lived up to it;" but "professing nothing" does not exonerate a man
at all, so far as relates to the personal maintenance of honor,
purity, and truth. The man who would excuse a lapse from virtue,
or any obliquity of conduct, on the ground that he did not profess
any thing, simply announces to me the execrable proposition that
every man has a kind or degree of right to be a rascal until he
pledges himself to be something better. There are altogether too
many men in the world who am keeping themselves easy with the
thought that if they are not very good, they never pretended or
professed to be,--as if this failure publicly to pronounce
themselves on the side of the highest morality, were a sufficient
apology for minor delinquencies! It seems to be a poultice of
poppies to some sensitively inflamed consciences, that, whatever
they may have done, they have never broken promises voluntarily
made, to do right--as if there were a release from the obligation
to do right, in failing to make the promise! If it will help a man
to do right, publicly to profess to do right, and to do good to
other men by placing his influence on the right side, then the
first duty a man owes to his race, is to make this declaration.
But I will not linger here, because my words have led me to the
discussion of the obligations of those who have made a profession
of Christianity, and taken upon themselves the vows of Christian
church-membership.
When a man joins a Christian church, he becomes related to that
church in the same way that nature makes him related to humanity.
The reputation of the church is placed in his keeping. He cannot
do an unchristian thing without injury to the church, or without
depreciating, in the eyes of the world, every other member. Think
what a blow is inflicted upon the church of Jesus Christ by such
scandalous immoralities as some of its most prominent members have
been guilty of--by forgeries, and adulteries, and drunkenness!
These cases are not common, but when they occur, they are blows
under which the church reels. The outside world looks on, and
scoffs: "Aha! That's your Christianity, is it?"
I declare that I do not know of a position that more strongly
appeals to a man's personal honor than that of membership in a
Christian church. Even if a man in such a position should say
within himself: "This costs more than it comes to. I love my vices
more than I love the Master whose name I profess. Either openly or
secretly, I will give rein to my appetites and passions"--he
should be arrested by the consideration that he proposes to do
that which will wound the feelings, and degrade the position, and
injure the influence, of thousands of the best men and women in
the world; that he proposes to inflict an irreparable injury upon
a cause which has never injured him, and whose office it is to
save him, and all mankind. Perhaps he is so weak, and temptation
is so strong, that he feels, in the stress of his trial, that he
can afford to perjure his own soul; but if he does, he has no
right to wound others. Better fight the devil until the animal
within us bleeds at every vein--until it dies, if that must be--
than "offend one of these little ones." A man who will join a
church, and then lead an unchristian life, not only demonstrates
before the world his hypocrisy, but he voluntarily undertakes to
prove that he has no personal honor. An honorable man will
sacrifice himself always before he will voluntarily inflict injury
upon a cause he has pledged himself to sustain, and upon men and
women whose good name is in his hands. When a member of a church
has become so hardened in a course of bad living, that no pang
comes to him when he thinks of the injury he is inflicting upon
the Christian church, he is bad enough for a prison. I would not
trust him the length of my arm.
We have had, within the last ten years, too many notable instances
of falls from virtue among the clergy; and every fall has been
like an avalanche. They come from a point so near to heaven, and
fall so far, that mountain-sides are scarred and whole communities
whelmed by the calamity. It takes, often, many years for the
villages that lie at their feet to smile again. All Christendom
feels the shock, and mourns with downcast eyes the consequences. I
freely grant that, as a class, the American clergy, of all
denominations, are the purest and best men whom I know; but I
cannot resist the conviction that there are many of them who
forget what the responsibility is that rests upon them. It was the
remark of an aged clergyman, retired from pulpit duties, that if
he were a layman he should watch with more anxiety and carefulness
than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the
women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that
there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all;
but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is
no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for
their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their
pastors. There shall never be an improper word spoken; there shall
never be a deed committed that would bring a blush to the most
sensitive cheek; yet a susceptible woman in the society of a
minister of strong and magnetic sympathies, may become as passive
as a babe. Led toward him by her religious nature, attracted and
held by his intellectual power and the graces of his language,
yielding to him her confidence, it is not strange that, before she
is aware, she is a captive without a captor, a victim without an
enemy, a wreck without a destroyer.
