This law of violence received its first check through the parental instinct. Parenthood built a fortress with walls and bulwarks about the babe. Love of offspring caused a weakness to survive. At last an era dawned when many parents united to construct a shield for weak children indeed, but also for weak adults. The state lifted the shield between weakness and its oppressor. The widow and the orphan were permitted to glean after the harvesters. The traveler, pa.s.sing through the field, might pluck a handful of corn or pull a bunch of figs. The creditor must not take the blanket or coat from the laborer nor the boat from the poor fisherman, nor the plane or saw from the poor carpenter. Stimulated by Christ"s example and teachings, society began to multiply the bulwarks against tyranny and selfishness. Looking toward the child, for the protection of weakness and unripeness, the state built these shields called the school and library, looking toward the unfortunate and those weak in body or mind, the state built bulwarks called asylum and hospital. Looking toward the chimney-sweep, the factory boys and girls, the state began to soften pain and mitigate the distress of labor. Looking toward the serf and the slave and the prisoner, the novelist and poet constructed song and story as shields for the protection of the weak and the oppressed.
One hundred years ago a man was as a beast of the field, and the slaughter of men in Italy, by the tyrant who ruled over them, stirred no more thought in England than the news of the slaughter of so many beasts. But fifty years ago the state had become so gentle toward the weak that when Mr. Gladstone made a protest against the savagery and infuriated cruelty wrought upon the inmates of the dungeons of Italy, then the heart of Europe turned toward Rome, the throne trembled upon its foundations. Formerly when any foreign government wished to colonize Africa, they sent out a regiment of soldiers, cut off a slice of the country and annexed it. Now public sentiment forbids such tyranny. The only way the aggressive nations can obtain possession of new territory is to do it under the name of a protectorate, sugar-coating, as has been said, the deeds of tyranny. If the dungeon has been rifled of its prey, if cruelty has been scourged out of the land, if despotism tottered, it is because society was slowly climbing up that stairway, of which the first step is fear and the last is love.
In these January days our earth, snow-clad and frost-bound, seems like a huge ball of ice. Yet all unconsciously to itself, the earth is being swept on into spring and summer. Unconsciously, but none the less truly, society, under the silent and secret impulse of the great G.o.d, has been journeying upward toward the time when love shall fulfill every law; when kindness and sympathy shall be organized in manners and customs. All the revolutions of the past, all the clangor of war, all the tumbling down of Bastilles, all the piling up of cities, is as nothing to the advance of the world toward that era when love shall perfect man"s inst.i.tutions and civilization.
Love also perfects religion. It is the glory of Christ that he unveils the sovereignty of character and crowns manhood with all-maturing and all-perfecting love. Looking backward, man finds that all religions fall into four cla.s.ses: There is the religion of fear and force, when man offers sacrifices to appease the G.o.ds and conciliate justice.
There is the religion of law, when men reduce life to formal rules, and the Pharisee rigorously fulfills his duty as chief, or trader, or friend. There is the religion of romanticism, when men of powerful intellect and strong imagination evolve their ideal and, withdrawing to some cave, give themselves to reverie. In all such self becomes an orb, so large as to eclipse brother man and G.o.d. Last of all there is the religion of Christ, in which love is root, blossom and fruitage.
It aims at the development and unfolding of everything that is gracious in life, whatever strikes at admiration, whether it is in school, in art, in song, in wit, in travel, in books; whatever is praiseworthy in courage or endurance, whatever has fineness and sweetness and n.o.bility; all that belongs to the hero and patriot; all that belongs to the seer and scholar; all that belongs to leadership in trade and commerce--all these elements are to be united and carried upward into the sweetness and purity of life, until the full man, standing apart and standing above life, seems to have been informed with divine love, as with a presence.
