WORSHIP.

Some of my friends have complained, when the preceding papers were read,

that we discussed Fate, Power, and Wealth, on too low a platform; gave

too much line to the evil spirit of the times; too many cakes to

Cerberus; that we ran Cudworth's risk of making, by excess of candor,

the argument of atheism so strong, that he could not answer it. I have

no fears of being forced in my own despite to play, as we say, the

devil's attorney. I have no infirmity of faith; no belief that it is of

much importance what I or any man may say: I am sure that a certain

truth will be said through me, though I should be dumb, or though I

should try to say the reverse. Nor do I fear skepticism for any good

soul. A just thinker will allow full swing to his skepticism. I dip my

pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my

inkpot. I have no sympathy with a poor man I knew, who, when suicides

abounded, told me he dared not look at his razor. We are of different

opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on

the side of truth.

I see not why we should give ourselves such sanctified airs. If the

Divine Providence has hid from men neither disease, nor deformity, nor

corrupt society, but has stated itself out in passions, in war, in

trade, in the love of power and pleasure, in hunger and need, in

tyrannies, literatures, and arts,--let us not be so nice that we cannot

write these facts down coarsely as they stand, or doubt but there is a

counter-statement as ponderous, which we can arrive at, and which, being

put, will make all square. The solar system has no anxiety about its

reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I

any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides

of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith

cannot down-weigh. The strength of that principle is not measured in

ounces and pounds: it tyrannizes at the centre of Nature. We may well

give skepticism as much line as we can. The spirit will return, and

fill us. It drives the drivers. It counterbalances any accumulations

of power.

"Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow."

We are born loyal. The whole creation is made of hooks and eyes, of

bitumen, of sticking-plaster, and whether your community is made in

Jerusalem or in California, of saints or of wreckers, it coheres in a

perfect ball. Men as naturally make a state, or a church, as

caterpillars a web. If they were more refined, it would be less formal,

it would be nervous, like that of the Shakers, who, from long habit of

thinking and feeling together, it is said, are affected in the same way,

at the same time, to work and to play, and as they go with perfect

sympathy to their tasks in the field or shop, so are they inclined for a

ride or a journey at the same instant, and the horses come up with the

family carriage unbespoken to the door.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples. A

self-poise belongs to every particle; and a rectitude to every mind, and

is the Nemesis and protector of every society. I and my neighbors have

been bred in the notion, that, unless we came soon to some good

church,--Calvinism, or Behmenism, or Romanism, or Mormonism,--there

would be a universal thaw and dissolution. No Isaiah or Jeremy has

arrived. Nothing can exceed the anarchy that has followed in our skies.

The stern old faiths have all pulverized. 'Tis a whole population of

gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions. 'Tis as flat anarchy

in our ecclesiastic realms, as that which existed in Massachusetts, in

the Revolution, or which prevails now on the slope of the Rocky

Mountains or Pike's Peak. Yet we make shift to live. Men are loyal.

Nature has self-poise in all her works; certain proportions in which

oxygen and azote combine, and, not less a harmony in faculties, a

fitness in the spring and the regulator.

The decline of the influence of Calvin, or Fenelon, or Wesley, or

Channing, need give us no uneasiness. The builder of heaven has not so

ill constructed his creature as that the religion, that is, the public

nature, should fall out: the public and the private element, like north

and south, like inside and outside, like centrifugal and centripetal,

adhere to every soul, and cannot be subdued, except the soul is

dissipated. God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches

and religions.

In the last chapters, we treated some particulars of the question of

culture. But the whole state of man is a state of culture; and its

flowering and completion may be described as Religion, or Worship.

There is always some religion, some hope and fear extended into the

invisible,--from the blind boding which nails a horseshoe to the mast or

the threshold, up to the song of the Elders in the Apocalypse. But the

religion cannot rise above the state of the votary. Heaven always bears

some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal,

of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant. In all

ages, souls out of time, extraordinary, prophetic, are born, who are

rather related to the system of the world, than to their particular age

and locality. These announce absolute truths, which, with whatever

reverence received, are speedily dragged down into a savage

interpretation. The interior tribes of our Indians, and some of the

Pacific islanders, flog their gods, when things take an unfavorable

turn. The Greek poets did not hesitate to let loose their petulant wit

on their deities also. Laomedon, in his anger at Neptune and Apollo,

who had built Troy for him, and demanded their price, does not hesitate

to menace them that he will cut their ears off.[5] Among our Norse

forefathers, King Olaf's mode of converting Eyvind to Christianity was

to put a pan of glowing coals on his belly, which burst asunder. "Wilt

thou now, Eyvind, believe in Christ?" asks Olaf, in excellent faith.

Another argument was an adder put into the mouth of the reluctant

disciple Rand, who refused to believe.

