THE THUNDER OF SILENT FIDELITY:
A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF LITTLE THINGS.
"We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands; and what is true of Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most reverently when most habitually; our insolence is in ever acting without reference to it, our true honoring of it is in its universal application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing, but my excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in our lives. The snow, the vapour and the strong wind fulfil His word. Are our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these, that we should forget it?"—Ruskin.
"I expect to pass through this life but once. If there is any kindness or any good thing I can do to my fellow-beings let me do it now. I shall pass this way but once."—-William Penn.
CHAPTER X.
THE THUNDER OF SILENT FIDELITY:
A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF LITTLE THINGS.
Schliemann, uncovering marbles upon which Phidias and his followers carved out immortality for themselves, has not wrought more effectually for the increase of knowledge than have those excavators in Egypt who have uncovered the Rosetta stone, with other manuscripts of brick and marble. Of all these instructive tablets and tombs, none are more interesting than one picturing forth a national festival in the Jewish capital. Upon his canvas of stone the unknown artist portrays for us Herod's temple with its outer courts and columns and its massive walls.
We see the public square crowded with merchants and traders, who have come in from the great cities of the world to this festival of the fathers. With solemn pageantry, these Jews, who were the bankers and merchants of that far-off age, march through the streets toward the gate that is called Beautiful. In the vast parade are men notable by their princely wealth in Ephesus and Antioch, in Alexandria and Rome. We see one advancing with his retinue of servants, another with the train which corresponds to his wealth. One group the artist exhibits as characteristic. Advancing before their lord and master are four servants, who lift up in the presence of admiring spectators a platter upon which lies a heap of shining gold. The murmur of admiration that runs through the crowd is sweeter to the old merchant's ear than any music of harp or human voice. Passing by the treasury, what gifts are cast upon the resounding table! How heavy the bars of gold! What silver plate! What pearls and jewels! How rich the fabrics and hangings for the temple! As at St. Peter in the sixteenth century, so in Christ's day it seemed as if the whole world were being swept for treasures for enriching this glorious temple.
But when the lions of the procession had all passed by, there followed also the crowd of stragglers. From this post of observation we are told that Christ saw a poor widow advancing. With falling tears, yet with exquisite grace and tenderness, she cast in two mites, or one half-penny, then passed on to worship him whom she loved, all unconscious of the fact that she had also passed into immortality. For the noise of the gold falling into the resounding chest has long since died away. Jerusalem itself is in ruins. The old temple with its magnificence has gone to decay. The proud thrones and monarchies have all fallen into dust. But the silent fidelity of this obscure woman is a voice that thunders down the long aisles of time. A thousand times hath she encouraged heroism in poet and parent. Ten thousand times hath she been an inspiration to reformers and martyrs! Love and fidelity have embalmed her deed and lent her immortality. In the very center of the world's civilization stands her monument. For her Arc de Triomphe has been built in the human heart. Her monument does not appeal to the eye; it is not carved in stone; yet it is more permanent than gold, and her fame outshines all flashing jewels. While love and admiration endure the story of her humble fidelity shall abide indestructible!
The great Italian first noted that thrice only did Christ stretch forth his hand to build a monument, and each time it was to immortalize a deed of humble fidelity. Once a disciple gave a cup of cold water to one of God's little ones, and won thereby imperishable renown. Once a woman broke an alabaster box for her master, and, lo! her deed has been like a broken vase, whose perfume has exhaled for two thousand years, and shall go on diffusing sweetness to the end of time. Last of all, after the rich men of Alexandria had cast their rattling gold into the brazen treasury, a poor widow cast a speck of dust called two mites, and, lo! this humble deed gave her enduring recollection.
It seems that immortal renown is achieved not so much by the solitary deed of greatness as by humble fidelity to life's details, and that modest Christian living that regards small deeds and minor duties. Ours is a world in which life's most perfect gifts and sweetest blessings are little things. Take away love, daily work, sweet sleep, and palaces become prisons and gold seems contemptible. The classic poet tells of Kind [Transcriber's note: King?] Midas, to whom was offered whatsoever he wished, and whose avarice led him to choose the golden touch. But lo! his blessing became a curse. Rising to dress he found himself shivering in a coat with threads of gold. Going into his garden he stooped to breathe the perfume of the roses, and, lo! the dewy petals became yellow points that pierced his face. Breakfasting, the bread became metal in his mouth. Lifting a goblet the water became a solid mass. Swinging his little daughter in his arms one kiss turned the sweet child into a cold statue. A single hour availed to drive happiness from Midas' heart. In an agony of despair he besought the gods for simple things. He asked for one cup of cold water, one cluster of fruit and his little daughter's loving heart and hand.
And as with wealth, so wisdom without life's little things is impotent for happiness. Genius hath its charm; nevertheless, the wisest of men have also been the saddest of men. The story of literary greatness is a piteous tale. History tells of many beautiful and gifted girls who have married scholars for their genius, fame and position. When these honors were theirs they wakened to discover that all were less than nothing, since tenderness refused its mite and sympathy gave cot its cup of cold water. Home and fame became dungeons in which the soul sat and famished for love's little courtesies.
For no palace was ever so beautiful, no royal wine quaffed from vessels of gold was ever so sweet as to satisfy hearts famishing for one mite of that heavenly manna love prepares, or one cup filled with kindness.
Down in a corner of a window of an English palace may be found faint lines scratched with a woman's diamond. What a tragedy in those words, "My prison!" It seems the sweet girl, Jane Grey, entered her palace with a leaping heart, but her lord had no time to break upon her white forehead the tiny box of life's ointment. Hers was the palace; hers also a thousand rich gifts called titles, lands, castles, maids of honor, dresses, jewels. Yet because the castles held no sweet courtesies the journal of that beautiful girl reminds us of some young bird that beats with bloody wings against the bars of an iron cage. For life is made up not of joys few and intense, but of joys many and gentle. Great happiness is the sum of many small drops. God makes the days that are channels of mighty and tumultuous joys to be few and far between. For highly spiced joys exhaust. All who seek intense pleasure will find not enjoyment but yearnings for enjoyment. Happiness is in simple things; a cup of cold water, health and a perfect day; dreamless sleep, honest toil, the esteem of the worthy, the caresses of little children, a love that waxes with the increasing years.
