the mostpossible of himself, and to store up resources of knowledge andvirtue, of friendship and heart treasure. But when a man has treatedhis reason as a granary and stored it with food, his memory as agallery, and filled it with pictures of a beautiful past, his reasonand will as armories, and stored them with weapons against the day ofbattle, then a second principle asserts itself. Responsible for hisown growth and happiness, man is made equally responsible for thehappiness and welfare of those about him. By so much as he has securedhis own personal enrichment, by that much he is bound to secure theenrichment and social advantage of his fellows. To love one's self atthe expense of one's fellows is for selfness to become malignancy. Tolove one's neighbors more than one's self is foolishness andself-destruction. 

Whatever of value the individual has, comes from fidelity to the firstof these principles. Self-love working toward reason makes a man ascholar; working toward his imagination, makes him artist andinventor; working toward his gift of speech, makes him an orator;working with pride makes him self-reliant and self-sufficing. And whenthe principle of love for others asserts itself, this love, workingtoward poverty, transforms man into a philanthropist; working towardiniquity, makes man a reformer; working toward freedom, makes him apatriot and a hero; working toward God, makes him a saint and a seer. 

The new astronomy makes much of the three cosmic laws. Our earth, by aform of self-love called molecular attraction, ceases to be scattereddust, and takes on the shape of a rich and beautiful planet. Butself-loved, our earth is also sun-loved, and drawn by invisible bandsit is swept forward out of winter into summer. Then enters in a thirdprinciple, by which Neptune and Uranus, lying upon the edge of space, seek fellowship with our planet and hold it at a fixed distance fromthe sun's fierce heat. Thus self-love has given the earthindividuality, the love of other planets secures stability, while thesun's love gives movement and wealth. Working together, these threeprinciples secure the harmony and stability of the planetary world. Similarly, each individual is part of a great social system. Eachmoves forward under the embrace of three laws, called love to God, love to neighbor, and love to self. Upon obedience to these laws restsall social wealth and civilization. 

We hear little of individualism, and much of the solidarity ofsociety. A bloodless and selfish destruction of the rights of the manyhas threatened the very foundations of human happiness and compelledthe recognition of the fact that the weakness and injury of one arethe weakness and injury of all. Ours is a world in which the law ofthe survival of the fittest not only works, but works very rapidly. Thus the more wealth a man has the more he can achieve. To-day, it issaid, the various members of the Rothschild family in the differentcapitals of Europe control nine billions of dollars. This sum isaccumulating like a rolling snowball, and will soon surpass, andperhaps absorb the wealth of several of the smaller European nations. Similarly, in the realm of wisdom, the more a man knows the more hecan know. Sir William Jones tells us that he gave five years tomastering his first language, while six weeks were sufficient foracquiring his fortieth dialect. Thus, too, in the realm of inventiveskill, each tool becomes the parent of a score of other tools. Thestudies preparatory to Edison's first mechanism covered a long periodof years; but, gaining momentum, his inventive skill increased ingeometric ratio, until to-day the famous electrician holds nearly athousand patents; but, as nothing succeeds like success, so nothing isso ruinous as failure. The weaker a man is, the weaker he must become. When a man who seeks employment is shabby and gaunt and nerveless, hispoverty lessens his chances, but to-morrow he will be weaker andshabbier, and day by day the rapidity of his declension will increase. 

Startled by these considerations, our generation perceives thatsuccess feeding upon its gains will soon drink up all the energies ofthe earth, while failure, growing more ruinous, will sweep multitudesinto the abyss. Therefore, society has come to fully recognize theimportance of a mutual love and mutual service. When a man falls weare less and less ready to kick him. If the poorly born drops behindin life's race, society is increasingly ready to set him upon somebeast. If some man's brain is spongy, and his mental processes slow, the stronger minds are belting his faculties to their swifterenergies. If a man's moral springtime is slow, says one of our socialreformers, society fits up for him a little ethical conservatory, withsteam heat and southern exposure, where the buds are given a littlejudicious stimulating and pushing. 

