subject, whether we are properly responsible for an influence which
we exert insensibly; we are not, I reply, except so far as this
influence flows directly from our character and conduct. And this
it does, even much more uniformly than our active influence. In
the latter we may fail of our end by a want of wisdom or skill, in
which case we are still as meritorious, in God's sight, as if we
succeeded. So, again, we may really succeed, and do great good by
our active endeavors, from motives altogether base and hypocritical,
in which case we are as evil, in God's sight, as if we had failed.
But the influences we exert unconsciously will almost never disagree
with our real character. They are honest influences, following our
character, as the shadow follows the sun. And, therefore, we are
much more certainly responsible for them, and their effects on the
world. They go streaming from us in all directions, tho in channels
that we do not see, poisoning or healing around the roots of
society, and among the hidden wells of character. If good ourselves,
they are good; if bad, they are bad. And, since they reflect so
exactly our character, it is impossible to doubt our responsibility
for their effects on the world. We must answer not only for what
we do with a purpose, but for the influence we exert insensibly.
To give you any just impressions of the breadth and seriousness of
such a reckoning I know to be impossible. No mind can trace it. But
it will be something gained if I am able to awaken only a suspicion
of the vast extent and power of those influences, which are ever
flowing out unbidden upon society, from your life and character.
In the prosecution of my design, let me ask of you, first of all, to
expel the common prejudice that there can be nothing of consequence
in unconscious influences, because they make no report, and fall on
the world unobserved. Histories and biographies make little account
of the power men exert insensibly over each other. They tell how
men have led armies, established empires, enacted laws, gained
causes, sung, reasoned, and taught--always occupied in setting forth
what they do with a purpose. But what they do without purpose, the
streams of influence that flow out from their persons unbidden on
the world, they can not trace or compute, and seldom even mention.
So also the public laws make men responsible only for what they
do with a positive purpose, and take no account of the mischiefs
or benefits that are communicated by their noxious or healthful
example. The same is true in the discipline of families, churches,
and schools; they make no account of the things we do, except we
will them. What we do insensibly passes for nothing, because no
human government can trace such influences with sufficient certainty
to make their authors responsible.
But you must not conclude that influences of this kind are
insignificant, because they are unnoticed and noiseless. How is it
in the natural world? Behind the mere show, the outward noise and
stir of the world, nature always conceals her hand of control, and
the laws by which she rules. Who ever saw with the eye, for example,
or heard with the ear, the exertions of that tremendous astronomic
force, which every moment holds the compact of the physical universe
together? The lightning is, in fact, but a mere firefly spark in
comparison; but, because it glares on the clouds, and thunders so
terribly in the ear, and rives the tree or the rock where it falls,
many will be ready to think that it is a vastly more potent agent
than gravity.
The Bible calls the good man's life a light, and it is the nature
of light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the
world unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it
would say, not so much because he will, as because he is a luminous
object. Not that the active influence of Christians is made of no
account in the figure, but only that this symbol of light has its
propriety in the fact that their unconscious influence is the chief
influence, and has the precedence in its power over the world. And
yet, there are many who will be ready to think that light is a very
tame and feeble instrument, because it is noiseless. An earthquake,
for example, is to them a much more vigorous and effective agency.
Hear how it comes thundering through solid foundations of nature.
It rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of man--cities,
monuments, and temples--are in a moment leveled to the ground, or
swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire. Little do they think
that the light of every morning, the soft, and genial, and silent
light, is an agent many times more powerful. But let the light of
the morning cease and return no more, let the hour of morning come,
and bring with it no dawn; the outcries of a horror-stricken world
fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness audible. The beasts
go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. The vegetable growths
turn pale and die. A chill creeps on, and frosty winds begin to howl
across the freezing earth. Colder, and yet colder, is the night.
The vital blood, at length, of all creatures, stops congealed.