[5] Iliad, Book xxi. 1. 455.

Christianity, in the romantic ages, signified European culture,--the

grafted or meliorated tree in a crab forest. And to marry a pagan wife

or husband, was to marry Beast, and voluntarily to take a step backwards

towards the baboon.

"Hengist had verament

A daughter both fair and gent,

But she was heathen Sarazine,

And Vortigern for love fine

Her took to fere and to wife,

And was cursed in all his life;

For he let Christian wed heathen,

And mixed our blood as flesh and mathen."[6]

[6] Moths or worms

What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed drew from the pagan sources,

Richard of Devizes's chronicle of Richard I.'s crusade, in the twelfth

century, may show. King Richard taunts God with forsaking him: "O fie!

O how unwilling should I be to forsake thee, in so forlorn and dreadful

a position, were I thy lord and advocate, as thou art mine. In sooth,

my standards will in future be despised, not through my fault, but

through thine: in sooth, not through any cowardice of my warfare, art

thou thyself, my king and my God conquered, this day, and not Richard

thy vassal." The religion of the early English poets is anomalous, so

devout and so blasphemous, in the same breath. Such is Chaucer's

extraordinary confusion of heaven and earth in the picture of Dido.

"She was so fair,

So young, so lusty, with her eyen glad,

That if that God that heaven and earthe made

Would have a love for beauty and goodness,

And womanhede, truth, and seemliness,

Whom should he loven but this lady sweet?

There n' is no woman to him half so meet."

With these grossnesses, we complacently compare our own taste and

decorum. We think and speak with more temperance and gradation,--but is

not indifferentism as bad as superstition?

We live in a transition period, when the old faiths which comforted

nations, and not only so, but made nations, seem to have spent their

force. I do not find the religions of men at this moment very creditable

to them, but either childish and insignificant, or unmanly and

effeminating. The fatal trait is the divorce between religion and

morality. Here are know-nothing religions, or churches that proscribe

intellect; scortatory religions; slave-holding and slave-trading

religions; and, even in the decent populations, idolatries wherein the

whiteness of the ritual covers scarlet indulgence. The lover of the old

religion complains that our contemporaries, scholars as well as

merchants, succumb to a great despair,--have corrupted into a timorous

conservatism, and believe in nothing. In our large cities, the

population is godless, materialized,--no bond, no fellow-feeling, no

enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and

appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,--so aimless as

they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the

lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy

purpose. There is no faith in the intellectual, none in the moral

universe. There is faith in chemistry, in meat, and wine, in wealth, in

machinery, in the steam-engine, galvanic battery, turbine-wheels, sewing

machines, and in public opinion, but not in divine causes. A silent

revolution has loosed the tension of the old religious sects, and, in

place of the gravity and permanence of those societies of opinion, they

run into freak and extravagance. In creeds never was such levity;

witness the heathenisms in Christianity, the periodic "revivals," the

Millennium mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to

Popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor of Mesmerism, the

deliration of rappings, the rat and mouse revelation, thumps in

table-drawers, and black art. The architecture, the music, the prayer,

partake of the madness: the arts sink into shift and make-believe. Not

knowing what to do, we ape our ancestors; the churches stagger backward

to the mummeries of the dark ages. By the irresistible maturing of the

general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold. The dogma

of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his

genius as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis

of his personality; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the

sublimity of the moral laws. From this change, and in the momentary

absence of any religious genius that could offset the immense material

activity, there is a feeling that religion is gone. When Paul Leroux

offered his article "_Dieu_" to the conductor of a leading French

journal, he replied, "_La question de Dieu manque d'actualite_." In

Italy, Mr. Gladstone said of the late King of Naples, "it has been a

proverb, that he has erected the negation of God into a system of

government." In this country, the like stupefaction was in the air, and

the phrase "higher law" became a political jibe. What proof of

infidelity, like the toleration and propagandism of slavery? What, like

the direction of education? What, like the facility of conversion?

What, like the externality of churches that once sucked the roots of

right and wrong, and now have perished away till they are a speck of

whitewash on the wall? What proof of skepticism like the base rate at

which the highest mental and moral gifts are held? Let a man attain the

highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let

him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all

America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that,

after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America,

that the best use to put a fine person to, is, to drown him to save his

board.

Another scar of this skepticism is the distrust in human virtue. It is

believed by well-dressed proprietors that there is no more virtue than

they possess; that the solid portion of society exist for the arts of

comfort: that life is an affair to put somewhat between the upper and

lower mandibles. How prompt the suggestion of a low motive! Certain

patriots in England devoted themselves for years to creating a public

opinion that should break down the corn-laws and establish free trade.

'Well,' says the man in the street, 'Cobden got a stipend out of it.'