Society is recognizing the debt of strength to weakness. The man whohas skill in speech is becoming a voice for the dumb. Those who haveskill toward wealth are becoming the almoners of bounty toward art, education and morals. Men who selfishly get much and give little, whohave become Dead Seas of accumulated treasure, are losing theirstanding in society. More and more cities are bestowing their honorsand esteem upon those who serve their fellows. Men are becomingmagazines, sending out kindness everywhither. Men are becominggardens, filling all the air with pungent fragrance. Men are becomingcastles, in which the poor find protection. The floods of iniquityhave long covered the earth, but love is the dove bringing the olivebranch of peace. Love sings the dawn of a new day. 

Our generation does well to emphasize the principle of social sympathyand social liability. But, because individual worth is beingthreatened, the time seems to have fully come for also emphasizingman's duty to love and make the most of himself. Of late, self-careand self-enrichment, as a principle of life, have been berated andharshly condemned. Yet Christ recognized selfness as a principle mostproper and praiseworthy and one to be used as the basis and measure ofall moral worth. By so much as man loves and secures for himself thephysical benefits and social incitements of life, by that much he isto love his fellows. And the failure to love one's self wisely andpassionately ends by making it impossible for man to love his fellows. Plato's thought is ever with us: "The granary must be filled beforethe poor are fed; knowledge must be gained before knowledge is given. "Happy the philanthropist whose generosity has founded school orlibrary. But this gift of to-day is made possible only by the industryand thrift of yesterday. Happy the surgeon whose skill in a crisishour has saved some valuable life. But the hand that performs whatseems a miracle of surgery has back of it twenty years of vigilantstudy and practice. 

Ours is a world in which the amount of wisdom or wealth or friendshipto be distributed is predetermined by the amount required. The flow ofthe faucet is determined by the fullness of the reservoir. The speedof the electric car is fixed by the energy stored in the power house. The power of the piston is in the push of the accumulated steam. TheNile has force to feed civilizations, because there are a thousandstreams and rivers, a thousand hills and mountains lying back of theNile's current, and crowding it forward. If we could sit down by thefamous Santa Barbara vine, and speaking with it as with a familiarfriend, ask how it came to give man a half-ton of purple treasure in asingle summer, the reply would be that this rich treasure was grownand given in one summer because two hundred summers were given togrowing a vast root and trunk, to large stems and stalks. 

When Nestor stood forth before the Greek generals and counseled attackupon Troy, he said: "The secret of victory is in getting a goodready. " Wendell Phillips was once asked how he acquired his skill inthe oratory of the lost arts. The answer was: "By getting a hundrednights of delivery back of me. " Shakespeare tells us all that theclouds give in rain what they get in mist, which is the poet's way ofsaying that what he gave in inspiration he got by way ofperspiration. Some years ago a young man asked a distinguished scholarand writer what he thought of the higher education. "If I were twenty, and had but ten years to live, " answered the publicist, "I would spendthe first nine years accumulating knowledge and getting ready for thetenth. " Indeed, the measure of influence in any man is the measure ofhis reserves. The youth who will rule to-morrow is the youth whoto-day is storing up resources of knowledge and wisdom, ofself-reliance and courage. 

All history does but repeat the principle. Surveying the past, we notethat the nations that have made great contributions to civilizationhave been isolated. Our historians tell us that the Hebrew gaveconscience and morals, the Greek reason and culture, the Roman law andgovernment, the Teuton liberty and the rise of woman. But, singularlyenough, not one of these nations lived in an open, extended country. Each forceful race has dwelt upon some island or peninsula. The Hebrewwas shut in between the desert and the sea, and there restrained untilhe accumulated his moral treasure. He was compelled to fall back uponhis own resources. By practice he found out that it was not best tosteal; that society lived more happily and peacefully when theproperty of each individual was respected. Similarly, God gave him thework of formulating each of the ten commandments. Slowly the moraltreasure grew. The jurist gave law, the poet sang songs, the prophetpoured out his rhapsody, the patriot and martyr died for principle, and the roll of the heroes lengthened. At last the pages of Jewishhistory were filled with names glowing and glorious as the nights withstars. 

Then came Jesus Christ, filling all the land with spiritual energies. Soon the pressure of moral forces was so strong as to break throughall restraints. Then these moral treasures poured forth over all theearth. Having given the two thousand years before Christ toaccumulating its moral energies, the Hebrew race acquired momentumenough to continue the civilizing tide through the two thousand yearsafter Christ. Similarly Greece, the mother of the arts and sciences, was shut in between the mountains and the sea until the intellectualtides grew deep and strong. 

