THE LOVE THAT PERFECTS LIFE.
The purpose of Christ's mission to earth was the development of ideal
manhood. The instruments he fashioned and the agents he ordained all
wrought unceasingly toward a manhood that was ample in faculty, fertile
in resource and ripe in those qualities that make for maturity of
character. He sought to teach men how to carry their faculties through
all the strife, collisions and rivalries of life, without damaging men
or being damaged by them.
Always to the children of good fortune right living has seemed easy,
for these live midst sheltered conditions and exhibit goodness as
naturally as the sheltered southern nooks have grass and flowers when
all the northern hillsides are brown with death or white with snow.
But Christ came teaching the children of weakness and misfortune how to
bear up midst adversity, how to sing songs at midnight and how, through
defeat, to march to final victory. So beautiful was the manhood he
unveiled before men that, beholding it, men low and men high, the
publican and prodigal, the centurion and ruler also, quivered with
hope, as the harp quivers under the touch of the harper.
For his ideal includes every quality that kindles admiration and
delight; all gentleness, all goodness, all simplicity, the refinement
of the scholar, the insight of the seer, the courage that makes the
youth a hero. In luminous hours men behold visions of ideal perfection
hanging like stars in a midnight sky. Unfortunately for many, these
visions burst like bubbles and soon pass away. Artists and sculptors
look forward to an hour when, by a touch here and a touch there, the
statue shall be perfected and the portrait completed; so Christ pointed
forward to an hour when, having been wrought upon by darkness and by
light, by defeat and by victory, by sorrow and by joy, at last wisdom
shall be made perfect, judgment know no error, love have full
disclosure and the soul enter into unhindered perfection.
Great are the achievements of the chisel upon the block of marble,
marvelous the skill with which a master turns a dead canvas into
lustrous life and beauty. Matchless the power that turns a clod into a
rosy apple, a seed into a sheaf of wheat, a babe into a sage; yet
neither nature nor art knows any transformation like unto that wonder
of time when, by slow processes, God develops man out of rude and low
conditions of life unto those high and spiritual moods when selfishness
gives place to self-sacrifice, coarseness to sweetness, hardness to
gentleness and love, and perfection dwells in man as ripeness dwells in
fruit, as maturity dwells in harvests.
The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to
fulfill in character all one has planned in thought. Man's life is one
long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet,
rebuke and tempt him upward. "As to other points," said John Milton,
"what God may have determined for me I know not, but this I know--that
if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of
any man, he has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued
not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than I, day and
night, the idea of perfection." Haunted by his dream of excellence,
the poet likened himself to one born beside the throne and reared in
purple, yet by some mischance left to gypsies, midst poverty and
neglect, while thoughts of the glory he has known and that imperial
palace whence he came, are never out of mind. In picturing forth these
conceptions of sweetness and light, philosophers have found it hard to
summarize the qualities that make up ideal manhood.
Conceding that the Christian is the perfect gentleman, who does for his
fellows what an easy chair does for a tired man, what a winter's fire
is to a lost traveler, we may also affirm that Newman's definition is
inadequate and fragmentary. As the ideal portraits of Christ, from
Perugino to Hoffman, divide the kingdom of beauty--and must be united
in one new conception in order to approach the perfect face--so the
poets and the philosophers, with their diverse conceptions of ideal
manhood, divide the kingdom of character. "The true man cannot be a
fragmentary man," said Plato. Is he not one-sided who masters the
conventional refinement and the stock proprieties, yet indulges in
drunkenness and gluttony? "Pleasure must not be his sole aim," said
the accomplished Chesterfield. "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of
the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret
their loss. Those who have no experience are dazzled with there
[Transcriber's note: their?] glare, but I have been behind the scenes
and have seen all the coarse pulleys, which exhibit and move all the
gaudy machines that excite the admiration of the ignorant audience."
Nor is scholarship enough. From Solomon to Burke, the wisest men have
been the saddest of men. The Scottish physician who ordered his
secretary to select from his library all the books upon medicine and
surgery that were printed prior to 1880 and sell them, tells us how
futile is the pursuit of wisdom and how rapidly the systems of to-day
become the cast-off garments of to-morrow. Nor must the perfect man
represent power and wealth alone, for "the wealth of Croesus cannot
bring sleep to the sick man tossing upon his silken couch, and all the
Alexanders and Napoleons have shed bitter tears, conquering or
conquered." He who is merchant or scholar or ruler, and only that,
climbs his pillar like Simeon Stylites.
