The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our Cities
by Samuel Osgood · English · Gutenberg #37540 · 378,829 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our Cities
Author: Samuel Osgood
Release date: September 26, 2011 [eBook #37540]
Language: English
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THE HEARTH-STONE:
Thoughts upon Home-Life in Our Cities.
by
SAMUEL OSGOOD,
Author of "Studies in Christian Biography,"
"God with Men, or Footprints of Providential Leaders," &C.
"This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told."
GEORGE HERBERT.
New-York:
D. Appleton and Company,
200 Broadway.
London: 10 Little Britain.
1854.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858 by
D. Appleton And Company,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern
District of New-York.
PREFACE.
These thoughts are published for the same reason that led the author from
time to time to put them upon paper,--a wish to meet a want in the sphere
of the affections rather than to claim any honor in the kingdom of ideas.
Wherever important questions have been at issue he has not avoided them,
however conspicuous or controverted; but the volume aims to breathe a
kindly spirit above the reach of sect and party. He is not ashamed to have
his style show something of the habit of his profession, and to use, in
part, ideas that he has expressed in the lyceum and the pulpit in a
different form.
It will be seen that the several subjects connect themselves more or less
closely with a year's life in the household, and that the light which
cheers the whole twelvemonth is kindled on the hearth-stone at Christmas
and New Year.
The state of things in our American cities is now so peculiar, so marked
by privilege and peril, that no earnest plea for home affections and
virtues can be wholly thrown away. To dedicate books to conspicuous names
is a custom now almost obsolete, and if the Author were to venture upon
any dedication of this little volume it would read somewhat thus:--
TO THOSE WHO HAVE EVER LOVED HOME,
AND WHO WISH TO LOVE IT ALWAYS.
NEW-YORK, _Oct. 22, 1853_.
CONTENTS.
Page
HOME VIEWS OF AMERICAN LIFE 7
THE IDEAL OF WOMANHOOD 27
THE HOPE OF CHILDHOOD 45
NEW THINGS 63
SOLICITUDE OF PARENTS 79
REVERENCE IN CHILDREN 91
BROTHERS AND SISTERS 105
MARRIAGE 119
OUR FRIENDS 135
MASTER AND SERVANT 151
THE DIVINE GUEST 167
THE ORPHAN 183
THE YOUNG PRODIGAL 199
EDUCATION OF DAUGHTERS 213
BUSINESS AND THE HEART 233
SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY 249
RETURNING HOME 265
THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 277
Home Views of American Life.
HOME VIEWS OF AMERICAN LIFE.
What day of all the year gives an American a happier sense of his civil
and domestic blessings, than the old feast of the ingathering--the
time-hallowed Thanksgiving? Once more it has come round; and our pen is
disposed to catch a little of its genial temper before the hearth-stone.
This is peculiarly the home festival of our people, and throughout all the
States of our republic it is affectionately cherished. As such, resting
upon a good old precedent, it appeals to a permanent want, and gains
interest with years. The character of the day has somewhat changed, and
the domestic element in its uses preponderates far over the
ecclesiastical. Yet much of the old feeling remains, and thousands gather
in the churches, all the better prepared by the hour of worship, for the
hours of fireside enjoyment. Large scope is usually given the preacher at
this time, and many a timid man ventures upon bold themes, quite free to
take the political, or social, or philanthropic, or ecclesiastical view of
the country or the world, as he may choose. The preacher may not
complain, then, of the essayist for taking something of the same liberty,
and trenching a little upon the prerogative of the pulpit. It is surely
not amiss to open this series of discursive papers with some thoughts upon
our home blessings, upon God's hand in giving them, and our work in
spreading them.
