THE GENTLENESS OF TRUE GIANTHOOD.
History has never known another such an enthusiasm for a hero as the
multitude once felt toward Jesus Christ. There have indeed been times
when such patriots as Garibaldi, Kossuth and Lincoln have kindled in
men an enthusiasm akin to adoration and worship. Yet let us hasten to
confess that the qualities calculated to quicken men into raptures of
devotion appeared in these patriots only in fragmentary form, while
they dwelt in Christ in full-orbed majesty and splendor. The welcome
Chicago gave to Grant upon his return from his journey around the
world; the enthusiasm excited by Kossuth when in 1851 he drove through
Broadway, New York; the wave of gratitude that swept over the Italian
multitude when Garibaldi appeared in Florence--all these are events
that bear witness to society's devotion to its patriots and heroes.
But, be it remembered, these scenes occurred but once in the history of
each of these great men.
It stirs wonder in us, therefore, that Christ's every journey across
the fields took on the aspect of a triumphal procession, while His
popularity waxed with familiarity and the increasing years. Indeed,
full oft the rapture men felt toward Him amounted to an intoxication
and an ecstasy of devotion. True it is that men now look upon Him
through a blaze of light, and, remembering His achievements for art,
liberty and learning, have stained His name through and through with
lustrous colors. As at eventide we look out upon the sun through white
and golden clouds that the sun itself has lifted, so do we behold the
carpenter's son standing forth under the dazzling light of nearly two
thousand years of history, while the heart colors His name with all
that is noblest in human aspiration and achievement.
Nevertheless, be it instantly confessed that from the very beginning
this divine Teacher exhibited qualities that kindled in men an
enthusiasm that amounted to transcendent delight. The time was when
scholars attempted to explain His influence over the multitude by
portraying Him with a halo of light about His head. Fortunately these
ideas that robbed men of all fellowship with their divine brother have
perished, and now we know that there was nothing unusual about His
appearance, nor did any effulgent light blaze forth from His person.
Whether or not unique beauty of face and form was His we do not know.
Coins and statues portray for us the Roman emperors and the Greek
scholars. Yet art has broken down utterly in the attempt to combine in
one face Christ's majesty and meekness, strength and gentleness,
suffering and victory. All that we can know of His personal appearance
must be gained through imagination, as it clothed Him with those traits
that alone cannot account for His influence over the multitudes. What
sweet allurement in the face that made children leap into His arms!
What winsome benignity that made mothers feel that His touch would
return the babe with double worth into the parent's bosom!
Purity in others has been cold and chaste as ice. How strange that in
Him purity had an irresistible fascination, so that the corruptest and
wickedest felt drawn unto Him, and "depravity itself bowed down and
wept in the presence of divinity." What all-forgiving love, what
all-cleansing love, in one who by a mere look could dissolve in
repentant tears men long hardened by vice and crime! What an
atmosphere of power He must have carried, that by one beam from His eye
He could smite to the very ground the soldiers who confronted Him!
Did ever man have such a genius for noble friendship? What bosom words
He used! What love pressure in all His speech! How were His words
laden with double meanings, so that hearing one thing, men also heard
another, even as they who hear the sound of the distant sea, knowing
that the sound they hear is but a breath of the great infinite ocean
that heaves beyond in the dim, vast dark. Among all the heroes of time
He walks solitary by the greatness of His power, His beauty and the
wonder of love His personality excited. Standing in the presence of
some glorious cathedral or gallery, beholding the Parthenon or
pyramids, the rugged mountain or the beautiful landscape, emotion and
imagination are sometimes so deeply stirred that men lose command of
themselves and break into transports of admiration. But the enthusiasm
evoked by mountain or statue or canvas is as nothing compared to the
rapturous devotion felt by the multitude for this One, who united in
full splendor all those eminent qualities of mind and heart that all
the ages and generations have in vain sought to emulate. High over all
the other worthies He rises like a star riding in untroubled splendor
above the low-browed hills.
