For all lovers of their kind, nothing is so hard to bear as the slowness of the upward progress of society. It is not simply that the rise of the common people is accompanied with heavy wastes and losses, it is that the upward movement is along lines so vast as to make society"s growth seem tardy, delayed, or even reversed. Doubtless the drift of the ages is upward, but this progress becomes apparent only when age is compared with age and century with century. It is not easy for some Bruno or Wickliffe, sowing the good seed of liberty and toleration in one century, to know that not until another century hath pa.s.sed will the precious harvest be reaped. Man is accustomed to brief intervals. Not long the s.p.a.ce between January"s snowdrifts and June"s red berries. Brief the interval between the egg and the eagle"s full flight. Scarcely a score of years separates the infant of days from the youth of full stature. Trained to expect the April seed to stand close beside the August sheaf, it is not easy for man to accustom himself to the processes of him with whom four-score years are but a handbreadth and a thousand years as but one day.
To man, therefore, toiling upon his industry, his art, his government, his religion, comes this reflection: Because the divine epochs are long, let not the patriot or parent be sick with hope long deferred.
Let the reformer sow his seed untroubled when the sickle rusts in the hand that waits for its harvest. Remember that as things go up in value, the period between inception and fruition is protracted.
Because the plant is low, the days between seed and sheaf are few and short; because the bird is higher, months stand between egg and eagle.
But manhood is a thing so high, culture and character are harvests so rich as to ask years and even ages for ripening, while G.o.d"s purposes for society involve such treasures of art, wisdom, wealth, law, liberty, as to ask eons and cycles for their full perfection.
Therefore let each patriot and sage, each reformer and teacher be patient. The world itself is a seed. Not until ages have pa.s.sed shall it burst into bloom and blossom.
Troubled by the strifes of society, depressed by the waste of its forces and the delays of its columns, he who seeks character for himself and progress for his kind, oft needs to shelter himself beneath that divine principle called the time-element for the individual and the race. Optimists are we; our world is G.o.d"s; wastes shall yet become savings and defeats victories; nevertheless, life"s woes, wrongs and delays are such as to stir misgiving. The mult.i.tudes hunger for power and influence, hunger for wealth and wisdom, for happiness and comfort; satisfaction seems denied them. Watt and Goodyear invent, other men enter into the fruit of their inventions; Erasmus and Melanchthon sow the good seeds of learning; two centuries pa.s.s by before G.o.d"s angels count the bundles. In a pa.s.sion of enthusiasm for England"s poor, Cobden wore his life out toiling for the corn laws.
The reformer died for the cotton-spinners as truly as if he had slit his arteries and emptied out the crimson flood. But when the victory was won, the wreath of fame was placed upon another"s brow. One day Robert Peel arose in the House of Commons and in the presence of an indignant party and an astounded country, proudly said: "I have been wrong. I now ask Parliament to repeal the law for which I myself have stood. Where there was discontent, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, I see peace, where there was disloyalty, I see loyalty."
Then the fury of party anger burst upon him, and bowing to the storm, Robert Peel went forth while men hissed after him such words as "traitor," "coward," "recreant leader." Nor did he foresee that in losing an office he had gained the love of a country.
What delays also in justice! What recognition does society withhold from its heroes! What praise speaks above the pulseless corpse that is denied the living, hungering heart! What gold coin spent for the marble wreath by those who have no copper for laurel for the living hero! How do rewards that dazzle in prospect, in possession, burst like gaudy bubbles! Honors are evanescent; reputation is a vapor; property takes wings; possessions counted firm as adamant dissolve like painted clouds; in the hour of depression the hand drops its tool, the heart its task. In such dark hours and moods, strong men reflect that he who sows the good seed of liberty or culture or character must have long patience until the harvest; that as things go up in value they ask for longer time; that he is the true hero who redeems himself out of present defeat by the foresight of far-off and future victory; that that man has a patent of n.o.bility from G.o.d himself who can lay out his life upon the principle that a thousand years are as one day. The truly great man takes long steps by G.o.d"s side, has the courage of the future; working, he can also wait.
