city which had heretofore been a dead letter. He discovered streets
where the wildest imagination had not supposed streets to be possible.
Prominent citizens were arrested for obstructing mythical sidewalks. He
was encouraged to stretch his prerogatives to the utmost, for every one
was curious to see how far they would go. For six months he ruled by
right of eminent domain. Leading lawyers gave it as their opinion that
all rights not expressly reserved by the Federal and State governments
were vested in the Grand Old Man. The Methodist minister, who was
inclined to sensationalism, preached a sermon from the text in Nehemiah
vi. 6: “It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it.” “Who
this Gashmu was,” said the preacher, in beginning his discourse, “we
do not know, but from the importance attributed to his remarks we may
fairly assume that he was the Superintendent of Streets and Sidewalks
in Jerusalem.”
* * * * *
Lowell describes the rough humor of the frontier, with the free and
easy manners which characterize
this brown-fisted rough, this shirt-sleeved Cid,
This back-woods Charlemagne of empires new,
Whose blundering heel instinctively finds out
The goutier foot of speechless dignities,
Who, meeting Cæsar’s self, would slap his back,
Call him ‘Old Horse’ and challenge to a drink.
He had in mind the backwoodsmen whom sturdy apostles like Peter
Cartwright labored with to such good purpose. But the Honest Miner,
though a pioneer, is not a backwoodsman. His humor is of a different
quality. He would not think of slapping Cæsar on the back and calling
him “Old Horse.” It would seem more amusing to him to address some one
who might properly be called “Old Horse” with titles of honor.
“Truthful James” delights in euphemism. He does not object to calling a
spade a spade, but he refuses to do so in such a way as to give offense.
Which it is not my style
To produce needless pain
By statements that rile
Or that go ’gin the grain.
He is no “brown-fisted rough” who delights in swagger. There is
roughness enough all about him, and it pleases him to cultivate the
amenities. His gentlemanliness is often carried to excess.
The most characteristic humor of the Honest Miner consists, not in
grotesque exaggeration, but in delicate understatement. What can be
more considerate than the notice posted by the side of an open shaft:
“Gentlemen will please not fall down this shaft, for there are men at
work below.”
A Nevada minister once described to me the action of a brother
minister in the early days. The minister went to a certain town where
he offended the lawless element, and was threatened with physical
violence if he persisted in his intention of preaching. My friend
described the method by which the liberty of prophesying was asserted.
“He went into the pulpit, laid his revolver on the Bible--and then he
preached _extempore_.”
The manner of narration savored of the soil. The Honest Miner under
such circumstances would subordinate everything to emphasis on the
correct homiletical method. No matter how able the minister might be,
it was evident that if he were closely confined to his notes, his
delivery could not be effective.
A good woman described the way in which her minister, a young man fresh
from the theological school, made one of his first parish calls. He
found his parishioner, who had been extolled as one of the pillars of
the church, in a state of intoxication, and he was chased out of the
house and some distance down the street.
“We were sorry it happened, for it gave him an unpleasant impression of
the congregation. You know Mr. ---- met with several rebuffs.”
The unconventional episode was related with all the prim propriety of
“Cranford.”
The perfect democracy of a mining camp develops a certain naïve
truth-telling, which has all the unexpectedness which belongs to
the observations of a boy. There is no attempt to reduce everything
to uniformity, or to prove any particular thesis. The gossip of a
conventional village where people know each other too well is apt to
be malicious. A creditable action is narrated, and then comes the
inevitable “but.” The subject of conversation falls in the estimation
of the hearers with a sudden thud.
The Honest Miner does not attempt to pass final judgment or to arrange
his fellow men according to any sort of classification. He speaks of
them as he sees them, and so virtues and failings jostle one another
and take no offense. The result is a moral inconsequence which has
all the effect of studied wit. This is what delights us in the
characterization of Thompson of Angel’s:
Frequently drunk was Thompson, but always polite to the stranger.
