HOPE'S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.
The soul is monarch of three kingdoms. Man lives at once in the
present, the past and the future. Memory presides over yesterday;
to-day is ruled by reason; to-morrow is under the sway of hope. The
ancient seer who stood by the historic vine reflecting how the rain of
yesterday had disappeared to give its sweet liquors to the roots only
to reappear to-morrow in purple clusters, gave us a beautiful image of
himself. Each human life is like unto a vine--its trunk manifest in
the present; its roots deeply buried in the past; its branches throwing
themselves forward, ripening fruit for days to come. Life is a solid
column of days all compacted together. To-day's usefulness is in the
number of wise, happy and helpful yesterdays, whose accumulated
treasures crowd forward the soul's present activities. But for his
yesterdays stored up in memory man would be impotent for any heroic
thought or deed. He would remain a perpetual infant. As the child
journeys away from the cradle memory gathers up and carries forward
faces, words, books, arts, sciences, literatures, and these
recollections are embalmed and transmitted as soul-capital, legacies
unspeakably precious.
Yesterday, therefore, is no mausoleum of dead deeds; no storehouse of
mummies. Memory is a granary holding seed for to-morrow's sowing;
memory is an armory holding weapons for to-morrow's battles, memory is
a medicine-chest with balms for to-morrow's hurts; memory is a library
with wisdom for to-morrow's emergency. Yesterday holds the full store
of to-day's civilization, contains our tools, conveniences, knowledges;
contains our battlefields and victories; above all gives us Bethlehem
and Calvary. But alone man's yesterday is impotent; his to-morrow
insufficient. The true man binds all his days together with an
earnest, intense, passionate purpose. His yesterdays, to-days and
to-morrows march together, one solid column, animated by one thought,
constrained by one conspiracy of desire, energizing toward one holy and
helpful purpose, to serve man and love God.
God governs man through the regency of hope. The reasons thereof are
self-evident. Man is born a long way from home. No cradle rocks a
full-orbed manhood. The babe begins a mere handful of germs; a bough
of unblossomed buds. It is a weary climb from nothing to manhood, at
its best. As things rise in the scale of being the distance between
birth and maturity widens. Mollusks are born close up to their full
estate, sandflies mature in two days, butterflies in two weeks,
humming-birds in as many months. But let no man think the vast
all-shadowing redwood trees of California grew in a mushroomic night.
When the seed first thrust its rootlets down into the soil and its
plumule up to the sunshine it entered upon a long career. Saved by
hope after 800 years of growth it gives shade to myriads of birds;
beams for lath and loom and ship in the service of industry; lends pen
and pencil to poet and artist in the service of beauty; through desk
and pew enters into man's intellectual and moral life; through
instruments of convenience strengthens the sweet amenities of the home;
working, it also waited and is saved by hope.
Man stands at the very summit of creation. He is at the head of all
that creep and swim and walk and fly. Preparatory to his dominion he
begins with the lowest and runs the whole gamut of experience of all
living things below him. And hope alone can save him as he journeys
upward through all the intermediate stages on his way to his throne and
his God. Big with destiny, he is saved by hope. Not to-day and not
yesterday can suffice. The present offers only standing
room--four-and-twenty hours. Memory is a bin banked with snowdrifts,
not the waving harvest-fields. Man's life is all in front of him. His
large endowment asks for an extended period of time, asks seventy years
for skill toward his body; asks an immortal destiny for mind and heart.
He is saved by hope and futurity.
Consider the scope and functions of hope and aspiration. Man is
governed from above and within; while rocks, birds, beasts are governed
from below and without. Gravity holds the bowlder in its place. The
channel saith to the river: "Thus far and no farther." The fawn that
is struck, the lion that strikes, the eagle dwelling above both, are
controlled by fear. The charioteer drives his steeds from behind and
controls by rein and scourge. But man is controlled from within and in
front. God does not scourge his children forward through whips of
fear. Hopes moving on before him lure him onward. The Italian artist
shows us the child passing near the precipice. Then drew near a gentle
guardian spirit. The unseen friend rolled along the pathway apples of
Paradise and the child, following after with shouts of glee, was lured
from danger. To the beauty of the artist's thought Homer's story adds
elements of instruction. When the Grecian boy was pursued by a giant
whose breath was fire, whose hand held a huge club, two invisible
beings lent help. One took the boy's hand and lifted him forward, the
other casting an invisible cord over him flew before him until his
speed was doubled and the palace gates gave shelter. Oh, beautiful
story of God's gentle rule o'er men! When troubles sweep over the
world like sheeted storms, when men fear exceedingly and strong men
cower and shrink and little ones believe the next step to be the
precipice, then God smiles. Striking some sweet bell he sends forth
messengers to lure men forward; they hang stars in man's night; they
whisper that the twilight is nothing, since it is morning twilight;
that fears are bats and owls hooting at the dawn; that hope is a lark
singing the new day; that God reigns and all is well. Then depart all
fears and superstitions. The courage of the future comes; the columns
begin a forward march. These upward movements of society are the
yearnings of God's heart lifting his children forward by hope.
