It was a retreat for men who were tired of the world, or who felt so
unequal to the strife and conflict of life in the world that they
believed peace could be found only in retirement. The house was of the
order of St. Francis. One of the monks took me into his cell, and I
sat down and talked with him. It was a very small room――one door, one
window, bare walls, a small table, two wooden chairs, a few books, a
crucifix, a washstand, and some pieces of crockery; and that was all.
In this room he lived, never to leave it except to go to the chapel,
just across the corridor, and to walk in the cloisters for exercise;
here he expected to die. It seemed very dreary and lonely to me. But
I thought, if this were a certain and sure way of escaping from evil
thoughts, and the only way, men may well submit to the confinement, the
solitude, the monotony, the dreariness of this way of life. But, alas!
it is not so. No close and narrow cell, no iron doors, no bolts and
bars, can shut out our thoughts, for they are a part of ourselves: they
_are_ ourselves; for, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
Some years ago a country lad left his home to seek his fortune in
the city. His mother was dead and his father broken in health and in
fortune. The boy reached the city full of high hopes, promising his
father that he would do his best to succeed in whatever fell to his
lot to do. He was tall, strong and good-looking. A place was soon
found for him, and until he was better able to support himself he
found a home with some friends. He was a boy of good mind but with a
very imperfect education, and he seemed inclined to make up for this
in part by reading during his leisure hours. The situation found for
him was in a large commercial house, where everything was conducted
in the best manner and on the highest principles. Here he made rapid
progress and was soon able to contribute to the support of those he had
left at home in the country. He became interested in serious things,
united with the Sunday-school, and after a while made a profession of
religion. Everything went well with him for several years, until he
fell in with some boys near his own age, who had been brought up under
very different circumstances. Two or three of these were inclined
towards skepticism in religious things, and their reading was quite
unlike that to which this boy had been accustomed. Some fascination
of manner about them attracted the lad to their society, and he grew
less and less fond of his truest and best friends. He became irregular
in his attendance at the Sunday-school, and when remonstrated with
by his teacher and friends had no candid and manly answer for them.
After a while he ceased going to church entirely, spending his time
at his lodgings reading profane and immoral books or in the society
of his new companions. Then he found his way with these friends (so
he called them, but they were really his greatest enemies) to taverns
and even to worse places, reading a corrupt literature and thinking he
was strengthening his mind and broadening his views. A little further
on and his habits grew worse, and became the subject of observation
and remark. His early friends interposed, talked kindly with him and
received his promise to turn away from his evil associates (who had
well-nigh ruined him) and to lead a better life. He promised well,
and for a time things with him were better. But after a while he fell
away again into his old ways and with his old tempters, and before his
friends were aware of it he disappeared and went abroad. Then letters
were received from him. He was without means; he found it hard to get
employment; he had no references, and the people among whom he found
himself were distrustful of strangers.
One of his friends to whom he wrote for a letter of recommendation
replied something like this:
“It is impossible for me to give you a letter of recommendation except
with qualification. If you are seeking employment it is your duty to
make a candid statement of your condition. Make a clean breast of it.
Keep nothing back. Say that you had a good situation; that you were
growing with the growth of your employers; that your salary had been
advanced twice within the year; that one of the partners was your
friend; that he had stood by you in your earlier youth; that he had
extricated you from embarrassment and would have helped you again when
needed, and that in an evil hour you forgot this, and your duty to him
and to the house which sustained you; that you left your place without
your father’s knowledge and well-nigh or quite broke his heart, and
that all this grew out of your love of bad associates and your love of
drink, and that while under this infatuation you went astray with bad
women; and that in very despair of your ability to save yourself, and
ashamed to meet your employers, you sought other scenes in the hope
that in a new field and with new associates you could reform.