For man, fulfilling such a career, no principle hath greater practical value than this one; as things rise in the scale of value the interval between seedtime and harvest must lengthen. Happily for us, G.o.d hath capitalized this principle in nature and life. Each gardener knows that what ripens quickest is of least worth. The mushroom needs only a night; the moss asks a week for covering the fallen tree; the humble vegetable asks several weeks and the strawberry a few months; but, planting his apple tree, the gardener must wait a few years for his ripened russet, and the woodsman many years for the full-grown oak or elm. If in thought we go back to the dawn of creation--to that moment when sun and planet succeeded to clouds of fire, when a red-hot earth, cooling, put on an outer crust, when gravity drew into deep hollows the waters that cooled the earth and purified the upper air--and then follow on in nature"s footsteps, pa.s.sing up the stairway of ascending life from lichen, moss and fern, on to the culminating moment in man, we shall ever find that increase of value means an increase of time for growth. The fern asks days, the reed asks weeks, the bird for months, the beast for a handful of years, but man for an epoch measured by twenty years and more. To grow a sage or a statesman nature asks thirty years with which to build the basis of greatness in the bone and muscle of the peasant grandparents, thirty years in which to compact the nerve and brain of parents; thirty years more in which the heir of these ancestral gifts shall enter into full-orbed power and stand forth fully furnished for his task. Nature makes a dead snowflake in a night, but not a living star-flower. For her best things nature asks long time.
The time-principle holds equally in man"s social and industrial life.
To-day our colleges have their anthropological departments and our cities their museums. The comparative study of the dress, weapons, tools, houses, ships of savage and civilized races gives an outline view of the progress of society. How fragile and rude the handiwork of savages! How quickly are the wants provided for! A few fig leaves make a full summer suit for the African and the skin of an ox his garb for winter. But civilized man must toil long upon his loom for garments of wool and fine silk. Slowly the hollow log journeys toward the ocean steamer; slowly the forked stick gives place to the steam-plow, the slow ox to the swift engine; slowly the sea-sh.e.l.l, with three strings tied across its mouth, develops into the many-mouthed pipe-organ. But if rude and low conveniences represent little time and toil, these later inventions represent centuries of arduous labor. In his history of the German tribes, Tacitus gives us a picture of a day"s toil for one of the forest children. Moving to the banks of some new stream, the rude man peels the bark from the tree and bends it over the tent pole; with a club he beats down the nuts from the branches; with a round stone he knocks the squirrel from the bough; another hour suffices for cutting a line from the ox"s hide and, hastily making a hook out of the wishbone of the bird, he draws the trout from its stream. But if for savage man a day suffices for building and provisioning the tent, the acc.u.mulated wisdom of centuries is required for the home of to-day. One century offers an arch for the door, another century offers gla.s.s windows, another offers wrought nails and hinges, another plaster that will receive and hold the warm colors, another offers the marble, tapestry, picture and piano, the thousand conveniences for use and beauty.
Husbandry also represents patience and the labor of generations. Were it given to the child, tearing open the golden meat of the fruit, to trace the ascent of the tree, he would see the wild apple or bitter orange growing in the edge of the ancient forest. But man, standing by the fruit, grafted it for sweetness, pruned it for the juicy flow, nourished it for taste and color. Could he who picks the peach or pear have this inner vision, he would behold an untold company of husbandmen standing beneath the branches and pointing to their special contributions. The fathers labored, the children entered into the fruitage of the labor in his dream; the poet slept in St. Peter"s and saw the shadowy forms of all the architects and builders from the beginning of time standing about him and giving their special contributions to Bramante and Angelo"s great temple. Thus many hands have toiled upon man"s house, man"s art, industry, invention.
