the country in teaching lessons of virtue--in bracing the frame for
hardier labors--in urging the worth of the lesser ethics of frugality and
economy, and the higher morals of true manliness and godliness. Virtue is
moral strength, and is taught in every school that strengthens the moral
energies. The genial air and simple habits of rural life favor manly
fortitude, and a manly spirit. Poor would be the future prospects of our
nation if they rested wholly with the dwarfed and fevered offspring of our
cities. Our people would ere long lose their place among the nations, and
would drop their heads in shame in comparison with men trained in hardy
sports and healthful labors, as the yeomanry and gentry of England.
Religion itself, which is the crown of true manliness, would languish if
there were no more check to vice and skepticism than the check, strong
indeed as it is, which metropolitan churches afford. How wonderfully the
power of faith among the peasants of La Vendee withstood the sneers and
threats of Paris, with its armed bands of Atheists in the great
convulsion, when priests became scoffers and churches were places of
rioting! How nobly our own churches have been favored by the words and
thoughts of elect minds devoted to God and his truth, in peaceful villages
away from the crowded marts! Where would the pulpit find the teachers that
are needed, if its sole dependence were upon the youth reared in cities? I
could not but think much of the power of rural life in raising up vigorous
and independent preachers, whilst I was enjoying a few weeks of recreation
in the lovely town in which President Dwight prepared himself for his more
conspicuous ministry at New Haven. I have rambled with delight again and
again over that noble Greenfield Hill, which he celebrated in a poem, and
have not wondered that the vast and charming prospect, ranging as it does
from the broad waters of Long Island Sound to the peak of the Catskill
Mountains, should have made something of a poet of a theologian, sometimes
so remorseless a logician. May we not see, however, in his theological
works, and still more in the pages of his mighty predecessor in theology,
Edwards, of Northampton, who, too, dwelt among scenes of singular beauty,
ample proofs that nature never deserts her votaries, nor fails to breathe
into them a spirit of beauty, that can live, after the harsh dogmas have
perished like the husks that inclose the grain for the harvest.
I would not disparage our town life, nor call it by any means godless. It
is happy in being able to command so many resources, happy in being able
to ally to itself so many influences not its own. Where there are souls
there God may be known, and where learning and experience gather their
treasure; we may find light upon the ways of God and his Providence. But
very poorly do we study this manifold creation, and the word of its
Creator, if we limit our horizon to the streets and walls, and business
and pleasure even of the greatest metropolis. The Bible itself--that book
so full of the poetry of nature--from its first to its last chapter, from
the Old Eden to the New Jerusalem exhaling the fragrance of fields and
breathing the genial air of rivers and mountains,--lifting the soul to God
by the contemplation of his works,--the Bible is a sealed book to us, if
we do not always read its parallel revelation in the heavens and upon the
earth. There is an expression in nature which must be caught, like that on
a friend's countenance, from itself. Description is not enough, and the
best scientific analysis, however valuable as an aid, is but a poor
substitute for the original reality. God speaks to us still in his works,
and what prophets and bards of old have heard, we may now hear. We may
hear it perhaps all the more eagerly for the comparative rarity of the
privilege. They that are trained in cities wisely yearn to breathe the
country air, and in its diviner meaning, interpret the landscape. Pastoral
poets and rural philosophers find their fondest admirers in such minds.
Who has exercised this blessed ministry of the interpretation of nature
better than Wordsworth, poet and philosopher at once as he is? With all
their exquisite refinement, and their sometimes mystical sentiment, his
poems are tinted with the hues of sky and mountain, lake and meadow,
eloquent with the voices of the seasons, breathing the calm spirit of
nature in its pleadings with the rebel temper of man. In how many of us
they awaken blessed remembrances of our childhood, refresh us in our worn,
anxious, and weary life as with the gush of living waters, and the sight
of grassy meadows! Kind Heaven would not have us lose the companionship of
nature, and has given us elect minds as well as glorious scenery to be its
interpretation. There is peace as well as power in listening to such
ministries. Nor do I fear to place upon this list, those men who have
brought a fine taste and genial humility to the culture and adornment of
the soil, the improvement of rural architecture and landscape gardening!
What name deserves more grateful mention than that of Downing, that lover
of nature and of the art that best interprets her ideal. I know of no
village which does not bear directly or indirectly some mark of his mind,
in the form of a cottage or school-house, or a garden devised after his
idea. He has brought out the wealth of our forests, and in our summer
retreat, many a tree that else had been cramped and hidden in the swamp
has whispered his requiem to our ears.
* * * * *
The course of thought which I have pursued regarding the objects and
influences of country life, will find an answer in many of my city
readers. We need no tent of green branches to quicken our remembrance of
Heaven's bounty to us and our fathers in our relations to rural scenes.
