It was the day before that fixed for the departure of the students, and
all the town was gathered in the Square, now changed to an amphitheatre,
and roofed with canvas. Professor Pearlstein was to give the young men a
last charge, repeating admonitions which they had already heard, indeed,
but which in these circumstances would make a deeper impression.
The speaker began gently:—
“When a father sends his child on a long journey in foreign lands, he
first provides for his sustenance, furnishes him with suitable clothing,
and tries to secure friends for him in those far-off countries. He tells
him all that he knows, or can learn concerning them, warns him against
such dangers as he can foresee.
“Having done all this, his anxious love is still unsatisfied. He follows
to the threshold of that parting, and beyond, trying to discover some
new service that he can render, looks again at the traveler’s
equipments, repeats once more his admonitions, gives lingeringly his
last blessing, his last caress; till, no longer able to postpone the
dreaded moment, he loosens his hold upon the loved one, strains his eyes
for the last glance, then sits down to weep.
“But even then, when the first irrepressible burst of grief is over, he
forgets himself anew, and sends out his imagination in search of the
wanderer—in what vigils! with what fears, what prayers for his
well-being!
“While the child, amused and distracted by the novelties of this foreign
life, forgets sometimes the parent he has left, those sad eyes at home
gaze down the empty road by which he disappeared, or weep with longing
to see him once more. Would the wanderer’s song and laugh displease him
if he knew? Oh, no! He would rejoice in that happiness. The only
inconsolable anguish that he could feel would be in knowing that the
virtue with which he had labored to fortify that child’s soul was cast
aside and forgotten.
“But I did not mean to make you weep. I wish you to think, resolve,
remember, and persevere.
“Once more I warn you of the dangers of that life which you are about to
enter. Let not your minds be swept away by the swift currents everywhere
rushing they know not whither, all human society rising in great waves
on some tidal throe which may land it on a higher plane, or may cast it
into the abyss, one leader with a blazing torch striving in the name of
Liberty to shut the gate of heaven, and the other, his unconscious
accomplice, in the name of Order, setting wide the gates of hell.
“Trust not the visionary who will tell you that science everywhere
diffused will bring an age of gold. Trust not the bigot who will say
that knowledge is for the few.
“Trust not those orators who, intoxicated by the sound of their own
voices, proclaim that from the platform where they stand gesticulating
they can see the promised land. Long since the Afghan heard just such a
voice, and made his proverb on it: ‘The frog, mounted on a clod, said he
had seen Kashmir.’
“Wait, and examine. Look at both sides of a question, before you form an
opinion.
“See what children we were but yesterday. We thought that we knew the
Earth. Complacently we told its age, and all its story. We told of a new
world discovered four hundred years ago, of its primeval forests and
virgin soil, of its unwritten pages on which we should inscribe the
opening chapters of a new Genesis. And, lo! the new world, like the old,
is but a palimpsest! Under the virgin soil is found a sculptured stone;
through the unlettered seas rise the volcanic peaks of lost Atlantis.
The insulted spirit of the past lifts everywhere a warning finger from
the dust. It points to the satanic promise: _Ye shall be as gods_. It
points us to the tower of Babel. It underlines the haughty Jewish boast:
_Against the children of Israel shall not a dog wag his tongue_. Samples
every one of arrogant pride followed by catastrophe sudden, utter, and
inevitable.
“In the face of such a past, can we make sure of our stability? We
cannot. Beware of pride. _Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in
vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain
that keepeth it._
“Hold yourselves aloof from any party that excludes your King. Bind
yourselves by no oaths, and have no fellowship with him who has taken an
oath.
“If a man sin, and hurt no other knowingly, be silent and save your own
souls. If he sin in wronging another, speak for his victim, or bear the
guilt of an accomplice. Do not sophisticate. You are your brother’s
keeper, or his Cain.
“Do not bid a sufferer be calm, nor talk of reason to him while he
writhes in anguish. The man of cold blood may be as unreasonable as the
man in a passion. There is a reason of flame as well as a reason of
snow.
“Remember that freedom means freedom from criticism as well as from
force.
