VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
"Only he that uses shall even so much as keep. Unemployed strength steadily diminishes. The sluggard's arm grows soft and flabby. So, even in this lowest sphere, the law is inexorable. Having is using. Not using is losing. Idleness is paralysis. New triumphs must only dictate new struggles. If it be Alexander of Macedon, the Orontes must suggest the Euphrates, and the Euphrates the Indus. Always it must be on and on. One night of rioting in Babylon may arrest the conquering march. Genius is essentially athletic, resolute, aggressive, persistent. Possession is grip, that tightens more and more. Ceasing to gain, we begin to lose. Ceasing to advance, we begin to retrograde. Brief was the interval between Roman conquest of Barbarians, and Barbarian conquest of Rome. Blessed is the man who keeps out of the hospital and holds his place in the ranks. Blessed the man, the last twang of whose bow-string is as sharp as any that went before, sending its arrow as surely to the mark."—Roswell W. Hitchcock.
CHAPTER IV.
VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has been called the picture-gallery of heroes. These patriots and martyrs who won our first battles for liberty and religion made nobleness epidemic. Oft stoned and mobbed in the cities they founded and loved, they fled into exile, where they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and slept in the holes of the earth. Falling at last in the wilderness, it may be said that no man knoweth their sepulcher and none their names. But joyfully let us confess that the institutions most eminent and excellent in our day represent the very principles for which these martyrs died and, dying, conquered. For those heroes were the first to dare earth's despots. They won the first victory over every form of vice and sin. They wove the first threads of the flag of liberty and made it indeed the banner of the morning, for they dyed it crimson in their heart's-blood. In all the history of freedom there is no chapter comparable for a moment to the glorious achievements of these men of oak and rock. Their deeds shine on the pages of history like stars blazing in the night and their achievements have long been celebrated in song and story. "The angels of martyrdom and victory," says Mazzini, "are brothers; both extend protecting wings over the cradle of the future life."
Sometimes it has happened that the brave deed of a single patriot has rallied wavering hosts, flashed the lightning through the centuries, and kindled whole nations into a holy enthusiasm. The opposing legions of soldiers and inquisitors went down before the heroism of the early church as darkness flees before the advancing sunshine. Society admires the scholar, but man loves the hero. Wisdom shines, but bravery inspires and lifts. Though centuries have passed, these noble deeds still nourish man's bravery and endurance. It was not given to these leaders to enter into the fruits of their labors. Vicariously they died. With a few exceptions, their very names remain unknown. But let us hasten to confess that their vicarious suffering stayed the onset of despotism and achieved our liberty. They ransomed us from serfdom and bought our liberty with a great price. Compared to those, our bravest deeds do seem but brambles to the oaks at whose feet they grow.
Having made much of the principles of the solidarity of society, science is now engaged in emphasizing the principle of vicarious service and suffering. The consecrated blood of yesterday is seen to be the social and spiritual capital of to-day. Indeed, the civil, intellectual and religious freedom and hope of our age are only the moral courage and suffering of past ages, reappearing under new and resplendent forms. The social vines that shelter us, the civic bough whose clusters feed us, all spring out of ancient graves. The red currents of sacrifice and the tides of the heart have nourished these social growths and made their blossoms crimson and brilliant. Nor could these treasures have been gained otherwise. Nature grants no free favors. Every wise law, institution and custom must be paid for with corresponding treasure. Thought itself takes toll from the brain. To be loved is good, indeed; but love must be paid for with toil, endurance, sacrifice—fuel that feeds love's flame.
Generous giving to-day is a great joy; but it is made possible only by years of thrift and economy. The wine costs the clusters. The linen costs the flax. The furniture costs the forests. The heat in the house costs the coal in the cellar. Wealth costs much toil and sweat by day. Wisdom costs much study and long vigils by night. Leadership costs instant and untiring pains and service. Character costs the long, fierce conflict with vice and sin. When Keats, walking in the rose garden, saw the ground under the bushes all covered with pink petals, he exclaimed; "Next year the roses should be very red!" When Aeneas tore the bough from the myrtle tree, Virgil says the tree exuded blood. But this is only a poet's way of saying that civilization is a tree that is nourished, not by rain and snow, but by the tears and blood of the patriots and prophets of yesterday.
Fortunately, in manifold ways, nature and life witness to the universality of vicarious service and suffering. Indeed, the very basis of the doctrine of evolution is the fact that the life of the higher rests upon the death of the lower. The astronomers tell us that the sun ripens our harvests by burning itself up. Each golden sheaf, each orange bough, each bunch of figs, costs the sun thousands of tons of carbon. Geike, the geologist, shows us that the valleys grow rich and deep with soil through the mountains, growing bare and being denuded of their treasure. Beholding the valleys of France and the plains of Italy all gilded with corn and fragrant with deep grass, where the violets and buttercups wave and toss in the summer wind, travelers often forget that the beauty of the plains was bought, at a great price, by the bareness of the mountains. For these mountains are in reality vast compost heaps, nature's stores of powerful stimulants. Daily the heat swells the flakes of granite; daily the frost splits them; daily the rains dissolve the crushed stone into an impalpable dust; daily the floods sweep the rich mineral foods down into the starving valleys. Thus the glory of the mountains is not alone their majesty of endurance, but also their patient, passionate beneficence as they pour forth all their treasures to feed richness to the pastures, to wreathe with beauty each distant vale and glen, to nourish all waving harvest fields. This death of the mineral is the life of the vegetable.
If now we descend from the mountains to explore the secrets of the sea, Maury and Guyot show us the isles where palm trees wave and man builds his homes and cities midst rich tropic fruits. There scientists find that the coral islands were reared above the waves by myriads of living creatures that died vicariously that man might live. And everywhere nature exhibits the same sacrificial principle. Our treasures of coal mean that vast forests have risen and fallen again for our factories and furnaces. Nobody is richer until somebody is poorer. Evermore the vicarious exchange is going on. The rock decays and feeds the moss and lichen. The moss decays to feed the shrub. The shrub perishes that the tree may have food and growth. The leaves of the tree fall that its boughs may blossom and bear fruit. The seeds ripen to serve the birds singing in all the boughs. The fruit falls to be food for man. The harvests lend man strength for his commerce, his government, his culture and conscience. The lower dies vicariously that the higher may live. Thus nature achieves her gifts only through vast expenditures.
It is said that each of the new guns for the navy costs $100,000. But the gun survives only a hundred explosions, so that every shot costs $1,000. Tyndall tells us that each drop of water sheathes electric power sufficient to charge 100,000 Leyden jars and blow the Houses of Parliament to atoms. Farraday amazes us by his statement of the energy required to embroider a violet or produce a strawberry. To untwist the sunbeam and extract the rich strawberry red, to refine the sugar, and mix its flavor, represents heat sufficient to run an engine from Liverpool to London or from Chicago to Detroit. But because nature does her work noiselessly we must not forget that each of her gifts also involves tremendous expenditure.