All such know not that the world itself is a pillar all too small for
the soul to stand upon. This life-chase after bubbles, this fighting
for trifles, this pursuit of false grails, reminds us of the story of
that Grecian boy lured to his death by the enchantress. Going into the
palace garden to pluck a rose, the youth beheld the form of a young
girl standing in the edge of the glimmering woods. With soft words and
sweet, she called him. Forgetting his dear ones in the palace, the
youth ran after his enchantress. Along a pathway of flowers she danced
before him, sometimes sweeping the strings of her harp, sometimes
singing, and shaking her curls at his haste, ever shooting arrows from
her eyes, yet ever just eluding his embrace. On and on she led him
into the bog, that covered his garments with mud, through the thorns
and brambles that tore his white skin, over rocks steep and sharp.
Ever and anon the youth stopped to pluck the thorns from his hands and
bind up his bleeding feet; then, gathering his torn purple about him,
he plunged on, in the hope of drinking at last the sweet cup of her
sorcery. When, at the end of the day, the desire of his heart was
given him, the illusion fell away, for the youth embraced not a
beautiful maiden, but an old hag, who had led him into the desert to a
hut whose stones were darkness and whose walls were confusion.
As the term genius includes all those forms of culture termed poetry,
music, eloquence, leadership, so love is a term that includes all those
shapes of human welfare known as education, refinement, liberty,
happiness. Properly defined, love is that exalted state of mind and
heart when reason is luminous, when judgment and imagination glow under
its influence just as the electric bulb glows under the living current.
There are three possible states and moods under which the mind may
fulfill its functions. There is a dull and quiescent condition when
reason and judgment act, but act without fervor. Power is there, but
it is latent, just as heat is in the unkindled wood lying on the grate,
but the heat is hidden.
Then there is a higher mood of the mind, when, under the influence of
conversation or reading, the mind emits jets and flashes of thought,
through witticism or story; but this creative mood is intermittent and
spasmodic. Last of all is that exalted mood when the mind glows and
throbs, when reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the
nimbus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures
literally represents the effulgence of the mind. Work done in the
lower moods is called mediocre; work done by the mind in the second
stage is associated with talent, but when, through birth or ancestry,
the mind works ever in regnant and supernal moods, it is called genius.
Affirming that all minds rise into this higher mood at intervals, we
may also affirm that all the best work in literature or art or commerce
has been wrought during these exalted states when love for the work in
hand has rendered the mind luminous and crystalline.
It was love of nature that lent Wordsworth his power to divine nature's
secret. When the poet approached Chamouni and the mountains that gird
it round he tells us he was conscious of a shivering from head to foot,
with mingled awe and fear; his mind glowed with an indescribable
pleasure; his body thrilled as if in the presence of a disembodied
spirit; his heart approached nature with an intensity of joy comparable
only to that joy which Dante felt when approaching Beatrice. But when
the cares of this world gained upon him and the love of nature faded
gradually away in the manner described by him in his "Intimations of
Immortality," then also his power to describe nature faded away. For
only when the heart loves can intellect do great work.
His biographer tells us that when Angelo grew old and blind he was
accustomed to ask his servant to lead him to the torso of Phidias.
Passing his hands slowly over the broken marble, the sculptor entered
into the thought of the great Grecian, and with love for his art
glowing in his face and thrilling in his voice, he mused aloud upon the
genius of Phidias. Love of his art made all his days bright and all
his moons honeymoons. When Wyatt Eaton, the artist, was in Millet's
home he noticed that when the wife called the artist from his task to
his noonday meal, the artist's whole being had so gathered itself into
the eye that there was no life left with which to hear. Love lent
genius skill. No other sentiment is so universal or so powerful in its
influence as love that energizes the mind and heart. Love lent
swiftness to the feet of Sir Galahad; lent his heart courage; lent his
sword victory. Entering the palace, love, said Cicero, "makes gold
shine." Love for the birds lent fame to Audubon; just as love for the
bees lent fortune to Huber. Love of knowledge hived all the wisdom in
the libraries; love of beauty adorned all the galleries; love of
service organized all the philanthropies. To-morrow, at the behest of
love, and in the interests of dear ones at home, all the wheels will
begin to revolve; all the trains go out and all the ships come in.
When a man of real force and worth passes upward into that high state
of purity and sweet reasonableness called love, he becomes almost
sacred and exhales an ineffable and mysterious atmosphere. Great is
the power of trade; wonderful the influence of fortune and force;
marvelous the hundred instrumentalities and institutions of society,
but above all of them is man, whose love can indeed "make riches
splendid," whose wisdom love can make mellow, whose strength love can
make gentle, whose defeats love can turn into victories. In that hour
one hundred men dwell in one man.
Love also perfects morality and fulfills all ethical laws. What health
is to the body, what sweetness is to the lark's song, what perfume is
to the rose, that morality is to culture and character. Drunkenness
and gluttony have not more power to blear the eye than immorality to
degrade the soul. When Homer tells us that Ulysses escaped unharmed
from the enchanted palace, but suffered injury from his unfaithfulness
to a friend, the poet wishes us to know that it is easier to recover
from the poison of Circe's cup than to escape the effect of
disobedience to the laws of God.