And when love has made the most of the man himself it overflows to bless others. Christ"s disciples are not here to be ministered unto, but to minister. Religion, says Christ, is love, and love is gentle toward those with hollow eyes and famine-stricken faces. Love is kindly toward those who have a tragedy written in the sharpened countenance. Love is patient toward those who have lost fidelity, as a man loses a golden coin; who have lost morality as one who flounders in the Alpine drifts. And this religion of love takes on a thousand modern forms. If it is not rowing out against the darkness and storm, as did Grace Darling to save the shipwrecked, it is going forth to those tossed upon life"s billows, to succor and to save. For love is making the individual life beautiful, making the home beautiful, and will at last make the church and state beautiful. Men will not bow down to crowned power nor philosophic power nor esthetic power; but, in the presence of a great soul, filled with vigor of inspiration and glowing with love, man will do obeisance. There is no force upon earth like divine love in the heart of man, and at last that force will sweeten and regenerate society.
Love also fulfills immortality. Of late science has reduced the number of things that endure. The astronomer tells us the sun is burning up, and will be a dying ash-heap as truly as the coal in man"s cellar will be exhausted. The geologists tell us the flowing of "the crystal springs wearies the mountain"s heart as truly as the beating of the crimson pulse wearies man"s; that the force of the iron crag is abated in its time, like the strength of human sinews in old age." The everlasting mountains are doomed to decay as surely as the moth and worm. It seems that the shining texture of stars and suns must wax old, like a garment, and decay. If now youth is eager to master all knowledge, plunge into the thick of life"s battle, forge some tool, enact some law, right some wrong, the time will speedily come when the man will sit down amid the ruins of his life and confess that his idols have been shivered, one by one.
He who loves endures. For him always all is well. That youth with a great love for nature"s treasures that promised fame, but who found his open book crimson with the life-current, may dry his tears, for love is immortal and beyond he will fulfill the dreams denied here. Because he loves the slave, Livingstone, falling in the African forest, need not fear, for love will make his work immortal. The sweet mother, whose love overarches the cradle with thoughts that for number are beyond the stars, need not fear to leave behind the gentle babe, for everlasting love will encircle it. Falling into unconsciousness and putting out upon the yeasty sea midst the falling darkness, man may call back: "I still live." For G.o.d is love and G.o.d is eternal. Therefore man who loves is immortal also.
HOPE"S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.
"Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown"d, Let Darkness keep her raven gloss; Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with Death to beat the ground!"--_Tennyson_.
"Soul, rule thyself. On pa.s.sion, deed, desire, Lay thou the laws of thy deliberate will.
Stand at thy chosen post. Faith"s sentinel: Though h.e.l.l"s lost legions ring thee round with fire, Learn to endure. Dark vigil hours shall tire Thy wakeful eyes; regrets thy bosom thrill; Slow years thy loveless flower of youth shall kill; Yea, thou shalt yearn for lute and wanton lyre.
Yet is thy guerdon great; thine the reward Of those elect, who, scorning Circe"s lure, Grown early wise, make living light their lord.
Clothed with celestial steel, these walk secure, Masters, not slaves. Over their heads the pure Heavens bow, and guardian seraphs wave G.o.d"s sword."--_V. A. Symonds_.
CHAPTER XIV.
HOPE"S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.
The soul is monarch of three kingdoms. Man lives at once in the present, the past and the future. Memory presides over yesterday; to-day is ruled by reason; to-morrow is under the sway of hope. The ancient seer who stood by the historic vine reflecting how the rain of yesterday had disappeared to give its sweet liquors to the roots only to reappear to-morrow in purple cl.u.s.ters, gave us a beautiful image of himself. Each human life is like unto a vine--its trunk manifest in the present; its roots deeply buried in the past; its branches throwing themselves forward, ripening fruit for days to come. Life is a solid column of days all compacted together. To-day"s usefulness is in the number of wise, happy and helpful yesterdays, whose acc.u.mulated treasures crowd forward the soul"s present activities. But for his yesterdays stored up in memory man would be impotent for any heroic thought or deed. He would remain a perpetual infant. As the child journeys away from the cradle memory gathers up and carries forward faces, words, books, arts, sciences, literatures, and these recollections are embalmed and transmitted as soul-capital, legacies unspeakably precious.