This law of vicarious service holds equally in the intellectual world. The author buys his poem or song with his life-blood. While traveling north from London midst a heavy snow-storm, Lord Bacon descended from his coach to stuff a fowl with snow to determine whether or not ice would preserve flesh. With his life the philosopher purchased for us the principle that does so much to preserve our fruits and foods through the summer's heat and lend us happiness and comfort. And Pascal, whose thoughts are the seeds that have sown many a mental life with harvests, bought his splendid ideas by burning up his brain. The professors who guided and loved him knew that the boy would soon be gone, just as those who light a candle in the evening know that the light, burning fast, will soon flicker out in the deep socket. One of our scientists foretells the time when, by the higher mathematics, it will be possible to compute how many brain cells must be torn down to earn a given sum of money; how much vital force each Sir William Jones must give in exchange for one of his forty languages and dialects; what percentage of the original vital force will be consumed in experiencing each new pleasure, or surmounting each new pain; how much nerve treasure it takes to conquer each temptation or endure each self-sacrifice. Too often society forgets that the song, law or reform has cost the health and life of the giver. Tradition says that, through much study, the Iliad cost Homer his eyes. There is strange meaning in the fact that Dante's face was plowed deep with study and suffering and written all over with the literature of sorrow.
To gain his vision of the hills of Paradise, Milton lost his vision of earth's beauteous sights and scenes. In explanation of the early death of Raphael and Burns, Keats and Shelley, it has been said that few great men who are poor have lived to see forty. They bought their greatness with life itself. A few short years ago there lived in a western state a boy who came up to his young manhood with a great, deep passion for the plants and shrubs. While other boys loved the din and bustle of the city, or lingered long in the library, or turned eager feet toward the forum, this youth plunged into the fields and forests, and with a lover's passion for his noble mistress gave himself to roots and seeds and flowers. While he was still a child he would tell on what day in March the first violet bloomed; when the first snowdrop came, and, going back through his years, could tell the very day in spring when the first robin sang near his window. Soon the boy's collection of plants appealed to the wonder of scholars. A little later students from foreign countries began to send him strange flowers from Japan and seeds from India. One midnight while he was lingering o'er his books, suddenly the white page before him was as red with his life-blood as the rose that lay beside his hand. And when, after two years in Colorado, friends bore his body up the side of the mountains he so dearly loved, no scholar in all our land left so full a collection and exposition of the flowers of that distant state as did this dying boy. His study and wisdom made all to be his debtors. But he bought his wisdom with thirty years of health and happiness. We are rich only because the young scholar, with his glorious future, for our sakes made himself poor.
Our social treasure also is the result of vicarious service and suffering. Sailing along the New England coasts, one man's craft strikes a rock and goes to the bottom. But where his boat sank there the state lifts a danger signal, and henceforth, avoiding that rock, whole fleets are saved. One traveler makes his way through the forest and is lost. Afterward other pilgrims avoid that way. Experimenting with the strange root or acid or chemical, the scholar is poisoned and dies. Taught by his agonies, others learn to avoid that danger.
Only a few centuries ago the liberty of thought was unknown. All lips were padlocked. The public criticism of a baron meant the confiscation of the peasant's land; the criticism of the pope meant the dungeon; the criticism of the king meant death. Now all are free to think for themselves, to sift all knowledge and public teachings, to cast away the chaff and to save the precious wheat. But to buy this freedom blood has flowed like rivers and tears have been too cheap to count.
To achieve these two principles, called liberty of thought and liberty of speech, some four thousand battles have been fought. In exchange, therefore, for one of these principles of freedom and happiness, society has paid—not cash down, but blood down; vital treasure for staining two thousand battle-fields. To-day the serf has entered into citizenship and the slave into freedom, but the pathway along which the slave and serf have moved has been over chasms filled with the bodies of patriots and hills that have been leveled by heroes' hands. Why are the travelers through the forests dry and warm midst falling rains? Why are sailors upon all seas comfortable under their rubber coats? Warm are they and dry midst all storms, because for twenty years Goodyear, the discoverer of India rubber, was cold and wet and hungry, and at last, broken-hearted, died midst poverty.
Why is Italy cleansed of the plagues that devastated her cities a hundred years ago? Because John Howard sailed on an infected ship from Constantinople to Venice, that he might be put into a lazaretto and find out the clew to that awful mystery of the plague and stay its power. How has it come that the merchants of our western ports send ships laden with implements for the fields and conveniences for the house into the South Sea Islands? Because such men as Patteson, the pure-hearted, gallant boy of Eton College, gave up every prospect in England to labor amid the Pacific savages and twice plunged into the waters of the coral reefs, amid sharks and devil-fish and stinging jellies, to escape the flight of poisoned arrows of which the slightest graze meant horrible death, and in that high service died by the clubs of the very savages whom he had often risked his life to save—the memory of whose life did so smite the consciences of his murderers that they laid "the young martyr in an open boat, to float away over the bright blue waves, with his hands crossed, as if in prayer, and a palm branch on his breast." And there, in the white light, he lies now, immortal forever.
And why did the representatives of five great nations come together to destroy the slave trade in Africa, and from every coast come the columns of light to journey toward the heart of the dark continent and rim all Africa around with little towns and villages that glow like lighthouses for civilization? Because one day Westminster Abbey was crowded with the great men of England, in the midst of whom stood two black men who had brought Livingstone's body from the jungles of Africa. There, in the great Abbey, faithful Susi told of the hero who, worn thin as parchment through thirty attacks of the African fever, refused Stanley's overtures, turned back toward Ulala, made his ninth attempt to discover the head-waters of the Nile and search out the secret lairs of the slave-dealers, only to die in the forest, with no white man near, no hand of sister or son to cool his fevered brow or close his glazing eyes. Faithful to the last to that which had been the great work of his life, he wrote these words with dying hand: "All I can add in my solitude is, may heaven's rich blessings come down on every one who would help to heal this open sore of the world!" Why was it that in the ten years after Livingstone's death, Africa made greater advancement than in the previous ten centuries? All the world knows that it was through the vicarious suffering of one of Scotland's noblest heroes. And why is it that Curtis says that there are three American orations that will live in history—Patrick Henry's at Williamsburg, Abraham Lincoln's at Gettysburg and Wendell Philips' at Faneuil Hall? A thousand martyrs to liberty lent eloquence to Henry's lips; the hills of Gettysburg, all billowy with our noble dead, exhaled the memories that anointed Lincoln's lips; while Lovejoy's spirit, newly martyred at Alton, poured over Wendell Phillips' nature the full tides of speech divine. Vicarious suffering explains each of these immortal scenes.
Long, too, the scroll of humble heroes whose vicarious services have exalted our common life. Recognizing this principle, Cicero built a monument to his slave, a Greek, who daily read aloud to his master, took notes of his conversation, wrote out his speeches and so lent the orator increased influence and power. Scott also makes one of his characters bestow a gift upon an aged servant. For, said the warrior, no master can ever fully recompense the nurse who cares for his children, or the maid who supplies their wants. To-day each giant of the industrial realm is compassed about with a small army of men who stand waiting to carry out his slightest behests, relieve him of details, halve his burdens, while at the same time doubling his joys and rewards. Lifted up in the sight of the entire community the great man stands on a lofty pedestal builded out of helpers and aids. And though here and now the honors and successes all go to the one giant, and his assistants are seemingly obscure and unrecognized, hereafter and there honors will be evenly distributed, and then how will the great man's position shrink and shrivel!