Kossuth fled hither across the ocean to try if he could rouse the New

World to a sympathy with European liberty. 'Aye,' says New York, 'he

made a handsome thing of it, enough to make him comfortable for life.'

See what allowance vice finds in the respectable and well-conditioned

class. If a pickpocket intrude into the society of gentlemen, they

exert what moral force they have, and he finds himself uncomfortable,

and glad to get away. But if an adventurer go through all the forms,

procure himself to be elected to a post of trust, as of senator, or

president,--though by the same arts as we detest in the

house-thief,--the same gentlemen who agree to discountenance the private

rogue, will be forward to show civilities and marks of respect to the

public one: and no amount of evidence of his crimes will prevent them

giving him ovations, complimentary dinners, opening their own houses to

him, and priding themselves on his acquaintance. We were not deceived

by the professions of the private adventurer,--the louder he talked of

his honor, the faster we counted our spoons; but we appeal to the

sanctified preamble of the messages and proclamations of the public

sinner, as the proof of sincerity. It must be that they who pay this

homage have said to themselves, On the whole, we don't know about this

that you call honesty; a bird in the hand is better.

Even well-disposed, good sort of people are touched with the same

infidelity, and for brave, straightforward action, use half-measures and

compromises. Forgetful that a little measure is a great error,

forgetful that a wise mechanic uses a sharp tool, they go on choosing

the dead men of routine. But the official men can in nowise help you in

any question of to-day, they deriving entirely from the old dead things.

Only those can help in counsel or conduct who did not make a party

pledge to defend this or that, but who were appointed by God Almighty,

before they came into the world, to stand for this which they uphold.

It has been charged that a want of sincerity in the leading men is a

vice general throughout American society. But the multitude of the sick

shall not make us deny the existence of health. In spite of our

imbecility and terrors, and "universal decay of religion," &c. &c., the

moral sense reappears to-day with the same morning newness that has been

from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say, there is no

religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, there is no sun, when

at that moment we are witnessing one of his superlative effects. The

religion of the cultivated class now, to be sure, consists in an

avoidance of acts and engagements which it was once their religion to

assume. But this avoidance will yield spontaneous forms in their due

hour. There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all

speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet,

undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our

rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be

worked upon; and to this homage there is a consent of all thoughtful and

just men in all ages and conditions. To this sentiment belong vast and

sudden enlargements of power. 'Tis remarkable that our faith in ecstasy

consists with total inexperience of it. It is the order of the world to

educate with accuracy the senses and the understanding; and the enginery

at work to draw out these powers in priority, no doubt, has its office.

But we are never without a hint that these powers are mediate and

servile, and that we are one day to deal with real being,--essences with

essences. Even the fury of material activity has some results friendly

to moral health. The energetic action of the times develops

individualism, and the religious appear isolated. I esteem this a step

in the right direction. Heaven deals with us on no representative

system. Souls are not saved in bundles. The Spirit saith to the man,

'How is it with thee? thee personally? is it well? is it ill?' For a

great nature, it is a happiness to escape a religious

training,--religion of character is so apt to be invaded. Religion must

always be a crab fruit: it cannot be grafted and keep its wild beauty.

"I have seen," said a traveller who had known the extremes of society,

"I have seen human nature in all its forms, it is everywhere the same,

but the wilder it is, the more virtuous."

We say, the old forms of religion decay, and that a skepticism

devastates the community. I do not think it can be cured or stayed by

any modification of theologic creeds, much less by theologic discipline.

The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget your books and

traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour. That which is

signified by the words "moral" and "spiritual," is a lasting essence,

and, with whatever illusions we have loaded them, will certainly bring

back the words, age after age, to their ancient meaning. I know no words

that mean so much. In our definitions, we grope after the _spiritual_

by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of _spiritual_ is

_real_; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and

which cannot be conceived as not existing. Men talk of "mere

morality,"--which is much as if one should say, 'poor God, with nobody

to help him.' I find the omnipresence and the almightiness in the

reaction of every atom in Nature. I can best indicate by examples those

reactions by which every part of Nature replies to the purpose of the

actor,--beneficently to the good, penally to the bad. Let us replace

sentimentalism by realism, and dare to uncover those simple and terrible

laws which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern.

Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day

comes when he begins to care that he do not cheat his neighbor. Then

all goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the

sun. What a day dawns, when we have taken to heart the doctrine of

faith! to prefer, as a better investment, being to doing; being to

seeming; logic to rhythm and to display; the year to the day; the life

to the year; character to performance;--and have come to know, that

justice will be done us; and, if our genius is slow, the term will be

long.

'Tis certain that worship stands in some commanding relation to the

health of man, and to his highest powers, so as to be, in some manner,

the source of intellect. All the great ages have been ages of belief.

