man. To him everything is important in the degree to which it moves him.
The telegraph wires and posts, the electricity speeding from clerk to
clerk, the clerks, the glad or sorrowful import of the message, and the
paper on which it is finally brought to him at home, are all equally
facts, all equally exist for man. A word or a thought can wound him as
acutely as a knife of steel. If he thinks he is loved, he will rise up
and glory to himself, although he be in a distant land and short of
necessary bread. Does he think he is not loved?--he may have the woman
at his beck, and there is not a joy for him in all the world. Indeed, if
we are to make any account of this figment of reason, the distinction
between material and immaterial, we shall conclude that the life of each
man as an individual is immaterial, although the continuation and
prospects of mankind as a race turn upon material conditions. The
physical business of each man's body is transacted for him; like a
sybarite, he has attentive valets in his own viscera; he breathes, he
sweats, he digests without an effort, or so much as a consenting
volition; for the most part he even eats, not with a wakeful
consciousness, but as it were between two thoughts. His life is centred
among other and more important considerations; touch him in his honour
or his love, creatures of the imagination which attach him to mankind or
to an individual man or woman; cross him in his piety which connects his
soul with heaven; and he turns from his food, he loathes his breath, and
with a magnanimous emotion cuts the knots of his existence and frees
himself at a blow from the web of pains and pleasures.
It follows that man is twofold at least; that he is not a rounded and
autonomous empire; but that in the same body with him there dwell other
powers, tributary but independent. If I now behold one walking in a
garden curiously coloured and illuminated by the sun, digesting his
food, with elaborate chemistry, breathing, circulating blood, directing
himself by the sight of his eyes, accommodating his body by a thousand
delicate balancings to the wind and the uneven surface of the path, and
all the time, perhaps, with his mind engaged about America, or the
dog-star, or the attributes of God--what am I to say, or how am I to
describe the thing I see? Is that truly a man, in the rigorous meaning
of the word? or is it not a man and something else? What, then, are we
to count the centre-bit and axle of a being so variously compounded? It
is a question much debated. Some read his history in a certain intricacy
of nerve and the success of successive digestions; others find him an
exiled piece of heaven blown upon and determined by the breath of God;
and both schools of theorists will scream like scalded children at a
word of doubt. Yet either of these views, however plausible, is beside
the question; either may be right; and I care not; I ask a more
particular answer, and to a more immediate point. What is the man? There
is Something that was before hunger and that remains behind after a
meal. It may or may not be engaged in any given act or passion, but when
it is, it changes, heightens, and sanctifies. Thus it is not engaged in
lust, where satisfaction ends the chapter; and it is engaged in love,
where no satisfaction can blunt the edge of the desire, and where age,
sickness, or alienation may deface what was desirable without
diminishing the sentiment. This something, which is the man, is a
permanence which abides through the vicissitudes of passion, now
overwhelmed and now triumphant, now unconscious of itself in the
immediate distress of appetite or pain, now rising unclouded above all.
So, to the man, his own central self fades and grows clear again amid
the tumult of the senses, like a revolving Pharos in the night. It is
forgotten; it is hid, it seems, for ever; and yet in the next calm hour
he shall behold himself once more, shining and unmoved among changes
and storm.
Mankind, in the sense of the creeping mass that is born and eats, that
generates and dies, is but the aggregate of the outer and lower sides of
man. This inner consciousness, this lantern alternately obscured and
shining, to and by which the individual exists and must order his
conduct, is something special to himself and not common to the race. His
joys delight, his sorrows wound him, according as _this_ is interested
or indifferent in the affair: according as they arise in an imperial war
or in a broil conducted by the tributary chieftains of the mind. He may
lose all, and _this_ not suffer; he may lose what is materially a
trifle, and _this_ leap in his bosom with a cruel pang. I do not speak
of it to hardened theorists: the living man knows keenly what it is I
mean.
"Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better and more
divine than the things which cause the various effects, and, as it were,
pull thee by the strings. What is that now in thy mind? is it fear, or
suspicion, or desire, or anything of that kind?" Thus far Marcus
Aurelius, in one of the most notable passages in any book. Here is a
question worthy to be answered. What is in thy mind? What is the
utterance of your inmost self when, in a quiet hour, it can be heard
intelligibly? It is something beyond the compass of your thinking,
inasmuch as it is yourself; but is it not of a higher spirit than you
had dreamed betweenwhiles, and erect above all base considerations? This
soul seems hardly touched with our infirmities; we can find in it
certainly no fear, suspicion, or desire; we are only conscious--and that
as though we read it in the eyes of some one else--of a great and
unqualified readiness. A readiness to what? to pass over and look beyond
the objects of desire and fear, for something else. And this something
else? this something which is apart from desire and fear, to which all
the kingdoms of the world and the immediate death of the body are alike
indifferent and beside the point, and which yet regards conduct--by
what name are we to call it? It may be the love of God; or it may be an
inherited (and certainly well concealed) instinct to preserve self and
propagate the race; I am not, for the moment, averse to either theory;
but it will save time to call it righteousness. By so doing I intend no
subterfuge to beg a question; I am indeed ready, and more than willing,
to accept the rigid consequence, and lay aside, as far as the treachery
of the reason will permit, all former meanings attached to the word
righteousness. What is right is that for which a man's central self is
ever ready to sacrifice immediate or distant interests; what is wrong is
what the central self discards or rejects as incompatible with the fixed
design of righteousness.
To make this admission is to lay aside all hope of definition. That
which is right upon this theory is intimately dictated to each man by
himself, but can never be rigorously set forth in language, and never,
above all, imposed upon another. The conscience has, then, a vision like
that of the eyes, which is incommunicable, and for the most part
illuminates none but its possessor. When many people perceive the same
or any cognate facts, they agree upon a word as symbol; and hence we
have such words as _tree_, _star_, _love_, _honour_, or _death_; hence
also we have this word _right_, which, like the others, we all
understand, most of us understand differently, and none can express
succinctly otherwise. Yet even on the straitest view, we can make some
steps towards comprehension of our own superior thoughts. For it is an
incredible and most bewildering fact that a man, through life, is on
variable terms with himself; he is aware of tiffs and reconciliations;
the intimacy is at times almost suspended, at times it is renewed again
with joy. As we said before, his inner self or soul appears to him by
successive revelations, and is frequently obscured. It is from a study
of these alternations that we can alone hope to discover, even dimly,
what seems right and what seems wrong to this veiled prophet of ourself.