As we read the line we smile, not so much at Thompson as at the society
of which he was a part. We see behind him the sympathetic company at
Angel’s. Here was a public with whose temper he was familiar. He could
trust himself to the judgment of his peers. No misdemeanor would blind
them to such virtues as he actually possessed. He could appeal to them
with perfect confidence.
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice.
The Western mining camp is not primarily an educational institution,
yet it has served a most important function in the making of
Americans. The young man is fortunate who on leaving college can take
a post-graduate course in a community where he can study sociology at
first hand. He will learn many things, especially that human nature
is not so simple as it seems, but that it has many “dips, spurs, and
angles.”
A SAINT RECANONIZED
[Illustration]
All the world loves a lover,” but all the world does not love a saint.
Our hearts do not leap up when we behold a halo on the title-page, and
so the lives of the heroes of the Church are frequently neglected. When
the saint has been duly canonized, that is generally the end of him in
popular esteem. But sometimes the ecclesiastical and secular judgments
coincide and the saint is invested with human interest.
So it has been with St. Francis of Assisi,--given the highest honors in
his church, he has captivated the imagination of the world. Protestants
vie with Catholics in doing him honor. At no time has his name been
more familiar or his legend more often repeated than in our own day. He
has been recanonized.
This renewal of interest in the Franciscan legend is all the more
interesting because it carries us into a region so remote from that in
which we habitually dwell.
“Now it came to pass that as Francis, the servant of the Lord, was
singing the praises of the Lord with joy and gladness, certain robbers
fell upon him and fiercely questioned him who he was. And he answered,
‘I am the herald of the King of Heaven.’ And the robbers fell upon him
with blows and cast him into a ditch, saying, ‘Lie there, thou herald
of nothing!’ When they had departed Francis arose and went through the
forest, singing with a loud voice the praises of the Creator.”
These words take us into another world than ours. To enter that world
we must not only lay aside our easily besetting sins, but our easily
besetting virtues as well. We must cast aside all the prudential
virtues, we must rid our minds of all prejudice in favor of scientific
charity and rationalistic schemes of philanthropy, and we must disclaim
personal responsibility for the progress of modern civilization. With
such impedimenta the pilgrim of thought might possibly get as far
back as the sixteenth century, but it would be impossible for him to
penetrate into the thirteenth. He who would do so must first drink deep
of Lethe. He must put out of mind those persons and events which have
been the distinctive influences of the modern world. He must forget
Luther, and wash his soul clean of every trace of Calvin; every echo of
the raillery of Voltaire must have died away, and his mind must have
been kept unspotted from the world of Newton and of Darwin.
Above all, if he would enter into the social dreams of the thirteenth
century, he must forget that he ever heard of such a science as
political economy. He must renounce the old Adam and all his works,--I
mean Adam Smith.
But on the other side of Lethe there are pure fountains, and dark
forests where robbers lurk, and where saints are singing the high
praises of God, and beyond are the “regions dim of rapture” where they
are lost from the eyes of their disciples.
And it may not be in vain to turn aside from the consideration of the
engrossing questions of our day, to enter into that dim world and look
out upon it through the eyes of its truest saints. They were eyes blind
to many things we see clearly, but they saw some things which we do not
always see; at any rate they were eyes--
Beyond my knowing of them beautiful,
Beyond all knowing of them wonderful,
Beautiful in the light of holiness.
So Francis of Assisi has an especial interest for every student of
Christianity and for every student of ethics. For the student of
Christianity he stands as a man who, while neither a theologian nor
a reformer, and having no place among the intellectual leaders of
mankind, has an undisputed spiritual leadership. His place is that of
the little child whom Jesus placed in the midst and of whom he said,
“Of such is the kingdom of Heaven.”
For the student of ethics St. Francis is of interest because, while he
had an invincible ignorance of scientific ethics, yet the real emphasis
of his life and teaching was on the finest kind of ethical idealism. We
are reminded of Shakespeare’s lines:--
Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not that conscience is born of love.
There are some characters, and St. Francis is among them, who belong
so completely to their own age that we cannot take them out of their
environment. The beauty of their lives is like that of some shy wild
flower which will not bear transplanting. If we would enjoy it we must
go where it grows. To appreciate these characters we need not critical
knowledge, but imaginative sympathy.
