"apprehended as ideas first, and then rigorously followed as laws, are
and must be for the sage only. The mass of mankind have neither force of
intellect enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor force of
character enough to follow them strictly as laws. The mass of mankind
can be carried along a course full of hardships for the natural man, can
be borne over the thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the
tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from
reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and
melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh
greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet
have borne it!... For the ordinary man, this sense of labor and sorrow
constitutes an absolute disqualification; it paralyzes him; under the
weight of it he cannot make way toward the goal at all. The paramount
virtue of religion is that it has lighted up morality; that it has
supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for carrying the sage
along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man along it
at all. Even the religions with most dross in them have had something of
this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled
splendor." The Duke de Chaulnes once said to Dr. Johnson that "every
religion had a certain degree of morality in it." "Ay, my lord,"
answered he, "but the Christian religion alone puts it on its proper
basis." "It is Christianity alone," said Max Mueller, "which, as the
religion of humanity, as the religion of no caste, of no chosen people,
has taught us to respect the history of humanity as a whole, to discover
the traces of a divine wisdom and love in the government of all the
races of mankind, and to recognize, if possible, even in the lowest and
crudest forms of religious belief, not the work of demoniacal agencies,
but something that indicates a divine guidance, something that makes us
perceive, with St. Peter, 'that God is no respecter of persons, but that
in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is
accepted with Him.'" "There is a principle," said John Woolman--"the man
who," it is said, "in all the centuries since the advent of Christ,
lived nearest to the Divine pattern"--"there is a principle," said that
Christian man, "which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in
different places and ages hath had different names; it is, however,
pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms
of religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect
sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become
brethren."
"The turning-point," remarks Frances Power Cobbe, "between the old world
and the new was the beginning of the Christian movement. The action upon
human nature, which started on its new course, was the teaching and
example of Christ. Christ was he who opened the age of endless progress.
The old world grew from without, and was outwardly symmetric. The new
one grows from within, and is not symmetric, nor ever will be; bearing
in its heart the germ of an everlasting, unresting progress. The old
world built its temples, hewed its statues, framed its philosophies, and
wrote its glorious epics and dramas, so that nothing might evermore be
added to them. The new world made its art, its philosophy, its poetry,
all imperfect, yet instinct with a living spirit beyond the old. To the
Parthenon not a stone could be added from the hour of its completion. To
Milan and Cologne altar and chapel, statue and spire, will be added
through the ages. Christ was not merely a moral reformer, inculcating
pure ethics; not merely a religious reformer, clearing away old
theological errors and teaching higher ideas of God. These things He
was; but He might, for all we can tell, have been them both as fully,
and yet have failed to be what He has actually been to our race. He
might have taught the world better ethics and better theology, and yet
have failed to infuse into it that new tide which has ever since coursed
through its arteries and penetrated its minutest veins. What Christ has
really done is beyond the kingdom of the intellect and its theologies;
nay, even beyond the kingdom of the conscience and its recognition of
duty. His work has been in that of the heart. He has transformed the law
into the gospel. He has changed the bondage of the alien for the liberty
of the sons of God. He has glorified virtue into holiness, religion into
piety, and duty into love." His was "a religion," says Jeremy Taylor,
"that taught men to be meek and humble, apt to receive injuries, but
unapt to do any; a religion that gave countenance to the poor and
pitiful, in a time when riches were adored, and ambition and pleasure
had possessed the heart of all mankind; a religion that would change the
face of things and the hearts of men, and break vile habits into
gentleness and counsel." "Christianity has that in it," says Steele, in
the Christian Hero, "which makes men pity, not scorn the wicked; and, by
a beautiful kind of ignorance of themselves, think those wretches
their equals." "Great and multiform," observes Lecky, in his
History of European Morals,--summing up some of the results of
Christianity,--"great and multiform have been the influences of
Christian philanthropy. The high conception that has been formed of the
sanctity of human life, the protection of infancy, the elevation and
final emancipation of the slave classes, the suppression of barbarous
games, the creation of a vast and multifarious organization of charity,
and the education of the imagination by the Christian type, constituted
together a movement of philanthropy which has never been paralleled or
approached in the pagan world."