All that is in the man in the larger sense, what we call impression as
well as what we call intuition, so far as my argument looks, we must
accept. It is not wrong to desire food, or exercise, or beautiful
surroundings, or the love of sex, or interest which is the food of the
mind. All these are craved; all these should be craved; to none of these
in itself does the soul demur; where there comes an undeniable want, we
recognise a demand of nature. Yet we know that these natural demands may
be superseded, for the demands which are common to mankind make but a
shadowy consideration in comparison to the demands of the individual
soul. Food is almost the first pre-requisite; and yet a high character
will go without food to the ruin and death of the body rather than gain
it in a manner which the spirit disavows. Pascal laid aside mathematics;
Origen doctored his body with a knife; every day some one is thus
mortifying his dearest interests and desires, and, in Christ's words,
entering maim into the Kingdom of Heaven. This is to supersede the
lesser and less harmonious affections by renunciation; and though by
this ascetic path we may get to heaven, we cannot get thither a whole
and perfect man. But there is another way, to supersede them by
reconciliation, in which the soul and all the faculties and senses
pursue a common route and share in one desire. Thus, man is tormented by
a very imperious physical desire; it spoils his rest, it is not to be
denied; the doctors will tell you, not I, how it is a physical need,
like the want of food or slumber. In the satisfaction of this desire, as
it first appears, the soul sparingly takes part; nay, it oft unsparingly
regrets and disapproves the satisfaction. But let the man learn to love
a woman as far as he is capable of love; and for this random affection
of the body there is substituted a steady determination, a consent of
all his powers and faculties, which supersedes, adopts, and commands the
other. The desire survives, strengthened, perhaps, but taught obedience,
and changed in scope and character. Life is no longer a tale of
betrayals and regrets; for the man now lives as a whole; his
consciousness now moves on uninterrupted like a river; through all the
extremes and ups and downs of passion, he remains approvingly conscious
of himself.
Now to me this seems a type of that rightness which the soul demands. It
demands that we shall not live alternately with our opposing tendencies
in continual see-saw of passion and disgust, but seek some path on which
the tendencies shall no longer oppose, but serve each other to a common
end. It demands that we shall not pursue broken ends, but great and
comprehensive purposes, in which soul and body may unite like notes in a
harmonious chord. That were indeed a way of peace and pleasure, that
were indeed a heaven upon earth. It does not demand, however, or, to
speak in measure, it does not demand of me, that I should starve my
appetites for no purpose under heaven but as a purpose in itself; or, in
a weak despair, pluck out the eye that I have not yet learned to guide
and enjoy with wisdom. The soul demands unity of purpose, not the
dismemberment of man; it seeks to roll up all his strength and
sweetness, all his passion and wisdom, into one, and make of him a
perfect man exulting in perfection. To conclude ascetically is to give
up, and not to solve, the problem. The ascetic and the creeping hog,
although they are at different poles, have equally failed in life. The
one has sacrificed his crew; the other brings back his seamen in a
cock-boat, and has lost the ship. I believe there are not many
sea-captains who would plume themselves on either result as a success.
But if it is righteousness thus to fuse together our divisive impulses
and march with one mind through life, there is plainly one thing more
unrighteous than all others, and one declension which is irretrievable
and draws on the rest. And this is to lose consciousness of oneself. In
the best of times, it is but by flashes, when our whole nature is clear,
strong and conscious, and events conspire to leave us free, that we
enjoy communion with our soul. At the worst, we are so fallen and
passive that we may say shortly we have none. An arctic torpor seizes
upon men. Although built of nerves, and set adrift in a stimulating
world, they develop a tendency to go bodily to sleep; consciousness
becomes engrossed among the reflex and mechanical parts of life; and
soon loses both the will and power to look higher considerations in the
face. This is ruin; this is the last failure in life; this is temporal
damnation; damnation on the spot and without the form of judgment. "What
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and _lose himself_?"
It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its
fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and
religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but
the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till
we die. If, as teachers, we are to say anything to the purpose, we must
say what will remind the pupil of his soul; we must speak that soul's
dialect; we must talk of life and conduct as his soul would have him
think of them. If, from some conformity between us and the pupil, or
perhaps among all men, we do in truth speak in such a dialect and
express such views, beyond question we shall touch in him a spring;
beyond question he will recognise the dialect as one that he himself has
spoken in his better hours; beyond question he will cry, "I had
forgotten, but now I remember; I too have eyes, and I had forgot to use
them! I too have a soul of my own, arrogantly upright, and to that I
will listen and conform." In short, say to him anything that he has once
thought, or been upon the point of thinking, or show him any view of
life that he has once clearly seen, or been upon the point of clearly
seeing; and you have done your part and may leave him to complete the
education for himself.
Now the view taught at the present time seems to me to want greatness;
and the dialect in which alone it can be intelligibly uttered is not the
dialect of my soul. It is a sort of postponement of life; nothing quite
is, but something different is to be; we are to keep our eyes upon the
indirect from the cradle to the grave. We are to regulate our conduct
not by desire, but by a politic eye upon the future; and to value acts
as they will bring us money or good opinion; as they will bring us, in
one word, _profit_. We must be what is called respectable, and offend no
one by our carriage; it will not do to make oneself conspicuous--who
knows? even in virtue? says the Christian parent! And we must be what is
called prudent and make money; not only because it is pleasant to have
money, but because that also is a part of respectability, and we cannot
hope to be received in society without decent possessions. Received in
society! as if that were the kingdom of heaven! There is dear Mr.
So-and-so;--look at him!--so much respected--so much looked up to--quite
the Christian merchant! And we must cut our conduct as strictly as
possible after the pattern of Mr. So-and-so; and lay our whole lives to
make money and be strictly decent. Besides these holy injunctions, which
form by far the greater part of a youth's training in our Christian
homes, there are at least two other doctrines. We are to live just now
as well as we can, but scrape at last into heaven, where we shall be
good. We are to worry through the week in a lay, disreputable way, but,
to make matters square, live a different life on Sunday.
The train of thought we have been following gives us a key to all these
positions, without stepping aside to justify them on their own ground.