I mean, when there was any extraordinary power of performance, when

great national movements began, when arts appeared, when heroes existed,

when poems were made, the human soul was in earnest, and had fixed its

thoughts on spiritual verities, with as strict a grasp as that of the

hands on the sword, or the pencil, or the trowel. It is true that

genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty

and power which men covet, are somehow born out of that Alpine district;

that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral

charm. Thus, I think, we very slowly admit in another man a higher

degree of moral sentiment than our own,--a finer conscience, more

impressionable, or, which marks minuter degrees; an ear to hear acuter

notes of right and wrong, than we can. I think we listen suspiciously

and very slowly to any evidence to that point. But, once satisfied of

such superiority, we set no limit to our expectation of his genius. For

such persons are nearer to the secret of God than others; are bathed by

sweeter waters; they hear notices, they see visions, where others are

vacant. We believe that holiness confers a certain insight, because not

by our private, but by our public force, can we share and know the

nature of things.

There is an intimate interdependence of intellect and morals. Given the

equality of two intellects,--which will form the most reliable

judgments, the good, or the bad hearted? "The heart has its arguments,

with which the understanding is not acquainted." For the heart is at

once aware of the state of health or disease, which is the controlling

state, that is, of sanity or of insanity, prior, of course, to all

question of the ingenuity of arguments, the amount of facts, or the

elegance of rhetoric. So intimate is this alliance of mind and heart,

that talent uniformly sinks with character. The bias of errors of

principle carries away men into perilous courses, as soon as their will

does not control their passion or talent. Hence the extraordinary

blunders, and final wrong head, into which men spoiled by ambition

usually fall. Hence the remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness,

the cure of crime, is love. "As much love, so much mind," said the

Latin proverb. The superiority that has no superior; the redeemer and

instructor of souls, as it is their primal essence, is love.

The moral must be the measure of health. If your eye is on the eternal,

your intellect will grow, and your opinions and actions will have a

beauty which no learning or combined advantages of other men can rival.

The moment of your loss of faith, and acceptance of the lucrative

standard, will be marked in the pause, or solstice of genius, the

sequent retrogression, and the inevitable loss of attraction to other

minds. The vulgar are sensible of the change in you, and of your

descent, though they clap you on the back, and congratulate you on your

increased common sense.

Our recent culture has been in natural science. We have learned the

manners of the sun and of the moon, of the rivers and the rains, of the

mineral and elemental kingdoms, of plants and animals. Man has learned

to weigh the sun, and its weight neither loses nor gains. The path of a

star, the moment of an eclipse, can be determined to the fraction of a

second. Well, to him the book of History, the book of love, the lures

of passion, and the commandments of duty are opened: and the next lesson

taught, is, the continuation of the inflexible law of matter into the

subtile kingdom of will, and of thought; that, if, in sidereal ages,

gravity and projection keep their craft, and the ball never loses its

way in its wild path through space,--a secreter gravitation, a secreter

projection, rule not less tyrannically in human history, and keep the

balance of power from age to age unbroken. For, though the new element

of freedom and an individual has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms

are prefigured and predetermined to moral issues, are in search of

justice, and ultimate right is done. Religion or worship is the attitude

of those who see this unity, intimacy, and sincerity; who see that,

against all appearances, the nature of things works for truth and right

forever.

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of

chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do not stop where our

eyes lose them, but push the same geometry and chemistry up into the

invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look where we

will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a

perpetual judgment keeps watch and ward. And this appears in a class of

facts which concerns all men, within and above their creeds.

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: It was somebody's

name, or he happened to be there at the time, or, it was so then, and

another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause

and effect. The man was born to do it, and his father was born to be

the father of him and of this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall

see there was no luck in the matter, but it was all a problem in

arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry. The curve of the flight of

the moth is preordained, and all things go by number, rule, and weight.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not see, that,

as he eats, so he thinks: as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he

does not see, that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his

actions; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits; that relation and

connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always;

no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly,--but method, and an even web;

and what comes out, that was put in. As we are, so we do; and as we do,

so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes; cant and lying

and the attempt to secure a good which does not belong to us, are, once

for all, balked and vain. But, in the human mind, this tie of fate is

made alive. The law is the basis of the human mind. In us, it is

inspiration; out there in Nature, we see its fatal strength. We call it

the moral sentiment.

We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of Law, which compares well

with any in our Western books. "Law it is, which is without name, or

color, or hands, or feet; which is smallest of the least, and largest of

the large; all, and knowing all things; which hears without ears, sees

without eyes, moves without feet, and seizes without hands."

