_THE_ heart is full of guest-chambers that are never empty; and as the
heart is the seat of life, these guests are continually acting upon the
life, either for good or evil, according to their quality. As the
guests are, so our states of life--tranquil and happy, if good;
disturbed and miserable, if evil.
We may choose our own guests, if we are wise. None can open the door
and come in, unless we give consent; always provided that we keep watch
and ward. If we leave wide open the doors of our houses, or neglect to
fasten them in the night season, thieves and robbers will enter and
despoil us at will. So if we leave the heart, unguarded, enemies will
come in. But if we open the door only to good affections--which are
guests--then we shall dwell in peace and safety. We have all opened the
door for enemies; or let them enter through unguarded portals. They are
in all the heart's guest-chambers. They possess the very citadel of
life; and the measure of their possession is the measure of our
unhappiness.
Markland was an unhappy man; and yet of this world's goods, after which
he had striven, he had an abundance. Wealth, honor among men, luxury;
these were presented to his mind as things most to be desired, and he
reached after them with an ardor that broke down all impediments.
Success answered to effort, with almost unerring certainty. So he was
full of wealth and honors. But, for all this, Markland was unhappy.
There were enemies in the house of his life; troublesome guests in the
guest-chambers of his heart, who were forever disturbing, if not
wounding him, with their strifes and discords. Some of these he had
admitted, himself holding open the door; others had come in by stealth
while the entrance was all unguarded.
Envy was one of these guests, and she gave him no peace. He could not
bear that another should stand above him in anything. A certain pew in
the church he attended was regarded as most desirable. He must have
that pew at any cost. So when the annual choice of pews was sold at
auction, he overbid all contestants, and secured its occupancy. For all
the preceding year, he had failed to enjoy the Sabbath services,
because another family had a pew regarded as better situated than his;
and now he enjoyed these services as little, through annoyance at
having given so large a price for the right of choice, that people
smiled when they heard the sum named. He had paid too dear for the
privilege, and this fact took away enjoyment.
Envy tormented him in a hundred different ways. He could not enjoy his
friend's exquisite statuary, or paintings, because of a secret
intimation in his heart that his friend was honored above him in their
possession. Twice he had sold almost palatial residences, because their
architectural attractions were thrown into the shade by dwellings of
later construction. Thousands of dollars each year this troublesome
guest cost him; and yet she would never let him be at ease. At every
feast of life she dashed his cup with bitterness, and robbed the
choicest viands of their zest. He did not enjoy the fame of an author,
an orator, an artist, a man of science, a general, or of any who held
the world's admiring gaze--for while they stood in the sunlight, he
felt cast in the shade. So the guest Envy, warmed and nourished in his
heart, proved a tormentor. She gave him neither rest nor peace.
Detraction, twin-sister of Envy, was all the while pointing out defects
in friends and neighbors. He saw their faults and hard peculiarities;
but rarely their good qualities. Then Doubt and Distrust crept in
through the unguarded door, and soon after their entrance Markland
began to think uneasily of the future; to fear lest the foundations of
worldly prosperity were not sure. These troublesome guests were busiest
in the night season, haunting his mind with strange pictures of
disasters, and with suggestions touching the arbitrary power of God,
whom he feared when the thought of him was present, but did not love.
"Whom He will He setteth up, and whom He will He casteth down." Doubt
and Distrust revived this warning in his memory, and seeing that it
gave his heart a throb of pain, they set it close to his eyes, so that,
for a time, he could see nothing else. Thus, night after night, these
guests troubled his peace, often driving slumber from his eyelids until
the late morning watches. If there had been in his heart that true
faith in God which believes in him as doing all things well, Doubt and
Distrust might never have gained an entrance. But he had trusted in
himself; had believed himself equal to the task of creating his own
prosperity--had been, in common phrase, the architect of his own
fortunes. And now just as he was pluming himself on success, in crept
Doubt and Distrust with their alarming suggestions, and he was unable
to cast them out.
Affections, whether evil or good, are social in their character, and
obey social laws. They do not like to dwell alone, and therefore seek
congenial friendships. They draw to themselves companions of like
quality, and are not satisfied until they rule a man as to all the
powers of his mind.
In the case of Markland, Envy made room for her twin-sister,
Detraction; Ill-will, Jealousy, Unkindness, and a teeming brood of
their malevolent kindred crowded into his heart, possessing its
chambers, ere a warning reached him of their approach. Is there rest or
peace for a man with such guests in his bosom?
Doubt and Distrust only heralded the coming of Fear, Anxiety,
Solicitude, Suspicion, Despondency, Foreboding. Markland had only to
open his eyes and look around him, to see, on every hand, the unsightly
wrecks of palaces once as fair to the eye as that which he had raised
with such labor and forethought, and as he contemplated these, Doubt,
Distrust, and their companions, filled his mind with alarming thoughts,
and so oppressed him with a sense of insecurity that, at times, he saw
the advancing shadows of misfortune on his path.
Thus it was with Markland at fifty. He had all good as to the externals
of life, yet was he a miserable man, and, worse than all, he felt
himself growing more and more unhappy as the years increased. Was there
no remedy for this? None, while his heart was so filled with evil
affections, which are always tormentors. He did not see this. Though
his guests disturbed and afflicted him, he called them friends, and
gave them entertainments of the best his house afforded.