In all ages great men have educated themselves by reading the biography
of ancient worthies, and emulating the example of the heroes of
antiquity. Great has been the influence of these reformers and
philosophers, statesmen and poets, hanging in the heavens above men and
raining down inspiration upon the human imagination. Yet from all the
worthies of the past, and all modern heroes, man has drawn less of
inspiration and personal influence than from the single example of this
ideal Christ. Passing by His influence upon institutions, education,
art and literature, we shall do well to consider how His example has
instructed man in the art of a right carriage of the faculties in the
home and market-place. In the last analysis, Jesus Christ is the only
perfect gentleman our earth has ever known--in comparison with whom all
the Chesterfields seem boors. For nothing taxes a man so heavily as
the task of maintaining smooth, pleasant and charitable relations with
one's fellows. And Christ alone was able always to meet storm with
calm, hate with love, scowls with smiles, plottings with confidence,
envy and bitterness with unruffled tranquility.
In all His relations with His friends and enemies the quality that
crowns His method of living and challenges our thought is the
gentleness of His bearing. Matchless the mingled strength and beauty
of His life, yet gentleness was the flower and fruitage of it all. For
in Him the lion and the lamb dwelt together. Oak and rock were there,
and also vine and flower. Weakness is always rough. Only giants can
be gentle. Tenderness is an inflection of strength. No error can be
greater than to suppose that gentleness is mere absence of vigor.
Weakness totters and tugs at its burden. When the dwarf that attended
Ivanhoe at the tournament lifted the bleeding sufferer he staggered
under his heavy burden. Weakness made him stumble and caused the
wounded knight intense pain. When the giant of the brawny arm and the
unconquered heart came, he lifted the unconscious sufferer like a
feather's weight and without a jar bore him away to a secure
hiding-place for healing and recovering. He who studies the great men
of yesterday will find in the last analysis that gentleness has always
been the test of gianthood, and fine considerateness the measure of
manhood and the gauge of personal worth. No other hero moving through
the crowds has ever been so courteously gentle, so sweetly considerate
in his personal bearing as this Christ--who never failed to kindle in
men transports of delight and enthusiasm.
The crying fault of our generation is its lack of gentleness. Our age
is harsh when it judges, brutal when it blames and savage in its
severity. Carlyle, emptying vials of scorn upon the people of England,
numbering his generation by "thirty millions, mostly fools," is typical
of the publicists, authors and critics who pelt their brother man with
contemptuous scorn. The author of "Robert Elsmere" exhibits that
polished scholar and brilliant student as one who gave up teaching
because he could find no audience on a level with his ability or worthy
of his instruction. Having begun by despising others, he ends by
despising himself. Now the popularity of Elsmere's character witnesses
to the fact that our generation includes a large number of cynics who
scorn their fellows and in Elsmere see themselves as "in an open
glass." To-day this tendency toward harshness of judgment has become
more pronounced, and there seems to be no leader so noble as to escape
brutal criticism and no movement whose white flag may not be smirched
by mud-slingers. What epithets are hurled at each new idea! What
torrents of ridicule are emptied out upon each social movement!
The fact that society has oftentimes destroyed its noblest geniuses
avails little for the restraint of harshness. For years England was
wildly merry at Turner's expense. The newspapers cartooned his
paintings. Reviews spoke of them as "color blotches." The rich over
their champagne made merry at the great artist's expense. After a
while men found a little respite from the mad chase for wealth and
pleasure and discovered that Turner's extreme examples represented
peculiar moods in nature, seen only by those who had traveled as widely
as had Turner, while his great landscapes were as rich in imaginative
quality as those of any artist of all ages. Only when it was too late,
only when harshness had broken the man's heart, and scorn had fatally
wounded his genius, did scholars begin to adorn their pages by
references to Turner's fame, did the rich begin to pay fabulous sums
for the very pictures they had once despised, the nation set apart the
best room in its gallery for Turner's works, while the people wove for
his white tombstone wreaths they had denied his brow and paid his dead
ashes honors refused his living spirit.