It is because we have been disgusted fifty times with physical squalls
and fifty times torn between conflicting impulses, that we teach people
this indirect and tactical procedure in life, and to judge by remote
consequences instead of the immediate face of things. The very desire to
act as our own souls would have us, coupled with a pathetic disbelief in
ourselves, moves us to follow the example of others; perhaps, who knows?
they may be on the right track; and the more our patterns are in number,
the better seems the chance; until, if we be acting in concert with a
whole civilised nation, there are surely a majority of chances that we
must be acting right. And again, how true it is that we can never behave
as we wish in this tormented sphere, and can only aspire to different
and more favourable circumstances, in order to stand out and be
ourselves wholly and rightly! And yet once more, if in the hurry and
pressure of affairs and passions you tend to nod and become drowsy, here
are twenty-four hours of Sunday set apart for you to hold counsel with
your soul and look around you on the possibilities of life.
This is not, of course, all that is to be, or even should be, said for
these doctrines. Only, in the course of this chapter, the reader and I
have agreed upon a few catchwords, and been looking at morals on a
certain system; it was a pity to lose an opportunity of testing the
catchwords, and seeing whether, by this system as well as by others,
current doctrines could show any probable justification. If the
doctrines had come too badly out of the trial, it would have condemned
the system. Our sight of the world is very narrow; the mind but a
pedestrian instrument; there's nothing new under the sun, as Solomon
says, except the man himself; and though that changes the aspect of
everything else, yet he must see the same things as other people, only
from a different side.
And now, having admitted so much, let us turn to criticism.
If you teach a man to keep his eyes upon what others think of him,
unthinkingly to lead the life and hold the principles of the majority of
his contemporaries, you must discredit in his eyes the one authoritative
voice of his own soul. He may be a docile citizen; he will never be a
man. It is ours, on the other hand, to disregard this babble and
chattering of other men better and worse than we are, and to walk
straight before us by what light we have. They may be right; but so,
before heaven, are we. They may know; but we know also, and by that
knowledge we must stand or fall. There is such a thing as loyalty to a
man's own better self; and from those who have not that, God help me,
how am I to look for loyalty to others? The most dull, the most
imbecile, at a certain moment turn round, at a certain point will hear
no further argument, but stand unflinching by their own dumb, irrational
sense of right. It is not only by steel or fire, but through contempt
and blame, that the martyr fulfils the calling of his dear soul. Be glad
if you are not tried by such extremities. But although all the world
ranged themselves in one line to tell you "This is wrong," be you your
own faithful vassal and the ambassador of God--throw down the glove and
answer "This is right." Do you think you are only declaring yourself?
Perhaps in some dim way, like a child who delivers a message not fully
understood, you are opening wider the straits of prejudice and preparing
mankind for some truer and more spiritual grasp of truth; perhaps, as
you stand forth for your own judgment, you are covering a thousand weak
ones with your body; perhaps, by this declaration alone, you have
avoided the guilt of false witness against humanity and the little ones
unborn. It is good, I believe, to be respectable, but much nobler to
respect oneself and utter the voice of God. God, if there be any God,
speaks daily in a new language by the tongues of men; the thoughts and
habits of each fresh generation and each new-coined spirit throw another
light upon the universe and contain another commentary on the printed
Bibles; every scruple, every true dissent, every glimpse of something
new, is a letter of God's alphabet; and though there is a grave
responsibility for all who speak, is there none for those who
unrighteously keep silence and conform? Is not that also to conceal and
cloak God's counsel? And how should we regard the man of science who
suppressed all facts that would not tally with the orthodoxy of the
hour?
Wrong? You are as surely wrong as the sun rose this morning round the
revolving shoulder of the world. Not truth, but truthfulness, is the
good of your endeavour. For when will men receive that first part and
prerequisite of truth, that, by the order of things, by the greatness of
the universe, by the darkness and partiality of man's experience, by the
inviolate secrecy of God, kept close in His most open revelations, every
man is, and to the end of the ages must be, wrong? Wrong to the
universe; wrong to mankind; wrong to God. And yet in another sense, and
that plainer and nearer, every man of men, who wishes truly, must be
right. He is right to himself, and in the measure of his sagacity and
candour. That let him do in all sincerity and zeal, not sparing a
thought for contrary opinions; that, for what it is worth, let him
proclaim. Be not afraid; although he be wrong, so also is the dead,
stuffed Dagon he insults. For the voice of God, whatever it is, is not
that stammering, inept tradition which the people holds. These truths
survive in travesty, swamped in a world of spiritual darkness and
confusion; and what a few comprehend and faithfully hold, the many, in
their dead jargon, repeat, degrade, and misinterpret.
So far of Respectability: what the Covenanters used to call "rank
conformity": the deadliest gag and wet blanket that can be laid on men.
And now of Profit. And this doctrine is perhaps the more redoubtable,
because it harms all sorts of men; not only the heroic and self-reliant,
but the obedient, cowlike squadrons. A man, by this doctrine, looks to
consequences at the second, or third, or fiftieth turn. He chooses his
end, and for that, with wily turns and through a great sea of tedium,
steers this mortal bark. There may be political wisdom in such a view;
but I am persuaded there can spring no great moral zeal. To look thus
obliquely upon life is the very recipe for moral slumber. Our intention
and endeavour should be directed, not on some vague end of money or
applause, which shall come to us by a ricochet in a month or a year, or
twenty years, but on the act itself; not on the approval of others, but
on the rightness of that act. At every instant, at every step in life,
the point has to be decided, our soul has to be saved, heaven has to be
gained or lost. At every step our spirits must applaud, at every step we
must set down the foot and sound the trumpet. "This have I done," we
must say; "right or wrong, this have I done, in unfeigned honour of
intention, as to myself and God." The profit of every act should be
this, that it was right for us to do it. Any other profit than that, if
it involved a kingdom or the woman I love, ought, if I were God's
upright soldier, to leave me untempted.
It is the mark of what we call a righteous decision, that it is made
directly and for its own sake. The whole man, mind and body, having come
to an agreement, tyrannically dictates conduct. There are two
dispositions eternally opposed: that in which we recognise that one
thing is wrong and another right, and that in which, not seeing any
clear distinction, we fall back on the consideration of consequences.
The truth is, by the scope of our present teaching, nothing is thought
very wrong and nothing very right, except a few actions which have the
disadvantage of being disrespectable when found out; the more serious
part of men inclining to think all things _rather wrong_, the more
jovial to suppose them _right enough for practical purposes_. I will
engage my head, they do not find that view in their own hearts; they
have taken it up in a dark despair; they are but troubled sleepers
talking in their sleep. The soul, or my soul at least, thinks very
distinctly upon many points of right and wrong, and often differs flatly
with what is held out as the thought of corporate humanity in the code
of society or the code of law. Am I to suppose myself a monster? I have
only to read books, the Christian Gospels for example, to think myself a
monster no longer; and instead I think the mass of people are merely
speaking in their sleep.