Our home blessings! Take first the most obvious view of them. Consider the
plenty that abounds. I speak not of the few affluent, but of the great
majority who enjoy the common lot. What abundance in their homes! Look at
the household of any unpretending citizen, and say what realm of earth,
what domain of nature, does not send its treasures thither? The orchards,
the fields, the pastures, the hills, the rivers, the mines, the oceans,
bring their tribute to the fireside. From the shores of the Mediterranean
come the olive, the grape, the orange, the fig, the date. The farther
Indies send their fragrant herbs and sweet spices. The repast of a frugal
family is rarely set forth without offerings from all quarters of the
globe. The cottager's lamp, that burns by night, is fed with oil from the
Arctic zone. The light of day shines through clear crystal, that shows the
perfection of the arts, and the cheapness of their most beautiful
products. In humble abodes the wonders of manufacture appear. Rich cotton
stuffs tell of the affluence of the Southern soil and the skill of the
Northern artisan. Luxuries, of old the prerogative of princes, are now
familiar things. The silks of France and Italy are worn by the wife and
daughters of the farmer and the mechanic. I will not try to describe the
mansions of the wealthy, although these, when graced by refinement, and
exalted by piety and charity, may give impressive views of the ample
bounty of Providence. It is better to contemplate the plenty within reach
of the common lot. Among what people, in what age, has the common lot been
so favored as with us? When in the earth's history have so many persons
had reason to be grateful at the feast of the ingathering as now? We boast
not of great banquets, in which the luxury of the few is wrung from the
misery of the many. We speak not of pearls dissolved in the wine cup, and
the price of cities thus quaffed at a draught. Our country, prouder than
the empire of a Caligula, or a Cleopatra, can point to the households of
her people, and in the amount of their combined blessings pity the poverty
of the builders of the Coliseum or the Pyramids. Other lands may have
prouder palaces and more princely fortunes. None can show so many favored
homes. Go to thy home, and tell how great things the Lord, the giver of
the harvests, hath done for thee in its plenty.
Consider too its peace as well as its plenty. No wars disturb it, nor
rumors of war. No civil strifes threaten its tranquillity. No tyrannical
powers intrude upon its freedom. Every household is better guarded than
any feudal castle. Equal laws make it more impregnable than walls or
moats. Public opinion is a host of defence stronger than an army with
banners. We do not indeed forget our own imperfections and failings. We do
not forget that millions are in bondage in our land, and that if they have
homes in favored cases, they have them by their owners' mercy, not by
their own legal right. Yet to-day the slave is somewhat a sharer in his
master's bounty, and this feast, that carries our thoughts back to the
time of the great Hebrew Exodus, allows us to enjoy the liberty that God
has bestowed upon us and these free States, and forbids us to despair of
the redemption of any of the races yet held in bondage. It is something to
boast of, that slavery is the exception now among civilized nations,
instead of being, as of old, the universal law for the weaker from the
stronger. For ourselves, we disclaim all share in its origin and
continuance, deeming it to be a local misfortune to be deplored, not a
national institution to be honored.
As a nation, we are lovers of equal law. The sober thought, nurtured by
the best experience of the Atlantic States, finds its response in the new
regions of the farthest West, and not even the mad thirst for gold has
made the restless people on our Pacific coast forgetful of their
birthright of liberty and law. A mighty habit of civil order has entered
into our national life. The strongholds of order are in our homes. There
each man finds the motive that leads him to resist alike the disorganizer
and the invader. Thence we derive the assurance of the best of standing
armies; for men that have households to defend, will be as little inclined
to yield to hostile invasion as to destructive revolution. How peaceful
our homes! As mighty is the power nurtured within them that makes them so.
Go home, and in addition to the blessings of plenty and of peace, consider
the means of intellectual and spiritual culture there. The laboring man
may own a better library than a prince or prelate of the olden time. For a
pittance trifling even to him, he may have tidings daily from all quarters
of his own country, and from foreign lands. His children bring with them
more learning from the common school, than would have sufficed of old to
constitute the wisdom of a sage. For a less sum than the tippler gives for
the draught that fevers his blood and crazes his brain, the artisan may
adorn his house with choice works of art, through the cheap and beautiful
products of the engraver's skill; and thus the beautiful from the hand of
man and of God, may refine and cheer the common lot. Music, that voice of
the beautiful arts, is becoming a familiar blessing, and a part of
ordinary education. Groups of children by the fireside, and in the field
and garden, sometimes at the corners of the streets or in their walk home
from school, are heard singing their songs and hymns together, thus
exchanging discord for peace, quarrels for harmony. Even the utilities
that are becoming the custom of our time, have their refining and exalting
influences. The light that streams up in our streets and houses, is the
handmaid of a light brighter than its own. The pure water that gushes up
in so many homes, has connections far more substantial than fanciful with
the living water of the divine word. Facts enough show that human
civilization needs, in the most literal sense, its water-baptism before
its spirit-baptism can be realized.
The spirit is not lost sight of even in this utilitarian age. In religion
the means of culture have their consummation. Within every home, in any
degree worthy the name, Christianity proves its power, whether the gospel
be nominally professed or not. The very unity of the family comes from
Him, who has decreed the purity of the home by his fundamental law, and
bound parents to each other and their offspring by a tie at once of
principle and affection. Greater still the blessing where Christianity is
fully known and practised in its truths and graces, where the pleasant
fireside is a consecrated altar, and the earthly mansion opens ever into
the heavenly.
Consider then the blessings of our homes--their plenty, their peace, their
means of intellectual and spiritual culture.
