Part 18 (1/2)

To some minds the beauty of nature brings a deep and inspiring sense of divinity. As one who has this sensibility looks on the hills and woods flus.h.i.+ng in the tender radiance of autumn, there comes to him perhaps no articulate and conscious thought. He may not name the name of G.o.d, or think it. But the soul is uplifted. There flows in upon it some high serenity, some mysterious sense of ineffable good. If from such a scene one returns to life's activities in braver, truer, and gentler mood, there has been to him a divine revelation.

Some men are of a metaphysical turn of mind, and not only their thoughts but all their emotional experience, all that directs their purpose and animates their feeling, is cast in the mould of highly abstract ideas.

They express themselves in phrases which to most people seem cold or meaningless,--an empty subst.i.tute for the warmth of religious life. But to the thinker himself these phrases stand for profound realities. It may be that words which have to other ears the dryness of a mathematical formula are to him the expression of moral purpose and sacred trust.

Such an one may say: ”I do not recognize a personal G.o.d, I do not know that I shall have any personal immortality; but I believe in the moral order of the universe and seek to conform to it. I fearlessly trust my destiny here and hereafter.” Perhaps on most of his hearers the words fall coldly; but if they see that the speaker's life bears fruit of goodness and heroism and service, they may be sure that, though in a language strange to them, G.o.d has spoken to his soul.

There are a great many people, and some of the very best of people, who never get any vivid or distinct apprehension of realities above the sphere of their personal activity. Often they conform to the usages and the language of a religious faith in which they have been educated, and, very likely, feel some self-reproach that they know so little of the spiritual experiences which others speak of. There are men, too, who frankly say, ”I don't know much about G.o.d; I can't get hold of what folks call religion; but I try to do my work honestly, and I want to help other people just as much as I can.” Some of the most genuine religion in the world exists in people who are almost unconscious that they have any religion. The simple desire to do right, and the constant readiness to ”lend a hand,”--that is the revelation which such souls receive.

Another very large cla.s.s--a cla.s.s which once included most of the distinctively religious world--crave and find the warmth of a personal relation with Christ as the only satisfying thing. It is one of the great and wonderful facts of human history, this personal devotion of unnumbered souls throughout the ages to Jesus. In its intensest form it is affection to a living personality. Any attempt to explain it as an appreciation of beneficent influences of which Jesus was the historical originator, or as the reproduction of a temper and purpose resembling that which was in Jesus, fails to satisfy those in whom love to Christ is the ruling sentiment. It is a person, and a living person, that they love. One may decline to accept the theories which are wont to accompany the sentiment; one may not believe that Jesus was G.o.d, nor that personal love for him can be required as an essential part of religion; and, at the same time, one may believe that when a n.o.ble soul pa.s.ses from earth, it rises into yet n.o.bler existence, and may be truly apprehended and profoundly loved by those who are here. Certainly we see this: that to many men and women the strongest and holiest sentiment of life is affection for a personal embodiment of goodness and love, who once walked in Galilee and Jerusalem, existing now in the invisible realm, sympathizing with all human aspiration, pitiful to all human weakness and sorrow, inspiring to all effort and hope and trust. That sentiment is surely a blessed revelation to those in whom it exists,--the warm and living symbol of an eternal reality.

To many, the disclosure of G.o.d is made in some way especially personal to themselves. Very often some human friend is the best manifestation and a.s.surance of divinity. Our faith leans on the faith of the best and most loving person we have known. Sometimes the heart's natural language is ”My father's G.o.d,” ”my mother's G.o.d.” With some, the life beyond death first becomes real to consciousness when the heart's treasure has been taken there. Sometimes, in looking upon one's own life, one becomes deeply conscious of the higher guidance that has led it. There are hours in which past sorrows s.h.i.+ne out as heavenly messengers of good. There dawns upon us a sense of the blessedness that life has held; all its highest experiences become instinct with the suggestion of a celestial meaning that we as yet but half apprehend. We escape for the moment from the thralldom of self; personal happiness merges in something higher; we are glad and still in the sense of a divine Will working in us and in all things. In such hours the soul says, ”_My_ G.o.d.”

There is infinite variety of personal experience; ”so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them without signification.” One man has been deep in drunkenness and debauchery, he has grown reckless and hopeless; but through some friendly voice there reaches him an impulse to a new and successful effort; there comes in upon him the sense of a divine love; a mighty forgiving and restoring force seems to seize him and draw him back to life. In his religion thereafter there may be the glowing emotion of one who has been forgiven much and loves much.

Another man walks always in steady allegiance to conscience and right, and never has any rapturous emotions; is not he, too, the child of G.o.d?