In similar vein we remember the English-speaking world has recently
been celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Keats, who is the only
pure Greek in all English literature, for whose imagination "a thing of
beauty was a joy forever," and whose genius in divining the secrets of
the beautiful amounted to inspiration. We know now that no poet in all
time, who died so young, has left so much that is precious. Scholars
are not wanting who believe that had he lived to see his maturity Keats
would have ranked with the five great poets of the first order of
genius. Yet the publication of his volume of verse received from
"Blackwood" and the "Quarterly" only contempt and bitter scorn. Waxing
bold, the penny-a-liners grew savage, until the very skies rained lies
and bitter slanders upon poor Keats. Sensitive, soon he was wounded to
death. After a week of sleeplessness, he arose one morning to find a
bright red spot upon his handkerchief. "That is arterial blood," said
he; "that drop is my death-warrant; I shall die." And so, when he was
one-and-twenty, friends lifted above the boy's dust a marble slab, upon
which was written: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Now
his name shines like a star, while low down and bespattered with mud
are the names of those whose cruel criticisms helped to kill the boy
and whose only claim to immortality is their brutality.
Witness also the contempt our age once visited upon Browning, whose
mind is slowly becoming recognized as one of the rich-gold minds of our
century. Witness the sport over Ruskin's "Munera Pulveris," and the
scornful reception given Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." Now that a few
years have passed, those who once reviled are teaching their children
the pathway to the graves of the great. The harshness of the world's
treatment of its greatest teachers makes one of the most pathetic
chapters in history. God gives each nation only a few men of supreme
talent. Gives it, for greatness is not made; it is found as is the
gold. Gold cannot be made out of mud; it is uncovered. And God gives
each generation a few men of the first order; and when they have
created truth and beauty they have the right while they live to
kindness and sympathy, not harshness and cynicism. No youth winning
the first goal of his ambition was ever injured by knowing that his
father's face did not flush with pride, while his mother's eyes were
filled with happy tears, in joy of his first victory. No noble lover
but girds himself for a second struggle the more resolutely for knowing
that his noble mistress rejoiced in his first conquest. Frost itself
is not more destructive to harvest fields than harshness is to the
creative faculties. Strange that Florence gave Dante exile in exchange
for his immortal poem! Strange that London gave Milton threats of
imprisonment for the manuscript of "Paradise Lost!" Passing strange
that until his career was nearly run universities visited upon John
Ruskin only scorn and contumely, that ruined his health and broke his
heart, withholding the wreath until, as he said pathetically, his only
"pleasure was in memory, his ambition in heaven," and he knew not what
to do with his laurel leaves save "lay them wistfully upon his mother's
grave." In every age the critics that have refused honor to its
worthies, living, have heaped gifts high upon the graves of its dead.
That generation and individual must be far from perfect that is
characterized by the presence of harshness and the absence of
gentleness. With a great blare of trumpets our century has been
praised for its ingenuity, its wealth and comforts, its instruments,
refinement and culture. But history tells of no man who has carried
his genius up to such supreme excellence that society has forgotten his
vice or forgiven the faults that marred his rare gifts. What genius
had De Quincey! Marvelous the myriad-minded Coleridge! The
opium-habit, however, was a vice that eclipsed their fame and robbed
them of half their rightful influence. Voltaire's style was so
faultlessly perfect that if the sentences lying across his page had
been strings of pearls they could have been no more beautiful. But
Voltaire's excesses make a black mark across the white page before each
reader's mind. Rousseau's writings are so melodious that, long after
laying aside the book the ear would be filled with the sound of
delicious music were it not that the reader seems ever to hear the moan
of the four children whose unnatural father, without even giving them a
name, placed them in the foundling-asylum.
Early Carlyle wooed and won one of the most brilliant girls of his day,
whose signal talent shone in the crowded drawing-rooms of London like a
sapphire blazing among pebbles. Yet her husband lacked gentleness.