Yesterday, therefore, is no mausoleum of dead deeds; no storehouse of mummies. Memory is a granary holding seed for to-morrow"s sowing; memory is an armory holding weapons for to-morrow"s battles, memory is a medicine-chest with balms for to-morrow"s hurts; memory is a library with wisdom for to-morrow"s emergency. Yesterday holds the full store of to-day"s civilization, contains our tools, conveniences, knowledges; contains our battlefields and victories; above all gives us Bethlehem and Calvary. But alone man"s yesterday is impotent; his to-morrow insufficient. The true man binds all his days together with an earnest, intense, pa.s.sionate purpose. His yesterdays, to-days and to-morrows march together, one solid column, animated by one thought, constrained by one conspiracy of desire, energizing toward one holy and helpful purpose, to serve man and love G.o.d.
G.o.d governs man through the regency of hope. The reasons thereof are self-evident. Man is born a long way from home. No cradle rocks a full-orbed manhood. The babe begins a mere handful of germs; a bough of unblossomed buds. It is a weary climb from nothing to manhood, at its best. As things rise in the scale of being the distance between birth and maturity widens. Mollusks are born close up to their full estate, sandflies mature in two days, b.u.t.terflies in two weeks, humming-birds in as many months. But let no man think the vast all-shadowing redwood trees of California grew in a mushroomic night.
When the seed first thrust its rootlets down into the soil and its plumule up to the sunshine it entered upon a long career. Saved by hope after 800 years of growth it gives shade to myriads of birds; beams for lath and loom and ship in the service of industry; lends pen and pencil to poet and artist in the service of beauty; through desk and pew enters into man"s intellectual and moral life; through instruments of convenience strengthens the sweet amenities of the home; working, it also waited and is saved by hope.
Man stands at the very summit of creation. He is at the head of all that creep and swim and walk and fly. Preparatory to his dominion he begins with the lowest and runs the whole gamut of experience of all living things below him. And hope alone can save him as he journeys upward through all the intermediate stages on his way to his throne and his G.o.d. Big with destiny, he is saved by hope. Not to-day and not yesterday can suffice. The present offers only standing room--four-and-twenty hours. Memory is a bin banked with snowdrifts, not the waving harvest-fields. Man"s life is all in front of him. His large endowment asks for an extended period of time, asks seventy years for skill toward his body; asks an immortal destiny for mind and heart.
He is saved by hope and futurity.
Consider the scope and functions of hope and aspiration. Man is governed from above and within; while rocks, birds, beasts are governed from below and without. Gravity holds the bowlder in its place. The channel saith to the river: "Thus far and no farther." The fawn that is struck, the lion that strikes, the eagle dwelling above both, are controlled by fear. The charioteer drives his steeds from behind and controls by rein and scourge. But man is controlled from within and in front. G.o.d does not scourge his children forward through whips of fear. Hopes moving on before him lure him onward. The Italian artist shows us the child pa.s.sing near the precipice. Then drew near a gentle guardian spirit. The unseen friend rolled along the pathway apples of Paradise and the child, following after with shouts of glee, was lured from danger. To the beauty of the artist"s thought Homer"s story adds elements of instruction. When the Grecian boy was pursued by a giant whose breath was fire, whose hand held a huge club, two invisible beings lent help. One took the boy"s hand and lifted him forward, the other casting an invisible cord over him flew before him until his speed was doubled and the palace gates gave shelter. Oh, beautiful story of G.o.d"s gentle rule o"er men! When troubles sweep over the world like sheeted storms, when men fear exceedingly and strong men cower and shrink and little ones believe the next step to be the precipice, then G.o.d smiles. Striking some sweet bell he sends forth messengers to lure men forward; they hang stars in man"s night; they whisper that the twilight is nothing, since it is morning twilight; that fears are bats and owls hooting at the dawn; that hope is a lark singing the new day; that G.o.d reigns and all is well. Then depart all fears and superst.i.tions. The courage of the future comes; the columns begin a forward march. These upward movements of society are the yearnings of G.o.d"s heart lifting his children forward by hope.
Hope and aspiration also furnish the secret springs of civilization.
All things useful and beautiful were once only hopes and ideas. Free inst.i.tutions are ideals of liberty, crystallized into word forms.