Hope and aspiration also furnish the secret springs of civilization.
All things useful and beautiful were once only hopes and ideas. Free
institutions are ideals of liberty, crystallized into word forms.
Tools and instruments are ideals dressed up in iron clothes. The early
forest man dwelt in a cave; ached with cold and moaned with hunger.
Going into the forest to dig roots he found honey hived by the bees and
nuts stored up by squirrels against the winter. Straightway hope
suggested to him a larger granary, whence hath come all man's bins and
storehouses. Man plucked a large plum and found it sour, and another
plum small, but sweet. Hope suggested that he unite the two and strike
through the abundant acid juices of the one with the sugar of the
other. Thence came all vineyards and orchards. Digging in the soil
tired him, but hope suggested that his pet ox might pull his forked
stick; when the wooden stick wore blunt hope replaced it with an iron
point; when the iron point refused to scour hope suggested steel; when
the steel made his burden light and doubled the pace of his steeds,
hope suggested a seat on the plow; when the riding-plow gave him time
to think, hope suggested he could increase the harvest by doubling the
depth, when the weight was overheavy for his beasts, hope suggested a
steam-plow. The Kensington Museum exhibits the growth of the plow
idea, as it moved from the forked stick to the "steam gang." If in
this procession of material plows we could see the procession of ideal
plows we would find that thoughts and hopes are a thousandfold more
than material things.
By hope also do the people increase in wisdom and culture and
character. Millions of men are digging and toiling twelve hours each
day; and God hath sent forth hope to emancipate them from drudgery.
The man digging with his pick hath a far-away look as he toils. Hope
is drawing pictures of a cottage with vines over the doorway, with some
one standing at the gate, a sweet voice singing over the cradle. Hope
makes this home his; it rests the laborer and saves him from despair.
Multitudes working in the stithy and deep mines sweeten their labor and
exalt their toil by aspiring thoughts. Thinking of his little ones at
home, the miner says: "My children shall not be as their father was; my
drudgery is not for self, but for love's sake; the sweat of my brow is
oil in the lamp of love; I will light it to-night on the sacred altar
of home." Here is the secret of the rise and reign of the people.
This explains all man's progress in knowledge and culture. As the
fruits and flowers rise rank upon rank in response to the advancing
summer, so all that is most refined and exalted in man's mind or heart
bursts forth in new ideals, reforms, revolutions, in response to the
revelation of that personal presence from whom all hope and aspiration
incessantly proceed.
Hope's noble ministry hath grievous enemies. Among these let us
include a false use of the past. Yesterday contains sins and mistakes,
but multitudes err in dwelling too much upon their wrongs. Each man
hath had his temptations, each his fierce conflicts and defeats, each
bears grievous scars from the battle-field. Yet if one constantly
revives all his old sins life will be filled with hideous specters.
Memory will become a place of torment and a ghastly chamber of horrors.
We shall be the children of despondency and wretchedness. Memory will
be a graveyard; the past will give no light save the "will-o-the-wisp"
light from putrescence and decay. All the springs of joy will be
poisoned by morbid griefs that keep open old wounds. The city hath its
offal heap where refuse matter is destroyed; each home its garret, the
contents cast out at regular intervals; the individual throws away his
old clothes, old tools, old vehicles. Why should not the soul have its
refuse valley--where the past is cast out of life and memory?
Farmers' boys sometimes set steel traps by shocks of corn whither come
quail and prairie chickens. Stepping upon the traps, the cruel jaws
close upon foot or wing and the bleeding bird beats out its life upon
the frozen ground. Memory often with cruel jaws holds men entrapped.
A single error wrecks the whole life. But once forgiven of God let the
sin go. Reflection upon past sins is good only so long as it produces
revulsion from sin, and like a bow shoots the soul toward God and
righteousness. God is like a mother who forgives the child's sin into
everlasting forgetfulness. Man should be ashamed to remember what God
forgets. "I will cast your sins into the depth of the sea." Someone
says: "God receives the soul as the sea the bather, to return it
cleansed--itself unsoiled." Gather up, therefore, all thy sins--old
wrongs, old hatreds, burning angers, memories of men's treachery; stuff
them into a bag and heave them into the gulf of oblivion. Your life is
not in the past, but in the future. "We are saved by hope."