Our memory has a leafy arbor of unfading foliage, in which we may every
day celebrate God's goodness to us in the gift of so noble a heritage,
where we dwell and where we may visit.
It is not well to conclude these thoughts upon the influence of scenes
upon character without urging home the truth, that our ruling principle is
the main index and source of character; and he is sadly deluded who trusts
to any position to secure his virtue or to excuse his vices. Apt enough we
are to be discontented with our lot, and to burden fate or Providence with
the blame that is our own. We imagine some more favored condition to be
the sure warranty of success and worth. He who lives among the crowd
ascribes to their example his vices, and he who lives among the fields
refers his rudeness to want of better opportunity. Older than the Satire
of Horace on human discontent is the wish of man for change of fortune,
even as old as man himself. Better for him to make the best of what he
has, and find his content thus keeping pace with his progress.
He that dwells in the country, while he should use every opportunity for
enlarging his circle of experience by travel, must take heed lest he
slight the privileges of his own position. He may fall into the vices of
the town among the simpler habits of his neighbors, and be eaten at heart
by the worst passion while breathing the purest airs of heaven. He must
learn simple truth of a power above man, or nature will not save him from
corruption.
He who lives in the city need not ascribe the evil that he suffers solely
to circumstances, nor expect mental enlargement as the consequence of a
cosmopolitan home. He must keep true simplicity in the midst of artificial
conventions, and may narrow himself into an earthworm in the midst of the
men and the culture of all climes and nations. He may be in bondage to a
metropolitan mannerism which is quite as slavish as any provincial
prejudice, and full as far short of a wise humanity as of a genuine faith.
Better counsel do we need than crowds can teach or nature alone can
unfold. Wherever we dwell, we are to look to a kingdom not of this world,
and by communion with its sovereign Head, elect Messiah and sainted
intellects, we are to confirm what is best on earth by what is most
gracious on high.
Still, though only in thought, need we weave our green bowers to tell us
of the ancient march through the wilderness to the promised land, for
still are we on our pilgrimage. Wisely do we keep the feast of tabernacles
when we erect them at once in our remembrance and hope, looking upon the
emblems of God's love for us in the past as the assurance of his love when
the soul shall reach the river whose waters never fail, and rest beneath
the tree of life whose leaf never fades, whose fruit never withers.
_August._
Returning Home.
RETURNING HOME.
Two commands God gave in the beginning and is always giving to his
creatures. He bids them go forth and return, and the lives of all beings
are divided between the two. The history of every man is but another
version of the words, "He went forth and he returned." All his enterprises
and all his results may be thus simply described.
It is so common, especially in our restless time, to dwell upon the more
adventurous change, that the milder is apt to be slighted, and, bent upon
advancing, we make too little account of return as a primal law of life.
How can we fail to see it written on all things that God has made? It may
be read upon every dew-drop whose summons back to the heavens the morning
sunshine brings, and upon every flower whose gorgeous petals signal its
triumph, and herald the retreat of its vital forces to the earth whence
they came. Every rising wave murmurs also of an ebbing tide, and every
beat of the pulse sends back as well as forward the current of life. The
heavens--they bear majestic witness of Him who rules their hosts. The
stars are ever returning upon their courses, and marking the seasons that
time the periods of man. Insect, bird, and beast, follow instinctively the
same great law; by their transformations, migrations and quickened or
diminished vitality, they turn in the recurrent cycles in which all things
have their round. In all ages, thinking minds have been impressed with
this great fact. We see the impression in the early memorials of sober
thought. The wise preacher brooded over it, as he spoke of winds and
waters returning on their path and of there being nothing new under the
sun. It haunted the visions of the sages of the Nile, and stands out to
the eye in that serpent symbol which teaches from tombs and temples the
circle of eternity.
Feeling themselves sometimes swept away upon this great current of events,
inclosed in this serpent-fold of destiny, men have lost their proper sense
of responsibility and sunk down into a passive fatalism. From this torpor
God would ever arouse us, and have us see in the return, as in the going
forth, the same providential plan--the same sphere of duty and privilege.
* * * * *
How full of privilege is this recurrent aspect of things! Led by the hosts
of heaven, the seasons walk their benign round, and in their course they
are ever renewing most delightful relations of life. In the calendar of
nature there are far more festivals than fasts, and, to a well-taught
mind, the recurrence of the sadder times and scenes of the year brings
thoughts more blessed than the world's reckless feasting. Spring and
summer are always new and always cheering, whilst autumn and winter teach
lessons and may nurture affections more precious than their gayer
treasures. The text of nature has ever a marginal commentary taken from
the book of the heart; and as the text is read and re-read, the commentary
grows in size and interest, for each year's repeated interviews reveal
nature and the heart more fully to each other, and give variety ever fresh
to a friendship constant as the law of God. The great universe was made,
we must believe, more for the home of rational souls than for the
playground of giant masses and powers of matter. What aspect of its
vastness is more tender than that which exhibits its majestic changes as
waiting upon the discipline and affections of God's children; the great
sun lighting the laborer to his work, and then withdrawing its light to
send him to the welcome of his home and the peace of his pillow; the whole
starry host joining together to make and mark the days and months whose
returning recalls some pleasant face of life and Providence, makes
childhood glad, or age peaceful.
