beautiful and useful; they are surrounded by all the facts of man's
marvelous history; they breathe an atmosphere charged with refinement.
But the youth who hates his books might as well be the poor savage
lying on the banks of the Niger, whose soul sits in silence and
starves to death in a silent dungeon. Should a kind heaven give us the
power to select some charmed gift to be dropped down upon our youth,
parents and teachers could ask nothing better than that each young
heart should storm the gates of learning with such enthusiasm as
belonged to Milton or Epictetus. The Roman slave had one leg broken
and twisted by a cruel master, but in his enthusiasm for knowledge he
used the dim light of his cell for copying the thoughts of great
authors, and lay awake at night reflecting upon the problems of life
and death with man's mysterious nature, and so made himself immortal
by his devotion to the truth. For the student, enthusiasm is indeed "a
god within." Ignorance is want of mental animation. The scientist
tells us the Patagonians sleep eighteen hours each day, with a
tendency to doze through the other six. Their minds are unable to make
any kind of movement, and the chief once told Sir John Lubbock that he
would love to talk were it not that large ideas made him very sleepy.
But it is all in vain that man has reason or learning or imagination
if these talents lie sleeping. Not long ago the ruins of an old temple
were discovered in Rome. When the spade had turned up the soil, lo,
seeds long hidden awakened to cover the soil with rich verdure. For
2,000 years these germs had slept, waiting for the day of warmth and
quickening. Thus each faculty of man is latent, until some powerful
enthusiasm passes over it. Indeed, mental power is not in the
multitude of knowledge acquired, but in the powerful enthusiasms that
drive the informed soul along some noble path. Power is not in the
engine, but in the steam that pounds the piston; and the soul is a
mechanism driven forward by those motives called enthusiasm for
learning or influence or wealth. Success might be defined as a full
casting of the heart into some worthy cause.
It is high time that our young men should recognize that prosperity
and wealth are won only when the mind moves enthusiastically along the
pathway of industry. Our young men have been deeply injured by the
fact that now and then some one stumbles upon sudden wealth, or by
accident gains great treasure. But for every one such fortunate
person, there are ten thousand who have failed of success for want of
a purposeful enthusiasm.
The Persians have a strange story of the Golconda diamond mines. Once
Ali Hafed sat with his wife looking out upon the river that flowed
through their farm. Soon their children came through the trees
bringing with them a traveler. In confidence the stranger showed Ali
Hafed a diamond that shone like a drop of condensed sunshine. He told
his host that one large diamond was worth whole mines of copper and
silver; that a handful would make him a prince; that a mine of
diamonds would buy a kingdom. That night wealthy Ali Hafed went to bed
a poor man, for poverty is discontent. When the morning came he sold
his farm for gold, and went forth in search of diamonds. Years passed.
Old and gray he returned in rags and poverty. He found his dear ones
had all died in penury. He also found that the peasant who bought his
farm was now a prince. One day, digging in the white sand in the
stream at the foot of the garden, the peasant saw a shining something
that sent his heart to his mouth. Running his hands through the sand,
he found it sown with gems. Thus were discovered the Golconda mines.
Had Ali Hafed dug in his own garden, instead of starvation, poverty
and a broken heart, he would have owned gems that made nations rich.
This legend reminds us how youth constantly throws away its
opportunities. Each day some man exchanges a farm in Pennsylvania for
the prairies of Dakota, only to find that the hills he despised have
developed oil that makes his successor rich. Each year purposeful men
grow rich out of trifles that the careless cast away. The sewers of
Paris have made one man wealthy with treasure beyond that of gold
mines. The wastes of a cotton mill founded the fortune of one of the
greatest families in England. Peter Cooper used to say that he built
the Cooper Institute by picking up the refuse that the butcher shops
threw aside. A boy tugging over a shoe-last in Haverhill, Mass., was
told by his mother to give himself to making better and stronger
lasts. Twenty years of enthusiastic study ended, and he was president
of one of the greatest of our railways. In 1870, a youth sat upon the
slag heap of a mine in California. But he gave his full mind to each
clod, and going away for a few weeks he returned with a machine that
extracted greater treasure from the slag than men had ever gained from
the mines. All wise men unite in telling us that ours is a world where
prosperity is won by fidelity to details, and that wealth comes
through little improvements. But, best of all, a purposeful enthusiasm
gives mental wealth, and achieves a treasure beyond gold and rubies--a
worthy character.
