purple, Jean Valjean took the two candlesticks given him by the
Bishop, his thorn cane, the coin taken from the boy, and cast all upon
the blazing coals. Soon the flames had licked all up. Then Victor Hugo
says: "Jean Valjean heard a burst of internal laughter." What was it
in him jeering and mocking? At midnight from sheer exhaustion the
mayor slept. Dreaming, he seemed to be in a hall of justice where an
old man was being tried. There were roses in the vase, only sin had
bleached the crimson petals gray. The sunlight came through the
window, only sin had washed the color from the sunbeam and left the
golden rays ashen pale. All the people were silent. At length an
officer touched the mayor and said: "Do you know you have been dead a
long while? Your body lives, but you died when you slew your
conscience." Suddenly a voice said: "Jean Valjean, you may melt the
candlestick, burn your clothes, change your face, but God sees you."
Afterward came a second burst of internal laughter. Then the mayor
arose swiftly, took his horse, drove hard all night and reached the
distant village to enter the courtroom just as the old man was about
to be sent to the galleys. Ascending the prisoner's dock, he confessed
his identity. Victor Hugo tells us that in that hour the judge and the
lawyer saw a strange light upon the mayor's face, and felt a light
within dazzling their hearts. It was the same light that fell on the
German monk's face when before the Emperor at Worms he said: "I cannot
and will not recant!" and then boldly fronted death. Conscience
shining through made Luther's face luminous, as it had made the face
of Moses before him!
As obedience to the behests of conscience has always yielded happiness
and formed character, so disobedience has always destroyed manhood.
The great novelists have exhibited the deterioration of character in
their hero as beginning with a sin against the sense of duty. In
Romola, George Eliot exhibits Tito as a gifted and ideal youth. The
orphan child was adopted by the Greek scholar, who lavished upon him
all the gifts of affection, all the culture and embellishments of the
schools, all the comforts of a beautiful home; and when the longing
for foreign travel came upon the youth the foster-father could not
deny him, but took passage for Tito and himself and sailed for
Alexandria. But the motto of Tito's life was, get all the pleasure
you can, avoid all the pain. Soon the old scholar became a clog and a
burden. One night, conscience battled for its life with Tito. At
midnight the youth arose, unbuckled from his father's waist the
leather belt stuffed with jewels, and fled into the night, leaving the
gray-haired man among strangers whose language he could not speak.
Then this youth sailed away to Florence. There his handsome person,
his Southern beauty, his grace of address, his aptitude for affairs,
won him the admiration of the wisest statesmen and the heart of one of
the noblest of women. But all the time we feel toward this beautiful
youth that same loathing and contempt that we feel toward a beautiful
young tiger. Tito had no conscience toward Romola, no conscience
toward her father's priceless library, no conscience toward the
patriots struggling for the city's liberty; he played the traitor
toward all. His soul was, indeed, sheathed in a glowing and beautiful
body; but it was the corpse sheathed over with flowers and vines; and
so conscience becomes an avenger upon Tito. When the keystone goes
from the arch, all must crash down in ruins. Unconsciously but surely
the youth moved toward his destruction. The day of doom was delayed,
but there came an hour when conscience first drove Tito into the
Arno's swift current, and then became a millstone, that sunk him into
the deep abyss. For ours is a world in which nature and God cannot
afford to permit sin to prosper. Conscience is God's avenger.
Open all the master books, and they portray the same truth. Three of
the seven greatest novels deal with conscience. Seven of the world's
greatest dramas are studies of conscience and of duty. The
masterpieces of Sophocles and AEschylus, of Dante and Milton, of Goethe
and Byron, are all studies of the soul's oracle, that, disobeyed,
hurls man into the abyss, or, followed, becomes wings, lifting him
into the open sky.
Demosthenes said that knowledge begins with definition. What, then, is
conscience? Many misconceptions have prevailed. Multitudes suppose it
to be a distinct faculty. The eye tests colors for beauty, the ear
tests sounds for harmony, the reason tests arguments for truth, and
there is a popular notion that conscience is a distinct faculty,
testing deeds for morality. Many suppose that, when God made man, He
implanted conscience as an automatic moral mechanism, a kind of inner
mind, to act in his absence; but conscience is not a single faculty.