If any reader tax me with using vague and traditional phrases, let me

suggest to him, by a few examples, what kind of a trust this is, and how

real. Let me show him that the dice are loaded; that the colors are

fast, because they are the native colors of the fleece; that the globe

is a battery, because every atom is a magnet; and that the police and

sincerity of the Universe are secured by God's delegating his divinity

to every particle; that there is no room for hypocrisy, no margin for

choice.

The countryman leaving his native village, for the first time, and going

abroad, finds all his habits broken up. In a new nation and language,

his sect, as Quaker, or Lutheran, is lost. What! it is not then

necessary to the order and existence of society? He misses this, and

the commanding eye of his neighborhood, which held him to decorum. This

is the peril of New York, of New Orleans, of London, of Paris, to young

men. But after a little experience, he makes the discovery that there

are no large cities,--none large enough to hide in; that the censors of

action are as numerous and as near in Paris, as in Littleton or

Portland; that the gossip is as prompt and vengeful. There is no

concealment, and, for each offence, a several vengeance; that, reaction,

or _nothing for nothing, or, things are as broad as they are long_, is

not a rule for Littleton or Portland, but for the Universe.

We cannot spare the coarsest muniment of virtue. We are disgusted by

gossip; yet it is of importance to keep the angels in their proprieties.

The smallest fly will draw blood, and gossip is a weapon impossible to

exclude from the privatest, highest, selectest. Nature created a police

of many ranks. God has delegated himself to a million deputies. From

these low external penalties, the scale ascends. Next come the

resentments, the fears, which injustice calls out; then, the false

relations in which the offender is put to other men; and the reaction of

his fault on himself, in the solitude and devastation of his mind.

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits

by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of

opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder

in that state of mind you had, when you made it. If you spend for show,

on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so

appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and

things themselves are detective. If you follow the suburban fashion in

building a sumptuous-looking house for a little money, it will appear to

all eyes as a cheap dear house. There is no privacy that cannot be

penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a

masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by

hiding. If a man wish to conceal anything he carries, those whom he

meets know that he conceals somewhat, and usually know what he conceals.

Is it otherwise if there be some belief or some purpose he would bury in

his breast? 'Tis as hard to hide as fire. He is a strong man who can

hold down his opinion. A man cannot utter two or three sentences,

without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life

and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the

understanding, or, in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of

intuitions and duty. People seem not to see that their opinion of the

world is also a confession of character. We can only see what we are,

and if we misbehave we suspect others. The fame of Shakspeare or of

Voltaire, of Thomas a Kempis, or of Bonaparte, characterizes those who

give it. As gas-light is found to be the best nocturnal police, so the

universe protects itself by pitiless publicity.

Each must be armed--not necessarily with musket and pike. Happy, if,

seeing these, he can feel that he has better muskets and pikes in his

energy and constancy. To every creature is his own weapon, however

skilfully concealed from himself, a good while. His work is sword and

shield. Let him accuse none, let him injure none. The way to mend the

bad world, is to create the right world. Here is a low political

economy plotting to cut the throat of foreign competition, and establish

our own;--excluding others by force, or making war on them; or, by

cunning tariffs, giving preference to worse wares of ours. But the real

and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war. The way to

conquer the foreign artisan, is, not to kill him, but to beat his work.

And the Crystal Palaces and World Fairs, with their committees and

prizes on all kinds of industry, are the result of this feeling. The

American workman who strikes ten blows with his hammer, whilst the

foreign workman only strikes one, is as really vanquishing that

foreigner, as if the blows were aimed at and told on his person. I look

on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into

his work for a reply, not into the market, not into opinion, not into

patronage. In every variety of human employment, in the mechanical and

in the fine arts, in navigation, in farming, in legislating, there are

among the numbers who do their task perfunctorily, as we say, or just to

pass, and as badly as they dare,--there are the working-men, on whom the

burden of the business falls,--those who love work, and love to see it

rightly done, who finish their task for its own sake; and the state and

the world is happy, that has the most of such finishers. The world will

always do justice at last to such finishers: it cannot otherwise. He who

has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it

felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter. Men talk as if

victory were something fortunate. Work is victory. Wherever work is

done, victory is obtained. There is no chance, and no blanks. You want

but one verdict: if you have your own, you are secure of the rest. And

yet, if witnesses are wanted, witnesses are near. There was never a man

born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world

with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see

without awe, that no man thinks alone, and no man acts alone, but the

divine assessors who came up with him into life,--now under one

disguise, now under another,--like a police in citizens' clothes, walk

with him, step for step, through all the kingdom of time.

This reaction, this sincerity is the property of all things. To make

our word or act sublime, we must make it real. It is our system that

counts, not the single word or unsupported action. Use what language

you will, you can never say anything but what you are. What I am, and

what I think, is conveyed to you, in spite of my efforts to hold it

back. What I am has been secretly conveyed from me to another, whilst I

was vainly making up my mind to tell him it. He has heard from me what

I never spoke.

