speaks of sailing the sea with God alone. The founders of astronomy
dwelt on a plain of sand, where the horizon held not one vine-clad
hill nor alluring vista. Wearying of the yellow sea, their thoughts
journeyed along the heavenly highway and threaded the milky way, until
the man became immortal. Moses became the greatest of jurists, because
during the forty years when his mind was creative and at its best, he
dwelt amid the solitude of the sand hills around Sinai, and was free
for intellectual and moral life. History tells of a thousand men who
have maintained virtue in adversity only to go down in hours of
prosperity. That is, man is stimulated by the crisis; conflict
provokes heroism, persecution lends strength. But, denied the exigency
of a great trial, men who seemed grand fall all to pieces. Triumphant
in adversity, men are vanquished by drudgery. An English author has
expressed the belief that many men "achieve reputations when all eyes
are focused upon them, who fall into petty worthlessness amid
obscurity and monotony. Life's crowning victory belongs to those who
have won no brilliant battle, suffered no crushing wrong; who have
figured in no great drama, whose sphere was obscure, but who have
loved great principles midst small duties, nourished sublime hopes
amid vulgar cares, and illustrated eternal principles in trifles."
Responsibility is a teacher of righteousness. God educates men by
casting them upon their own resources. Man learns to swim by being
tossed into life's maelstrom and left to make his way ashore. No youth
can learn to sail his life-craft in a lake sequestered and sheltered
from all storms, where other vessels never come. Skill comes through
sailing one's craft amidst rocks and bars and opposing fleets, amidst
storms and whirls and counter currents. English literature has a
proverb about the incapacity of rich men's sons. The rich man himself
became mighty because he began in poverty, had no hand to help him
forward, and many hands to hold him back. After long wrestling with
opposing force he compacted within himself the strength and
foresight, the frugality and wisdom of a score of ordinary men. The
school of hard knocks made him a man of might. But his son, cradled in
a soft nest, sheltered from every harsh wind, loving ease more than
industry, is in danger of coming up without insight into the secrets
of his profession or industry.
Responsibility alone drives man to toil and brings out his best gifts.
For this reason the pensions given to scholars are said to have
injured some men of genius. Johnson wrote his immortal Rasselas to
raise money to buy his mother's coffin. Hunger and pain drove Lee to
the invention of his loom. Left a widow with a family to support, in
mid-life Mrs. Trollope took to authorship and wrote a score of
volumes. The most piteous tragedy in English literature is that of
Coleridge. Wordsworth called him the most myriad-minded man since
Shakespeare, and Lamb thought him "an archangel slightly damaged." The
generosity of his friends gave the poet a home and all its comforts
without the necessity of toil. Is it possible that ease and lack of
responsibility, with opium, helped wreck him? What did that critic
mean when he said of a rich young friend, "He needs poverty alone to
make him a great painter?" It is responsibility that teaches caution,
foresight, prudence, courage, and turns feeblings into giants.
The extremes and contrasts of life do much to shape character. Ours is
a world that moves from light to dark, from heat to cold, from summer
to winter. On the crest to-day, the hero is in the trough to-morrow.
Moses, yesterday a deserted slave child, to-day adopted by a king's
daughter; David, but yesterday a shepherd boy with his harp, and
to-day dwelling in the King's palace; men yesterday possessed of
plenty, to-day passing into penury--these illustrate the extremes of
life. These contrasts are as striking as those we find on the sunny
slopes of the Alps. There the foothills are covered with vineyards,
while the summits have everlasting snow. In Wyoming hot springs gush
close beside snowdrifts. During man's few years, and brief, he
experiences many reverses. He flits on between light and dark. It is
hard for the leader to drop back into the ranks. It is not easy for
him who hath led a movement to its success to see his laurels fall
leaf by leaf. After a long and dangerous service men grown old and
gray are succeeded by the youth to whom society owes no debt. Thus man
journeys from strength to invalidism, from prosperity to adversity,
from joy to sorrow, or goes from misery to happiness, from defeat to
victory.