Tools and instruments are ideals dressed up in iron clothes. The early forest man dwelt in a cave; ached with cold and moaned with hunger.
Going into the forest to dig roots he found honey hived by the bees and nuts stored up by squirrels against the winter. Straightway hope suggested to him a larger granary, whence hath come all man"s bins and storehouses. Man plucked a large plum and found it sour, and another plum small, but sweet. Hope suggested that he unite the two and strike through the abundant acid juices of the one with the sugar of the other. Thence came all vineyards and orchards. Digging in the soil tired him, but hope suggested that his pet ox might pull his forked stick; when the wooden stick wore blunt hope replaced it with an iron point; when the iron point refused to scour hope suggested steel; when the steel made his burden light and doubled the pace of his steeds, hope suggested a seat on the plow; when the riding-plow gave him time to think, hope suggested he could increase the harvest by doubling the depth, when the weight was overheavy for his beasts, hope suggested a steam-plow. The Kensington Museum exhibits the growth of the plow idea, as it moved from the forked stick to the "steam gang." If in this procession of material plows we could see the procession of ideal plows we would find that thoughts and hopes are a thousandfold more than material things.
By hope also do the people increase in wisdom and culture and character. Millions of men are digging and toiling twelve hours each day; and G.o.d hath sent forth hope to emanc.i.p.ate them from drudgery.
The man digging with his pick hath a far-away look as he toils. Hope is drawing pictures of a cottage with vines over the doorway, with some one standing at the gate, a sweet voice singing over the cradle. Hope makes this home his; it rests the laborer and saves him from despair.
Mult.i.tudes working in the st.i.thy and deep mines sweeten their labor and exalt their toil by aspiring thoughts. Thinking of his little ones at home, the miner says: "My children shall not be as their father was; my drudgery is not for self, but for love"s sake; the sweat of my brow is oil in the lamp of love; I will light it to-night on the sacred altar of home." Here is the secret of the rise and reign of the people.
This explains all man"s progress in knowledge and culture. As the fruits and flowers rise rank upon rank in response to the advancing summer, so all that is most refined and exalted in man"s mind or heart bursts forth in new ideals, reforms, revolutions, in response to the revelation of that personal presence from whom all hope and aspiration incessantly proceed.
Hope"s n.o.ble ministry hath grievous enemies. Among these let us include a false use of the past. Yesterday contains sins and mistakes, but mult.i.tudes err in dwelling too much upon their wrongs. Each man hath had his temptations, each his fierce conflicts and defeats, each bears grievous scars from the battle-field. Yet if one constantly revives all his old sins life will be filled with hideous specters.
Memory will become a place of torment and a ghastly chamber of horrors.
We shall be the children of despondency and wretchedness. Memory will be a graveyard; the past will give no light save the "will-o-the-wisp"
light from putrescence and decay. All the springs of joy will be poisoned by morbid griefs that keep open old wounds. The city hath its offal heap where refuse matter is destroyed; each home its garret, the contents cast out at regular intervals; the individual throws away his old clothes, old tools, old vehicles. Why should not the soul have its refuse valley--where the past is cast out of life and memory?
Farmers" boys sometimes set steel traps by shocks of corn whither come quail and prairie chickens. Stepping upon the traps, the cruel jaws close upon foot or wing and the bleeding bird beats out its life upon the frozen ground. Memory often with cruel jaws holds men entrapped.
A single error wrecks the whole life. But once forgiven of G.o.d let the sin go. Reflection upon past sins is good only so long as it produces revulsion from sin, and like a bow shoots the soul toward G.o.d and righteousness. G.o.d is like a mother who forgives the child"s sin into everlasting forgetfulness. Man should be ashamed to remember what G.o.d forgets. "I will cast your sins into the depth of the sea." Someone says: "G.o.d receives the soul as the sea the bather, to return it cleansed--itself unsoiled." Gather up, therefore, all thy sins--old wrongs, old hatreds, burning angers, memories of men"s treachery; stuff them into a bag and heave them into the gulf of oblivion. Your life is not in the past, but in the future. "We are saved by hope."