In the realm of law and liberty the best things ask for patience and waiting. Out of nothing nothing comes. The inst.i.tution that represents little toil but little time endures. Man"s early history is involved in obscurity, largely because his early arts were mushroomic--completed quickly, they quickly perished. The ideas scratched upon the flat leaf or the thin reed represented scant labor and therefore soon were dust. But he who holds in his hand a modern book holds the fruitage of years many and long. For that book we see the workmen ranging far for linen; we see the printer toiling upon his movable types; we see the artist etching his plate; the author giving his days to study and his nights to reflection; and because the book harvests the study of a great man"s lifetime it endures throughout generations. The sciences also increase in value only as the time spent upon them is lengthened. Few and brief were the days required for the early astronomers to work out the theory that the earth is flat, the sky a roof, the stars holes in which the G.o.ds have hung lighted lamps. The theory that makes our earth sweep round the sun, our sun sweep round a far-off star, all lesser groups sweep round one central sun, that shepherds all the other systems, asks for the toil of Galileo and Kepler, of Copernicus and Newton, and a great company of modern students. The father of astronomy had to wait a thousand years for the fruition of his science. Upon those words, called law or love, or mother or king, man hath with patience labored. The word wife or mother is so rich to-day as to make Homer"s ideal, Helen, seem poor and almost contemptible. The girl was very beautiful, but very painful the alacrity with which she pa.s.ses from the arms of Menelaus to the arms of Paris, from the arms of Paris to those of Deiphobus, his conqueror. If one hour only was required for this lovely creature to pack her belongings preparatory to moving to the tent of her new lord, one day fully sufficed for transferring her affections from one prince to another. But, toiling ever upward to her physical beauty, woman added mental beauty, moral beauty, until the word wife or mother or home came to have almost infinite wealth of meaning.
In government also the best political instruments ask for longest time.
Hercules ruled by the right of physical strength. a.s.sembling the people, he challenged all rivals to combat. A single hour availed for cutting off the head of his enemy. Henceforth he reigned an unchallenged king. Because man hath with patience toiled long upon this republic, how rich and complex its inst.i.tutions! The modern presidency does not represent the result of an hour"s combat between two Samsons. Forty years ago the eager aspirants began their struggle.
A great company of young men all over the land determined to build up a reputation for patriotism, statesmanship, wisdom and character. As the time for selecting a president approached, the people pa.s.sed in review all these leaders. When two or more were finally chosen out, there followed months in which the principles of the candidates were sifted and a.n.a.lyzed. "I know of no more sublime spectacle," said Stuart Mill, "than the election of the ruler under the laws of the republic. If the voice of the people is ever the voice of G.o.d, if any ruler rules by divine right, it is when millions of freemen, after long consideration, elect one man to be their appointed guide and leader." If a single hour availed for Samson to settle the question of his sovereignty, free inst.i.tutions ask for their statesmen to have the patience of years; working, they must also wait.
With long patience also man has worked and waited as he has toiled upon his idea of religion. Rude, indeed, man"s hasty thoughts of the infinite. In early days the sun was G.o.d"s eye, the thunder his voice, the stroke of the earthquake the stroke of his arm, the harvest indicated his pleasure, the pestilence his anger. In such an age the priest and philosopher taxed their genius to invent methods of preserving the friendship and avoiding the anger of the Infinite.
Daily the king and general calculated how many sheep and oxen they must slay to avoid defeat in battle. Daily the husbandman and farmer calculated how many doves and lambs must be killed to avert blight from the vineyard and hailstorms from the harvests. Observing that when the king ascended to the throne the slaves put their necks under his heel and covered their bodies with dust, in their haste the priests concluded that by degrading man G.o.d would be exalted. Prostrating themselves in dirt and rags, men went down in order that by contrast the throne of G.o.d might rise up. The mud was made thick upon man"s brow that the crown upon the brow of G.o.d might be made brilliant. Out of this degrading thought grew the idea that G.o.d lived and ruled for his own gratification and self-glory. The infinite throne was unveiled as a throne of infinite self-aggrandizement. Slowly it was perceived that the parent who makes all things move about himself as a center, ever monopolizing the best food, the best place, the best things, at last becomes a monster of selfishness and suffers an awful degradation, while he who sacrifices himself for others is the true hero.
