physical life, and smite each sordid, selfish purpose. The vision hour
is the natural enemy of the vulgar mood. Men begin life with the high
purpose of living nobly, generously, openly. Full of the choicest
aspirations, hungering for the highest things, the youth enters
triumphantly upon the pathway of life. But journeying forward he meets
conflict and strife, envy and jealousy, disappointment and defeat. He
finds it hard to live up to the level of his best moods. Self-interest
biases his judgment. Greed bribes reason. Pride leads him astray.
Selfishness tempts him to violate his finer self. The struggle to
maintain his ideals is like a struggle for life itself. Many, alas!
after a short, sharp conflict, give up the warfare and break faith and
fealty with the deeper convictions. They quench the light that shone
afar off to beckon and cheer them on. Persuading themselves that the
ideal life is impracticable, they strike an average between their
highest moods and their low-flying hours. Then is the luster of life
all dimmed, and the soul is like a noble mansion in the morning after
some banquet or reception. In the evening, when making ready for the
brilliant feast, all the house is illuminated. Each curio is in its
niche. The harp is in its place. The air is laden with the perfume of
roses. But when the morning comes, how vast is the change! The windows
are darkened and the halls deserted; the wax tapers have burned to the
socket, or flicker out in smoke; the flowers, scorched by the heated
air, have shriveled and fallen, and in the banquet-room only the
"broken meats" remain. Gone is all the glory of the feast! Thus, when
men lay aside their heroic ideals and bury their visions, the luster
of life departs, and its beauty perishes. Then it is that God sends in
the heavenly vision to rebuke the poorer, sensuous life and man's
material mood. Above the life that is, God hangs the glory, and
grandeur, and purity of the life that might be, and the soul looking
up scorns the lower things, and hungers and thirsts for truth and
purity. Then man comes to himself again, and makes his way back to his
Father's side.
Moreover, these vision hours come to men to give them hints and gleams
of what they shall be when time and God's resources have wrought their
purpose of strength and beauty upon the soul. Man is born a long way
from himself and needs to see the end toward which he moves. He has a
body and uses a lower life, but man is what he is in his best hours
and most exalted moods. The measure of strength in any living thing is
its highest faculty. The strength of the deer is swiftness, of a lion
strength; but to the power of the foot the eagle adds wings, and
therefore is praised for its swift flight. To the wing the bee adds
genius for building with geometric skill, and its praise lies in its
rare intelligence. Thus man also is to be measured by his highest
faculty, in that he has power to see things unseen and work in realms
invisible. We are told that Cicero had three summer villas and a
winter residence, but he prided himself not upon his wealth, but upon
his oratory and eloquence. The grand old statesman of England has
skill for lifting the axe upon the tall trees, but he glories in his
skill in statecraft. Incidentally man reaps treasures from the fields,
finds riches in the forests, and wealth in the mountains; yet his real
manhood resides in reason and moral sentiment, and the spirit that
saith, "Our Father." For him to live for the body is as if one who
should inherit a magnificent palace were to close the galleries and
libraries and splendid halls, and opening only the eating-room, there
to live and feed.
Happy the man who is a good mechanic or merchant; but, alas! if he is
only that. Happy he who prospers toward the granary and the
storehouse; but, alas! if he is shrunken and shriveled toward the
spiritual realm. To all rich in physical treasure, but bankrupt toward
the unseen realm, comes some divine influence arousing discontent.
Then lower joys are seen to be uncrowned, and sordid pleasures to have
no scepter. The soul becomes restless and disappointed where once it
was contented. Looking afar off it sees in its vision hours the goodly
estate to which God shall some day bring it. Here we recall the
peasant's dream. His humble cottage while he slept lifted up its
thatched roof and became a noble mansion. The one room and small
became many and vast. The little windows became arched and beautiful,
looking out upon vast estates all his. The fireplace became an altar,
o'er which hung seraphim. The chimney became a golden ladder like that
which Jacob saw, and his children, living and dead, passed like angels
bringing treasure up and down. And thus, while the human heart muses
and dreams, God builds His sanctuary in the soul. The vision the heart
sees is really the pattern by which God works. These fulfill the
transformation wrought in the peasant's dream.