Not one single person but sooner or later is tested by these
alterations. God sends prosperity to lift character to its highest
levels. It is an error to suppose that the higher manhood flourishes
in extreme poverty. Watkinson has beautifully said that "humility is
never so lovely as when arrayed in scarlet; moderation is never so
impressive as when it sits at banquets; simplicity is never so
delightful as when it dwells amidst magnificence; purity is never so
divine as when its unsullied robes are worn in a king's palace;
gentleness is never so touching as when it exists in the powerful.
When men combine gold and goodness, greatness and godliness, genius
and graces, human nature is at its best." On the other hand, adversity
is a supplement, making up what prosperity lacks. The very abundance
of Christmas gifts ofttimes causes children to forget the parents who
gave them. Some are adorned by prosperity as mountains are adorned
with rich forests. Others stand forth with the bareness, but also with
the grandeur and enduring strength, of Alpine mountains. Character is
like every other structure--nothing tests it like extremes.
When friendship and love have enriched man, and deepened all the
secret springs of his being, when grief hath refined and suffering
mellowed him, then God sends the ideals to stimulate men to new
achievements. An ideal is a pattern or plan held up before the man's
eye for imitation, realization and guidance. In the heart's innermost
temple of silence, whither neither friend nor enemy may ever come,
there the soul unveils its secret ideal. The pattern there erected at
once proclaims what man is and prophesies what he shall be. In old age
men think what they are, but in youth, what we think, we come to be.
Therefore must the pattern held up before the mind's eye be of the
highest and purest. The legend tells us of the master's apprentice,
who, from the small bits of glass that had been thrown away
constructed a window of surpassing loveliness. The ideal held up
before the boy's mind organized and brought together these broken
bits, and wrought them into lines of perfect beauty.
Thus by his inner aspirations, man lives and builds. The inner eye
reveals to the toiler a better tool or law or reform, and the
realization of these visions gives social progress. The vision of
conscience reveals new possibilities of character, and these give
duty. The vision of the heart reveals new possibilities of
friendship, and these give the home. As the sun standing upon the
horizon orbs itself, first in each dewdrop, and afterward lifts the
whole earth forward, so the ideal repeats itself, first in the
individual heart, and afterward lifts all society forward. Thus unto
man slowly building up his character comes the supreme ideal, when
Jesus Christ stands forth fully revealed in His splendor. He is no
empty abstraction, no bloodless theory, but bone of our bone, brother
of our own body and breath, yet marred by no weakness, scarred by no
sin, tossing back temptations as some Gibraltar tosses back the sea's
billows and the bits of drift-wood. Strong, He subdued His strength in
the day of battle, and bore Himself like iron. Yet He was so gentle
that His white hand felt the fall of the rose leaf, while He inflected
His gianthood to the needs of the little child. Nor could He be holden
of the bands of death, for He clove a pathway through the grave, and
made death's night to shine like the day. "I have but one passion,"
said Tholuck. "It is He! it is He!" As Shakespeare first reveals to
the young poet his real riches of imagination, as Raphael first
unveils to the young artist the possibilities of color, so man knows
not his infinite capabilities until Jesus Christ stands forth in all
His untroubled splendor. Having Him, man has not only his Teacher and
Saviour, but also his Master and Model, fulfilling all the needs of
the highest manhood and the noblest character.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Modern Painters, vol. III, pg. 368.
ASPIRATIONS AND IDEALS
"As some most pure and noble face,
Seen in the thronged and hurrying street,
Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace,
A flying odor sweet,
Then passing leaves the cheated sense
Balked with a phantom excellence.
'So in our soul, the visions rise
Of that fair life we never led;
They flash a splendor past our eyes,
We start, and they are fled;
They pass and leave us with blank gaze,
Resigned to our ignoble days."
--_The Fugitive Ideal, by Wm. Watson._
"Contentment and aspiration are in every true man's
life."