Here also are the parents who loved books and hungered for beauty, yet in youth were denied education and went all their life through concealing a secret hunger and ambition, but who determined that their children should never want for education. That the boy, therefore, might go to college, these parents rose up early to vex the soil and sat up late to wear their fingers thin, denying the eye beauty, denying the taste and imagination their food, denying the appetite its pleasures. And while they suffer and wane the boy in college grows wise and strong and waxing great, comes home to find the parents overwrought with service and ready to fall on death, having offered a vicarious sacrifice of love.
And here are our own ancestors. Soon our children now lying in the cradles of our state will without any forethought of theirs fall heir to this rich land with all its treasures material—houses and vineyards, factories and cities; with all its treasures mental—library and gallery, school and church, institutions and customs. But with what vicarious suffering were these treasures purchased! For us our fathers subdued the continents and the kingdoms, wrought freedom, stopped the mouths of wolves, escaped the sword of savages, turned to flight armies of enemies, subdued the forests, drained the swamps, planted vineyards, civilized savages, reared schoolhouses, builded churches, founded colleges. For four generations they dwelt in cabins, wore sheepskins and goatskins, wandered about exploring rivers and forests and mines, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, because of their love of liberty, and for the slave's sake were slain with the sword—of whom this generation is not worthy. "And these all died not having received the promise," God having reserved that for us to whom it has been given to fall heir to the splendid achievements of our Christian ancestors.
And what shall we more say, save only to mention those whose early death as well as life was vicarious? What an enigma seems the career of those cut off while yet they stand upon life's threshold! How proud they made our hearts, standing forth all clothed with beauty, health and splendid promise! What a waste of power, what a robbery of love, seemed their early death! But slowly it has dawned upon us that the footsteps that have vanished walk with us more frequently than do our nearest friends. And the sound of the voice that is still instructs us in our dreams as no living voice ever can. The invisible children and friends are the real children. Their memory is a golden cord binding us to God's throne, and drawing us upward into the kingdom of light. Absent, they enrich us as those present cannot. And so the child who smiled upon us and then went away, the son and the daughter whose talents blossomed here to bear fruit above, the sweet mother's face, the father's gentle spirit—their going it was that set open the door of heaven and made on earth a new world. These all lived vicariously for us, and vicariously they died!
No deeply reflective nature, therefore, will be surprised that the vicarious principle is manifest in the Savior of the soul. Rejecting all commercial theories, all judicial exchanges, all imputations of characters, let us recognize the universality of this principle. God is not at warfare with himself. If he uses the vicarious principle in the realm of matter he will use it in the realm of mind and heart. It is given unto parents to bear not only the weakness of the child, but also his ignorance, his sins—perhaps, at last, his very crimes. But nature counts it unsafe to permit any wrong to go unpunished. Nature finds it dangerous to allow the youth to sin against brain or nerve or digestion without visiting sharp penalties upon the offender. Fire burns, acids eat, rocks crush, steam scalds—always, always. Governments also find it unsafe to blot out all distinctions between the honest citizen and the vicious criminal. The taking no notice of sin keeps iniquity in good spirits, belittles the sanctity of law and blurs the conscience.
With God also penalties are warnings. His punishments are thorn hedges, safeguarding man from the thorns and thickets where serpents brood, and forcing his feet back into the ways of wisdom and peace. For man's integrity and happiness, therefore, conscience smites and is smiting unceasingly. Therefore, Eugene Aram dared not trust himself out under the stars at night, for these stars were eyes that blazed and blazed and would not relent. But why did not the murderer, Eugene Aram, forgive himself? When Lady Macbeth found that the water in the basin would not wash off the red spots, but would "the multitudinous seas incarnadine," why did not Macbeth and his wife forgive each other? Strange, passing strange, that Shakespeare thought volcanic fires within and forked lightning without were but the symbols of the storm that breaks upon the eternal orb of each man's soul. If David cannot forgive himself, if Peter cannot forgive Judas, who can forgive sins? "Perhaps the gods may," said Plato to Socrates. "I do not know," answered the philosopher. "I do not know that it would be safe for the gods to pardon." So the poet sends Macbeth out into the black night and the blinding storm to be thrown to the ground by forces that twist off trees and hiss among the wounded boughs and bleeding branches.
For poor Jean Valjean, weeping bitterly for his sins, while he watched the boy play with the buttercups and prayed that God would give him, the red and horny-handed criminal, to feel again as he felt when he pressed his dewy cheek against his mother's knee—for Jean Valjean is there no suffering friend, no forgiving heart? Is there no bosom where poor Magdalene can sob out her bitter confession? What if God were the soul's father! What if he too serves and suffers vicariously! What if his throne is not marble but mercy! What if nature and life do but interpret in the small this divine principle existing in the large in him who is infinite! [1] What if Calvary is God's eternal heartache, manifest in time! What if, sore-footed and heavy-hearted, bruised with many a fall, we should come back to the old home, from which once we fled away, gay and foolish prodigals! The time was when, as small boys and girls, with blinding tears, we groped toward the mother's bosom and sobbed out our bitter pain and sorrow with the full story of our sin. What if the form on Calvary were like the king of eternity, toiling up the hill of time, his feet bare, his locks all wet with the dew of night, while he cries: "Oh, Absalom! my son, my son, Absalom!" What if we are Absalom, and have hurt God's heart! Reason staggers. Groping, trusting, hoping, we fall blindly on the stairs that slope through darkness up to God. But, falling, we fall into the arms of Him who hath suffered vicariously for man from the foundation of the world.
[1] Eternal Atonement, p. 11.
GENIUS, AND THE DEBT OF STRENGTH.
"Paul says: 'I am a debtor.' But what had he received from the Greeks that he was bound to pay back? Was he a disciple of their philosophy? He was not. Had he received from their bounty in the matter of art? No. One of the most striking things in history is the fact that Paul abode in Athens and wrote about it, without having any impression made upon his imaginative mind, apparently, by its statues, its pictures or its temples. The most gorgeous period of Grecian art poured its light on his path, and he never mentioned it. The New Testament is as dead to art-beauty as though it had been written by a hermit in an Egyptian pyramid who had never seen the light of sun. Then what did he owe the Greeks? Not philosophy, not art, and certainly not religion, which was fetichism. Not a debt of literature, nor of art, nor of civil polity; not a debt of pecuniary obligation; not an ordinary debt. He had nothing from all these outside sources. The whole barbaric world was without the true knowledge of God. He had that knowledge and he owed it to every man who had it not. All the civilized world was, in these respects, without the true inspiration; and he owed it to them simply because they did not have it; and his debt to them was founded on this law of benevolence of which I have been speaking, which is to supersede selfishness, and according to which those who have are indebted to those who have not the world over."—Henry Ward Beecher.