Seeking to fulfill their noble ministry, ideals have grievous enemies.
Among these let us include vanity and pride. When the wise man said,
"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit, there is more hope of a
fool than of him," he indicated that he had known fools cured of their
folly, but never a vain man cured of his vanity. Pliny said: "It is as
hard to instruct pride as it is to fill an empty bottle with a cork in
it." Some men are constitutionally vain. They think all creation
converges toward one center, and they are that center. The rash of
conceit commonly runs its course very early in life. With most it is
like the prancing and gayety of an untrained colt; the cure is the
plow and harness. Failure also is a curative agent, and so also is
success. But chiefly do the ideals rebuke conceit. The imagination is
God in the soul, and lifting up the possible achievement, the glory of
what men may become, shames and makes contemptible what men are.
Indolence and contentment also antagonize the ideals. Men bring
together a few generosities and integrities. Soul-misers, men gloat
over these, as money-misers over their shining treasure, content with
the little virtue they have. But no man has a right to fulfill a
stagnant career; life is not to be a puddle, but a sweet and running
stream. No man has a right to rust; he is bound to keep his tools
bright by usage. No man has a right to be paralyzed; he is bound to
enlarge and grow. So ideals come in to compel men to go forward. It is
easier to lie down in a thorn hedge, or to sleep in a field of
stinging nettles, than for a man to abide contentedly as he is while
his ideals scourge him upward.
Chiefly do the malign elements oppose the ideal life. There is enmity
between vulgarity and visions. If anger comes, mirth goes; when greed
is in the ascendency, generosity is expelled. If, during a chorus of
bird-voices in the forest, only the shadow of an approaching hawk
falls upon the ground, every sweet voice is hushed. Thus, if but one
evil, hawk-like note is heard in the heart, all the nobler joys and
aspirations depart. The higher life is at enmity with the lower, and
this war is one of extermination.
Oh, all ye young hearts! guard well one rock that is fatal to all
excellence. If ever you have broken faith with your ideals, lift them
up and renew faith. Cherish ideals as the traveler cherishes the north
star, and keep the guiding light pure and bright and high above the
horizon. The vessel may lose its sails and masts, but if it only keeps
its course and compass, the harbor may be reached. Once it loses the
star for steering by, the voyage must end in shipwreck. For when the
heroic purpose goes, all life's glory departs. Let no man think the
burial of a widow's son the saddest sight on earth. Let men not mourn
over the laying of the first born under the turf, as though that were
man's chiefest sorrow. Earth knows no tragedy like the death of the
soul's ideals. Therefore, battle for them as for life itself! The
cynic may ridicule them, because, having lost his own purity and
truth, he naturally thinks that none are pure or true; but wise men
will take counsel of aspirations and ideals. Even low things have
power for incitement. No dead tree in the forest so unsightly but that
some generous woodbine will wrap a robe of beauty about its
nakedness. No cellar so dark but if there is a fissure through which
the sunlight falls the plant will reach up its feeble tendrils to be
blessed by the warming ray. Yet the soul is from God, is higher than
vine or tree, and should aspire toward Him who stirs these mysterious
aspirations in the heart.
The soul is like a lost child. It wanders a stranger in a strange
land. Full oft it is heartsick, for even the best things content it
for but a little while. Daily, mysterious ideals throb and throb
within. It struggles with a vagrant restlessness. It goes yearning
after what it does not find. A deep, mysterious hunger rises. It would
fain come to itself. In its ideal hours it sees afar off the vision
that tempts it on and up toward home and heaven. The secret of man is
the secret of his vision hours. These tell him whence he came--and
whither he goes. Then Christ became the soul's guide; God's heart, the
soul's home.
THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CHARACTER
"Health is the vital principle of bliss."--_Thompson._
"Good nature is often a mere matter of health. With good
digestion men are apt to be good natured; with bad
digestion, morose."--_Beecher._
"A man so trained in youth that his body is the ready
servant of his will, and does with equal ease and
pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable
of,--whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic-engine, with
all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working
order, ready like a steam engine to be turned to any kind
of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the
anchors of the mind."--_Huxley._
"Finally, I have one advice which is of very great
importance. You are to consider that health is a thing to
be attended to continually, as the very highest of all
temporal things. There is no kind of an achievement equal
to perfect health. What to it are nuggets or
millions?"--_Carlyle's Address to Students at Edinburgh._
"Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty:
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood:
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty but kindly."
--"_As You Like It_," ii: 3.
IV
THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CHARACTER
Ancient society looked upon the human body with the utmost veneration.
The citizen of Thebes or Memphis knew no higher ambition than a
competency for embalming his body. Men loved unto death and beyond it
the physical house in which the soul dwelt. Every instinct of
refinement and self-respect revolted from the thought of discarding
the body like a cast-off garment or worn-out tool. In his dying hour
it was little to Rameses that his career was to be pictured on obelisk
and preserved in pyramid, but it was very much to the King that the
embalmer should give permanency to the body with which his soul had
gone singing, weeping and loving through three-score years and ten.
The papyrus found in the tombs tells us that the soldiers of that
far-off age did not fear death itself more than they feared falling in
some secluded spot where the body, neglected and forgotten, would
quickly give its elements back to air and earth. How noble the
sentiment that attached dignity and honor to hand and foot! Sacred,
doubly sacred, was the body that had served the soul long and
faithfully!
The soul is a city, and as Thebes had many gateways through which
passed great caravans laden with goodly treasure, so the five senses
are gateways through which journey all earth's sights and sounds.
Through the golden gate of the ear have gone what noble truths,
companying together what messengers of affection, what sweet
friendships. The eye is an Appian Way over which have gone all the
processions of the seasons. How do hand and vision protect man?
Hunters use sharp spears for keeping back wild beasts, but
Livingstone, armed only with eye beams, drove a snarling beast into
the thicket, and Luther, lifting his great eyes upon an assassin, made
the murderer flee. What flute or harp is comparable for sweetness to
the voice? It carries warning and alarm. It will speak for you, plead
for you, pray for you. Truly it is an architect, fulfilling Dante's
dictum, "piling up mountains of melody." Serving the soul well, the
body becomes sacred by service. Therefore man loves and guards the
physical house in which he lives.
Always objects and places associated with life's deep joys and sorrows
become themselves sacred through these associations. The flock
passing through the forest leaves some white threads behind. The bird
lines its nest with down from its own bosom. Thus the heart, going
forward, leaves behind some treasure, and perfumes its path. Memory
hangs upon the tree the whispered confession made beneath its
branches. No palace so memorable as the little house where you were
reared, no charter oak so historic as the trees under which you
played, no river Nile so notable as the little brook that once sung to
your sighing, no volume or manuscript so precious as the letter and
Testament your dying father pressed into your hand. Understanding this
principle, nations guard the manuscript of the sage, the sword of the
general, the flag stained with heroes' blood. Memorable forever the
little room where Milton wrote, the cottage where Shakespeare dwelt,
the spot where Dante dreamed, the ruin where Phidias wrought. But no
building ever showed such comely handiwork as the temple built by
divine skill. God hath made the soul's house fair to look upon. Death
may close its doors, darken its windows, and pull down its pillars;
still, its very ruins are precious, to be guarded with jealous care.
How sacred the spot where lie the parents that tended us, the bosom
that shielded our infancy, the hands that carried our weakness
everywhither. Men will always deem the desecration of the body or the
grave blasphemous. The physical house, standing, is the temple of God;
falling, it must forever be sacred in man's memory.
Science teaches us to look upon the body as a thinking machine. As a
mental mechanism it exhibits the divine being as an inventor, who has
produced a machine as much superior to Watt's engine, as that engine
is superior to a clod or stone. In this divine mechanism all intricate
and enduring machines are combined in one. Imagine an instrument so
delicate as to be at once a telescope and microscope, at one moment
witnessing the flight of a sun hundreds of millions of miles away,
then quickly adjusted for seeing the point of the finest needle!