As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat

less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress of the

character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a

decreasing faith in propositions. Young people admire talents, and

particular excellences. As we grow older, we value total powers and

effects, as the spirit, or quality of the man. We have another sight,

and a new standard; an insight which disregards what is done _for_ the

eye, and pierces to the doer; an ear which hears not what men say, but

hears what they do not say.

There was a wise, devout man who is called, in the Catholic Church, St.

Philip Neri, of whom many anecdotes touching his discernment and

benevolence are told at Naples and Rome. Among the nuns in a convent

not far from Rome, one had appeared, who laid claim to certain rare

gifts of inspiration and prophecy, and the abbess advised the Holy

Father, at Rome, of the wonderful powers shown by her novice. The Pope

did not well know what to make of these new claims, and Philip coming in

from a journey, one day, he consulted him. Philip undertook to visit the

nun, and ascertain her character. He threw himself on his mule, all

travel-soiled as he was, and hastened through the mud and mire to the

distant convent. He told the abbess the wishes of his Holiness, and

begged her to summon the nun without delay. The nun was sent for, and,

as soon as she came into the apartment, Philip stretched out his leg all

bespattered with mud, and desired her to draw off his boots. The young

nun, who had become the object of much attention and respect, drew back

with anger, and refused the office: Philip ran out of doors, mounted his

mule, and returned instantly to the Pope; "Give yourself no uneasiness,

Holy Father, any longer: here is no miracle, for here is no humility."

We need not much mind what people please to say, but what they must say;

what their natures say, though their busy, artful, Yankee understandings

try to hold back, and choke that word, and to articulate something

different. If we will sit quietly,--what they ought to say is said,

with their will, or against their will. We do not care for you, let us

pretend what we will:--we are always looking through you to the dim

dictator behind you. Whilst your habit or whim chatters, we civilly and

impatiently wait until that wise superior shall speak again. Even

children are not deceived by the false reasons which their parents give

in answer to their questions, whether touching natural facts, or

religion, or persons. When the parent, instead of thinking how it

really is, puts them off with a traditional or a hypocritical answer,

the children perceive that it is traditional or hypocritical. To a

sound constitution the defect of another is at once manifest: and the

marks of it are only concealed from us by our own dislocation. An

anatomical observer remarks, that the sympathies of the chest, abdomen,

and pelvis, tell at last on the face, and on all its features. Not only

does our beauty waste, but it leaves word how it went to waste.

Physiognomy and phrenology are not new sciences, but declarations of the

soul that it is aware of certain new sources of information. And now

sciences of broader scope are starting up behind these. And so for

ourselves, it is really of little importance what blunders in statement

we make, so only we make no wilful departures from the truth. How a

man's truth comes to mind, long after we have forgotten all his words!

How it comes to us in silent hours, that truth is our only armor in all

passages of life and death! Wit is cheap, and anger is cheap; but if

you cannot argue or explain yourself to the other party, cleave to the

truth against me, against thee, and you gain a station from which you

cannot be dislodged. The other party will forget the words that you

spoke, but the part you took continues to plead for you.

Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which life offers me? I am

well assured that the Questioner, who brings me so many problems, will

bring the answers also in due time. Very rich, very potent, very

cheerful Giver that he is, he shall have it all his own way, for me.

Why should I give up my thought, because I cannot answer an objection to

it? Consider only, whether it remains in my life the same it was. That

only which we have within, can we see without. If we meet no gods, it

is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find

grandeur in porters and sweeps. He only is rightly immortal, to whom

all things are immortal. I have read somewhere, that none is

accomplished, so long as any are incomplete; that the happiness of one

cannot consist with the misery of any other.

The Buddhists say, "No seed will die:" every seed will grow. Where is

the service which can escape its remuneration? What is vulgar, and the

essence of all vulgarity, but the avarice of reward? 'Tis the difference

of artisan and artist, of talent and genius, of sinner and saint. The

man whose eyes are nailed not on the nature of his act, but on the

wages, whether it be money, or office, or fame,--is almost equally low.

He is great, whose eyes are opened to see that the reward of actions

cannot be escaped, because he is transformed into his action, and taketh

its nature, which bears its own fruit, like every other tree. A great

man cannot be hindered of the effect of his act, because it is

immediate. The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and in the dark

brings them friends from far. Fear God, and where you go, men shall

think they walk in hallowed cathedrals.

And so I look on those sentiments which make the glory of the human

being, love, humility, faith, as being also the intimacy of Divinity in

the atoms; and, that, as soon as the man is right, assurances and

previsions emanate from the interior of his body and his mind; as, when

flowers reach their ripeness, incense exhales from them, and, as a

beautiful atmosphere is generated from the planet by the averaged

emanations from all its rocks and soils.

