I do not know as the next following extracts will strike the reader as anything very brilliant or very novel; but I cannot forbear transcribing them, because they were plucked so near the secret pavilion of his soul, so near the hidden sources of his spiritual strength. To my mind, they are like mosses damp with the moisture of fountains.
These resolutions were adopted in the month preceding his admission to the church.
“To grow in grace is the duty of every Christian. Yet it is a most difficult work; at least, I have found it so. There are so many sins to subdue, so many temptations to assail, so many crosses of self-denial to take up, that I find the Christian must ever be on the alert, lest he fall into sin, or at least make no progress in piety.
“In order to meet these failings, it is a good plan for the young Christian to throw as many obstacles as possible in the way of his returning to the world; and I have felt it to be my duty to take some decisive step in relation to these matters. Accordingly, I have determined to adopt a set of resolutions, and also to write down a set of questions to be answered every night, a review of which is to be made every week.
“I have long hesitated as to the expediency, in my case, of the resolutions; for I feared I should not be able to keep them. But at length I have concluded to adopt a set, taken mostly from President Edwards and Dr. Porter; and although it may require much self-inspection to keep them, yet I hope that, through the blessing of God, they will not be wholly in vain. I wish to make them in the strength of the Lord; for my own strength is weakness; and it is my earnest prayer to God that he will enable me to keep them.
“It may be well to notice several encouragements which I find to persevere in these resolutions. As remarked before, I feared I should not be able to keep them even if I adopted them. But what encouragement do I find in the fact that I am not to make them in my own strength, but in God’s. Though weak in myself, yet he can give me grace to persevere in keeping them; and if I look to him in sincerity for help, he will enable me to keep them.
“Also, I have encouragement in the example of others. Though they may not have adopted these resolutions in form, and may not have committed them to paper, they were engraven on their hearts, and they regulated their lives by them. If I fail in living a godly life, it will be my own fault. I possess the same natural abilities to enable me to live a holy life as had Edwards or Payson; and I also meet with the same obstacles to surmount.
“Finally, I have sometimes thought that these and other duties of religion would occupy too large a portion of my time, which I should otherwise devote to the cultivation of my mind. But in regard to this, also, I find encouragement. What if I do break in upon these hours, if I can feel the assurance that I am prepared for heaven! It is of vastly more importance that I should seek first the kingdom of heaven; then I shall have an eternity to spend in expanding my mind, and in drinking in rivers of knowledge.
“Resolved, 1. To study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly, and frequently, as that I may find and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.
“2. To strive every week to be brought higher in religion, and to a higher exercise of grace, than I was the week before.
“3. Never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can.
“4. Never to do anything out of revenge.
“5. Never to speak evil of any one, so that it shall tend to his dishonor, more or less, upon no account, except for some real good.
“6. In narrations, never to speak anything but the pure and simple truth.
“7. Never to utter anything that is sportive or matter of laughter on the Lord’s day.
“8. That I will so live as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.
“9. Never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.
“10. To think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.
“11. That I may not be surprised by death, I will endeavor to carry with me the habitual recollection that it may come at any moment.
“12. As my comfort in death must depend on my hope of heaven, I will often examine this hope; because, if I have good reason to believe that I shall live with Christ in glory, I shall have no reason for reluctance in leaving this world, any more than the sentinel in being called from his post after a stormy night, or the child who has been long from home in returning to his father’s house.
“13. To live at all times as I think best while in my most devout frames of mind.
“14. Never to count that a prayer which is so made that I cannot hope God to answer it, nor that a confession which I cannot hope God will accept.
“15. Never to give over or in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.
“16. When I am most conscious of provocation to ill-nature and anger, that I will strive most to feel good-natured.
“17. To dress plainly, and wear no ornament that shall tend to foster pride.
“18. To contribute all that I am able to the benevolent objects of the day.
“19. That I will read over the foregoing resolutions at least once a week, and ask myself each day a set of questions to be answered in writing.”
It is quite evident that these secret resolutions were rewarded openly by a virtuous and honorable life.
How full of plain utility is the first resolution! “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word.” I do not recollect that anywhere the matter of merely intellectual clearness is made the subject of direct instruction in the Bible. But, without doubt, they who purify their hearts and manners, by taking heed according to the Word of God, take the most expeditious method of thoroughly clarifying the merely intellectual vision. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God;” not alone in the happy heaven that we love to think lies just beyond the years of earth, but probably they shall also see him in the theological and natural and social sciences of our human life.