Imagine a machine that at one and the same moment can feel the
gratefulness of the blazing fire, taste the sweetness of an orange,
experience the aesthetic delights of a picture, recall the events in
the careers of the men the artist has delineated, recognize the
entrance of a group of friends, out of the confusion of tongues lead
forth a voice not heard for years, thrill with elation at the
unexpected meeting! The very mention of such an instrument, combining
audiphone, telephone, phonograph, organ, loom, and many other
mechanisms yet to be invented, seems like some tale from the "Arabian
Nights." Yet the body and brain make up such a wondrous mental loom,
weaving thought-textures called conversations, poems, orations, making
the creations of a Jacquard loom mere child's play. The body is like a
vast mental depot with lines running out into all the world.
Everything outside has a desk inside where it transacts its special
line of business. There is a visual desk where sunbeams make up their
accounts; an aural desk where melodies conduct their negotiations; a
memory desk where actions and motives are recorded; a logical desk
where reasons and arguments are received and filed. Truly God hath
woven the bones and sinews that fence the soul about into a mechanism
"fearfully and wonderfully made."
To-day science is writing for us the story of the ascent of the body.
Scholars perceive that matter has fulfilled its mission now that dust
stands erect, throbbing in a thinking brain, and beating in a glowing
heart. Ours is a world wherein God hath ordained that acorns should go
on toward oaks, huts become houses, tents temples, babes men, and the
generations journey on to that sublime event "toward which the whole
creation moves." In this long upward march science declares the human
body has had its place. Professor Drummond, famed for his Christian
faith, in his recent volume tells us that man's body brings forward
and combines in itself all the excellencies of the whole lower animal
creation. As the locomotive of to-day contains the engine of Watt and
the improvements of all succeeding inventors; as the Hoe
printing-press contains the rude hand-machine of Guttenberg and the
best features of all the machines that followed it; so the human body
contains the special gift of all earlier and lower forms of animal
life. In making a reaper the machinist does not begin with the sickle,
and then unite the hook with the scythe, afterward joining thereto the
rude reaper and so move on through all the improving types. But in the
germinal man, nature does adopt just this method. As the embryo life
develops it passes into and through the likeness of each lower animal,
and ever journeying upward carries with it the special grace and gift
of each creature it has left behind, "sometimes a bone, or a muscle,
or a ganglion," until the excellencies of many lower forms are
compacted in the one higher man. In the human body there are now
seventy vestigial structures, e.g., vermiform appendices, useful in
the lower life but worse than useless in man. When an anatomist
discovered an organ in a certain animal he foretold its rudimentary
existence in the embryonic man, and we are told his prophecy was
fulfilled through the microscope, "just as the planet Neptune was
discovered after its existence had been predicted from the
disturbances produced in the orbit of Uranus." As some noble gallery
owes its supremacy to centuries of toil and represents treasures
brought in from every clime and country, so the human body represents
contributions from land and sea, and members and organs from
innumerable creatures that creep and walk and fly.
Thus man's descent from the animals has been displaced by the ascent
of the human body. This is not degradation, but an unspeakable
exaltation. Man is "fearfully and wonderfully made." God ordained the
long upward march for making his body exquisitely sensitive and fitted
to be the home of a divine mind. How marvelously does this view
enhance the dignity of man, and clothe God with majesty and glory! It
is a great thing for the inventor to construct a watch. But what if
genius were given some jeweler to construct a watch carrying the power
to regulate itself, and when worn out to reproduce itself in another
watch of a new and higher form, endowing it at the same time with
power for handing forward this capacity for self-improvement? Is not
the wisdom and skill required for making a watch that is
self-adjusting, self-improving, and self-succeeding vastly more than
the wisdom required to construct a simple timepiece? Should science
finally establish the new view, already adopted by practically all
biologists, it will but substitute the method of gradualism and an
unfolding progression for a human body created by an instantaneous and
peremptory fiat. But this is a question for specialists and experts.
