the bad does what it can. The good dwells in the kingdom of duty; the
bad sits on the throne of might. Duty is a loyal subject; might is a
royal tyrant. Duty is the evangel of God that proclaims the acceptable
year of the Lord; might is the scourge of the world that riots in
carnage, groans, and blood. Duty gains its victories by peace; might
conquers only by war. Duty is a moralist resting on principle; might is
a worldling seeking for pleasure. These are the inward principles
contending with each other in every human soul.
To live truly and nobly is to act energetically. Life is a battle to be
fought valiantly. Inspired by high and honorable resolves a man must
stand to his post, and die there if necessary. Like the hero of old his
determination should be "to dare nobly, to will strongly, and never to
falter in the path of duty." It has been truly said that man's real
greatness consists, not in seeking his own pleasure or fame, but that
every man shall do his duty. What most stands in the way of the
performance of duty is irresolution, weakness of purpose, and
indecision. On the one side are conscience and the knowledge of good and
evil; on the other are indolence, selfishness, and love of pleasure. The
weak and ill-disciplined will may remained suspended for a time between
these influences, but at length the balance inclines one way or another,
as the voice of conscience is heeded or passed by. If its warning voice
is unheeded the lower influence of selfishness will prevail; thus
character is degraded, and manhood abdicates its throne as ruler, and
sinks to the level of slave to the senses.
Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world
may make upon you. Their censures have no power over you, and,
consequently, should not be any part of your concern. No man's spirits
were ever hurt by doing his duty; on the contrary, one good action done,
one temptation resisted and overcome, one sacrifice of desire or
interest, purely for conscience's sake, will prove a cordial for weak
souls most salutary for their real good; conducing not less to their
present happiness and welfare than to their eternal and unending good.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: TRIALS.]
[Illustration]
Life, no matter in what aspects it has been presented before us, when we
come to the reality, is full of pitfalls and entanglements, into which
our unwary feet often stumble. Day after day, as we watch the different
vicissitudes of life, we are reminded of the frailty of human hopes and
aspirations. As the leaves of the tree, once flourishing, once verdant,
lose their vitality and finally waste away, so it is with our desires
and anticipations.
In youth we look forward; the future appears calm and tranquil; as we
approach manhood and womanhood life changes its appearance and becomes
tempestuous and rough, as the ocean changes before the advancing storm.
In the changes of real life joy and grief are never far apart. In the
same street the shutters of one house are closed, while the curtains of
the next are brushed by the passing dancers. A wedding party returns
from church, and a funeral train leaves from the adjacent house.
Gladness and sighs brighten and dim the mirror of daily life. Tears and
laughter are twin-born. Like two children sleeping in one cradle, when
one wakes and stirs the other wakes also.
Be not dismayed at the trials of life; they are sent for your good. God
knows what keys in the human soul to touch in order to draw out its
sweetest and most perfect harmonies. These may be the strains of sadness
and sorrow as well as the loftier notes of joy and gladness. Think not
that uninterrupted joy is good. The sunshine lies upon the mountain top
all day, and lingers there latest and longest at eventide. Yet is the
valley green and fertile, while the peak is barren and unfruitful.
Trials come in a thousand different forms, and as many avenues are open
to their approach. They come with the warm throbbing of our youthful
lives, keep pace with the measured tread of manhood's noon, and depart
not from the descending footsteps of decrepitude and age. We may not
hope to be entirely free from either disciplinary trials or the fiery
darts of the enemy until we are through with life's burdens. Men may be
so old that ambition has no charm, pleasures may pale on the senses, but
they are never too old to experience trials.
Life all sunshine without shade, all happiness without sorrow, all
pleasure without pain, were not life at all—at least not human life.