"If there be any good in thee," says the author of the Imitation,
"believe that there is much more in others, that so thou mayest preserve
humility. It hurteth thee not to submit to all men; but it hurteth thee
most of all to prefer thyself even to one." Sir Henry Wotton being asked
if he thought a Papist could be saved, replied, "You may be saved
without knowing that." "Be assured," said Dean Young, "there can be but
little honesty without thinking as well as possible of others; and there
can be no safety without thinking humbly and distrustfully of
ourselves." "It is easy," said Peterborough, in Imaginary Conversations,
"to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty."
"The character of a wise man," says Confucius, "consists in three
things: to do himself what he tells others to do; to act on no occasion
contrary to justice; and to bear with the weaknesses of those around
him. Treat inferiors as if you might one day be in the hands of a
master." "I recollect," says Saadi, "the verse which the elephant-driver
rehearsed on the banks of the river Nile: 'If you are ignorant of the
state of the ant under your foot, know that it resembles your own
condition under the foot of the elephant.'" The stable of Confucius
being burned down, when he was at court, on his return he said, "Has any
man been hurt?" He did not ask about the horses. Of the death of Sir
Roger de Coverley, his butler (Addison himself) wrote to The Spectator:
"I am afraid he caught his death the last county-sessions, where he
would go to see justice done to a poor widow woman, and her fatherless
children, that had been wronged by a neighboring gentleman; for you
know, sir, my good master was always the poor man's friend." Fenelon had
a habit of bringing into his palace the wretched inhabitants of the
country, whom the war had driven from their homes, and taking care of
them, and feeding them at his own table. Seeing one day that one of
these peasants eat nothing, he asked him the reason of his abstinence.
"Alas! my lord," said the poor man, "in making my escape from my
cottage, I had not time to bring off my cow, which was the support of my
family. The enemy will drive her away, and I shall never find another so
good." Fenelon, availing himself of his privilege of safe-conduct,
immediately set out, accompanied by a servant, and drove the cow back
himself to the peasant. A literary man, whose library was destroyed by
fire, has been deservedly admired for saying, "I should have profited
but little by my books, if they had not taught me how to bear the loss
of them." The remark of Fenelon, who lost his in a similar way, is still
more simple and touching. "I would much rather they were burnt than the
cottage of a poor peasant." Lord Peterborough said of Fenelon, "He was a
delicious creature. I was obliged to get away from him, or he would have
made me pious." The influence of such a character brings to mind another
passage from Saadi. "One day," he says, "as I was in the bath, a friend
of mine put into my hand a piece of scented clay. I took it, and said to
it, 'Art thou of heaven or earth? for I am charmed with thy delightful
scent.' It answered, 'I was a despicable piece of clay; but I was some
time in company of the rose: the sweet quality of my companion was
communicated to me; otherwise I should have remained only what I appear
to be, a bit of earth.'"
"If thou canst not make thyself such an one as thou wouldst," quoting
the Imitation of Christ, "how canst thou expect to have another in all
things to thy liking? We would willingly have others perfect, and yet we
amend not our own faults. We would have others severely corrected, and
will not be corrected ourselves. The large liberty of others displeaseth
us; and yet we will not have our own desires denied us. We will have
others kept under by strict laws; but in no sort will ourselves be
restrained. And thus it appeareth how seldom we weigh our neighbor in
the same balance with ourselves." Recalling the apologue from Phaedrus,
paraphrased by Bulwer:--
"From our necks, when life's journey begins,
Two sacks, Jove, the Father, suspends,
The one holds our own proper sins,
The other the sins of our friends:
"The first, Man immediately throws
Out of sight, out of mind, at his back;
The last is so under his nose,
He sees every grain in the sack."
Addison, in one of the papers of The Spectator, enlarges upon the
thought of Socrates, that if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast
into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole
species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer
the share they are already possessed of before that which would fall to
them by such a division--by imagining a proclamation made by Jupiter,
that every mortal should bring in his griefs and calamities, and throw
them in a heap. There was a large plain appointed for this purpose. He
took his stand in the centre of it, and saw the whole human species
marching one after another, and throwing down their several loads, which
immediately grew up into a prodigious mountain, that seemed to rise
above the clouds. He observed one bringing in a bundle very carefully
concealed under an old embroidered cloak, which, upon his throwing into
the heap, he discovered to be poverty. Another, after a great deal of
puffing, threw down his luggage, which, upon examining, he found to be
his wife. He saw multitudes of old women throw down their wrinkles, and
several young ones strip themselves of their tawny skins. There were
very great heaps of red noses, large lips, and rusty teeth,--in truth,
he was surprised to see the greatest part of the mountain made up of
bodily deformities. Observing one advancing toward the heap with a
larger cargo than ordinary upon his back, he found upon his near
approach that it was only a natural hump, which he disposed of with
great joy of heart among the collection of human miseries. But what most
surprised him of all was that there was not a single vice or folly
thrown in the whole heap; at which he was very much astonished, having
concluded with himself that every one would take this opportunity of
getting rid of his passions, prejudices, and frailties.
