Part 5 (2/2)
Happy, indeed, our age, in that the heart is now beginning to color our civilization. Vast, indeed, the influence of library and lecture-hall, of gallery and store and market-place, but the most significant fact of our day is that sympathy is baptizing our industries and inst.i.tutions with new effort. Intellect has lent the modern youth instruments many and powerful. Inventive thought has lent fire to man's forge, tools for his hands, books for his reading, has lent arts, sciences, inst.i.tutions. The modern youth stands forth in the aspect of the Roman conqueror to whom the citizens went forth to bestow gifts, one taking his chariot, one leading a steed, the children scattering flowers in the way, young men and maidens taking the hero's name upon their lips.
Unfortunately mult.i.tudes have declined those high gifts, turning away from the open door of the schoolhouse and college; many young feet have crossed the threshold of the saloon. Having entered our museum or art-gallery, mult.i.tudes enter places of evil resort.
Despising the opportunity offered by music or eloquence, by book or newspaper, by trade and profession, many choose sloth and self-indulgence. These needy millions, blinded with sin and ignorance, stand forth as a great opportunity for loving hearts. Sympathy is making beautiful the pathway of knowledge, that young hearts may be allured along the s.h.i.+ning way. By a thousand arts and devices young people of refinement and culture are founding centers of light among the poor. The opportunity that William the Silent found in the starving millions of Holland; that Garrison found in the miserable slaves of the South; that Livingstone found in Africa, the modern hero is finding in the tenement-house district. Through sympathy a new hope is entering into all cla.s.ses of society.
The heart is also coloring industry. This year it is said that more than a score of great industrial inst.i.tutions in our country have, to the factory, added gymnasium, recreation-hall, schoolroom, library, free musicals and lectures. The intellect has failed to solve the social problems by giving allopathic doses from Poor Richard's Almanac.
Impotent also those dreamers who have insisted that society must have socialism--either G.o.d's or the devil's. Impotent those who, during the past week, have proposed to cure economic ills by spitting the heads of tyrants upon bayonets. But what force and law cannot do is slowly being done by sympathy and good-will. The heart is taking the rigor out of toil, the drudgery out of service, the cruelty out of laws, harshness out of theology, injustice out of politics. Love has done much. The social gains of the future are to be to the gradual progress of sympathy and love.
Unto man who goes through life working, weeping, laughing, loving, comes the heart believing unto immortality. For reason oft the immortal hope burns low and the stars dim and disappear, but for the heart, never! Scientists tell us matter is indestructible. And the heart nourishes an immortal hope that no doubt can quench, no argument destroy, no misfortune annihilate. Comforting, indeed, for reasons, the arguments of Socrates that life survives death. After the death of his beloved daughter Tullia, Cicero outlined arguments which have consoled the mind of mult.i.tudes. But in the hour of darkness and blackness, for a man to put out upon Death's dark sea, upon the argument of Cicero, is like some Columbus committing himself to a single plank in the hope of discovering an unseen continent.
In these dark hours the heart speaks. In the poet's vision, to blind Homer, falling into the bog, torn by the thorns and thickets and lost in the forest and the night, came the young G.o.ddess, the daughter of Light and Beauty, to take the sightless poet by the hand and lead him up the heavenly heights. Sometimes intellect seems sightless and wanders lost in the maze. Then comes the heart to lead man along the upward path. For even in its dreams the heart hears the sound of invisible music. Oft before reason's eye the heart unveils the Vision Splendid. The soul is big with immortality. When the heart speaks it is G.o.d within making overtures for man to come upward toward home and heaven.
RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.
”To live absolutely each man for himself could not be possible if all were to live together. In course of time, in addition to utility, certain more sensitive individuals began to see a charm, a beauty in this consideration for others. Gradually a sort of sanct.i.ty attached to it, and nature had once more ill.u.s.trated her mysterious method of evolving from rough and even savage necessities her lovely shapes and her tender dreams. To a.s.sert, then, with some recent critics of Christianity, that that law of brotherly love which is its central teaching is impracticable of application to the needs of society, is simply to deny the very first law by which society exists.”--_Richard Le Galliene, in ”The Religion of a Literary Man._”
”It is only with renunciations that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin. . . . In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did n.o.bleness ever lie.”--_Carlyle_.
”You talk of self as the motive to exertion. I tell you it is the abnegation of self which has wrought out all that is n.o.ble, all that is good, all that is useful, nearly all that is ornamental in the world.”--_Whyte Melville_.
”Jesus said; 'Whosoever will come after Me, let him renounce himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.' Perhaps there is no other maxim of Jesus which has such a combined stress of evidence for it and may be taken as so eminently His.”--Matthew Arnold.
CHAPTER VIII.
RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.
History has crowned self-sacrifice as one of the virtues. In all ages selfishness has been like a flame consuming society, like a sword working waste and ruin, but self-sacrifice has repaired these ravages and achieved for man victories many and great. The church owes so much to the company of martyrs whose blood has crimsoned her every page, the state is so deeply indebted to the patriots who have given their lives for liberty, man has derived such strength from those who have endured the fetter and the f.a.got rather than belie their convictions, woman has derived such beauty from the example of that Antigone who died rather than desert the body of her dead brother, as that each modern youth beholds self-sacrifice standing forth clothed with immeasurable excellence.