In the second resolution is found the secret of many a pleasant face and many a strong and happy heart. And here I wish to make a few observations especially to the young. I wish to speak about Walter Aimwell’s life’s being very real to him. Boys think that is a matter of course; but it is not. Their lives seem real to them,—that is a matter of course with healthy boys. But if they live to the age when they should put away childish things, and they do not put them away, and do not live in the very best manner of Christian manliness known to them, or to be easily found out by them, then their lives will not seem real. The most fortunate of them will have a vague sense of having been disappointed. Perhaps they will not feel as though life had strongly or directly opposed their will; but they will grasp at things, indeed their fingers may actually close about things they think dear to them, and it will not seem as though they had. Persons whose natural capacities are as good as the average, and who live in civilized communities, grow so that trivialities cannot fill their minds with any sense of satisfaction. Leaving out of consideration the sin, it is the smallness of folly that makes the frivolous heart feel empty. It is as though a giant should sit down on the floor, and, grasping a sugar-plum in his great hand, try to coax up the look and feeling of riches and delight manifest in the baby opposite who has a similar sugar-plum. No wonder the giant does not feel happy: he does not even feel the sugar-plum.
They who do not live up to the spirit of Walter Aimwell’s second resolution, though they may not always be bitterly miserable, cannot he richly happy, nor even fully alive.
The third, fourth, and fifth rules are commended by almost every child; supposed to be adopted by almost every adult, and just about as universally violated; although the obligation is none the less binding, nor the penalty any the less sure, on account of the multitude of the wrong-doers. Walter Aimwell, like everybody else who has given an example of “holy living and holy dying,” had great respect for the little things of every day. Early in life he took one of his “decisive steps” in regard to these matters; and he was one who would not go backward. A very unusual success crowned his efforts to keep these resolutions.
His rule in regard to speaking the truth, pure and simple, is approved by all, and seems very easy to follow. But truthfulness is a virtue not to be possessed but by those who have many others. It requires a sterling character to speak the truth. Genuine humility is one of the first requisites of truth-speaking, and that, of course, is inconsistent with all vanity, pride, ambition, and petty spite, or sullen revenge. Humility is necessary even for the seeing of much truth, to say nothing of saying it. Next to the humility needful to see the truth without subjecting it to the refractions of our own wicked moods, a steady, faithful mind and will are almost indispensable to keep us from involuntarily giving hue to recital, according to the partialities or prejudices of our hearers. Humility, courage, strength, are prerequisites to truth-telling, no more to be dispensed with than conscience.
His seventh rule is one of which perhaps he stood in more need than many persons, especially at the time when it was adopted. He had such a keen sense of the ludicrous, and such aptness sometimes to make it appear to others, and the Sabbath being the day on which the apprentice-boy was least restricted in companionship, it is highly probable that he sometimes offended his own taste as well as conscience by the utterance of words that disturbed the thoughts necessary to the restoring of the soul. Probably it is a good general rule; and the majority of objectors to it will be found among those in no great danger of breaking it, but who, if they do happen to think of anything funny, cannot forego the rare pleasure of saying it, even if it rudely break the meditations of those who are trying to keep the Sabbath holy.
Perhaps the abrupt and pithy wording of the eleventh rule may fall with somewhat of gloom upon some young hearts, whose owners are playing the part of butterflies. But then, none but poor little worms, comparatively poverty-stricken in regard to the gifts of God, ought to be ambitious of being butterflies. He who can feel the quiver of wings that stretch six feet should not flutter about a pink, nor balk his royal bosom of its full breath by running his head into a lily-cup. Let him soar away to the sunshine above the mountains. He will be better satisfied to battle with a cloud than to nestle under a rose-leaf.
That resolution did not affect Walter Aimwell with gloom. Without doubt, he very faithfully kept it; for he often spoke of death,—not making occasions for the subject, but naturally, as it will often present itself to those who do not fear it. I think the only thing in the universe that he dreaded was sin. He had been born into the new life; and although in the initiatory processes of that new birth the thought of death may have struck his mind with peculiar force, he had become so occupied with living the immortal life that death was regarded simply as one of the many things incident to the beginning of that life. He knew God had given him duties and pleasures to satisfy the measure of his capacities before death, and he had not a doubt that the same God would do the same thing after death. He had no gloomy thoughts or feelings upon the subject.
Take particular notice of the fifteenth and sixteenth resolutions. We often hear it said, “There’s no use in striving against nature.” “Don’t blame him; it is natural for him to do so.”
Now there is use in “striving against nature,” as that phrase is generally understood; else there is no use in the Christian religion, and we may at once relinquish its doctrines and precepts as so many superfluities, and look upon the matchless history in the Gospels as a splendid blunder. If there is no use in striving against nature when nature is in the wrong, or takes the less noble side of the question, then we can dispense, not only with Christianity, but with all schools and all discipline. Without instruction and without training, anybody can act, if he is bound to act only just as he happens to feel at the time. To be consistent, even the prize-fighter should refuse to submit to his “training;” because, for the sake of greater bodily strength and celerity and greater accuracy of motion, he is required to abstain from many things which it is natural for him to do. Rather let him who ever means to be anybody worth naming, or anybody worth the trouble of living, say, with Walter Aimwell, “I will never slacken my fight with my faults, however unsuccessful I may be!”