Down goes the frost toward the earth's center. The heart of the sea
is frozen; nay, the earthquakes are themselves frozen in, under
their fiery caverns. The very globe itself, too, and all the fellow
planets that have lost their sun, are become mere balls of ice,
swinging silent in the darkness. Such is the light, which revisits
us in the silence of the morning. It makes no shock or scar. It
would not wake an infant in his cradle. And yet it perpetually new
creates the world, rescuing it each morning, as a prey, from night
and chaos. So the Christian is a light, even "the light of the
world," and we must not think that, because he shines insensibly or
silently, as a mere luminous object, he is therefore powerless. The
greatest powers are ever those which lie back of the little stirs
and commotion of nature; and I verily believe that the insensible
influences of good men are much more potent than what I have called
their voluntary, or active, as the great silent powers of nature are
of greater consequence than her little disturbances and tumults. The
law of human influences is deeper than many suspect, and they lose
sight of it altogether. The outward endeavors made by good men or
bad to sway others, they call their influence; whereas, it is, in
fact, but a fraction, and, in most cases, but a very small fraction,
of the good or evil that flows out of their lives. Nay, I will even
go further. How many persons do you meet, the insensible influence
of whose manners and character is so decided as often to thwart
their voluntary influence; so that, whatever they attempt to do,
in the way of controlling others, they are sure to carry the exact
opposite of what they intend! And it will generally be found that,
where men undertake by argument or persuasion to exert a power, in
the face of qualities that make them odious or detestable, or only
not entitled to respect, their insensible influence will be too
strong for them. The total effect of the life is then of a kind
directly opposite to the voluntary endeavor, which, of course, does
not add so much as a fraction to it.
I call your attention, next, to the twofold powers of effect
and expression by which man connects with his fellow man. If we
distinguish man as a creature of language, and thus qualified to
communicate himself to others, there are in him two sets or kinds
of language, one which is voluntary in the use, and one that
is involuntary; that of speech in the literal sense, and that
expression of the eye, the face, the look, the gait, the motion, the
tone of cadence, which is sometimes called the natural language of
the sentiments. This natural language, too, is greatly enlarged by
the conduct of life, that which, in business and society, reveals
the principles and spirit of men. Speech, or voluntary language, is
a door to the soul, that we may open or shut at will; the other is
a door that stands open evermore, and reveals to others constantly,
and often very clearly, the tempers, tastes, and motives of their
hearts. Within, as we may represent, is character, charging the
common reservoir of influence, and through these twofold gates
of the soul pouring itself out on the world. Out of one it flows
at choice, and whensoever we purpose to do good or evil to men.
Out of the other it flows each moment, as light from the sun, and
propagates itself in all beholders.
Then if we go to others, that is, to the subjects of influence, we
find every man endowed with two inlets of impression; the ear and
the understanding for the reception of speech, and the sympathetic
powers, the sensibilities or affections, for tinder to those sparks
of emotion revealed by looks, tones, manners and general conduct.
And these sympathetic powers, tho not immediately rational, are yet
inlets, open on all sides, to the understanding and character. They
have a certain wonderful capacity to receive impressions, and catch
the meaning of signs, and propagate in us whatsoever falls into
their passive molds from others. The impressions they receive do not
come through verbal propositions, and are never received into verbal
propositions, it may be, in the mind, and therefore many think
nothing of them. But precisely on this account are they the more
powerful, because it is as if one heart were thus going directly
into another, and carrying in its feelings with it. Beholding, as in
a glass, the feelings of our neighbor, we are changed into the same
image, by the assimilating power of sensibility and fellow-feeling.
