He came to the sense of a divine purpose in which he had a part. He grew in charity, in sympathy, in wisdom. His private griefs, such as the death of his boy, deepened his nature. He bore burdens beyond Hamlet"s,--a temperament p.r.o.ne to melancholy, the death of the woman he loved, a wife who was little comfort, an ambition which long found no fruition and no adequate field, a baffled gaze into life"s mystery; then the responsibility of a nation in its supreme crisis, and the sense of the nation"s woe. Through it all he held fast the clew of moral fidelity.
A lover of peace, he was forced to be captain in a terrible war. "You know me, Voorhees," he said to an old friend; "I can"t bear to cut off the head of a chicken, and here I stand among rivers of blood!"
Under overwhelming perplexities and responsibilities, amid a ceaseless drain on his sympathies, he learned and practiced a higher fidelity and deeper trust. At the outset was "the process of crystallization;" at the end came "malice toward none, charity for all," "fidelity to the right as G.o.d gives us to see the right." At last the sunrise of the nation"s new day shone full upon him. Then suddenly, painlessly, he pa.s.sed into the mystery beyond. He was loved by his people as they never loved any other man. The world prizes its happy souls, but it takes to its inmost heart him who is faithful in darkness.
[1] Jowett"s translation.
[2] I have followed George Long"s translation of Epictetus.
[3] In the language of Renan: "By this word [supernatural] I always mean the _special_ supernatural act, miracle, or the divine intervention for a particular end; not the general supernatural force, the hidden Soul of the Universe, the ideal, source, and final cause of all movements in the system of things."
IV
GLIMPSES
The virtue of truth-seeking is a modern growth. The love of speculative truth, indeed, shines far back in antiquity, in individuals or in little companies. But the truth-seeking quality has had its special training through the pursuits of physical science. The achievements of three centuries in this direction have been made under the constant necessity of attention to reality, at whatever cost to prepossession or desire. Watchfulness, patience, self-correction are the requisites. There is the discipline of what Huxley calls "the perpetual tragedy of science,--the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact." This courage, patience, humility of the intellect, long exercised on secondary problems, wrought into habitual and accepted traits of the explorer, are called on at last to face the direst ordeal. The human mind confronts the question, "Are my dearest faith and love and hope based on reality?" To face that question, and face it through; to yield to no despondency, however dark the answer; to hold sometimes the best attainable answer, whether of affirmation or denial, as only provisional, and wait for further light, whether it come now or in a remote future, whether it come to him or to some other,--this measures the greatness of the human spirit.
It is in this respect that our moral standards, compared with those of Christendom for eighteen hundred years, have in a sense undergone not merely a development but reversal. In that pa.s.sage upon charity in which the genius of early Christianity wings its highest flight, one note alone wakes no response in us. "Charity beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." Amen! But at "believeth all things" we draw back. For us, the word must read "proveth all things."
So long as moral obligation was based solely on the sanction of a supernatural world; so long as the condemnation of murder and theft and adultery was supposed to rest on the fact that G.o.d gave two tables of stone to Moses; so long as brotherhood and hope and trust ascribed their charter to an incarnate Deity,--so long a _belief_ in the charter and its history seemed the first requirement, the necessary condition of morality. But to the modern mind the first and great commandment is to see things as they are. The foundation of our morality, our happiness if we are to be happy, our trust and worship if we are to have a trust and worship,--in any event, our rule of life, our guide and law,--must be, _follow the truth_. No sect monopolizes that principle. It was orthodox old Nathaniel Taylor who used to bid his students, "Go with the truth, if it takes you over Niagara!"
The question presents itself to man: "Is the Power that rules the universe friendly to me?" It certainly does not offer the kind of friendship which man instinctively asks. It does not give the friendship which saves from pain, which insures ease, pleasure, unchecked delight. Not an indulgent mother, certainly.
The starting-point for getting the question truly answered must be a practical acceptance of the highest rule and ideal known to man.
Accepting that and following it, he rises higher and higher. He feels himself in some inward accord with the moving forces of the universe.