Nor is there any dross that love will not refine away, nor any vice
that love can not expel from the heart. Wordsworth was so impressed
with the evil of avarice that he could compare it only to a poisoned
vine that wrapped itself so tightly about his favorite tree that vine
and tree became one life, and the removal of the one meant the death
of the other. But in her most famous story George Eliot tells us that
avarice passes utterly away before the touch of love. Silas Marner was
the victim of blackest ingratitude. His friend was a thief, who thrust
upon him the blame of a black crime. Suddenly, this innocent man found
all homes closed to his hand, all shops locked to his tools, while
even the market refused his wares. Through two years and more, right
bravely he held his head aloft and looked all men in the face. At
length hunger and want drove him forth a wanderer. Then he shook off
the dust of his feet against his false friends, and cursed their
firesides. Kindness in him soured into cynicism, his sweetness became
bitterness, his faith in God and man fluttered feebly for awhile, then
lay without a single pulse-beat. In anger he cursed God, but could not
die.
Journeying afar, the traveler at length stayed his steps in a distant
village. Then in toil he sought to forget. Rising a great while before
day, he wrought with the activity of a spinning insect; and while men
slept, his loom hummed far into the night. When fifteen years had
passed, he had much gold and was a miser. Under the brick floor he
secreted his treasure. Each night he locked the door, shuttered his
windows, and poured upon the table his gold and silver. He bathed his
hands in the yellow river. He piled his guineas up in heaps. Sometimes
he slept with arms around his precious money-bags. One evening he
lifted the bricks of the floor, to find that the hole was empty.
Benumbed with terror, he went everywhither seeking his treasure. He
kneaded his bed, swept his oven, peered into each crack and crevice.
When the full truth fell upon the miser, he sent forth a wild, ringing
scream--the soul's cry of desolation. Then in his grief he rushed into
the rain and the wild night, and wandered on and on, stupefied with
pain. Not until morning came did he stagger in out of the storm.
Entering, he saw the glint of yellow by his hearth. With a wild cry he
sprang forward and clutched it. But it was not gold; it was something
better--it was the yellow locks of a sleeping child. Broken-hearted,
with nothing else to live for, Silas Marner took the deserted babe
into his bosom. As the weeks went on, the little creature nestled into
his heart. For the child's sake he turned again to his loom; love
taught him thrift and industry. For the child's sake he bought books
and hived knowledge; love made a scholar of him. For the child's sake
he planted vines, roses and all sweet flowers; love made him an
artist. For the child's sake he bought carpets for the bare floors and
pictures for the wall; love had made him generous. For the child's
sake he knelt one night and recited her prayer; love would fain make
him a Christian. But he hated men, and could not forget their
ingratitude. One day a rich man's carriage stopped before his cottage.
The lord of the mansion told a strange story--how this beautiful girl
of eighteen was his daughter. In that hour the girl, tall and
beautiful, turned away from palace, lands, position, and, for the love
she bore him, put her arms around Silas Marner and refused to leave
him. Then something in him gave way, and Silas Marner wept. Then
confidence in man and God was his again. Love had destroyed avarice
and purged away his sin. For love is a civilizer; it makes saints out
of savages. As an armor of ice melts before the sun, so all vice and
iniquity disappear in the presence of an overmastering affection.
It remains for us to consider that the absence of an enthusiastic
devotion to integrity and the law of God explains the moral disasters
and shipwrecks that have increased the tears and sorrows of mankind.
Recently the people of this land opened their morning papers only to
be deeply shocked by a rehearsal of grievous disasters, not all of
which were physical. It seems that an awful cyclone had swept through
a Western community, twisting the orchards, destroying houses and
barns, and leaving behind a swath wide and black with destruction. In
addition, the foreign news told of a volcano whose crater had suddenly
poured forth a river of lurid lava, which, sweeping down the mountain
side, consumed the homes of the flying multitude. But the saddest
disaster was reserved to the last. It told of the shame and sorrow,
from which there is no recovery, that had befallen the parents and
friends of three young men, hitherto held in high honor. It seems that
for many years these men had been honored by their friends, and
trusted by the banks in which they were employed. But in a dark hour
they determined to cease to be gentlemen, preferring, rather, to join
the ranks of thieves. Despising every principle of honor, the gold
which employers committed to their care was taken, not to the safety
vault, but distributed among gamblers and evil persons. And our heavy
sorrow is increased when we read in our commercial reports that last
year 625 men went astray as embezzlers, robbing the people in
forty-five states of $25,234,112. The time seems to have come for this
nation to sit down in sackcloth and ashes.
To all good men comes the reflection that either this immorality must
cease its ravages, or this nation will be irretrievably disgraced.
Were it possible to search out these unhappy men, some of them wearing
the convict's garb, and some wandering as fugitives in foreign lands,
henceforth to be men "without a country," and question each for the
cause of his deep disgrace, from all would come this shameful
confession: "I loved evil and hated the law of God." Not one could
confess to passionate, enthusiastic devotion to the divine laws. But
every tree not rooted goes down before the storm, and every ship
unanchored midst the rocks will go to pieces when the wind rises.
