THE NEW YEAR
[1865.]
Here comes the First of January, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Five,
and we are all settled comfortably into our winter places, with our
winter surroundings and belongings; all cracks and openings are
calked and listed, the double windows are in, the furnace dragon
in the cellar is ruddy and in good liking, sending up his warming
respirations through every pipe and register in the house; and
yet, though an artificial summer reigns everywhere, like bees we have
our swarming place,--in my library. There is my chimney-corner, and
my table permanently established on one side of the hearth; and
each of the female genus has, so to speak, pitched her own winter
tent within sight of the blaze of my camp-fire. I discerned to-day
that Jenny had surreptitiously appropriated one of the drawers of my
study-table to knitting-needles and worsted; and wicker work-baskets
and stands of various heights and sizes seem to be planted here and
there for permanence among the bookcases. The canary-bird has a
sunny window, and the plants spread out their leaves and unfold
their blossoms as if there were no ice and snow in the street, and
Rover makes a hearth-rug of himself in winking satisfaction in front
of my fire, except when Jenny is taken with a fit of discipline, when
he beats a retreat, and secretes himself under my table.
Peaceable, ah, how peaceable, home and quiet and warmth in winter! And
how, when we hear the wind whistle, we think of you, O our brave
brothers, our saviors and defenders, who for our sake have no home but
the muddy camp, the hard pillow of the barrack, the weary march, the
uncertain fare,--you, the rank and file, the thousand unnoticed ones,
who have left warm fires, dear wives, loving little children, without
even the hope of glory or fame,--without even the hope of doing
anything remarkable or perceptible for the cause you love,--resigned
only to fill the ditch or bridge the chasm over which your country
shall walk to peace and joy! Good men and true, brave unknown hearts,
we salute you, and feel that we, in our soft peace and security, are
not worthy of you! When we think of you, our simple comforts seem
luxuries all too good for us, who give so little when you give all!
But there are others to whom from our bright homes, our cheerful
firesides, we would fain say a word, if we dared.
Think of a mother receiving a letter with such a passage as this
in it! It is extracted from one we have just seen, written by a
private in the army of Sheridan, describing the death of a private.
"He fell instantly, gave a peculiar smile and look, and then
closed his eyes. We laid him down gently at the foot of a large
tree. I crossed his hands over his breast, closed his eyelids down,
but the smile was still on his face. I wrapt him in his tent, spread
my pocket-handkerchief over his face, wrote his name on a piece of
paper, and pinned it on his breast, and there we left him: we could
not find pick or shovel to dig a grave." There it is!--a history
that is multiplying itself by hundreds daily, the substance of what
has come to so many homes, and must come to so many more before the
great price of our ransom is paid!
What can we say to you, in those many, many homes where the light has
gone out forever?--you, O fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, haunted
by a name that has ceased to be spoken on earth,--you, for whom there
is no more news from the camp, no more reading of lists, no more
tracing of maps, no more letters, but only a blank, dead silence! The
battlecry goes on, but for you it is passed by! the victory comes,
but, oh, never more to bring him back to you! your offering to this
great cause has been made, and been taken; you have thrown into it
_all_ your living, even all that you had, and from henceforth your
house is left unto you desolate! O ye watchers of the cross, ye
waiters by the sepulchre, what can be said to you? We could almost
extinguish our own home-fires, that seem too bright when we think of
your darkness; the laugh dies on our lip, the lamp burns dim through
our tears, and we seem scarcely worthy to speak words of comfort, lest
we seem as those who mock a grief they cannot know.
But is there no consolation? Is it nothing to have had such a treasure
to give, and to have given it freely for the noblest cause for which
ever battle was set,--for the salvation of your country, for the
freedom of all mankind? Had he died a fruitless death, in the track of
common life, blasted by fever, smitten or rent by crushing accident,
then might his most precious life seem to be as water spilled upon the
ground; but now it has been given for a cause and a purpose worthy
even the anguish of your loss and sacrifice. He has been counted
worthy to be numbered with those who stood with precious incense
between the living and the dead, that the plague which was consuming
us might be stayed. The blood of these young martyrs shall be the seed
of the future church of liberty, and from every drop shall spring up
flowers of healing. O widow! O mother! blessed among bereaved women!
there remains to you a treasure that belongs not to those who have
lost in any other wise,--the power to say, "He died for his country."