But not alone does history urge us to make the most of ourselves. Allour great men illustrate the same principle. Of late attention hasbeen called to the fact that our cities are being ruled by men whosechildhood and youth were spent in the country. Isolated, brooding foryears in the fields and forests, these boys developed a forcefulindividuality. A recent canvass of the prominent men in New York Cityshowed that eighty-five per cent were reared in the villages and ruraldistricts. Seventeen of our twenty-three presidents came from thefarm. A census of the colleges and seminaries in and about Chicagoshowed that the country is furnishing eighty per cent of our collegestudents. The chances of success seem one hundred to one in favor ofthe country boy. Many explain this by saying that there is amathematical relation between a fine physique and a firm, intellectualtread. Good thinking rests upon fine brain-fiber. But this is onlyhalf the truth. 

These giants from the country learned in youth not to depend uponbooks and newspapers, but upon their eyes and ears. Having no externalresources, they turned their thoughts inward and led forth their ownfaculties. They did not wait until they opened the journal to find outwhat they thought about some important subject, but, unaided, theywrought out their own opinions, and through self-reliance grew great. Should any sower go forth to sow in the streets of the city, he wouldreap but a small harvest. The hard, beaten roadway would give thegrain no lodgment; but sown on the open furrows, the seed roots andgrows. Thus the mind of the city youth is a roadway beaten down by themyriad events of life. His individuality is a root having littlechance to grow. 

The mornings rain newspapers, the evenings increase events, the veryskies rain pamphlets. Individuality is overwhelmed with many things. Soon the mind ceases to develop its own mental treasure, and iscontent to receive its incitements from without. Because schools andcolleges are multiplied, the youth who has never gone to the bottom ofa single subject imagines that he is a fine student. Because hisshelves are crowded with books, the man deceives himself into thinkingthat he has read them all. Because our age is rich in mechanicalappliances and inventions, many who cannot drive a nail straightimagine that they have been really instrumental in ushering in thismagnificent epoch. Many sing peans of exultation over this wondrouscivilization who are mental and industrial paupers, whose chief groundof congratulation is that they got themselves born into thisparticular century. But power does not come that way. Moses willcontrol all our jurists to-morrow because he spent forty years in thedesert reflecting upon the principles of justice. Paul had the honorto fashion our political institutions because he gave twelve years ofgeneral preparation and three years of special application to thestudy of individual rights. Milton tells us that he spent four andthirty years of solitary and unceasing study in accumulating hismaterial for a heroic poem that the world would not willingly let die. 

Homer wrote the "Iliad" because he was blind and driven in upon hisown resources. Dante wrote his "Inferno" because he was exiled, and inisolation had time to store up his mental treasure. Webster andLincoln spent years in the forests and fields, reflecting andbrooding, analyzing and comparing. Many a long summer passed whilethey sowed and garnered their mental treasure. Pasteur gave ourgeneration much, because for thirty years he isolated himself and gotmuch to give. When Lowell speaks of the attar of roses, he reminds usof the whole fields of crimson blossoms that have been swept togetherin one tiny vial. When Starr King saw the great trees of Californiastanding forth twenty-five feet in diameter and lifting their crownsthree hundred feet into the sunshine, he was so impressed by theirdignity and beauty as to be touched into tears; but the size of thetrees did not explain his emotion. It was the thought of the reserveenergies that had been compacted into them. The mountains had giventheir iron and rich stimulants, the hills had given their soil, theclouds had given their rain and snow, a thousand summers and wintershad poured forth their treasure about the vast roots. Thus the authorsand statesmen who will help the next generation are to-day engaged inloving themselves and making the most of their talents. Not until theyhave compacted within themselves a thousand knowledges and virtueswill they be able to love others. 

With sadness let us confess that our age is sinning grievously againstthis principle of self-care and self-love. Individual worth is beingsorely neglected. An age is great not through a large census roll, butthrough a multitude of great souls, just as a book is valuable not byhaving many pages, but by containing great ideas. The paving-stones inour streets are very different from sapphires. The bringing togetherof 65, 000, 000 small granite blocks will not turn these stones intodiamonds. It is only when each stone is a gem that the increase ofnumber means the increase of beauty. No nation is moving forwardtoward supremacy merely because the weak individuals began to go indroves. In our education we are singing peans and praise about ourschools and new methods of education. Meanwhile Frederic Harrisoninsists that in fifty years the public schools of Great Britain haveturned out not one mind of the first order. Some of those who haveachieved renown in literature or statecraft were self-educated. Therest enjoyed the help of some parent or friend, who very early in thechild's career took the pains to search out the child's strongestfaculty, and then asked some tutor or teacher to assist in nourishingthe special talent toward greatness. 