“If you say this or something like this to a Christian man, little as
you affect to think of Christianity, his heart will open to you and you
can then look him frankly in the face, and have no concealments from
him. Any other course than this will only prolong your agony, and in
the end plunge you in deeper shame and disgrace. If you will take this
advice, you may yet make a man of yourself, and no one will be more
rejoiced than myself or more ready to help you. Read the parable of
the prodigal son every day; don’t think so much of your fancied mental
ability; get down off your stilts and be a man, a humble, penitent man,
and make your father’s last days cheerful, instead of blasting his life.
“You see that I am in earnest and that I feel a deep interest in you,
else I would have thrown your letter to me into the fire.”
I believe that this young man’s fall was due entirely to the influence
of his foolish, bad companions. And I know that this sad history is the
record of many others; in fact, that the same experience awaits all
who think it a light matter what company they keep, and who drift on
the current with no purpose except to find pleasure, without regard to
their duty to God. When I see, as I so often do, young men standing at
the corners of the streets, or lounging against lamp-posts, and catch a
word as I pass, very often profane or indecent, I know very well that
a work of ruin is going on there, which, if unchecked, will certainly
lead to destruction. And I wonder whether these boys and young men
have parents or sisters, who love them and who yet allow them to pass
unwarned down the road that leads to death.
But there are other companions, foolish, bad companions, besides those
that appear to us in bodily form. They confront us in the printed page.
You read a book or a pamphlet or paper which is full of dialogue. Such
books are often more attractive than a plain narrative with little
conversation. You enter fully, even if unconsciously, into the spirit
of the story. The characters are real to you. You seem to see the forms
before you; you make a picture of each in your mind, so that if you
were an artist you could paint the portrait of each one. Sometimes the
dialogue is full of profanity, and though you make no sound as you
read, you are really pronouncing each word in your mind. And every time
you say a bad word, in your mind, you defile your heart. You are in
effect listening to bad words not spoken by other people merely, but
spoken by yourself, and before you are aware of it you will be in the
habit of thinking oaths when you are afraid to speak them out. It is
even worse, if possible, when the language is obscene. Now do you ever
think that when you are reading such wretched stuff you are in effect
associating with the characters whose talk you are listening to, and
without rebuke? They are thieves, pirates, burglars, dissolute, the
very worst of society, even murderers. You may not have the courage to
rebuke those who are defiling the very air with their foul talk; you
may be too cowardly even to turn away from such company lest they sneer
at you; but what do you say of a boy who deliberately, and after being
warned, reads by stealth such stuff as I have described? Is there any
one here who would be guilty of such conduct?
These evils of which I am speaking, and I do so most reluctantly, for
these are not pleasant subjects――are not mere theories. They are sad
realities. It was my ill fortune in my boyhood to know some boys who
were essentially corrupt. Their minds were cages of unclean birds.
They were inexpressibly vile. And it is this fear of the evil that
one sinner may do among young boys that leads me to say what I do on
this most painful subject. Oh, boys, if I can persuade you to turn
away from foolish company, from bad associates, I shall feel that I am
doing indeed a blessed work. For what is the object, the purpose of
all this that is said to you? It is to make men of you and to give
you grace and strength to assert your manhood. It is to build you up
on the foundation of a substantial education, and so prepare you for
the life that is before you here and for that life which is beyond.
But the education of text-books illustrated by the best instructors is
not enough; it is not all you need for the great work of your lives.
You must be ready when you are equipped not only to take care of
yourselves, but to help those who may be dependent upon you, for you
are not to live for yourselves. And you cannot be fully equipped unless
you have the blessing of Almighty God on your work and on your life.
I want you to be successful men, and no man can be a successful man,
in the highest and best sense, unless he is a religious man. How can
one expect to make his way in life as he ought, without the blessing of
God? And how can one expect the blessing of God who does not ask God
for his blessing? Prayers in the church are not enough; the reading
of the Scriptures in the church is not enough; you must read the
Scriptures for yourselves; you must pray for yourselves and each one
for himself, as well as for others.
[Illustration: _James A. Garfield._]
ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.
September 25, 1881.