"No bird can race in the great blue sky against a noble
soul. The eagle's wing is slow compared with the flight of
hope and love."--_Swing._
"We figure to ourselves
The thing we like, and then we build it up--
As chance will have it, on the rock or sand;
For time is tired of wandering o'er the world,
And home-bound fancy runs her bark ashore."
--_Taylor._
III
ASPIRATIONS AND IDEALS.
Man is a pilgrim journeying toward the new and beautiful city of the
Ideal. Aspiration, not contentment, is the law of his life. To-day's
triumph dictates new struggles to-morrow. The youth flushed with
success may couch down in the tent of satisfaction for one night only;
when the morning comes he must fold his tent and push on toward some
new achievement. That man is ready for his burial robes who lets his
present laurels satisfy him. God has crowded the world with antidotes
to contentment and with stimulants to progress. The world is not built
for sluggards. The earth is like a road, a poor place for sleeping in,
a good thing to travel over. The world is like a forge, unfit for
residence, but good for putting temper in a warrior's sword. Life is
built for waking up dull men, making lazy men unhappy, and the
low-flying miserable. When other incitements fail, fear and remorse
following behind scourge men forward; but ideals in front are the
chief stimulants to growth. Each morning, waking, the soul sees the
ideal man one ought to be rising in splendor to shame the man one is.
Columbus was tempted forward by the floating branches, the drifting
weeds, the strange birds, unto the new world rich in tropic-treasure.
So by aspirations and ideals God lures men forward unto the soul's
undiscovered country. In the long ago the star moving on before guided
the wise men of the East to the manger where the young child lay; and
still in man's night God hangs aspirations--stars for guiding men away
from the slough of content to the hills of paradise. The soul hungers
for something vast, and ideals lure to the long voyage, the distant
harbor, and are the stars by which the pilgrim shapes his course.
Life's great teachers are friendship, occupation, travel, books,
marriage, and chiefly heart-hungers. These yearnings within are the
springs of all man's progress without. Sometimes philosophers say that
the history of civilization is the history of great men. Confessing
this, let us go on and note that the history of all great men is the
history of their ideal hours, realized in conduct and character.
Waking at midnight in his bleak garret, the vision splendid rose
before John Milton. The boy of twelve would fain write a poem that
the world would not willingly let die. He knew that whoever would
write a heroic poem must first live a heroic life. From that hour the
youth followed the ideal that led him on, pursuing knowledge
unceasingly for seven years, never closing book before midnight,
leaving Cambridge with the approbation of the good, and without stain
or spot upon his life. Afterward, making a pilgrimage to Italy for
study in that land of song and story, he heard of the civil wars in
England, and at once returned, putting away his ambition for culture
because he thought it base to be traveling in ease and safety abroad
while his fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home. When he
resisted a brutal soldier's attack who lifted his sword to say, "I
have power to kill you," the scholar replied: "And I have power to be
killed and to despise my murderer." Growing old and blind, and falling
upon evil days and tongues, out of his heroic life he wrote his
immortal poem. Dying, he still pursued his ideal, for moving into the
valley and shadow, the blind poet whispered: "Still guides the
heavenly vision!"
Did men but know it, this is the secret of all heroic greatness. Here
is that matchless old Greek, Socrates, sitting in the prison talking
with his friends of death and immortality, of the truth and beauty he
hopes to find beyond. With one hand he rubs his leg, chafed by the
harsh fetters, with the other he holds the cup of poison. When the sun
touched the horizon he took the cup of death from the jailer's hand,
and with shining face went down into the valley, and midst the thick
shadows passed forever from mortal sight, still pursuing his vision
splendid. And here is that pure-white martyr girl, painted by Millais,
staked down in the sea midst the rising tide, but looking toward the
open sky, with a great, sweet light upon her face. Here is Luther
surrounded by scowling soldiers and hungry, wolfish priests, looking
upward and then flinging out his challenge, "I cannot and I will not
recant, God help me." Here is John Brown, with body all pierced with
bullets and grievously sore, stooping to kiss the child as he went on
to the gallows, with heart as high as on his wedding day. And here is
that Christian nurse who followed the line of battle close up to the
rifle-pits, and kindled her fire and prepared hot drinks for dying
men; who, when asked by the colonel who told her to build those fires,
made answer: "God Almighty, sir!" and went right on to fulfill her
vision. And here is Livingstone, with his grand craggy head and
deep-set eyes, found in the heart of Africa, dead beside his couch,
with ink scarcely dry on words that interpreted his vision: "God bless
all men who in any way help to heal this open sore of the world!"