CHAPTER V.
GENIUS, AND THE DEBT OF STRENGTH.
Booksellers rank "Quo Vadis" as one of the most popular books of the day. In that early era persecution was rife and cruelty relentless. It was the time of Caligula, who mourned that the Roman people had not one neck, so that he could cut it off at a single blow; of Nero, whose evening garden parties were lighted by the forms of blazing Christians; of Vespasian, who sewed good men in skins of wild beasts to be worried to death by dogs. In that day faith and death walked together.
Fulfilling such dangers, the disciples came together secretly at midnight. But the spy was abroad, and despite all precautions, from time to time brutal soldiers discovered the place of meeting, and, bursting in, dragged the worshipers off to prison. Then a cruel stratagem was adopted that looked to the discovery of those who secretly cherished faith. A decree went forth forbidding the jailer to furnish food, making the prisoners 'dependent' upon friends without.
To come forward as a friend of these endungeoned was to incur the risk of arrest and death, while to remain in hiding was to leave friends to die of starvation. Then men counted life not dear unto themselves. Heroism became a contagion. Even children dared death. An old painting shows the guard awakened at midnight and gazing with wonder upon a little child thrusting food between the iron bars to its father. In the darkness the soldiers sleeping in the corridors heard the rustling garments of some maiden or mother who loved life itself less than husband or friend. These tides of sympathy made men strong against torture; old men lifted joyful eyes toward those above them. Loving and beloved, the disciples shared their burdens, and those in the prison and those out of it together went to fruitful martyrdom.
When the flames of persecution had swept by and, for a time, good men had respite, Apollos recalled with joy the heroism of those without the prison who remembered the bonds of those within. With leaping heart he called before his mind the vast multitudes in all ages who so fettered through life—men bound by poverty and hedged in by ignorance; men baffled and beaten in life's fierce battle, bearing burdens of want and wretchedness, and by the heroism of the past he urged all men everywhere to fulfill that law of sympathy that makes hard tasks easy and heavy burdens light. Let the broad shoulders stoop to lift the load with weakness; let the wise and refined share the sorrows of the ignorant; let those whose health and gifts make them the children of freedom be abroad daily on missions of mercy to those whose feet are fettered; so shall life be redeemed out of its woe and want and sin through the Christian sympathy of those who "remember men in the bonds as bound with them."
Rejoicing in all of life's good things, let us confess that in our world-school the divine teachers are not alone happiness and prosperity, but also uncertainty and suffering, defeat and death. Inventors with steel plates may make warships proof against bombs, but no man hath invented an armor against troubles. The arrows of calamity are numberless, falling from above and also shot up from beneath. Like Achilles, each man hath one vulnerable spot. No palace door is proof against phantoms. Each prince's palace and peasant's cottage holds at least one bond-slave. Byron, with his club-foot, counted himself a prisoner pacing between the walls of his narrow dungeon. Keats, struggling against his consumption, thought his career that of the galley-slave. The mother, fastened for years to the couch of her crippled child, is bound by cords invisible, indeed, but none the less powerful. Nor is the bondage always physical. Here is the man who made his way out of poverty and loneliness toward wealth and position, yet maintained his integrity through all the fight, and stood in life's evening time possessed of wealth, but in a moment saw it crash into nothing and fell under bondage to poverty. And, here is some Henry Grady, a prince among men, the leader of the new South, his thoughts like roots drinking in the riches of the North; his speech like branches dropping bounty over all the tropic states, seeming to be the one indispensable man of his section, but who in the midst of his career is smitten and, dying, left his pilgrim band in bondage.
Here is Sir William Napier writing, "I am now old and feeble and miserable; my eyes are dim, very dim, with weeping for my lost child," and went on bound midst the thick shadows. Or here are the man and woman, set each to each like perfect music unto noble words, and one is taken—but Robert Browning was left to dwell in such sorrow that for a time he could not see his pen for the thick darkness. Here is the youth who by one sin fell out of man's regard, and struggling upward, found it was a far cry back to the lost heights, and wrote the story of his broken life in the song of "the bird with the broken pinion, that never flew as high again." Sooner or later each life passes under bondage. For all strength will vanish as the morning dew our joys take wings and flit away; the eye dim, the ear dull, the thought decay, our dearest die. Oft life's waves and billows chill us to the very marrow, while we gasp and shiver midst the surging tide. Then it is a blessed thing to look out through blinding tears upon a friendly face, to feel the touch of a friendly hand and to know there are some who "remember those in bonds, as bound with them."
Now this principle of social sympathy and liability gives us the secret of all the epoch-making men of our time. Carlyle once called Ruskin "the seer that guides his generation." More recently a prominent philanthropist said: "All our social reform movements are largely the influence of John Ruskin." How earned this man such meed of praise? Upon John Ruskin fortune poured forth all her gifts. He was born the child of supreme genius. He was heir to nearly a million dollars, and by his pen earned a fortune in addition. At the age of 21, when most young men were beginning their reading, he completed a book that put his name and fame in every man's mouth. "For a thousand who can speak, there is but one who can think; for a thousand who can think, there is but one who can see," and to this youth was given the open vision. In the hour of fame the rich and great vied to do him honor, and every door opened at his touch. But he turned aside to become the knight-errant of the poor. Walking along Whitechapel road he saw multitudes of shopmen and shopwomen whose stint was eighty hours a week, who toiled mid poisoned air until the brain reeled, the limbs trembled, and worn out physically and mentally they succumbed to spinal disease or premature age, leaving behind only enfeebled progeny, until the city's streets became graves of the human physique. In that hour London seemed to him like a prison or hospital; nor was it given to him to play upon its floor as some rich men do, knitting its straw into crowns that please; clutching at its dust in the cracks of the floor, to die counting the motes by millions. The youth "remembered men in bonds as bound with them." He tithed himself a tenth, then a third, then a half, and at length used up his fortune in noble service. He founded clubs for workingmen and taught them industry, honor and self-reliance. He bought spinning-wheels and raw flax, and made pauper women self-supporting. He founded the Sheffield Museum, and placed there his paintings and marbles, that workers in iron and steel might have the finest models and bring all their handiwork up toward beauty. He asked his art-students in Oxford to give one hour each day to pounding stones and filling holes in the street. When his health gave way Arnold Toynbee, foreman of his student gang, went forth to carry his lectures on the industrial revolution up and down the land. Falling on hard days and evil tongues and lying customs, he wore himself out in knightly service. So he gained his place among "the immortals." But the secret of his genius and influence is this: He fulfilled the debt of strength and the law of social sympathy and service.