I wish to lead your thoughts to one of the strangest things――one of
the most difficult things to understand, which has ever occurred. On
the second day of July last the President of the United States, when
about to step into a railway train which was to carry him North, where
he was to attend a college commencement, at the college where he was
graduated, was shot down by an assassin.
I say it is one of the strangest things, because the President did not
know the assassin, and had never injured him nor any of his friends.
There was absolutely no motive for the hideous deed.
I say it is most difficult to understand, because we believe that
Divine Providence overrules all events, holds all power, and we wonder
why He permitted the wretch to do so deplorable a deed.
President Garfield was no ordinary man. He was emphatically a man of
the people. He was born in a log-cabin which his father had built with
his own hands. It was a very small house, twenty feet by thirty. When
James was two years old, his father died, late in the autumn, and this
boy with three other children were all dependent upon their mother for
a support. How the lone widow passed that winter we do not know; but
when the spring came there was a debt to be paid, and part of the farm
had to go to pay it. About thirty acres of the clearing were left, and
this little farm was worked by the mother and her oldest son. Only
those who have lived on a farm in the country know how hard the work
is. When James was five years old he was sent to school, a mile and a
half away, and as this was a very long walk for so young a boy, his
sister often carried the little boy on her back.
After a while the boy tried to learn the carpenter’s trade, and in
this effort he spent two years or so, going to school at intervals and
studying at spare hours at home. So he mastered grammar, arithmetic and
geography. After that he became a sort of general help and book-keeper
for a manufacturer in the neighborhood at $14 per month “and found,”
and this was to him a very great advance. But not being well treated
there, he soon left and took to chopping wood――at one time cutting
about twenty-five cords for some $7. Then having read some tales of
the sea, sailors’ stories, such as you have often read, he wanted to
be a sailor; but when he applied for a place on the great lake, he
looked so like a landsman from the country that no captain would engage
him. So he went to the canal, and found employment in leading or
driving horses or mules on the tow-path. But he was soon promoted to
be a deck-hand and steersman, and often falling into the water (once
almost being drowned) and meeting some other mishaps, he concluded that
“following the water” was not his forte, and he abandoned it. By this
time he had saved some money, and his brother Thomas lent him some
more, and with another young man and a cousin he went to a neighboring
town to the academy. These young fellows rented a room, borrowed some
simple cooking utensils, a table and some chairs, made beds and filled
them with straw, and set up house-keeping, and went to the academy.
Young Garfield spent three years at this academy, doing odd jobs of
carpenter work when he could, and so eking out a living. Then he
went to an eclectic institute, and paid his way in part by doing
the janitor’s work of sweeping the floor and making the fires. Here
he prepared himself to enter the junior class in a higher college,
and, after some delay, he entered that class in Williams College,
Massachusetts.
While pursuing his college course at Williams he filled his vacations
by teaching in district schools in the neighborhood until his
graduation, in 1856, at twenty-five years of age――quite advanced, you
see, in years for a college graduate.
Then he went back as a teacher to his eclectic institute, became a
professor of Greek and Latin, and then at twenty-eight years of age
became a Senator in the Ohio Legislature. When the war broke out
in 1861, while still a member of the State Senate, the Government
commissioned him as colonel of a regiment, and he did good service in
the State of Kentucky in driving out the rebels. In a few months he was
promoted to be brigadier-general. So he went on distinguishing himself
wherever he was placed, and, having been assigned for duty to the
Army of the Cumberland, fighting his last battle at Chickamauga, his
gallantry was so conspicuous and so successful that within a fortnight
he was made a major-general.
While in the army he was elected representative to Congress, and on
December 5, 1863, he took his seat in the House, the youngest member of
Congress.
Some time after this, the war still going on, he wished to rejoin the
army, but President Lincoln would not permit it, on the ground that his
military knowledge would be invaluable to the government. After serving
seventeen years in the House of Representatives, at times Chairman of
most important committees, he was elected to the Senate, but before he
took his seat he was nominated for the Presidency, and last November
was elected by a large majority to that high office.