“Never allow yourselves to think or speak of the poor, of condemned
criminals, or social outcasts as the dangerous classes. Your nativity
forbids. Justice and mercy forbid. If there is a class which can truly
be called dangerous to heavenly order and all that is noblest in life,
it is that great stall-fed, sluggish, self-complacent mass which makes a
god of its own ease and tranquillity, shuts its eyes to wrongs that it
will not right, and cares not what power may rule as long as its own
household is protected. It praises the hero of a thousand years ago, and
is itself a skulking coward. It calls out a regiment if its sleeve is
but brushed against, and steps upon a human neck to reach a flower. Seek
not their friendships, nor their praises, and follow not their counsels.
Be courteous, sincere, and inflexible. Be loyal, and fear not!
‘Non è il mondan rumor altro che un fiato
Di vento, che or vien quindi ed or vien quinci,
E muta nome perchè muta lato.’
“Do right, and trust in God. Remember that Christianity is heroism. _We
are not given the spirit of cowardice_, says Saint Paul. An Arabian
proverb goes farther. ‘There is no religion without courage,’ it says.
“This life of ours is woven as the weaver makes his tapestry. He stands
behind the frame, seeing the wrong side only of his web, and having but
a narrow strip of the pattern before him at a time. And with every strip
the threads that it requires are given. It is all knots and ends there
where he works; but he steadily follows the pattern. All the roughnesses
that come toward him testify to the smoothness of the picture at the
other side.
“So we see but a few steps in advance, and the rough side of our duty is
ever before us. But weave on, weave faithfully on in the day that is
given you. Be sure that when, your labor done, you pass to the other
side, if you have been constant, you will find the most glowing and
beautiful part of your picture to be just that part where the knots were
thickest when you were weaving.
“I wish to tell you a little incident of to-day that clings to my mind.
It is but a trifle; but you may find a thought in it.
“As I sat aloft at dawn, thinking of you and of what I would say to you,
I saw an ant in the path at my feet carrying a stick much longer than
himself. He ran lightly till he came to two small gravel stones, one at
either side of his path. The stick struck on both stones and stopped
him. He dropped it, and ran from side to side trying to drag it through.
“For a while I watched the little creature’s distress; then with a
slender twig I carefully lifted the stick over the obstacles, and laid
it down on the other side.
“The ant remained for a moment motionless, as if paralyzed with
astonishment, then ran away as fast as he could run, leaving the stick
where I had placed it; and I saw him no more.
“Can you not understand that I was grieved and disappointed? The labor,
the loss, and the fear of that little insect were as great to him as
ours are to us. I was so sorry for him that if I had had the power to
change my shape, as fairy stories tell, and take it safely back again, I
would have run after him as one of his own sort, yet with a tale
marvelous to him, would have reassured him of my good-will, promised him
a thousand timbers for his dwelling, and a store of food and downy
lining for his nest, when I should have resumed my proper form and
power.
“Oh! would the ants have caught and crucified me in the shape I took
from love, and only to serve them!
“Children, it is at this very point that the world will fight with you
its most demoniac battle.
“There have been, and there are, men and women whose lives shine like
those pure flames in the long, dim corridors of our cemetery, making a
circle of holy light about them, some tranquil and hidden, some in
constant combat. But for the majority of the race, all the primal
Christian truths have become as worn pebbles on the shores of time. It
is not long since there was yet enough of public sanity and faith to
compel a decent reverence; but now they utter their blasphemies, not
only with toleration, but with applause. They have an infernal
foolishness that sounds like wisdom to the ignorant unthinking mind.
This spirit puts on the doctor’s cap and robe and reasons with you. It
twists up a woman’s long hair, and breathes out brazen profanities and
shameless mockeries.
“Or some being, half saint and half siren, will praise the beauties of
our faith as you would praise a picture or a song, and smooth away its
more austere commands, so covering all with glozes and with garlands
that there would seem to be no other duty but to praise and poetize; and
you might believe yourself floating painlessly toward the gates of
Paradise when you are close to the gates of hell.
“I will tell you some of the arguments of these people.
“They say that Christ taught nothing new, that his moral lessons had
been taught before, and even in heathen lands.