Multitudes may embitter their new year by undue reflections over
opportunities neglected and lost in the past and denied in the present.
Professor Agassiz tells of a friend who sold his farm in Pennsylvania
for $5,000 to invest it in Dakota, and after losing all in the new home
returned to find the German who purchased the homestead had found oil
and great wealth in a swamp which he had tried to drain off. An old
gentleman recently told of his refusal in 1840 to accept as payment of
a small note a lot on a corner in Chicago now worth a million dollars,
and he shed bitter tears over the loss of property he never owned.
When Ali Hafed heard of the diamonds in India he sold his estate and
went forth to seek his fortune. His successor, watering his camel in
the garden, saw the gleam of gems in the white sand and discovered the
Golconda mines. Had Ali Hafed had eyes to see his would have been
boundless treasure at home instead of poverty, starvation and death.
These and similar legends stand for the opportunities that have gone
forever. How many neglected their opportunities for education; how
they knocked unbidden at every door and no man opened. Others were
denied culture, and now feel they are unfulfilled prophecies. Many by
one error have injured eye or ear or lung or limb or nervous system.
They grievously handicapped themselves. Others by ingratitude,
infidelity to trusts, treachery to friends, have poisoned happiness.
Repentance is theirs, and also forgiveness, but not forgetfulness. The
past is full of bitterness.
Let the dead past bury its dead. The future is still ours. The trees
in October willingly let go their leaves to fall into the ditch. Their
life is not in last year's leaves, but in the infant buds that crowd
the old leaves off. Put forth new activities. Open new furrows. Sow
new seed. All the tomorrows are thine; but they are few and short.
Fulfill his dictum who said: "I am as one going once across this vast
continent; I would lean forth and sow as far as hand can scatter my
seed. Let the angels count the bundles." No man should be discouraged
in whom God believes, preserving him in life. Let hope in God sweeten
life's bitterness.
Another enemy of hopefulness is found in nervous excesses and overwork.
Men drain away their vitality. Ambitions unduly stimulate the brain.
Many break the laws of sleep and the laws of digestion and the laws of
nerve sobriety. They spend their brain capital. Then they grow
hopeless toward home and business. Ill-health spreads a gloom over all
life. Every judgment is pessimistic; it could not be otherwise. The
jaundiced eye yellows the landscape. The sweetest music rasps like a
file upon the nervous ear. Thomas Carlyle's pessimism was largely
physical. He overworked upon his life of Oliver Cromwell. Maurice
once said: "Carlyle believed in God down to the time of Oliver
Cromwell." Once, in a moment of depression, Lyman Beecher prayed:
"Lord, keep us from despising our rulers, and help them to stop acting
so we cannot help despising them." Poor, nerve-racked Pascal, grew
fearful lest his affection for his sister, who had nursed him through a
long illness, was sinful. One day he wrote in his journal: "Lord,
forgive me for loving my dear sister so much!" Afterward he drew his
pen through the word "dear." Hope and trust toward God go with health.
Sickliness is not saintliness. God cannot save by hope what man
destroys by ill-health.
Dean Stanley used hopefulness as a test of all systems of truth.
Rightly so. God is the God of hope, and his truth, like himself,
carries the atmosphere of good cheer. The falsity of medievalism
appears in this--it robbed men of joy and gladness. God was the center
of darkness. His throne was iron. His heart was marble. His laws
were huge implements of destruction. His penalties were red-hot cannon
balls crashing along the sinner's pathway. Repentance toward God was
moving toward the arctics and away from the tropics. Christianity was
anything but "peace on earth, good will to men."
Philosophers destroyed God's winsomeness. The reformers came in to
lead men away from medievalism back to God himself. Men found hope
again in redemptive love. They saw that any conception of God that
dispirited and depressed men was perverted and false. No man hath done
more to establish this fact than him who long ago said: "Any
presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that does not come to the
world as the balmy days of May comes to the unlocked northern zones;
any way of preaching the love of God in Christ which is not as full of
sweetness as the voice of the angels when they sang at the advent; any
way of making known the proclamation of mercy which has not at least as
many birds as there are in June and as many flowers as the dumb meadows
know how to bring forth; any method of bringing before men the doctrine
of salvation which does not make everyone feel, 'There is hope for me
in God--in the divine plan, in the very nature of the organization of
human life and society,' is spurious--is a slander on God and is
blasphemy against his love."