It is a commonplace, enshrined, if I mistake not, even in school
copy-books, that honour is to be sought and not fame. I ask no other
admission; we are to seek honour, upright walking with our own
conscience every hour of the day, and not fame, the consequence, the
far-off reverberation of our footsteps. The walk, not the rumour of the
walk, is what concerns righteousness. Better disrespectable honour than
dishonourable fame. Better useless or seemingly hurtful honour, than
dishonour ruling empires and filling the mouths of thousands. For the
man must walk by what he sees, and leave the issue with God who made him
and taught him by the fortune of his life. You would not dishonour
yourself for money; which is at least tangible; would you do it, then,
for a doubtful forecast in politics, or another person's theory in
morals?
So intricate is the scheme of our affairs, that no man can calculate the
bearing of his own behaviour even on those immediately around him, how
much less upon the world at large or on succeeding generations! To walk
by external prudence and the rule of consequences would require, not a
man, but God. All that we know to guide us in this changing labyrinth is
our soul with its fixed design of righteousness, and a few old precepts
which commend themselves to that. The precepts are vague when we
endeavour to apply them; consequences are more entangled than a wisp of
string, and their confusion is unrestingly in change; we must hold to
what we know and walk by it. We must walk by faith, indeed, and not by
knowledge.
You do not love another because he is wealthy or wise or eminently
respectable: you love him because you love him; that is love, and any
other only a derision and grimace. It should be the same with all our
actions. If we were to conceive a perfect man, it should be one who was
never torn between conflicting impulses, but who, on the absolute
consent of all his parts and faculties, submitted in every action of his
life to a self-dictation as absolute and unreasoned as that which bids
him love one woman and be true to her till death. But we should not
conceive him as sagacious, ascetical, playing off his appetites against
each other, turning the wing of public respectable immorality instead
of riding it directly down, or advancing toward his end through a
thousand sinister compromises and considerations. The one man might be
wily, might be adroit, might be wise, might be respectable, might be
gloriously useful; it is the other man who would be good.
The soul asks honour and not fame; to be upright, not to be successful;
to be good, not prosperous; to be essentially, not outwardly,
respectable. Does your soul ask profit? Does it ask money? Does it ask
the approval of the indifferent herd? I believe not. For my own part, I
want but little money, I hope; and I do not want to be decent at all,
but to be good.
CHAPTER IV
We have spoken of that supreme self-dictation which keeps varying from
hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and
circumstances. Now, for us, that is ultimate. It may be founded on some
reasonable process, but it is not a process which we can follow or
comprehend. And moreover the dictation is not continuous, or not
continuous except in very lively and well-living natures; and
betweenwhiles we must brush along without it. Practice is a more
intricate and desperate business than the toughest theorising; life is
an affair of cavalry, where rapid judgment and prompt action are alone
possible and right. As a matter of fact, there is no one so upright but
he is influenced by the world's chatter; and no one so headlong but he
requires to consider consequences and to keep an eye on profit. For the
soul adopts all affections and appetites without exception, and cares
only to combine them for some common purpose which shall interest all.
Now respect for the opinion of others, the study of consequences and the
desire of power and comfort, are all undeniably factors in the nature of
man; and the more undeniably since we find that, in our current
doctrines, they have swallowed up the others and are thought to conclude
in themselves all the worthy parts of man. These, then, must also be
suffered to affect conduct in the practical domain, much or little
according as they are forcibly or feebly present to the mind of each.
Now a man's view of the universe is mostly a view of the civilised
society in which he lives. Other men and women are so much more grossly
and so much more intimately palpable to his perceptions, that they stand
between him and all the rest; they are larger to his eye than the sun,
he hears them more plainly than thunder; with them, by them, and for
them, he must live and die. And hence the laws that affect his
intercourse with his fellow-men, although merely customary and the
creatures of a generation, are more clearly and continually before his
mind than those which bind him into the eternal system of things,
support him in his upright progress on this whirling ball, or keep up
the fire of his bodily life. And hence it is that money stands in the
first rank of considerations and so powerfully affects the choice. For
our society is built with money for mortar; money is present in every
joint of circumstance; it might be named the social atmosphere, since,
in society, it is by that alone men continue to live, and only through
that or chance that they can reach or affect one another. Money gives us
food, shelter, and privacy; it permits us to be clean in person, opens
for us the doors of the theatre, gains us books for study or pleasure,
enables us to help the distresses of others, and puts us above necessity
so that we can choose the best in life. If we love, it enables us to
meet and live with the loved one, or even to prolong her health and
life; if we have scruples, it gives us an opportunity to be honest; if
we have any bright designs, here is what will smooth the way to their
accomplishment. Penury is the worst slavery, and will soon lead to
death.
But money is only a means; it presupposes a man to use it. The rich can
go where he pleases, but perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a
library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither patience to
read nor intelligence to see. The table may be loaded and the appetite
wanting; the purse may be full and the heart empty. He may have gained
the world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around him, in a
great house and spacious and beautiful demesne, he may live as blank a
life as any tattered ditcher. Without an appetite, without an
aspiration, void of appreciation, bankrupt of desire and hope, there, in
his great house, let him sit and look upon his fingers. It is perhaps a
more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be
born a millionaire. Although neither is to be despised, it is always
better policy to learn an interest than to make a thousand pounds; for
the money will soon be spent, or perhaps you may feel no joy in spending
it; but the interest remains imperishable and ever new. To become a
botanist, a geologist, a social philosopher, an antiquary, or an artist,
is to enlarge one's possessions in the universe by an incalculably
higher degree, and by a far surer sort of property, than to purchase a
farm of many acres. You had perhaps two thousand a year before the
transaction; perhaps you have two thousand five hundred after it. That
represents your gain in the one case. But in the other, you have thrown
down a barrier which concealed significance and beauty. The blind man
has learned to see. The prisoner has opened up a window in his cell and
beholds enchanting prospects; he will never again be a prisoner as he
was; he can watch clouds and changing seasons, ships on the river,
travellers on the road, and the stars at night; happy prisoner! his eyes
have broken gaol! And again he who has learned to love an art or science
has wisely laid up riches against the day of riches; if prosperity come,
he will not enter poor into his inheritance; he will not slumber and
forget himself in the lap of money, or spend his hours in counting idle
treasures, but be up and briskly doing; he will have the true alchemic
touch, which is not that of Midas, but which transmutes dead money into
living delight and satisfaction. _Etre et pas avoir_--to be, not to
possess--that is the problem of life. To be wealthy, a rich nature is
the first requisite and money but the second. To be of a quick and
healthy blood, to share in all honourable curiosities, to be rich in
admiration and free from envy, to rejoice greatly in the good of others,
to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear
possession in absence or unkindness--these are the gifts of fortune
which money cannot buy and without which money can buy nothing. For what
can a man possess, or what can he enjoy, except himself? If he enlarge
his nature, it is then that he enlarges his estates. If his nature be
happy and valiant, he will enjoy the universe as if it were his park and
orchard.