Now I know that there is not a pastor of a strong and graceful and
sympathetic nature who reads these words without understanding
what I mean--who does not know that there are women in his
congregation who are, either consciously or unconsciously, the
slaves of his will. I have no doubt that there are some such
pastors who will read this essay with a flush of guilt upon their
faces. They have never meant these women any ill--they would not
harm them for the world--but they are conscious of a selfish and
most unchristianly pleasure in these conquests of female natures--
these parlor triumphs, God forgive them! Perhaps they go further,
and, by the lingering, fervent pressure of a hand, or the glance
of an eye, or the utterance of some bit of gallantry or flattery,
send into a woman's heart an unwomanly and an unchristian thought.
Perhaps they take special delight in the society of some half a
dozen female members of their flock, and find themselves dressing
for them--betraying to them their weaknesses--opening, in various
ways, avenues by which the quick eyes and instincts of these women
can see directly into them. The number of pastors is not small, I
think, who are not aware that there is one woman, or that there
are some women, who know more of what is in them, to their
disadvantage, than any man--that before certain lenient--possibly
sad and forgiving eyes--they stand as men who indulge in
essentially unchristian vanities of purpose and life.
Of all woman-killers in this world, I know of none so disgusting
as one whose chosen profession it is to preach the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. A clerical fop, a ministerial gallant, a man who
preaches the love of God on Sunday, and lays snares for an
innocent heart on Monday afternoon, is a disgrace to Christianity,
and a sad burden to the Christian cause. Does such a man think
that he can add a little zest to a leisure hour and a humdrum
life, by toying with a tender friendship, and giving lease and
latitude to his desire for personal conquest, and yet that no one
shall know it? Ah, the fallacy! I know of eminent clergymen--
earnest workers--who, by yielding to this desire once, have been
shorn of their power for good forever, so far as those are
concerned who really know them and their weakness. There are
ministers in America before whom strong men tremble, and great
congregations bow themselves, who could be laughed to scorn and
smothered in a cloud of blushes, by some girl to whom, in a weak
moment, they betrayed the vain heart that beats within them. Ah!
ye men of the black coat and the white neck-cloth--toying with
women, under whatever disguise; indulging in the vanity of
personal power, however ingeniously you mask it, is not for you.
You can never do it without an injury to the religion which you
profess to preach. If you find that you are too weak to resist
these temptations--and they are great to such as you--then you
should leave the desk forever. You, at least, are bound in
personal honor to quit the public advocacy of a cause which your
private life dishonors.
Easy to preach, you say? Easier to preach than practise? Nobody
knows it better than I--unless it be you. I do not expect perfection
in this world, of anybody;--I do not expect impossibilities of anybody.
But there are certain duties which men owe to humanity and their race,
and which members of Christian churches and teachers of Christian
churches owe to Christianity and to their brotherhood, which are
possible to be performed, and which I insist upon. I do not appeal
to the highest motives--at least I do not appeal to religious motives.
I appeal to personal honor. I say that every man, high or low, is bound
in honor so to conduct himself as not to disgrace humanity--as not to
shake the confidence of men in human honor. I say that every man
who belongs to a Christian church--no matter what his internal life
may be--is bound in honor so to carry himself before men and women,
that the Christian name receive no damage and the Christian cause no
prejudice in their eyes. Every man carries the burden of his race and
his brotherhood; and if he be a man, he will neither ignore it nor try
to shake it off.
LESSON XVIII.
SORE SPOTS AND SENSITIVE SPOTS.
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain?"
SHAKSPEARE.
"I have gnashed
My teeth in darkness till returning morn,
Then cursed myself till sunset; I have prayed
For madness as a blessing; 'tis denied me."