On the 4th of March last he was inaugurated, and four months
afterwards (July 2d) he fell by the hand of an assassin.
You know how during this long, dry, hot summer he has been lying in
Washington until the last two weeks, hanging between life and death;
and you know how tenderly and lovingly he has been nursed; how gently
he was removed to the sea, in the hope that a change of air and scene
would do what the best surgical and medical skill had failed to do;
and you know how last Monday night, while you were sleeping soundly in
your beds, the bells of our city and all over the land were tolling the
tidings of his death.
He was a good man――in many respects as well qualified to fill the
Presidential chair as any man who has ever sat in it. So I say it is
most difficult to understand why he was taken away.
Like all of you he lost his father by death at an early age; as is the
case with all of you his mother was poor. He struggled hard for an
education, and he acquired it, who knows at what a cost! He was never
satisfied with present attainments; he was always on the advance. At
an early age he gave himself to the Lord, joining the church; and
as that branch of the church does not believe in the necessity of
ordination for the ministry he preached the Gospel as a layman, as the
great Faraday preached in London and as Christian laymen preach the
same truths to you, and it was my purpose, formed when he was elected
in November last, to persuade him, some time when he might be passing
through Philadelphia, to come to this chapel and address you boys.
This, alas, now can never be.
President Garfield loved his mother. No more touching incident was ever
witnessed than that which hundreds of people saw on inauguration day,
when, after taking the oath of his high office, he turned immediately
to his dear old mother and kissed her.
Our great sorrow is not felt by us alone. All nations mourn with us.
The Queen of Great Britain with her own hand sends messages of the
sweetest, the most touching sympathy. She, too, is a widow and her
children are fatherless. She sends flowers for Mrs. Garfield and puts
her court in mourning, a compliment never extended before except in the
case of death in a royal family. Other European and Asiatic and African
governments send their sympathy――they all feel it――they all deplore
it. Emblems of mourning are displayed in every street in our city, and
every heart is sad. The people mourn.
Boys, you may not be Presidents――probably not one here will ever be at
the head of this nation; nor is this of any moment; but remember it
was not only as President of the United States that General Garfield
was wise and good――it was in every place where he was put; whether
in school, in college, in teaching, in the army, in Congress, in the
President’s chair, in his family and on his sick and dying bed,
languishing and suffering, wasting and burning with fever, exhausted by
wounds cruel and undeserved, he was always the same brave, true, real
man.
Some of you know with what profound and tender interest people gathered
in places of prayer that Tuesday morning to ask that the journey from
Washington to Long Branch might be safe and prosperous, and how the
hope was expressed, almost to assurance, that the Saviour would meet
his disciple by the sea. The prayer was granted. The Lord did meet his
disciple, not, as was so much desired, with gifts of healing; nothing
short of a miracle could do that, but by a more complete preparation
of the people for the final issue. It came at last. And while many of
us were sleeping quietly, telegraphic messages were flashing the sad
intelligence everywhere that, at last, he was at rest.
Now that we know that he is taken away, we stand in awe and amazement.
We cannot yet understand it.
Shall we gather a few lessons from his life? Some of the most apparent
may be mentioned very briefly.
The simplicity of his character is most interesting. Conscious as he
must have been of the possession of no ordinary mental force, he was
never obtrusive nor self-assertive. What seemed to be his duty he did,
with purpose and completeness. And his associates often placed him in
positions of high trust and responsibility.
He was an accomplished scholar. Even while engrossed in Congressional
duties, to a degree which left him little or no time for recreation,
he did not fail to keep himself fresh in classic literature. It is
said that a friend returning from Europe, and desiring to bring him
some little present, could think of nothing more acceptable than a few
volumes of the Latin poets.
When his life comes to be written by impartial hands, it will be
found that along with his great simplicity and his high culture there
will be most prominent his devotion to principle. This was his great
characteristic. I have no time, and this is not the place, to speak of
his adherence, under strong adverse influences, to his sound views on
the great currency question which has occupied so much the attention of
Congress.