Mult.i.tudes may embitter their new year by undue reflections over opportunities neglected and lost in the past and denied in the present.
Professor Aga.s.siz tells of a friend who sold his farm in Pennsylvania for $5,000 to invest it in Dakota, and after losing all in the new home returned to find the German who purchased the homestead had found oil and great wealth in a swamp which he had tried to drain off. An old gentleman recently told of his refusal in 1840 to accept as payment of a small note a lot on a corner in Chicago now worth a million dollars, and he shed bitter tears over the loss of property he never owned.
When Ali Hafed heard of the diamonds in India he sold his estate and went forth to seek his fortune. His successor, watering his camel in the garden, saw the gleam of gems in the white sand and discovered the Golconda mines. Had Ali Hafed had eyes to see his would have been boundless treasure at home instead of poverty, starvation and death.
These and similar legends stand for the opportunities that have gone forever. How many neglected their opportunities for education; how they knocked unbidden at every door and no man opened. Others were denied culture, and now feel they are unfulfilled prophecies. Many by one error have injured eye or ear or lung or limb or nervous system.
They grievously handicapped themselves. Others by ingrat.i.tude, infidelity to trusts, treachery to friends, have poisoned happiness.
Repentance is theirs, and also forgiveness, but not forgetfulness. The past is full of bitterness.
Let the dead past bury its dead. The future is still ours. The trees in October willingly let go their leaves to fall into the ditch. Their life is not in last year"s leaves, but in the infant buds that crowd the old leaves off. Put forth new activities. Open new furrows. Sow new seed. All the tomorrows are thine; but they are few and short.
Fulfill his dictum who said: "I am as one going once across this vast continent; I would lean forth and sow as far as hand can scatter my seed. Let the angels count the bundles." No man should be discouraged in whom G.o.d believes, preserving him in life. Let hope in G.o.d sweeten life"s bitterness.
Another enemy of hopefulness is found in nervous excesses and overwork.
Men drain away their vitality. Ambitions unduly stimulate the brain.
Many break the laws of sleep and the laws of digestion and the laws of nerve sobriety. They spend their brain capital. Then they grow hopeless toward home and business. Ill-health spreads a gloom over all life. Every judgment is pessimistic; it could not be otherwise. The jaundiced eye yellows the landscape. The sweetest music rasps like a file upon the nervous ear. Thomas Carlyle"s pessimism was largely physical. He overworked upon his life of Oliver Cromwell. Maurice once said: "Carlyle believed in G.o.d down to the time of Oliver Cromwell." Once, in a moment of depression, Lyman Beecher prayed: "Lord, keep us from despising our rulers, and help them to stop acting so we cannot help despising them." Poor, nerve-racked Pascal, grew fearful lest his affection for his sister, who had nursed him through a long illness, was sinful. One day he wrote in his journal: "Lord, forgive me for loving my dear sister so much!" Afterward he drew his pen through the word "dear." Hope and trust toward G.o.d go with health.
Sickliness is not saintliness. G.o.d cannot save by hope what man destroys by ill-health.
Dean Stanley used hopefulness as a test of all systems of truth.
Rightly so. G.o.d is the G.o.d of hope, and his truth, like himself, carries the atmosphere of good cheer. The falsity of medievalism appears in this--it robbed men of joy and gladness. G.o.d was the center of darkness. His throne was iron. His heart was marble. His laws were huge implements of destruction. His penalties were red-hot cannon b.a.l.l.s crashing along the sinner"s pathway. Repentance toward G.o.d was moving toward the arctics and away from the tropics. Christianity was anything but "peace on earth, good will to men."
Philosophers destroyed G.o.d"s winsomeness. The reformers came in to lead men away from medievalism back to G.o.d himself. Men found hope again in redemptive love. They saw that any conception of G.o.d that dispirited and depressed men was perverted and false. No man hath done more to establish this fact than him who long ago said: "Any presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that does not come to the world as the balmy days of May comes to the unlocked northern zones; any way of preaching the love of G.o.d in Christ which is not as full of sweetness as the voice of the angels when they sang at the advent; any way of making known the proclamation of mercy which has not at least as many birds as there are in June and as many flowers as the dumb meadows know how to bring forth; any method of bringing before men the doctrine of salvation which does not make everyone feel, "There is hope for me in G.o.d--in the divine plan, in the very nature of the organization of human life and society," is spurious--is a slander on G.o.d and is blasphemy against his love."