Man himself has in his own being a periodicity corresponding with the
cycles of nature. His active energies, his sensibilities, social and
devout, his intellectual powers, have their recurrent periods. He is
strangely ignorant of his own nature, who has not learned that there are
times and tides within his own soul as well as with seas and stars. The
plan of the benign Deity for him seems to be such as to secure at once
constancy, and variety, and progress.
* * * * *
Note well the constancy which God, the Ever Faithful and True, ordains for
man by the recurrent order of his lot. He will not have life a chaos of
scattered fragments, nor a stray meteor that follows no orbit. It must
have its periods of outgoing and return. Whatever be our home, the object
of our love or care, to that we must ever recur; and however capricious
the humors, or eventful the career, every man's life falls into a certain
circuit, and every heart revolves in some orbit by a law as sure as that
which guides Arcturus and Orion. Man, indeed, may be so perverse as to
abuse the law, but he cannot repeal it. He may give his heart to evil, and
make his home with wickedness; but wherever he makes it, there this law
finds him, and, in a round of habit good or bad, returns him after every
wandering to his own place. Securing thus the constancy of his Providence,
God teaches us to see the moral significance of the law of return. What a
lesson is here upon the force of habit! Its power comes from God's own
constancy, and woe to the man who inverts his nature so sadly, that evil
instead of good walks in the appointed circuit. Every vice into which he
falls constantly returns upon him, like the circling waters of the
whirlpool, which run round and round until lost in the dark deep. Every
good which he loves, every truth he accepts, every charity he cherishes,
follows the same law; circling in the ascending order, like the vine that
twines round and round its trellis, to lift its leaves and fruit into the
upper air and light. The law of habit we cannot repeal, but our use of it
depends upon ourselves. It is like the tides, which wait not our bidding
to rise or fall, but which leave us free to launch wisdom and industry, or
folly and rapine, upon their waters. The law says that man must return in
his course. He must go home. Let a true life interpret the benignity of
this Divine constancy.
* * * * *
Consider, also, the variety which comes from the action of this law. The
interest of existence depends in great measure upon a due proportion of
constancy and variety. Were there no uniformity, the world would be chaos,
society Babel, and thought madness; there could be no external stability,
no intellectual consistency; the senses would recognize no familiar
things, and memory could make no reliable record. Such a condition is
hardly conceivable; although feuds and wars sometimes so disturb the
stability of life as to give some idea of the fatal effect of such
disorder. Without variety, moreover, the Divine plan would also be broken,
and a dreary monotony would brood over paradise itself. Benign Heaven has
blended the two elements in our lot, so that perhaps our highest pleasure
consists in the return of familiar blessings with varied
circumstances;--not in absolute novelty or absolute permanence, but in
scenes, friends, and pursuits ever constant and ever new. Who does not
know this kindly mingling of joys? What traveller is there in distant
lands--lands which his boyish fancy has so long yearned to see--who does
not feel more delight in the return than in the going away? No matter what
beauties or sublimities of nature and art may have feasted sense and soul,
the fairest sight is his own familiar home and friends,--the sublimest
thought is of the God who guarded his childhood, and whose presence he
feels more deeply as the guardian of his dwelling, than as the dread Being
who piled up the Alps and poured out the oceans. In any aspect of the
case, it is recurrence with variety that gives our being much of its
finest zest. To talk with cherished friends after absence, to revisit
familiar scenes and meditate on times past and present; to perform, under
new influences and encouragements, the accustomed round of duty; how much
of freshest satisfaction is thus found! It is the best novelty and the
truest constancy. Old things are made new by the fresh spirit infused into
them, and that which the apostle states as the feeling of a first convert
to the Gospel, becomes a permanent aspect of life,--"Old things are passed
away, and all things are become new."
Happy the man who understands self-discipline, so as to secure this charm,
and mingle constancy and variety in his pursuits. He will divide days and
years in such a way that life shall be ever more constant and more fresh.
No servile drudge to worldly care, no capricious pleasure-seeker who is
always uneasy, because always sated, he will be a faithful worker and a
cheerful friend, stronger for work by recreation, the wiser for enjoyment
by his work,--filling his time with such varied uses, that recurrent
duties shall be welcome to him each in its time, and every day's life
illustrate in some way the varied uniformity of God's plan for nature and
humanity. Great obstacles, we know, lie in the way of such order; for care
is often too imperious and protracted, and pleasure too engrossing, to
make true method easy; but the obstacles yield before a just purpose, and,
in the end, every man is the artificer of his habits. He can make his life
constant to its appointed round, and varied in its constancy.