Slowly harshness crept into Carlyle's voice. Soon the wife gave up her
favorite authors to read the husband's notes; then she gave up all
reading to relieve him of details; at last her very being was placed on
the altar of sacrifice--fuel to feed the flame of his fame and genius.
Long before the end came she was submerged and almost forgotten. One
day two distinguished foreign authors called upon Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle.
For an hour the philosopher poured forth vehement tirade against the
commercial spirit, while the good wife never once opened her lips. At
last the author ceased talking, and there was silence for a time.
Suddenly Carlyle thundered: "Jane, stop breathing so loud!" Long years
before Jane had stopped doing everything else except breathe. And so,
obedient to the injunction, a few days afterward she ceased "breathing
so loud."
When a few weeks had gone by Carlyle discovered, through reading her
journal, that his wife had for want of affection frozen and starved to
death within his home like some poor traveler who had fallen in the
snows beyond the door. For years, without his realizing it, she had
kept all the wheels oiled, kept his body in health and his mind in
happiness. Only when it was too late did the husband realize that his
fame was largely his wife's. Then did the old man begin his pathetic
pilgrimage to his wife's grave, where Froude often found him murmuring:
"If I had only known! If I had only known!" For all his supreme gifts
and rare talents were marred by harshness. Intellectual brilliancy
weighs light as punk against the gold of gentleness and character.
Half Carlyle's books, weighted by a gentle, noble spirit, would have
availed more for social progress than these many volumes with the bad
taste they leave in the mouth. The sign of ripeness in an apple, a
peach, is beauty, and the test of character is gentleness and kindness
of heart.
One of the crying needs of society is a revival of gentleness and of a
refined considerateness in judging others. There is no disposition
that cuts at the very root of character like harshness, and there is
nothing that blights happiness and breeds discord like unlovingness and
severity of judgment. We hear much of industrial strife, social
warfare and want of sympathy between the classes. Be it remembered,
gentleness alone can be invoked to heal the breach. There is a legend
that when Jacob with his family and flocks met Esau with his children
and herds, the angels of God hovered in the air above the two brothers
and began to rain gifts down upon their companies. Strangely enough,
each forgetting the gifts falling in his own camp, rushed forth to pick
up the gifts falling in that of his brother. There was anger stirred.
Epithets and stones began to fly, until all the air was filled with
flying weapons. In such a scrimmage the messengers of peace had no
place. Soon the sound of receding wings died out of the air, the gifts
ceased to fall and all things faded into the light of common day. This
legend interprets to us how harshness breeds strife and robs man of his
gifts from God and his happiness through his brother man.
Several years ago an industrial war was waged in the coal districts of
England that cost that nation untold treasure. It is said that the
strife grew out of harsh words between the leaders of the opposing
factions. It seemed that the industrious and worthy poor men
overlooked the fact that there were industrious and worthy rich men and
insisted on speaking only of the idle and spendthrift rich. Then
followed his opponent who, as an industrious and worthy rich man,
insisted on ignoring the industrious and worthy poor, but spoke only of
the idle and thriftless poor, the paupers and parasites. Soon
gentleness was forgotten and harshness remembered. Soon there came the
trampled cornfields and the bloody streets.
Teachers also need to learn the lesson of Arnold of Rugby. One day the
great instructor spake harshly to a dull boy, who an hour afterward
came to him with tearful eyes, and in a half-sobbing voice exclaimed;
"But why are you angry, sir? I am doing my best." Then Arnold learned
that a lesson easy for one mind may be a torture for another. So he
begged the boy's pardon, and recognized the principle of gentleness
that afterward made him the greatest instructor of his time.
Not war, not pestilence, not famine itself, produces for each
generation so much misery and unhappiness as is wrought in the
aggregate through the accumulated harshness of each generation.
Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they who with humble
talents make themselves like the mignonette, creators of fragrance and
peace! Thrice blessed are they who with lofty talents emulate the
vines that climbing high never forget to blossom, and the higher they
climb do ever shed sweet blooms upon those beneath! No single great
deed is comparable for a moment to the multitude of little gentlenesses
performed by those who scatter happiness on every side and strew all
life with hope and good cheer.
