RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.
History has crowned self-sacrifice as one of the virtues. In all ages
selfishness has been like a flame consuming society, like a sword
working waste and ruin, but self-sacrifice has repaired these ravages
and achieved for man victories many and great. The church owes so much
to the company of martyrs whose blood has crimsoned her every page, the
state is so deeply indebted to the patriots who have given their lives
for liberty, man has derived such strength from those who have endured
the fetter and the fagot rather than belie their convictions, woman has
derived such beauty from the example of that Antigone who died rather
than desert the body of her dead brother, as that each modern youth
beholds self-sacrifice standing forth clothed with immeasurable
excellence.
Not large the company of the Immortals whose birthdays society
celebrates. Yet when on these high days, through song or story the
poet or orator draws back the veil and reveals to the assembled
multitude the face of some Garibaldi or Hampden or Lincoln, the beloved
one is seen to be clothed with genius and beauty and truth indeed, but
also to be crowned with self-sacrifice. Society makes haste to forget
him who remembers only himself. As there can be no illiterate sage, no
ignorant Shakespeare, so history knows no selfish hero. For the
mercenary forehead memory has no wreath. A sentinel with a flaming
sword guards the threshold of the temple of fame against those
aspirants named Ease, Avarice, Self-indulgence.
"Shall I be remembered by posterity?" asked the dying Garfield. In
this eager, tremulous question the renowned and the obscure alike have
a pathetic interest. For the deeply reflective mind oblivion is a
thought all unendurable. The tool man fashions, the structure he
rears, the success he achieves, not less than his marble monument,
looks down upon the beholder with a mute appeal for recollection. To
each eager aspirant for everlasting remembrance Christ comes whispering
his secret of abiding renown. Speaking not as an amateur, but as a
master, Christ affirms that he who would save his life must lose it,
that he who would be remembered by others must forget himself, that the
soldier who flees from danger to save his body shall leave that life
upon the battlefield, while he who plunges his banner into the very
thick of the fight and is carried off the field upon his shield shall
in safety bear his life away. Hard seem the terms; they rebuke ease,
they smite self-indulgence, they deny the maxims of the worldly wise.
But in accepting Christ's principle and forsaking their palaces that
they might be as brothers to beggars, Xavier and Loyola found an
exhilaration denied to kings; while each Sir Launfal, in his ease
denied the Holy Grail, has in the hour of self-sacrifice discerned the
Vision Splendid. To each young patriot and soldier looking eagerly
unto the tablets that commemorate the deeds of heroes, to each young
scholar aspiring to a place beside the sages, comes this word: Life is
through death, and immortal renown through self-renunciation.
This law of self-sacrifice is imbedded in nature. Minot, the
embryologist, and Drummond, the scientist, tells us that only by losing
its life does the cell save it. The new science exhibits the body as a
temple, constructed out of cells, as a building is made of bricks.
Just as some St. Peter represents strange marble from Athens, beauteous
woods from Cyprus, granite from Italy, porphyry from Egypt, all brought
together in a single cathedral, so the human body is a glorious temple
built by those architects called living cells. When the scientist
searches out the beginning of bird or bud or acorn he comes to a single
cell. Under the microscope that cell is seen to be absorbing nutrition
through its outer covering. But when the cell has attained a certain
size its life is suddenly threatened. The center of the cell is seen
to be so far from the surface that it can no longer draw in the
nutrition from without. The bulk has outrun the absorbing surface.
"The alternative is very sharp," says the scientist, "the cell must
divide or die." Only by losing its life and becoming two cells can it
save its life.
Later on, when each of the two cells has grown again to the size of the
original one, the same peril threatens them and they too must divide or
die. And when through this law of saving life by losing it nature has
made sure the basis for bud and bird, for beast and man, then the
principle of sacrifice goes on to secure beauty of the individual plant
or animal and perpetuity for the species. In the center of each grain
of wheat there is a golden spot that gives a yellow cast to the fine
flour. That spot is called the germ. When the germ sprouts and begins
to increase, the white flour taken up as food begins to decrease. As
the plant waxes, the surrounding kernel wanes. The life of the higher
means the death of the lower. In the orchard also the flower must fall
that the fruit may swell. If the young apple grows large, it must
begin by pushing off the blossom. But by losing the lower bud, the
tree saves the higher fruit.