This spirit of sympathetic helpfulness has also given us what is called "the new womanhood." To-day our civilization is rising to higher levels. Woman has brought love into law, justice into institutions, ethics into politics, refinement into the common life. Reforms have become possible that were hitherto impracticable. King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table marching forth for freeing some fair lady were never more soldierly than these who have become the friends and protectors of the poor. The movement began with Mary Ware, who after long absence journeyed homeward. While the coach stopped at Durham she heard of the villages near by where fever was emptying all the homes; and leaving the coach turned aside to nurse these fever-stridden creatures and light them through the dark valley. Then came Florence Nightingale and Mary Stanley, braving rough seas, deadly fever and bitter cold to nurse sick soldiers in Crimea, and returned to find themselves broken in health and slaves to pain, like those whom they remembered. Then rose up a great group of noble women like Mary Lyon and Sarah Judson, who journeyed forth upon errands of mercy into the swamps of Africa and the mountains of Asia, making their ways into garrets and tenements, missionaries of mercy and healing, Knights of the Red Cross and veritable "King's Daughters." No cottage so remote as not to feel this new influence.
Fascinating, also, the life-story of that fair, sweet girl who married Audubon. Yearning for her own home, yet finding that her husband would journey a thousand miles and give months to studying the home and haunts of a bird, she gave up her heart-dreams and went with him into the forest, dwelling now in tents, and now in some rude cabin, being a wanderer upon the face of the earth—until, when children came, she remained behind and dwelt apart. At last the naturalist came home after long absence to fulfill the long-cherished dream of years of quiet study with wife and children, but found that the mice had eaten his drawings and destroyed the sketches he had left behind. Then was he dumb with grief and dazed with pain, but it was his brave wife who led him to the gate and thrust him forth into the forest and sent him out upon his mission, saying that there was no valley so deep nor no wilderness so distant but that his thought, turning homeward, would see the light burning brightly for him. And in those dark days when our land trembled, and a million men from the north tramped southward and a million men from the south tramped northward, and the columns met with a concussion that threatened to rend the land asunder, there, in the battle, midst the din and confusion and blood, women walked, angels of light and mercy, not merely holding the cup of cold water to famished lips, or stanching the life-blood until surgeons came, but teaching soldier boys in the dying hour the way through the valley and beyond it up the heavenly hills. These all fulfilled their mission and "remembered those in bonds as bound with them."
This principle also has been and is the spring of all progress in humanity and civilization. Our journalists and orators pour forth unstinted praise upon the achievements of the nineteenth century. But in what realm lies our supremacy? Not in education, for our schools produce no such thinkers or universal scholars as Plato and his teacher; not in eloquence, for our orators still ponder the periods of the oration "On the Crown;" not in sculpture or architecture, for the broken fragments of Phidias are still models for our youth. The nature of our superiority is suggested when we speak of the doing away with the exposure of children, the building of homes, hospitals and asylums for the poor and weak; the caring for the sick instead of turning them adrift; the support of the aged instead of burying them alive; the diminished frequency of wars; the disappearance of torture in obtaining testimony; humanity toward the shipwrecked, where once luring ships upon the rocks was a trade; the settlement of disputes by umpires and of national differences by arbitration.
Humanity and social sympathy are the glory of our age. Society has come to remember that those in bonds are bound by them. Indeed, the application of this principle to the various departments of human life furnishes the historian with the milestones of human progress. The age of Sophocles was not shocked when the poet wrote the story of the child exposed by the wayside to be adopted by some passer-by, or torn in pieces by wild dogs, or chilled to death in the cold. When the wise men brought their gold and frankincense to the babe in the manger, men felt the sacredness of infancy. As the light from the babe in Correggio's "Holy Night" illumined all the surrounding figures, so the child resting in the Lord's arms for shelter and sacred benediction began to shed luster upon the home and to lead the state. To-day the nurture and culture in the schools are society's attempt to remember the little ones in bonds. Fulfilling the same law Xavier, with his wealth and splendid talents, remembered bound ones and journeyed through India, penetrating all the Eastern lands, being physician for the sick, nurse for the dying, minister for the ignorant; his face benignant; his eloquence, love; his atmosphere, sympathy; carrying his message of peace to the farther-most shores of the Chinese Sea, through his zeal for "those who were in bonds." And thus John Howard visited the prisons of Europe for cleansing these foul dens and wiped from the sword of justice its most polluting stain. Fulfilling the debt of strength, Wilberforce and Garrison, Sumner and Brown, fronted furious slave-holders, enduring every form of abuse and vituperation and personal violence, and destroyed the infamous traffic in human flesh.
This new spirit of sympathy and service it is that offers us help in solving the problems of social unrest and disquietude. Events will not let us forget that ours is an age of industrial discontent. Society is full of warfare. Prophets of evil tidings foretell social revolution. The professional agitators are abroad, sowing discord and nourishing hatred and strife, and even the optimists sorrowfully confess the antagonism between classes. There is an industrial class strong and happy, both rich and poor; and there is an idle class weak and wicked and miserable, among both rich and poor. Unfortunately, as has been said, the wise of one class contemplate only the foolish of the other. The industrious man of means is offended by the idle beggar, and identifies all the poor with him, and the hard-working but poor workman despises the licentious luxury of one rich man, and identifies all the rich with him. But there are idle poor and idle rich and busy poor and busy rich. "If the busy rich people watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be well; and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people all would be right. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had $10,000 a year, and many a man of large fortune is busier than his errand boy."
Forgetting this, some poor look upon the rich as enemies and desire to pillage their property, and some rich have only epithets for the poor. Now, wise men know that there is no separation of rich industrious classes and the poor industrious classes, for they differ only as do two branches of one tree. This year one bough is full of bloom, and the other bears only scantily, but next year the conditions will be reversed. Wealth and poverty are like waves; what is now crest will soon be trough. Such conditions demand forbearance and mutual sympathy. Some men are born with little and some with large skill for acquiring wealth, the two differing as the scythe that gathers a handful of wheat differs from the reaper built for vast harvests and carrying the sickle of success. For generations the ancestors back of one man's father were thrifty and the ancestors back of his mother were far-sighted, and the two columns met in him, and like two armies joined forces for a vast campaign for wealth. Beside him is a brother, whose thoughts and dreams go everywhither with the freedom of an eagle, but who walks midst practical things with the eagle's halting gait. The strong one was born, not for spoiling his weaker brother, but to guard and guide and plan for him.
This is the lesson of nature—the strong must bear the burdens of the weak. To this end were great men born. Nature constantly exhibits this principle. The shell of the peach shelters the inner seed; the outer petals of the bud the tender germ; the breast of the mother-bird protects the helpless birdlets; the eagle flies under her young and gently eases them to the ground; above the babe's helplessness rise the parents' shield and armor. God appoints strong men, the industrial giants, to protect the weak and poor. The laws of helpfulness ask them to forswear a part of their industrial rights; and they fulfill their destiny only by fulfilling the debt of strength to weakness.