It includes many faculties, and is complex in nature. It has an
intellectual element, and this is distinctly fallible and capable of
education. Witness the Indians, believing it to be right to kill aged
persons. Witness savages of old, sacrificing their children to appease
the gods. Just as there has been an evolution in tools, in laws and in
institutions, so has there been an evolution of the intellectual
element in conscience. Thucydides tells us that the time was in Sparta
when stealing was right. In that far-off time a boy was praised for
exhibiting skill and dexterity in pilfering. Stealing was disgraceful
and wrong only when it was found out, and, if the theft was large and
skillfully done, it won honor--a condition of things that still
prevails in some sections.
Never since man stepped foot upon this planet has there been a time
when conscience, the judge, has praised a David when sinning against
what he believed to be the law of right; never once has it condemned a
Daniel in doing what he believed to be right. In this sense conscience
is, indeed, infallible and is the very voice and regent of God.
Since, therefore, conscience partakes of this divine nature and speaks
as an oracle, what are its uses and functions? Primarily, the moral
sense furnishes a standard and tests actions for righteousness or
iniquity. To its judgment-seat comes reason, with its purposes and
ambitions. When his color sense is jaded the artist uses the sapphire
or ruby to bring his tints up to perfection. And when contact with
selfishness or sordidness has soiled the soul's garments, dulled its
instruments, and lowered its standards, then conscience comes in to
freshen the ideals and to smite vice and vulgarity. In these luminous
hours when conscience causes the deeper convictions to prevail, how
beautiful seem truth and purity and justice! How does the soul revolt
from iniquity, even as the eye revolts from the slough or the nostril
from filth!
Conscience has also relations to judgment. It pronounces upon the
inner motive that colors the deeds, for it is the motive within that
makes the actions without right or wrong. When Coleridge, the
schoolboy, was going along the street thinking of the story of Hero
and Leander and imagining himself to be swimming the Hellespont, he
threw wide his arms as though breasting the waves. Unfortunately, his
hand struck the pocket of a passer-by and knocked out a purse. The
outer deed was that of a pickpocket and could have sent the youth to
jail. The inner motive was that of an imaginative youth deeply
impressed by the story he was translating from the Greek, and that
inner motive made the owner of the purse his friend and sent young
Coleridge to college. Thus, the philosopher tells us, the motive made
what was outwardly wrong to be inwardly right.
Memory, too, is influenced by the moral Faculty. Memory gathers up all
our yesterdays. Often her writing is invisible, like that of a penman
writing with lemon juice, taking note of each transgression and
recording words that will appear when held up to the heat of fire.
Very strangely does conscience bring out the processes of memory. Sir
William Hamilton tells of a little child brought to England at four
years of age. When a few brief summers and winters had passed over his
head, the language of far-off Russia had passed completely out of the
child's mind. Seventy years afterward, stricken with his last illness,
in his delirium the man spoke with perfect ease in the language of
childhood. In moments of extreme excitement, when ships go down or
death is imminent, conscience doth so quicken the mind that all the
deeds and thoughts of an entire career are reviewed within a few
minutes. Scholars have been deeply impressed with this unique fact.
Seeking to interpret it, Walter Scott takes us into the castle where a
foul murder was committed. So deeply did the red current stain the
floor that, though the servants scrubbed and scrubbed and planed and
planed, still the dull red stains oozed up through the oaken planks.
This is the great Scotchman's way of saying that our deeds stain
through the very fiber and substance of the soul.
Looking backward, we see only here and there a peak of remembrance
standing out midst the sea of forgetfulness, even as the islands in
the West Indies stand out midst the ocean. But each of these island
peaks represents a submerged continent. Drain off the sea, and the
mountains ease off toward the foothills and the hills toward the great
plains that make up the hidden land. Thus the isolated memories of the
past are all united, and will at length stand forth in perfect
revelation. Verily, conscience is a witness, secretly taking notes,
even as good Latimer in his cell overheard the scratching of the pen
in the chimney behind the curtain. Conscience is a judge, and, though
juries nod and witnesses may be bribed, conscience never slumbers and
never sleeps. Conscience is a monarch, and, though to-day the soul's
king be deposed from its throne, to-morrow it will ascend to the
judgment-seat and lift the scepter. For conscience represents God and
acts in His stead.