Centuries ago Herodotus, the Grecian traveler, noted a remarkable
custom in Egypt. Each springtime, when the palms flowered, the
Egyptians went into the desert, cut off branches from the wild palms
and, bringing them back to their gardens, waved them over the flowers
of the date trees. What was meant by this ceremony Herodotus did not
know. The husbandmen believed that if they neglected it the gods would
give them but a scanty crop of dates. It was reserved for the science
of our century, through Drummond, to explain the fact that the one palm
saved its dates because the other palm lost its fertilizing pollen.
Should nature refuse to obey this law of losing life in order to save
it, man's world would become one vast Sahara waste, an arctic
desolation.
The law of sacrifice is also industrial law. Great is the power of
wealth. It buys comfort, it purchases travel, it secures instruments
of culture for reason and taste, it is almoner of bounty for sympathy
and kindness. Flowing through man's life, it seems like unto some Nile
flowing through Egypt with soft, irrigating flow, bearing man's burdens
upon its currents, giving food to bird and beast. But the story of
each Peter Cooper, each Peabody, each Amos Lawrence, is the story of
the ease of life lost to-day that the strength of life may be saved
to-morrow. Each young merchant loved luxury and beauty, but in the
interests of thrift he denied the eye its hunger, the taste its
satisfaction. When pride asked for dress and show, the youth rebuked
his vanity. When companions scoffed at the young merchant as a niggard
he subdued his sensitiveness and inured himself to rigid economy. When
increasing wealth began to lend influence, and society urged him to
give his evenings to gayety, the young merchant denied the social
instinct and gave his long winter evenings to broadening his knowledge
and culture. Having lost the lower good, at last the time came when
the American merchant and philanthropist had saved for himself
universal fame. Having lost ease and self-indulgence during the first
half of his life, he saved the higher ease and comfort for the second
period of his career.
Similarly of the young men in Parliament who to-day have charge of the
destinies of the English empire, it may be said that they have saved
their lives, because the fathers lost theirs. One hundred years ago
these fathers made exiles of themselves in the interests of their sons
and daughters. The East India merchant exiled himself into the tropic
land where heat and malaria made his skin as yellow as the gold he
gained. Others braved the perils of the African forests, dared the
dangers of Australian deserts, endured the rigor of the arctic cold.
Losing the lower and present happiness, they saved the higher ease and
comfort for their sons. The self-denial of yesterday brought the
influence of to-day. Upon this principle God has organized the
industrial world. Man must take his choice between ease and wealth,
either may be his but not both.
Sacrifice is also the secret of beauty, culture and character.
Selfishness eats sweetness from the singer's voice as rust eats the
edge of a sword. St. Cecilia refused to lend the divine touch to lips
steeped in pleasure. He who sings for love of gold finds his voice
becoming metallic. In art, also, Hitchcock has said: "When the brush
grows voluptuous it falls like an angel from heaven." Fra Angelico
refuses an invitation to the Pitti palace, choosing rather his crust
and pallet in the cell of the monastery. The artist gave his mornings
to the poor, his evenings to his canvas. But when the painter had worn
his life away in kindly deeds, men found that the light divine had been
transferred to the painter's canvas. Eloquence also loves sincere
lips. The history of oratory includes few great scenes--Demosthenes'
plea for Athenian liberty that resulted in his death, Luther's single
challenge to the hosts of Pope and Emperor, Wendell Phillips' at
Faneuil Hall, Lincoln's at Gettysburg. All these risked life for a
cause, and were baptized with eloquence, their words being tipped with
fire, their minds hurling thunderbolts.