There is an old Irish legend of a young hero who sailed to a far
country and married a beautiful princess. Living there he enjoyed
perpetual youth, and three centuries passed away as if they had been
but three years. Then came a longing to return to his own native land.
After much entreating his fair wife allowed him to return on one
condition, and that was that he should not dismount from the white
steed she gave him. The prince came back, but riding in youthful
strength and beauty through the familiar land, at last he forgot
the condition. Dismounting, his feet touched the ground, and the
enchantment vanished. Suddenly he realized the passage of time. His
friends, the heroes of his youth, were dead and forgotten. He was very
old; his strength had withered away. The joyous paganism in which he
had been bred had been driven away. He saw processions of monks and
nuns, and heard the sound of church bells, and saw over all the shadow
of the cross. He belonged to the old order that had passed away, now
the destinies of the land were in the hands of new men.
Something of this same caution must be used by those who would see
the St. Francis whom the people long ago loved and worshiped. He is
the embodiment of mediæval goodness. Let us beware of disenchanting
literalism, lest suddenly the radiant youth disappear and we see only
the relic of an age that has passed away.
Let us not look back at St. Francis. Let us stand at the beginning of
the thirteenth century and look forward. Let us share the dream of the
youth who went through the forest singing the praise of God.
The transformation of worldly ambition into spiritual was never
more vividly told than in the legend of St. Francis, by the Three
Companions. We see Francis the gay son of Peter Bernardone, merchant of
Assisi, transformed into a knight of Lady Poverty.
“Then a few years later a certain noble of the city of Assisi provided
himself with warlike gear to go into Apulia to increase his profit of
money and renown. Upon hearing this, Francis did aspire to go with him
and to be made a knight by a certain count, Gentile by name; wherefore
he made ready stuffs as costly as he could, poorer in riches than his
fellow citizen, but more profuse in largesse. One night when he had
given all his thoughts to bringing this to pass, and was fevered with
the desire for making the journey, he was visited by the Lord, who
draweth him as one eager for glory to the pinnacle of glory by a vision
and uplifteth him. For while sleeping that night one appeared unto him,
calling him by name, and leading him into the palace of a fair bride,
very pleasant and full of knightly armor, to wit, glittering shields
and other apparel hanging on the wall as it were waiting for knights to
accoutre them therewithal. And while he, rejoicing greatly, marveled
silently within himself what this might be, he asked whose were these
arms flashing with such splendor and this so pleasant palace? And
the answer was made him that the palace and all things therein were
his own and his knights’. And thus awakening with joyous heart he
rose early.... And so much gayer than his wont did he seem that many
wondered thereat, and asked whence had he such joy, unto whom he would
reply, “I know that I shall be a great prince.”
It was not the sense of sin that proved the beginning of a new life
to this light-hearted Italian. It was rather the sense of a higher
chivalry. Another vision came to him. A voice asked, “‘Which can do the
better for thee, the lord or the servant?’
“And when he answered, ‘The lord,’ that other said again unto him,
‘Wherefore then dost thou leave the lord for the servant, and a rich
lord for a poor?’... Then waking he began earnestly to ponder this
vision. And just as in the first vision he had been, as it were,
quite carried out of himself for his great joy, coveting worldly
good fortune, so in this vision he withdrew within himself entirely,
wondering at its might, and meditating so earnestly that he could sleep
no more that night.”
At last the new vision took form in an enthusiastic way of life. In the
church Francis heard the words of the gospels, “Take no gold nor silver
nor money in your purses, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor staff.”
No further did he need to listen. Throwing away his purse, and putting
on the garb of a peasant, he devoted himself henceforth not simply
to the service of the poor, but to the worship of Poverty. Dante in
memorable words described this lover-like devotion.
For he in youth his father’s wrath incurred
For certain Dame, to whom as unto death
The gate of pleasure no one doth unlock;
* * * * *
Then day by day more fervently he loved her.