Consider the workings of conscience in daily life. The ideal man is he
who is equally conscientious toward intellect and affection, toward
plan and purpose. But in practical life men are Christian only in
spots and departments. The soul may be likened unto a house, and
conscience is the furnace thereof. Sometimes the householder turns the
heat into the sitting-room and parlor, but in the other rooms he turns
off the warm currents of air. Sometimes heat is turned into the upper
rooms, while the lower rooms are cold. Thus conscience, that should
govern all faculties alike, is largely departmental in its workings.
Some men are conscientious toward Sunday, but not toward the week
days. On Sunday they sing like saints, on Monday they act like demons.
On the morning of St. Bartholomew's massacre, Charles IX was
conscientious toward the cathedral and attended mass during three
hours; in the evening he filled the streets of Paris with rivers of
blood. John Calvin was conscientious toward his logical system. He was
very faithful to his theology, but he had no conscience toward his
fellows, and burned Servetus without a sympathetic throb.
In the Middle Ages conscience worked toward outer forms. In those days
the baron and priest made a contract. The general led his peasants
forth to burn and pillage and kill, and the priest absolved the
murderers for five per cent of the profits. Men were very
conscientious toward absolution, but not at all toward the neighbor's
flocks and barns. In others conscience is largely superstition.
Recently an officer of our army found himself sitting beside his host
at a table containing thirteen guests. The soldier, who perhaps would
have braved death on the battle-field, was pricked by his conscience
for sitting at table where the guests numbered thirteen. But he was
afraid to die at the dinner-table. He believed that the great God who
makes suns and stars and blazing planets to fly from His hand as
sparks beneath the hammer of a smith, the god of Sirius and Orion,
always stopped his work at six o'clock to count the guests around each
table, and if he found perchance there were thirteen, then would lift
his arrow to the bow to let fly the deadly shaft upon these awful
sinners against the law of twelve chairs or fourteen.
Singularly enough, now and then an individual is conscientious toward
some charm, as in the case of a merchant who presently discovered that
he had left his buckeye at home. He had carried this for twenty years.
Had he forgotten to pray he would not have gone home to fall upon his
knees. Nature and God were in the merchant's counting-room, but not
the buckeye. So he hurriedly left his office to bring back the agent
that secured all his success and prosperity.
Then, there is a commercial conscience. Some men feel that the law of
right is chiefly binding upon a man in his business relations. They
exile themselves from home, break the laws of love and companionship
with the wife whom they have engaged to cherish and love, until they
become strangers to her. But conscience does not prick them. Home,
friends, music, culture, all these may be neglected--but the business,
never. Others there are whose consciences work largely toward the
home. When they cross their own thresholds they are genial, kind and
delightful. As hosts they are famed for their companionship. Dying,
their fame is gathered up by the expressions, "good husband, good
father, good provider." But they have no conscience toward the street.
They count other men their prey, being grasping, greedy and
avaricious. They feel about their fellows just as men do about the
timber in the forest. When a man wants timber for his house, he says,
"That is the tree I want," and the woodsman fells it and squares it
for the sill. Does he want stone for his foundations or marble for his
finishings? There are the rocks; quarry them. Men go into inanimate
nature and get the materials they need. Nor is it very different in
the great world of business and ambition. The giant takes one man for
the foundation and cuts him down and builds him into the walls; he
selects another man and uses him up, building his substance into the
structure; he looks upon his fellows as the shepherd upon his
flocks--so much wool to be sheared.
Nor is the work of conscience very different in the moral and
spiritual realm. Here is one man who is conscientious toward
yesterday. Ten years ago, he says, "while kneeling in the field light
broke through the clouds" and he obtained "a hope." And every Sunday
since that day he has not failed to recall that scene. He is not
conscientious about having a new, fresh, crisp, vital experience for
to-day, but he is conscientiously faithful in recalling that old
experience. It is all as foolish as if he should say that ten years
ago he had a bath, or ten years ago he drank at the bubbling spring,
or ten years ago he met a friend. What about to-day's purity, to-day's
loaf and to-day's friendships? The heart should count no manna good
that is not gathered fresh each morning. Others there are whose
conscience works largely toward doctrine and intellectual statements.