* * * * *
So God teaches us the moral significance of the law of return, by showing
its bearing on the stability and freshness that give charm to our days.
Yet more, he teaches us to find in it the true law of progress. He bids us
return, but not the same, nor to the same,--he bids us return better or
worse, and to a state of things better or worse. This is a necessity, and
we are called to make it a happy necessity. Not in a circle of absolute
uniformity, but in a rounding path, in a spiral course, we wind our way
upward or downward,--our way turning indeed ever upon itself, yet at a
higher or lower mark. The very structure of language indicates that true
progress is the returning of the mind towards its previous experience.
What is the accumulation of knowledge but remembering the facts of
previous observation? What is wisdom but the fruit of reflection, or
turning thought backward upon its course? What is repentance but
conscience revising past errors? What is reformation but the whole man
returning to himself and to God? It is progress that gives its most
cheering aspect to the recurrent order of life.
Return then to thine own home as each day, or week, or season repeats the
decree. Return to do better than you have ever done,--to see more clearly
than before the demands of your position, the errors of your way of
living, your indifference, perhaps unkindness, towards those who daily
look to you for a nurture, better than that of perishing bread. Return to
thine own house, and consider whether among the guests there welcomed, the
only abiding Comforter is entertained, and the good angels that go with
him are not shut out. Return with thought more free to see things as they
are from your temporary absence from the trammels of routine, with
affections fresh from nearer companionship with nature, with powers
renewed for the sober work of life. Let fortune smile or frown more than
of old, make sure of your own soul, and do better than you have done.
Constant and varied in many respects our life must be. God bids us add
progress to the constancy and variety that he has decreed. True to him,
our days in their returning order, their various events, their steady
progress, shall go forward, like the march of the faithful host to the
promised land, their step responsive, their way opening new attractions,
their course ever onward, and above them, swelling sweet and clear, that
glorious psalm of jubilee, which in its rhythmic verse and progressive
flow ever returns upon the same rapturous burden, and repeats the
hallowed anthem, "His mercy endureth for ever."
Let this be our spirit, and we shall know how wonderfully God reconciles
two things apparently contradictory; we shall know, that the greater our
progress, the surer our return,--that more and more the blessed scenes and
friends of early days shall come back to us. Memory shall mate with hope
to cheer us, and the evening of life shall add to its own tranquil beauty
the fairest charms from the morning of our days. The aged man turns ever
fondly to his childhood, and may enter the kingdom of heaven like a little
child, even before death unlocks its gates of eternity.
What a thought here opens--opens to us as we return to our homes, and
think of some who return no more! Beyond these homes, the orbit of our
being reaches, and one, nay, many call to us, "Come." Over the grave the
decree is still more solemnly heard. The words, "Thou sayest, return, ye
children of men," mean more, far, than "dust to dust." "Return, ye
children of men." "Dust to the dust whence it was,--the spirit to God who
gave it."
Christ repeats the call in more than the Hebrew's faith, in more, far more
than the philosopher's hope. Futurity as revealed by him is the way
homeward to Him from whom our being came,--to all the faithful and lovely,
who have blessed man and glorified God. We will not scorn the
philosopher's hope of earthly cycles recurring in progressive order, until
our globe bears the perfected harvest of a truer civilization, and all
nature comes to herself. This hope is well, but does not go far enough. As
we and those dear to us leave the earth, we crave word of a return more
blessed than any dream of earthly kingdoms and ages. We crave what God has
given us. The soul about to go into a region by itself unexplored, yearns
to know that the path is not to night and nothingness, but is a return and
more than a return to God, the Eternal Father, and to the mansions that
gather from all earthly homes their purest treasures, and transfigure them
in the light of heaven.
_September._
The Church in the House.
THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE.
In his letter to Philemon St. Paul salutes "the church in thy house," and
thus brings home to us a fact which is too often put a great way off. He
brings the church into the house, and thus makes an every-day reality of
an institution, which is thought to belong to the disputed territory where
controversialists quarrel, or the close walls where priestcraft rules. The
church, what is it? many are virtually ready to ask. Is it a certain style
of edifice, or platform of opinion, or set of ceremonies or band of
officials? In the apostle's mind, surely it was a very tangible fact, and
he closes his letter so full of friendly remembrance and delicate courtesy
with an affectionate message to the church in his correspondent's house.
He meant, of course, by the church the Christian people under Philemon's
roof, whether those who lived there constantly or those who came to
worship occasionally. The same greeting is several times repeated in
Paul's letters, and fitly guides us in some thoughts on practising
Christianity at home, or the Church in the House. We would show that.--
There should be a church in every house,
What makes it a true church in itself,
And how it may be true to the church universal.