She reft of her first husband, scorned, obscure,
One thousand and one hundred years and more,
Waited without a suitor till he came.
* * * * *
So that when Mary still remained below
She mounted up with Christ upon the cross!
But that too darkly I may not proceed,
Francis and Poverty for these two lovers
Take thou henceforward in my speech diffuse.
Their concord and their joyous semblances
The love, the wonder, and the sweet regard,
They made to be the cause of holy thoughts.
Francis and Poverty--these lovers seem strange indeed to
twentieth-century eyes. An age when philanthropy strives for the
abolition of poverty and invites enlightened self-interest to its
aid cannot readily understand one who welcomed poverty as a blessed
condition. “No man,” said a disciple of St. Francis, “was ever so
covetous of wealth as he of poverty.”
We hear St. Francis discoursing with brother Leo concerning perfect
bliss. It lies not in knowledge or power or even in the ability to
convert the infidels to the Holy Faith. “When we shall come to St. Mary
of the Angels dripping with rain and tormented with cold and hunger,
and we shall knock at the door, and the porter shall say, ‘Who are ye?’
and we shall answer, ‘We are your brethren,’ and he shall say, ‘You
lie, you are two knaves that go about deceiving the people and stealing
from the poor’--if, when he leaves us in the cold and wet we shall
patiently endure, and say within ourselves, ‘Perhaps the porter reads
us aright,’ then, O brother Leo, thou mayest say, ‘Herein lies perfect
bliss.’”
We hear the passionate prayer, “O Lord Jesus, point out to me the ways
of poverty which were so dear to thee. O Jesus, who chosest to be poor,
the favor I ask of thee is to give me the privilege of poverty and to
be enriched by thy blessing.”
This was not the temper of ordinary asceticism. St. Francis was in
temper more an Epicurean than a Stoic. He was a lover of pleasure
and was not content with any kind of pleasure short of what he
conceived to be the highest. The ascetic was interested primarily in
the salvation of his own soul. Wealth and comfort were the temptations
of the devil to cheat him of his future reward. The hermit accepted
poverty as the hard road to Heaven; to St. Francis it was Heaven itself.
“Property is robbery,” he would have said, but not in the sense in
which a modern communist would use the words. It is the robbery not of
one’s neighbor but of one’s self. We take for granted that wealth is
a good thing and poverty an evil. No, St. Francis would say, there is
no good thing but what is good for the soul. It is good to be humble,
sympathetic, and thankful. It is good to be conscious of God’s presence
everywhere and to be close to the lowliest of his creatures. The means
of this grace are nearer to the peasant than to the prince. There
are some things that wealth buys. The rich man has his comforts, his
sheltered home, his group of friends and dependents, his servants and
his wide estates; his is the meekness that inherits the earth.
St. Francis found joy in the sacrifices and austerities which to
others were so painful. The predominant note is that of gladness. In
the midst of his penances he is light-hearted. He interpreted more
literally than we do the words, “Take no thought for the morrow.”
Some things are possible in Umbria and Galilee that seem wildly
impracticable under the fickle skies of New England. The sober prose of
religion may be translated into all languages and verified by all human
experience, but there is an idyllic poetry of religion that belongs
only to the climate where that poetry had birth. “The Little Flowers
of St. Francis” grew out of the same kindly soil and under the same
friendly skies that nourished the lilies that Jesus loved.
St. Francis always wore his halo with an easy grace. In spite of
his scourgings and fastings he was blithe and debonair. He was
saint-errant, as full of romance as any knight-errant of them all.
He was a lover of spiritual adventure, and delighted to attempt the
impossible.
To St. Francis voluntary poverty meant spiritual freedom. The preacher
was no longer dependent on powerful patrons or rich parishioners or
even on the fickle multitudes. The missionary did not need a missionary
board. He did not have to wait for a church building to be erected and
a pulpit to be prepared. Even a hermitage was a superfluity. “The true
hermit,” said St. Francis, “carries his cell about with him.” And so he
and his disciples preached and asked no man’s leave. Through all the
byways of Italy they wandered, proclaiming that God was in the fields
as well as in the churches. Entering a village Brother Francis would
say, “Love God and repent, good people. Love God and do penance.” And
Brother Egidio would say, “Yes, good people, do as Brother Francis
says, for he says what is right.”