Thus man is made equal to every event. He can face danger for the

right. A poor, tender, painful body, he can run into flame or bullets

or pestilence, with duty for his guide. He feels the insurance of a

just employment. I am not afraid of accident, as long as I am in my

place. It is strange that superior persons should not feel that they

have some better resistance against cholera, than avoiding green peas

and salads. Life is hardly respectable,--is it? if it has no generous,

guaranteeing task, no duties or affections, that constitute a necessity

of existing. Every man's task is his life-preserver. The conviction

that his work is dear to God and cannot be spared, defends him. The

lightning-rod that disarms the cloud of its threat is his body in its

duty. A high aim reacts on the means, on the days, on the organs of the

body. A high aim is curative, as well as arnica. "Napoleon," says

Goethe, "visited those sick of the plague, in order to prove that the

man who could vanquish fear, could vanquish the plague also; and he was

right. 'Tis incredible what force the will has in such cases: it

penetrates the body, and puts it in a state of activity, which repels

all hurtful influences; whilst fear invites them."

It is related of William of Orange, that, whilst he was besieging a town

on the continent, a gentleman sent to him on public business came to his

camp, and, learning that the King was before the walls, he ventured to

go where he was. He found him directing the operation of his gunners,

and, having explained his errand, and received his answer, the King

said, "Do you not know, sir, that every moment you spend here is at the

risk of your life?" "I run no more risk," replied the gentleman, "than

your Majesty." "Yes," said the King, "but my duty brings me here, and

yours does not." In a few minutes, a cannon-ball fell on the spot, and

the gentleman was killed.

Thus can the faithful student reverse all the warnings of his early

instinct, under the guidance of a deeper instinct. He learns to welcome

misfortune, learns that adversity is the prosperity of the great. He

learns the greatness of humility. He shall work in the dark, work

against failure, pain, and ill-will. If he is insulted, he can be

insulted; all his affair is not to insult. Hafiz writes,

At the last day, men shall wear

On their heads the dust,

As ensign and as ornament

Of their lowly trust.

The moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all. It is the coin which

buys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under the whip of the

driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes. In the

greatest destitution and calamity, it surprises man with a feeling of

elasticity which makes nothing of loss.

I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose life and discourse

betrayed many inspirations of this sentiment. Benedict was always great

in the present time. He had hoarded nothing from the past, neither in

his cabinets, neither in his memory. He had no designs on the future,

neither for what he should do to men, nor for what men should do for

him. He said, 'I am never beaten until I know that I am beaten. I meet

powerful brutal people to whom I have no skill to reply. They think

they have defeated me. It is so published in society, in the journals;

I am defeated in this fashion, in all men's sight, perhaps on a dozen

different lines. My ledger may show that I am in debt, cannot yet make

my ends meet, and vanquish the enemy so. My race may not be prospering:

we are sick, ugly, obscure, unpopular. My children may be worsted. I

seem to fail in my friends and clients, too. That is to say, in all the

encounters that have yet chanced, I have not been weaponed for that

particular occasion, and have been historically beaten; and yet, I know,

all the time, that I have never been beaten; have never yet fought,

shall certainly fight, when my hour comes, and shall beat.' "A man,"

says the Vishnu Sarma, "who having well compared his own strength or

weakness with that of others, after all doth not know the difference, is

easily overcome by his enemies."

'I spent,' he said, 'ten months in the country. Thick-starred Orion was

my only companion. Wherever a squirrel or a bee can go with security, I

can go. I ate whatever was set before me; I touched ivy and dogwood.

When I went abroad, I kept company with every man on the road, for I

knew that my evil and my good did not come from these, but from the

Spirit, whose servant I was. For I could not stoop to be a circumstance,

as they did, who put their life into their fortune and their company. I

would not degrade myself by casting about in my memory for a thought,

nor by waiting for one. If the thought come, I would give it

entertainment. It should, as it ought, go into my hands and feet; but

if it come not spontaneously, it comes not rightly at all. If it can

spare me, I am sure I can spare it. It shall be the same with my

friends. I will never woo the loveliest. I will not ask any friendship

or favor. When I come to my own, we shall both know it. Nothing will

be to be asked or to be granted.' Benedict went out to seek his friend,

and met him on the way; but he expressed no surprise at any

coincidences. On the other hand, if he called at the door of his

friend, and he was not at home, he did not go again; concluding that he

had misinterpreted the intimations.

He had the whim not to make an apology to the same individual whom he

had wronged. For this, he said, was a piece of personal vanity; but he

would correct his conduct in that respect in which he had faulted, to

the next person he should meet. Thus, he said, universal justice was

satisfied.

