that he could do and longs to do for the large benefit of mankind,--the
man who has a gift of teaching and is not allowed to teach, or who has
the statesman's quality and finds no place in public affairs, or who,
with any large executive and beneficent faculty, finds himself denied all
opportunity of exercising it. For a faculty to be repressed is hard just
in proportion as its quality is noble. A caged canary is hardly a
painful sight, but a caged eagle stirs one with regret. And the world
has such need of all noble talent; such exigent and hungry need of the
true teacher, statesman, seer,--of the word of inspiration and the act of
leadership! How shall one who feels in him the power and sees the need;
who grasps in his hand the keen sickle, yet is held back, while before
his eyes the fields are white with the harvest which threatens, unreaped,
to perish,--how shall he reconcile himself to his lot? How escape the
thought that he and all mankind are but playthings in the grasp of cruel
and ironic fate?
What, then, does the world most need of us? Is it wisdom, or
statesmanship, or executive power? These things it greatly needs. But
most of all it needs character. Most of all it needs that quality of
personality which is moulded by the interplay of loyal will with the
shifting course of outward event. For our wisest thoughts the world can
very well wait, or do without them altogether; almost certainly some one
else has thought them and said them. Our executive power to be added to
the world's work,--it is but a fly's strength contributed to a
steam-engine. One thing the universe asks of us, which no one else can
give,--_ourselves_; our highest and fullest self. It is not what we do
externally, but what we are, that measures our worth. The real and
lasting value of a word or an act depends largely on the weight of
character behind it. And in character no higher effect is wrought out
than that which comes through endurance and heroic passivity. To stand
long before closed doors of opportunity and keep serene; to see work
waiting, see others working, and in patience and self-control to bide
one's time,--that is more than to do any work; it is to be a man. The
time comes when manhood finds itself to be power.
A brook goes singing on its way, marking its course through forest and
field with a track of beauty and freshened life. Men throw a dam across
its path, and through many a long day its course is stopped and its
waters silently accumulate. And the brook says, "Alas for my lost
freedom and service! Alas for the rush and sparkle and joy of my
cascades! Alas for the parched meadows, the unwatered ferns and mosses!"
But the day comes when with a cataract leap it crosses its barrier;
meadow and mosses and ferns revive; and now the stored power of the
stream is turning great mills and grinding bread for men.
Washington rode as a subordinate in Braddock's army; ignorance commanded
and knowledge looked on powerless until the mischief was done. Twenty
years of quiet follow; great events are impending, eloquent men are
rousing and leading; what is there for this silent Virginian? till
suddenly he finds himself the chief commander. Then comes waiting to
which all before was easy; holding away from the stronger enemy, holding
steady under the impatience and the doubts of friends; for one bold
stroke, a year of waiting and watching; till, at last, victory! And not
to Washington victorious at Yorktown do we turn for inspiration so much
as to Washington in the dead of winter at Valley Forge.
There are a great many women whose capacities and desires seem much
beyond their opportunities. This is especially true of our New England,
who stimulates the brains of her children, and consigns many of her
daughters to a secluded life with small scope for action. There are many
women who, being unmarried, or being married and childless, or left by
the flight of the young birds to brood an empty nest, have not the full
natural outlet of a woman's activities and affections, and suffer
consciously or unconsciously from a partial emptiness and idleness of
what is best in them. The burden upon such lives is that of isolation.
Isolation may be in the midst of a crowd as well as in solitude; it is
when the heart is not filled that we are truly alone. And this real
solitude, this isolation of the affections from their proper objects, is
something so bad, so against the law of our nature, that, broadly
speaking, it is a matter not so much for endurance as for speedy getting
rid of. Do you feel yourself alone and empty-hearted? Then you have
necessity indeed for fortitude and brave endurance, but above all and
before all you are to get out of your solitude. You cannot command for
yourself the love you would gladly receive; it is not in our power to do
that; but that noble love which is not asking but giving,--that you can
always have.