In all the good that comes of this anguish you shall have a right and
share by virtue of this sacrifice. The joy of freedmen bursting from
chains, the glory of a nation new-born, the assurance of a triumphant
future for your country and the world,--all these become yours by the
purchase-money of that precious blood.
Besides this, there are other treasures that come through sorrow, and
sorrow alone. There are celestial plants of root so long and so deep
that the land must be torn and furrowed, ploughed up from the very
foundation, before they can strike and nourish; and when we see how
God's plough is driving backward and forward and across this nation,
rending, tearing up tender shoots, and burying soft wild-flowers, we
ask ourselves, What is He going to plant?
Not the first year, nor the second, after the ground has been broken
up, does the purpose of the husbandman appear. At first we see only
what is uprooted and ploughed in,--the daisy drabbled, and the violet
crushed,--and the first trees planted amid the unsightly furrows stand
dumb and disconsolate, irresolute in leaf, and without flower or
fruit. Their work is under the ground. In darkness and silence they
are putting forth long fibres, searching hither and thither under the
black soil for the strength that years hence shall burst into bloom
and bearing.
What is true of nations is true of individuals. It may seem now winter
and desolation with you. Your hearts have been ploughed and harrowed
and are now frozen up. There is not a flower left, not a blade of
grass, not a bird to sing,--and it is hard to believe that any
brighter flowers, any greener herbage, shall spring up than those
which have been torn away; and yet there will. Nature herself teaches
you to-day. Outdoors nothing but bare branches and shrouding snow; and
yet you know that there is not a tree that is not patiently holding
out at the end of its boughs next year's buds, frozen indeed, but
unkilled. The rhododendron and the lilac have their blossoms all
ready, wrapped in cere-cloth, waiting in patient faith. Under the
frozen ground the crocus and the hyacinth and the tulip hide in their
hearts the perfect forms of future flowers. And it is even so with
you: your leaf buds of the future are frozen, but not killed; the soil
of your heart has many flowers under it cold and still now, but they
will yet come up and bloom.
The dear old book of comfort tells of no present healing for sorrow.
No chastening for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous, but
afterwards it yieldeth peaceable fruits of righteousness. We, as
individuals, as a nation, need to have faith in that AFTERWARDS. It is
sure to come,--sure as spring and summer to follow winter.
There is a certain amount of suffering which must follow the rending
of the great cords of life, suffering which is natural and inevitable;
it cannot be argued down; it cannot be stilled; it can no more be
soothed by any effort of faith and reason than the pain of a fractured
limb, or the agony of fire on the living flesh. All that we can do is
to brace ourselves to bear it, calling on God, as the martyrs did in
the fire, and resigning ourselves to let it burn on. We must be
willing to suffer, since God so wills. There are just so many waves to
go over us, just so many arrows of stinging thought to be shot into
our soul, just so many faintings and sinkings and revivings only to
suffer again, belonging to and inherent in our portion of sorrow; and
there is a work of healing that God has placed in the hands of Time
alone.
Time heals all things at last; yet it depends much on us in our
suffering, whether time shall send us forth healed, indeed, but maimed
and crippled and callous, or whether, looking to the great Physician
of sorrows, and co-working with him, we come forth stronger and fairer
even for our wounds.
We call ourselves a Christian people, and the peculiarity of
Christianity is that it is a worship and doctrine of sorrow. The five
wounds of Jesus, the instruments of the passion, the cross, the
sepulchre,--these are its emblems and watchwords. In thousands of
churches, amid gold and gems and altars fragrant with perfume, are
seen the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the cup of vinegar
mingled with gall, the sponge that could not slake that burning
death-thirst; and in a voice choked with anguish the Church in many
lands and divers tongues prays from age to age, "By thine agony and
bloody sweat, by thy cross and passion, by thy precious death and
burial!"--mighty words of comfort, whose meaning reveals itself only
to souls fainting in the cold death-sweat of mortal anguish! They tell
all Christians that by uttermost distress alone was the Captain of
their salvation made perfect as a Saviour.