Consider them well, and moreover, own God's hand in them.
God is Creator and Lord of nature. From him comes the plenty of our homes.
Man does not create, he finds the bounties of his lot. His utmost industry
and skill but find the blessings stored up for him. We may look upon the
kingdom of nature from many points of view. We may consider the organism
of the heavens, the great periods of the earth's apparent formation, the
influence of climate and position upon the history of nations, and see
God's hand in natural laws. But what view of the universe is more sublime,
and at the same time more touching, than that from the home? The heavens
themselves help in keeping it upon its foundation by the force of the
great law of attraction, whilst every element and domain of the earth
conspires to give it blessing. Tenderly indeed does the Lord of this
great Cosmos care for the dwellings of men. His love looks down from the
stars of heaven that shine into the casement, and is reflected from the
little flower that blooms in the garden, or cheers the sick man's chamber.
To God, Creator and Preserver, be our thanksgiving.
God is in history, and to his hand we trace the peace of our homes. Our
familiar social blessings are not the exhalations of a day, but the growth
of ages. No clearer or more striking view of the development of the Divine
plans in the course of events can be given than the domestic view. All
that God has done for man as an individual soul or as a social being, thus
is made to appear. There is a providence in the development of liberty,
and so too in the progress of law, and in the combination of them both in
a true social order. What better symbol of their combination and proof of
providential guidance than the peaceful home? How vast the providential
agencies instrumental in framing that statute-book which, next to the
Bible, is the safeguard of the dwelling, and which bands the whole nation
together in defence of every citizen's right,--the constitution of our
country, to us the bequest of ages, guided by an arm mightier than man's,
and to issues beyond his dream. In two grand lines of influence it brings
to every household the co-ordinate powers which, from quarters once
antagonistic, unite in a true civilization. It guarantees to every family
the liberty so dearly prized by the old parent races of the Germanic
North, whilst it gathers them into a great nation under the guidance of
that law which was the bequest of the Roman empire to the world. These
and all the leading lines of history meet in the home, and in them we own
God's guiding hand. From the East with the Star of true empire, came the
benign power that united these two mighty agencies of our civilization.
Surely it was the religion of Jesus that wedded Roman law to Germanic
liberty, and laid the foundations of constitutional freedom and domestic
peace. Blessed indeed was that bridal, and the living Word that hallowed
the union still dispenses the blessing, and calls the children of its
lineage to a future brightening unto the perfect day.
The Constitution, and above it, the Bible! In this is the Word of God, and
the way of life, present and eternal. It is the chief agency in
intellectual and spiritual culture, giving the mind its true aim, the soul
its rightful dignity, life its highest grace. Where the Bible is held in
honor, the home has purity and elevation. Interesting indeed is the
ecclesiastical view of Christianity. For its priests and temples we have
no words of disparagement. Yet we most honor the church in honoring the
home, for where the family is most blessed, there the church is most
worthy. The history of the gospel neither ends nor begins with that of
cathedrals and priesthoods. Since God laid the foundation of domestic
purity on Sinai, since Jesus bore the grace of the gospel to the homes of
Judah and Galilee, the brightest illustrations of the beauty and power of
religion have been given in abodes far less stately than the temple, or
the cloister, or the palace. The end is not yet, not yet developed are our
grounds of gratitude to the Heavenly Father for the gospel in the
blessings of our homes. God's love in giving them, we own and adore.
Responsibility walks ever hand in hand with privilege, and human duty
follows in the path of Divine goodness. No topic of graver import can be
urged now, than that of the obligation of Christian people to diffuse
domestic blessings. This topic carries us into the heart of the momentous
social questions of our age. The Christian should have his answer ready,
an answer too which considers all the needs of man's being, and respects
alike his physical and moral wants.