With them Christianity is a function of thought in the brain. These
are they who want every sermon to consist of linked arguments. The
good deacon sits in his pew and listens to the unfolding of proofs of
election or foreordination. When the arguments have been piled up to
sixteen or eighteen, the good man begins to chuckle with delight,
saying, "Verily, this is a high day in Israel; my soul feasts on fat
things." Other men want some flesh on their skeletons, but he is fed
on the dry bones of logic.
Sometimes conscience affects only the feelings. Fifty years ago there
was a type numbering hundreds of thousands of persons whose religion
was largely emotional. In great camp-meetings filled with a warm
atmosphere men showed at their best. The sunny spot of all the year
was the month of revival meetings. Then they experienced the luxury of
spiritual enjoyment. They lived on the top of some Mount of
Transfiguration, while the world below was thundering with wickedness
and tormented with passion. Men became drunk with emotions. Religion
was an exquisite form of spiritual selfishness. Afterward came an era
when men learned to transmute feelings into thoughts and fidelities
toward friendships and business and duty. At other times conscience
has had unique manifestations in fidelity toward creeds. Now one
denomination and now another, forgetting to be conscientious in
meeting together for days and weeks to plan in the interests of the
pauper, the orphans, the tenement house or the foreign district in the
great city, will through months of excitement exhibit conscience
toward some doctrinal symbol. Witness the recent upheaval about
inspiration. As water bubbling up through the spring was once rain
that fell from the sky, so the truth coming through the lips of poet
or prophet was first breathed into the heart by God. Recently a good
professor thought more emphasis should be laid upon the human spring.
But his opponents thought the emphasis should be placed upon the sky,
from which the rain fell. In the broil about the nature of the water,
the spring itself was soiled, much mud stirred up, until multitudes
wholly forgot the spring, and many knew not whether there was any
water of life.
But conscience in some, means fidelity to what man and God did--not
what God is doing or will do. When the flowing sap under the stimulus
of the sun causes the tree to grow and splits the bark, men rejoice
that the bark is rent and that new and larger growths must be
inserted. Sometimes a child, long feeble and sickly, enters upon a
period of very rapid growth. Soon the boy's old clothes are too small,
and so is his hat. But what if the parents should remember only that
the clothes and hat came from some famous pattern? What if in their
zeal to preserve the hat they should put an iron band about the boy's
forehead and never permit it to increase so that the hat would not
fit? What if they should put a strait-jacket about the chest to
restrain the stature? This would show great zeal toward the hat and
the coat, but meanwhile what is to become of the boy? Strange that men
should be so conscientious toward an intellectual symbol, but forget
to give liberty to other men's consciences who day and night seek to
please God and be true to their beliefs. Thus in a thousand ways
conscience is partial and fragmentary in its workings. Only one
full-orbed man has ever trod our earth!
God's crowning gift to man is the gift of conscience. Reason is a
noble and kingly faculty, turning reveries into orations and
conversations into books. Imagination is a stately and divine gift,
turning thoughts into poems and blocks of stone into statues. Great is
the power of an eloquent tongue instructing men, restraining,
inspiring, stimulating vast multitudes. Great are the joys of memory,
that gallery stored with pictures of the past. But there is no genius
of mind or heart comparable to a vigorous conscience, magisterial,
clear-eyed, wide-looking. He who gave all-comprehending reason,
all-judging reason, reserved his best gift to the last--then gave the
gift of conscience.
Man is a pilgrim and conscience is the guide, leading him safely
through forests and thickets, restraining from the paths of wrong,
pointing out the ways of right. Man is a voyager and conscience is his
compass. The sails may be swept away, and the engines stopped, but the
voyager yet may be saved if only the compass is kept. In time of
danger man may be careless about his garments, but not about his hand
or foot or eye. It is possible to sustain the loss of wealth, friends
and outer honors, but no man can sustain the loss of conscience. It is
the soul's eye. Afar off it sees the face of God. Instructed, guided,
loved, and redeemed by Jesus Christ, he who while living is at peace
with his Master and with his conscience will, when dying, find himself
at peace with his God.