Wherever your life touches another life, there you have opportunity. The
finest, the most delicate, the most irresistible force lies in the mutual
touch of human lives. To mix with men and women in the ordinary forms of
social intercourse becomes a sacred function when one carries into it the
true spirit. To give a close, sympathetic attention to every human being
we touch; to try to get some sense of how he feels, what he is, what he
needs; to make in some degree his interest our own,--that disposition and
habit would deliver any one of us from isolation or emptiness. There is
but one sight more beautiful than the mother of a family ministering
happiness and sunshine to them all; and that is a woman who, having no
family of her own, finds her life in giving cheer and comfort to all whom
she reaches, and makes a home atmosphere wherever she goes. Though she
have not the joy of wife and mother, she has that which is most sacred in
wifehood and motherhood. She shares the blessedness of that highest life
the earth has seen, of him who, having no home nor where to lay his head,
brought into other homes a new happiness, and who spoke the transforming
word, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
Take, again, the case of an invalid, who is for a long period shut out by
illness or weakness from all ordinary activities. There are many such to
whom pain and physical endurance are less trying than the feeling of
being excluded from use and service, and having their moral life stunted
or disordered by this stoppage of the natural play of the faculties.
There are kinds of illness, especially those of the nervous system, which
seem to invade the seat of the will and soul itself, to irritate the
temper and sap the resolve and foster a self-centring egotism, by a power
that is literally irresistible. Before such experiences as this one
thought rises: it is part of mankind's business to lessen, and so far as
possible to extirpate, these maladies. The individual sufferer must meet
as best he can the conditions thrust upon him, but to prevent such
conditions from arising is the lesson for the rest of us. We are only
beginning to appreciate how largely the salvation of mankind must be
worked out through physical means. The pestilences, the transmitted
diseases, the insanities, the nervous disorders, bred of violated
law,--all these and the like curses, which not merely destroy human life
but degrade it, are to be fought and extirpated. We must secure for
soul-life some fair room and chance as against these pests and tyrants.
Here lies the noblest work of science; here, in prevention rather than in
cure, lies the best field of that unsurpassed profession, the
physician's. And, too, in this preventive work each man must learn to be
his own physician, and minister to himself.
But what, meantime, is our disabled and secluded invalid to do? He is
like a man set to fight a battle with one arm tied behind him. Others
may pity, but for him his disablement must be a motive to greater
exertion; he must supply by courage and skill the place of the lacking
strength. It is what man can do under limitations and disabilities that
shows his high-water mark of achievement. Any one can be cheerful in
perfect health, but to be cheerful under weakness and pain,--_that_ is
worth trying for! To be considerate and unselfish, when one is at ease
and has all he wants, does not cost much; but to take thought for others
and to spare them, and to be sympathetic with their joys and troubles,
when pain forces you to be self-conscious, and long endurance tempts you
to become self-centred,--well, if you can do that, you are good for
something. If you can do that, have no fear that you are useless. Such
fruit is rare enough to be precious. The lessons taught from many a
sick-bed of bravery and gentleness and love,--we get no other teaching so
good as that. There is many a family where it is the one who can do the
least who does the most,--where it is the invalid's room from which goes
out the strongest influence of patience and sweet courage and that divine
quality which transforms trouble.
In one sick-room in a foreign land, for years a home-loving woman has
been an exile; a woman of active and eager disposition, with large,
executive capacity and ripe experience, shut up almost to idleness; a
woman of large benevolence, who had entered on work of peculiar
excellence and attractiveness, cut off from all such activities. This,
with frequent pain, with fluctuation of hope and discouragement as to the
future; and yet there is about her an atmosphere as serene as the Alpine
heights that look down upon her, as cheerful as the sunny Alpine pastures
with their tinkle of sheep-bell and hum of mountain bee. Her constant
thought goes out to distant friends and brings them near; her close
attention follows the march of the world's great interests, the fortunes
of England and Russia and America, the course of freedom and reform; a
sense of nature's beauty, trained to fineness through years of enforced
quietude, brings exquisite ministrations; she shares the lives of the
little circle of friends about her; heart and mind are at rest in the
peace of God. Patience has had her perfect work.
