THE INVESTMENT OF TALENT AND ITS RETURN.
In all ages man has been stimulated to sowing by the certainty of
reaping. Tomorrow's sheaves and shoutings support to-day's tearful
sowing. Certainty of victory wins battles before they are fought.
Armed with confidence patriots have beaten down stone castles with
naked fists. Uncertainty makes the heart sick, takes nerve out of arm
and tension out of thought. The mere rumor of war along the
border-lines of nations destroys enterprise and industry. Men will not
plow if warhorses are to trample down the ripe grain. Men will not
build if the enemy are to warm hands over blazing rafters. Why should
the husbandman plant vines if others are to wrest away his fruit? The
individual and the race need the stimulus of hope and a rational basis
of security that nothing shall cut the connection between the causes
sown and the effects to be reaped. Therefore, the divine word: "Send
forth thy gift and talent, and nature and providence shall invest it
securely and give the talent back with interest and increase."
What a promise for civilization was that of Christ: "Give and it shall
be given unto you!" Let the husbandman give his seed to the furrows;
soon the furrows will give back big bundles into the sower's arms. Let
the vintner give the sweat of his brow to the vines; soon the vines
will give back the rich purple floods. Give thy thought, O husbandman!
to the wild rice; soon nature will give back the rice plump wheat.
Give thyself, O inventor! to the raw ores, and nature will give thee
the forceful tools. Give thyself, O reformer! to the desert world;
soon the world-desert will be given back a world-garden. Give
sparingly to nature, and sparingly shalt thou receive again. Give
bountifully, and bounty shall be given back. Give scant thought and
drag but one plank to the stream, and thou shalt receive only a narrow
bridge across the brook. Give abundant thought to wires and cables and
buttresses, and nature will give the bridge across the Firth of Forth.
Give God thy one talent and, investing it, he returns ten. Give the
cup of cold water and thou shalt have rivers of water of life. Share
thy crust and thy cloak, and thou shall have banquet and robe and house
of many mansions. This is the pledge of nature and God: "Give, and
good measure pressed down and shaken together, shalt thou receive of
celestial reapers." The history of progress is the history of Christ's
challenge and man's response.
Christianity deals in universal. Its principles are not local nor
racial nor temporary. They are meridian lines taking in all forces,
men and movements. Nature, too, saith: "Give and it shall be given
unto you." The sun gives heat to the forests, and afterward the
burning coal and tree give heat back to the heavens; the arctics give
icebergs and frigid streams for cooling the fierce tropics, and the
tropics give back the warm Gulf Stream. The soil in the spring gives
its treasures to the growing tree, and in the autumn the tree gives its
leaves to make the soil richer and deeper. Personal also is this
principle. Give thy body food and thy body will give thee mental
strength. Give thy blow to the ax, and the ax will return the fallen
tree, with strong tools for thy arm. Give thy brain sleep and rest and
thy brain will give thy thought nimbleness. Give thy mind to rocks,
and the rock pages will give thee wealth of wisdom. Give thy thought
to the fire and water, and they will give thee an engine stronger than
tamed lions. Give thy scrutiny to the thunderbolt leaping from the
east to the west, and the lightnings shall give themselves back to thee
as noiseless and gentle and obedient as the sunlight. Give thy mind to
books and libraries, and the literature and lore of the ages will give
thee the wisdom of sage and seer. Let some hero give his love and
self-sacrificing service to the poor in prisons, and society will give
him in return, monuments and grateful memory. Give thy obedience to
conscience, and God, whom conscience serves, will give Himself to thee.
Being a natural principle, this law is also spiritual. Standing by his
mother's knee each child hears the story of the echo. The boy visiting
in the mountains, when he called aloud found that he was mocked by a
hidden stranger boy. The insult made him very angry. So he shouted
back insults and epithets. But each of these bad words was returned to
him from the rocks above. With bitter tears the child returned to his
mother, who sent him back to give the hidden stranger kind words and
affectionate greetings. Lo! the stranger now echoed back his
kindliness. Thus society echoes back each temperament and each career.
Evermore man receives what he first gives to nature and society and God.
History is rich in interpretation of this principle. In every age man
has received from society what he has given to society. This continent
lay waiting for ages for the seed of civilization. At length the sower
went forth to sow. Landing in midwinter upon a bleak coast, the
fathers gave themselves to cutting roads, draining swamps, subduing
grasses, rearing villages, until all the land was sown with the good
seed of liberty and Christian civilization. Afterward, when tyranny
threatened liberty, these worthies in defending their institutions gave
life itself. Dying, they bequeathed their treasures to after
generations. At length an enemy, darkling, lifted weapons for
destroying. Would these who had received institutions nourished with
blood, give life-blood in return? The uprising of 1861 is the answer.