Sorrow brings us into the true unity of the Church,--that unity which
underlies all external creeds, and unites all hearts that have
suffered deeply enough to know that when sorrow is at its utmost there
is but one kind of sorrow, and but one remedy. What matter, _in
extremis_, whether we be called Romanist, or Protestant, or Greek, or
Calvinist?
We suffer, and Christ suffered; we die, and Christ died; he conquered
suffering and death, he rose and lives and reigns,--and we shall
conquer, rise, live, and reign. The hours on the cross were long, the
thirst was bitter, the darkness and horror real,--_but they ended_.
After the wail, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" came the calm,
"It is finished;" pledge to us all that our "It is finished" shall
come also.
Christ arose, fresh, joyous, no more to die; and it is written that,
when the disciples were gathered together in fear and sorrow, he stood
in the midst of them, and showed unto them his hands and his side; and
then were they glad. Already had the healed wounds of Jesus become
pledges of consolation to innumerable thousands; and those who, like
Christ, have suffered the weary struggles, the dim horrors of the
cross,--who have lain, like him, cold and chilled in the hopeless
sepulchre,--if his spirit wakes them to life, shall come forth with
healing power for others who have suffered and are suffering.
Count the good and beautiful ministrations that have been wrought in
this world of need and labor, and how many of them have been wrought
by hands wounded and scarred, by hearts that had scarcely ceased to
bleed!
How many priests of consolation is God now ordaining by the fiery
imposition of sorrow! how many Sisters of the Bleeding Heart,
Daughters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, are receiving their first
vocation in tears and blood!
The report of every battle strikes into some home; and heads fall low,
and hearts are shattered, and only God sees the joy that is set before
them, and that shall come out of their sorrow. He sees our morning at
the same moment that He sees our night,--sees us comforted, healed,
risen to a higher life, at the same moment that He sees us crushed and
broken in the dust; and so, though tenderer than we, He bears our
great sorrows for the joy that is set before us.
After the Napoleonic wars had desolated Europe, the country was, like
all countries after war, full of shattered households, of widows and
orphans and homeless wanderers. A nobleman of Silesia, the Baron von
Kottwitz, who had lost his wife and all his family in the reverses and
sorrows of the times, found himself alone in the world, which looked
more dreary and miserable through the multiplying lenses of his own
tears. But he was one of those whose heart had been quickened in its
death anguish by the resurrection voice of Christ; and he came forth
to life and comfort. He bravely resolved to do all that one man could
to lessen the great sum of misery. He sold his estates in Silesia,
bought in Berlin a large building that had been used as barracks for
the soldiers, and, fitting it up in plain, commodious apartments,
formed there a great family-establishment, into which he received the
wrecks and fragments of families that had been broken up by the
war,--orphan children, widowed and helpless women, decrepit old
people, disabled soldiers. These he made his family, and constituted
himself their father and chief. He abode with them, and cared for them
as a parent. He had schools for the children; the more advanced he put
to trades and employments; he set up a hospital for the sick; and for
all he had the priestly ministrations of his own Christ-like heart.
The celebrated Professor Tholuck, one of the most learned men of
modern Germany, was an early protege of the old Baron's, who,
discerning his talents, put him in the way of a liberal education. In
his earlier years, like many others of the young who play with life,
ignorant of its needs, Tholuck piqued himself on a lordly skepticism
with regard to the commonly received Christianity, and even wrote an
essay to prove the superiority of the Mohammedan to the Christian
religion. In speaking of his conversion, he says,--"What moved me was
no argument, nor any spoken reproof, but simply that divine image of
the old Baron walking before my soul. That life was an argument always
present to me, and which I never could answer; and so I became a
Christian." In the life of this man we see the victory over sorrow.