Chiefly, there is Christ, who, from the hour when the star stayed by
His manger in Bethlehem, and the light ne'er seen on land or sea shone
on the luminous and transfigured mount, on to the day of His uplifted
cross, ever followed the divine vision that brought Him at last to
Olivet, to the open sky, the ascending cloud, the welcoming heavens.
But God, who hath appointed visions unto great men, doth set each
lesser human life between its dream and its task. Deep heart-hungers
are quickened within the people, and then some patriot, reformer, or
hero, is raised up to feed the aspiration. Afterward history stores up
these noble achievements of yesterday as soul food for to day. The
heart, like the body, needs nourishment, and finds it in the highest
deeds and best qualities of those who have gone before. Thus the
artist pupil is fed by his great master. The young soldier emulates
his brave general. The patriot is inspired by his heroic chief.
History records the deeds of noble men, not for decorating her pages,
but for strengthening the generations that come after. The measure of
a nation's civilization is the number of heroes it has had, whose
qualities have been harvested for children and youth.
Full oft one hero has transformed a people. The blind bard singing
through the villages of Greece met a rude and simple folk. But Homer
opened up a gallery in the clouds, and there unveiled Achilles as the
ideal Greek. It became the ambition of every Athenian boy to fix the
Iliad in his mind and repeat Achilles in his heart and life. Soon the
Achilles in the sky looked down upon 20,000 young Achilles walking
through the streets beneath. With what admiration do men recall the
intellectual achievements of Athens! What temples, and what statues in
them! What orators and eloquence! What dramas! What lyric poems! What
philosophers! Yet one ideal man who never lived, save in a poet's
vision, turned rude tribes into intellectual giants. Thus each nation
hungers for heroes. When it has none God sends poets to invent them as
soul food for the nation's youth. The best gift to a people is not
vineyards nor overflowing granaries, nor thronged harbors, nor rich
fleets, but a good man and great, whose example and influence repeat
greatness in all the people. As the planet hanging above our earth
lifts the sea in tidal waves, so God hangs illustrious men in the sky
for raining down their rich treasure upon society.
Moreover, it is the number and kind of his aspirations that determine
a man's place in the scale of manhood. Lowest of all is that great
under class of pulseless men, content to creep, and without thought of
wings for rising. Mere drifters are they, creatures of circumstance,
indifferently remaining where birth or events have started them.
Having food and raiment, therewith they are content. No inspirations
fire them, no ideals rebuke them, no visions of possible excellence or
advancement smite their vulgar contentment. Like dead leaves swept
forward upon the current, these men drift through life. Not really
bad, they are but indifferently good, and therefore are the material
out of which vicious men are made. In malarial regions, physicians
say, men of overflowing health are safe because the abounding vitality
within crowds back the poison in the outer air, while men who live on
the border line between good health and ill, furnish the conditions
for fevers that consume away the life. Similarly, men who live an
indifferent, supine life, with no impulses upward, are exposed to evil
and become a constant menace to society.
Higher in the scale of manhood are the men of intermittent
aspirations. A traveler may journey forward guided by the light of the
perpetual sun, or he may travel by night midst a thunder-storm, when
the sole light is an occasional flash of lightning, revealing the path
here and the chasm there. But once the lightning has passed the
darkness is thicker than before. And to men come luminous hours,
rebuking the common life. Then does the soul revolt from any evil
thought and thing and long for all that is God-like in character, for
honor and purity, for valor and courage, for fidelity to the finer
convictions deep hidden in the soul's secret recesses. What heroes are
these--in the vision hour! With what fortitude do these soldiers bear
up under blows--when the battle is still in the future! But once the
conflict comes, their courage goes! On a winter's morning the frost
upon the window pane shapes forth trees, houses, thrones, castles,
cities, but these are only frost. So before the mind the imagination
hangs pictures of the glory and grandeur and God-likeness of the
higher life, but one breath of temptation proves their evanescence.