Many have gone so far, and not without show, at least, of reason, as
to maintain that the look or expression, and even the very features
of children, are often changed by exclusive intercourse with nurses
and attendants. Furthermore, if we carefully consider, we shall
find it scarcely possible to doubt, that simply to look on bad and
malignant faces, or those whose expressions have become infected by
vice, to be with them and become familiarized to them, is enough
permanently to affect the character of persons of mature age. I do
not say that it must of necessity subvert their character, for the
evil looked upon may never be loved or welcomed in practise; but it
is something to have these bad images in the soul, giving out their
expressions there, and diffusing their odor among the thoughts, as
long as we live. How dangerous a thing is it, for example, for a
man to become accustomed to sights of cruelty? What man, valuing
the honor of his soul, would not shrink from yielding himself to
such an influence? No more is it a thing of indifference to become
accustomed to look on the manners, and receive the bad expression of
any kind of sin.
The door of involuntary communication, I have said, is always open.
Of course we are communicating ourselves in this way to others at
every moment of our intercourse or presence with them. But how
very seldom, in comparison, do we undertake by means of speech to
influence others! Even the best Christian, one who most improves
his opportunities to do good, attempts but seldom to sway another
by voluntary influence, whereas he is all the while shining as a
luminous object unawares, and communicating of his heart to the
world.
But there is yet another view of this double line of communication
which man has with his fellow-men, which is more general, and
displays the import of the truth yet more convincingly. It is
by one of these modes of communication that we are constituted
members of voluntary society, and by the other, parts of a general
mass, or members of involuntary society. You are all, in a certain
view, individuals, and separate as persons from each other; you
are also, in a certain other view, parts of a common body, as
truly as the parts of a stone. Thus if you ask how it is that you
and all men came without your consent to exist in society, to be
within its power, to be under its laws, the answer is, that while
you are a man, you are also a fractional element of a larger and
more comprehensive being, called society--be it the family, the
church, the state. In a certain department of your nature, it is
open; its sympathies and feelings are open. On this open side
you will adhere together, as parts of a larger nature, in which
there is a common circulation of want, impulse, and law. Being
thus made common to each other voluntarily, you become one mass,
one consolidated social body, animated by one life. And observe
how far this involuntary communication and sympathy between the
members of a state or a family is sovereign over their character. It
always results in what we call the national or family spirit; for
there is a spirit peculiar to every state and family in the world.
Sometimes, too, this national or family spirit takes a religious or
an irreligious character, and appears almost to absorb the religious
self-government of individuals. What was the national spirit of
France, for example, at a certain time, but a spirit of infidelity?
What is the religious spirit of Spain at this moment, but a spirit
of bigotry, quite as wide of Christianity and destructive of
character as the spirit of falsehood? What is the family spirit in
many a house, but the spirit of gain, or pleasure, or appetite,
in which everything that is warm, dignified, genial, and good in
religion, is visibly absent? Sometimes you will almost fancy that
you see the shapes of money in the eyes of children. So it is that
we are led on by nations, as it were, to good or bad immortality.
Far down in the secret foundations of life and society there lie
concealed great laws and channels of influence, which make the race
common to each other in all the main departments or divisions of
the social mass, laws which often escape our notice altogether, but
which are to society as gravity to the general system of God's works.
But these are general considerations, and more fit, perhaps, to
give you a rational conception of the modes of influence and their
relative power, than to verify that conception, or establish its
truth. I now proceed to add, therefore, some miscellaneous proofs of
a more particular nature.
And I mention, first of all, the instinct of imitation in children.
We begin our mortal experience, not with acts grounded in judgment
or reason, or with ideas received through language, but by simple
imitation, and, under the guidance of this, we lay our foundations.
The child looks and listens, and whatsoever tone of feeling or
manner of conduct is displayed around him, sinks into his plastic,
passive soul, and becomes a mold of his being ever after. The very
handling of the nursery is significant, and the petulance, the
passion, the gentleness, the tranquillity indicated by it, are all
reproduced in the child. His soul is a purely receptive nature,
and that for a considerable period, without choice or selection.