But money is not only to be spent; it has also to be earned. It is not
merely a convenience or a necessary in social life; but it is the coin
in which mankind pays his wages to the individual man. And from this
side, the question of money has a very different scope and application.
For no man can be honest who does not work. Service for service. If the
farmer buys corn, and the labourer ploughs and reaps, and the baker
sweats in his hot bakery, plainly you who eat must do something in your
turn. It is not enough to take off your hat, or to thank God upon your
knees for the admirable constitution of society and your own convenient
situation in its upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it enough
to buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the
point of the inquiry; and you must first have _bought the sixpence_.
Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of spirit
desires certainty in a thing of such a nature; he must see to it that
there is some reciprocity between him and mankind; that he pays his
expenditure in service; that he has not a lion's share in profit and a
drone's in labour; and is not a sleeping partner and mere costly incubus
on the great mercantile concern of mankind.
Services differ so widely with different gifts, and some are so
inappreciable to external tests, that this is not only a matter for the
private conscience, but one which even there must be leniently and
trustfully considered. For remember how many serve mankind who do no
more than meditate; and how many are precious to their friends for no
more than a sweet and joyous temper. To perform the function of a man
of letters it is not necessary to write; nay, it is perhaps better to be
a living book. So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by
others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is
useless while he has a friend. The true services of life are inestimable
in money, and are never paid. Kind words and caresses, high and wise
thoughts, humane designs, tender behaviour to the weak and suffering,
and all the charities of man's existence, are neither bought nor sold.
Yet the dearest and readiest, if not the most just, criterion of a man's
services, is the wage that mankind pays him, or, briefly, what he earns.
There at least there can be no ambiguity. St. Paul is fully and freely
entitled to his earnings as a tentmaker, and Socrates fully and freely
entitled to his earnings as a sculptor, although the true business of
each was not only something different, but something which remained
unpaid. A man cannot forget that he is not superintended, and serves
mankind on parole. He would like, when challenged by his own conscience,
to reply: "I have done so much work, and no less, with my own hands and
brain, and taken so much profit, and no more, for my own personal
delight." And though St. Paul, if he had possessed a private fortune,
would probably have scorned to waste his time in making tents, yet of
all sacrifices to public opinion none can be more easily pardoned than
that by which a man, already spiritually useful to the world, should
restrict the field of his chief usefulness to perform services more
apparent, and possess a livelihood that neither stupidity nor malice
could call in question. Like all sacrifices to public opinion and mere
external decency, this would certainly be wrong; for the soul should
rest contented with its own approval and indissuadably pursue its own
calling. Yet, so grave and delicate is the question, that a man may well
hesitate before he decides it for himself; he may well fear that he sets
too high a valuation on his own endeavours after good; he may well
condescend upon a humbler duty, where others than himself shall judge
the service and proportion the wage.
And yet it is to this very responsibility that the rich are born. They
can shuffle off the duty on no other; they are their own paymasters on
parole; and must pay themselves fair wages and no more. For I suppose
that in the course of ages, and through reform and civil war and
invasion, mankind was pursuing some other and more general design than
to set one or two Englishmen of the nineteenth century beyond the reach
of needs and duties. Society was scarce put together, and defended with
so much eloquence and blood, for the convenience of two or three
millionaires and a few hundred other persons of wealth and position. It
is plain that if mankind thus acted and suffered during all these
generations, they hoped some benefit, some ease, some well-being, for
themselves and their descendants; that if they supported law and order,
it was to secure fair-play for all; that if they denied themselves in
the present, they must have had some designs upon the future. Now a
great hereditary fortune is a miracle of man's wisdom and mankind's
forbearance; it has not only been amassed and handed down, it has been
suffered to be amassed and handed down; and surely in such a
consideration as this, its possessor should find only a new spur to
activity and honour, that with all this power of service he should not
prove unserviceable, and that this mass of treasure should return in
benefits upon the race. If he had twenty, or thirty, or a hundred
thousand at his banker's, or if all Yorkshire or all California were his
to manage or to sell, he would still be morally penniless, and have the
world to begin like Whittington, until he had found some way of serving
mankind. His wage is physically in his own hand; but, in honour, that
wage must still be earned. He is only steward on parole of what is
called his fortune. He must honourably perform his stewardship. He must
estimate his own services and allow himself a salary in proportion, for
that will be one among his functions. And while he will then be free to
spend that salary, great or little, on his own private pleasures, the
rest of his fortune he but holds and disposes under trust for mankind;
it is not his, because he has not earned it; it cannot be his, because
his services have already been paid; but year by year it is his to
distribute, whether to help individuals whose birthright and outfit have
been swallowed up in his, or to further public works and institutions.
At this rate, short of inspiration, it seems hardly possible to be both
rich and honest; and the millionaire is under a far more continuous
temptation to thieve than the labourer who gets his shilling daily for
despicable toils. Are you surprised? It is even so. And you repeat it
every Sunday in your churches. "It is easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." I
have heard this and similar texts ingeniously explained away and brushed
from the path of the aspiring Christian by the tender Greatheart of the
parish. One excellent clergyman told us that the "eye of a needle" meant
a low, Oriental postern through which camels could not pass till they
were unloaded--which is very likely just; and then went on, bravely
confounding the "kingdom of God" with heaven, the future paradise, to
show that of course no rich person could expect to carry his riches
beyond the grave--which, of course, he could not and never did. Various
greedy sinners of the congregation drank in the comfortable doctrine
with relief. It was worth the while having come to church that Sunday
morning! All was plain. The Bible, as usual, meant nothing in
particular; it was merely an obscure and figurative school-copybook; and
if a man were only respectable, he was a man after God's own heart.