BYRON.
_Alessandra_. Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing
Thy happiness--what ails thee, cousin of mine?
Why didst thou sigh so deeply?
"_Castiglione_. Did I sigh?
I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,
A silly--a most silly fashion I have
When I am _very_ happy. Did I sigh?"
POE.
There is a hill opposite to my window, up which, during all the
long and weary day, horses are drawing heavy loads. The majority
of them crawl patiently along, with their heads down and with
reeking flanks and shoulders, pausing occasionally as the
water-bars brace the wheels, and impatient only with the flies that
vex their ears, and the insufficiency of their short and stumpy
tails to protect their quivering sides. Some of these animals are
not so patient, but are nervous and spasmodic and unhappy. I have
noticed one among them particularly, that has a very bad time every
morning with his first load. He is what the teamsters call
"balky," though evidently an excellent horse. Much coaxing and not
a little whipping seem necessary to get him started; and then he
plunges into his work as if he were determined to tear his harness
and his load all in pieces. I notice that there are certain
unusual fixtures about his collar, and learn that the poor animal
has a galled shoulder, so raw and inflamed that all his first
efforts in the morning are attended by pain, and that he only
works well after the flesh has become benumbed by pressure. I ask
his driver why he does not turn the creature into the pasture, and
let the ulcer heal, and am told that he has been treated thus
repeatedly, but that it always returns when labor is resumed.
There is a livery stable that I visit frequently; and while I wait
to be served I notice what the grooms are doing. I see that when
the currycomb or brush touches a certain spot upon the horse's
skin there is a cringe, and usually a kick and a squeal,--
possibly a harmless nip at the groom's shoulder. I learn, too,
that there is a certain place upon the back of every horse that
the grooms are not permitted to bathe with cold water.
These sore spots and tender spots and sensitive spots on horses
have very faithful counterparts in the minds and characters of
men. I do not know that I ever met a man who had not on him,
somewhere, a sore spot, or a tender spot, or a sensitive spot--a
spot that would either gall under the collar of labor, or bring on
hysterics if harshly rubbed, or communicate a damaging shock to
the nervous system when suddenly cooled. Very few men arrive at
thirty-five years of age without getting galled, and very few
entirely recover from the abrasion while they live. The spot never
thoroughly heals, and the old collar only needs to be put on, even
after the longest period of rest, to develop the ulcer in the same
old place. I heard a young clergyman preach recently, and I
instantly learned that he had a sore spot under his collar. He was
a young man of fine powers, bold intellect, a strong love of
freedom, and a will determined to do honor to his convictions. He
had formed his own opinion upon certain points of doctrine, and
had insisted upon it in the presence of his elders. The
consequence was that he had been bitterly opposed, and was with
great difficulty settled over his parish. The screws had been put
tightly down upon him, and he had felt, in the very depths of his
sensitive soul, that the liberty wherewith Christ had made him
free had been tampered with. So he could neither pray nor preach
without showing that he had a sore spot on him. He did not betray
it by refusing to draw at all; but he drew violently, as if he had
been hitched to the leg of an obtuse Doctor of Divinity, and
intended to give all the other Doctors of Divinity notice to get
out of the way. Now that sore spot on that young man's shoulder is
sure to color all his efforts from this time henceforth, until he
puts on another kind of collar. The same old sting will be in all
his preaching--a tinge of personal feeling--that the masses of
those who hear him preach will not understand, and that he, at
last, will become unconscious of. Ministers have more sore places
under their harnesses than any class of men I know of.