Hope hath her harvest also for teachers and reformers. Often men think their work is squandered. They seem to be sowing seed not upon the Nile, to find it again abundantly, but in midocean, to sink and come to naught. Parents and teachers break their hearts, fearing their watchfulness and instruction have failed. Men sow wheat and wait six months for a harvest; but they sow moral seed Sunday and on Monday whip their children because the seed has not ripened. They forget that apples bitter in July may be sweet in August. To-day"s vice in the child is often to-morrow"s virtue, as acid juices through frost become saccharine. Yesterday the mother rocked a little angel in the cradle; to-day she moans: "Alas, that I should have rocked a little fox, a little serpent, a little wolf!" To-morrow the child becomes a model of truth and integrity.
The sage might have said: "It is good that woman should hope and wait."
Truth"s errand has always been a successful errand. Not a single social truth or civic truth or moral truth has ever been lost out of the world. Secrets of cruelty and fraud, secrets of oppression and sin perish, but nothing that makes life happier or better hath been forgotten. We do not have to keep G.o.d and truth alive, they keep us alive. Vegetable seeds can be killed, but not moral seeds. When G.o.d issues his silent command to the earth flying into winter and wheels it back toward summer, it is given to no man to put a brake upon warmth; nor can he go up against the spring with swords and banners. But easier this than staying the upward march of mankind. G.o.d is abroad upon a mission of recovery. Open thy hand, O publicist! and sow thy seed. The seed shall perish, but not the harvest.
Our childhood was pleased with the story of the old monk who was shipwrecked alone on a desert isle. He always carried with him a few roots and seeds. Planting these, he died, but sailors coming twenty years later found the isle waving with fruit trees. To the beauty of this legend let us add the truth of one who has made all this land his debtor. In 1801 a youth pa.s.sed through western Pennsylvania. He was collecting apple seeds with which to found orchards in the then unbroken states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. When he came to an open, sunny spot in the forest he would plant his seeds and protect them with a brush fence. Years afterward new settlers found hundreds of these embryo orchards in the forests. Thrice he floated his canoe laden with seeds down the Ohio to the settlers in Kentucky.
To this brave man, called by our Congressional Record "Johnny Appleseed," whole states owe their wealth and treasure of vineyards and orchards. This intrepid man is a beautiful type of all those who, pa.s.sing through life"s wastes, sow the land with G.o.d"s eternal truths, whose leaves and fruits heal nations. If G.o.d remembers the roots in dark forests he will not forget his truths in human hearts. Therefore, sow thy seed. Ye are saved by hope.
The ground and basis of all hope whatsoever is G.o.d. It is his good providence and redemptive love in Jesus Christ that make us optimists.
Hope is not within the scope of our wisdom or culture or skill; and hope is not in our health or tool or treasure. We journey into an unknown future. It is not given to us to know what a day or an hour of the new year may bring forth. How impotent are the wisest and strongest in the hour when we hear the sound of the ocean and in darkness ford the deep and dangerous river, beyond which is high and eternal noon. What can the child on some great ocean steamer caught in a winter"s storm do to overcome the tempest? Can it drive the fierce blasts back to their northern haunts? Can its little hand hold the wheel and guide the great ship? Can its voice still the billows that can crush the steamer like an egg-sh.e.l.l? Can its breath destroy the icy coat of mail that covers all the decks? What the child can do is trust the Captain who has brought this same ship through a hundred hard storms. It can rest and trust and hope. And all we upon this great earth-ship have been caught, not in a storm, but in the gulf stream of G.o.d"s providence. The warm tropic currents sweep us on to the heavenly harbor. The trade winds above aid the forward flight. More than all else is the larger planetary movement that sweeps gulf stream, winds and ship onward towards the infinite. Soon shall we enter into quiet waters and cast out our anchor.