Fortunately nature is so organized as to keep the consequences of
ill-doing ever before man's eyes. Disobeying the law of fire man is
burned; disobeying the law of steam man is scalded; disobeying the law
of honor friends avert their faces, or the door of the jail closes
behind the wrongdoer. So few are these laws and so simple that they
could not be plainer were they emblazoned upon the sky as an
ever-present scroll. There is the law of reverence. Conscious of
vastness and sublimity, in the presence of mountains, man, frail,
ignorant, passing swiftly to his grave, is asked to bow his head in the
presence of the Eternal One.
There is also the law of truth in speech, the law of purity in thought,
the laws that forbid theft and covetousness and killing. But all these
laws are gathered up and fulfilled in love, just as the seven colors of
nature are gathered up and fulfilled in the one white sunbeam. And he
who loves will fulfill all these laws. Loving himself, man will not
waste his physical treasure. As it was vandalism for the iconoclasts
to pass through the cathedrals of Europe whitewashing the frescoes and
breaking down the statues, much more is it vandalism for men to destroy
that temple of God called the body. If man loves his mind he will,
through culture, lead what is germinal and latent forth into full
blossom and fruitage. He who loves scholarship will make haste to
double the books in his library. He who loves sweetness will double
the sweetness of his melody. He who loves friends will double their
number and strengthen their affection. He who loves industry will
strengthen his toil and lend it influence. Looking toward the home,
love fulfills the law of helpfulness. Looking toward the weak and
poor, love fulfills the law of service and sympathy. Looking toward a
great crisis for humanity, love fulfills the law of martyrdom.
Just as summer fulfills all ripeness and growth for seed and root and
tree, so love fulfills all laws for self and man and the all-loving God.
After thirty-six years of tireless toil Herbert Spencer has brought to
a conclusion the labors of a lifetime. His final volume places the
capstone on the structure of his philosophy. In reading these pages no
thoughtful mind can fail to perceive that for science also has dawned
the vision splendid. If history began with an era of force, its last
and crowning achievement will be the era when love, organized into laws
and institutions, will lend perfection to civilization. The upward
march of mankind has been slow and accompanied by tremendous losses.
At the beginning strength prevailed and weakness went to the wall; the
bird with the swiftest wing first reached the fountain, the deer with
the swiftest foot reached the place of shelter, the ox with the
strongest thrust reached the richest fodder. Pushed back, weakness
perished, while strength prevailed and propagated.
This law of violence received its first check through the parental
instinct. Parenthood built a fortress with walls and bulwarks about
the babe. Love of offspring caused a weakness to survive. At last an
era dawned when many parents united to construct a shield for weak
children indeed, but also for weak adults. The state lifted the shield
between weakness and its oppressor. The widow and the orphan were
permitted to glean after the harvesters. The traveler, passing through
the field, might pluck a handful of corn or pull a bunch of figs. The
creditor must not take the blanket or coat from the laborer nor the
boat from the poor fisherman, nor the plane or saw from the poor
carpenter. Stimulated by Christ's example and teachings, society began
to multiply the bulwarks against tyranny and selfishness. Looking
toward the child, for the protection of weakness and unripeness, the
state built these shields called the school and library, looking toward
the unfortunate and those weak in body or mind, the state built
bulwarks called asylum and hospital. Looking toward the chimney-sweep,
the factory boys and girls, the state began to soften pain and mitigate
the distress of labor. Looking toward the serf and the slave and the
prisoner, the novelist and poet constructed song and story as shields
for the protection of the weak and the oppressed.
One hundred years ago a man was as a beast of the field, and the
slaughter of men in Italy, by the tyrant who ruled over them, stirred
no more thought in England than the news of the slaughter of so many
beasts. But fifty years ago the state had become so gentle toward the
weak that when Mr. Gladstone made a protest against the savagery and
infuriated cruelty wrought upon the inmates of the dungeons of Italy,
then the heart of Europe turned toward Rome, the throne trembled upon
its foundations. Formerly when any foreign government wished to
colonize Africa, they sent out a regiment of soldiers, cut off a slice
of the country and annexed it. Now public sentiment forbids such
tyranny. The only way the aggressive nations can obtain possession of
new territory is to do it under the name of a protectorate,
sugar-coating, as has been said, the deeds of tyranny. If the dungeon
has been rifled of its prey, if cruelty has been scourged out of the
land, if despotism tottered, it is because society was slowly climbing
up that stairway, of which the first step is fear and the last is love.