At last, Christ entered the earthly scene with his golden rule and his new commandment of love. He unveiled G.o.d, not as desiring to be ministered to, but as ministering; as being rich, yet for man"s sake becoming poor; as asking little, but giving much; as caring for the sparrow and lily; as waiting upon each beetle, bird and beast, and caring for each detail of man"s life. Slowly the word G.o.d increased in richness. Having found through his telescope worlds so distant as to involve infinite power, man emptied the idea of omnipotence into the word G.o.d; finding an infinite wisdom in the wealth of the summers and winters, man added the idea of omniscience; noting a certain upward tendency in society, man added the word, "Providence;" gladdened by G.o.d"s mercy, man added ideas of forgiveness and love. Slowly the word grew. In the olden time people entering the Acropolis cast their gifts of gold and silver into some vase. Last of all came the prince to empty in jewels and flashing gems and make the vase to overflow. Not otherwise Christ emptied vast wealth of meaning into those words called "conscience," "law," "love," "vicarious suffering," "immortality,"
"G.o.d." Beautiful, indeed, the simplicity of Christ. With long patience, man waited for the unveiling of the face of divine love.
To all patriots and Christian men who seek to use occupation and profession so as to promote the world"s upward growth comes the reflection that henceforth society"s progress must be slow, because its inst.i.tutions are high and complex. To-day many look into the future with shaded eyes of terror. In the social unrest and discontent of our times timid men see the brewing of a social and industrial storm. In their alarm, amateur reformers bring in social panaceas, conceived in haste and born in fear. But G.o.d cannot be hurried. His century plants cannot be forced to blossom in a night. No reformer can be too zealous for man"s progress, though he can be too impatient. In these days, when civilization has become complex and the fruitage high, those who work must also wait and with patience endure.
Mult.i.tudes are abroad trying to settle the labor problem. The labor problem will never be settled until the last man lies in the graveyard.
Each new inventor reopens the labor problem. Men were contented with their wages until Gutenberg invented his type and made books possible; then straightway every laborer asked an increased wage, that though he died ignorant his children might be intelligent. When society had readjusted things and man had obtained the larger wage, Arkwright came, inventing his new loom, Goodyear came with the use of rubber, and straightway men asked a new wage to advantage themselves of woolen garments and rubber goods for miners and sailors. On the morrow 15,000,000 children will enter the schoolroom; before noon the teacher has given them a new outlook upon some book, some picture, some convenience, some custom. Each child registers the purpose to go home immediately and cry to his parent for that book or picture; that tool or comfort. When the parents return that night the labor question has been reopened in millions of homes.
Intelligence is emanc.i.p.ating man. Ignorance is a constant invitation to oppression. So long as workmen are ignorant, governments will oppress them; wealth will oppress them; religious machinery will oppress them. Education can make man"s wrists too large to be holden of fetters. In the autumn the forest trees tighten the bark, but when April sap runs through the trees the trunk swells, the bark is strained and despite all protests it splits and cracks. The splitting of the bark saves the life of the tree. The soft, balmy air of April is pa.s.sing over the world and succeeding to the winter of man"s discontent. Old ideas are being rent asunder and old inst.i.tutions are being succeeded by new ones. G.o.d is abroad destroying that he may save. In every age he makes the discontent of the present to be the prophecy of the higher civilization. Despite all the pessimists and the croakers, the ideas of manhood were never so high as to-day, and the number of those whose hearts are knitted in with their kind was never so large nor so n.o.ble. The movement may be slow, but it is because the social organs are complex and intricate. With long patience man must work and also wait.
In the world of business, also, the time element exerts striking influence. To-day our land is filled with men who have sown the seed of thought and purpose, but whose harvest is of so high a quality that with long patience must they wait for the fruition. How pathetic the reverses of the last four years. The condition of our land as to the overthrows of its leaders answers to the condition in Poland when Kossuth and his fellow patriots, accustomed to life"s comforts and its luxuries, went forth penniless exiles to accustom themselves to menial toil, to hardship and extreme poverty. His heart must be of iron who can behold those who have been leaders of the industrial column, who now stand aside and see the mult.i.tude sweep by. Just at the moment of expected victory misfortune overtook them and brought their structure down in ruins. And because the seed they have sown is not physical, but mental and moral, the fruition is long postponed.
