ON BOOKS.—It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with
superior minds and these invaluable means of communication are in the
reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their
most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the
dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use
them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of
our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of
my time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the sacred writers will
enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my
threshhold to sing to me of paradise, and Shakspere to open to me the
worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin
to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of
intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though
excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.
ON LABOR.—Manual labor is a great good, but only in its just
proportions. In excess it does great harm. It is not a good when
made the sole work of life. It must be joined with higher means of
improvement or it degrades instead of exalting. Man has a various
nature which requires a variety of occupation and discipline for its
growth. Study, meditation, society, and relaxation should be mixed up
with his physical toil. He has intellect, heart, imagination, taste, as
well as bones and muscles; and he is grievously wronged when compelled
to exclusive drudgery for bodily subsistence.
ON POLITICS.—To govern one’s self (not others) is true glory. To serve
through love, not to rule, is Christian greatness. Office is not
dignity. The lowest men, because most faithless in principle, most
servile to opinion, are to be found in office. I am sorry to say it,
but the truth should be spoken, that, at the present moment, political
action in this country does little to lift up any who are concerned
in it. It stands in opposition to a high morality. Politics, indeed,
regarded as the study and pursuit of the true, enduring good of a
community, as the application of great unchangeable principles to
public affairs, is a noble sphere of thought and action, but politics,
in its common sense, or considered as the invention of temporary
shifts, as the playing of a subtle game, as the tactics of party for
gaining power and the spoils of office, and for elevating one set of
men above another is a paltry and debasing concern.
ON SELF-DENIAL.—To deny ourselves is to deny, to withstand, to renounce
whatever, within or without, interferes with our conviction of right,
or with the will of God. It is to suffer, to make sacrifice, for duty
or our principles. The question now offers itself: What constitutes
the singular merit of this suffering? Mere suffering, we all know, is
not virtue. Evil men often endure pain as well as the good and are
evil still. This, and this alone, constitutes the worth and importance
of the sacrifice, suffering, which enters into self-denial, that it
springs from and manifests moral strength, power over ourselves, force
of purpose, or the mind’s resolute determination of itself to duty.
It is the proof and result of inward energy. Difficulty, hardship,
suffering, sacrifices, are tests and measures of moral force and the
great means of its enlargement. To withstand these is the same thing
as to put forth power. Self-denial then is the will acting with power
in the choice and prosecution of duty. Here we have the distinguishing
glory of self-denial, and here we have the essence and distinction of a
good and virtuous man.
ON PLEASURE.—The first means of placing a people beyond the temptations
to intemperance is to furnish them with the means of innocent
pleasure. By innocent pleasures I mean such as excite moderately;
such as produce a cheerful frame of mind, not boisterous mirth; such
as refresh, instead of exhausting, the system; such as are chastened
by self-respect, and are accompanied with the consciousness that life
has a higher end than to be amused. In every community there _must_
be pleasures, relaxations and means of agreeable excitement; and if
innocent ones are not furnished, resort will be had to criminal. Men
drink to excess very often to shake off depression, or to satisfy
the restless thirst for agreeable excitement, and these motives
are excluded in a cheerful community. A gloomy state of society in
which there are few innocent recreations, may be expected to abound
in drunkenness if opportunities are afforded. The savage drinks to
excess because his hours of sobriety are dull and unvaried, because
in losing consciousness of his condition and his existence he loses
little which he wishes to retain. The laboring classes are most exposed
to intemperance, because they have at present few other pleasurable
excitements. A man, who, after toil, has resources of blameless
recreation is less tempted than other men to seek self-oblivion. He has
too many of the pleasures of the man to take up those of the brute.
[End of Required Reading for November.]