"Passions, prejudices, and frailties!" "There is no man so good," says
Montaigne, "who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the
laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life. [Talleyrand, when
Rulhiere said he had been guilty of only one wickedness in his life,
asked, "When will it end?"] We are so far from being good men, according
to the laws of God, that we cannot be so according to our own; human
wisdom never yet arrived at the duty that it had itself prescribed; and
could it arrive there, it would still prescribe itself others beyond it,
to which it would ever aspire and pretend; so great an enemy of
consistency is our human condition." Of prejudice it has been truly
said by Basil Montagu, in a note to one of his publications, that "it
has the singular ability of accommodating itself to all the possible
varieties of the human mind. Some passions and vices are but thinly
scattered among mankind, and find only here and there a fitness of
reception. But prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It
has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room.
There is scarcely a situation, except fire and water, in which a spider
will not live. So let the mind be as naked as the walls of an empty and
forsaken tenement, gloomy as a dungeon, or ornamented with the richest
abilities of thinking; let it be hot, cold, dark or light, lonely or
inhabited, still prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs,
and live, like the spider, where there seems nothing to live on. If the
one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the
other does the same; and as several of our passions are strongly
characterized by the animal world, prejudice may be denominated the
spider of the mind." "We are all frail, but do thou esteem none more
frail than thyself." "Those many that need pity," says Jeremy Taylor,
"and those infinities of people that refuse to pity, are miserable upon
a several charge, but yet they almost make up all mankind."
"Lord, what is man--what the best of men--but man at the best!"
exclaimed the impassioned and pious Whitefield.
"Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Though they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human:
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it:
And just as lamely can ye mark,
How far perhaps they rue it.
"Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
Decidedly can try us,
He knows each chord--its various tone,
Each spring--its various bias:
Then at the balance let's be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."
It is said that when Leonardo da Vinci had finished his celebrated
picture of the Last Supper, he introduced a friend to inspect the work
privately, and give his judgment concerning it. "Exquisite!" exclaimed
his friend; "that wine-cup seems to stand out from the table as solid,
glittering silver." Thereupon the artist took a brush and blotted out
the cup, saying, "I meant that the figure of Christ should first and
mainly attract the observer's eye, and whatever diverts attention from
him must be blotted out." Could we poor mortals just as readily blot out
of our lives whatever diverts attention from the real good that is in
us, how differently would we appear to others.
"Artists," says Hawthorne, "are fond of painting their own portraits;
and in Florence, there is a gallery of hundreds of them, including the
most illustrious, in all of which there are autobiographical
characteristics, so to speak; traits, expressions, loftinesses, and
amenities, which would have been invisible had they not been painted
from within. Yet their reality and truth are none the less."
A good woman, who had bred a large family, and led a long life of
devotion and self-sacrifice--worn out by care, and weary of her
burdens--came at length to what was supposed to be her death-bed. A
clergyman in the neighborhood thought it to be his duty to call upon
her. He asked her in usual language if she had made her peace with her
Maker; to which she replied that she was not aware that there had been
any trouble.
"The most important thing in life," said Pascal, "is the choice of a
profession; and yet this is a thing purely in the disposal of chance."
We, however, take little or no account of the effects of particular
professions or occupations upon the mind and character, holding all
alike responsible for opinions and conduct. It does not occur to us as
possible that even suicide and murder may primarily result from
vocation. Roesch and Esquirol affirm from observation that indigo-dyers
become melancholy; and those who dye scarlet, choleric.
Cottle, the bookseller, wrote with a pencil some lines on the wall of
the room in Bristol, Newgate, where poor Savage died, which were admired
by Coleridge. These are two of them:--
"If some virtues in thy breast there be,
Ask if they sprang from circumstance or thee."
So much, alas, must be known to judge of a human life. Could we only
know that we cannot know enough to judge one another, to say nothing of
the indispensable wisdom that surpasses all knowledge. Happily, God is
Judge.
Knowledge, in the common sense, as commonly acquired, what is it?