Those scholars who accept this view, including such thinkers as the
late President McCosh, of Princeton; Dana, of Yale; such teachers as
Caird, Drummond, and scores who could be named, all renowned for their
Christian belief and life, find that these new views do not waste
faith, but rather nourish it. Formerly men feared and fought Newton's
doctrine of gravity, trembling lest that principle should destroy
belief. To-day many are troubled because of the new views of
development. But it is possible for one to believe in evolution, and
still believe in God with all the mind and soul and strength.
Strangely enough, some are unwilling to have ascended progressively
from an animal, but quite willing to have come up directly from the
clod. But either origin is good enough providing man has ascended far
enough from the clod and the animal, and made some approach to the
angel. Some there are for whom no descent seems possible--they can go
no lower; dwelling now with beasts; others seem to have made no ascent
whatever, but to be even now upon the plane of things that crawl and
creep. Let us leave the question to the scientists. By whatever way
the body came, mentality and spirituality have now been engrafted upon
it. Man is no longer animal, but spiritual; and the wondrous
development of man upon this side of the grave is the pledge and
promise of a long progress beyond the grave, when the divine spirit by
his secret resources shall lead forth from men, emotions,
dispositions, and aspirations as much beyond the present thought and
life as the tree is beyond the seed and the low-lying roots.
In this new view of the human body, science not only exhibits the
growth and perfection of man as the goal toward which God has been
moving from the first, but also throws light upon the sinfulness of
man and the conflicts that rage within the soul. Man is seen to be a
double creature. The spirit man rides a man of flesh and is often
thrown thereby and trampled under foot. There is a lower animal nature
having all the appetites and passions that sustain the physical
organization; but super-imposed thereon, is a spiritual man, with
reason and moral sentiment, with affection and faith. The union of the
two means strife and conflict; the doing what one would not do and the
leaving undone what one would do. The poet describes the condition by
saying: "The devil squatted early on human territory, and God sent an
angel to dispossess him." The animal nature foams out all manner of
passions and lusts. From thence issue also lurid lights and murky
streams. But the under man is not the true man. The soldier rides the
horse, but is himself other than his beast. Man uses an animal at the
bottom, but man is what he is at the top. Sin is the struggle for
supremacy between the animal forces and the higher spiritual powers.
The passions downstairs must be subordinated to the people upstairs.
In some men the animal impulses predominate with terrible force, and
their control is not easy. It is as if a child should try to drive a
chariot drawn by forty steeds of the sun. When a man finds that he can
not dam back the mountain stream, nor stop up its springs, he learns
to use the stream by building a mill, and controlling the pressure of
the flood for grinding his corn. Similarly, the problem of life is for
the upper man to educate, control, and transmute the lower forces
into sympathy and service. The combative powers once turned against
his fellows must be turned against nature and used for hewing down the
forests, bridging rivers, piercing mountains. Thus every animal force
and passion becomes sacred through consecration to mental and
spiritual ends and aims.
Sin therefore ceases to be philosophy or mediaevalism; it becomes a
concrete personal fact. Daily each one comes under its rule and sway.
The mind loves truth, and the body tempts man to break truth. The soul
loves honor, and passion tempts it to deflect its pathway. Man goes
forth in the morning with all the springs of generosity open; but
before night selfishness has dammed up the hidden springs. In the
morning man goes out with love irradiating his face; he comes back at
night sullen and black with hatred and enmity. In the morning the soul
is like a young soldier, parading in stainless white; at night his
garments are begrimed and soiled with self-indulgence and sin. As
there is a line along the tropics where two zones meet and breed
perpetual storm, so there is a middle line in man where the animal man
meets the spiritual man, and there is perpetual storm. There clouds
never pass away, and the thunder never dies out of the horizon of
time.[3] This view, appealing to universal reason, appeals also to
divine help. In his daily strife man needs the brooding presence and
constant stimulus of the divine being. Man waits for God's stimulus as
the frozen roots wait the drawing near of God's sun. The soul looks
ever unto the hills whence cometh its help. In the morning, at noon,
and at night, man longs for a deliverer. God is the pledge of the
soul's victory over the body. For men floundering in the slough of sin
and despond these words, "Ye may, ye must be born again," are sweeter
than angel songs falling from the hills of Paradise.