Take the life of the happiest. It is a tangled yarn. It is made up of
joys and sorrows, and the joys are all the sweeter because of the
sorrows. Even death itself makes life more loving; it binds us more
closely together while living. The severer trials and hazardous
enterprises of life call into exercise the latent faculties of the soul
of man. They are for the purpose of putting his manhood to the test, and
rouse in him strength, hardihood, and valor. They may be hard to take,
though they strengthen the soul. Tonics are always bitter.
Heaven, in its mercy, has placed the fountain of wisdom in the hidden
and concealed depths of the soul, that the children of misfortune might
seek and find in its healthful waters the antidote and cordial of their
cares and calamities. Knowledge and sorrow are blended together, and as
closely and inseparably so as ignorance and folly, and for reasons
equally as salutary and just. Such is the established course of nature;
such is her best and wisest law. When she leads us from what is
frivolous and vain in the land of darkness, and brings us to the
impressive and true in the land of light, the first act she performs is
to remove the scales from our eyes that we may see and weep. We must
first learn to mourn and feel before we can know and think. And the
deeper we shall go into the depths below the higher shall we ascend into
the heights above.
Man is like a sword in a shop window. Men that look upon the perfect
blade do not dream of the process by which it was completed. Man is a
sword, daily life is the workshop, and God is the artificer, and the
trials and sorrows of life the very things that fashion the man. We
should remember when borne down by trials that they are sent to us only
for our instructions, even as we darken the cages of our birds when we
wish them to sing. Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls,
the most massive characters are seamed with cares, martyrs have put on
their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through tears many
caught their first glimpse of heaven.
Never meet trouble half-way, but let him have the whole walk for his
pains. Perhaps he will give up his visit even in sight of your house. If
misfortune comes be patient, and he will soon stalk out again, for he
can not bear cheerful company. Do not think you are fated to be
miserable, because you are disappointed in your expectation and baffled
in your pursuits. Do not declare that God has forsaken you when your way
is hedged about with thorns, when trials and troubles meet you on every
side. No man's life is free from struggles and mortifications, not even
the happiest; but every one may build up his own happiness by seeking
mental pleasures, and thus making himself independent of outward
fortune.
The greatest misfortune of all is not to be able to bear misfortune. Not
to feel misfortune is not the part of a mortal; but not to bear it is
not becoming in a man. Calamity never leaves us where it finds us; it
either softens or hardens the heart of its victim. Misfortune is never
mournful to the soul that accepts it, for such do always see in every
cloud an angel's face. Every man deems that he has precisely the trials
and temptations which are the hardest of all others for him to bear.
From the manner in which men bear their conditions we should ofttimes
pity the prosperous and envy the unfortunate.
The simplest and most obvious use of sorrow is to remind us of God. It
would seem that a certain shock is needed to bring us in contact with
reality. We are not conscious of breathing till obstruction makes it
felt. So we are not conscious of the mighty cravings of our half divine
humanity, we are not aware of the God within us, till some chasm yawns
which must be filled, or till the rending asunder of our affection
brings us to a consciousness of our need.
To mourn without measure is folly; not to mourn at all is insensibility.
God says to the fruit-tree bloom and bear, and to the human heart bear
and bloom. The soul's great blooming is the flower of suffering. As the
sun converts clouds into a glorious drapery, firing them with gorgeous
hues, draping the whole horizon with its glorious costume, and writing
victory along their front, so sometimes a radiant heart lets forth its
hopes upon its sorrows, and all blackness flies, and troubles that
trooped to appall seem to crowd around as a triumphant procession
following the steps of a victor.
[Illustration: SICKNESS.]
[Illustration]
Sickness takes us aside and sets us alone with God. We are taken into
his private chamber, and there he converses with us face to face. The
world is afar off, our relish for it is gone, and we are alone with Him.
Many are the words of grace and truth which he then speaks to us. All
our former props are struck away, and now we must lean on God alone. The
things of earth are felt to be vanity. Man's sympathy deserts us. We are
cast wholly upon God, that we may learn that his praise and his sympathy
are enough.