Better, however, these intermittent ideals than uninterrupted
supineness and contentment. But, best of all, that third type of men
who realize in daily life their luminous hours, and transmute their
ideals into conduct and character. These are the soul-architects who
build their thoughts and deeds into a plan; who travel forward, not
aimlessly, but toward a destination; who sail, not anywhither, but
toward a port; who steer, not by the clouds, but by the fixed stars.
High in the scale of manhood these who ceaselessly aspire toward
life's great Exemplar.
Consider the use of the soul's aspirations. Ideals redeem life from
drudgery. Four-fifths of the human race are so overbodied and
under-brained that the mind is exhausted in securing provision for
hunger and raiment. No to-morrow but may bring men to sore want.
Poverty narrows life into a treadmill existence. Multitudes of
necessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom
themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning
till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts.
Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his
years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood
threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test
exhibition of a machine was successful, and those present gave the
inventor heartiest congratulations. But one man was present whose face
was drawn with pain, and whose eyes were wet with tears. Explaining
his emotion to a questioner he said: "One hour ago I entered this room
a skilled workman; this machine sends me out that door a common
laborer. For years I have been earning five dollars a day as an expert
machinist. By economy I hoped to educate my children into a higher
sphere, but now my every hope is ruined." Life is crowded with these
disappointments. A journey among men is like a journey through a
harvest field after a hailstorm has flailed off all the buds and
leaves, and pounded the young corn into the ground. Fulfilling such a
life, men need to be saved by hopes and aspirations. Then God sends
visions in to give men wing-room, and lift them into the realm of
restfulness. Some hope rises to break the thrall of life. The soul
rises like a songbird in the sky.
Disappointed men find that food itself is not so sweet as dreams. The
seamstress toiling in the attic stitches hope in with each thread, and
dreams of some knight coming to lift her out of poverty, and her
reverie mocks and consumes her woe. The laborer digging in his ditch
sweetens his toil and rests his weariness by the dream of the humble
home labor and love will some day build. Many in middle life, when it
is too late, find themselves in the wrong occupation, but maintain
their usefulness and happiness by surrounding themselves with the
thoughts of the career they love and beyond may yet fulfill. How does
imagination enterprise everywhither! By it what ships are built, what
lands are explored, what armies are led, what thrones are erected in
thought! When the seed sprang up in the prison cell, the scholar
confined there enlarged the little plant until in his mind it became a
vast forest, where all flowers bloomed and spiced shrubs grew and
birds sang, and where brooks gurgled such music as never fell on
mortal ear. Innumerable men endure by seeing things invisible. They
retire from the vexations and disappointments without to their
hidden-vision life. Their inner thoughts contrast strangely with the
outer fact and life. During the Middle Ages, when persecution broke
out against the Jews, these merchants were oppressed and robbed, and
saved themselves from destruction only by living a squalid life
outside and a princely life in hidden quarters. It has been said: "You
might follow an old merchant, spotted and stained with all the squalor
of beggary upon him, through byways foul to the feet and offensive to
every sense, and through some narrow lane enter what looks like the
entrance of an ill-kept stable. Thence opens out a squalid hall of
noisome odors. But ascending the steps you come to a secret passage,
when, opening the door, you are blinded with the brilliancy that
bursts upon you. You are in the palace of a prince. The walls are
covered with adornments. Rare tapestries hang upon the walls. The
dishes that bespread the table are of silver and gold, and the
household, who hasten to receive the parent and strip off his outward
disguise, are themselves arrayed like king's children." Thus the
ideals make a great difference between the man without and the hidden
life within. Seeing unseen things, the heart sings while the hand
works. The vision above lifts the life out of fatigue into the realm
of joy and restfulness.