Hope hath her harvest also for teachers and reformers. Often men think
their work is squandered. They seem to be sowing seed not upon the
Nile, to find it again abundantly, but in midocean, to sink and come to
naught. Parents and teachers break their hearts, fearing their
watchfulness and instruction have failed. Men sow wheat and wait six
months for a harvest; but they sow moral seed Sunday and on Monday whip
their children because the seed has not ripened. They forget that
apples bitter in July may be sweet in August. To-day's vice in the
child is often to-morrow's virtue, as acid juices through frost become
saccharine. Yesterday the mother rocked a little angel in the cradle;
to-day she moans: "Alas, that I should have rocked a little fox, a
little serpent, a little wolf!" To-morrow the child becomes a model of
truth and integrity.
The sage might have said: "It is good that woman should hope and wait."
Truth's errand has always been a successful errand. Not a single
social truth or civic truth or moral truth has ever been lost out of
the world. Secrets of cruelty and fraud, secrets of oppression and sin
perish, but nothing that makes life happier or better hath been
forgotten. We do not have to keep God and truth alive, they keep us
alive. Vegetable seeds can be killed, but not moral seeds. When God
issues his silent command to the earth flying into winter and wheels it
back toward summer, it is given to no man to put a brake upon warmth;
nor can he go up against the spring with swords and banners. But
easier this than staying the upward march of mankind. God is abroad
upon a mission of recovery. Open thy hand, O publicist! and sow thy
seed. The seed shall perish, but not the harvest.
Our childhood was pleased with the story of the old monk who was
shipwrecked alone on a desert isle. He always carried with him a few
roots and seeds. Planting these, he died, but sailors coming twenty
years later found the isle waving with fruit trees. To the beauty of
this legend let us add the truth of one who has made all this land his
debtor. In 1801 a youth passed through western Pennsylvania. He was
collecting apple seeds with which to found orchards in the then
unbroken states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. When he came
to an open, sunny spot in the forest he would plant his seeds and
protect them with a brush fence. Years afterward new settlers found
hundreds of these embryo orchards in the forests. Thrice he floated
his canoe laden with seeds down the Ohio to the settlers in Kentucky.
To this brave man, called by our Congressional Record "Johnny
Appleseed," whole states owe their wealth and treasure of vineyards and
orchards. This intrepid man is a beautiful type of all those who,
passing through life's wastes, sow the land with God's eternal truths,
whose leaves and fruits heal nations. If God remembers the roots in
dark forests he will not forget his truths in human hearts. Therefore,
sow thy seed. Ye are saved by hope.
The ground and basis of all hope whatsoever is God. It is his good
providence and redemptive love in Jesus Christ that make us optimists.
Hope is not within the scope of our wisdom or culture or skill; and
hope is not in our health or tool or treasure. We journey into an
unknown future. It is not given to us to know what a day or an hour of
the new year may bring forth. How impotent are the wisest and
strongest in the hour when we hear the sound of the ocean and in
darkness ford the deep and dangerous river, beyond which is high and
eternal noon. What can the child on some great ocean steamer caught in
a winter's storm do to overcome the tempest? Can it drive the fierce
blasts back to their northern haunts? Can its little hand hold the
wheel and guide the great ship? Can its voice still the billows that
can crush the steamer like an egg-shell? Can its breath destroy the
icy coat of mail that covers all the decks? What the child can do is
trust the Captain who has brought this same ship through a hundred hard
storms. It can rest and trust and hope. And all we upon this great
earth-ship have been caught, not in a storm, but in the gulf stream of
God's providence. The warm tropic currents sweep us on to the heavenly
harbor. The trade winds above aid the forward flight. More than all
else is the larger planetary movement that sweeps gulf stream, winds
and ship onward towards the infinite. Soon shall we enter into quiet
waters and cast out our anchor.
Looking forward, let us hope and cleanse all fear out of life--trust
God, love him and rejoice. Even our largest problems need not dispirit
us. Problems are not to be analyzed, but accepted. He who analyzes a
flower loses it. He who cracks a diamond to see what it is, is without
both gem and knowledge. Life's great questions are seeds. Plant a
seed, then wait. Some day the flower and fruit will explain the seed.
It is well to lay aside difficult questions to be asked some day at the
throne of God. Then we will look back to smile at what now disturbs us
exceedingly. Remember the Russian Cathedral--travelers tell us the din
and noise of the crowds thronging under the dome to those above the
dome become a strain of soft music. It is good to hope and wait.