There is something in sickness that lowers the pride of manhood, that
softens the heart, and brings it back to the feelings of infancy. Who
that has languished, even in advanced life, in sickness, but has thought
of the mother who watched over his childhood, who smoothed his pillow,
and administered to his helplessness? When a man is laboring under the
pain of any distemper, it is then that he recollects there is a God, and
that he himself is but a man. No mortal is then the object of his envy,
his admiration, or his contempt, and, having no malice to gratify, the
tales of slander excite him not. But it unveils to him his own heart. It
shows him the need there is for sympathy and love between man and man.
Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect
blessing. One who has never known a day's illness is lacking in one
department, at least, of moral culture. He has lost the greatest lesson
of his life; he has missed the finest lecture in that great school of
humanity, the sick chamber.
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes. The
distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little
perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be vain to
expect entertainment from the gay or instruction from the wise; where
all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner
perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of
mortal beings finds nothing of real worth left him but the consciousness
of innocence.
Sickness brings a share of blessings with it. What stores of human love
and sympathy it reveals! What constant, affectionate care is ours! what
kindly greetings from friends and associates! This very loosening of our
hold upon life calls out such wealth of human sympathy that life seems
richer than before. Then, it teaches humility. Our absence is scarcely
noticed. From the noisy, wrestling world we are separated completely;
yet our place is filled, and all moves on without us. So we learn that
when at last we shall sink forever beneath the waves of the sea of life,
there will be but one ripple, and the current will move steadily on.
It is on the bed of sickness that we fully realize the value of good
health. The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and can
not serve any one; but health is one of the greatest blessings we are
capable of enjoying. Money can not buy it; therefore, value it, and be
thankful for it. Health is above all gold and treasure. It enlarges the
soul, and opens all its powers to receive instruction and to relish
virtue. He that has health has but little more to wish for; and he that
has it not, in the want of it wants every thing. It is beyond price,
since it is by health that money is procured. Thousands, and even
millions, are small recompense for the loss of health. Poverty is,
indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly; but let us not run from one
enemy to one still more implacable, which is assuredly the lot of those
who exchange poverty for sickness, though accompanied by wealth.
In no situation and under no circumstances does human character appear
to better advantage than when watching by the side of sickness. The
helplessness and weakness of the sick chamber makes a most effective
appeal to the charity and natural kindness inherent in the hearts of
all, even of the most degraded. Thus it appears that sickness is not
only of discipline to the sick one, but it serves also to bring to a
more perfect growth the flowers of charity and kindness in the hearts of
those who care for the sick one.
It is on the sick-bed that the heart learns most completely the value of
self-examination. Life passes before the sick one as a gliding panorama.
How strong are the resolutions formed for future guidance! And only God
and the angels know how many lives have been turned from evil courses to
the right, have been snatched as brands from the burning, who can date
their progress in the good and true modes of living from some bed of
sickness. Then, let us be patient in sickness. Let us turn it to account
in the bettering of our hearts, and thus may we reap from seeming evil
what will conduce in no small degree to our ultimate happiness.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: SORROW.]
[Illustration]
Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around great mountains,
but, like them, they break the storms and purify the air. Those who have
suffered much are like those who know many languages—they have learned
to understand and be understood by all.
Sorrows sober us and make the mind genial. In sorrows we love and trust
our friends more tenderly, and the dead become dearer to us. Just as the
stars shine out in the night, so there are faces that look at us in our
grief, though before they were fading from our recollections. Suffering!
Let no man dread it too much, because it is better for him, and will
help make him sure of being immortal. Just as it is only at night that
other worlds are to be seen shining in the distance, so it is in
sorrow—the night of the soul—that we see the farthest, and know
ourselves natives of infinity, sons and daughters of immortality.