A minister who has adopted unpopular views, and, in his advocacy
of them, has rubbed against the fixed opinions or prejudices of
the people to which he is called to preach, is very sure to get
sore; and he will either wince with the friction or oppose himself
to it with violence. His soreness will always be calling attention
to that which caused it, so that if his wound was procured in the
advocacy of some infernal doctrine like "infant damnation," why,
infant damnation will seem to become a very precious doctrine to
him, and he will always be talking about it, and enforcing it. If
he has preached against slavery, or intemperance, or any other
public wrong or popular vice, and been fiercely and persistently
opposed by any portion of his charge, he will betray the sore
under his collar on all occasions, and very possibly become so
fractious and violent that his flock will be obliged to turn him
out to pasture. A minister who gets sore under the friction of any
particular collar seems to feel that it is necessary for him to
wear that particular collar all the time; and he fails to remember
that the reason why he has so much feeling with this collar on, is
that it has made him sore. Not unfrequently he becomes so
sensitive and so nervous that he kicks out of the traces, and runs
away with, and smashes up, the vehicle to which he is attached.
No small degree of the sourness and bitterness and violence of the
advocates of special reforms comes from wearing too long the
collar of the public apathy, or the public contempt. The men are
very few, who, with the consciousness of being actuated by a good
motive, can work against opposition a long time, without getting
sore, and without betraying their soreness, either by stubbornness
or violence. Touch them anywhere but upon the galled spot, and
they will be as calm as clocks, and as good-natured as kittens;
touch them there, and we are sure to get a kick and a squeal, and
a nip at the shoulder. Heartless practical jokers understand where
"the raw" is, and know exactly what to say to provoke a galled
man to make a fool of himself.
The conscience is very liable to become sore with friction. One
entire section of the American nation became sore, even to
madness, with working in the collar of the world's condemnation.
The slave States of America were very comfortable with slavery so
long as they could hold it with self-respect, and so long as the
world regarded them rather with sympathy and pity than with
condemnation. As the popular opinion against slavery strengthened
and became intensified, both in this and other countries, they
became sore and sensitive. First, they tucked a constitutional rag
between the collar and the skin; and as that did not seem to
relieve them, they lined it with leaves from human philosophy; and
philosophy soon wearing out, they tore their Bibles into pieces
for materials with which to soften the cushion, and set the
Christian church to making padding. Every thing failing to produce
the desired result, and relieve them of their pain, they refused
to draw their portion of the national load, kicked the Union in
pieces, and ran away. They will never be happy again until slavery
is abolished, or the attitude of the nation and of the world
towards slavery is changed. This sore under the collar will never
heal, either in or out of the Union, until the cause shall in some
way be removed.
It is the same with individuals as with peoples. A man cannot long
wear a collar that presses upon his conscience, without getting
through the skin--down upon the raw. When a man who sells liquor
to his neighbors for drink, voluntarily apologizes to me for it,
or justifies himself in it, I know very well that his conscience
has a raw place upon it, and that it gives him trouble. When a
woman takes particular pains to tell me that she is exceedingly
economical, and that she really has had nothing for a year, I
cannot but conclude that she has been making some expenditure, or
some series of expenditures, that she knows she cannot afford, and
that there is a raw place upon her conscience in consequence. In
truth, I have never known a woman who wished to impress me with a
sense of her rigid economy, who was not more anxious to convince
herself of it than me. When a man undertakes to soften the
character of any crime by apologies, and by arguments, it is
invariably for the purpose of relieving its pressure upon a galled
conscience, or shaping it to a different place. I am afraid the
men are few who have escaped a galled spot upon their consciences.
Pride has had a terrible time of it in the world. It is, perhaps,
the most sensitive spot in human nature. Collars, curry-combs, and
cold water have alike served to torment it. A great multitude of
men and women have been obliged to work in the collar of poverty,
against a galled pride, during all their life. They never start in
the morning without flinching, and never work without violence,
until their pride has become entirely benumbed by pressure. Ah! if
society could be unveiled, how few would be found with pride free
from scars and raw places! I once heard a simple boy tell a young
man that his legs were crooked; and though the lad was very
innocent, and only supposed that he had made and announced a
pleasant discovery, he had, alas! hit the man's pride on the very
centre of its soreness and sensitiveness. One never knows, in
large things, where he will hit the sensitive places in the pride
of those he meets; but in little things he is pretty sure to learn
it concerning everybody. It is always safe to suppose that a very
small man is sore on the subject of bodily dimensions. It will
never do for a tall man to propose to measure altitude with him in
the presence of women. It is never safe to inquire the age of any
lady whom one knows to be more than twenty-five years old. There
is not one man or woman in a hundred who possesses an unpleasant
personal peculiarity, without getting a galled spot upon personal
pride in consequence. A long nose, a squint eye, a clumsy foot, a
low forehead, a hump in the back--any one of these will not bear
mention in the presence of its possessor.