At home, President White is telling us that our authors and poets aredead, and have no successors. Nor could it be otherwise. When askillful driver wishes to develop the speed of a thoroughbred colt, hespecializes upon this one animal. No sensible horseman would put fortycolts upon a track and try to develop their speed by driving themaround in a drove. It remains for the parents of this country to adoptthe method of training their children in droves, and educating them inherds. Our common-school system began in the necessity for thedivision of labor. Settling in the wilds of New England, the men wentinto the forests with axes, or to the field with their hoes. Themothers went into the garden or to the loom. Rather than that theirchildren should have no education, many parents came together andasked some one man or woman to do the work for all. Thus our commonschools were born out of poverty and emergency. 

But at length has come a time when parents, in blind worship of asystem, have farmed their children out to intellectual wet-nurses. Many children who possess talent of the first order in the realm ofpoetry or literature are compelled during the most precious period oflife to spend years upon subjects that yield them no culture effect. Meanwhile their enthusiasm is wasted, and their strongest facultiesstarved. Only when it is too late do they discover the cruel injusticethat has been wrought upon them, and recognize that they must remainunfulfilled prophecies. Our common schools have wrought mosteffectively for our civilization. They are the hope of society. Butnot until our parents become enthusiastic teachers, and our homesassist the school rooms, will men cease complaining that the nation'sgreat men have no successors, and that genius has departed from ourpeople. 

The time has fully come for the nation also to begin to love itself. All perceive that the individual has no right to be so generousto-day as to have nothing to bestow to-morrow. Wisdom guards to-day'sexpenditures lest to-morrow's capital be impaired. He is a poorhusbandman who so overtaxes his fields or vineyards as to exhaust thesoil or destroy the vine. Yet many events seem to prove that ournation has sorely injured itself by over-kindness. It has forgottenthat only God can love everybody. In trying to help the many it hasthreatened its power to help any. It has been like a man who on aJanuary day opens his windows and tries to warm all out of doors, onlyto find that he has frozen his family within the house, and warmed noone without. If we journey into the factory towns in New England, where the youthful Whittier and Longfellow were trained, we find theschool-houses with windows boarded over. The little churches also aredeserted and the doors nailed up. Listening to the "reformers" in ourparks on a Sunday afternoon, we are amazed by the virulent attacksupon our institutions. Conversing with the foreman of a large group ofmen laying water-pipes, we are astonished at his statement that he hasnot a single man who can write well enough to keep the time and hoursof these toilers. Standing in Castle Garden, where the emigrant shipunloads its multitudes, we hear the physician exclaim: "It will takethis nation a hundred years to expel this vice and scrofula from itsblood. "

As some railways water their stock, and for each dollar issue bondsfor five, in the hope that only one of the five will ever know enoughto ask for their dollar, so the intelligence of the nation has beenwatered and diluted. Sometimes a whole ballot-box full of voters'tickets does not contain the common sense of a single vote of the daysof Hamilton. Our nation often seems like a householder who has givenhis night-key to an enemy who has threatened his home with firebrands. Our nation has loved--not wisely, but too well. The time has come whenit must choose between loving itself and becoming bankrupt inintelligence and morality. For purposes of educating the nations ofthe world as to the true value of free institutions, one little NewEngland community, where all the citizens were patriots and heroes, scholars and Christians, where vulgarity and crime were unknown, wherethe jail was empty and the church was full, where all young livesmoved toward the school-house--one such community has a value beyondour present millions. 

What the world needs is not multitudes, but examples and ideals. Ifone Plato can be produced, he will lift the world. Our citizens askartists to paint their pictures--not bootblacks. We ask architects toerect our public buildings--not chimney sweeps. Loving their city, ourcitizens have lined the avenues with beautiful homes and streets withstores and factories. But here their self-love stops. When great menhave created the city, they ask saloon-keepers to govern it. Well didthe sage say, it was as if we had passed by Daniel Webster and askedan African ape to speak in his stead. Strange--passing strange--thatour nation and city should forget that all love for others begins witha wise love for self. 