Alas! I fear not. And though this matter of a man's services is one for
his own conscience, there are some cases in which it is difficult to
restrain the mind from judging. Thus I shall be very easily persuaded
that a man has earned his daily bread; and if he has but a friend or two
to whom his company is delightful at heart, I am more than persuaded at
once. But it will be very hard to persuade me that any one has earned an
income of a hundred thousand. What he is to his friends, he still would
be if he were made penniless to-morrow; for as to the courtiers of
luxury and power, I will neither consider them friends, nor indeed
consider them at all. What he does for mankind there are most likely
hundreds who would do the same, as effectually for the race and as
pleasurably to themselves, for the merest fraction of this monstrous
wage. Why it is paid, I am, therefore, unable to conceive, and as the
man pays it himself, out of funds in his detention, I have a certain
backwardness to think him honest.
At least, we have gained a very obvious point: that _what a man spends
upon himself he shall have earned by services to the race_. Thence flows
a principle for the outset of life, which is a little different from
that taught in the present day. I am addressing the middle and the upper
classes; those who have already been fostered and prepared for life at
some expense; those who have some choice before them, and can pick
professions; and above all, those who are what is called independent,
and need do nothing unless pushed by honour or ambition. In this
particular the poor are happy; among them, when a lad comes to his
strength, he must take the work that offers, and can take it with an
easy conscience. But in the richer classes the question is complicated
by the number of opportunities and a variety of considerations. Here,
then, this principle of ours comes in helpfully. The young man has to
seek, not a road to wealth, but an opportunity of service; not money,
but honest work. If he has some strong propensity, some calling of
nature, some overweening interest in any special field of industry,
inquiry, or art, he will do right to obey the impulse; and that for two
reasons: the first external, because there he will render the best
services; the second personal, because a demand of his own nature is to
him without appeal whenever it can be satisfied with the consent of his
other faculties and appetites. If he has no such elective taste, by the
very principle on which he chooses any pursuit at all he must choose the
most honest and serviceable, and not the most highly remunerated. We
have here an external problem, not from or to ourself, but flowing from
the constitution of society; and we have our own soul with its fixed
design of righteousness. All that can be done is to present the problem
in proper terms and leave it to the soul of the individual. Now the
problem to the poor is one of necessity: to earn wherewithal to live,
they must find remunerative labour. But the problem to the rich is one
of honour: having the wherewithal, they must find serviceable labour.
Each has to earn his daily bread: the one, because he has not yet got it
to eat; the other, who has already eaten it, because he has not yet
earned it.
Of course, what is true of bread is true of luxuries and comforts,
whether for the body or the mind. But the consideration of luxuries
leads us to a new aspect of the whole question, and to a second
proposition no less true, and maybe no less startling, than the last.
At the present day, we, of the easier classes, are in a state of surfeit
and disgrace after meat. Plethora has filled us with indifference; and
we are covered from head to foot with the callosities of habitual
opulence. Born into what is called a certain rank, we live, as the
saying is, up to our station. We squander without enjoyment, because our
fathers squandered. We eat of the best, not from delicacy, but from
brazen habit. We do not keenly enjoy or eagerly desire the presence of a
luxury; we are unaccustomed to its absence. And not only do we squander
money from habit, but still more pitifully waste it in ostentation. I
can think of no more melancholy disgrace for a creature who professes
either reason or pleasure for his guide, than to spend the smallest
fraction of his income upon that which he does not desire; and to keep a
carriage in which you do not wish to drive, or a butler of whom you are
afraid, is a pathetic kind of folly. Money, being a means of happiness,
should make both parties happy when it changes hands; rightly disposed,
it should be twice blessed in its employment; and buyer and seller
should alike have their twenty shillings' worth of profit out of every
pound. Benjamin Franklin went through life an altered man, because he
once paid too dearly for a penny whistle. My concern springs usually
from a deeper source, to wit, from having bought a whistle when I did
not want one. I find I regret this, or would regret it if I gave myself
the time, not only on personal but on moral and philanthropical
considerations. For, first, in a world where money is wanting to buy
books for eager students and food and medicine for pining children, and
where a large majority are starved in their most immediate desires, it
is surely base, stupid, and cruel to squander money when I am pushed by
no appetite and enjoy no return of genuine satisfaction. My philanthropy
is wide enough in scope to include myself; and when I have made myself
happy, I have at least one good argument that I have acted rightly; but
where that is not so, and I have bought and not enjoyed, my mouth is
closed, and I conceive that I have robbed the poor. And, second,
anything I buy or use which I do not sincerely want or cannot vividly
enjoy, disturbs the balance of supply and demand, and contributes to
remove industrious hands from the production of what is useful or
pleasurable and to keep them busy upon ropes of sand and things that are
a weariness to the flesh. That extravagance is truly sinful, and a very
silly sin to boot, in which we impoverish mankind and ourselves. It is
another question for each man's heart. He knows if he can enjoy what he
buys and uses; if he cannot, he is a dog in the manger; nay, if he
cannot, I contend he is a thief, for nothing really belongs to a man
which he cannot use. Proprietor is connected with propriety; and that
only is the man's which is proper to his wants and faculties.
A youth, in choosing a career, must not be alarmed by poverty. Want is
a sore thing, but poverty does not imply want. It remains to be seen
whether with half his present income, or a third, he cannot, in the most
generous sense, live as fully as at present. He is a fool who objects to
luxuries; but he is also a fool who does not protest against the waste
of luxuries on those who do not desire and cannot enjoy them. It remains
to be seen, by each man who would live a true life to himself and not a
merely specious life to society, how many luxuries he truly wants and to
how many he merely submits as to a social propriety; and all these last
he will immediately forswear. Let him do this, and he will be surprised
to find how little money it requires to keep him in complete contentment
and activity of mind and senses. Life at any level among the easy
classes is conceived upon a principle of rivalry, where each man and
each household must ape the tastes and emulate the display of others.
One is delicate in eating, another in wine, a third in furniture or
works of art or dress; and I, who care nothing for any of these
refinements, who am perhaps a plain athletic creature and love exercise,
beef, beer, flannel shirts and a camp bed, am yet called upon to
assimilate all these other tastes and make these foreign occasions of
expenditure my own. It may be cynical: I am sure I shall be told it is
selfish; but I will spend my money as I please and for my own intimate
personal gratification, and should count myself a nincompoop indeed to
lay out the colour of a halfpenny on any fancied social decency or duty.