We dislike the prodigal's elder brother for his jealousy; but his father's word to him, despite that touch of unworthiness, was: ”Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”

One whose life flows with smooth current may find the significance of religion in duty rather than in trust. To such a one G.o.d may appear as an ideal, inspiring conduct, but not as a power, controlling events. But upon him, it may be, there breaks some great emergency of life and death; the heart cries out like a child waking frightened in the night, and there answers it, from some depth far below its fear, a voice that says ”Peace!” In that hour the soul finds its father. Thereafter pa.s.sing doubts and fears can but ruffle the surface for a moment.

In our northern winter, how perfectly the trees blend with the scene about them! They seem wholly a part of winter's grand but lifeless world, and with what beauty do they crown that world,--the columnar trunks, the mighty grip of the roots upon the firm earth, the arching sweep of stalwart boughs, the delicate tracery against the sky! They answer to the season's mood, bending in patient grace beneath a load of snow, casing themselves in jewels, or springing up again in slender strength; silent, except when the deep voice of the wind speaks through them. Their shadows soften the sunlight glittering on the snow, or weave a black fretwork when the cold moon s.h.i.+nes. Yet vital in their hearts the trees hold summer's secret. A little while, and they will be clothed in the leafy glory of June. The robin and catbird and oriole will sing hidden among their branches. Of that summer season the trees will be the delight and crown, that now stand like true children of winter. They stand now so strong and true because of that hidden life within them which summer will fully disclose. It is because it is alive that the trunk bends to the storm but does not break, and the twigs hold up their load of snow. So, there are lives that so fit themselves to this world in which they stand that they become its finest part. Their sympathy finds out the secret needs and possibilities of those about them. Their insight discerns the work which society most needs, and their fidelity accomplishes that part of the work which falls to them. Their natures stand open to all the glad influences of earth; their hearts rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. They make full proof of those experiences in which fort.i.tude and silent endurance are the only resource. Sometimes they are happy, and sometimes they are sad; but always other people are happier because of them. They are the children of a better country. For them the soul's full summer waits. Knowing them, we do indeed know something of G.o.d and the eternal life.

There is freedom to be achieved from the pettiness of our lives. They never, perhaps, look so pitiful as when they seem made up altogether of little, necessary details. Our planting and reaping, building and buying, all the half-mechanical operations that absorb our thought and time, seem sometimes little better than the bustle of a colony of ants.

When we look down upon it all from the height of some quiet, meditative hour, are we not at times oppressed with a sense of its triviality and worthlessness? Trivial and worthless it is, except as amidst it all we are working out something higher. But to a man whose heart is set on n.o.ble ends; one whose great aim is, not to get his bread and b.u.t.ter, but to be a man; one who wants, not just to make a profit out of his neighbors, but to serve them and help them, these details are no more trivial or degrading than the rough dress and homely tools of a sculptor are unworthy of the marble beauty that is growing under his hands. The high purpose consecrates and transfigures all, the want of purpose degrades all. I have stood in Switzerland upon the Gorner Grat, looking upon the grandest scene in Europe. On every side a circle of towering heights look down; against the sky rise dazzling snowy summits, celestially pure, celestially tender; the Matterhorn frowns in awful majesty; vast ice-rivers sweep down toward the valley in solemn, silent march. If there be upon earth a spot that of itself has power to hush the soul with n.o.blest emotion, it should be that. Yet there I have seen a company of travelers spend their half-hour in senseless gabble and banter and the laughter of fools. Amid the squalid surroundings of a New York tenement-house, I have seen a poor Irish woman living with such fort.i.tude and faith and generosity that it was a comfort and inspiration to meet her. That brave soul enn.o.bled its mean surroundings with a glory which not the Alps and the sky could flash in upon a heart made blind and dull by ign.o.ble thoughts.

If there dwells in us the spirit of life we shall be freed from the bondage of doubt. On how many earnest and aspiring lives does doubt throw its chill shadow! The world is crossing the flood that divides the old form of faith from the new. The rising water strikes cold to many a heart. Here and there the waves sweep men off from all moral footing. I know not that for the resolute and thoughtful there is any escape from some suffering in the transition. Could we be always sure that it is only a transition,--could we know always that a better country lies waiting us,--all might be easily borne. The suffering we may not decline; but safety, utter safety, we may keep through all. _Life_ is always possible to us. Fidelity, purity, self-sacrifice,--these may always be ours. Are we baffled in our search for a divine plan in the universe? Let us look nearer home; can we not find the clew to a divine plan in our own lives? Yes, there need never fail to us an immediate token of divinity. There is always, at the lowest, a duty to be done.