Our appreciation of the principle that greatness of any form is an accumulation of little deeds will be freshened by an outlook upon nature's method. The old science unveiled the universe as a divine thought rushing into instant form, stars and suns being sparks struck out on the anvil of omnipotence. The new science has found that earth's every atom has been slowly polished by an infinite artisan and architect. If we descend into the sea we shall find that the reefs and islands against which the tides of the Pacific dash in vain are built of coral insects, whose every organ exhibits the delicate skill of a diamond or snowflake. If we stand upon the fruitful plain where men build cities we shall discern that each flake of the rich soil represents the perfect crystallization of drops of melted granite. If we take the wings of the morning and dwell upon the summit of the Matterhorn there also we find that the mountain hath its height and majesty through particles themselves weak and little. For the geologist who analyzes the topmost peak of the Alpine ridge must go back to a little flake of mica, that ages and ages ago floated along some one of earth's rivers, too light to sink, too feeble to find the fiber of a lichen, therefore dropped into the ooze of mire and decay. Yet hardened by earth's processes, the day came when that flake of mica was lifted up upon the mountain's peak, wrought into the strength of imperishable iron, "rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, capping the very summit of the Alpine tower. Above it—that little obscure mica flake—the north winds rage, yet all in vain, below it—the feeble mica flake—the snowy hills lie bowing themselves like flocks of sheep, and the distant kingdoms fade away in unregarded blue." [1] Around it—the weak, wave-drifted mica flake—booms all the artillery of storms, when electric arrows with blunted points fall back from its front, as it lifts its might and majesty toward the enduring stars.
If ages ago the sages said, God is not in the earthquake, nor in the storm, but in the still small voice, now science reaffirms the declaration that omnipotence is revealed not so much through awful cataclysms and earthquake forces as through the silent agents and hidden processes that make the plains to be fruitful and hillsides to be rich in corn. In the past astronomy has been the favorite science, emphasizing the distant stars and suns. The science of the future is to be chemistry, emphasizing atoms and elements. Journeying outward in pursuit of the footsteps of God, advancing upon his distant and dizzy march, man's vision faints and falls upon the horizon beyond which are indiscernible splendors. Journeying inward upon the wings of the microscope, we shall find that there is another realm of beauty beyond which the utmost vision of man cannot pierce. For before the microscope "the last discernible particle dies out of sight with the same perfect glory on it as on the last orb that glimmers in the skirts of the universe." If God is throned in the clouds He is also tabernacled in the dewdrop and palaced in the bud and blossom.
The history of nations and individuals teaches us that the greatest gifts are poor and empty and the most signal talents worthless if the small things be not done, the two mites be not given. For life is marred by little infelicities and ruined by little errors. The broken columns and marble heaps in lands where once were cities represent destructions not so much through tornadoes and earthquakes as through small vices and unnoticed sins. In modern life also, journeying through city and forest and field, the economist returns to tell us that life's chief wastes are through little enemies and foes. It is a minute bug that steals the golden berry from the wheat; it is a tiny germ upon the leaf that blights the budding peach and pear, it is a rough spot upon the potato that fills all Ireland with fear of famine; it is a worm that bores through the planks of the ship's hull and alarms old seacaptains as approaching battleships could not.
The enemies of human life are not enemies that fill man's streets with banners and charging cannon. We wage war against the dust mote ambushed in the sunbeam; we fight against weapons hurled from those battleships called drops of impure water; we wrestle with those hosts whose broadsides invisible rise from streets foul, or fall from poisoned clouds. Such enemies that lurk in dampness and darkness, a thousand fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand. That great catastrophe that overtook Holland a century ago is not explained by a tidal wave that pierced through the dikes; the disaster was through the crawfishes that opened tiny holes and, weakening the bulwarks, let in the onrushing sea.
It was but a trifling error also that robbed the generations of one of man's divinest pictures. Three hundred years ago the monks made tight and strong the roof above the room where was Da Vinci's "Last Supper." A thousand tiles were fastened down and all save one were perfect. The one hid a secret hole. When months had passed and the driving storm came from the right direction the rain found out that hidden fault and, rushing in, a flood of drops streamed down o'er the wall and made a great black mark across the noble painting, and ruined the central face forever.
Human life is ruined through the absence of humble virtues and the presence of little faults. There is no man so great, no gift so brilliant, but let it be whispered that there is falseness in the life of the hero, and immediately his greatness is dwarfed, his eloquence becomes a trick, his authority is impaired. Reading Robert Burns' poems, he seems wiser than all the scholars, wittier than all the humorists, more courtly than princes. His genius blazes like a torch among the tapers. But watching this son of genius and of liberty weave a net for his own feet, and fashion a snare for his own faculties, with wistful hearts we long, as one has said, "to hear the exulting and triumphant cry of the strong man coming to himself, I will arise." But he loved the barroom more than the library, and so fell on death at seven and thirty, and lost his right to rule as a king o'er men's hearts and lives. Byron, too, and Goethe had gifts so resplendent that in kings' palaces they shine like diamonds amid the pebbles. What a constellation of gifts was theirs! Culture, sanity, imagination, wit, courage, vigor—all these stars were grouped in their mental constellations! Yet little vices dethroned these kings and made them plebeian. It is the absence of little virtues and sweet domestic graces that seem trifling as the two mites that robs the Roman poets and orators of their power over us. They had urbanites indeed, flowers, music, art, oratory, letters, song. The events of each day were executed like a piece of music, and even their sarcophagi were covered with scenes of feasting and revelry. But they were not true; and that false note jars through all their pages. Harshness in the poet and pride in the orator make their refinement and culture seem but skin deep.
We note that Pompeii was a paradise built beside a crater. The traveler tells us if we strike the rocky earth it rings hollow. Close by the calm lake is a boiling spring. In the very heart of the orange groves rises a column of smoke and steam. "The mist of lava jars on the music of summer, the scent of sulphur mingles with the scent of roses." Not for a moment can the traveler forget that beneath all this opulence of color and fragrance rages a colossal furnace. Thus the harshness and selfishness found in the eloquence and poetry of the ancient writers rob us of all joy in their splendid gifts. We yield homage only to the greatness that is also goodness. To ten-talent power the hero must also add tenderness to his own, kindness to the weak, unfailing sympathy to all. No giant is a full giant until he is also gentle, stooping to give his two mites to the weak, bearing to the weary his cup of cold water, ever emulating that hero, Sir Philip Sydney, wounded sorely indeed, but pushing away the canteen because the soldier, suffering great pain, had greater need.
In one of his essays Lowell notes that the great reform monuments are the humble deeds of humble persons, taken up and repeated by an entire people. The final victories for liberty and religion are emblazoned upon monuments and celebrated in song and story, but the beginnings of these achievements for mankind are often given over to obscurity and forgetfulness. Our age makes much of the "Red Cross" movement. Hardly fifty years have passed since two English girls boarded the steamer that was to carry them to the Crimea. Upon the distant battlefields, with their deserted cannon, wounded horses and dying men, at first these gentle girls seemed strangely out of place. The hospitals were full; neglected soldiers were lying in the thickets, whither they had crawled to die. Counseling with none, these brave girls moved across the battlefields like angels of mercy. Many years have passed. Now these nurses bring hope to every battlefield, and minister to every stricken Armenia, for the story of that sweet girl has filled the earth with "King's Daughters." One hundred years ago also England left her orphan babes to grow up in the country poorhouse, midst surroundings often vulgar, profane and brutal. One day two sweet babes, unnamed and unwelcomed, lay in the garret of a county-house in the outskirts of London. Then a poor, half-witted spinster, hearing of the young mother's death, found her way to the garret, brooded o'er the babes with all the dignity of our Mother of Sorrows, took the babes to her heart and planned how, with six shillings a week, she might keep bread in three hungry mouths. Four years passed by, and one day the lord of the manor stayed a moment before this woman's hovel and heard her prayer for the two boys clinging to her skirts. Soon the story of the woman's mercy was heard in every English pulpit, and in every town men and women made their way to the county-houses to take away the orphan babes and found instead some asylum for God's little ones. Now noble men in distant lands plan homes and shelter for little children, and the work of the obscure woman is a part of the history of reform.