Not large the company of the Immortals whose birthdays society celebrates. Yet when on these high days, through song or story the poet or orator draws back the veil and reveals to the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude the face of some Garibaldi or Hampden or Lincoln, the beloved one is seen to be clothed with genius and beauty and truth indeed, but also to be crowned with self-sacrifice. Society makes haste to forget him who remembers only himself. As there can be no illiterate sage, no ignorant Shakespeare, so history knows no selfish hero. For the mercenary forehead memory has no wreath. A sentinel with a flaming sword guards the threshold of the temple of fame against those aspirants named Ease, Avarice, Self-indulgence.
”Shall I be remembered by posterity?” asked the dying Garfield. In this eager, tremulous question the renowned and the obscure alike have a pathetic interest. For the deeply reflective mind oblivion is a thought all unendurable. The tool man fas.h.i.+ons, the structure he rears, the success he achieves, not less than his marble monument, looks down upon the beholder with a mute appeal for recollection. To each eager aspirant for everlasting remembrance Christ comes whispering his secret of abiding renown. Speaking not as an amateur, but as a master, Christ affirms that he who would save his life must lose it, that he who would be remembered by others must forget himself, that the soldier who flees from danger to save his body shall leave that life upon the battlefield, while he who plunges his banner into the very thick of the fight and is carried off the field upon his s.h.i.+eld shall in safety bear his life away. Hard seem the terms; they rebuke ease, they smite self-indulgence, they deny the maxims of the worldly wise.
But in accepting Christ's principle and forsaking their palaces that they might be as brothers to beggars, Xavier and Loyola found an exhilaration denied to kings; while each Sir Launfal, in his ease denied the Holy Grail, has in the hour of self-sacrifice discerned the Vision Splendid. To each young patriot and soldier looking eagerly unto the tablets that commemorate the deeds of heroes, to each young scholar aspiring to a place beside the sages, comes this word: Life is through death, and immortal renown through self-renunciation.
This law of self-sacrifice is imbedded in nature. Minot, the embryologist, and Drummond, the scientist, tells us that only by losing its life does the cell save it. The new science exhibits the body as a temple, constructed out of cells, as a building is made of bricks.
Just as some St. Peter represents strange marble from Athens, beauteous woods from Cyprus, granite from Italy, porphyry from Egypt, all brought together in a single cathedral, so the human body is a glorious temple built by those architects called living cells. When the scientist searches out the beginning of bird or bud or acorn he comes to a single cell. Under the microscope that cell is seen to be absorbing nutrition through its outer covering. But when the cell has attained a certain size its life is suddenly threatened. The center of the cell is seen to be so far from the surface that it can no longer draw in the nutrition from without. The bulk has outrun the absorbing surface.
”The alternative is very sharp,” says the scientist, ”the cell must divide or die.” Only by losing its life and becoming two cells can it save its life.
Later on, when each of the two cells has grown again to the size of the original one, the same peril threatens them and they too must divide or die. And when through this law of saving life by losing it nature has made sure the basis for bud and bird, for beast and man, then the principle of sacrifice goes on to secure beauty of the individual plant or animal and perpetuity for the species. In the center of each grain of wheat there is a golden spot that gives a yellow cast to the fine flour. That spot is called the germ. When the germ sprouts and begins to increase, the white flour taken up as food begins to decrease. As the plant waxes, the surrounding kernel wanes. The life of the higher means the death of the lower. In the orchard also the flower must fall that the fruit may swell. If the young apple grows large, it must begin by pus.h.i.+ng off the blossom. But by losing the lower bud, the tree saves the higher fruit.
Centuries ago Herodotus, the Grecian traveler, noted a remarkable custom in Egypt. Each springtime, when the palms flowered, the Egyptians went into the desert, cut off branches from the wild palms and, bringing them back to their gardens, waved them over the flowers of the date trees. What was meant by this ceremony Herodotus did not know. The husbandmen believed that if they neglected it the G.o.ds would give them but a scanty crop of dates. It was reserved for the science of our century, through Drummond, to explain the fact that the one palm saved its dates because the other palm lost its fertilizing pollen.
Should nature refuse to obey this law of losing life in order to save it, man's world would become one vast Sahara waste, an arctic desolation.
The law of sacrifice is also industrial law. Great is the power of wealth. It buys comfort, it purchases travel, it secures instruments of culture for reason and taste, it is almoner of bounty for sympathy and kindness. Flowing through man's life, it seems like unto some Nile flowing through Egypt with soft, irrigating flow, bearing man's burdens upon its currents, giving food to bird and beast. But the story of each Peter Cooper, each Peabody, each Amos Lawrence, is the story of the ease of life lost to-day that the strength of life may be saved to-morrow. Each young merchant loved luxury and beauty, but in the interests of thrift he denied the eye its hunger, the taste its satisfaction. When pride asked for dress and show, the youth rebuked his vanity. When companions scoffed at the young merchant as a n.i.g.g.ard he subdued his sensitiveness and inured himself to rigid economy. When increasing wealth began to lend influence, and society urged him to give his evenings to gayety, the young merchant denied the social instinct and gave his long winter evenings to broadening his knowledge and culture. Having lost the lower good, at last the time came when the American merchant and philanthropist had saved for himself universal fame. Having lost ease and self-indulgence during the first half of his life, he saved the higher ease and comfort for the second period of his career.
Similarly of the young men in Parliament who to-day have charge of the destinies of the English empire, it may be said that they have saved their lives, because the fathers lost theirs. One hundred years ago these fathers made exiles of themselves in the interests of their sons and daughters. The East India merchant exiled himself into the tropic land where heat and malaria made his skin as yellow as the gold he gained. Others braved the perils of the African forests, dared the dangers of Australian deserts, endured the rigor of the arctic cold.
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