The prime requisite is for him to obey, to do the right, be the heavens kindly or hostile or indifferent. Just so, long before man knew anything of the general laws of nature, he planted and reaped, struggled for food and clothing, took care for himself,--he must do long before he comprehends. So he must work righteousness and love, G.o.d or no G.o.d. And in the summoning voice within him, the play upon him of powers forever urging him to choose the right,--powers to which he grows more and more sensitive as his effort is earnest,--in this he comes to recognize some reality which has to him more significance and impressiveness than any other thing in the world.
The working principle of the modern mind is that the universe is orderly. Everything has its place and meaning. Man discerns in his personal life this much of clear meaning, that he is to strive toward the n.o.blest ideal. As he accepts that, the conviction comes home to him that in the highest sense the universe is friendly, for it is attracting, urging, compelling him to the realization of his highest dreams.
The highest intellect is always serene. Shakspere and Emerson stand at the summit of human thought and vision; unlike as they are, both view the spectacle of life with an intense interest, and a great though sober cheer. If we a.n.a.lyze the elements which Shakspere portrays, we might incline to judge that the sadness outweighs the joy. But the impression left by his pages is somehow not sad. Some deeper spirit underlies and penetrates. Back of Lear"s heartbreak, Hamlet"s bewilderment, Oth.e.l.lo"s despair, we feel some presence which upholds our courage. It is the mind of the writer, so lofty and wise that it is not daunted by all the terrors it beholds, and which conveys to us its own calm.
In a like mood, we may often look for ourselves on the drama of real life, profoundly stirred by its comedies and tragedies, but not overwhelmed,--least overwhelmed when our sight is clearest.
The sense of a.s.surance--not of mere safety from special harm, but the uplift of some unspeakable divine reality--comes in presence of the grandest scenes of nature,--mountain or ocean or sunset. They supply an external image, answering to some faculty in the soul. And when through failure of sense or spirit the vision is obscured, the soul becomes conscious in itself of that to which mountain and ocean are but servants,--the reserve power to endure and to conquer which springs to life at the stern challenge.
The deepest a.s.surance comes not as an intellectual view nor as an impression from the sublimities of nature. It is the outcome of the severest conflicts and the heaviest trials. We cannot explain the process, but we see in others or feel in ourselves this: that out of the hardest struggle in which we have held our ground comes the deepest peace. What serenity is to the intellectual life, that to the moral life is this "peace which pa.s.seth understanding," this blending of gladness and love. It is not a pa.s.sive condition, but of the highest potential energy,--the parent of all great achievements and patient fidelities.
The soul learns to draw courage, trust, joy, and hope from its resolute encounter with realities, without leaning on any explanation. It is the onlooker only who despairs. Literature, so much the work of on-lookers, exaggerates the depression. Men of action, toilers, helpers, fathers, mothers, saints,--these do not despair. The world as a whole, and the best part of the world, lives a life of action, feeling, exercise of every faculty,--which generates courage, strength, tenderness. Under all the confusion and wrong, there are still the deep springs of that same experience, that "peace of G.o.d" which always fed the highest life.
There is an experience sometimes felt of perfect a.s.surance, peace, and joy. It is "love which casteth out fear,"--the sense of being "G.o.d"s child;" it is communion with the Highest.
This is the heart of religion. It is known to "babes and sucklings,"
unknown to many otherwise very learned people. It speaks with an absolute authority the message of love and peace, of joy and hope.
The mind is wont to clothe this message in some crude form, which serves to convey it to others, but is like the alloy which makes the pure gold workable, yet debases it.
This gladness of the spirit was the gospel of Jesus. He had it as no one ever had it before. His followers caught it. They debased, necessarily, but they spread it. They worshiped it in him, made him their leader, master, and finally their G.o.d. They loved him as a present reality, while they treasured the record of his human words.
In such exaltation, like the intoxication of a heavenly wine, the untrained mind is creative in its ecstasy; hence the beautifully conceived and easily believed stories of announcing angels, miracles of healing, bodily resurrection.
Then came a long development of dogma and church,--much of obscuration, much of degeneracy. Through it all survived the truths that love is supreme, and that the law of life is goodness sublimed to holiness.
The revivals of religions have been the rediscovery of the glad truth, freed each time from some accompanying error.
The discovery of Luther was that the soul"s life in G.o.d was possible outside of the Catholic church. Others had found this, too, but he made it a militant truth, and successfully revolted.