We return from our survey with the conviction that Jesus Christ didwell to make individual worth the genius of Christianity. Having movedbackward along the pathway of history, we have found the streams ofcivilization taking rise in some one enriched mind and heart, even asmighty rivers issue from isolated springs. Looking backward we seeMoses building the Hebrew temple; we see Pericles and Plato fashioningmany shapes of truth and beauty for Athens; we see Dante laying thefoundations of Florence; we see Carlo Zeno causing Venice to rise outof the sands of the sea; we see Bacon and Luther rearing thecathedrals of thought and worship, under which the millions find theirshelter. Oppressed by a sense of human ignorance and human sin, athousand questions arise. Can one poorly born journey toward greatnessof stature? The Cremona violin of the sixteenth century is a mass ofcondensed melody. Each atom was soaked in a thousand songs, until theinstrument reeks with sweetness. But can a human instrument, long outof tune and sadly injured, e'er be brought back to harmony of being?In the studio of the sculptor lie blocks of deserted marble. Out ofone emerges a hand, another exhibits the outlines of a face. But forsome reason the artist has forsaken them. It seems that as the chiselworked inward, it uncovered some crack or revealed a dark stain. Therefore the sculptor passed it by, preferring the flawless block ofsnowy marble. Is the soul soiled by sin, to be cast off by the divineSculptor?

Journeying across the plains, travelers looking through the carwindows behold the California trail. The wagon ruts have becomeditches, and the old route is marked by human graves. But long ago menexchanged the ox cart, the deep wagon ruts, and the wearisome journey, for palace cars. Thus there are many paths of sin worn deep bypressure of human feet. Many would fain forsake them. But is there anydivine power to cast up some divine highway? Is there a happiness?Nature is kind to her grains and sweeps them forward toward harvests;is kind toward her apple seeds and bids them journey unto orchards; iskind unto the March days, and bids them journey into perpetual summer. 

And man would fain find some divine friend who will lead him untogreat personal worth. As if to fulfill man's deepest needs, JesusChrist enters the earthly scene. He comes to hasten man's step alongthat pathway that leads from littleness unto largeness. Before ouradmiring vision the Divine Teacher seems like some sacred husbandman, His garden our earth, good men and great earth's richest fruit. Heasks each youth to love and make the most of himself, that later on hemay be bread to the hungry, medicine to the wounded, shelter to theweak. He bids each love his own reason, getting wisdom with that eagerpassion that Hugh Miller had for knowledge. He bids each make the mostof friendship, emulating Plato in his love for his noble teacher. Heasks each to love industry, emulating Peabody, whose generosity gushedlike rivers. He asks each to make the most of courage andself-reliance, emulating Livingstone in self-denying service. He bidseach emulate and look up to Jesus Christ, as Dante, midst the pitchynight, looked up toward the star. He bids each move heaven and earthto achieve for himself a worthy manhood. For thus only can earth everbe moved back unto heaven. 

INDEX

Abélard, 166

Abraham, influence on posterity, 16

Abundant Life, 29

Æschylus, 198

Agassiz, 102, 237

Aristotle, 124

Arkwright, 99

Arnold, 135, 216, 292 Thos. , 164

Aspirations and Ideals, 53 number and kind, 61 power to lift life, 58 the use of, 63 rebuke lower life, 66 enemies of, 70

Babbage, 287

Bancroft, Geo. , 10

Beatrice, 44

Beecher, 19, 95, 134, 142, 188, 258

Bible, 32, 98, 142, 164, 255

Body, a thinking machine, 80 delicacy of sensation, 80 evolution, 81 its needs as stimuli, 88 channel of knowledges, 88 system of moral registration, 92

Books and reading, 233 increase of power of vision, 238 show men at their best, 239 tools for the mind, 240 multiply brain forces, 242 preserve the spirit of great men, 243 give information, 246 show unity of progress, 249 choice of books, 250