Life holds no motive for stimulating gentleness in man like the thought
of the gentleness of God. Unfortunately, it seems difficult for man to
associate delicacy and gentleness with vastness and strength. It was
the misfortune of Greek philosophers and is, indeed, that of nearly all
the modern theologians, to suppose that a perfect being cannot suffer.
Both schools of thought conceive of God as sitting upon a marble
throne, eternally young, eternally beautiful, beholding with quiet
indifference from afar how man, with infinite blunderings, sufferings
and tears makes his way forward. Yet He who holds the sun in the
hollow of his hand, who takes up the isles as a very little thing, who
counts the nations but as the dust in the balance, is also the gentle
One. Like the wide, deep ocean, that pulsates into every bay and creek
and blesses the distant isles with its dew and rain, so God's heart
throbs and pulsates unto the uttermost parts of the universe, having a
parent's sympathy for His children who suffer.
Indeed, the seer ranges through all nature searching out images for
interpreting His all-comprehending gentleness. "Even the bruised reed
he will not break." Lifting itself high in the air, a mere lead pencil
for size, weighted with a heavy top, a very little injury shatters a
reed. Some rude beast, in wild pursuit of prey, plunges through the
swamp, shatters the reed, leaves it lying upon the ground, all bruised
and bleeding, and ready to die. Such is God's gentleness that, though
man make himself as worthless as a bruised reed; though by his
ignorance, frailty and sin he expel all the manhood from his heart and
life, and make himself of no more value than one of the myriad reeds in
the world's swamps, still doth God say: "My gentleness is such that I
will direct upon this wounded life thoughts that shall recuperate and
heal, until at last the bruised reed shall rise up in strength, and
judgment shall issue in victory."
And as God's gentleness would go one step further, there is added the
tender lesson of the smoking flax. Our glowing electric bulbs suffer
no injury from blasts, and our lamps have like strength. The time was,
when, wakened by the cry of the little sufferer, the ancient mother
sprang up to strike the tinder and light the wick in the cup of oil.
Only with difficulty was the tinder kindled. Then how precious the
spark that one breath of air would put out! With what eagerness did
the mother guard the smoking flax! And in setting forth the gentleness
of God it is declared that, with eyes of love, He searches through each
heart, and if He find so much as a spark of good in the outcast, the
publican, the sinner, He will tend that spark and feed it toward the
love that shall glow and sparkle forever and ever; for evil is to be
conquered, and God will not so much punish as exterminate sin from His
universe. His strength is inflicted toward gentleness, His justice
tempered with mercy, and all his attributes held in solution of love.
No longer should medievalism becloud God's gentle face. Cleanse your
thoughts, as once the artist in Milan cleansed the grime and soot from
the wall where Dante's lustrous face was hidden.
With shouts and transports of joy and admiration men welcome the
patriot or hero who in times of danger held the destiny of the people
in his hands and never once betrayed it. And let each intellect soar
without hindrance, and the heart pour itself out before God in a
freshet of divine love. Great is the genius of Plato or Bacon,
revealing itself in tides of thought, but greater and richer is the
genius of the heart that is conscious of vast, deep fountains of love,
that may be poured forth in generous tides before the God whose throne
is mercy, whose face is light, whose name is love, whose strength is
gentleness, whose considerateness is our pledge of pardon, peace and
immortality.
THE THUNDER OF SILENT FIDELITY:
A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF LITTLE THINGS.
"We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not
by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite
authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small things.
There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His
guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands; and what
is true of Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most
reverently when most habitually; our insolence is in ever acting
without reference to it, our true honoring of it is in its universal
application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its
sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing, but my
excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every
argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough
on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in
our lives. The snow, the vapour and the strong wind fulfil His word.
Are our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these, that we should
forget it?"--_Ruskin_.
"I expect to pass through this life but once. If there is any kindness
or any good thing I can do to my fellow-beings let me do it now. I
shall pass this way but once."---_William Penn_.