In these January days our earth, snow-clad and frost-bound, seems like
a huge ball of ice. Yet all unconsciously to itself, the earth is
being swept on into spring and summer. Unconsciously, but none the
less truly, society, under the silent and secret impulse of the great
God, has been journeying upward toward the time when love shall fulfill
every law; when kindness and sympathy shall be organized in manners and
customs. All the revolutions of the past, all the clangor of war, all
the tumbling down of Bastilles, all the piling up of cities, is as
nothing to the advance of the world toward that era when love shall
perfect man's institutions and civilization.
Love also perfects religion. It is the glory of Christ that he unveils
the sovereignty of character and crowns manhood with all-maturing and
all-perfecting love. Looking backward, man finds that all religions
fall into four classes: There is the religion of fear and force, when
man offers sacrifices to appease the gods and conciliate justice.
There is the religion of law, when men reduce life to formal rules, and
the Pharisee rigorously fulfills his duty as chief, or trader, or
friend. There is the religion of romanticism, when men of powerful
intellect and strong imagination evolve their ideal and, withdrawing to
some cave, give themselves to reverie. In all such self becomes an
orb, so large as to eclipse brother man and God. Last of all there is
the religion of Christ, in which love is root, blossom and fruitage.
It aims at the development and unfolding of everything that is gracious
in life, whatever strikes at admiration, whether it is in school, in
art, in song, in wit, in travel, in books; whatever is praiseworthy in
courage or endurance, whatever has fineness and sweetness and nobility;
all that belongs to the hero and patriot; all that belongs to the seer
and scholar; all that belongs to leadership in trade and commerce--all
these elements are to be united and carried upward into the sweetness
and purity of life, until the full man, standing apart and standing
above life, seems to have been informed with divine love, as with a
presence.
And when love has made the most of the man himself it overflows to
bless others. Christ's disciples are not here to be ministered unto,
but to minister. Religion, says Christ, is love, and love is gentle
toward those with hollow eyes and famine-stricken faces. Love is
kindly toward those who have a tragedy written in the sharpened
countenance. Love is patient toward those who have lost fidelity, as a
man loses a golden coin; who have lost morality as one who flounders in
the Alpine drifts. And this religion of love takes on a thousand
modern forms. If it is not rowing out against the darkness and storm,
as did Grace Darling to save the shipwrecked, it is going forth to
those tossed upon life's billows, to succor and to save. For love is
making the individual life beautiful, making the home beautiful, and
will at last make the church and state beautiful. Men will not bow
down to crowned power nor philosophic power nor esthetic power; but, in
the presence of a great soul, filled with vigor of inspiration and
glowing with love, man will do obeisance. There is no force upon earth
like divine love in the heart of man, and at last that force will
sweeten and regenerate society.
Love also fulfills immortality. Of late science has reduced the number
of things that endure. The astronomer tells us the sun is burning up,
and will be a dying ash-heap as truly as the coal in man's cellar will
be exhausted. The geologists tell us the flowing of "the crystal
springs wearies the mountain's heart as truly as the beating of the
crimson pulse wearies man's; that the force of the iron crag is abated
in its time, like the strength of human sinews in old age." The
everlasting mountains are doomed to decay as surely as the moth and
worm. It seems that the shining texture of stars and suns must wax
old, like a garment, and decay. If now youth is eager to master all
knowledge, plunge into the thick of life's battle, forge some tool,
enact some law, right some wrong, the time will speedily come when the
man will sit down amid the ruins of his life and confess that his idols
have been shivered, one by one.
He who loves endures. For him always all is well. That youth with a
great love for nature's treasures that promised fame, but who found his
open book crimson with the life-current, may dry his tears, for love is
immortal and beyond he will fulfill the dreams denied here. Because he
loves the slave, Livingstone, falling in the African forest, need not
fear, for love will make his work immortal. The sweet mother, whose
love overarches the cradle with thoughts that for number are beyond the
stars, need not fear to leave behind the gentle babe, for everlasting
love will encircle it. Falling into unconsciousness and putting out
upon the yeasty sea midst the falling darkness, man may call back: "I
still live." For God is love and God is eternal. Therefore man who
loves is immortal also.
HOPE'S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.
"Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let Darkness keep her raven gloss;
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with Death to beat the ground!"--_Tennyson_.
"Soul, rule thyself. On passion, deed, desire,
Lay thou the laws of thy deliberate will.
Stand at thy chosen post. Faith's sentinel:
Though Hell's lost legions ring thee round with fire,
Learn to endure. Dark vigil hours shall tire
Thy wakeful eyes; regrets thy bosom thrill;
Slow years thy loveless flower of youth shall kill;
Yea, thou shalt yearn for lute and wanton lyre.
Yet is thy guerdon great; thine the reward
Of those elect, who, scorning Circe's lure,
Grown early wise, make living light their lord.
Clothed with celestial steel, these walk secure,
Masters, not slaves. Over their heads the pure
Heavens bow, and guardian seraphs wave God's sword."--_V. A. Symonds_.