“He did not pretend to teach a new morality. He fulfilled the law
already given by making Charity the consort of Justice.
“Is it to be believed that the Father of mankind left his children, all
but a favored few, in total darkness during the ages that preceded
Christ? ‘Teste David cum Sibylla,’ sings the ‘Dies Iræ.’
“They will tell you that the miraculous circumstances of Christ’s birth
are but a parody on old heathen myths, that a woman with a Divine Child
in her arms was worshiped by the Indus and the Nile, and that many an
ancient hero claimed a divine paternity. They will go to the very root
of revelation and tell you that Vishnu floated on primal seas even as
God moved on the face of the waters; that while the Norse Ymir slept, a
man and a woman grew out from under his left arm like Eve from sleeping
Adam’s side. The fragmentary resemblances are countless.
“Our God be thanked that not the Israelite alone, but even those
step-children of the Light had some sense of his coming footsteps! They
had caught an echo of the promise, for it was made for all. It was
moulded into the clay that made their bodies. It aspired in the spark
that kindled their souls.
“I have seen the nest of a swallow all straightly built of parallel
woven twigs, except in one corner. In that corner, in a shoal
perspective, was an upright end of pale brown stick shaped like an
antique altar. Two tiny twigs were laid on top as for a fire, and from
them rose a point of bright yellow leaf for a flame. A pencil could not
draw the shapes in better proportion, nor color them more perfectly.
“Above the leaf-flame was hung a cross like a letter X, which is a
rising or a falling cross. This, floating in the air above the altar,
seemed a veiled interpretation of the sacrifice. Larger, inclosing all,
was an upright cross, the beam of which formed one side of a triangle,
the figure of the Trinity.
“These figures were laid, one over the other, increasing in size from
the altar outward, the victim announced, the mode of his sacrifice
hinted, and his divinity proclaimed,—all the emblems of Christianity
plainly and chronologically set. What breath of the great all-pervading
harmony blew these symbols to the beak of a nesting bird!
“From the first records that we possess of human life, a divine legend
or a divine expectation looms before the souls of men, vague as to time,
sometimes confused in outline, but ever striking some harmonious chord
with their own needs and aspirations, and with the visible world about
them.
“See those southern mountain-tops half hidden in a fleet of clouds just
sailing over! Even we who know those heights from infancy can scarce be
certain what is rock and what is mist in all those outlines. A cliff
runs up in shadow, and masses of frowning vapors catch and carry its
profile almost to the zenith. There is a rounded mountain where the snow
never lingered; and a pile of snowy cumuli has settled on its grayness,
and sharpened itself to a fairy pinnacle to mock our ice-peaks, and
sifted its white drifts into crevices downward, and set its alabaster
buttresses to confuse our knowledge of the old familiar height. Yonder
where the White Lady has stood during all the years of our lives, pure
and stainless against the blue southwest, a dazzling whirl of
sun-bleached mists has usurped her place, leaving visible only her
pedestal wreathed about with olive-trees.
“But if you watch awhile the slowly moving veil, gathering with care
each glimpse of an unchanging outline, you can build up again the solid
mountain wall.
“So the heathen, yes! and the Jew also, saw the coming Christ. Anubis,
Isis, Osiris, Buddha, Thor,—they had each some inch-long outline, some
divine hand-breadth of truth running off into fantastic myth.
“Were they content with their gods, those puzzled but reverent souls?
No; for they were ever seeking new ones, or adding some new feature to
the old. Their Sphinx, combining in herself the forms of woman and lion,
dog, serpent, and bird, seemed set there to ask, What form will the
Divine One choose? Are these creatures all the children of one primal
mother? Of what mysterious syllogism is the brute creation the mystical
conclusion?
“The German Lessing has well said that ‘the first and oldest opinion in
matters of speculation is always the most probable, because common sense
immediately hit upon it.’ And, converging to the same conclusion, an
English writer, borrowing, however, from the Greek, has said that ‘both
Philosophy and Romance take their origin in wonder;’ and that ‘sometimes
Romance, in the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries, conducts its
votaries toward the same goal to which Philosophy leads the illuminated
student.’
“The early ages of the world were ages of romance.