Walter Scott tells the story of a wounded knight, who took refuge in the castle of a baron that proved to be a secret enemy and threw the knight into a dungeon; one day in his cell the knight heard the sound of distant music approaching. Drawing near the slit in the tower, he saw the flash of swords and heard the tramp of marching men. At last the wounded hero realized that these were his own troops, marching by in ignorance of the fact that the lord of this castle was also the jailer of their general. While the knight tugged at his chain, lifted up his voice and cried aloud, his troops marched on, their music drowning out his cries. Soon the banners pa.s.sed from sight, the last straggler disappeared behind the hill and the captive was left alone.
The brave knight died in his dungeon, but the story of his heroism lived. What the knight learned in suffering the poets have taught in song. The captive hero has a permanent place in civilization, though the foresight of his influence was denied him.
Those whose harvest is delayed are a great company. Elizabeth Barrett Browning exclaiming, "I have not used half the powers G.o.d has given me," poets dying ere the day was half done; the inventors and reformers denied their ideals; obscure and humble workmen--the mechanic who emanc.i.p.ates man by his machine; the artisan whose conveniences are endless benefactions to our homes; the smith whose honest anchor holds the ship in time of storm--all these labored and died without seeing the fruitage, but other men entered into their labors.
To parents who have pa.s.sed through all the thunder of life"s battle and stand at the close of life"s day discouraged because children are unripe, thoughtless and immature; to publicists and teachers, sowing G.o.d"s precious seed, but denied its harvests; to individuals seeking to perfect their character within themselves comes this thought--that character is a harvest so rich as to ask for long waiting and the courage of far-off results. Nature can perfect physical processes in twenty years, but long time is asked for teaching the arm skill, the tongue its grace of speech, to clothe reason with sweetness and light, to cast error out of the judgment, to teach the will hardness and the heart hope and endurance.
Four hundred years pa.s.sed by before the capstone was placed upon the Cathedral of Cologne, but no trouble requires such patient toil as the structure of manhood. For complexity and beauty nothing is comparable to character. Great artists spend years upon a single picture. With a touch here and a touch there they approach it, and when a long period hath pa.s.sed they bring it to completion. Yet all the beauty of paintings, all the grace of statues, all the grandeur of cathedrals are as nothing compared to the painting of that inner picture, the chiseling of that inner manhood, the adornment of that inner temple, that is scarcely begun when the physical life ends. How majestic the full disclosure of an ideal manhood! With what patience must man wait for its completion! Here lies the hope of immortality; it does not yet appear what man shall be.
THE SUPREMACY OF HEART OVER BRAIN.
"Out of the heart are the issues of life."--_Prov. IV. 23_.
"For out of the heart man believeth unto righteousness."--_Paul_.
"Heart is a word that the Bible is full of. Brain, I believe, is not mentioned in Scripture. Heart, in the sense in which it is currently understood, suggests the warm center of human life or any other life.
When we say of a man that he "has a good deal of heart" we mean that he is "summery." When you come near him it is like getting around to the south side of a house in midwinter and letting the sunshine feel of you, and watching the snow slide off the twigs and the tear-drops swell on the points of pendant icicles. Brain counts for a good deal more to-day than heart does. It will win more applause and earn a larger salary. Thought is driven with a curb-bit lest it quicken into a pace and widen out into a swing that transcends the dictates of good form.
Exuberance is in bad odor. Appeals to the heart are not thought to be quite in good taste. The current demand is for ideas--not taste. I asked a member of my church the other day whether he thought a certain friend of his who attends a certain church and is exceptionally brainy was really entering into sympathy with religious things. "Oh, no," he said, "he likes to hear preaching because he has an active mind, and the way that things are spread out in front of him." In the old days of the church a sermon used to convert 3,000 men, now that temperature is down it takes 3,000 sermons to convert one man."--_Charles H.
Parkhurst_.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SUPREMACY OF HEART OVER BRAIN.
To-day there has sprung up a rivalry between brain and heart. Men are coming to idolize intellect. Brilliancy is placed before goodness and intellectual dexterity above fidelity. Intellect walks the earth a crowned king, while affection and sentiment toil as bond slaves.
Doubtless our scholars, with the natural bias for their own cla.s.s, are largely responsible for this worship of intellectuality. When the historian calls the roll of earth"s favorite sons he causes these immortals to stand forth an army of great thinkers, including philosophers, scientists, poets, jurists, generals. The great minds are exalted, the great hearts are neglected.