Then the people rose as one man, the plow stood in the furrow, the
hammer fell from the hand, workroom and college hall were alike
deserted--a half-million men laid down their lives upon many a
battle-field. Similarly, the honor given to Washington during these
last few days tells us that the patriot who gives shall receive. From
the day when the young Virginian entered the Indian forests with
Braddock to the day when he lay dying at Mount Vernon the patriot gave
his health, his wealth, his time, his life, a living sacrifice through
eight and forty years. Now every year the people, rising up early and
sitting up late, rehearse to their children the story of his life and
work. Having given himself, honor shall he receive through all the
ages.
To Abraham Lincoln also came the word: "Give and thou shall receive!"
Sitting in the White House the President proclaimed equal rights to
black and white. Then, with shouts of joy, three million slaves
entered the temple of liberty. But they bore the emancipator upon
their shoulders and enshrined him forever in the temple of fame, where
he who gave bountifully shall receive bountiful honor through all the
ages. There, too, in the far-off past stands an uplifted cross.
Flinging wide his arms this crowned sufferer sought to lift the world
back to his Father's side. In life he gave his testimony against
hypocrisy, Phariseeism and cruelty. For years he gave himself to the
publican, the sinner, the prodigal, the poor in mind or heart, and so
came at length to his pitiless execution. But, having given himself in
abandon of love, the world straightway gave itself in return. Every
one of his twelve disciples determined to achieve a violent death for
the Christ who gave himself for them. Paul was beheaded in Rome. John
was tortured in Patmos. Andrew and James were crucified in Asia. The
rest were mobbed, or stoned, or tortured to death. And as years sped
on man kept giving. Multitudes went forth, burning for him in the
tropics, freezing for him in the arctics; threading for him the forest
paths, braving for him the swamps, that they might serve his little
ones. He gave himself for the world, and the world, in a passion of
love, will yet give itself back to him.
Recently the officials of the commonwealth of Massachusetts and the
noblest citizens of Boston assembled for celebrating the one hundredth
anniversary of the birth of George Peabody. For a like purpose the
citizens of London came together in banquet hall. Now, the banker had
long been dead. Nor did he leave children to keep his name before the
public. How shall we account for two continents giving him such praise
and fame? George Peabody received from his fellows, because he first
gave to his fellows. To his genius for accumulation he added the
genius of distribution. His large gifts to Harvard and Yale, to Salem
and Peabody, made to science and art as well as to philanthropy and
religion, secured perpetual remembrance. When the public credit of the
State of Maryland was endangered, he negotiated $8,000,000 in London
and gave his entire commission of $200,000 back to the State. He who
gave $3,500,000 for founding schools and colleges in the South for
black and white, could not but receive honor and praise. Therefore the
eulogies pronounced by the legislators in Annapolis. As a banker in
London he was disturbed by the sorrows of the poor, and for months gave
himself to an investigation of the tenement-house system, developing
the Peabody Tenements, to which he gave $2,500,000, and helped 20,000
people to remove from dens into buildings that were light and sweet and
wholesome. Therefore when he died in London the English nation that
had received from him gave to him, and, for the first time in history,
the gates of Westminster Abbey were thrown open for the funeral
services of a foreigner. Therefore, the Prime Minister of England
selected the swiftest frigate in the English navy for carrying his body
back to his native land. His generosity radiated in every direction,
not in trickling rivulets, but in copious streams. Bountifully he gave
to men; therefore, through innumerable orations, sermons, editorials
and toasts, men vied with each other in giving praise and honor back to
Peabody, the benefactor of the people.
Society, always sensitive to generosity, is equally sensitive to
selfishness. He who treats his fellows as so many clusters to be
squeezed into his cup, who spoils the world for self aggrandizement,
finds at last that he has burglarized his own soul. Here is a man who
says: "Come right, come wrong, I will get gain." Loving ease, he
lashes himself to unceasing toil by day and night. Needing rest on
Sunday, he denies himself respite and scourges his jaded body and brain
into new activities. Every thought is a thread to be woven into a
golden net. He lifts his life to strike as miners lift their picks.