There is always, at the very lowest, a burden to be bravely borne. There is always some one to be helped. Do we say, But this does not comfort me, does not rea.s.sure me? Then let it guide me! It is not essential that I should be always in the suns.h.i.+ne. It is only essential that in suns.h.i.+ne or in darkness my steering should be true. And I am never without a compa.s.s while I see that there is for me a higher and a lower, a right and a wrong, to choose between.

Does any sense of bondage weigh you down? Disappointment, it may be,--failure, life's fair promise blighted. It may be the bitter slavery of evil habit. It may be a dull and apathetic way of life, stirred with a vague yearning toward higher possibilities. It may be the darkness of a lost faith. It may be a bereavement that has emptied life. Whatever it be, the angel of deliverance stands beside you. He is perhaps in very humble garb, unsuspected of you. Some lowly duty awaits you. Some saddened life, unnoticed by your side, asks you to cheer it. Whatever opportunity of duty or of service lies in the path before you is G.o.d's own messenger. Meet it like the messenger of a king! So meet every duty, every opportunity. Find them, make them, for yourself. Live no longer in solitude but in brotherhood. So shall the very spirit of G.o.d dwell in you; so in his service shall you find perfect freedom.

The end of February is near, and not a hint or whisper of spring does Nature give us yet. We are wont to have earlier than this a few days at least that seem to start the sap in the trees and the blood in the veins, when the first bluebird is heard, and we get one swift, delicious glimpse of the good time coming. But this year the cold only takes a sharper clutch. At its average, our northern winter has a fierce and almost merciless persistence. Those first days of spring are hardly more than the taste of freedom with which the cat tantalizes the mouse. It is this lingering close of winter that is hard to bear. The supplies begin to give out. The wood-pile that stood so high when the first snow came is getting lowered to very near the ground. The poor man's little h.o.a.rd, that was to bridge him over till the season of good work, is perilously shrunken. Vitality, too, begins to run low. The body pines for the out-door life from which it has too long been shut off. Winter is a hard-fisted churl who does n't give just measure. He drives off the mellow and jolly Autumn before its mid-month October is fairly gone. He bullies Spring so that the poor, gentle-hearted thing has to get almost under the wing of Summer before she dares take possession of the remnant of her own. The great robber gets almost half the year. The very bears, curled up for their long nap, must in these days wake sometimes with an uneasy s.h.i.+ver and wonder whether their stock of fat will hold out.

This last and worst onset of winter may stand for those experiences that come as the sharpest test of the stuff that is in men. The pressure of adversity goes on and on, until we say it has reached the last point of endurance, and then another turn is given to the screw! For three long days the battle has raged around the heights of Gettysburg, and each side seems to have done its utmost, when the word is given for Pickett's division in solid column to throw itself straight against Cemetery Hill, that becomes a volcano to meet it. Those are the times that mark men for the rest of their lives as heroes. Yet there are finer heroisms than this. The very splendor of such an hour, with a nation's fate at stake and the world looking on, is enough to find out and kindle any spark of manhood in a man. With no such inspiration as that, there are in every community men and women who are battling with poverty and adversity and all kinds of trouble with a finer courage than that of the battlefield.

They cover an anxious heart with a cheerful face, for the sake of husband or wife or children who are watching the face. No winter is long enough, no lifetime is long enough, to tire out their fort.i.tude and patience and love. There are resources in human nature that never are known until things are at their hardest.

So at winter's worst--come it in one form or another--man summons up his courage, and though the winter be longer and sharper than he had thought--though poverty pinches him or trouble weighs upon him--he sets himself stoutly to bear it. Alone and unhelped he seems, perhaps,--the march of the seasons and the vast order of the universe taking no account of him; yet manfully he will face whatever comes. Whatever comes? It is the summer that is coming! As certain as to-day's snow and cold, the season of all beauty and warmth and delight is on its way! The apple-blossoms, the wild-flowers, the budding of every twig, the greenness of the pastures, the rejoicing life of animals and birds and insects, the sweet airs of May, the suns.h.i.+ne of June,--these, and all varied loveliness beyond imagination's reach or heart's desire, lie just before us. So for every soul that patiently endures an unimagined summer waits. Our patient endurance seems to us now a great matter, and indeed if we have it not we are little worth; but when the more genial season comes--when there fully reveals itself to us that high meaning of our lives and that divine destiny of which now we catch but a glimpse--we shall say, not ”How well we endured the winter,” but ”How glorious is G.o.d's summer!”