Would that we could to-day cause the laws of God to stand forth as
sharply defined as mountain peaks before the eyes of all young men;
would that we could also kindle in each a passionate love and loyal
affection for these holy laws. If the youth of to-day are to be the
leaders of to-morrow, and are ever to have power to stir their
fellows, to correct abuses, revolutionize society, or organize
history, they must, with the enthusiasm of love, ally themselves with
God and His law, clothing that law with flesh until it becomes
visible, clothing it with voice until it becomes eloquent, thrilling
it with power until it becomes triumphant. Only love fulfills law!
Most of all does man need the enthusiasm of love toward his God and
Saviour. In the olden time Plato expressed a wish to have the moral
law become a living personage, that beholding, mankind might stand
amazed and entranced at her beauty. The philosopher felt that
abstractions were too cold to kindle the soul's enthusiasm. As
planets are removed from the sun, their light and heat lessen; their
flowers fade; their fruits lack luster; their summers shorten. Thus
Neptune stands in the midst of perpetual ice and winter, without tree
or bird or human voice. But as our earth approaches the direct rays of
the sun, its beauty increases, its harvests grow heavy.
As if to fulfill Plato's desire, Jesus Christ drew near to our world,
not to chill man's heart, but to strengthen his affection, refine his
reason, enlarge his horizon. How admirable Christ's words, how
illustrious His work, how divine His character! The philosopher
describes man, but Jesus Christ loves man, weeps for man, dies for
man. Dante inspires, but Jesus Christ gives life. Shakespeare shines,
but Jesus Christ uplifts. History causes the heroes of yesterday to
pass before the mind, surrounded by applauding multitudes. When
Napoleon entered Paris the people ran together with one accord, and
the tides of enthusiasm rose like a mountain freshet. When Garibaldi
entered Florence, when Kossuth passed up Broadway in New York, when
Grant, returning homeward, entered our own city, the streets were
filled solidly with multitudes who forgot hunger and exhaustion,
exalted by hero-worship.
But the divine man never stood forth in full proportion until Jesus
Christ stepped upon this planet. What strength! What gentleness!
Behold His exquisite sympathy! Behold the instinct of confidence, that
drew little children to His arms! How did men, defiled within and
without, throng round Him, while His presence wrought the miracle of
miracles in cleansing them! Then for the first time in history did
disheveled ones so feel the beauty of goodness that an irresistible
enthusiasm drew them about Him to kiss the very hem of His garment.
All the excellencies of life, and more, unite in Him; the orator's
persuasive speech; the artist's love of beauty; the scholar's passion
for truth; the patriot's love of country. His also is more than the
love of mother, lover, friend, for his is the love of Saviour. To-day
He rises over each soul in such majesty of excellence as to include
the excellencies of everything in heaven and everything on earth. As
the clouds sometimes, after hanging for days and nights in the
atmosphere, at length come together and pour down their refreshing
showers, so let all that is deepest and richest and sweetest in man's
thought and affection pour itself out before Him who is worthy of the
world's anthem. For His mind will guide, His mercy forgive, His love
redeem, His hand lead--not into the abyss of death, but unto the
heavenly heights. He who with Dante looks upward to-day may behold the
Saviour's divine chariot "sweeping along the confines of heaven, a
sweet light above it, its wheels almost blocked with flowers."
CONSCIENCE AND CHARACTER
"There is a higher law than the constitution."--_Seward._
"Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod,
Man's conscience is the oracle of God."
--_Byron._
"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of
celestial fire called conscience."--_Washington._
"Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in
everything."--_Sterne._
"If you can find a place between the throne of God and
the dust to which man's body crumbles, where the fatal
responsibilities of law do not weigh upon him, I will
find a vacuum in nature. They press upon him from God out
of eternity and from the earth out of nature, and from
every department of life, as constant and all-surrounding
as the pressure of the air."--_Beecher._
IX
CONSCIENCE AND CHARACTER
Von Humboldt said that every man, however good, has a yet better man
within him. When the outer man is unfaithful to his deeper
convictions, the hidden man whispers a protest. The name of this
whisper in the soul is conscience. And never had monarch aspect so
magisterial as when conscience terrified King Herod into confession.
The cruel, crafty despot had slain John the Baptist to gratify the
revenge of the beautiful Jezebel, his wife, reproved of John for her
outrageous sins. But soon passed from memory that hateful night when
the blood of a good man mingled with the red wine of the feast. Luxury
by day and revelry by night caused the hateful incident to be
forgotten. Soon a full year had passed over the palace with its silken
seclusion. One day, when the dead prophet had long been forgotten, a
courtier at the king's table told the story of a strange carpenter,
whose name and fame were ringing through the land.