In a not very remote sense his death is to be attributed to his
devotion to principle. That great and most discreditable contest at
Albany might have been settled weeks before it was, although in a very
different manner, if the President could have yielded his convictions.
He did not yield, and he was slain.
The funeral services in the capitol are over and the men whom Mrs.
Garfield chose as the bearers of her husband’s coffin were not members
of the cabinet, nor senators, nor judges of the Supreme Court, any of
whom would have been honored by such a service, but they were plain
men, of names unknown to us, members of his own little church.
They are gone. They have taken his worn and wasted and mutilated form,
all that remains in this world of the strong, pure life that was not
yet fifty years old, to the beautiful city by the lake, and there
within sight and almost within sound of the waves of the great inland
sea, they will to-morrow lay him to rest until the morning of the
resurrection.
* * * * *
What use shall we make of this deplorable calamity? Shall our faith
in the prevalence of prayer be weakened? God forbid that we should so
distort his teachings. “Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest
against God?”
Our prayers are answered, not as we wished, and almost insisted, but
in softening the hearts of the people and drawing them as they have
never before been drawn towards the Great Ruler of the universe, and
in uniting the people, and also in promoting a better feeling between
the different sections of our country than has been known for half a
century. And if, in addition to this, the people would only learn to
abate that passion for office which has been so fatal to peace, and
would be content to allow fitness for office to be the only rule of
appointment, then a true civil service would be a heritage for the
securing of which even the sacrifice of a President would seem not too
great a price.
“And the archers shot at King Josiah, and the king said to his
servants, Have me away for I am sore wounded. His servants
therefore took him out of that chariot, and put him in the
second chariot that he had, and they brought him to Jerusalem,
and he died and was buried. And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned
for Josiah.” 2 Chron. xxxv. 23, 24.
THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED.
March 25, 1888.
A distinguished lawyer of our city delivered an address before one of
the societies in the venerable University of Harvard on this subject:
“The Case of the Educated Unemployed.” With an intimate knowledge
of his subject, and with rare felicity of thought and expression,
he set before his audience, most of whom were either in the learned
professions or preparing to enter them, the overcrowded condition of
those professions, especially that of the law, a preparation for which
is supposed to imply a more or less thorough academic or collegiate
education.
I have a different task; for I would show the importance of education
to the workers with the hand, whether in the mills, the shops, or
among the various trades and occupations. By education I do not mean
that of the colleges, or of the common schools merely, but also that
which is acquired sometimes without the advantage of any schools. And
I particularly desire to show that an uneducated worker, whatever be
his work, is at an immense disadvantage with one who is engaged in the
same kind of work, and who is more or less educated.
A mechanic may be well trained; may have more than his share of brains;
may be highly successful in his business; indeed, may have acquired
a large property, and have very high credit, and may hardly know how
to write his name. A man may have scores or hundreds of men in his
employment, and be conducting business on a very large scale, indeed,
and yet be so ignorant of accounts that he is entirely at the mercy of
his book-keeper, and may be so defrauded as to be on the very brink
of ruin and not know it until it is almost too late. In the course
of a long business life more than one such case has come under my
observation. A man may be partially educated, able to cast up accounts,
able to keep books by double entry (and no other kind of book-keeping
is worthy of the name), and yet not be able to write a simple agreement
in good English, nor understand clearly the meaning of such a paper
when written by another.
Very many of the business failures that occur are due to the fact that
the person or firm did not know how to keep accounts. This is not
confined to people of small business. How often after a failure are we
told “that the man was very much surprised at his condition; he thought
he was all right; he could not account for his failure, and that in
a short time he would have his books in such a shape that he would
be able to make a statement to his creditors and ask their advice.
It would require ten days or so, however, before he could tell how
he stood.” Why, if the man had been an educated business man, and an
honest man, he would have known in twenty-four hours how he stood.