Artists also have united with authors for strengthening this idolatry of intellect. One of the great pictures in the French Academy of Design a.s.sembles the immortals of all ages. Having erected a tribunal in the center of the scene, Delaroche places Intellect upon the throne.
Also, when the sons of genius are a.s.sembled about that glowing center, all are seen to be great thinkers. There stand Democritus, a thinker about invisible atoms; Euclid, a thinker about invisible lines and angles; Newton, a thinker about an invisible force named gravity; La Place, a thinker about the invisible law that sweeps suns and stars forward toward an unseen goal.
The artist also remembers the inventors whose useful thoughts blossom into engines and ships; statesmen whose wise thoughts blossom into codes and const.i.tutions; speakers whose true thoughts blossom into orations, and artists whose beautiful thoughts appear as pictures. At this a.s.sembly of the immortals great thinkers touch and jostle. But if the great minds are remembered, no chair is made ready for the great hearts. He who lingers long before this painting will believe that brain is king of the world; that great thinkers are the sole architects of civilization; that science is the only providence for the future; that G.o.d himself is simply an infinite brain, an eternal logic engine, cold as steel, weaving endless ideas about life and art, about nature and man.
But the throne of the universe is mercy and not marble; the name of the world-ruler is Great Heart, rather than Crystalline Mind, and G.o.d is the Eternal Friend who pulsates out through his world those forms of love called reforms, philanthropies, social bounties and benefactions, even as the ocean pulsates its life-giving tides into every bay and creek and river. The springs of civilization are not in the mind. For the individual and the state, "out of the heart are the issues of life."
What intellect can dream, only the heart realizes! John Cabot"s mind did, indeed, blaze a pathway through the New England forest. But with burning hearts and iron will the Pilgrim Fathers loved liberty, law and learning, and soon they broadened the path into a highway for commerce, turned tepees into temples and made the forests a land of vineyards and villages. Mind is the beginning of civilization, but the ends and fruitage thereof are of the heart.
Christopher Wren"s intellect wrought out the plan for St. Paul"s Cathedral. But all impotent to realize themselves, these plans, lying in the King"s council chamber grew yellow with age and thick with dust.
One day a great heart stood forth before the people of London, pointing them to an unseen G.o.d, "from whom cometh every good and perfect gift,"
and, plying men with the generosity of G.o.d, he asked gifts of gold and silver and houses and lands, that England might erect a temple worthy of him "whom the heaven of heavens could not contain." The mind of a great architect had created a plan and a "blue-print," but eager hearts inspiring earnest hands turned the plan into granite and hung in the air a dome of marble.
Thus all the great achievements for civilization are the achievements of heart. What we call the fine arts are only red-hot ingots of pa.s.sion cooled off into visible shape. All high music is emotion gushing forth at those faucets named musical notes. As unseen vapors cool into those visible forms named snowflakes, so Gothic enthusiasms cooled off into cathedrals.
Our art critics speak of the eight great paintings of history. Each of these masterpieces does but represent a holy pa.s.sion flung forth upon a canvas. The reformation also was not achieved by intellect nor scholarship. Erasmus represents pure mind. Yet his intellect was cold as winter sunshine that falls upon a snowdrift and dazzles the eyes with brightness, yet is impotent to unlock the streams, or bore a hole through the snowdrifts, or release the roots from the grip of ice and frost, or cover the land with waving harvests. Powerless as winter sunshine were Erasmus" thoughts. But what the scholar could not do, Luther, the great heart, wrought easily.
Thus all the reforms represent pa.s.sions and enthusiasms. That citadel called "The Divine Right of Kings" was not overthrown by colleges with books and pamphlets. It was the pulse-beats of the heart of the people that pounded down the Bastille. Ideas of the iniquity of slavery floated through our land for three centuries, yet the slave pen and auction block still cursed our land. At last an enthusiasm for man as man and a great pa.s.sion for the poor stood behind these ideas of human brotherhood, and as powder stands behind the bullet, flinging forth its weapons, slavery perished before the onslaught of the heart.