Sacrifice also is the secret of beauty. After a little time the life
of pleasure and selfishness will make the sweetest fact opaque and
repellent, while self-sacrificing thoughts are cosmetics that at last
make the plainest face to be beautiful. In the calm of scholarship men
have given up the thought that culture consists of an exquisite
refinement in manners and dress, in language and equipage. The poet
laureate makes Maud the type of polished perfection. She is "icily
regular, splendidly null," for culture is more of the heart than of the
mind. But as eloquence means that an orator has so mastered the laws
of posture, and gesture and thought and speech that they are utterly
forgotten, and have become second nature, so knowledge becomes culture,
and physical perfection becomes beauty, only when it is unconscious.
In the moral realm also, the gains for the soul begin with loss. In
the hour of temptation he who sacrifices the higher duty to the lower
pleasure will find that ease has shorn away the strength of Samson.
Victor Hugo has pictured a man committing suicide through poverty, and
deserting the duty and dwelling where God has placed him. But waking
in the next world, the man perceives a letter on the way to himself
announcing a large inheritance which would have been his had he but
been patient. Therefore the great novelist affirms that God makes such
a man begin over again, only under harder conditions, the existence
that here he has willfully shattered. What a tragedy is his who, to
save the present good, will lose the higher life. Whittier expressed
the fear that Daniel Webster saved his life only to lose it. In his
works the poet recalls the time when for genius of statesmanship and
weight of mentality Webster's like was not upon our earth. But in an
evil hour the statesman saw that the presidency was a prize that could
be gained by giving the fugitive slave law as a sop to the South. In
that hour his character suffered grievous injury. In the attempt to
save men's votes he lost men's higher respect. In deepest sorrow his
admirers, abroad and at home, cried out: "O, Lucifer, thou son of the
morning, how art thou fallen!"
The law of sacrifice is also the law of progress and civilization.
When history exhibits as dead the nations that have been
pleasure-seekers it declares that the state that saveth its life shall
lose it. In our own land the bankruptcy and gloom that have for years
overshadowed the South speak eloquently of a national gain that is a
loss. One hundred years ago the North freed its slaves. Later, when
the constitution was adopted, many statesmen believed that slavery was
losing its hold in the South. Jefferson said: "When I think that God
is just I tremble for my country." In that hour the statesman
prophesied that slavery would soon melt away like the vanishing snow of
April. But when Whitney invented his gin and the raising of cotton
became very lucrative slavery took on new life. It was Lord Brougham
who first said that when slavery brought in 100 percent, while it was
seen to be immoral, not all the navies of the world could stop it.
Later, when it brought in 300 percent, it became a peculiar
institution, patterned after the system of the patriarchs. But when it
brought in 300 percent master and slave became a Christian relation,
and slavery was baptized with quotations from the Old Testament.
But avarice could not forever blind men's eyes to scenes of sorrow, nor
stop their ears to sounds of woe. When the horrors of the slave-market
and the infamies of the cotton-field filled all the land with shame
reformers arose, declaring that the attempt to compress and confine
liberty would end in explosion. In that hour Northern men made
tentative overtures looking to the purchase of all slaves. But
slavery, Delilah-like, made the southern leaders drunk with the cup of
sorcery. They scorned the proposition. In the light of subsequent
events we see that in saving her institution the South lost it, and
with it her wealth, while in losing her slaves the North gained her
wealth. Under free labor the North doubled its population, its
manufactories, its riches and waxed mighty. Under slave-labor the
South dwindled in wealth and became only the empty shell of a state.
The spark fired at Fort Sumter kindled a conflagration that swept
through the sunny South like a devastating fire and revealed its inner
poverty. When four years had passed by the farmhouses and factories
were ruins, the village was a heap, the town a desolation. Graveyards
were as populous as cities, each village had its company of cripples,
the cry of the orphan and the widow filled all the land.