It is quite amusing to witness the various methods resorted to for
cheating the world with regard to these sore places in personal
pride. Men who are conscious that they do not possess a particle of
musical taste, and are really ignorant of the difference between
Dundee and Yankee Doodle, will profess to be "very fond of music,"
and will not unfrequently convince themselves that they are so. Men
who are exceedingly sensitive touching any eccentricities of person,
will be constantly joking about their own long noses, or red hair,
or big feet, and run on about them in the pleasantest sort of way,
and persist in doing it on all occasions, as if the matter were
exceedingly amusing to them, when the fact is that their pride is
very sore in that particular spot. A woman who has passed her hour
of bloom, and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient
maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superfluous iteration,
about the usefulness of old maids, and the independence of their
lot--determined to cover up the galled spot that burns upon the
surface of her personal pride. The trick of keeping up the
appearances of wealth, after wealth is departed, is a familiar one;
and though if rarely deceives, it is likely to be persisted in to
the end of time. It is often very pitiful to witness the ingenuity
of the efforts that are made to cover from public observation the
soreness of personal pride, caused by a change of circumstances.
The Hepsibah Pynchons abound in houses of less than seven gables.
There is probably no harness so apt to gall the shoulder of personal
pride as that of ambition. The number of men in the world whose
personal pride has a sore on it, inflicted by disappointed ambition,
is sadly large. I have seen many a worthy man utterly spoiled by his
failure to reach the political, social, or literary eminence at
which he has aimed. Thenceforward, his hand has been against every
man, and he has imagined that every man's hand has been against him.
All who contributed to his defeat, and all in any way associated
with them, have become the subjects of his hatred and his
animadversion. He has retired into himself, sneering at every
thing and everybody, doubtful of the sincerity of all friendly
professions, and regarding himself as "a passenger," while the
poor fools among whom he once so gladly numbered himself, chase
the baubles by which his life has been so miserably cheated of its
meed. It is very hard for a proud man, with a strong will, to
feel that he has been baffled and beaten; and a really noble man,
defeated in his objects by trickery and meanness, will sometimes
become half insane with the wound which his pride has received. He
will never forget it; and the old sore can never be touched, even
in the most accidental way, without calling the fire into his eye,
and the color into his cheek. In the domain of politics, "sore
heads" notoriously abound, and I suppose they always will.
Literary life is probably as prolific of failures, and as full of
"sore heads" as political. The number of men and women who are
ambitious of literary distinction, and who make great efforts to
win it, is very large--larger than the world outside of the
publisher's private office dreams of. The number of manuscripts
rejected and never published is greater than the number published;
and of those which are published, not one in ten satisfies, in its
success, the ambition of its author. I suppose that it is within
the bounds of truth to say that nine authors in every ten are
disappointed men--men whose personal pride is wounded, who believe
that the world has treated them unjustly, and who cherish a sore
spot on their personal pride as long as they live. Some of these
refuse to draw in any harness, and give themselves up to poverty
and laziness, as the victims of the world's undiscriminating
stupidity. Some become critics of the works of successful authors,
and take their revenge in the hearty abuse of their betters.
Others enter into other departments of effort, but carry with them
through life the belief that they are out of their place, and the
conviction that if they had been born in a nobler age they would
have been recognized as the geniuses they imagine themselves to
be.