A little further on he begins voluntarily to copy everything he
sees. Voice, manner, gait, everything which the eye sees, the mimic
instinct delights to act over. And thus we have a whole generation
of future men, receiving from us their beginnings, and the deepest
impulses of their life and immortality. They watch us every moment,
in the family, before the hearth, and at the table; and when we are
meaning them no good or evil, when we are conscious of exerting no
influence over them, they are drawing from us impressions and molds
of habit, which, if wrong, no heavenly discipline can wholly remove;
or, if right, no bad associations utterly dissipate. Now it may be
doubted, I think, whether, in all the active influence of our lives,
we do as much to shape the destiny of our fellow-men as we do in
this single article of unconscious influence over children.
Still further on, respect for others takes the place of imitation.
We naturally desire the approbation or good opinion of others. You
see the strength of this feeling in the article of fashion. How few
persons have the nerve to resist a fashion! We have fashions, too,
in literature, and in worship, and in moral and religious doctrine,
almost equally powerful. How many will violate the best rules of
society, because it is the practise of the circle! How many reject
Christ because of friends or acquaintance, who have no suspicion of
the influence they exert, and will not have, till the last days
show them what they have done! Every good man has thus a power in
his person, more mighty than his words and arguments, and which
others feel when he little suspects it. Every bad man, too, has a
fund of poison in his character, which is tainting those around him,
when it is not in his thoughts to do them injury. He is read and
understood. His sensual tastes and habits, his unbelieving spirit,
his suppressed leer at religions, have all a power, and take hold of
the heart of others, whether he will have it so or not.
Again, how well understood is it that the most active feelings and
impulses of mankind are contagious. How quick enthusiasm of any sort
is to kindle, and how rapidly it catches from one to another, till a
nation blazes in the flame! In the case of the Crusades you have an
example where the personal enthusiasm of one man put all the states
of Europe in motion. Fanaticism is almost equally contagious. Fear
and superstition always infect the mind of the circle in which they
are manifested. The spirit of war generally becomes an epidemic of
madness, when once it has got possession of a few minds. The spirit
of party is propagated in a similar manner. How any slight operation
in the market may spread, like a fire, if successful, till trade
runs wild in a general infatuation, is well known. Now, in all these
examples, the effect is produced, not by active endeavor to carry
influence, but mostly by that insensible propagation which follows,
when a flame of any kind is once more kindled.
It is also true, you may ask, that the religious spirit propagates
itself or tends to propagate itself in the same way? I see no
reason to question that it does. Nor does anything in the doctrine
of spiritual influences, when rightly understood, forbid the
supposition. For spiritual influences are never separated from the
laws of thought in the individual, and the laws of feeling and
influence in society. If, too, every disciple is to be an "epistle
known and read of all men," what shall we expect, but that all men
will be somehow affected by the reading? Or if he is to be a light
in the world, what shall we look for, but that others, seeing his
good works, shall glorify God on his account? How often is it seen,
too, as a fact of observation, that one or a few good men kindle at
length a holy fire in the community in which they live, and become
the leaven of general reformation! Such men give a more vivid proof
in their persons of the reality of religious faith than any words or
arguments could yield. They are active; they endeavor, of course,
to exert a good voluntary influence; but still their chief power
lies in their holiness and the sense they produce in others of their
close relation to God.