Because God lives and loves, man should enter the future as he enters
temple or cathedral--to dedicate all its days to hope and aspiration.
INDEX.
Anti-slavery movement, the, Wilberforce, 211
Arnold, Benedict, 243
Arnold of Rugby, 189
Audubon, wife of, 98
Bacon; Pascal, 75
"Baucis and Philemon", 249
Caesar, the value of personality, 16
Carey, William, 171
Carlyle, wife of, 186
Christ, coming of, 122
Christian manhood, the, 259
Christ the supreme example, 30
Civilization, achievements of, 136
Civilization, Christ's promise for, 52
Classic writer, tale of a, 24
Culture, Character, Beauty, the secret of, 163
Darwin on Christian teachers, 168
Desert, oases of, 35
Divine Teacher, the, 177
England, career of, 253
England, orphan babes of, 210
English visitor, the, 148
Fame a holy ambition, 29
Faneuil, Peter, 215
Fathers, the; uprising of 1861, 55
Feeling and sentiment, 142
Forest, a--differing conceptions of, 60
Fourth century, the, 223
France--king of; Marie Antoinette; Carlyle, 63, 64
Friendship an open sesame, 231
Garfield, 158
Genius marred by absence of humble virtues, 207
Gentleness, lack of, 181
God, erroneous conception of, 191
God, man's attitude toward, 65
God, punishments of, 85
God the ground and basis of all hope, 194
God's world a good world, 36
Gough, John B., 144
Great hearts, 134
Greatness an accumulation of little deeds, 202
Grey, Jane, 201
Growth by accretion; from seed, 242
Heart and intellect, 138
Heart and the age of cruelty, 139
Heart transformations, 145
Heroism--the Divine Teacher; Henry Grady; Napier;
Browning; Ruskin, 92-95
Holland, greatness of; William the Silent, 170
Homer's ideal, Helen, 119
Hope and aspiration, functions of, 282
Hope, enemies of, 286
Hope long deferred, 112
Howard; Goodyear; Patteson, 79, 80
Hugo, Victor, 165
Human life, enemies of, 205
Humanity and social sympathy, 100
Industrial law the law of sacrifice, 161
Intelligence, ignorance, 125
Keats, 183
"Keep thou this man", 219
King Saul and the seer, 14
Labor, problem of, 124
Labor, fruition of, 127
Law of violence, the, 270
Life a column of days, 279
Life, problem of, 239
Life's better hours, 233
Lincoln, Abraham, 56
Livingstone, 180
Love, definition of, 264
Love and immortality, 275
Love the fulfillment of all ethical laws, 268
Lowly woman, career of a, 19
Man governed through hope, 280
Man, influence of for good or evil, 13
Man, the great destroyer, 23
Man, a force-producer, 25
Man, unpurposed influence of, 27
Moral retribution, 251
Nature, favors of, 71
Nature, mysterious workings of, 241
New womanhood, the, 98
Nerve and brain force, drain of, 255
"No man careth for my soul", 214
Opportunity, genius of, 220
Orations--American; humble heroes; parental sacrifice;
suffering of ancestors; a tribute to the early dead, 81-84
Patriot, the; scholar, the, 70
Peabody, George, 57
Phocion, patriot and martyr, 170
Pompeii, 229
Progress and civilization, law of, 166
Progress, mainspring of, 261
Prosperity, 230
Religion, man's idea of, 121
Religion perfected by love, 273
Retribution, harvest of, 245
Rosetta Stone, the, 197
Science and God, 204
Seas, secrets of, 73
Secret springs of civilization, 283
Self-sacrifice, law of, 159
Society, 58
Society, crying need of, 188
Society, progress of, 123
Spencer, Herbert, 270
Spiritual harvests, Milton's study of, 247
Strategic element, the, 225
The Christian the perfect gentleman, 262
The heart and religious belief, 147
The heart in industry, 151
The heart in civilization, 149
Thirteenth century, the, 224
Thought, liberty of, 78
Time-element, the; Robert Peel; honors are evanescent;
man's social and industrial life; realm of law and
liberty, 113-119
Time-element in business, 126
Turner, 182
Tyndall, 74
Unsupported intellect, impotency of, 140
Wealth and position--Lord Shaftesbury, 21
Wealth and poverty, 103
Webster, Daniel, 165
Widow's mite, the, 198
Wisdom, culture, character increased by hope, 285