Humble also is the origin of the anti-slavery movement that won its final victory at Appomattox. A century and more ago a young Moravian made his way to Jamaica as a Herald of Christ and his message of good-will. The horrors of slavery in that far-off time cannot be understood by our age. Then each week some African slaver landed with its cargo of naked creatures. Slaves were so cheap that it was simpler to kill them with rapid work and purchase new ones than to care for the wants of captives weakened by several summers. What horrors under overseers in the field! What outrages in slave-market and pen! So grievous were the wrongs negroes suffered at white men's hands that they would not listen to this young teacher. At last, despairing of their confidence, the brave youth had himself sold as a slave and wrought in the fields under the overseer's lash. Fellowship with their sufferings won their confidence and love. When the day's task was done the poor creatures crowded about him to receive Christ's cup of cold water. Long years after the young hero had fallen upon the sugar plantation his story came to the ears of young Wilberforce and armed him with courage invincible against England's traffic in flesh and blood. Soon Parliament freed the West India slaves and Lincoln emancipated our freedmen. But side by side with the heroes of liberty famed through monument and solemn oration, let us mention the young Moravian hero who loved Christ's little ones, and in giving "two mites and a cup of cold water," lost his life, indeed, but found immortal fame.
This modest deed that bought renown also tells us that enduring remembrance is possible for all. Great deeds the majority cannot do. Two-talent men march in millions, but the ten-talent men are few and far between. Many scientists—one Newton. Thousands of poets—but the Elizabethan eras are separated by centuries. Great is the company of the orators—but to each generation only one Webster and one Clay. As each continent hath but one mountain range, so the elect minds stand isolated in the ages. All greatness is mysterious, and like God's throne, genius is girt about with clouds and darkness. If great men are infrequent, the world's need of great men is as occasional. Society advances in happiness and culture, not through striking, dramatic acts, but through myriads of unnumbered and unnoticed deeds.
Even the heroes dying upon the battlefield ask not for Plato nor Bacon, but for a cup of cold water. To Benedict Arnold, dying in his garret, came a physician, who said, "Is there anything you wish?" and heard this answer; "Only a friend." Traitors sometimes each of us also. Traitors to our deepest convictions and our highest ideals, and in the hours when the fever of discontent burns fiercely within us, and the mind seems half-delirious in its trouble, we also ask for a friend bringing a mite of sympathy and a cup of cold water. Let us confess it—we are all famishing for love and the kind word that says: "In your Gethsemane you are not alone."
God secures for us our happiness, not through speech about the heavens and firmament, but through the comfort that comes through speech over little things. He feeds the birds, adorns the lily, clothes the grass, numbers man's troubles. He is the Shepherd seeking the one sheep, the father waiting for the lost son. His kingdom is a little leaven working in the world's meal, His truth being no larger than a grain of mustard-seed. Above each little one bows some guardian angel beholding the face of its heavenly Father. And He who unites grains of sand for making planets and rays of light for glorious suns, and blades of grass for the solid splendor of field and pasture and drops of water for the ocean that blesses every continent with its dew and rain, teaches us also that great principles will organize the little words, little prayers, little aspirations and little services into the full-orbed splendor of an enduring character and an immortal fame.
Happily none need journey far nor search long for opportunities of humble fidelity. Into our midst come each year thousands of boys who are strangers in the great city. Passing along the streets these lonely lads behold each horse having some friendly hand to care for it. Yea! each sleek dog hath some owner's name engraven on the collar for the neck. But for the youth, weeks pass by, and no face lifts a friendly smile, no hand is outstretched in gentle kindness, and oft the thought is bitter: "No man careth for my soul." The youth who sits in the seat beside you asks only that the leaflet be shared in brotherliness, and you may lift upon the discouraged one a smile that saith; "Once the battle went sore with me, also, but be of good cheer, you shall overcome." Such friendliness is the two mites that buy enduring rembrance. For if each must fight his own battles, face for himself the spectres of doubt, and slay them; if each must be his own surgeon and draw the iron from the soul, still sympathy is a precious boon, and it is given to man to give the cup of tenderness to the warrior sorely wounded in life's battle. In ancient times when men's cabins were built on the edge of the wilderness, not yet cleared of wild beasts, sometimes the little ones wandered from the path and were lost in the forest, until the cry of terror revealed the awful danger that threatened and caused the mother to speed forth with winged feet and lift her body as a shield against the enemy. Daily these scenes are re-enacted, not in songs and dramas, but through the work of those who rescue the city's children from squalor, filth and sin. What redemptions' man's little deeds do bring!
For $30,000 Peter Faneuil bought immortality and forever associated his name with liberty. To-day that amount will erect the social settlement in the needy quarter of some city and give hundreds of young people opportunity and field for Bible-schools, kindergartens, nursery, gymnasium, mothers' classes, men's clubs, singing-schools and also associate man's name with the happiness and civilization of an entire community. Mammon will care for the children of strength and good fortune, and fame will guard the sons of success; let us guard the weak and lowly. In the Roman triumph, when a general came home with his spoils, many captives went with his chariot up to the capital. And happy 'twill be for us if in the hour when the sunset gun shall sound and we pass beyond the flood God's little ones mourn us with tears of gratitude while all the trumpets sound for us on the other side.
[1] Ruskin's Modern Painters, Vol. iv., page 284. [Transcriber's note: In the original book, there was no footnote symbol in the page where this footnote appeared. I've made a best guess of its intended location.]
INFLUENCE, AND THE STRATEGIC ELEMENT IN OPPORTUNITY.
"And now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign fought without a general? If Trafalgar could not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or Waterloo without the mind of a Wellington, was there no one mind to lead these innumerable armies, on whose success depended the future of the whole human race? Did no one marshal them in that impregnable convex front, from the Euxine to the North Sea? No one guide them to the two great strategic centres of the Black Forest and Trieste? No one cause them, blind barbarians without maps or science, to follow those rules of war without which victory in a protracted struggle is impossible: and by the pressure of the Huns behind, force on their flagging myriads to an enterprise which their simplicity fancied at first beyond the powers of mortal men? Believe it who will; I cannot.
"But while I believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life—if I be superstitious enough (as thank God I am) to hold that Creed, shall I not believe that though this great war had no general upon earth, it may have had a general in Heaven; and that in spite of all their sins the hosts of our forefathers were the hosts of God?"—Charles Kingsley.
CHAPTER XI.
INFLUENCE, AND THE STRATEGIC ELEMENT IN OPPORTUNITY.