The path of life meanders through a bright and beautiful world—a world
where the fragrant flowers of friendship, nourished by the gentle dews
of sympathy and the warm sunlight of affection, bloom in perennial
beauty. But through this bright world there flows a stream whose turbid
waters cross and recross the path of every pilgrim. It is the stream of
human suffering. As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers
and the sharpest thorns; as the heavens are sometimes overcast,
alternately tempestuous and serene, so is the life of man intermingled
with hopes and fears, with joy and sorrow, with pleasures, and with
pains.
Life is beset with unavoidable annoyances, vexatious cares, and
harassing events. But we endure them—we strive to forget them—or, like
the dustworn garment, or the soil on our shoes, we brush them off, and,
if possible, scarcely bestow a thought on the trouble it requires. But
when we have once been called upon to feel and undergo a great sorrow,
to bend the back and bow the head, to endure the yoke and suffer the
agony, to abide the pelting of the storm of adversity and sorrow, when
few, perhaps none, sympathize with us—these are the days of anguish and
of darkness, these the nights of desolation and despair; and when they
have once come upon us with their appalling weight, their remorseless
power, we can never be beguiled into a forgetfulness of them. The memory
of them will endure as long as life shall last. We may again behold the
beams of a cheerful sun throwing a delusive coloring over the landscape
around us, but while our eyes may rest upon the lights they will dwell
upon the shadows of the picture.
"Time is the rider that breaks youth." To the young how bright the new
world looks! how full of novelty! of enjoyment! of pleasure! But as
years pass on they are found to abound in sorrowful scenes as well as
those pleasant—scenes of toil, suffering, difficulty, perhaps
misfortune and failure. Happy they who can pass through such trials with
a firm mind and a pure heart, encountering trials with cheerfulness, and
standing erect beneath even the heaviest burdens.
Sorrow is the noblest of all discipline. Our nature shrinks from it, but
it is not the less a discipline. It is a scourge, but there is healing
in its stripes. It is a chalice, and the draught is bitter, but health
proceeds from the bitterness. It is a crown of thorns, but it becomes a
wreath of light on the brow which it has lacerated. It is a cross on
which the spirit groans, but every Calvary has an Olivet. To every place
of crucifixion there is likewise a place of ascension. The sun that is
shrouded is unveiled, and the heavens open with hopes eternal to the
soul which was nigh unto despair. Even in guilt sorrow has a sanctity
within it. Place a bad man beside the death-bed, or the grave, where all
that he loved is cold—we are moved, we are won, by his affection, and
we find the divine spark yet alive, which no vice could quench.
Christianity itself is a religion of sorrow. It was born in sorrow, in
sorrow it was tried, and by sorrow it was made perfect. The Author of
Christianity was a "man of sorrow and acquainted with grief." Sorrow is
exalting, and a baptism of sorrow is awarded to every one who strives
for the higher life. Since Christ wept over Jerusalem the best, the
bravest, who have followed him in good will and good deeds have
commenced their mission alike in suffering. Sorrow is not to be
complained of; it is the passport by which we are to be made acceptable
in that house where all tears shall be wiped away. It has power for
good; it has joy within its gloom, and, though Christianity is a
religion of trials and suffering, it is not less a religion of hope; it
casts down in order to exalt, and if it tries the spirit by affliction
it is to prepare it for a future great reward.
All mankind must taste the cup which destiny has mixed, be it bitter or
be it sweet. Be not impatient under suffering. It is for the correction
of thy soul. It is better to suffer than to injure. It is better to
suffer without a cause than that there should be cause for our
suffering. By experiencing distress an arrogant insensibility of temper
is most effectually corrected. Endeavor to extract a blessing from the
remembrance of thy own sufferings. If so be that Providence has so
ordered your life that you are not subject to much of the discipline of
sorrow, strive to extract this discipline from the consideration of the
lot of those less favored than you are. Step aside occasionally from the
flowers and smooth paths which it is permitted you to walk in, in order
to view the toilsome march of your fellow creatures through the thorny
desert. The designed end of temporal afflictions is to cause men to
consider their spiritual wants, and to seek the good of their higher
natures.