Calvinism was partly a reversion; its emphasis on sovereignty was tyrannical, but it trained the mind in exact and intense thought.
Fox, after long searchings amid sects and parties, made the new discovery again,--G.o.d"s spirit given directly, freely to man! Hence a sort of intoxication in the early Quaker, sobering to a sweet religion.
Always, in the various churches,--Roman, English, Genevan, Lutheran,--was something of the divine fire, though often hidden and choked.
In the Wesleys, the saving and seeking love of Christ was the form the revival took; and with this went "free grace," as against fatalism which crushed the will.
Edwards had something of the love-element, but it was fettered by his Calvinism. His main service was to stimulate religious thought, which, from a Calvinistic basis, worked out through Hopkins to Channing.
The revival in Liberal Orthodoxy is essentially a recognition of the true character of Jesus, and an idealization and enthronement of this as the sovereign ideal, with a clinging as yet to the supernatural basis, which inevitably grows weaker.
Meanwhile, new "ways into the Infinite" have been opened,--through nature, as by Wordsworth; through humanity by Emerson.
Science has swept away the whole supernatural machinery with which this inner life of the soul has been connected in men"s minds. It finds everywhere order, growth, a present rooted in the past and flowering into the future. Opening immense vistas for the race, it sometimes seems to shrivel the individual to a transient atom.
But still there wells up in the heart of man the mysterious, profound, irresistible gladness in its Divine source,--the love that casts out fear. We may look at it soberly, a.s.sign it place, limit it in a way; it can no longer give us a cosmogony, but unimpaired is its message, "Obey and rejoice!" We correlate its impulse with the sense of moral obligation and the code of ethics which has grown up in the world"s sober experience. We learn to cultivate the religious sense more wisely than of old. We make bodily health its minister. We administer and reorganize civil society, instead of confining ourselves to the church. We open our hearts to the revelation of nature and humanity.
And we wait patiently the slow coming of the Kingdom; the slow growth of religion in our own character; the slow upbuilding of human societies.
Side by side with this slow process lies always the present heaven into which at times the soul enters and finds perfect peace,--a peace which embraces past, present, and future, time and eternity. We study and practice obedience, diligence, patience; and at unforeseen moments, under shocks or in highest tranquillity, comes the divine revelation.
The belief that the perfect life had actually been lived by Christ was a help to men whose aspiration felt itself unsuccessful,--the very height of the aspiration deepening the sense of failure. The mind fastened on an actual and perfect goodness outside of itself. The Stoic ideal kept a man self-watchful, giving him no higher personality to look up to. There was in Christianity the feeling that the perfect life has been lived, and this somehow may help to save me. This was the core of the Atonement. All theories of it--ransom, subst.i.tution, and the like--were intellectual explanations of the fact of experience.
Forgiveness is the soul"s delighted sense that its sin is not mortal.
It comes only after sin has been felt as a burden. Conscious of wrong-doing, man feels helpless and even accursed,--imagines or credits stories of a fall, of measureless guilt, and an endless h.e.l.l. What gives poignancy to these ideas is the real sense of wrong-doing, which projects a monstrous and exaggerated shadow.
The sense of duty, constantly worked, breeds in sensitive souls the despair of an unattainable perfection. The outward ceremonial does not help or enrich,--the moral and spiritual ideal tantalizes by its impossibility. This happens even to the strenuously righteous. In the gross wrong-doer, especially if he falls under the ban of society, there is wrought a despair which probably expresses itself in a hardened recklessness.
Among these "lost sheep" came Jesus as a friend. His love divined the deeper soul within them,--its yearning for the good it had perhaps ceased even to struggle for,--its untouched possibilities. He said, "Be of good cheer! Thy sins be forgiven thee! Go in peace!" At his word and touch, a new life sprang up in them,--a new force lifted humanity in its lowest depths.
To this new sense of life out of death Jesus gave the name of _Your Father"s love_. He typified it in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
And as the appropriate att.i.tude for this recovered sinner, he set, not merely a glad and thankful acceptance of the gift, but the pa.s.sing of it on to others. He bound inseparably the receiving and the giving.
"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
Just the experience of the pardoned miser or harlot came to Paul when he saw that in his pride and willfulness he had been persecuting the holy and innocent, yet felt himself reached and loved and restored by that same innocent and holy soul.