Up, friend! leave your law case, your sermon, your accounts, and come out
for an hour into this delicious March day, bracing as winter and sweet as
spring. The new life of the year is stirring in the trees whose tops
begin to redden, and in the brown pastures where watchful eyes can
already see the green. The joy of the season is singing in a million
bluebirds' and robins' throats; the cocks crow gayly; the caw of the big
black crow flapping overhead with ragged wing has a cheery tone. All
living creatures feel the tingle and throb of the great tide of life that
sweeps in with the returning sun. See yonder two dogs, how they frolic,
how they crouch and wheel and charge and roll each other over and pretend
to bite. "Pure mongrels," both of them, and as happy as if they were the
most aristocratic of Irish setters! See near by the tree full of flowers
that has lasted the winter through. That is a tulip-tree, holding up its
thousand delicate ghostly cups. Its grand trunk rises straight and
unbroken full thirty feet, then branches in symmetry, and holds up as if
to catch the sunshine and the rain its fairy goblets. And here is an oak
that has not yet let go its grip on last year's dead leaves. How sharply
the snow rattled on them, as if clashing on the iron which naturalists
say the sturdy tree holds in its blood! Who ever sees these last oak
leaves fall? And who knows where this dry, dead grass vanishes when the
green blades fill all its room? Look at the horse-chestnut; already its
buds are shiny. It must wait a good while before their
"little hands unfold,
Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old."
Sharp whistles the wind to-day, but it is the breath of life that it
breathes into us. It comes down from yonder hills where the snow is
shining yet. Grandly on the horizon lies Mount Tom, like a crouching
lion, guardian over the fair valley. Where the mountain line breaks,
between him and his twin sentinel, Holyoke, we know that the broad
Connecticut sweeps past Hockanum. The glorious river,--what an unfailing
joy it is to the eye as it curves and winds on its leisurely, steadfast
course to the sea! Here at our feet is another river, a little brook
flowing in clear stream over the roadside sand, born of the last
snow-drift and living till the sun drinks it up. And beside it are half
a dozen happy boys, paddling with their bare feet, making mud dams,
scraping new channels and short cuts for the stream.
How black is the still water of this pond, smooth as a steel mirror! what
perfect pictures it gives back of its woody and snow-touched banks! The
woods above are solemn as that grandest work of man, an Old World
cathedral, and free as only the Lord's own works are free, with the music
of the wind in the great pine-tops; the gracious, infinite sky revealing
itself through their tracery; the columnar trunks swaying now like a
ship's masts. How at evening the setting sun glows through their black
shafts; how ethereal the light that then fills the spaces of the wood;
how the stars look down through the branches in the living stillness of
the night! A few steps, and below us in the hollow we see the city, all
its commonplaceness charmed away, the vulgar noises of the streets
blended in a soft murmur. Not one human life moves in those streets,
commonplace and vulgar though it may seem, but has its own charm and
beauty, if we could find the right view-point, or if our sight went deep
enough.
Across a plowed field darts in swift zigzag a gleam of blue; then,
perched on a fence-rail, sends a thrilling song. The bluebird is the
true voice of early spring, as is the bobolink of later spring.
Bobolinks and apple-blossoms come together in the prodigal time of May.
Our Northern spring is the most arrant of coquettes,--the most delicious
in allurement, the swiftest in retreat. One day she seems to pour her
whole heart out to us, and we think she is ours once and for all; next
day she pelts us with sleet; buffets, freezes us; she--nay, she is gone,
and we never shall see her again; it is the sourest shrew in the whole
sisterhood of the year that has come in her stead! But the true lover
thinks not so. He knows her woman's heart,--coying it a little, holding
back her treasure till she sees if her worshiper be faithful, to pour it
out all unstinted at the last, when May's perfect bridal day shall usher
in the full and fruitful marriage blessing of the year.