Often suffering not only fails to purify the soul from sin, but
aggravates and intensifies its selfish and malignant passions. This is
always the case where the heart fails to accept the lesson taught. By
submission to sorrow the sweetest traits of character are developed, as
some fruits are brought to perfection only by frost. Misfortune should
act upon us or upon our feelings like fire upon old tenements, which are
consumed only to be rebuilt with greater perfection. The winds of
adversity sweep over the soul and scatter the fairest blossoms of hope.
But the blossoms fall that the fruit may appear. So with us, when the
flowers of hope are gone, there come the fruits of long-suffering,
patience, faith, and love. Thus the darkest clouds which overhang human
destiny may often appear the brightest to the angels who behold them
with prophetic ken from heaven.
The damps of Autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for decay, and
thus are we, insensibly perhaps, detached from our hold on life by the
gentle pressure of recorded sorrows. Who is not familiar with the fact
that life, which to the young promises so much, but to the middle-aged
presents a stern reality, seems to the old as a day's labor now closing;
and even as the laborer, worn by the burdens and heat of the day, looks
forward to rest, so does the aged pilgrim, oppressed by the accumulated
griefs and sorrows of a life-time, look forward to the rest of death?
The first thing to be conquered in grief is the pleasure we feel in
indulging it. Persons may acquire a morbid and unhealthy state of
feeling on this subject, and by a constant giving way to feelings of
grief become at last so constituted that on the slightest occasions they
give way to apparently uncontrollable sorrow, converting thus what was
intended as a means of discipline necessary to soul growth into an evil
which contracts life. Remember, then, that in the matter of giving
expression to sorrow self-control is no less necessary than in the other
affairs of life. There is but one pardonable grief—that for the
departed. This pleasing grief is but a variety of comfort, the sighs are
but a mournful mode of loving them.
There are sorrows too sacred to be babbled to the world, griefs which
one would forbear to whisper even to a friend. Real sorrow is not
clamorous. It seeks to shun every eye, and breathes in solitude and
silence the sighs that come from the heart. Every heart has also its
secret sorrows, of which the world knows nothing, and ofttimes we call a
man cold when he is only sorrowful. Sorrow may be divided into two
classes—that which really comes from the heart and is for the bettering
of man, and that which comes from wounded selfishness, egotism, and
pride. It is our duty to strive against giving vent to the latter kind
of sorrow. It is, after all, only selfish in feeling and expression. It
is the duty of all to cultivate cheerfulness of manner and disposition.
Another hath said, "Give not thy mind to heaviness. The gladness of
heart is the life of man, and the joyfulness of a man prolongeth his
days. Remove sorrow far from thee, for sorrow hath killed many, and
there is no profit therein; and carefulness bringeth age before the
time."
As limbs which are wrenched violently asunder do not bleed, so the
sudden shocks of overwhelming sorrow are unrelieved by tears. The heart
is benumbed. The eyes are dry, and the very fountain of feeling
obstructed and stagnant. Our lighter afflictions find relief in
lamentations and weeping, and the voice of sympathy and compassion
brings some consolation and peace. But when the heart has been deeply
and powerfully struck by some cruel blow of destiny, the intensity of
suffering exceeds the bounds of sensibility and emotion.
Those who work hard seldom yield themselves entirely up to real or
fancied sorrow. When grief sits down, folds its hands, and mournfully
feeds upon its own tears, weaving the dim shadows that a little exertion
might sweep away into oblivion, the strong spirit is shorn of its might,
and sorrow becomes our master. When sorrow, then, pours upon you,
instead of giving way to it, rather seek by occupation to divert the
dark waters that threaten to overwhelm you into the thousand channels
which the duties of life always present. Before you dream of it those
waters will fertilize the present and give birth to flowers that may
brighten the future—flowers that will become pure and holy in the
sunshine which illumes the path of duty, in spite of every obstacle.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: POVERTY.]
[Illustration]