Brooks, Phillips, 44, 254

Brown, John, 58

Browning, Mrs. , 248

Bulwer Lytton, 135

Bunyan, 114

Burns, 158, 294

Byron, 48, 188, 198, 250

Cadmus, 16

Caird, 84

Capital, original, 13

Carlyle, 76, 214, 234, 239, 255

Castelar, 40

Channing, 192, 225, 234

Character, 31, 44 defined, 34 materials of, 34

Charles IX. , 203

Clay, 154, 262

Climate, effect on race, 16

Coleridge, 47, 132, 200, 293

Columbus, 56, 152

Confucius, 32

Conscience and Character, 187 working of conscience, 191, 201 uses and functions, 199 standard, 199 relation to judgment, 200 influence on memory, 201 in daily life, 202 commercial, 205 emotional, 208 to the past, 209

Contrasts and extremes, teachers, 47

Cooper, Peter, 177

Cranmer, 145

Cromwell, 39, 40, 100

Curtis, Geo. Wm. , 23

Dana, 84

Dante, 21, 78, 129, 150, 165, 198, 215, 312, 318

David, 48, 165

Death, 95

Demosthenes, 198

De Tocqueville, 126

Dickens, 106

Distribution of ability in U. S. , 22

Doré, 124

Douglass, Frederick, 223

Dreams, 64

Drummond, 82, 84

Dwight's dictum, 15

Edison, 169, 304

Elements of worth in individual, 9

Eliot, Geo. , 178, 196, 222

Emerson, 13, 31, 34, 42, 98, 103, 122, 150, 164

Enthusiasm, 168 of friendship, 165

Epictetus, 174

Evolution, 82

External world a teacher, 37

Faraday, 248

Fiske, 94

Friendship, 163 secret of eminence, 173 refining, 178

Froude, 172

Garibaldi, 171, 184

Gladstone, 43, 69

Göethe, 151

Grant, 184

Greeley, 33

Guttenberg printing press, 82

Hamilton, 133, 201

Handel, 153

Harrison, Frederic, 234, 250, 314

Hawthorne, 107

Health, 75

Helps, Arthur, 253

Heredity, 130

Herod, 189

Heroes raised up to teach men, 58, 59

Hoe, printing press, 82

Holland, J. G. , 23

Holmes, O. W. , 13

Homer, 60, 312

Hugo, 193

Huss, 145, 150

Huxley, 76

Ideals, teachers, 49

Ignorance, 19, 31

Imagination, 141 defined, 147 sustains men, 149 place in science and invention, 157 mechanics, 152 helps character, 156 abuse of, 157 lifts above misfortune, 159 reveals God, 160

Integrity, 27

Iron, value of raw and manufactured, 20

Jacob's vision, 70, 166

Jesus, 14, 29, 30, 31, 40, 51, 59, 115, 118, 183, 189, 210, 215, 271, 309, 318, 319

John, 14

Johnson, 47, 166

Jones, Sir Wm. , 304

Judas Iscariot, 135

Keats, 106

King, Starr, 312

Knowledge, 20

Kossuth, 184

Lamartine, 34

Lamb, 47, 166, 244

Lecky, 45

Lee, inventor of loom, 47

Lincoln, 34, 41, 169, 219, 284, 312

Livingstone, 58, 78, 236, 241

Living with men, 257 the largest subject, 259 training necessary, 262 the most important act, 264 the most difficult, 266 aim and end of life, 274 test of manhood, 275

Locke, 122

Lodge's study of distribution of ability, 22

Longfellow, 129, 252

Lowell, 31, 98, 142, 312

Lubbock's inquiry of Indian chief, 16, 175

Luther, 40, 41, 58, 78, 100, 171

Macaulay, 132, 262

Making the most of one's self, 299 self-care and self-love, 301 debt of strength to weakness, 305 examples from history, 309 examples from great men, 309 duty of the nation, 316 teaching of Christ, 318

Man a double creature, 85

Mann, Horace, 17

Massachusetts, education, 22

McCosh, 84

Michael Angelo, 118, 149, 214

Mill, John Stuart, 12, 25

Millais, Martyr, 58

Millet's Angelus, 20

Milton, 34, 56, 79, 114, 129, 153, 167, 174, 198, 234, 312

Mind and the duty of right thinking, 97 its wonderfulness, 101 its fruitfulness, 103 determines character, 114