It now remains to exhibit the very important fact, that where the
direct or active influence of men is supposed to be great, even
this is due, in a principal degree, to that insensible influence
by which their arguments, reproofs, and persuasions are secretly
invigorating. It is not mere words which turn men; it is the heart
mounting, uncalled, into the expression of the features; it is the
eye illuminated by reason, the look beaming with goodness; it is
the tone of the voice, that instrument of the soul, which changes
quality with such amazing facility, and gives out in the soft,
the tender, the tremulous, the firm, every shade of emotion and
character. And so much is there in this, that the moral stature and
character of the man that speaks are likely to be well represented
in his manner. If he is a stranger, his way will inspire confidence
and attract good will. His virtues will be seen, as it were,
gathering round him to minister words and forms of thought, and
their voices will be heard in the fall of his cadences. And the
same is true of bad men, or men who have nothing in their character
corresponding to what they attempt to do. If without heart or
interest you attempt to move another, the involuntary man tells what
you are doing in a hundred ways at once. A hypocrite, endeavoring to
exert a good influence, only tries to convey by words what the lying
look, and the faithless affectation, or dry exaggeration of his
manner perpetually resists. We have it for a fashion to attribute
great or even prodigious results to the voluntary efforts and labors
of men. Whatever they effect is commonly referred to nothing but
the immediate power of what they do. Let us take an example, like
that of Paul, and analyze it. Paul was a man of great fervor and
enthusiasm. He combined, withal, more of what is lofty and morally
commanding in his character, than most of the very distinguished men
of the world. Having this for his natural character, and his natural
character exalted and made luminous by Christian faith, and the
manifest indwelling of God, he had of course an almost superhuman
sway over others. Doubtless he was intelligent, strong in argument,
eloquent, active, to the utmost of his powers, but still he moved
the world more by what he was than by what he did. The grandeur and
spiritual splendor of his character were ever adding to his active
efforts an element of silent power, which was the real and chief
cause of their efficacy. He convinced, subdued, inspired, and led,
because of the half-divine authority which appeared in his conduct,
and his glowing spirit. He fought the good fight, because he kept
the faith, and filled his powerful nature with influences drawn from
higher worlds.
And here I must conduct you to a yet higher example, even that
of the Son of God, the light of the world. Men dislike to be
swayed by direct, voluntary influence. They are jealous of such
control, and are therefore best approached by conduct and feeling,
and the authority of simple worth, which seem to make no purposed
onset. If goodness appears, they welcome its celestial smile; if
heaven descends to encircle them, they yield to its sweetness; if
truth appears in the life, they honor it with a secret homage; if
personal majesty and glory appear, they bow with reverence, and
acknowledge with shame their own vileness. Now it is on this side
of human nature that Christ visits us, preparing just that kind
of influence which the spirit of truth may wield with the most
persuasive and subduing effect. It is the grandeur of His character
which constitutes the chief power of His ministry, not His miracles
or teachings apart from His character. Miracles were useful, at
the time, to arrest attention, and His doctrine is useful at all
times as the highest revelation of truth possible in speech; but
the greatest truth of the gospel, notwithstanding, is Christ
Himself--a human body becomes the organ of the divine nature, and
reveals, under the conditions of an earthly life, the glory of
God! The Scripture writers have much to say, in this connection,
of the image of God; and an image, you know, is that which simply
represents, not that which acts, or reasons, or persuades. Now it
is this image of God which makes the center, the sun itself, of the
gospel. The journeyings, teachings, miracles, and sufferings of
Christ, all had their use in bringing out this image, or what is the
same, in making conspicuous the character and feelings of God, both
toward sinners and toward sin. And here is the power of Christ--it
is that God's beauty, love, truth, and justice shines through Him.
It is the influence which flows unconsciously and spontaneously
out of Christ, as the friend of man, the light of the world, the
glory of the Father, made visible. And some have gone so far as to
conjecture that God made the human person, originally, with a view
to its becoming the organ or vehicle by which He might reveal His
communicable attributes to other worlds. Christ, they believe, came
to inhabit this organ, that He might execute a purpose so sublime.
The human person is constituted, they say, to be a mirror of God;
and God, being imaged in that mirror, as in Christ, is held up to
the view of this and other worlds. It certainly is to the view of
this; and if the Divine nature can use the organ so effectively to
express itself unto us, if it can bring itself, through the looks,
tones, motions, and conduct of a human person, more close to our
sympathies than by any other means, how can we think that an organ
so communicative, inhabited by us, is not always breathing our
spirit and transferring our image insensibly to others?
I have protracted the argument on this subject beyond what I could
have wished, but I can not dismiss it without suggesting a few
thoughts necessary to its complete practical effect.