To identify one's self with those in bonds is the very core of the Christian life. Not an intellectual belief within, not a form of worship without, but sympathetic helpfulness betokens the true Christian. God, who hath endowed the soul with capacity to endure all labors and pains for wealth, to consume away the very springs of life for knowledge, hath also given it power for pouring itself out in great resistless tides of love and sympathy. For beauty and royal majesty nothing else is comparable to the love of some royal nature. A loving heart exhales sweet odors like an alabaster box; it pours forth joy like a sweet harp; it flashes beauty like a casket of gems; it cheers like a winter's fire; it carries sweet stimulus like returning sunshine. We have all known a few great-hearted men and women who have through years distributed their love-treasures among the little children of the community and scattered affection among the poor and the weak, until the entire community comes to feel that it lives in them and without them will die. Happy the man who hath stored up such treasures of mind and heart as that he stands forth among his fellows like a lighthouse on some ledge, sending guiding rays far out o'er dark and troubled seas. Happy the woman whose ripened affection and inspiration have permeated the common life until to her come the poor and weak and heart-broken, standing forth like some beauteous bower offering shade and filling all the air with sweet perfume.
In crisis hours the patriot and martyr, the hero and the philanthropist, die for the public good, but not less do they serve their fellows who live and through years employ their gifts and heart-treasures, not for themselves, but for the happiness and highest welfare of others. Richter, the German artist, painted a series of paintings illustrating the ministry of angels. He showed us the child-angels who sit talking with mortal children among the flowers, now holding them by their coats lest they fall upon the stairs, now with apples enticing them back when they draw too near the precipice; when the boy grows tall and is tempted, ringing in the chambers of memory the sweet mother's name; in the hour of death coming in the garb of pilgrim, made ready for convoy and guidance to the heavenly land. Oh beautiful pictures! setting forth the sacred ministry of each true Christian heart.
History tells of the servant whose master was sold into Algeria, and who sold himself and wandered years in the great desert in the mere hope of at last finding and freeing his lord; of the obscure man in the Eastern city who, misunderstood and unpopular, left a will stating that he had been poor and suffered for lack of water, and so had starved and slaved through life to build an aqueduct for his native town, that the poor might not suffer as he had; of the soldier in the battle, wounded in cheek and mouth and dying of thirst, but who would not drink lest he should spoil the water for others, and so yielded up his life. But this capacity of sacrifice and sympathy is but the little in man answering to what is large in God. Here deep answers unto deep. The definition of the Divine One is, he remembers those in bonds, and it is more blessed to give than to receive; more blessed to feed the hungry than starving to be fed; more blessed to pour light on darkened misunderstanding than ignorant to be taught; more blessed to open the path through the wilderness of doubt than wandering to be guided; more blessed to bring in the bewildered pilgrim than to be lost and rescued; more blessed to forgive than to be forgiven; to save than to be saved.
THE TIME ELEMENT IN INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER AND SOCIAL GROWTH.
"All that we possess has come to us by way of a long path. There is no instantaneous liberty or wisdom or language or beauty or religion. Old philosophies, old agriculture, old domestic arts, old sciences, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, old modes of travel and commerce, old forms of government and religion have all come in gracefully or ungracefully and have said: 'Progress is king, and long live the king!' Year after year the mind perceives education to expand, art sweeps along from one to ten, music adds to its early richness, love passes outwardly from self towards the race, friendships become laden with more pleasure, truths change into sentiments, sentiments blossom into deeds, nature paints its flowers and leaves with richer tints, literature becomes the more perfect picture of a more perfect intellect, the doctrines of religion become broader and sweeter in their philosophy."—David Swing.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TIME ELEMENT IN INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER AND SOCIAL GROWTH.
For all lovers of their kind, nothing is so hard to bear as the slowness of the upward progress of society. It is not simply that the rise of the common people is accompanied with heavy wastes and losses, it is that the upward movement is along lines so vast as to make society's growth seem tardy, delayed, or even reversed. Doubtless the drift of the ages is upward, but this progress becomes apparent only when age is compared with age and century with century. It is not easy for some Bruno or Wickliffe, sowing the good seed of liberty and toleration in one century, to know that not until another century hath passed will the precious harvest be reaped. Man is accustomed to brief intervals. Not long the space between January's snowdrifts and June's red berries. Brief the interval between the egg and the eagle's full flight. Scarcely a score of years separates the infant of days from the youth of full stature. Trained to expect the April seed to stand close beside the August sheaf, it is not easy for man to accustom himself to the processes of him with whom four-score years are but a handbreadth and a thousand years as but one day.
To man, therefore, toiling upon his industry, his art, his government, his religion, comes this reflection: Because the divine epochs are long, let not the patriot or parent be sick with hope long deferred. Let the reformer sow his seed untroubled when the sickle rusts in the hand that waits for its harvest. Remember that as things go up in value, the period between inception and fruition is protracted. Because the plant is low, the days between seed and sheaf are few and short; because the bird is higher, months stand between egg and eagle. But manhood is a thing so high, culture and character are harvests so rich as to ask years and even ages for ripening, while God's purposes for society involve such treasures of art, wisdom, wealth, law, liberty, as to ask eons and cycles for their full perfection. Therefore let each patriot and sage, each reformer and teacher be patient. The world itself is a seed. Not until ages have passed shall it burst into bloom and blossom.
Troubled by the strifes of society, depressed by the waste of its forces and the delays of its columns, he who seeks character for himself and progress for his kind, oft needs to shelter himself beneath that divine principle called the time-element for the individual and the race. Optimists are we; our world is God's; wastes shall yet become savings and defeats victories; nevertheless, life's woes, wrongs and delays are such as to stir misgiving. The multitudes hunger for power and influence, hunger for wealth and wisdom, for happiness and comfort; satisfaction seems denied them. Watt and Goodyear invent, other men enter into the fruit of their inventions; Erasmus and Melanchthon sow the good seeds of learning; two centuries pass by before God's angels count the bundles. In a passion of enthusiasm for England's poor, Cobden wore his life out toiling for the corn laws. The reformer died for the cotton-spinners as truly as if he had slit his arteries and emptied out the crimson flood. But when the victory was won, the wreath of fame was placed upon another's brow. One day Robert Peel arose in the House of Commons and in the presence of an indignant party and an astounded country, proudly said: "I have been wrong. I now ask Parliament to repeal the law for which I myself have stood. Where there was discontent, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, I see peace, where there was disloyalty, I see loyalty." Then the fury of party anger burst upon him, and bowing to the storm, Robert Peel went forth while men hissed after him such words as "traitor," "coward," "recreant leader." Nor did he foresee that in losing an office he had gained the love of a country.
What delays also in justice! What recognition does society withhold from its heroes! What praise speaks above the pulseless corpse that is denied the living, hungering heart! What gold coin spent for the marble wreath by those who have no copper for laurel for the living hero! How do rewards that dazzle in prospect, in possession, burst like gaudy bubbles! Honors are evanescent; reputation is a vapor; property takes wings; possessions counted firm as adamant dissolve like painted clouds; in the hour of depression the hand drops its tool, the heart its task. In such dark hours and moods, strong men reflect that he who sows the good seed of liberty or culture or character must have long patience until the harvest; that as things go up in value they ask for longer time; that he is the true hero who redeems himself out of present defeat by the foresight of far-off and future victory; that that man has a patent of nobility from God himself who can lay out his life upon the principle that a thousand years are as one day. The truly great man takes long steps by God's side, has the courage of the future; working, he can also wait.