“In this supreme case, Imagination, with her wings of a butterfly and
her wings of an eagle, soared till her strength failed at a height that
was half heaven, half earth. To this same point philosophy climbed her
slow and cautious way. They found Faith already there, waiting from the
beginning of time at the feet of the God made Man.
“Again, these apostles of skepticism will tell you that the
superstitions of the time, and the prophesies concerning Christ, favored
his pretensions.
“If Christ had been an impostor, or self-deceived,—the King’s Majesty
pardon me the supposition!—in either case he would have striven to
conform as much as possible to the prejudices of that expectation; and
he would have taken advantage of the popular enthusiasm, as impostors
and visionaries do. Instead of that, he set up a pure spiritual system
and acted on it consistently, _obedient_ (the Scripture says) _unto
death_. He flattered no one. He boldly reproved the very ones whose
support he might naturally have desired. In the height of his fame he
predicted his martyrdom.
“Nor was that time more superstitious than the present, nor the
followers of Christ more credulous than people of to-day, and not among
the ignorant alone. It is, in fact, notable how many proofs they
required. I should say that the Apostles were hard to convince,
considering the wonders they had seen. How many times had Jesus to say
to them, _O ye of little faith!_
“When the women went to the sepulchre, it was not to meet a risen Lord,
but to embalm and mourn over a dead one. When Mary Magdalen went to tell
the Apostles that Jesus had risen, her words _seemed to them an idle
tale, and they believed it not_. But Peter went to see. _He ran_, Saint
Luke says. He saw the empty grave, the linen cloths laid by; and he went
away _wondering_, not yet believing, though Magdalen had testified to
having seen and spoken with Jesus, and had given them a message from
him, though he had predicted his own resurrection, and though Lazarus
and the ruler’s daughter were still among them. Does this look like
credulity?
“It is not for the present to reproach the past with superstition, now
when every wildest fantasy flourishes unchecked. Some turn their longing
eyes back to the old mythologies. Like the early Christian gnostics,
they like to flatter themselves by professing an occult worship which
the vulgar cannot understand, and building an inner sanctuary of belief
where chosen ones may gather, veiled from the multitude. It is scarcely
an exaggeration to say that the day may not be far distant when, in
lands called Christian, temples and altars may again be erected to Jove,
Cybele, Diana, Osiris, and the rest.
“The mind, like the body, may, perhaps, feel from time to time a need to
change its position. But the body, in all its movements, seeks
instinctively to keep its equilibrium. The equilibrium of the soul is in
its position toward its Creator.
“The paganism of to-day has this evil which the earlier had not: it is a
step in a descending scale. In those other days mankind seemed to be
rising from the abyss of some immemorial disaster, of which all nations
have some fragmentary tradition. In Christ the human race reached its
climax. He was the height of an epoch which now, perhaps, declines to a
new cataclysm.
“Again, the skeptic tells you that there were and are no miracles.
Presumptuous tongue that utters such denial! How do they know that there
are no miracles?
“But what is a miracle? Is it necessary to set aside a law of nature in
order to perform a miracle? Was not he who made the law wise enough to
so frame it that without infringement he could perform wonders? The
miracle of one age is the science of the next. Men do to-day without
exciting wonder what a few centuries ago would have consigned them to
the stake as magicians.
“The miracles of Christ were the acts of one having a perfect knowledge
of the laws of the universe, and are a stronger proof of his divinity
than any invasion of those laws could be. It was miraculous that a
seeming man should have such knowledge.
“Another criticism of religious teachers in both the old and the new law
is their ignorance of physical science, evident by commission as well as
by omission. Whether they knew or not, common sense alone should teach
us that if any one announcing a new religious truth should disturb the
preconceptions of his hearers regarding physical truths he would in so
much distract their attention from that which he wished to teach them;
and their credulity, under this double attack, might fail to accept
anything.