I shall not wear gloves unless my hands are cold, or unless I am born
with a delight in them. Dress is my own affair, and that of one other in
the world; that, in fact, and for an obvious reason, of any woman who
shall chance to be in love with me. I shall lodge where I have a mind.
If I do not ask society to live with me, they must be silent; and even
if I do, they have no further right but to refuse the invitation.
There is a kind of idea abroad that a man must live up to his station,
that his house, his table, and his toilette, shall be in a ratio of
equivalence, and equally imposing to the world. If this is in the Bible,
the passage has eluded my inquiries. If it is not in the Bible, it is
nowhere but in the heart of the fool. Throw aside this fancy. See what
you want, and spend upon that; distinguish what you do not care about,
and spend nothing upon that. There are not many people who can
differentiate wines above a certain and that not at all a high price.
Are you sure you are one of these? Are you sure you prefer cigars at
sixpence each to pipes at some fraction of a farthing? Are you sure you
wish to keep a gig? Do you care about where you sleep, or are you not as
much at your ease in a cheap lodging as in an Elizabethan manor-house?
Do you enjoy fine clothes? It is not possible to answer these questions
without a trial; and there is nothing more obvious to my mind, than that
a man who has not experienced some ups and downs, and been forced to
live more cheaply than in his father's house, has still his education to
begin. Let the experiment be made, and he will find to his surprise that
he has been eating beyond his appetite up to that hour; that the cheap
lodging, the cheap tobacco, the rough country clothes, the plain table,
have not only no power to damp his spirits, but perhaps give him as keen
pleasure in the using as the dainties that he took, betwixt sleep and
waking, in his former callous and somnambulous submission to wealth.
The true Bohemian, a creature lost to view under the imaginary Bohemians
of literature, is exactly described by such a principle of life. The
Bohemian of the novel, who drinks more than is good for him and prefers
anything to work, and wears strange clothes, is for the most part a
respectable Bohemian, respectable in disrespectability, living for the
outside, and an adventurer. But the man I mean lives wholly to himself,
does what he wishes, and not what is thought proper, buys what he wants
for himself and not what is thought proper, works at what he believes he
can do well and not what will bring him in money or favour. You may be
the most respectable of men, and yet a true Bohemian. And the test is
this: a Bohemian, for as poor as he may be, is always open-handed to his
friends; he knows what he can do with money and how he can do without
it, a far rarer and more useful knowledge; he has had less, and
continued to live in some contentment; and hence he cares not to keep
more, and shares his sovereign or his shilling with a friend. The poor,
if they are generous, are Bohemian in virtue of their birth. Do you know
where beggars go? Not to the great houses where people sit dazed among
their thousands, but to the doors of poor men who have seen the world;
and it was the widow who had only two mites, who cast half her fortune
into the treasury.
But a young man who elects to save on dress or on lodging, or who in any
way falls out of the level of expenditure which is common to his level
in society, falls out of society altogether. I suppose the young man to
have chosen his career on honourable principles; he finds his talents
and instincts can be best contented in a certain pursuit; in a certain
industry, he is sure that he is serving mankind with a healthy and
becoming service; and he is not sure that he would be doing so, or doing
so equally well, in any other industry within his reach. Then that is
his true sphere in life; not the one in which he was born to his father,
but the one which is proper to his talents and instincts. And suppose he
does fall out of society, is that a cause of sorrow? Is your heart so
dead that you prefer the recognition of many to the love of a few? Do
you think society loves you? Put it to the proof. Decline in material
expenditure, and you will find they care no more for you than for the
Khan of Tartary. You will lose no friends. If you had any, you will keep
them. Only those who were friends to your coat and equipage will
disappear; the smiling faces will disappear as by enchantment; but the
kind hearts will remain steadfastly kind. Are you so lost, are you so
dead, are you so little sure of your own soul and your own footing upon
solid fact, that you prefer before goodness and happiness the
countenance of sundry diners-out, who will flee from you at a report of
ruin, who will drop you with insult at a shadow of disgrace, who do not
know you and do not care to know you but by sight, and whom you in your
turn neither know nor care to know in a more human manner? Is it not the
principle of society, openly avowed, that friendship must not interfere
with business; which being paraphrased, means simply that a
consideration of money goes before any consideration of affection known
to this cold-blooded gang, that they have not even the honour of
thieves, and will rook their nearest and dearest as readily as a
stranger? I hope I would go as far as most to serve a friend; but I
declare openly I would not put on my hat to do a pleasure to society. I
may starve my appetites and control my temper for the sake of those I
love; but society shall take me as I choose to be, or go without me.
Neither they nor I will lose; for where there is no love, it is both
laborious and unprofitable to associate.
But it is obvious that if it is only right for a man to spend money on
that which he can truly and thoroughly enjoy, the doctrine applies with
equal force to the rich and to the poor, to the man who has amassed many
thousands as well as to the youth precariously beginning life. And it
may be asked, Is not this merely preparing misers, who are not the best
of company? But the principle was this: that which a man has not fairly
earned, and, further, that which he cannot fully enjoy, does not belong
to him, but is a part of mankind's treasure which he holds as steward on
parole. To mankind, then, it must be made profitable; and how this
should be done is, once more, a problem which each man must solve for
himself, and about which none has a right to judge him. Yet there are a
few considerations which are very obvious and may here be stated.
Mankind is not only the whole in general, but every one in particular.
Every man or woman is one of mankind's dear possessions; to his or her
just brain, and kind heart, and active hands, mankind intrusts some of
its hopes for the future; he or she is a possible wellspring of good
acts and source of blessings to the race. This money which you do not
need, which, in a rigid sense, you do not want, may therefore be
returned not only in public benefactions to the race, but in private
kindnesses. Your wife, your children, your friends stand nearest to you,
and should be helped the first. There at least there can be little
imposture, for you know their necessities of your own knowledge. And
consider, if all the world did as you did, and according to their means
extended help in the circle of their affections, there would be no more
crying want in times of plenty and no more cold, mechanical charity
given with a doubt and received with confusion. Would not this simple
rule make a new world out of the old and cruel one which we inhabit?
[_After two more sentences the fragment breaks off._]
PRAYERS
WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE AT VAILIMA
PRAYERS
WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE AT VAILIMA
_For Success_
Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank Thee for this place in
which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us
this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health,
the work, the food, and the bright skies, that make our lives
delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth, and our friendly
helpers in this foreign isle. Let peace abound in our small company.
Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength
to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to accept and
to forgive offenders. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully
the forgetfulness of others. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet
mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it
may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the
strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril,
constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of
fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to
another. As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, as
children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for
Christ's sake.