On this June morning, place yourself here, under the shade of this noble,
wide-spreading apple-tree on a garden lawn. Last night the earth was
washed by showers, and a thunder-storm cleared the air. This morning a
fresh northwest wind breaks the clouds, and opens pure, sweet depths of
sky. Around us the flowers of early summer are blooming. Over the grass
trip the young birds, mottle-breasted robins and bluebirds; the trees
ring with frequent song; from the barnyard comes cheery cackle and cluck,
and the chickens stray forth to investigate the secrets and riches of the
world. A catbird pours out an opera in which he takes all the parts in
succession, and the voice of the wind rises and falls in mysterious,
delicious cadence.
"Oil and wine:" the oil poured on the wounds to soothe and heal, the wine
drunk to revive and hearten with cordial life. The Hebrew symbolism has
its roots in strong material soil: its imagery is vigorous and
ruddy,--"wine of gladness," "oil of joy," "wine that maketh glad the
heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which
strengtheneth man's heart." A modern psalmist might add, "and coffee
which uplifts his spirit, and tobacco which soothes his cares."
Jesus chose, as the two symbols by which he would be remembered, bread
and wine. Bread stands for nourishment and substantial support, wine for
exhilaration and joy. When his disciples were full of the sorrow of
approaching parting, he showed them that the loss was only in semblance:
the reality was to be a higher energy, a purer joy,--bread to eat, wine
to drink,--not death, but life. The sorrow attendant on death and loss
is to be esteemed but the pangs that usher in life. "A woman when she is
in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is
delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that
a man is born into the world."
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to
preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of
the Lord." What a key-note is that,--how jubilant, tender, strong!
As the earth revolving passes alternately into light and shadow, so human
life in its divine appointment moves by turns through sorrow and through
joy. Each has its service for the soul, as for the earth has day and
night each its ministry and message. Of pain come hardihood and strength
and sympathy. What a sapless, fibreless thing is a man untrained by
endurance and untaught by suffering! How flaccid in muscle, how narrow
in intelligence, how shallow in affection!
Yet, as to an all-beholding eye the sun pours light through all the
planetary spaces, and the night, which to us on the world's darkened side
seems all-enfolding, is in truth but a shadowy fleck in the vast
sun-steeped sphere: so, of the soul's universe, the native, all-pervasive
element is conscious good. Gladness is man's proper atmosphere. It is
by the impulse of his deepest nature that he seeks joy, it is by the
force of spiritual gravitation that he is drawn to it. But two hard
lessons await him. One is, that to reach that goal he must trust himself
to a higher Power, his own effort and purpose being to obey that Power.
The other is, that the goal is not for one alone, but for all; and he can
reach it only as he shares the common lot, making himself partner in the
vicissitudes of his comrades, rejoicing with them that rejoice and
weeping with them that weep. On our long voyage the stars by which we
steer must be Duty and Love. The stars guide us, the winds and currents
bear us, to the port of perfect good. The instinct of our journey's end
we call Hope; the instinct by which we cleave to our true course, even
when wholly doubtful of its end, and though false lights beckon us
alluringly,--that instinct we call Faith.
Open your eyes upon the world on such a morning as this. Forget your own
cares long enough to really see, but for a moment, yonder spray of roses
waving in the breeze. Watch the play of light and shade in the
flickering leaves overhead. Listen to the chorus of voices from bird,
insect, and wind. The wine of gladness! Nature pours it in a sparkling
flood, unceasing by day and night, for every one who will drink.
Nature pours the wine of gladness, but only from the mingling of human
hearts comes the oil of tenderness. From sorrow it gets its sacred
fragrance, from mutual service it draws its healing power, from the
bitterness of parting it wins the sweetness of an inexpressible hope.
It was under the stroke of a great bereavement, the death of his child,
that Emerson, in the "Threnody," gave utterance to highest consolation
soaring out of sorrow's darkness. It was under the shadow of that loss
that he heard the voice,--
"Saying, What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again."