And if there were no people to preach to there were always our sisters,
the birds, and now and then there was a wicked wolf who would yield to
moral suasion. We smile at this way of preaching to every creature, but
it is as we smile at the idiosyncrasies of one we love.
Many a preacher who has confined his preaching to human kind has put
less good sense into his sermons and shown less insight into the
causes of sin than did Francis in his discourse to the wolf of Gubbio.
The inhabitants who had suffered from his depredations hated him for
his wolfish iniquities. The saint saw that the cause of the evil was
economic rather than moral. He was a right-minded wolf; the trouble was
that he was hungry. St. Francis entered into a covenant of peace with
him.
“‘Brother Wolf, inasmuch as it pleases you to make and keep this peace,
I promise you that so long as you shall live you shall not suffer
hunger, forasmuch as I am aware that hunger has caused your every
crime. But since I have got for you this grace, I require, Brother
Wolf, your promise never again to do harm to any human being, neither
to any beast. Do you promise?’ And St. Francis stretching forth his
hand, the wolf uplifted his right paw and gave him the pledge of faith
as best he could.”
It was in the same spirit that St. Francis went forth on his mission
to the Sultan. The Crusaders had gone forth to destroy the infidels.
Francis, in the simplicity of his heart, thought the better way would
be to convert them. Neither way proved to be altogether effective, but
certainly the latter plan was the more Christian.
In the history of preaching there have been many vicissitudes.
Sometimes the preacher has been a philosopher, sometimes an advocate,
sometimes he has adopted the tone of a man of business. In the
preaching of St. Francis we are taken back to the time of the wandering
minstrels.
“So great was the sweetness and consolation of his spirit that he
called for Brother Pacificus whom the world entitled the King of Verse
and Courteous Doctor of Song, and desired to send him with the other
friars to go together through the world, preaching and singing the
“Praises of the Lord.” And he desired that he among them who was the
best preacher should first preach to the people, and when the sermon
was ended all the others should sing together the “Praises of the
Lord,” as the Lord’s minstrels; and at the end he desired the preacher
should say to the people, ‘We are the Lord’s minstrels, and the reward
we ask of you is that you turn to true repentance.’”
No wonder that the people loved Brother Francis when he brought
religion to them in such a fashion, and that there would gather around
him
A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books.
With all his saintly austerities St. Francis was always a gentleman.
Even the most admiring biographers cannot hide his humanness. The
Lives of the Saints do not contain many such incidents as that in the
chapter in “The Mirror of Perfection” entitled “How he comforted a Sick
Friar by eating Grapes with Him.” It was a little thing to do, but I
am sure that St. Dominic would never have thought of it. The friar had
been overdoing the mortification of the flesh, and had fallen ill.
“Blessed Francis said to himself: ‘If that friar would eat ripe grapes
in the morning I believe he would be cured!’ And as he thought so he
did. Rising early in the morning, he called the friar secretly, and
took him to a vineyard near the place, and choosing a vine that had
good grapes fit for eating, he sat down by the vine with the friar and
began to eat grapes, that the friar should not be ashamed of eating
alone.... And all the days of his life this friar remembered the pity
and compassion shown him by the blessed Father, and would relate what
had happened to the other friars.”
It was an age of miracles, but St. Francis never allowed them to
clutter up his little world. They must keep their place. When Brother
Peter died in great sanctity, he was immediately worshiped as a saint.
Great crowds came to his tomb, and many miracles were wrought. This
was well, but there must be a measure in all things. So one day St.
Francis went to the door of the tomb, and his most persuasive voice
said, “Brother Peter, in your lifetime you gave perfect obedience. Know
that your brethren are disturbed by the crowds that come to your tomb.
I command you, by holy obedience, that you work no more miracles.” And
from that day Brother Peter abstained from any interference with the
order of nature.