Misfits in life, 13

Mivart, 116

Monotony, a teacher, 43

Moral uses of the memory, 121 basis of civilization, 125 power, 131 examples, Macaulay, Niebuhr, etc. , 131 influenced by conscience, 201

Napoleon, 17, 142, 153, 184

Newness as a teacher, 42

Newton, 84, 237, 238

Nestor, 307

Niebuhr's memory, 131

Nilsson, 154

Northampton, noted men, 23

Obedience to law, 27

Oken, 151

Paganini, 14, 262

Pasteur, 312

Paul, 12, 41, 234, 235, 282

Paupers, plebeian and patrician, 12

Peter, 135

Petrarch, 166

Phillips, 135, 170, 217, 307

Phidias, 79, 125

Phocion, 34

Physical basis of character, 74

Pitt, 135

Plato, 13, 163, 183, 189, 214, 306

Pliny, 70

Proctor, 103

Ptolemy, 45

Pythagoras, 144

Racial elements, 15

Rameses, 77

Raphael, 51

Rasselas, 47

Responsibility a teacher, 46

Revelators of character, 279 the face, 283 instances, 285 body, 285 habits and unconscious desires, 292 power of pure character, 297

Richter, 121

Rosetti, 121

Ruskin, 41, 43, 255, 258

Savonarola, 41, 171, 191

Scaliger's memory, 131

Schopenhauer, 227

Schiller, 167, 214

Scott, 150, 201

Seneca's memory, 131

Servetus, 203

Seward, 188

Shakespeare, 22, 47, 51, 53, 79, 97, 125, 136, 164, 193, 307

Silas Marner, 178

Sin, a personal fact, 87

Skill in handling men, 25

Smith, Adam, 12 Sidney, 111

Socrates, 14, 57, 92, 130, 165, 190, 214

Solon, 144

Sophocles, 198

Sophroniscus, 147

Southey, 244

Spencer, Herbert, 50, 168

Stanley, 217, 292

Sterne, 188

Stupidity of sin, 25

Strength, physical, 17

Strikes, 25

Swing, 97, 164, 212, 258

Taylor, 212

Teachers in life external world, 37 temptation, 39 newness and zest, 42 monotony, 44 responsibility, 46 contrasts and extremes, 47 ideals, 49

Temptation, 39

Tennyson, 121, 165, 172, 284

Themistocles, 23

Theseus, 16

Tholuck, 51

Thomson, Sir Wm. , 248

Thompson, 75

Thoughts affect face's expression, 109

Thucydides, 199

Titian, 262

Trademarks, 281

Tubman, Harriet, 223

Tupper, 35

Tyndall, 101

Value of man, financial, 11 acc. To race, 16 thoughts determine, 111

Veronese, 113

Virgil, 110

Vision hours, 50, 62, 68, 230

Visions that disturb, 211 shape great lives, 217 bring life's best moods, 222 conquer sin, 223 secure service for right, 223 make good men perfect, 224 for our nation, 225

Von Humboldt, 189 Moltke, 23 Rile, 118

Wastes of Society, 9 through ignorance, 19 hatred, 28

Washington, 34, 188

Watson, Wm. , 212

Watts, 29, 80, 125, 152

Webster, 153, 192, 220, 256, 262, 284, 312

White, Pres. , 314

Whitney, Prof. , 23

Wordsworth, 47, 97, 106, 178

Zeno, 318

Zacharias, 14

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 +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | Page 27: Obedince replaced with Obedience | | Page 40: sweetnees replaced with sweetness | | Page 83: miscroscope replaced with microscope | | Page 88: civilzation replaced with civilization | | Page 133: provison replaced with provision | | Page 164: Goethe replaced with Göethe | | Page 237: eloqunce replaced with eloquence | | Page 325: M'Cosh replaced with McCosh | | Page 327: Thunistocles replaced with Themistocles | | Page 327: Thesnes replaced with Theseus | | | | The following words are correct: | | | | Page 63: stithy, noun meaning 1. An anvil, 2. A forge | | or smithy. | | Page 161: bowlder, an obsolete spelling for boulder | | Page 288: accidently, alternate spelling for accidentally | | Page 311: peans, noun meaning 1. Any song of praise, joy, | | or triumph. 2. A hymn of invocation or | | thanksgiving to Apollo or some other ancient | | Greek deity. | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+

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