Take the case of a man who, having engaged in the active business of life, feeling himself amply capable of it and longing for it, finds himself by force of circ.u.mstances kept out of work. Perhaps he has his living to earn, perhaps he has a wife and children to support, and he can get nothing to do. Well, that is about as hard a place as a man can be called to stand in. Idleness in itself is hard. It is a burden even to those who have wealth and all the luxuries and amus.e.m.e.nts that can be devised to while away their leisure. It is the very nature of a man who is good for anything to _do_. Idleness is as unnatural and trying to the mind as sickness is to the body. But to see those you love in need, to see them threatened with suffering, to know that you could amply provide for them if you had a chance, and not to find a chance,--what is so hard as that?

It is so hard, my friend, that, if you can bear it and not be conquered by it, you are a hero. If under that load you can keep your patience and your temper and your courage, you have won a victory such as makes life worth living. Just as in battle it is the post of danger that is most honorable, so always the hard place is the place of honor. ”But,” you say perhaps, ”I don't care about being a hero; I want to see my wife and children taken care of.” That is the best of all reasons for keeping up heart. When a good wife sees her husband unfortunate and out of work, what is it that she most dreads? Not that they will starve,--starvation seldom happens in this country. Not that they will be poor, though of that she may be somewhat afraid. Her greatest fear is lest her husband should get discouraged and down-hearted; should take to drink, perhaps; at any rate, should become so despondent and embittered that the light shall go out of their lives and their children's. Now it is his business not to let that happen. It is his part to keep up for her sake a resolute heart and a cheerful face. And if she is a true woman, how gladly will she do the same for him! Out of just such circ.u.mstances there come two opposite results, according as people meet them. There comes failure of effort and resolution, then despondency, then recklessness, drunkenness perhaps, and at last ruin, the break-up of character, the destruction of the children's prospects, or sometimes suicide. When a man, under pressure of such trouble, really gives up, even for an hour, the effort to be brave and make the best of things, he takes a step on a road at the end of which is suicide. _That_ is the consummate act of cowardice; that is the last logical result of refusing to face and conquer our troubles. Heaven have mercy on the man who seeks in death a refuge, and so multiplies the suffering of those he leaves behind! And at the point where begins the wretched road of despondency, which if followed out leads to this or some other ruin, there branches another road--manly endurance of the worst, courage which is strong because it is loving,--a road which leads to heights beyond our sight.

To bear trouble together, and for each other's sake to rise above it,--what knits hearts together like that?

Take, again, the case of a man who is by circ.u.mstances shut off from work that he could do and longs to do for the large benefit of mankind,--the man who has a gift of teaching and is not allowed to teach, or who has the statesman's quality and finds no place in public affairs, or who, with any large executive and beneficent faculty, finds himself denied all opportunity of exercising it. For a faculty to be repressed is hard just in proportion as its quality is n.o.ble. A caged canary is hardly a painful sight, but a caged eagle stirs one with regret. And the world has such need of all n.o.ble talent; such exigent and hungry need of the true teacher, statesman, seer,--of the word of inspiration and the act of leaders.h.i.+p! How shall one who feels in him the power and sees the need; who grasps in his hand the keen sickle, yet is held back, while before his eyes the fields are white with the harvest which threatens, unreaped, to perish,--how shall he reconcile himself to his lot? How escape the thought that he and all mankind are but playthings in the grasp of cruel and ironic fate?

What, then, does the world most need of us? Is it wisdom, or statesmans.h.i.+p, or executive power? These things it greatly needs. But most of all it needs character. Most of all it needs that quality of personality which is moulded by the interplay of loyal will with the s.h.i.+fting course of outward event. For our wisest thoughts the world can very well wait, or do without them altogether; almost certainly some one else has thought them and said them. Our executive power to be added to the world's work,--it is but a fly's strength contributed to a steam-engine. One thing the universe asks of us, which no one else can give,--_ourselves_; our highest and fullest self. It is not what we do externally, but what we are, that measures our worth. The real and lasting value of a word or an act depends largely on the weight of character behind it. And in character no higher effect is wrought out than that which comes through endurance and heroic pa.s.sivity. To stand long before closed doors of opportunity and keep serene; to see work waiting, see others working, and in patience and self-control to bide one's time,--that is more than to do any work; it is to be a man. The time comes when manhood finds itself to be power.

A brook goes singing on its way, marking its course through forest and field with a track of beauty and freshened life. Men throw a dam across its path, and through many a long day its course is stopped and its waters silently acc.u.mulate. And the brook says, ”Alas for my lost freedom and service! Alas for the rush and sparkle and joy of my cascades! Alas for the parched meadows, the unwatered ferns and mosses!”

But the day comes when with a cataract leap it crosses its barrier; meadow and mosses and ferns revive; and now the stored power of the stream is turning great mills and grinding bread for men.