He swings his body as harvesters their scythes. He will make himself
an augur for boring, a chisel for drilling, a muck-rake for scratching,
if only he may get gain. He will sweat and swelter and burn in the
tropics until malaria has made his face as yellow as gold, if thereby
he can fill his purse, and for a like end he will shiver and ache in
the arctics. He will deny his ear music, he will deny his mind
culture, he will deny his heart friendship that he may coin concerts
and social delights into cash. At length the shortness of breath
startles him; the stoppage of blood alarms him. Then he retires to
receive--what? To receive from nature that which he has given to
nature. Once he denied his ear melody, and now taste in return denies
him pleasure. Once he denied his mind books, and now books refuse to
give him comfort. Once he denied himself friendship, and now men
refuse him their love. Having received nothing from him, the great
world has no investment to return to him. Such a life, entering the
harbor of old age, is like unto a bestormed ship with empty coal bins,
whose crew fed the furnace, first with the cargo and then with the
furniture, and reached the harbor, having made the ship a burned-cut
shell. God buries the souls of many men long years before their bodies
are carried to the graveyard.
This principle tells us why nature and society are so prodigal with
treasures to some men and so niggardly to others. What a different
thing a forest is to different men! He who gives the ax receives a
mast. He who gives taste receives a picture. He who gives imagination
receives a poem. He who gives faith hears the "goings of God in the
tree-tops." The charcoal-burner fronts an oak for finding out how many
cords of wood are in it, as the Goths of old fronted peerless temples
for estimating how many huts they could quarry from the stately
pile.[1] But an artist curses the woodsman for making the tree food
for ax and saw. It has become to him as sacred as the cathedral within
which he bares his head. It is a temple where birds praise God. It is
a harp with endless music for the summer winds. It fills his eye with
beauty and his ear with rustling melodies.
For the poet that selfsame oak is enshrined in a thousand noble
associations. It sings for him like a hymn; it shines like a vision;
it suggests ships, storms and ocean battles; the spear of Launcelot,
the forests of Arden; old baronial halls mellow with lights falling on
oaken floors; King Arthur's banqueting chamber. To the scientist's
thought the oak is a vital mechanism. By day and by night, the long
summer through, it lifts tons of moisture and forces it into the
wide-spreading branches, but without the rattle of huge engines. With
what uproar and clang of iron hammers would stones be crushed that are
dissolved noiselessly by the rootlets and recomposed in stems and
boughs! What a vast laboratory is here, every root and leaf an expert
chemist!
For other multitudes the earth has become only a huge stable; its fruit
fodder; its granaries ricks, out of which men-cattle feed. These
estimate a man's value according as he has lifted his ax upon tall
trees and ravaged all the loveliness of creation; whose curse is the
Nebuchadnezzar curse, giving to nature the tongue and hand, and
receiving from nature grass; who are doomed to love the corn they
grind, to hear only the roar of the whirlwind and the crash of the
hail, never "the still small voice;" who see what is written in
lamp-black and lightning; who think the clouds are for rain, and know
not that they are chariots, thrones and celestial highways; that the
sunset means something else than sleep, and the morning suggests
something other than work. All these give nature only thought for
food, and food only shall they receive from nature, until all their
deeds are plowed down in dust. Give forth thy gift, young men and
maidens, and according as thou givest thou shalt receive fruit, or
picture, or poem, or temple, or ladder let down from heaven, or angel
aspirations going up.
Conscience also receives its gifts and makes a return. Give thy body
obedience and it will return happiness and health. Give overdrafts and
excesses and it will return sleepless nights and suffering days. Man's
sins are seeds, his sufferings harvests. Every action is embryonic,
and according as it is right or wrong will ripen into sweet fruits of
pleasure or poison fruits of pain. Some seeds hold two germs; and vice
and penalty are wrapped up under one covering. Sins are
self-registering and penalties are automatic. The brain keeps a double
set of books, and at last visits its punishments. Conscience does not
wait for society to ferret out iniquity, but daily executes judgment.
Policemen may slumber and the judge may nod, but the nerves are always
active, memory never sleeps, conscience is never off duty. The recoil
of the gun bruises black the shoulder of him who holds it, and sin is a
weapon that kills at both ends.
In the olden days, when the poisoner was in every palace, the Doge of
Venice offered a reward for a crystal goblet that would break the
moment a poison touched it. Perhaps the idea was suggested to the
Prince because his soul already fulfilled the thought, for one drop of
sin always shatters the cup of joy and wastes life's precious wine.
