Part 6 (1/2)
Losing the lower and present happiness, they saved the higher ease and comfort for their sons. The self-denial of yesterday brought the influence of to-day. Upon this principle G.o.d has organized the industrial world. Man must take his choice between ease and wealth, either may be his but not both.
Sacrifice is also the secret of beauty, culture and character.
Selfishness eats sweetness from the singer's voice as rust eats the edge of a sword. St. Cecilia refused to lend the divine touch to lips steeped in pleasure. He who sings for love of gold finds his voice becoming metallic. In art, also, Hitchc.o.c.k has said: ”When the brush grows voluptuous it falls like an angel from heaven.” Fra Angelico refuses an invitation to the Pitti palace, choosing rather his crust and pallet in the cell of the monastery. The artist gave his mornings to the poor, his evenings to his canvas. But when the painter had worn his life away in kindly deeds, men found that the light divine had been transferred to the painter's canvas. Eloquence also loves sincere lips. The history of oratory includes few great scenes--Demosthenes'
plea for Athenian liberty that resulted in his death, Luther's single challenge to the hosts of Pope and Emperor, Wendell Phillips' at Faneuil Hall, Lincoln's at Gettysburg. All these risked life for a cause, and were baptized with eloquence, their words being tipped with fire, their minds hurling thunderbolts.
Sacrifice also is the secret of beauty. After a little time the life of pleasure and selfishness will make the sweetest fact opaque and repellent, while self-sacrificing thoughts are cosmetics that at last make the plainest face to be beautiful. In the calm of scholars.h.i.+p men have given up the thought that culture consists of an exquisite refinement in manners and dress, in language and equipage. The poet laureate makes Maud the type of polished perfection. She is ”icily regular, splendidly null,” for culture is more of the heart than of the mind. But as eloquence means that an orator has so mastered the laws of posture, and gesture and thought and speech that they are utterly forgotten, and have become second nature, so knowledge becomes culture, and physical perfection becomes beauty, only when it is unconscious.
In the moral realm also, the gains for the soul begin with loss. In the hour of temptation he who sacrifices the higher duty to the lower pleasure will find that ease has shorn away the strength of Samson.
Victor Hugo has pictured a man committing suicide through poverty, and deserting the duty and dwelling where G.o.d has placed him. But waking in the next world, the man perceives a letter on the way to himself announcing a large inheritance which would have been his had he but been patient. Therefore the great novelist affirms that G.o.d makes such a man begin over again, only under harder conditions, the existence that here he has willfully shattered. What a tragedy is his who, to save the present good, will lose the higher life. Whittier expressed the fear that Daniel Webster saved his life only to lose it. In his works the poet recalls the time when for genius of statesmans.h.i.+p and weight of mentality Webster's like was not upon our earth. But in an evil hour the statesman saw that the presidency was a prize that could be gained by giving the fugitive slave law as a sop to the South. In that hour his character suffered grievous injury. In the attempt to save men's votes he lost men's higher respect. In deepest sorrow his admirers, abroad and at home, cried out: ”O, Lucifer, thou son of the morning, how art thou fallen!”
The law of sacrifice is also the law of progress and civilization.
When history exhibits as dead the nations that have been pleasure-seekers it declares that the state that saveth its life shall lose it. In our own land the bankruptcy and gloom that have for years overshadowed the South speak eloquently of a national gain that is a loss. One hundred years ago the North freed its slaves. Later, when the const.i.tution was adopted, many statesmen believed that slavery was losing its hold in the South. Jefferson said: ”When I think that G.o.d is just I tremble for my country.” In that hour the statesman prophesied that slavery would soon melt away like the vanis.h.i.+ng snow of April. But when Whitney invented his gin and the raising of cotton became very lucrative slavery took on new life. It was Lord Brougham who first said that when slavery brought in 100 percent, while it was seen to be immoral, not all the navies of the world could stop it.
Later, when it brought in 300 percent, it became a peculiar inst.i.tution, patterned after the system of the patriarchs. But when it brought in 300 percent master and slave became a Christian relation, and slavery was baptized with quotations from the Old Testament.
But avarice could not forever blind men's eyes to scenes of sorrow, nor stop their ears to sounds of woe. When the horrors of the slave-market and the infamies of the cotton-field filled all the land with shame reformers arose, declaring that the attempt to compress and confine liberty would end in explosion. In that hour Northern men made tentative overtures looking to the purchase of all slaves. But slavery, Delilah-like, made the southern leaders drunk with the cup of sorcery. They scorned the proposition. In the light of subsequent events we see that in saving her inst.i.tution the South lost it, and with it her wealth, while in losing her slaves the North gained her wealth. Under free labor the North doubled its population, its manufactories, its riches and waxed mighty. Under slave-labor the South dwindled in wealth and became only the empty sh.e.l.l of a state.
The spark fired at Fort Sumter kindled a conflagration that swept through the sunny South like a devastating fire and revealed its inner poverty. When four years had pa.s.sed by the farmhouses and factories were ruins, the village was a heap, the town a desolation. Graveyards were as populous as cities, each village had its company of cripples, the cry of the orphan and the widow filled all the land.