Some need much time to know a little; others know at a glance all that
they can. Cumberland said Bubb Doddington was in nothing more remarkable
than in ready perspicuity and discernment of a subject thrown before him
on a sudden. "Take his first thoughts then, and he would charm you; give
him time to ponder and refine, you would perceive the spirit of his
sentiments and the vigor of his genius evaporate by the process; for
though his first view of the question would be a wide one, and clear
withal, when he came to exercise the subtlety of his disquisitional
powers upon it, he would so ingeniously dissect and break it into
fractions, that as an object, when looked upon too intently for a length
of time, grows misty and confused, so would the question under his
discussion when the humor took him to be hypercritical." Coleridge said
Horne Tooke "had that clearness which is founded on shallowness. He
doubted nothing, and therefore gave you all that he himself knew, or
meant, with great completeness." Thucydides said of Themistocles that
"he had the best judgment in actual circumstances, and he formed his
judgment with the least deliberation." Quick or deliberate, shallow or
profound, all are apt to assume to know all, when they may be little
wiser, in truth, than AEsop's two travelers who had visited Arabia, and
were conversing together about the chameleon. "A very singular animal,"
said one, "I never saw one at all like it in my life. It has the head of
a fish, its body is as thin as that of a lizard, its pace is slow, its
color blue." "Stop there," said the other, "you are quite mistaken, the
animal is green; I saw it with my two eyes." "I saw it as well as you,"
cried the first, "and I am certain that it is blue." "I am positive that
it is green." "And I that it is blue." The travelers were getting very
angry with each other, and were about to settle the disputed point by
blows, when happily a third person arrived. "Well, gentlemen, what is
the matter here? Calm yourselves, I pray you." "Will you be the judge of
our quarrel?" "Yes; what is it?" "This person maintains that the
chameleon is green, while I say that it is blue." "My dear sirs, you are
both in the wrong; the animal is neither one nor the other--it is
black." "Black! you must be jesting!" "Not at all, I assure you; I have
one with me in a box, and you shall judge for yourselves." The box was
produced and opened, when, to the surprise of all three, the animal was
as yellow as gold! In one of the Hindoo books we are told that in a
certain country there existed a village of the blind men. These men had
heard that there was an amazing animal called the elephant, but they
knew not how to form an idea of his shape. One day an elephant happened
to pass through the place; the villagers crowded to the spot where this
animal was standing. One of them got hold of his trunk, another seized
his ear, another his tail, another one of his legs, etc. After thus
trying to gratify their curiosity, they returned into the village, and,
sitting down together, they began to give their ideas of what the
elephant was like; the man who had seized his trunk said he thought the
elephant was like the body of the plantain-tree; the man who had felt
his ear said he thought he was like the fan with which the Hindoos clean
the rice; the man who had felt his tail said he thought he must be like
a snake, and the man who had seized his leg thought he must be like a
pillar. An old blind man of some judgment was present, who was greatly
perplexed how to reconcile these jarring notions respecting the form of
the elephant, but he at length said, "You have all been to examine this
animal, it is true, and what you report cannot be false. I suppose,
therefore, that that which was like the plantain-tree must be his trunk;
that which was like a fan must be his ear; that which was like a snake
must be his tail, and that which was like a pillar must be his body."
Once upon a time a pastor of a village church adopted a plan to interest
the members of his flock in the study of the Bible. It was this: "At the
Wednesday evening meeting he would announce the topic to be discussed on
the ensuing week, thus giving a week for preparation. One evening the
subject was St. Paul. After the preliminary devotional exercises, the
pastor called upon one of the deacons to 'speak to the question.' He
immediately arose, and began to describe the personal appearance of the
great apostle to the Gentiles. He said St. Paul was a tall, rather spare
man, with black hair and eyes, dark complexion, bilious temperament,
etc. His picture of Paul was a faithful portrait of himself. He sat
down, and another prominent member arose and said, 'I think the brother
preceding me has read the Scriptures to little purpose if his
description of St. Paul is a sample of his Bible knowledge. St. Paul
was, as I understand it, a rather short, thick-set man, with sandy hair,
gray eyes, florid complexion, and a nervous, sanguine temperament,'
giving, like his predecessor, an accurate picture of himself. He was
followed by another who had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and who was
withal an inveterate stammerer. He said, 'My bro-bro-brethren, I have
never fo-found in my Bi-ble much about the p-per-personal ap-pe-pearance
of St. P-p-paul. But one thing is clearly established, and tha-that is,
St. P-p-paul had an imp-p-pediment in his speech.'"