How many with means like his, when desolated by like bereavements,
have lain coldly and idly gazing on the miseries of life, and weaving
around themselves icy tissues of doubt and despair,--doubting the
being of a God, doubting the reality of a Providence, doubting the
divine love, embittered and rebellious against the power which they
could not resist, yet to which they would not submit! In such a chill
heart-freeze lies the danger of sorrow. And it is a mortal danger. It
is a torpor that must be resisted, as the man in the whirling snows
must bestir himself, or he will perish. The apathy of melancholy must
be broken by an effort of religion and duty. The stagnant blood must
be made to flow by active work, and the cold hand warmed by clasping
the hands outstretched towards it in sympathy or supplication. One
orphan child taken in, to be fed, clothed, and nurtured, may save a
heart from freezing to death: and God knows this war is making but too
many orphans!
It is easy to subscribe to an orphan asylum, and go on in one's
despair and loneliness. Such ministries may do good to the children
who are thereby saved from the street, but they impart little warmth
and comfort to the giver. One destitute child housed, taught, cared
for, and tended personally, will bring more solace to a suffering
heart than a dozen maintained in an asylum. Not that the child will
probably prove an angel, or even an uncommonly interesting mortal. It
is a prosaic work, this bringing-up of children, and there can be
little rose-water in it. The child may not appreciate what is done for
him, may not be particularly grateful, may have disagreeable faults,
and continue to have them after much pains on your part to eradicate
them,--and yet it is a fact, that to redeem one human being from
destitution and ruin, even in some homely every-day course of
ministrations, is one of the best possible tonics and alteratives to a
sick and wounded spirit.
But this is not the only avenue to beneficence which the war opens. We
need but name the service of hospitals, the care and education of the
freedmen,--for these are charities that have long been before the eyes
of the community, and have employed thousands of busy hands: thousands
of sick and dying beds to tend, a race to be educated, civilized, and
Christianized, surely were work enough for one age; and yet this is
not all. War shatters everything, and it is hard to say what in
society will not need rebuilding and binding up and strengthening
anew. Not the least of the evils of war are the vices which a great
army engenders wherever it moves,--vices peculiar to military life, as
others are peculiar to peace. The poor soldier perils for us not
merely his body, but his soul. He leads a life of harassing and
exhausting toil and privation, of violent strain on the nervous
energies, alternating with sudden collapse, creating a craving for
stimulants, and endangering the formation of fatal habits. What furies
and harpies are those that follow the army, and that seek out the
soldier in his tent, far from home, mother, wife and sister, tired,
disheartened, and tempt him to forget his troubles in a momentary
exhilaration, that burns only to chill and to destroy! Evil angels are
always active and indefatigable, and there must be good angels
enlisted to face them; and here is employment for the slack hand of
grief. Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in this war, who have
seemed at once to open wide their hearts, and to become mothers to
every brave soldier in the field. They have lived only to work,--and
in place of one lost, their sons have been counted by thousands.
And not least of all the fields for exertion and Christian charity
opened by this war is that presented by womanhood. The war is
abstracting from the community its protecting and sheltering elements,
and leaving the helpless and dependent in vast disproportion. For
years to come, the average of lone women will be largely increased;
and the demand, always great, for some means by which they may provide
for themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will become more
urgent and imperative.
Will any one sit pining away in inert grief, when two streets off are
the midnight dance-houses, where girls of twelve, thirteen, and
fourteen are being lured into the way of swift destruction? How many
of these are daughters of soldiers who have given their hearts' blood
for us and our liberties!
Two noble women of the Society of Friends have lately been taking the
gauge of suffering and misery in our land, visiting the hospitals at
every accessible point, pausing in our great cities, and going in
their purity to those midnight orgies where mere children are being
trained for a life of vice and infamy. They have talked with these
poor bewildered souls, entangled in toils as terrible and inexorable
as those of the slave-market, and many of whom are frightened and
distressed at the life they are beginning to lead, and earnestly
looking for the means of escape. In the judgment of these holy women,
at least one third of those with whom they have talked are children so
recently entrapped, and so capable of reformation, that there would be
the greatest hope in efforts for their salvation. While such things
are to be done in our land, is there any reason why any one should die
of grief? One soul redeemed will do more to lift the burden of sorrow
than all the blandishments and diversions of art, all the alleviations
of luxury, all the sympathy of friends.