For man, fulfilling such a career, no principle hath greater practical value than this one; as things rise in the scale of value the interval between seedtime and harvest must lengthen. Happily for us, God hath capitalized this principle in nature and life. Each gardener knows that what ripens quickest is of least worth. The mushroom needs only a night; the moss asks a week for covering the fallen tree; the humble vegetable asks several weeks and the strawberry a few months; but, planting his apple tree, the gardener must wait a few years for his ripened russet, and the woodsman many years for the full-grown oak or elm. If in thought we go back to the dawn of creation—to that moment when sun and planet succeeded to clouds of fire, when a red-hot earth, cooling, put on an outer crust, when gravity drew into deep hollows the waters that cooled the earth and purified the upper air—and then follow on in nature's footsteps, passing up the stairway of ascending life from lichen, moss and fern, on to the culminating moment in man, we shall ever find that increase of value means an increase of time for growth. The fern asks days, the reed asks weeks, the bird for months, the beast for a handful of years, but man for an epoch measured by twenty years and more. To grow a sage or a statesman nature asks thirty years with which to build the basis of greatness in the bone and muscle of the peasant grandparents, thirty years in which to compact the nerve and brain of parents; thirty years more in which the heir of these ancestral gifts shall enter into full-orbed power and stand forth fully furnished for his task. Nature makes a dead snowflake in a night, but not a living star-flower. For her best things nature asks long time.
The time-principle holds equally in man's social and industrial life. To-day our colleges have their anthropological departments and our cities their museums. The comparative study of the dress, weapons, tools, houses, ships of savage and civilized races gives an outline view of the progress of society. How fragile and rude the handiwork of savages! How quickly are the wants provided for! A few fig leaves make a full summer suit for the African and the skin of an ox his garb for winter. But civilized man must toil long upon his loom for garments of wool and fine silk. Slowly the hollow log journeys toward the ocean steamer; slowly the forked stick gives place to the steam-plow, the slow ox to the swift engine; slowly the sea-shell, with three strings tied across its mouth, develops into the many-mouthed pipe-organ. But if rude and low conveniences represent little time and toil, these later inventions represent centuries of arduous labor. In his history of the German tribes, Tacitus gives us a picture of a day's toil for one of the forest children. Moving to the banks of some new stream, the rude man peels the bark from the tree and bends it over the tent pole; with a club he beats down the nuts from the branches; with a round stone he knocks the squirrel from the bough; another hour suffices for cutting a line from the ox's hide and, hastily making a hook out of the wishbone of the bird, he draws the trout from its stream. But if for savage man a day suffices for building and provisioning the tent, the accumulated wisdom of centuries is required for the home of to-day. One century offers an arch for the door, another century offers glass windows, another offers wrought nails and hinges, another plaster that will receive and hold the warm colors, another offers the marble, tapestry, picture and piano, the thousand conveniences for use and beauty.
Husbandry also represents patience and the labor of generations. Were it given to the child, tearing open the golden meat of the fruit, to trace the ascent of the tree, he would see the wild apple or bitter orange growing in the edge of the ancient forest. But man, standing by the fruit, grafted it for sweetness, pruned it for the juicy flow, nourished it for taste and color. Could he who picks the peach or pear have this inner vision, he would behold an untold company of husbandmen standing beneath the branches and pointing to their special contributions. The fathers labored, the children entered into the fruitage of the labor in his dream; the poet slept in St. Peter's and saw the shadowy forms of all the architects and builders from the beginning of time standing about him and giving their special contributions to Bramante and Angelo's great temple. Thus many hands have toiled upon man's house, man's art, industry, invention.
In the realm of law and liberty the best things ask for patience and waiting. Out of nothing nothing comes. The institution that represents little toil but little time endures. Man's early history is involved in obscurity, largely because his early arts were mushroomic—completed quickly, they quickly perished. The ideas scratched upon the flat leaf or the thin reed represented scant labor and therefore soon were dust. But he who holds in his hand a modern book holds the fruitage of years many and long. For that book we see the workmen ranging far for linen; we see the printer toiling upon his movable types; we see the artist etching his plate; the author giving his days to study and his nights to reflection; and because the book harvests the study of a great man's lifetime it endures throughout generations. The sciences also increase in value only as the time spent upon them is lengthened. Few and brief were the days required for the early astronomers to work out the theory that the earth is flat, the sky a roof, the stars holes in which the gods have hung lighted lamps. The theory that makes our earth sweep round the sun, our sun sweep round a far-off star, all lesser groups sweep round one central sun, that shepherds all the other systems, asks for the toil of Galileo and Kepler, of Copernicus and Newton, and a great company of modern students. The father of astronomy had to wait a thousand years for the fruition of his science. Upon those words, called law or love, or mother or king, man hath with patience labored. The word wife or mother is so rich to-day as to make Homer's ideal, Helen, seem poor and almost contemptible. The girl was very beautiful, but very painful the alacrity with which she passes from the arms of Menelaus to the arms of Paris, from the arms of Paris to those of Deiphobus, his conqueror. If one hour only was required for this lovely creature to pack her belongings preparatory to moving to the tent of her new lord, one day fully sufficed for transferring her affections from one prince to another. But, toiling ever upward to her physical beauty, woman added mental beauty, moral beauty, until the word wife or mother or home came to have almost infinite wealth of meaning.
In government also the best political instruments ask for longest time. Hercules ruled by the right of physical strength. Assembling the people, he challenged all rivals to combat. A single hour availed for cutting off the head of his enemy. Henceforth he reigned an unchallenged king. Because man hath with patience toiled long upon this republic, how rich and complex its institutions! The modern presidency does not represent the result of an hour's combat between two Samsons. Forty years ago the eager aspirants began their struggle. A great company of young men all over the land determined to build up a reputation for patriotism, statesmanship, wisdom and character. As the time for selecting a president approached, the people passed in review all these leaders. When two or more were finally chosen out, there followed months in which the principles of the candidates were sifted and analyzed. "I know of no more sublime spectacle," said Stuart Mill, "than the election of the ruler under the laws of the republic. If the voice of the people is ever the voice of God, if any ruler rules by divine right, it is when millions of freemen, after long consideration, elect one man to be their appointed guide and leader." If a single hour availed for Samson to settle the question of his sovereignty, free institutions ask for their statesmen to have the patience of years; working, they must also wait.
With long patience also man has worked and waited as he has toiled upon his idea of religion. Rude, indeed, man's hasty thoughts of the infinite. In early days the sun was God's eye, the thunder his voice, the stroke of the earthquake the stroke of his arm, the harvest indicated his pleasure, the pestilence his anger. In such an age the priest and philosopher taxed their genius to invent methods of preserving the friendship and avoiding the anger of the Infinite. Daily the king and general calculated how many sheep and oxen they must slay to avoid defeat in battle. Daily the husbandman and farmer calculated how many doves and lambs must be killed to avert blight from the vineyard and hailstorms from the harvests. Observing that when the king ascended to the throne the slaves put their necks under his heel and covered their bodies with dust, in their haste the priests concluded that by degrading man God would be exalted. Prostrating themselves in dirt and rags, men went down in order that by contrast the throne of God might rise up. The mud was made thick upon man's brow that the crown upon the brow of God might be made brilliant. Out of this degrading thought grew the idea that God lived and ruled for his own gratification and self-glory. The infinite throne was unveiled as a throne of infinite self-aggrandizement. Slowly it was perceived that the parent who makes all things move about himself as a center, ever monopolizing the best food, the best place, the best things, at last becomes a monster of selfishness and suffers an awful degradation, while he who sacrifices himself for others is the true hero.