Sometimes Pity came to the door of his heart and asked for admission,
but he sent Unkindness to double bar it against her. Generosity
knocked, but Avarice stood sentinel. Envy was forever refusing to let
Good-will, Appreciation, Approval, Delight, come in. Detraction would
give no countenance to Virtue and Excellence. Doubt made deadly assault
upon Faith, and Trust, and Hope, whenever they drew near, while
Ill-will stood ever on the alert to drive off Charity, Loving-kindness
and Neighborly regard. Unhappy man! Fiends possessed him, and he knew
it not.
It so happened on a time, that Markland, while standing in one of his
well-filled ware-houses, saw a child enter and come towards him in a
timid, hesitating manner.
"A beggar! Drive her away," said Unkindness and Suspicion, both
arousing themselves.
Markland was already lifting his hand to wave her back, when
Compassion, who had just then found an old way into his heart, hidden
for a long time by rank weeds and brambles, said, in soft and pitying
tones:
"She is such a little child!"
"A thieving beggar!" cried Unkindness and Suspicion, angrily.
"A weak little child," pleaded Compassion. "Don't be hard with her.
Speak kindly."
Compassion prevailed. Her voice had awakened into life some old and
long sleeping memories. Markland was himself, for a moment, a child,
full of pity, tenderness and loving-kindness. Compassion had already
uncovered the far away past, and the sweetness of its young blossoms
was reviving old delights.
"Well, little one, what is wanted?"
Markland hardly knew his own voice, it was so gentle and inviting.
How the pale, pure face of the child warmed and brightened! Gratefully
with trust and hope in her eyes, she looked up to the merchant. There
was no answer on her lips, for this unexpected kindness had choked the
coming utterance. Rebuff, threat, anger, had met her so often, that
soft words almost surprised her into tears.
"Well, what can I do for you?"
Compassion held open the door through which she gained an entrance, and
already Good-will, Kindness and Satisfaction had come in.
"Mother is sick," said the child.
"A lying vagrant!" exclaimed Suspicion, jarring the merchant's inward
ear.
"There is truth in her face," said Compassion, pleading, and, at the
same time, she unveiled an image, sharply cut in the past of Markland's
life--an image of his own beloved, but long sainted mother, pale and
wasted, on her dying bed.
"Give this to your mother," he said, hastily, taking a coin from his
pocket. There was more of human kindness in his voice than it had
expressed for many years.
"God bless you, sir," the child dropped her grateful eyes from his
face, as she took the coin, bending with an involuntary reverent
motion. Then, as she slowly passed to the warehouse door, she turned
two or three times, to look on the man who, alone, of the many to whom
she had made solicitation that day, had answered her in kindness.
"So much for the encouragement of vagrancy," said Suspicion.
"Played on by the art of a cunning child," said Pride.
Markland began to feel ashamed of his momentary weakness. But, he was
not now, wholly, at the mercy of the guests who had so long tormented
him. Compassion, Good-will and Kindness were now his guests also; and
they had other and pleasanter suggestions for his mind. The child's
"God bless you, sir," they repeated over and over again, softening the
young voice, and giving it increasing power to awaken tender and loving
states which had formed themselves in earlier and purer years.
Tranquility, so long absent from his soul, came in, now, through the
entrance made by Compassion.
Markland went back into his counting-room, almost wondering at the
peace he felt. Taking up a newspaper, he read of a rare specimen of
statuary just received from Italy, the property of a well-known
merchant. Envy did not move quickly enough. The old love of beauty and
nature, which envy, detraction, greed of gain, and their blear-eyed
companions, had kept in thrall, was already in a freer state; and found
in good-will, kindness and tranquility, congenial friends.
So, love of art and beauty ruled his mind in spite of envy, and
Markland found real pleasure in the ideal given him by the description
he read. It was, almost, a new sensation.
A friend came in, and spoke in praise of one who had performed a
generous deed. There was an instant motion among the guests in
Markland's heart, the evil inciting to envy and detraction, the good to
approval and emulation. Tranquility moved to the door through which she
had come in, as if to depart; but Good-will, Kindness and Approbation,
drew her back, and held, with her, possession of the mind they sought
to rule. Envy and Detraction were shorn, for the time, of their power.
Wondering, as he lay on his bed that night, over the strange peace that
pervaded his mind--a peace such as he had not known for many
years--Markland fell asleep; and in his sleep there came to him a dream
of the human heart and its guest-chamber; and what we have faintly
suggested, was made visible to him in living personation.
He saw how evil affections, when permitted to dwell therein, became its
enemies and tormentors; and how, just in the degree that kind and good
affections gained entrance, there was peace, tranquility and
satisfaction.
"I have looked into my own heart," he said, on awaking.
The incident of the child, and the dream that followed, were, in
Providence, sent for Markland's instruction. And they were not sent in
vain. Ever after he set watch and ward at the doors of his heart. Evil
guests, already in possession, were difficult to cast out; but, he
invited the good to come in, opening the way by kind and noble acts,
done in the face of opposing selfishness. Thus he went on, peopling the
guest-chamber with sweet beatitudes, until angels instead of demons
filled his house of life.