In the Roman Catholic Church there is an order of women called the
Sisters of the Good Shepherd, who have renounced the world to devote
themselves, their talents and property, entirely to the work of
seeking out and saving the fallen of their own sex; and the wonders
worked by their self-denying love on the hearts and lives of even the
most depraved are credible only to those who know that the Good
Shepherd himself ever lives and works with such spirits engaged in
such a work. A similar order of women exists in New York, under the
direction of the Episcopal Church, in connection with St. Luke's
Hospital; and another in England, who tend the "House of Mercy" of
Clewer.
Such benevolent associations offer objects of interest to that class
which most needs something to fill the void made by bereavement. The
wounds of grief are less apt to find a cure in that rank of life where
the sufferer has wealth and leisure. The _poor_ widow, whoso husband
was her all, _must_ break the paralysis of grief. The hard necessities
of life are her physicians; they send her out to unwelcome, yet
friendly toil, which, hard as it seems, has yet its healing power. But
the sufferer surrounded by the appliances of wealth and luxury may
long indulge the baleful apathy, and remain in the damp shadows of the
valley of death till strength and health are irrecoverably lost. How
Christ-like is the thought of a woman, graceful, elegant, cultivated,
refined, whose voice has been trained to melody, whose fingers can
make sweet harmony with every touch, whose pencil and whose needle can
awake the beautiful creations of art, devoting all these powers to the
work of charming back to the sheepfold those wandering and bewildered
lambs whom the Good Shepherd still calls his own! Jenny Lind once,
when she sang at a concert for destitute children, exclaimed in her
enthusiasm, "Is it not beautiful that I can sing so?" And so may not
every woman feel, when her graces and accomplishments draw the
wanderer, and charm away evil demons, and soothe the sore and sickened
spirit, and make the Christian fold more attractive than the dizzy
gardens of false pleasure?
In such associations, and others of kindred nature, how many of the
stricken and bereaved women of our country might find at once a home
and an object in life! Motherless hearts might be made glad in a
better and higher motherhood; and the stock of earthly life that
seemed cut off at the root, and dead past recovery, may be grafted
upon with a shoot from the tree of life which is in the Paradise of
God.
So the beginning of this eventful 1865, which finds us still treading
the wine-press of our great conflict, should bring with it a serene
and solemn hope, a joy such as those had with whom in the midst of the
fiery furnace there walked one like unto the Son of God.
The great affliction that has come upon our country is so evidently
the purifying chastening of a Father, rather than the avenging anger
of a Destroyer, that all hearts may submit themselves in a solemn and
holy calm still to bear the burning that shall make us clean from
dross and bring us forth to a higher national life. Never, in the
whole course of our history, have such teachings of the pure abstract
Right been so commended and forced upon us by Providence. Never have
public men been so constrained to humble themselves before God, and to
acknowledge that there is a Judge that ruleth in the earth. Verily his
inquisition for blood has been strict and awful; and for every
stricken household of the poor and lowly hundreds of households of the
oppressor have been scattered. The land where the family of the slave
was first annihilated, and the negro, with all the loves and hopes of
a man, was proclaimed to be a beast to be bred and sold in market with
the horse and the swine,--that land, with its fair name, Virginia, has
been made a desolation so signal, so wonderful, that the blindest
passer-by cannot but ask for what sin so awful a doom has been meted
out. The prophetic visions of Nat Turner, who saw the leaves drop
blood and the land darkened, have been fulfilled. The work of justice
which he predicted is being executed to the uttermost.
But when this strange work of judgment and justice is consummated,
when our country, through a thousand battles and ten thousands of
precious deaths, shall have come forth from this long agony, redeemed
and regenerated, then God himself shall return and dwell with us, and
the Lord God shall wipe away all tears from all faces, and the rebuke
of his people shall he utterly take away.