Mira came to ask what she should do with the poor Genesee woman who had

hired herself to work for her, at a shilling a day, and, now sickening,

was like to be bedridden on her hands. Should she keep her, or should

she dismiss her? But Benedict said, 'Why ask? One thing will clear

itself as the thing to be done, and not another, when the hour comes.

Is it a question, whether to put her into the street? Just as much

whether to thrust the little Jenny on your arm into the street. The

milk and meal you give the beggar, will fatten Jenny. Thrust the woman

out, and you thrust your babe out of doors, whether it so seem to you or

not.'

In the Shakers, so called, I find one piece of belief, in the doctrine

which they faithfully hold, that encourages them to open their doors to

every wayfaring man who proposes to come among them; for, they say, the

Spirit will presently manifest to the man himself, and to the society,

what manner of person he is, and whether he belongs among them. They do

not receive him, they do not reject him. And not in vain have they worn

their clay coat, and drudged in their fields, and shuffled in their

Bruin dance, from year to year, if they have truly learned thus much

wisdom.

Honor him whose life is perpetual victory; him, who, by sympathy with

the invisible and real, finds support in labor, instead of praise; who

does not shine, and would rather not. With eyes open, he makes the

choice of virtue, which outrages the virtuous; of religion, which

churches stop their discords to burn and exterminate; for the highest

virtue is always against the law.

Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arithmetician. Talent and

success interest me but moderately. The great class, they who affect

our imagination, the men who could not make their hands meet around

their objects, the rapt, the lost, the fools of ideas,--they suggest

what they cannot execute. They speak to the ages, and are heard from

afar. The Spirit does not love cripples and malformations. If there

ever was a good man, be certain, there was another, and will be more.

And so in relation to that future hour, that spectre clothed with beauty

at our curtain by night, at our table by day,--the apprehension, the

assurance of a coming change. The race of mankind have always offered

at least this implied thanks for the gift of existence,--namely, the

terror of its being taken away; the insatiable curiosity and appetite

for its continuation. The whole revelation that is vouchsafed us, is,

the gentle trust, which, in our experience we find, will cover also with

flowers the slopes of this chasm.

Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious. It is so

well, that it is sure it will be well. It asks no questions of the

Supreme Power. The son of Antiochus asked his father, when he would join

battle? "Dost thou fear," replied the King, "that thou only in all the

army wilt not hear the trumpet?" 'Tis a higher thing to confide, that,

if it is best we should live, we shall live,--'tis higher to have this

conviction, than to have the lease of indefinite centuries and

millenniums and aeons. Higher than the question of our duration is the

question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for

it, and he who would be a great soul in future, must be a great soul

now. It is a doctrine too great to rest on any legend, that is, on any

man's experience but our own. It must be proved, if at all, from our

own activity and designs, which imply an interminable future for their

play.

What is called religion effeminates and demoralizes. Such as you are,

the gods themselves could not help you. Men are too often unfit to

live, from their obvious inequality to their own necessities, or, they

suffer from politics, or bad neighbors, or from sickness, and they would

gladly know that they were to be dismissed from the duties of life. But

the wise instinct asks, 'How will death help them?' These are not

dismissed when they die. You shall not wish for death out of

pusillanimity. The weight of the Universe is pressed down on the

shoulders of each moral agent to hold him to his task. The only path of

escape known in all the worlds of God is performance. You must do your

work, before you shall be released. And as far as it is a question of

fact respecting the government of the Universe, Marcus Antoninus summed

the whole in a word, "It is pleasant to die, if there be gods; and sad

to live, if there be none."

And so I think that the last lesson of life, the choral song which rises

from all elements and all angels, is, a voluntary obedience, a

necessitated freedom. Man is made of the same atoms as the world is, he

shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his

mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully

into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by

structure.

The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present and coming ages,

whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind must

have a faith which is science. "There are two things," said Mahomet,

"which I abhor, the learned in his infidelities, and the fool in his

devotions." Our times are impatient of both, and specially of the last.

Let us have nothing now which is not its own evidence. There is surely

enough for the heart and imagination in the religion itself. Let us not

be pestered with assertions and half-truths, with emotions and snuffle.

There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and

naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical

law, the church of men to come, without shawms, or psaltery, or sackbut;

but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for

symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music,

picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and exigent as this shall

be. It shall send man home to his central solitude, shame these social,

supplicating manners, and make him know that much of the time he must

have himself to his friend. He shall expect no cooeperation, he shall

walk with no companion. The nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the

superpersonal Heart,--he shall repose alone on that. He needs only his

own verdict. No good fame can help, no bad fame can hurt him. The Laws

are his consolers, the good Laws themselves are alive, they know if he

have kept them, they animate him with the leading of great duty, and an

endless horizon. Honor and fortune exist to him who always recognizes

the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of

high causes.