Who is He? asked the feasters, pausing over their spiced wine. Who is
He? asked the women, gossiping over the new sensation. Suddenly,
conscience touched an old memory in Herod's heart. In terror the
despot rose from the banquet. As in the legend, when the murderer's
finger touched the gaping wound the blood began again to flow--a
silent witness against the unsuspected but guilty friend, so Herod's
conscience opened up again his guilty secret. Memory, thrusting a
hooked pole into "the ocean of oblivion, brought up the pale and
drowned deed." The long-forgotten sin was revealed in all its ghastly
atrocity. It availed nothing that Herod was a Sadducee--the agnostic
of antiquity. For, when conscience spake, all his doubts fell away.
Immortality and responsibility were clear as noonday. Holding a
thousand swords in her hand, conscience attacked the guilty king. Then
were fulfilled Plato's words: "If we could examine the heart of a
king, we would find it full of scars and black wounds." For no slave
was ever marked by his master's scourge as Herod's heart was lashed by
his conscience.
Socrates told his disciples that the facts of conscience must be
reckoned with as certainly as the facts of fire or wood or water. None
may deny the condemnation that weighed upon the soul of Herod or
Judas, or the approval of conscience that transfigured the face of the
martyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only through
peace with one's self, one's record, and one's God. All the great,
from AEschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasized
man's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Here
is the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty to
sentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before the
astounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dock
beside the prisoner. He stated that, thirty years before, in a distant
province, he had taken the life and property of his master, and
thereby gained his present position and influence. Though he had never
been suspected of crime, he now begged his fellow Judges to condemn
him to the death unto which his conscience had long urged him. Here is
the student of man and things, Dr. Samuel Johnson: In his old and
honored age he goes back to Litchfield to stand with uncovered head
from morning till night in the market-place on the spot where fifteen
years before he had refused to keep his father's book-stall. Despite
the grotesque figure he made, midst the sneers and the rain,
conscience bade him expiate his breach of filial piety. And here is
Channing, the scholar and seer: A child of six years, he lifted his
stick to strike the tortoise, as he had seen older boys do. But in
that moment an inner voice whispered loud and clear: "It is wrong." In
his fright the boy hastened home to fling himself into his mother's
arms. "What was the voice?" he asked. To which his mother answered:
"Men call the voice conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice of
God. And always your happiness will depend upon obedience to that
little voice."
Here also is the great Persian Sadi. One day he found a good man in
the jungle, who had been attacked by a tiger and horribly mutilated.
Despite his dreadful agony, the dying man's features were calm and
serene. "Great God," said he, "I thank thee that I am only suffering
from the fangs of the tiger and not of remorse." And here is Professor
Webster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning he
sent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "At
midnight," he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the wall
and whisper, 'Thou art a murderer.'" Now there were no prisoners in
the next cell. The whispers were the echoes of a guilty conscience.
Daniel Webster also testifies: Once he was asked what was the greatest
thought that had ever occupied his mind. "Who are here?" "Only your
friends." Then this colossal man answered: "There is no evil we can
not face or flee from but the consequences of duty disregarded. A
sense of obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity.
If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still
with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness
shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are
yet with us. We can not escape their power nor fly from their
presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close,
and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther on
we shall find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty--to pain
us forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as God
has given us grace to perform it." Weighed against conscience the
world itself is but a bubble. For God himself is in conscience lending
it authority.
We also owe the great dramatists and novelists a debt, in that they
have portrayed and analyzed the essential facts of man's moral life.
That which Shakespeare does for us in "Macbeth," Victor Hugo does in
his "Les Miserables." The latter work, always ranked as one of the
seven great novels, exhibits happiness and character as fruits of
obedience to the soul's inner circle. Jean Valjean was an escaped
convict. Going into a distant province he assumed a new name and began
life again. He invented a machine, amassed wealth, became mayor of the
town, was honored and beloved by all. One evening the good mayor heard
of an old man in another town who had been arrested for stealing
fruit. The officer apprehending him perceived in the old man a
striking resemblance to Jean Valjean. Despite his protests he was
tried as Jean Valjean, and was about to be remanded to prison--this
time for life. Unless some one cleared him he must go to the galleys.
Only Jean Valjean himself can clear the stranger. How clear him? By
confessing his identity and going himself.
In that hour the mayor's brain reeled. He retired to his inner room.
Then the tempest raged in his brain as a cyclone rages through the
trees, twisting off the branches and pulling up the roots. Must he go
back again to the galleys with their profanity and obscenity? Must he
resign his mayoralty and his wealth? Must he give up his life, so
useful and helpful, and all to save a possible year or two of life for
this old man? Were not these two young wards whom he was supporting
more than this one old wreck? Fate had decided. Let the old man go to
the galleys.