The history of a Jewish battle includes a dramatic incident. In the thick of the fight an officer brought to one of his soldiers an important prisoner. "Keep thou this man," said he, "with the utmost vigilance. Upon his person hang the issues of this campaign. His skill in leading the enemy, his courage and treachery have cost our side many lives. If by any means thou shalt suffer him to escape thy life shall be for his life."
Then, straining more tightly the cords knotted around the prisoner's hands and feet, the officer turned and plunged again into the thick of the fight. From that moment the soldier's one duty was to guard the prisoner whose escape would work such havoc.
Strangely enough, he became negligent. Careless, he leaned his bow and spear against the tent. Hungry, he busied himself with baking a few small cakes. Weary, he cast himself upon the ground, dozing upon his elbow. Suddenly a noise startled his nap. He sprang up just in time to see his prisoner make one leap, then disappear into the thicket.
A concealed knife had cut the thongs. Negligence had let "slip the dogs of war." That night when the general returned to his tent he found the prisoner had escaped.
Fronting his master the terror-stricken soldier had no excuse to offer save this; "While thy servant was busy here and there the man was gone." Gone opportunity!—and lightning could not equal its swift flight. Gone forever opportunity!—and the wings of seraphim could not overtake and bring it back. Gone honor, gone fidelity, gone good name!—all lost irretrievably. For though dying be long delayed, coming at last death would find the soldier's task unfulfilled. From "It might have been," and "It is too late," God save us all! For not Infinity himself can reverse the wheel of events and bring back lost opportunities.
The genius of opportunity lies in its strategic element. In every opportunity two or more forces meet in such a way that the one force so lends itself to the other as momentarily to yield plasticity. Nature is full of these strategic times. Iron passes into the furnace cold and unyielding; coming out it quickly cools and refuses the mold; but midway is a moment when fire so lends itself to iron, and iron so yields its force to flame as that the metal flows like water.
This brief plastic moment is the inventor's opportunity, when the metal will take on any shape for use or beauty. Similarly the fields offer a strategic time to the husbandman. In February the soil refuses the plow, the sun refuses heat, the sky refuses rain, the seed refuses growth. In May comes an opportune time when all forces conspire toward harvests; then the sun lends warmth, the clouds lend rain, the air lends ardor, the soil lends juices. Then must the sower go forth and sow, for nature whispers that if he neglects June he will starve in January.
The planets also lend interpretation to this principle. Years ago our nation sent astronomers to Africa to witness the transit of Venus. Preparations began months beforehand. A ship was fitted up, instruments packed, the ocean crossed, a site selected and the telescopes mounted. Scientists made all things ready for that opportune time when the sun and Venus and earth should all be in line. That critical moment was very brief. Instinctively each astronomer knew that his eye must be at the small end of the glass when the planet went scudding by the large end. Once the period of conjunction had passed no machinery would offer itself for turning the planet back upon her axis. Not for astronomers only are the opportune times brief. For all men alike, failure is blindness to the strategic element in events; success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment arrives. When nature has fully ripened an opportunity man must stretch out his hand and pluck it. Inventions may be defined as great minds detecting the strategic moment in nature; Galileo finding a lens in the ox's eye; Watt witnessing steam lift an iron lid; Columbus observing an unknown wood drifting upon the shore. To untold multitudes nature offered these opportune moments for discovery, but only Galileo, Watt and Columbus were ready to seize them. As for the rest, this is our only answer to nature: "While thy servant was busy here and there, the strategic moment was gone."
This majestic principle often appears in history. There is a strategy in Providence. Nations, like individuals, have their crisis hours. Through events God makes all society plastic, and then raises up some great man to stamp his image and superscription upon the nation's hot and glowing heart. As scholars move back along the pathway of history, they discern in each great epoch these strategic conditions. How opportune the moment when Jesus Christ appeared!
Alexander's march had scattered every whither the seeds of learning; the Greek language had turned the whole world into one great whispering gallery, in which the nations were assembled; all the provinces around the Mediterranean were linked together by the newly completed system of roads; the Roman judge was in every town to set forth the rights of citizens of the empire; the Roman soldier was there to protect all who brought messages of peace; the long-expected hour had struck. Then Christianity set forth from Bethlehem upon its errand of love. Along every highway ran the eager feet of the messengers of peace and good-will. Events were fully ripe, and soon Christianity was upon the throne of the Caesars.
How strategic that epoch called the fourth century! He who sat in Caesar's palace looked out upon a dying empire. The old race was worn out with war and wine and wealth and luxury. Civilization seemed about to perish, and society was fast sinking back into barbarism. To the north of the Alps were the forest children, ruddy and robust, with their glorious youth full upon them. These young giants needed the dying language and literature and religion, and these great institutions needed their young, fresh blood. But between lay the granite walls builded from sea to sea. Now mark what Charles Kingsley called "the strategy of Providence." Suddenly a blind impulse fell upon the forest children. Two columns started southward. The one rested upon the North Sea and marched southeast; the other rested upon the Ural Mountains and marched southwest; the two met and converged upon Trieste. Without maps or military tactics or plans, wholly ignorant that Napoleon's favorite method of attack was being carried out by them, these two columns converged toward the Alpine pass, and for ten years pounded and pounded against the Roman walls until these yielded and fell. Then the forest children poured down into the vineyards and villages and cities of the dying empire. Multitudes remained to intermarry and preserve the dying race. Other multitudes returned to their old home to sow the northern forests with those great ideas that were to carry civilization through the long night of the dark ages.
Another strategic hour came in the thirteenth century. Then all Europe was stirred with new and awakening life. It was dawn after darkness. Constantinople had fallen and scholars laden with manuscripts went forth to sow Europe with the new learning. The times were fully ripe for another great forward movement for society. Only one thing was lacking—great men for leaders. In that strategic crisis six leaders appeared. God gave each wing of the army of civilization a genius for its general. Copernicus overthrew superstition and brought in science; Luther gave religion, Gutenberg the printing-press, Calvin individualism, Michael Angelo art and the beautiful, Erasmus critical scholarship; and because the old world was filled with debris, and the new ideas needed room, Columbus gave the new world, offering what Emerson calls "the last opportunity of Providence for the human race." Surely this was a strategic moment in history, giving each citizen unique opportunity.
The strategic element enters into the individual career. Destiny is determined by our use of our critical hours. It is as if life's great issues were staked upon a single throw. Not but that the forces we neglect are permanent. It is that the strategic condition has passed out of them. The sluggard driving his plow into the field in July has sun, soil and seed, but the torrid summer refuses to perform the gentle processes of April. The man who in youth's strategic days denied to memory the great facts of nature and history, in maturer years still has his memory, but the plasticity has gone. It now refuses to hold the facts he gives it. The Latin poet interprets our principle by the story of the maiden in the boat, holding her hand in the water while she toyed with a string of pearls until the string snapped and the treasure sank into the abyss. The miner interprets opportunity lost through him who, for a rifle and a blanket, traded a rich copper mine that has since paid its owner millions. The historian interprets it by Napoleon's bitter signal to his General, tardy at Waterloo, "Too late! the critical hour has passed." Froude interprets it through the old hero bitterly condemning himself over his wife's grave, knowing that his wild love and fierce outburst of affection were impotent now to warm the heart that froze to death in a home.