_For Grace_
Grant that we here before Thee may be set free from the fear of
vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before us of
our course without dishonour to ourselves or hurt to others, and, when
the day comes, may die in peace. Deliver us from fear and favour: from
mean hopes and cheap pleasures. Have mercy on each in his deficiency;
let him be not cast down; support the stumbling on the way, and give at
last rest to the weary.
_At Morning_
The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and
duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter
and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go
blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds
weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of
sleep.
_Evening_
We come before Thee, O Lord, in the end of Thy day with thanksgiving.
Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are now beginning
the labours of the day what time we end them, and those with whom the
sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help, console, and prosper
them.
Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour come
to rest. We resign into Thy hands our sleeping bodies, our cold hearths
and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling.
As the sun returns in the east, so let our patience be renewed with
dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so let our loving-kindness make
bright this house of our habitation.
_Another for Evening_
Lord, receive our supplications for this house, family, and country.
Protect the innocent, restrain the greedy and the treacherous, lead us
out of our tribulation into a quiet land.
Look down upon ourselves and upon our absent dear ones. Help us and
them; prolong our days in peace and honour. Give us health, food, bright
weather, and light hearts. In what we meditate of evil, frustrate our
will; in what of good, further our endeavours. Cause injuries to be
forgot and benefits to be remembered.
Let us lie down without fear and awake and arise with exultation. For
His sake, in whose words we now conclude.
_In Time of Rain_
We thank Thee, Lord, for the glory of the late days and the excellent
face of Thy sun. We thank Thee for good news received. We thank Thee for
the pleasures we have enjoyed and for those we have been able to confer.
And now, when the clouds gather and the rain impends over the forest and
our house, permit us not to be cast down; let us not lose the savour of
past mercies and past pleasures; but, like the voice of a bird singing
in the rain, let grateful memory survive in the hour of darkness. If
there be in front of us any painful duty, strengthen us with the grace
of courage; if any act of mercy, teach us tenderness and patience.
_Another in Time of Rain_
Lord, Thou sendest down rain upon the uncounted millions of the forest,
and givest the trees to drink exceedingly. We are here upon this isle a
few handfuls of men, and how many myriads upon myriads of stalwart
trees! Teach us the lesson of the trees. The sea around us, which this
rain recruits, teems with the race of fish; teach us, Lord, the meaning
of the fishes. Let us see ourselves for what we are, one out of the
countless number of the clans of Thy handiwork. When we would despair,
let us remember that these also please and serve Thee.
_Before a Temporary Separation_
To-day we go forth separate, some of us to pleasure, some of us to
worship, some upon duty. Go with us, our guide and angel; hold Thou
before us in our divided paths the mark of our low calling, still to be
true to what small best we can attain to. Help us in that, our maker,
the dispenser of events--Thou, of the vast designs, in which we blindly
labour, suffer us to be so far constant to ourselves and our beloved.
_For Friends_
For our absent loved ones we implore Thy loving-kindness. Keep them in
life, keep them in growing honour; and for us, grant that we remain
worthy of their love. For Christ's sake, let not our beloved blush for
us, nor we for them. Grant us but that, and grant us courage to endure
lesser ills unshaken, and to accept death, loss, and disappointment as
it were straws upon the tide of life.
_For the Family_
Aid us, if it be Thy will, in our concerns. Have mercy on this land and
innocent people. Help them who this day contend in disappointment with
their frailties. Bless our family, bless our forest house, bless our
island helpers. Thou who hast made for us this place of ease and hope,
accept and inflame our gratitude; help us to repay, in service one to
another, the debt of Thine unmerited benefits and mercies, so that when
the period of our stewardship draws to a conclusion, when the windows
begin to be darkened, when the bond of the family is to be loosed, there
shall be no bitterness of remorse in our farewells.
Help us to look back on the long way that Thou hast brought us, on the
long days in which we have been served not according to our deserts but
our desires; on the pit and the miry clay, the blackness of despair, the
horror of misconduct, from which our feet have been plucked out. For
our sins forgiven or prevented, for our shame unpublished, we bless and
thank Thee, O God. Help us yet again and ever. So order events, so
strengthen our frailty, as that day by day we shall come before Thee
with this song of gratitude, and in the end we be dismissed with honour.
In their weakness and their fear, the vessels of Thy handiwork so pray
to Thee, so praise Thee. Amen.
_Sunday_
We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many families
and nations gathered together in the peace of this roof, weak men and
women subsisting under the covert of Thy patience. Be patient still;
suffer us yet a while longer;--with our broken purposes of good, with
our idle endeavours against evil, suffer us a while longer to endure,
and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary
mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, brace us to play the
man under affliction. Be with our friends, be with ourselves. Go with
each of us to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of
watching; and when the day returns, return to us, our sun and comforter,
and call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts--eager to
labour--eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion--and if the
day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it.
We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the words of Him to whom this day
is sacred, close our oblation.
_For Self-blame_
Lord, enlighten us to see the beam that is in our own eye, and blind us
to the mote that is in our brother's. Let us feel our offences with our
hands, make them great and bright before us like the sun, make us eat
them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to the offences of our
beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take them out of our mouths for
ever. Let all here before Thee carry and measure with the false
balances of love, and be in their own eyes and in all conjunctures the
most guilty. Help us at the same time with the grace of courage, that we
be none of us cast down when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our
happiness or our integrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we
may be up and doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method
of Him in whose words of prayer we now conclude.
_For Self-forgetfulness_
Lord, the creatures of Thy hand, Thy disinherited children, come before
Thee with their incoherent wishes and regrets: Children we are, children
we shall be, till our mother the earth hath fed upon our bones. Accept
us, correct us, guide us, Thy guilty innocents. Dry our vain tears, wipe
out our vain resentments, help our yet vainer efforts. If there be any
here, sulking as children will, deal with and enlighten him. Make it day
about that person, so that he shall see himself and be ashamed. Make it
heaven about him, Lord, by the only way to heaven, forgetfulness of
self, and make it day about his neighbours, so that they shall help, not
hinder him.
_For Renewal of Joy_
We are evil, O God, and help us to see it and amend. We are good, and
help us to be better. Look down upon Thy servants with a patient eye,
even as Thou sendest sun and rain; look down, call upon the dry bones,
quicken, enliven; re-create in us the soul of service, the spirit of
peace; renew in us the sense of joy.
END OF VOL. XVI
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