How do events interpret this principle! One day Louis, King of France,
was riding in the forest near his gorgeous and guilty palace of
Versailles. He met a peasant carrying a coffin. "What did the man die
of?" asked the King. "Of hunger," answered the peasant. But the sound
of the hunt was in the King's ear, and he forgot the cry of want. Soon
the day came when the King stood before the guillotine, and with mute
appeals for mercy fronted a mob silent as statues, unyielding as stone,
grimly waiting to dip the ends of their pikes in regal blood. He gave
cold looks; he received cold steel.
Marie Antoinette, riding to Notre Dame for her bridal, bade her
soldiers command all beggars, cripples and ragged people to leave the
line of the procession. The Queen could not endure for a brief moment
the sight of those miserable ones doomed to unceasing squalor and
poverty. What she gave others she received herself, for soon, bound in
an executioner's cart, she was riding toward the place of execution
midst crowds who gazed upon her with hearts as cold as ice and hard as
granite. When Foulon was asked how the starving populace was to live
he answered: "Let them eat grass." Afterward, Carlyle says, the mob,
maddened with rage, "caught him in the streets of Paris, hanged him,
stuck his head upon a pike, filled his mouth with grass, amid shouts as
of Tophet from a grass-eating people." What kings and princes gave
they received. This is the voice of nature and conscience: "Behold,
sin crouches at the door!"
This divine principle also explains man's attitude toward his fellows.
The proverb says man makes his own world. Each sees what is in
himself, not what is outside. The jaundiced eye yellows all it
beholds. The chameleon takes its color from the bark on which it
clings. Man gives his color to what his thought is fastened upon. The
pessimist's darkness makes all things dingy. The youth disappointed
with his European trip said he was a fool for going. He was, for the
reason that he was a fool before he started. He saw nothing without,
because he had no vision within. He gave no sight, he received no
vision. An artist sees in each Madonna that which compels a rude mob
to uncover in prayer, but the savage perceives only a colored canvas.
Recently a foreign traveler, writing of his impressions of our city,
described it to his fellows as a veritable hades. But his fellow
countryman, in a similar volume, recorded his impressions of our art,
architecture and interest in education. Each saw that for which he
looked.
This principle explains man's attitude toward his God. God governs
rocks by force, animals by fear, savage man by force and fear, true men
by hope and love. Man can take God at whatsoever level he pleases. He
who by beastliness turns his body into a log will be held by gravity in
one spot like a log. He who lives on a level with the animals will
receive fear and law and lightnings. He who approaches God through
laws of light and heat and electricity will find the world-throne
occupied by an infinite Agassiz. Some approach God through physical
senses. They behold his storms sinking ships, his tornadoes mowing
down forests. These find him a huge Hercules; yet the Judge who seems
cruel to the wicked criminal may seem the embodiment of gentleness and
kindness to his obedient children. Man determines what God shall be to
him. Each paints his own picture of Deity. Macbeth sees him with
forked lightnings without and volcanic fires within. The pure in heart
see him as the face of all-clasping Love. Give him thy heart and he
will give thee love, effulgent love, like the affection of mother or
lover or friend, only dearer than either. Give him thy ways, and he
will overarch life's path as the heavens overarch the flowers, filling
them with heat by day and yielding cooling dews by night. Give him but
a flickering aspiration and he will give thee balm for the bruised reed
and flame for the smoking flax. Give him the publican's prayer and he
will give thee mercy like the wideness of the sea. Give his little
ones but a cup of cold water and he will give thee to drink of the
water of the river of life and bring thee to the banquet hall in the
house of many mansions.
[1] Mod. Ptrs., Vol. 5, Chap. 1. The Earth--Veil Star papers: A Walk
Among Trees.
VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
"Only he that uses shall even so much as keep. Unemployed strength
steadily diminishes. The sluggard's arm grows soft and flabby. So,
even in this lowest sphere, the law is inexorable. Having is using.
Not using is losing. Idleness is paralysis. New triumphs must only
dictate new struggles. If it be Alexander of Macedon, the Orontes must
suggest the Euphrates, and the Euphrates the Indus. Always it must be
on and on. One night of rioting in Babylon may arrest the conquering
march. Genius is essentially athletic, resolute, aggressive,
persistent. Possession is grip, that tightens more and more. Ceasing
to gain, we begin to lose. Ceasing to advance, we begin to retrograde.
Brief was the interval between Roman conquest of Barbarians, and
Barbarian conquest of Rome. Blessed is the man who keeps out of the
hospital and holds his place in the ranks. Blessed the man, the last
twang of whose bow-string is as sharp as any that went before, sending
its arrow as surely to the mark."--_Roswell W. Hitchcock_.