Ruskin interprets it through a nation that allowed her noblest to descend into the grave, garlanding the tombstone when they refused to crown the brow; paying honors to ashes that were denied to spirit; wreathing immortelles only when they had no use save for laying on a grave where was one dead of a broken heart through a nation's ingratitude. Above all, Jesus Christ interprets it at midnight in Gethsemane, when he saw the torches fluttering in the darkness, heard the clanking of sabers and soldiers' armor, and in sad, reproachful irony wakened his disciples with these words: "Sleep on, now; sleep forever if you will! Henceforth no stress of your vigilance can help me; no negligence of your duty can harm me beyond the harm you have already wrought. Take your ease now. Sleep; the opportunity has gone." Then was the disciples' joy turned into mourning, and for garments of praise did they put on ashes and sackcloth. An irreparable loss was theirs. Yet for all of us each neglected duty means a tragedy. It is always now or never. The treasure wrapped up in each strategic opportunity is of infinite value. To-morrow can hold no joy when yesterday holds this memory: "While I was busy here and there my opportunity was gone."
How strategic the period of youth! Then the chiefest forces of life flow together in sensitive conjunction. Then four great gifts like four great rivers unite in one majestic current to bear up the young man's enterprises, and sweep him on to fame and fortune. Opportune are all the days when health spills over at the eye and ear and laughs through the lips. Men worn out are like overshot wheels—the life trickles and the buckets are filled slowly by long rests and frequent vacations. Young men are like undershot wheels—always, by day and night, the water overflows the banks.
Each morning the young soul wakens to the supreme luxury of living. The world is a great beaker brimmed with wine of the gods. The truth and beauty of field and forest and river give a pleasure that is exquisite to a keenly sensitive and perfectly healthy youth. Like an Aeolian harp, the slightest breath avails for wakening melody midst its strings. But years multiply cares. Age increases heaviness. Time destroys its own children. The poet says: "In youth we carry the world like Atlas; in maturity we stoop and bend beneath it; in age it crushes us to the ground." For the overtaxed and invalided, the dew-drops do not sparkle as diamonds; the wet grass suggests red flannels and cough sirups. For the nervous the bird's song is a meaningless chatter. For the sickly the clouds are big black water-bottles, though time was when they were chariots for God's angels, curtains for hiding ministering spirits trooping homeward at night, leaving all the air sweetly perfumed. It is the body that grants the soul permission to be happy.
To the opportunity offered by health may be added the years lying in front of the young heart like a great estate, as yet unincumbered. Powerful enthusiasms, too, are the inheritance of youth. Noble feelings, fine aspirations then pass through the mind, as in May the perfumed winds from the South pass over the fields. These motives beat upon the mind as steam upon the iron piston. Workmen excavating at Pompeii threw up soil that had been covered for 1,800 years. Exposed to the sun, young trees sprang up. Without the force of light and heat and dew and rain these seeds were dormant or dead. Thus each mind is a dead mind until the full warmth of great impulses quickens the dormant energies. The hopes, the ambitions, the aspirations of youth all conspire to make this a most strategic period. Then all the forces of life unite in a great gulf stream for bearing the soul up and sweeping it forward to new climes and richer shores.
Strategic the hour of prosperity. Men discount the speech of poverty, but the rich man's words weigh a ton each. It has been said that the poor man's dollar is just as good as the rich man's only when both are anonymous, for the dollar with a million behind it will go further than the dollar with a thousand behind it. This is a proverb: "A bid from Rothschild electrifies the market." Each new achievement and success builds higher the tower of observation that lifts the great man into the presence of the nation. All eyes are upon the prospered individual, all ears are alert to his whisper. Prosperity's voice is the voice of an oracle, all her words are winged. Every successful venture in the world of commerce or statecraft quadruples influence over the nation's youth. This principle interprets the curiosity of the boy in store or bank, asking a thousand questions about his successful employer. It explains why the eager aspirant for political influence searches all the journals for some word from Gladstone or Castelar or Bismarck. A sentence from these great champions hath sufficed for reversing the policy of a government. The memory of many triumphs lies back of the great leader's words and lends them weight.
Success is an orator; it charms multitudes. Full oft one who is a veritable genius for making homely truths beautiful has accomplished less for his age than some prosperous man whose few stumbling words have sufficed for shaping national policies and guiding his generation. All the young are drawn into the wake of the successful. Wealth fulfills the story of Orpheus, whose sweet voice made the very stones and trees follow after him. Truly wealth is an evangelist, the almoner of bounty toward college and library and art gallery and liberty and religion. But its chief use is in this: It enables its possessor to repeat his industry, integrity and thrift in the children of a nation. All youthful hearts do well to covet wealth, wisdom and leverage power! But man should remember that the chief value of prosperity is in its capitalization of personality, and the rendering of others sensitive to example and precept. Should man forget this, earth will hear no sadder cry than his when, closing the life career, he exclaims: "While thy servant was busy here and there the opportune moment was gone."
Friendship yields these plastic moments and unique opportunities. For the most part the soul dwells in a castle locked and barred against outsiders. No man can keep open-house for every passer-by. But friendship is an open sesame, drawing every bar and bolt. How the heart leaps when the friend crosses the threshold! His shadow always falls behind him. His coming is summer in the soul; his presence is peace. Friendship glorifies everything it touches. When on a stormy night our friend comes in he seems to warm the very fire upon the hearth; he sweetens the sweet singer's voice; lends new meaning to the wise man's words; gives reminiscence an added charm; makes old stories new; makes the laughter and smiles come twice as often and stay twice as long. Friendship lies upon the heart like a warm fire upon the hearth. By reason of friendship history exhibits every great man as leaving his school of thought and a group of disciples behind him. His spirit lingers with men long after his form has disappeared from the streets, as the sun lingers in the clouds after the day is done, as the melody lingers in the ear long after the song is sung. Longfellow, after a day and a night with Emerson, literally emitted poems and plays. He was stimulated by friendship as bees by rose liquor and the sweet pea wine. Friendship always makes the heart plastic. Then the mental furrows are all open and mellow; sympathy falls like dew and rain; then the heart saith to its friend: "Here am I, all plastic to your touch; work upon me your will; for good or ill—I am thine." Therefore, friendship imposes frightful responsibilities; in asking and receiving it we assume charge of another's destiny. This is the very genius of the teacher's influence over his pupil, the parent's over his child, the general's over his soldier, the patriot's over his people. Better a thousand times never open the furrow than to leave it unfertilized.