“Juvenal’s dictum, ‘bread and games,’ for the government of a people, is
true of all mankind in a higher sense. Physical science is man’s
_circenses_. It exercises his intellect, amuses him and his kind, and
every new discovery should excite in him a higher admiration of the
Creator. It was not necessary that the Son of God should become man, or
rise from the dead in order to teach the movements of the starry
spheres, or the secret workings of terrestrial powers. _Circenses!_
“What matters it to the interests of man’s immortal soul if the earth is
a stationary platform, or a globe rolling through space with a double,
perhaps a triple motion! What cares the dying man for the powers of
steam, or electricity, or the laws of the ways of the wind! _Circenses!
Circenses!_
“Christ came to bring the bread of life, the heavenly _Panem_, without
which there is no life nor growth for the spirit.
“My children, you are counseled to patience and gentleness. But listen
not in silence when any one reviles your King. Say little to them of the
God, lest they blaspheme the more; but say, _Behold the man!_ It is not
pious people alone who have lauded him, nor theologians only who have
borne testimony to him.
“Napoleon I., a warrior, an eagle among men, said of Jesus Christ: ‘I
know man, and I tell you that Christ was not a man. Everything about
Christ astonishes me. His spirit overwhelms and confounds me. There is
no comparison between him and any other being. Alexander, Cæsar,
Charlemagne, and I have founded empires; but on what rests the creation
of our genius? On force. Jesus alone founded his empire on love.’
“You will find no peer of Napoleon I. among those who can see no
greatness in Jesus Christ.
“Carlyle says of Christ that he was ‘the highest soul that ever was on
earth.’
“Such names will more impress the mocker than will the name of saint or
apostle.
“Bid them look at his humility when he was personally criticised, and at
his sublime assumption when proclaiming his mission. _I am the Light of
the world. I am the resurrection and the life. All power is given unto
me in heaven and on earth._
“Did any other teacher of men ever utter such words? See him with the
scourge in his hand! See him with the lily in his hand!
“O happy blossom! to be so looked at, touched and spoken of. Did it fade
away as other blossoms do? Does its seed yet live upon the earth? Does
the Syrian sunshine of to-day still paint the petals of its almost
nineteen hundredth generation?
“How dare these preachers of destruction try to rob the human race of
such a teacher? What have they to give in exchange for him? Who among
them all has a message that can gild the clouds of life, and make of
pain and of obscurity a promise and a crown? Never in our era as now has
there been such temporal need of the softening influences of
Christianity. The poor and the oppressed of all the world, maddened by
suffering and insult, outraged by hypocrisy and deceit, are rising
everywhere with the desperate motto almost on their lips, _Let us eat
and drink, for to-morrow we die_. A Samson mocked at by fools and
fiends, their arms grope blindly out, searching for the pillars of a
corrupted state.
“And this is the moment chosen to dethrone the Peacemaker of the
universe! Verily, whom the gods would destroy they first make mad!
“Will teachers like these incite men to heroic deeds? They destroy honor
and heroism from off the face of the earth! They forge their chains and
lay their traps for anarchy; yet there is no preacher of anarchy so
dangerous, even for this life, as he who seeks to dethrone in the hearts
of men their martyred Lover, Jesus of Nazareth!”
The old man paused, and, with his eyes fixed far away over the heads of
the audience to where the sky and mountains met, lifted his arms in
silent invocation. Then, drooping, he came feebly down from the pulpit.
The boys for whom his address had been especially meant pressed forward
to receive him, and conduct him to a seat.
Then the chimes began softly, and they all sang their last hymn
together:
“Let veiling shadows, O Almighty One,
Hide from thy sight the dust wherein we lie!
Look, we beseech thee, on thine only Son:
No other name but Jesus lift we on high!
“Fallen and alien, only him we boast
Strong to defend from Satan’s bonds of shame:
Jesus our sword and buckler, Jesus our host,—
No other name, Creator, no other name!
“No other name, O Holy One and Just,
Call we to stand between us and thy blame:
Jesus our ransom, our advocate and trust,—
No other name, Dread Justice, no other name!
“No other name, O God of gods, can rise
Pure and accepted on thine altar’s flame:
Jesus our perfumed incense and our sacrifice,—
No other name, Most Holy, no other name!
“No other soul-light while on earth we grope,
Only through him eternal light we claim:
Jesus our heavenly brother, Jesus our hope,—
No other name, Our Father, no other name!”