When Charles Darwin returned from his voyage around the world, he sent
a generous contribution to the London Missionary Society. The great
scientist had discovered that in lessening her wealth through missions
England had saved her treasure through commerce. Traveling in foreign
lands, Darwin noticed that the Christian teachers in schools that now
touch 3,000,000 of young men and women in India, were really commercial
agents for England's trade. In awakening the minds of the darkened
millions the teacher had created a demand for books, newspapers and
printing-presses. In awakening the sense of self-respect the teacher
had created a demand for English clothing and the product of English
looms. Also the influence of each home, with its comforts and
conveniences, created a demand for English tools and improvements of
labor. Summing up his observation, Lord Havelock said that each
thousand dollars England had spent upon her missions had brought a
return of a hundred thousand dollars through her commerce. Hitherto
the interior of China has been closed to English merchants. To that
dark land, therefore, England has sent 200 teachers whose homes are
centers of light and inspiration. When two-score years have passed
English fleets will be taxed to the utmost to carry to China, as now to
India, her fabrics of cotton and wool, her presses, looms,
sewing-machines, her pictures, her libraries. In giving of her wealth
to found these destitute schools England will save it a hundred-fold
and find new markets among 300,000,000 people.
Sacrifice is also the secret of influence. Long ago Cicero noted that
tales of heroes and eloquence and self-sacrifice cast a charm and spell
upon the people. When men sacrifice ease, wealth, rank, life itself,
the delight of the beholders knows no bounds. If we call the roll of
the sons of greatness and influence we shall see that they are also the
sons of self-sacrifice. The Grecian hero who lost his life that he
might save his influence is typical of all the great leaders. Phocion
was a patriot and martyr whose single error in judgment brought down a
catastrophe upon his beloved Athens. When the fierce mob surrounded
his house and prepared to beat down his doors, friends offered Phocion
escape and shelter, but the hero went calmly forth to meet his death.
When the day of execution arrived the cup of poison was handed to the
other leaders first. The jailer was careful to see to it that before
he reached Phocion he had only a few drops of hemlock left in his cup,
but the hero drew out his purse and bade a youth run swiftly to buy
more poison, saying to the onlookers: "Athens makes her patriots pay,
even for dying." Losing his life, Phocion, found immortal influence.
The history of Holland's greatness is the history of one who saved
liberty by losing his own life. William the Silent was a prince in
station and in wealth, yet for Holland's sake made himself a beggar and
an outlaw. He feared God, indeed, but not the batteries of Alva and
Philip. His career reads like one who with naked fists captured a
blazing cannon. Falling at last by the dagger of a hired assassin, he
exclaimed: "I commit my poor people to God and myself to God's great
captain, Christ." When he died little children cried in the streets.
He lost his life, said his biographer, but saved his fame. And what
shall we more say of Italy's hero, who wore his fiery fagots like a
crown of gold; of Germany's hero, who lost his priestly rites, but
gained the hearts of all mankind; of England's hero, whose very ashes
were cast by enemies upon the River Severn, as if to float his
influence out o'er all the world, of India's hero, William Carey, the
English shoemaker, who founded for India an educational system now
reaching millions of children and youth, who gave India literature,
made five grammars and six dictionaries, and so used his commercial
genius through his indigo plantation and factories that it made for him
a million dollars in the interests of Christian missions? Of this
great company, what can we say save that they won renown through
self-renunciation! What they did makes weak and unworthy what we say.
Just here let us remember that the statue of Jupiter was a figure so
colossal that worshipers, unable to reach the divine forehead, cast
their garlands at the hero's feet. For this law of sacrifice is the
secret of the Messiah. Earth's great ones were taught it by their
Master. Jesus Christ, "being rich, for our sakes became poor."
Because the law of sacrifice is the law of the Savior, man gains life
through death and renown through self-renunciation.
THE GENTLENESS OF TRUE GIANTHOOD.
"A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in
the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and
of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate
sympathies--one may say, simply 'fineness of nature.' This is, of
course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness, in
fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy.
Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel no
touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have
felt a bent rose leaf, yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and
behave itself like iron. I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar
animal, but if you think about him carefully you will find that his
non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine
nature, not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the
way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way and in his
sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique
on points of honor. Hence it will follow that one of the probable
signs of high-breeding in men generally will be their kindness and
mercifulness."--_Modern Painters_.