How strategic life's better hours! One of God's precious gifts is the luminous hour that denies the lower animal mood. Mind is not always at its best. Full oft our thought is sodden and dull. Then duty seems a maze without a clew and life's skeins all a tangle. The mind is uneasy, confused and troubled. Then men live to the eye and the ear and physical comforts; they live for houses and beautiful things in them; for shelves and rich goods upon them; for factories and large profits by them. Responsibility to God seems like the faint shadow of a vaguely remembered dream. The voice of conscience is in the ear like the far-off murmuring of the sea. The soul is sordid and the finer senses indurated. The angel of the better nature is bondslave to the worst. Then enters some element that nurtures the nobler impulse. Some misfortune, earthquake-like, cleaves through the hard crust. Or some gentle event, like the coming of an old friend or the returning to the old homestead, stirs old memories and kindles new thoughts.
Slowly the heart passes out of the penumbra. The mind, too long obscured like a sun eclipsed by clouds, searches out some rift. Suddenly reason comes into the clear. God rises like an untroubled sun upon the soul's horizon. How crystalline life looks! The mind literally exhales fancies and pictures, and each stick and stone is as full of suggestions and ideas as the forest is full of birds. Old problems become clear as noonday. Difficult questions lie clearly revealed before the mind like landscapes from which the fogs are lifted. Once the mind crawled tortoise-like through its work. Now it soars like an eagle. The soul seems a sweet-spiced shrub, and every leaf is perfumed. If in dull, obscure hours the soul was like a wooden beehive drifted o'er with snow, in its vision-hours the soul is like a glass hive out of which the bees go singing into sweet clover-fields. In these hours how unworthy the material life! How insubstantial the things of iron, wood and stone! Bodily things seem evanescent, as frost pictures on the window on a winter's morn. Then honor, integrity, kindness, generosity alone seem permanent and worth one's while. How easy then to do right. All habits that fettered the faculties like iron cuffs are now felt to be but ice fetters, quickly melting. Then the nobler self, using no whip of cords, looks upon meanness and selfishness, and by a look drives them from the heart and life.
Then years are fulfilled in a single hour. Then from its judgment-seat the soul reviews its past career, searches out secret sins and scorns them. How unworthy are vanity and pride and selfishness. In what garments of beauty and attraction are truth and purity clothed. The soul looks longingly unto the heavenly heights, as desert pilgrims long for oases and springs of water. Unspeakably precious are these strategic hours of opportunity. God sends them; divineness is in them; they cleanse and fertilize the soul; they are like the overflowing Nile. Men should watch for them and lay out the life-course by them, as captains ignore the clouds and headlands and steer by the stars for a long voyage and a distant harbor.
INFLUENCE, AND THE PRINCIPLE OF REACTION IN LIFE AND CHARACTER.
"So each man gets out of the world of men the rebound, the increase and development of what he brings there. Three men stand in the same field and look around them, and then they all cry out together. One of them exclaims, 'How rich!' another cries, 'How strange!' another cries, 'How beautiful!' And then the three divide the field between them, and they build their houses there, and in a year you come back and see what answer the same earth has made to each of her three questioners. They have all talked with the ground on which they lived, and heard its answers. They have all held out their several hands, and the same ground has put its own gift into each of them. What have they got to show you? One cries, 'Come here and see my barn,' another cries, 'Come here and see my museum;' the other says, 'Let me read you my poem.' That is a picture of the way in which a generation, or the race, takes the great earth and makes it different things to all its children. With what measure we mete to it, it measures to us again. This is the rebound of the hard earth—sensitive and soft, although we call it hard, and feeling with an instant keen discrimination the different touch of each different human nature which is laid upon it. Reaction is equal to action."—Phillips Brooks.
CHAPTER XII.
INFLUENCE, AND THE PRINCIPLE OF REACTION IN LIFE AND CHARACTER.
To the mystery of life and death must be added the mystery of growth. When Demosthenes exclaimed: "Yesterday I was not here; I shall not be here to-morrow; to-day I am here," he suggested a hard problem. Having solved the enigma, what went before life, and answered that mystery, what follows after death, there still remains this question: "How can a babe in twenty years take on the proportions of the great orator and reformer?" Rocks do not grow, nor diamonds, nor dirt, but a shrunken bulb does become a lily, and a tiny seed a mustard tree. In vain does the scientist struggle with this problem—how an acorn can expand into an oak; how in a single summer a grain of corn can ripen a thousand grains, like that from which the cornstalk sprang.
Men are indeed familiar with the bursting of buds, the cracking of eggs and the growth of children; yet familiarity robs these facts of no whit of their mystery. No jeweler ever goes into the field with a basket of watches to plant them in rows, expecting when autumn hath come to pick two or three wagon-loads of stem-winders from iron branches; yet, were this possible, it would be no more strange than that in the autumn the husbandman should stand under the branches to fill his basket with peaches or bunches of figs. For wise men it is no more difficult to think of a growing engine than of a growing oak. What if to-morrow an engineer should plant a cannon ball. Having watered it well and kept the ground loose through hoe or spade, suppose that when a few weeks have passed the outline of a smokestack should push through the soil, to be followed a little later by a rudimentary steam whistle, the outlines of a boiler, and, rising through the sod, rude drive-wheels, piston-rods and cylinders, until after six months the great engine should stand forth in full completion. This phenomenon would be no more wonderful than that which actually goes on before man's blind eyes, when a tiny seed enlarges into the big tree of California and constructs a vegetable engine that lifts thousands of hogsheads of water up to the topmost boughs without any rattle of chains or the din of machinery.
With difficulty man constructs that musical instrument called a mouthharp, but nature, in six weeks, out of a little blue or brown egg constructs a feathered music-box that automatically conveys itself from tree to tree. But the mystery that has gone on in that tiny blue egg lying in the nest is just as great as if some housewife had planted an old spinning-wheel in the full expectation of reaping a Jacquard loom, or had buried a jew's-harp in the garden expecting in the fall to pick a grand piano. To the mystery that is involved in enlargement by growth must be added the mystery of intelligence. It is not an easy thing for an expert housewife, using the same formula, always to achieve the same happy results in the white loaf. He who plants a strawberry seed will find that the tiny seed will construct a plant, lay in the red tints according to rule and mix the flavor of the berry to a nicety that is the despair of the chef. In the tropic forests there is a flower with a deep cup and the pollen at the bottom. This pollen lies upon a little platter, and underneath the platter is that form of trap known as a figure four, much loved by boys. When the bee, creeping down into the flower, touches that platter, it springs the trap that throws the fertilizing pollen upon the legs of the bee, to be conveyed to the next flower. Wise men can, indeed, imitate this device, but a single seed will in a few months construct many scores of these mechanical devices. To-morrow morning the embryologist in his laboratory will place an egg under a glass cylinder in an atmosphere of 98 degrees. Four hours pass and suddenly the scientist perceives an atom in the heart of that egg give a quick lashing movement. Another moment witnesses two quick throbs. Growth has begun and in four months' time the young eagle with firm strokes will lift itself into the soft air. From the chamber of life and the chamber of death God hath never drawn the curtains. The chamber of growth is another most holy place in which God alone doth stand.