VISIONS THAT DISTURB CONTENTMENT
"Like other gently nurtured Boston boys, Wendell Phillips
began the study of law. Doubtless the sirens sang to him,
as to the noble youth of every country and time. Musing
over Coke and Blackstone, perhaps he saw himself
succeeding Ames and Otis and Webster, the idol of
society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion of
the elegant ease, and the cultivated conservatism of
Massachusetts. * * * But one October day he saw an
American citizen assailed by a furious mob in the city of
James Otis for saying with James Otis that a man's right
to liberty is inherent and inalienable. As the jail doors
closed upon Garrison to save his life, Garrison and his
cause had won their most powerful and renowned ally. With
the setting of that October sun, vanished forever the
career of prosperous ease, the gratification of ordinary
ambition, which the genius and the accomplishments of
Wendell Phillips had seemed to foretell. Yes, the
long-awaited client had come at last. Scarred, scorned
and forsaken, that cowering and friendless client was
wronged and degraded humanity. The great soul saw and
understood."--_Oration on Wendell Phillips by George Wm.
Curtis._
X
VISIONS THAT DISTURB CONTENTMENT
Every community holds a few happy and buoyant souls, that are so
sustained by inner hope and outer prosperity as to seem the elect
children of good fortune. These are they who are born only to the best
things, for whom, as life goes on, the years do but increase happiness
and success. For other men happiness is occasional, and life offers
now and then a bright interval, even as an open glade is found here
and there in the dark forest. Among these sunny souls, dwelling midst
constant prosperity, let us hasten to include that youth to whom
Christ made overtures of friendship. His was a frank and open nature,
his a fresh and unsullied heart. He had also a certain grace and
indescribable charm that clothed him with rare attraction. Wealth,
too, was his, and all the advantages that go therewith. Yet ease had
not enervated him, nor position made him proud. He had indeed passed
through the fierce fires of temptation, but had come out with
spotless garments.
Beholding him, Christ loved him; nor could it have been otherwise.
Some men we force ourselves to like. For reasons of finance or social
advantage, men ignore their faults, while cherishing a secret dislike.
But others are so attractive, they compel our friendship by a certain
sweet necessity. The eye must needs like the rich red rose, and the
ear can not but enjoy the sweet song. And this youth stood forth
clothed with such rare attraction that it is said Christ cast one long
lingering look of affection upon him; then widening the circle of
friendship, he offered the young ruler a place therein. It was an
overture such as Socrates made to the boy Plato; it was a proffer such
as Michael Angelo made to the poor young artist who knocked at his
door. Recalling the day when he met Goethe, Schiller was accustomed to
say his creative literary career began with Goethe's proffer of
friendship.
Carlyle tells us that each new epoch in his life began with the
acquaintance of some great man. For it is not given to books nor
business, to landscapes nor clouds nor forests, to have full power
over the living man. Only mind can quicken mind, only heart can
quicken heart. What would the youth of genius not give for the
friendship of some Bacon or Shakespeare? But when this youth won
Christ's regard, it was as if all the children of genius had come
together in Christ's single person, to proffer intimacy and
companionship. His great soul overhung his friends as the harvests
overarch the fields, "filling the flowers with heat by day, and
cooling them with dews by night." His friendship is like a mother's, a
lover's, a friend's, but larger than either, and deeper than all. The
rising of a star, that glows and sparkles with ten thousand effects,
can alone be compared to this Son of Man, who flamed forth upon his
friends such majesty of beauty, such royalty of kindling influences.
For centuries scholars have spoken of this interview between Christ
and the young ruler as "the great refusal." Dante, wandering with
Virgil through the Inferno, thought he saw this young ruler searching
for his lost opportunity. For this ruler was the Hamlet of the New
Testament. Like the Prince of Denmark, he stood midway between his
conscience and his task, and indecision slew him. It has been said
that Hamlet could have been happy had he remained in ignorance of his
duty, or had he boldly obeyed the vision which called him to action.
It was because he knew more than he had the courage to do that a
discord arose, which destroyed the symmetry and sanity of his mind.
His madness grew out of the breach between his enlarged and haunting
sense of right and his faltering ability to face and fulfill it. Thus
also the tragedy of this young ruler's life grew out of the fact that
the new aspiration made his old contentment impossible, and compelled
him either to go on with boldness to better things, or to go back to
emptiness and misery. Beholding him, Christ loved him for what he was,
and pointed out what he might become. He knew that the better was a
great enemy of the best. For Christ had the double vision of the
sculptor.