It is the same voice that speaks through all the ages. It speaks through
Isaiah, "to give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." It speaks in Paul, when
in one sentence he gives the relation with God and his fellows into which
man may come when out of darkness is born light. "Blessed be God, even
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God
of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be
able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we
ourselves are comforted of God."
Where, asks the stricken heart, shall I find the God of comfort? O
heart, only God himself shall answer you! But know this, that the very
end and purpose of grief is that it shall be comforted. Comfort? The
word has no meaning except to those who have mourned; was never stamped
with its sacred significance except by those who had been through the
deep waters of grief. "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I
comfort you." A man child, a woman child, He trains you to fullness of
stature, to greatness of experience, to capacity for noble joy, for
heart-sufficing love. To greatness and to joy he calls us, and draws us
slowly by the changing years. The cross is the symbol of a passing
experience. The end, the attainment, is figured to us by that face of
Nature which is the face of God, with the strength of the mountains, the
gladness of the sunlight, the freedom of the sky, the infinitude of the
ocean.
The ripe days of early autumn open their best joys only to the sturdy
walker, who turns his back on the streets to seek the country roads, and
leaves the roads behind him to explore the forest nooks, the ravines, and
the sheltered meadows, hidden deftly away from the incurious traveler,
and keeping a wild sweetness for him who finds them out for himself. If
one is in good tune, he may get the finest flavor of such a walk by
taking it alone, or with only rarely perfect companionship. The ideal
companion is one who can fully enjoy, who will help you to glimpses
through another pair of eyes, and who will never obtrude inopportunely
between yourself and nature. If a satisfactory human comrade be not at
hand, one may find these qualities in no ordinary degree in--a good dog.
But then to appreciate them one must be a true dog-lover, a gift which
is, alas! denied to some otherwise exemplary and worthy people.
What does the dog think of it all? He has his own keen pleasures. His
nose is an organ of intelligence and enjoyment which his master does not
possess. He explores woodchuck holes; he tracks real or imaginary
squirrels; one barks and scolds at him from a high limb, and throws him
into a delicious fever of excitement. As Fox said the greatest pleasure
in life was to win at cards, and the next greatest to lose at cards, so
apparently the dog finds even an unsuccessful chase to be the second best
joy he knows. Look at him, tense and motionless with excitement, as he
watches the noisy chatterer overhead! No doubt the squirrel will brag to
all his acquaintances of how he openly defied and triumphed over his huge
enemy.
A chestnut bough swings low, and with hospitable hand proffers a
half-open burr, out of which shine the glossy brown nuts. Sweet is the
taste of the nuts. Sweet is the crisp red apple into which we bite, and
with just a hint of the flavor of stolen fruit.
What audacious pen will try to reproduce or even dryly catalogue the
glories poured out for eye and ear, for heart and brain, upon a bright
and cool September day? The deep-glowing sumacs, the asters purple and
white mixed with flaming goldenrod, in a splendid audacity of color such
as only One artist dare venture on; the occasional dash of scarlet upon a
maple, a first wave of the great tide that is sweeping up to cover the
whole north country; the masses of yet unbroken green left neither dimmed
nor dusty by the generous, moist summer; the oaks that will long hold
their green flag in unchanging tint, as if "no surrender" were written on
it, and then, last of all the trees, change to a hue of matchless depth
and richness, like the life-blood of a noble heart that shows its full
intensity only just before death's translation falls upon it; the
separate tint of each leaf and vine, "good after its kind;" the soft
whiteness of the everlastings in the hill-pastures; the reaped buckwheat
fields heaped with their sheaves, stubble and sheaves alike drenched in a
fine wine of color; the solemn interior of the woods, with the late
sunlight touching the shafts of the pines; the partridge-berry and the
white mushroom growing beneath, as in a cathedral one sees bright-faced
children kneeling to say their prayers at the foot of the solemn pillars;
the masses of light and of shadow--one cannot say which is the
tenderer--lying on the cool meadows as evening draws on; the voice of
unseen waters, the voice of the wind in the pines.
And so, with song, with autumn colors, with sunset lights, the Mother
calls her children home.