Deeply impressed by the fact of growth, scientists have also marveled at the principle that controls the harvest. Rocks enlarge by accretion, but from what a rock is at the beginning, the geologists cannot tell what will be the shape of that rock when all deposits are finally made. As to growth in seed and shrub, like produces like. He who sows wheat reaps wheat, not tares. He who plants a grape receives a purple cluster, not a bunch of thorns or thistles. He who sows honor shall reap confidence. He who sows frankness shall reap openness. No Peabody sowing industry and thrift reaps the harvest of indolence and idleness. Theodore Parker, loving knowledge and for it denying himself sleep and exercise, reaped wisdom, and also wan and hollow cheeks, while the iron frame and ruddy cheek are for the child of the woods who loves exercise in the open air. He who aspires to leadership and would have the multitude cheer his name, he who longs for the day when his appearance upon the street shall mean an ovation from the people, must make himself the people's slave, defy all demagogues, brave the fury of party strife, oft be execrated by politicians and sometimes be hated by the multitude. Having sown self-sacrifice and love, he shall reap fame and adulation. For nature's law is universal and inexorable—like produces like. The sheaf is simply the seed enlarged and multiplied. The sowing contains the germ of all the harvests to be reaped.
The new biography of Benedict Arnold tells us of the despair of the traitor's final days, the remorse that gnawed his heart, the agony that filled his life. Yet no arbitrary degree was imposed upon Arnold. He plotted the surrender of the interests committed to him as a general, planned the stratagem that ended in the capture and execution of Andre, and received $30,000 in gold for his treachery. Having gone over to the enemy, he placed himself at the head of a band of English troops and went forth to destroy the towns and villages of his boyhood and pillaged the homes of his old friends. He sowed avarice, and of avarice he reaped $30,000. He sowed distrust in America; he reaped distrust from the Englishmen who had bought his honor. He sowed treason; he reaped infamy. He sowed contempt for the colonists, and, dying, he reaped the contempt from his old friends, who counted his body carrion. For the harvests of the soul represent not arbitrary degrees, but the workings of natural law. If Ceres, the goddess of harvests, makes the sheaf to reap the seed, conscience, recalling man's career, ordains that like produces like. What a man soweth that shall he also reap is the law of nature and of God.
The heroes of the Old Testament are common people capitalized. What is unique in the experience of these sons of greatness holds true of all of lesser rank. The career of one of these giants is a pictorial exhibition of this principle of the spiritual harvest. Young Jacob was shrewd, crafty and full of foresight. If Esau, his brother, was a "hail fellow well met," the child of his impulses, Jacob was a diplomat and very wily. One day, when the father, Isaac, was blind and old, Esau grew restless, and at last went away with his companions, for he dearly loved to hunt. In that hour ambition tempted Jacob and avarice led him away. Advantaging himself of his brother's absence, Jacob used the skin of a kid to make his hands hairy, like the hands of Esau, and, simulating the brother's voice, he extorted from his dying father those tokens that, according to the Eastern custom, made him the successor to his father's title, wealth and power. Full twoscore years passed swiftly by and the deceit seems to have brought is large money returns to crafty Jacob.
But silently nature was working out the harvest of retribution, through that law of heredity that makes sons repeat the qualities of their father. When Jacob was now advanced in years his ten sons began, to develop craftiness, and soon they plowed great furrows of care in the father's face. In those days of care his young son Joseph stole into Jacob's heart like a sweet sunbeam, and, with his open, loving ways, filled his father's heart with gladness. When the elder brothers knew Jacob had given Joseph a coat of many colors they remembered the craft of their father in his early career. One evening, when the herds and flocks were scattered widely over the hills, Simeon sent out messengers and called his brothers together for a conference. In that hour he said: "Wist ye not how our father, being a younger son, supplanted his elder brother, Esau? And behold his craft will now make his younger child, Joseph, to supplant his elder brothers! Do ye not remember how our father, Jacob, took a kid and made his hands like unto the hands of Esau? Let us now take a kid and make its blood represent the blood and death of Joseph. What Jacob did for his father, Isaac, let his sons do to their father, Jacob." Thus, with subtle irony, nature made the man's sins to come back to him. A boy, Jacob deceived his father, now, grown gray and old, his boys brought their father an armful of deceits. In that hour when Reuben and Simeon held up the coat of many colors, all red with blood, great nature might have whispered to Jacob: "It is the blood of the kid that you slew for deceiving your father returning to enable your sons to deceive you." For, having sowed deceit, deceit also and stratagem Jacob reaped. Himself a son, he thrust a dart into his father's heart. Become a father, his ten sons became archers, skilled with darts that filled their father's heart with agony. For nature loves justice; her rule is law, sometimes her rod is iron.
The principle that every deed is a seed that contains the germ of its own reward or punishment has received full interpretation by the poets and dramatists. In his "Paradise Lost," Milton has made a detailed study of the principles of the spiritual harvests. The poet represents Satan as an angel, fallen indeed, and sadly battered by his fall, yet still an archangel glorious for strength and beauty. Having visited Paradise and accomplished the destruction of Eve's innocence and Adam's happiness, Satan returns home, passing over a bridge of more prodigious length than now arches the gulf between earth and hell. When the prince arrived at Pandemonium, the capital of Lucifer's realm, he found that the leaders of the fallen host had arranged a reception in the great banquet-hall of the palace. In the presence of the applauding throng, the prince told the story of how he had succeeded in opening the earth as a place to which these exiled angels might retreat from the prison in which they had been so long confined, and pointed to the great bridge spanning the abyss 'twixt earth and hell. When the loud cheerings and rejoicings over this fact had ceased, Satan told by what stratagem he had succeeded in inducing man to break friendship with God. It was not by disguising himself as an angel of light. But, affirmed Satan, man cared so little for the laws of God that, although disguised as a serpent, he induced man to sin.
"Then awhile Satan stood, expecting their universal
shout and high applause
To fill his ear, when contrary he hears
On all sides from innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn. He wondered, but not long
Had leisure. Wondering at himself no more,
His visage drawn, he felt; too sharp and spare
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
Each the other, till supplanted down he fell,
A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain. A greater power
Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom."
Also when Satan attempted to speak, Milton says, only a hiss went forth "from forked tongue to forked tongue." When many days had passed by and their hunger was very sore because these fallen angels had seduced man by an apple, it came about that when, fierce with hunger, they seized the fruit ripe upon the branches, the apples were found to be filled with soot and ashes. By these striking suggestions Milton gives us his idea how angels and men reap what they sow. Should the literary critic seek an appropriate heading for the tenth book of "Paradise Lost," he could hardly find one more appropriate than this: "What Man Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap."
This law of the spiritual harvest that visits retribution upon unrighteousness or visits reward upon integrity seems to have cast a spell of fascination upon all great writers. Even those who have written upon liberty, law, patriotism, or love have not been content to end their task until they have, through song or story, illustrated this law of the soul's seedtime and harvest. The ancient poet who wrote at a time near to the dawn of history makes a strong man go forth to seize his neighbor's flocks and herds, but returning the prince found that in his absence enemies had looted his palace and carried off not only his treasure, but his wife and children. In ending the tale the writer adds the reflection that "God is just!"
