I
IN a final division of household possessions of my ancestors, a
quaint gray chest has brought me a heritage of unexpected value in
packages of letters, written many years ago, and tossed carelessly here
with mouse-eaten diplomas and articles of ancient wear. As I read,
deciphering oftentimes with difficulty the old-fashioned handwriting on
the yellowing paper, I pause to marvel. What fullness of life is here!
What richness! What greatness!
There are letters from a mother to a little daughter at school in the
city; letters from an aged father who has been visiting his clergyman
son; glad letters, written to bring joy at marriages; solemn, and yet
joyous letters, written to console in death. Doubtless they are akin to
hundreds of others still resting in the corners of boxes and old desks,
and to others innumerable which have perished, recording the experience
of a generation, two generations ago. Written out of narrower lives, so
far as mere worldly circumstances go, than those with which I come in
contact to-day, they reveal a far deeper life, a profounder hope and
faith, a recognition of wider horizons than most of our contemporary
world knows. Here is a knowledge of spirit as the one great reality; of
divine meanings everywhere; a sense of the greatness of the issue in
life as a warfare waged in the name of the soul; faith in the undying
character of righteousness, in the endlessness of human hope. Words are
here traced which take away one’s breath, in the grandeur of their
denial of that which seems, in the splendor of assurance: “My sister
Mary to-day entered upon eternal life--”
It is not primarily theology upon which they dwell: dogma plays a
lesser part here than I should have supposed. It is upon the inner
sources of hope and consolation, the life-giving power of faith, faith
drawn often from hard experience, faced in the light of a great hope.
Here is a real sense of the swift flitting of things earthly, and the
great promise therein; here is a constant dwelling upon the Master, the
face of the Master, the vision of perfectness. Those writers repeat
lovingly his words, thus bringing one another courage in sharp anguish
of grief and at beds of illness; and the thought of sacrifice is ever
in their minds, of outer loss that is great inner gain. One is aware of
certain immovable tenets of hard theology, but I note that these have
small part in their thought, their feeling, in the way in which faith
vitalizes their daily lives.
Letters that I am privileged to see to-day are as different as if they
were written by a different race; chance articles in newspapers and
journals, intended to appeal to the contemporary public, reinforce
the impression in regard to our present absorptions, our present
limitations. These later letters are no less full of human tenderness,
and possibly they are more outspoken in regard to it, but they bespeak
an inner poverty, a contrasting narrowness of life. Their largeness, if
wide horizons are suggested, is external, geographical,--the largeness
of travel abroad, by land or sea, of motor-trips there or at home. They
are full of restlessness, desire for change, rushing hither and yon.
Their great concern is with material things: diet, dress, details
of operations, fluctuations in stocks. There is much about reform,
suffrage, the fighting of Tammany, measures for the physical betterment
of factory boys and girls. There are many wrongs to right, for the
most part centring in the body; but, in spite of my sympathy with each
distinct measure and my strenuous efforts to help forward some of
them, I feel great sense of lack. The horizon is near and attainable;
the sky comes down like a brass bowl over our heads; I stifle in this
world of nostrums, of remedies, of external cures for moral evils.
This superficial material optimism which ignores the deepest need, the
deepest answer, fails to suffice. One is aware of a lessening life, a
drying of the very sources of vitality; the old sense of illimitable
destiny, of greatness, of the challenge of eternity, is gone.
A kind of materialistic Epicureanism dominates our modern world; robbed
of Eternity, we mean to make Time pay to the uttermost,--hence this
nervous excitement, this feverish activity. Has any question been more
absorbing during the last decades than the question how much space
could be covered, on earth or in air, in a minute of time? Back of our
hurry lies something deeper than the mere desire to excel in this or
that sport, this or that means of rapid transit, this or that business
enterprise or philanthropy. It is an unconfessed manifestation of our
immense sense of loss; a morbid outpouring of that energy which might
work healthily and to great ends if the old hope were there of endless
destiny. We have but a few minutes in which to rob the house of life;
let us seize all the articles in sight; death, the householder, is even
now waiting to take us into custody. We want as much as we can get;
we want all, and we foolishly think that hurrying feet and twitching
muscles can win it. We will crowd all into the swift, flitting minutes,
though Life should break in the process.