At last, Christ entered the earthly scene with his golden rule and his new commandment of love. He unveiled God, not as desiring to be ministered to, but as ministering; as being rich, yet for man's sake becoming poor; as asking little, but giving much; as caring for the sparrow and lily; as waiting upon each beetle, bird and beast, and caring for each detail of man's life. Slowly the word God increased in richness. Having found through his telescope worlds so distant as to involve infinite power, man emptied the idea of omnipotence into the word GOD; finding an infinite wisdom in the wealth of the summers and winters, man added the idea of omniscience; noting a certain upward tendency in society, man added the word, "Providence;" gladdened by God's mercy, man added ideas of forgiveness and love. Slowly the word grew. In the olden time people entering the Acropolis cast their gifts of gold and silver into some vase. Last of all came the prince to empty in jewels and flashing gems and make the vase to overflow. Not otherwise Christ emptied vast wealth of meaning into those words called "conscience," "law," "love," "vicarious suffering," "immortality," "God." Beautiful, indeed, the simplicity of Christ. With long patience, man waited for the unveiling of the face of divine love.
To all patriots and Christian men who seek to use occupation and profession so as to promote the world's upward growth comes the reflection that henceforth society's progress must be slow, because its institutions are high and complex. To-day many look into the future with shaded eyes of terror. In the social unrest and discontent of our times timid men see the brewing of a social and industrial storm. In their alarm, amateur reformers bring in social panaceas, conceived in haste and born in fear. But God cannot be hurried. His century plants cannot be forced to blossom in a night. No reformer can be too zealous for man's progress, though he can be too impatient. In these days, when civilization has become complex and the fruitage high, those who work must also wait and with patience endure.
Multitudes are abroad trying to settle the labor problem. The labor problem will never be settled until the last man lies in the graveyard. Each new inventor reopens the labor problem. Men were contented with their wages until Gutenberg invented his type and made books possible; then straightway every laborer asked an increased wage, that though he died ignorant his children might be intelligent. When society had readjusted things and man had obtained the larger wage, Arkwright came, inventing his new loom, Goodyear came with the use of rubber, and straightway men asked a new wage to advantage themselves of woolen garments and rubber goods for miners and sailors. On the morrow 15,000,000 children will enter the schoolroom; before noon the teacher has given them a new outlook upon some book, some picture, some convenience, some custom. Each child registers the purpose to go home immediately and cry to his parent for that book or picture; that tool or comfort. When the parents return that night the labor question has been reopened in millions of homes.
Intelligence is emancipating man. Ignorance is a constant invitation to oppression. So long as workmen are ignorant, governments will oppress them; wealth will oppress them; religious machinery will oppress them. Education can make man's wrists too large to be holden of fetters. In the autumn the forest trees tighten the bark, but when April sap runs through the trees the trunk swells, the bark is strained and despite all protests it splits and cracks. The splitting of the bark saves the life of the tree. The soft, balmy air of April is passing over the world and succeeding to the winter of man's discontent. Old ideas are being rent asunder and old institutions are being succeeded by new ones. God is abroad destroying that he may save. In every age he makes the discontent of the present to be the prophecy of the higher civilization. Despite all the pessimists and the croakers, the ideas of manhood were never so high as to-day, and the number of those whose hearts are knitted in with their kind was never so large nor so noble. The movement may be slow, but it is because the social organs are complex and intricate. With long patience man must work and also wait.
In the world of business, also, the time element exerts striking influence. To-day our land is filled with men who have sown the seed of thought and purpose, but whose harvest is of so high a quality that with long patience must they wait for the fruition. How pathetic the reverses of the last four years. The condition of our land as to the overthrows of its leaders answers to the condition in Poland when Kossuth and his fellow patriots, accustomed to life's comforts and its luxuries, went forth penniless exiles to accustom themselves to menial toil, to hardship and extreme poverty. His heart must be of iron who can behold those who have been leaders of the industrial column, who now stand aside and see the multitude sweep by. Just at the moment of expected victory misfortune overtook them and brought their structure down in ruins. And because the seed they have sown is not physical, but mental and moral, the fruition is long postponed.
Walter Scott tells the story of a wounded knight, who took refuge in the castle of a baron that proved to be a secret enemy and threw the knight into a dungeon; one day in his cell the knight heard the sound of distant music approaching. Drawing near the slit in the tower, he saw the flash of swords and heard the tramp of marching men. At last the wounded hero realized that these were his own troops, marching by in ignorance of the fact that the lord of this castle was also the jailer of their general. While the knight tugged at his chain, lifted up his voice and cried aloud, his troops marched on, their music drowning out his cries. Soon the banners passed from sight, the last straggler disappeared behind the hill and the captive was left alone. The brave knight died in his dungeon, but the story of his heroism lived. What the knight learned in suffering the poets have taught in song. The captive hero has a permanent place in civilization, though the foresight of his influence was denied him.
Those whose harvest is delayed are a great company. Elizabeth Barrett Browning exclaiming, "I have not used half the powers God has given me," poets dying ere the day was half done; the inventors and reformers denied their ideals; obscure and humble workmen—the mechanic who emancipates man by his machine; the artisan whose conveniences are endless benefactions to our homes; the smith whose honest anchor holds the ship in time of storm—all these labored and died without seeing the fruitage, but other men entered into their labors.
To parents who have passed through all the thunder of life's battle and stand at the close of life's day discouraged because children are unripe, thoughtless and immature; to publicists and teachers, sowing God's precious seed, but denied its harvests; to individuals seeking to perfect their character within themselves comes this thought—that character is a harvest so rich as to ask for long waiting and the courage of far-off results. Nature can perfect physical processes in twenty years, but long time is asked for teaching the arm skill, the tongue its grace of speech, to clothe reason with sweetness and light, to cast error out of the judgment, to teach the will hardness and the heart hope and endurance.
Four hundred years passed by before the capstone was placed upon the Cathedral of Cologne, but no trouble requires such patient toil as the structure of manhood. For complexity and beauty nothing is comparable to character. Great artists spend years upon a single picture. With a touch here and a touch there they approach it, and when a long period hath passed they bring it to completion. Yet all the beauty of paintings, all the grace of statues, all the grandeur of cathedrals are as nothing compared to the painting of that inner picture, the chiseling of that inner manhood, the adornment of that inner temple, that is scarcely begun when the physical life ends. How majestic the full disclosure of an ideal manhood! With what patience must man wait for its completion! Here lies the hope of immortality; it does not yet appear what man shall be.