Later on the Grecian threw this moral principle into a tale for children, a story that still lives under the title "Baucis and Philemon." One day two travelers entered a village, but as they drew near, each housewife slammed her door, while rude boys threw clods at the wayfarers and let loose their dogs, who snapped and snarled after the travelers. Passing quite beyond the village the pilgrims came to a humble cottage. As they approached his door Philemon came forth to offer refuge, and apologized for the rudeness of his neighbors. The old man prepared for them seats in the grateful shade and hurried to bring them fresh water from the cool spring. Baucis also hastened to bring the loaf, with her one small honeycomb and her pitcher of milk. When the glasses were filled twice and thrice and still the rich milk failed not, the old housewife marveled, until she found that in the bottom of the pitcher there was a fountain from which the rich milk gushed so long as it was needed. Nor did the honeycomb fail, nor did the sharp knife make the wheaten loaf to be less. Having told us that the morning brought disaster to the inhospitable villagers, but brought assurance from these angels who had been entertained unawares that Baucis and Philemon should never more want for earthly goods, the writer of the olden times sets forth for us the principle that good man and bad alike reap what they sow, since each deed contains a harvest like unto itself. Indeed, literature and life teem with exhibitions of this principle. Haman, the rich ruler, builds a gallows for poor Mordecai, whom he hates, and later on Haman himself is hanged upon his own scaffold. David sets Uriah in the front of the battle and robs him of his wife, and when a few years have passed, in turn David is robbed of his wife, his palace also, and his city.
Walter Scott believes in moral retribution. He tells us of a youth who deftly split an arrow at the point where it fitted the bow-string, that when his brother, whom he hated, should bend his bow the arrow might split and, rebounding, pass through his eye. Now it happened that the brother returned from the hunt without using his weapon. That night, alarmed at a commotion without, the youth seized his bow, and, chancing to strike upon that very arrow, was himself slain by the stratagem that he had wickedly planned for his brother. George Eliot, too, has dedicated her greatest volume to the study of this principle. The orphan child, Tito, is received into the arms of an adopted father, who lavishes upon him all his wealth. But when the youth was grown to full strength and beauty, one night Tito left his adopted father in slavery and fled with his gold and gems into a foreign land. Years passed by and, with his stolen wealth, Tito bought wife, palace, position, fame. He had sown falsehood and cruelty, and nothing seemed so unlikely as that he would reap a similar harvest. But one day the people discovered his falsehood and attacked Tito. A mob pursued him through the streets, and, knowing his strength as a swimmer, the youth cast himself into the River Arno. When Tito had swum far down the river to the other side, and, in his exhaustion, would go ashore, he looked up, and, lo! he discerned the gray-haired father whom he had injured trotting along the shore side by side with the swimmer. In the old man's eyes blazed bitter hatred, in his hand flashed a sharp knife. What the youth had sown years before now at last he was to reap. When increasing weakness compelled him to approach the shore he looked beseechingly to his father for mercy, but found only justice. With a wild and bitter cry Tito reaped his harvest. Soon the mud of that river filled the eyes and ears of him who years before had received defilement into his heart. What seed he had sown, that Nature gave him as a harvest—good measure, heaped up, and shaken together.
History permits no man to escape the reflection that if, for the time being, individuals have escaped this moral law, nations have felt its full force. Nature does, indeed, walk through the fields with footsteps so gentle as to disturb no drop of dew hanging upon the blade of grass. Nature also hath her sterner aspect, and for the sons of iniquity her footsteps are earthquakes, her strokes are strokes of war and of pestilence. When Sophocles worked out the law of moral retribution for King Oedipus and Antigone, his daughter, the poet might well have gone on to note that if the Grecian army had sacked the Trojan cities the time would come when the Roman fleet would sack her cities and make her sons to toil as captives. Later on, if the Roman conquerors swept the East for corn and wheat, looted stores and shops, pillaged palaces for treasure for triumphal processions, the time came when Nature and God decreed that the vast wealth piled up in the Roman capital should excite the cupidity of the Goths, until at last the streets of that great city were swept with flame and store-houses were pillaged by marauders. In reviewing the history of Venice Ruskin was so impressed with this principle of the moral harvest that he affirms that the history of palace and cathedral, of fleets and navies, is simply the story, written by a pen dipped in fire and blood, of how the children reaped what the fathers had sown.
For many months past the statesmen of England have been sending forth discussions reviewing the career of their country. In the light of the Eastern problem one of these authors reflects that whenever England has sown injustice to a weaker nation she has reaped injustice and retribution for herself. He notes that in the last century the governors of England—for example, Lord Hastings—went through the land robbing rajahs, despoiling the people by false weights and measures, until they had turned the whole country into one vast desert. The hour came when before the House of Commons Burke impeached Hastings for high crimes and misdemeanors, as the enemy of India and England and all men. But England was content to impose a trifling fine upon her wicked official. How could she give up the treasure she had filched for herself? Years passed and an injured people brooded upon its wrongs, and the time came when what England had sown in tears she reaped in blood. One day the Indian soldiers mutinied. The next day the wells were filled with the bodies of English officers, their wives and children; then merchants and missionaries and travelers were slaughtered. For weeks the strife went on. If once the English soldier had pillaged the Indian villages, now, in turn, the English quarters were pillaged. "Blind of eye and hard of heart," said the sage statesman. "Retribution hath been visited upon us," said the great leader. "Our jealousy and greed hath ended with that sword being sharpened against ourselves." The note of conviction is in the voice of this statesman, but what saith be save this: "What a man soweth, that also shall he reap!"
All young hearts may well remember that it is safe to do right, but dangerous to sow wrong! No matter how smooth, how soft and sweet, seem the paths of sin, know that beneath every flower there lurks a spider, beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns and thickets. For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem unobservant and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection from honor shall find at last that God never slumbers, that his laws never sleep. Go east or go west. Nature is upon the track of the wrong-doer. Could the sage of old sit down to converse with each youth who to-day walks on the street, perchance he would find many who, through excess, are draining away the rich forces of nerve and brain and blood.
Daily they deny reason its book, taste its music, love its noble companionship. At last, when the harp of the physical senses begins to give way, and they fall back upon the mental faculties for pleasure, then these faculties that have been starved shall, in turn, make men suffer. In that hour reason or memory shall say: "Because I called and ye refused; because I stretched out my hand and no man regarded, therefore I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock at your desolation when your fear cometh as destruction and your desolation as whirlwind." In Daniel Webster's words of disappointed ambition, "I still live," we see that a statesman sows what he reaps. In Goethe's fearful cry for "more light" we see that the poet who sows darkness shall reap darkness. In Lord Byron's piteous "I must sleep now" we see that he who sows morbidness and passion reaps feverishness and shame. The law is inexorable. He who sows foul thoughts shall reap the foul countenance of a fiend. He who sows pure thoughts shall reap the sweetness and nobility of the face of Fra Angelico. He who sows reflection shall reap wisdom. He who sows sympathy shall reap love. The good Samaritan who sows tenderness to the man wounded by the wayside shall reap tenderness when angels stoop to bind up his broken heart.