When Charles Darwin returned from his voyage around the world, he sent a generous contribution to the London Missionary Society. The great scientist had discovered that in lessening her wealth through missions England had saved her treasure through commerce. Traveling in foreign lands, Darwin noticed that the Christian teachers in schools that now touch 3,000,000 of young men and women in India, were really commercial agents for England's trade. In awakening the minds of the darkened millions the teacher had created a demand for books, newspapers and printing-presses. In awakening the sense of self-respect the teacher had created a demand for English clothing and the product of English looms. Also the influence of each home, with its comforts and conveniences, created a demand for English tools and improvements of labor. Summing up his observation, Lord Havelock said that each thousand dollars England had spent upon her missions had brought a return of a hundred thousand dollars through her commerce. Hitherto the interior of China has been closed to English merchants. To that dark land, therefore, England has sent 200 teachers whose homes are centers of light and inspiration. When two-score years have pa.s.sed English fleets will be taxed to the utmost to carry to China, as now to India, her fabrics of cotton and wool, her presses, looms, sewing-machines, her pictures, her libraries. In giving of her wealth to found these dest.i.tute schools England will save it a hundred-fold and find new markets among 300,000,000 people.
Sacrifice is also the secret of influence. Long ago Cicero noted that tales of heroes and eloquence and self-sacrifice cast a charm and spell upon the people. When men sacrifice ease, wealth, rank, life itself, the delight of the beholders knows no bounds. If we call the roll of the sons of greatness and influence we shall see that they are also the sons of self-sacrifice. The Grecian hero who lost his life that he might save his influence is typical of all the great leaders. Phocion was a patriot and martyr whose single error in judgment brought down a catastrophe upon his beloved Athens. When the fierce mob surrounded his house and prepared to beat down his doors, friends offered Phocion escape and shelter, but the hero went calmly forth to meet his death.
When the day of execution arrived the cup of poison was handed to the other leaders first. The jailer was careful to see to it that before he reached Phocion he had only a few drops of hemlock left in his cup, but the hero drew out his purse and bade a youth run swiftly to buy more poison, saying to the onlookers: ”Athens makes her patriots pay, even for dying.” Losing his life, Phocion, found immortal influence.
The history of Holland's greatness is the history of one who saved liberty by losing his own life. William the Silent was a prince in station and in wealth, yet for Holland's sake made himself a beggar and an outlaw. He feared G.o.d, indeed, but not the batteries of Alva and Philip. His career reads like one who with naked fists captured a blazing cannon. Falling at last by the dagger of a hired a.s.sa.s.sin, he exclaimed: ”I commit my poor people to G.o.d and myself to G.o.d's great captain, Christ.” When he died little children cried in the streets.
He lost his life, said his biographer, but saved his fame. And what shall we more say of Italy's hero, who wore his fiery f.a.gots like a crown of gold; of Germany's hero, who lost his priestly rites, but gained the hearts of all mankind; of England's hero, whose very ashes were cast by enemies upon the River Severn, as if to float his influence out o'er all the world, of India's hero, William Carey, the English shoemaker, who founded for India an educational system now reaching millions of children and youth, who gave India literature, made five grammars and six dictionaries, and so used his commercial genius through his indigo plantation and factories that it made for him a million dollars in the interests of Christian missions? Of this great company, what can we say save that they won renown through self-renunciation! What they did makes weak and unworthy what we say.
Just here let us remember that the statue of Jupiter was a figure so colossal that wors.h.i.+pers, unable to reach the divine forehead, cast their garlands at the hero's feet. For this law of sacrifice is the secret of the Messiah. Earth's great ones were taught it by their Master. Jesus Christ, ”being rich, for our sakes became poor.”
Because the law of sacrifice is the law of the Savior, man gains life through death and renown through self-renunciation.
THE GENTLENESS OF TRUE GIANTHOOD.
”A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies--one may say, simply 'fineness of nature.' This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness, in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy.
Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel no touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have felt a bent rose leaf, yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and behave itself like iron. I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully you will find that his non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature, not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor. Hence it will follow that one of the probable signs of high-breeding in men generally will be their kindness and mercifulness.”--_Modern Painters_.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GENTLENESS OF TRUE GIANTHOOD.
History has never known another such an enthusiasm for a hero as the mult.i.tude once felt toward Jesus Christ. There have indeed been times when such patriots as Garibaldi, Kossuth and Lincoln have kindled in men an enthusiasm akin to adoration and wors.h.i.+p. Yet let us hasten to confess that the qualities calculated to quicken men into raptures of devotion appeared in these patriots only in fragmentary form, while they dwelt in Christ in full-orbed majesty and splendor. The welcome Chicago gave to Grant upon his return from his journey around the world; the enthusiasm excited by Kossuth when in 1851 he drove through Broadway, New York; the wave of grat.i.tude that swept over the Italian mult.i.tude when Garibaldi appeared in Florence--all these are events that bear witness to society's devotion to its patriots and heroes.
But, be it remembered, these scenes occurred but once in the history of each of these great men.
It stirs wonder in us, therefore, that Christ's every journey across the fields took on the aspect of a triumphal procession, while His popularity waxed with familiarity and the increasing years. Indeed, full oft the rapture men felt toward Him amounted to an intoxication and an ecstasy of devotion. True it is that men now look upon Him through a blaze of light, and, remembering His achievements for art, liberty and learning, have stained His name through and through with l.u.s.trous colors. As at eventide we look out upon the sun through white and golden clouds that the sun itself has lifted, so do we behold the carpenter's son standing forth under the dazzling light of nearly two thousand years of history, while the heart colors His name with all that is n.o.blest in human aspiration and achievement.
Nevertheless, be it instantly confessed that from the very beginning this divine Teacher exhibited qualities that kindled in men an enthusiasm that amounted to transcendent delight. The time was when scholars attempted to explain His influence over the mult.i.tude by portraying Him with a halo of light about His head. Fortunately these ideas that robbed men of all fellows.h.i.+p with their divine brother have perished, and now we know that there was nothing unusual about His appearance, nor did any effulgent light blaze forth from His person.
Whether or not unique beauty of face and form was His we do not know.