The most obvious, certainly the most obtrusive evil in the homes of the
wretched, is poverty. The love of God, who has given for man's use the
earth and its fulness, the gospel of Him who fed the hungry and healed the
sick, teach us to look with tender interest upon the poor, and try to
redeem them from a lot as full of temptation as of suffering. Of public
and private almsgiving, I will not speak now, important in their places as
these are. There is a need far greater than these can alleviate, and I
cannot dwell upon them here, pertinent as it would be to urge the worth of
those benevolent schemes that aim to provide comfortable homes for the
poor, and commodious baths and wash-houses in their neighborhoods. These
charities appeal to enlightened self-interest, as well as humanity, and,
if we will not ask in kindness who is my neighbor, we shall ask in fear,
either of pestilent disease or aggressive violence. The springs of human
energy are to be moved as never before, and the wretched are to be made to
help themselves as never before; or our civilization, certainly European
civilization, will stand on the brink of an abyss fearful as at the
dissolution of the old Roman Empire. Poverty has, in some cases, made an
alliance that gives omens of a conspiracy worse than Catiline's, and, with
cunning quickened by want, sharpens its knife upon the stone which has
fallen to its lot instead of bread,--bent upon living by destruction, if
it is not taught to live by producing. It is an indisputable fact that in
many countries the majority are so ignorant and inefficient, that the
whole annual product of the land is not sufficient to provide for their
decent wants. The theorists of France, who have been losing their wits in
the airy heights of pantheistic socialism, hoping to find a way to plenty,
other than the old way of labor and frugality, may well remember the
answer of the admirable political economist, Chevalier, and look for
plenty rather in making property more desirable than less so, and giving
the whole people the desire and the opportunity of profitable labor. The
material product of France at the highest estimate, he declares, does not
exceed ten thousand millions of francs, and thus at this estimate, an
equal division would give each person 78 centimes, or about 14-1/2 cents
per day, for food, lodging, clothing, education, enjoyment. Thus, he adds,
even upon the supposition of an absolute distribution of products, France
is not in a condition to give the majority of her children a tolerable
subsistence. Of course millions of citizens now come far short of this
miserable pittance. What is the inference? Certainly the productive
industry of the nation must be increased, that there may be plenty in the
home. Let more wealth be produced, and each man be put in a position to
get a due share of it, and the misery is alleviated, and plenty in the
household stops the spirit of reckless revolution, and gives the spirit of
peace, and motive and time for the higher aims of life.
What shall increase the national wealth and distribute it with due justice
in the homes of the people? Communism? Not so; for destroying the very
idea of property is not the way to increase the aggregate of property. Who
will work, if his gains are not secured to him and his children? Who will
plant the grain or the vine, if the field or the vineyard is to be an open
pasture, which any idler may waste? The way to enlarge and distribute
wealth is rather to strengthen the foundations of property, and give all
motive to earn their share of it by labor, temperance, and economy.
Here we believe that every nation is bound to apply the force of law to
reach the root of the difficulty. I am not proposing to discuss the
various projects set on foot to insure the more equable distribution of
property--such as the homestead laws of some of our own States, or the
measures in train to redeem the peasants of Ireland from their slavish
penury. Very certain it is, that we need to watch jealously the
distribution of the public lands, to keep them from the grasp of avarice
and intrigue, and to hold out the utmost inducements to actual settlers to
till and own the soil. It is interesting to find that upon this one point,
the most sanguine of the Land Reformers have much countenance from the
most judicious conservatives, and the wary sagacity of Webster himself
saw no peril in securing a part of the national domain to every
persevering cultivator. It is also interesting to observe that, whilst the
ultraist advocates of a protective tariff have signally lowered their
tone, some of the most earnest advocates of free trade, as the only
philosophical theory, are favoring such judicious protective duties as
shall tend to bring the producer and consumer near together, check the
wastefulness of needless transportation, and thus prepare the way for the
final triumph of free trade by the action of associative industry. All
such expedients however good in themselves, are of no avail apart from a
broad and energetic policy that meets the difficulty in the face. We mean
the education of the entire people in schools open to all the children of
the nation. Thus we reach the home--thus we open the eyes and quicken the
energies of the people--thus we enlarge the products of intelligent labor,
and guard against the worst evils of human inequality. Thus we open the
way for a better social science and organization, and favor the associated
enterprise, which is the best safeguard against communism. The educated,
industrious population will take their own lot into their own hands, and
by practising a truer philosophy of accommodation, they will apply in
their home economy something of that wise policy which has been left too
exclusively to the use of the favored few. The architecture of the house,
and the arrangements of the neighborhood, will show the influence. Whilst
gardens, filled with rare exotics, and stately mansions adorned with the
graces of art, may still be the prerogative of affluence; we shall see the
comfortable and tasteful houses of the unpretending classes ranged about
pleasant and salubrious squares, with all the appliances of health and
order, usually deemed beyond their means. For my own part, I know no more
cheering aspect of our country and our age, than that which is furnished
by some of those villages, which have been built up in the vicinity of our
great cities by associations of mechanics, securing to each man an
independent home. The fact that a set of men, educated in our free
schools, and with no means but the fruit of their own honest toil, provide
such homes for themselves, must give a benevolent observer more genuine
satisfaction, and more encouraging hope, than any of the proudest triumphs
of capital, whether a palace in the city or a palace upon the water. It is
not out of place here to say, that the highest honor will belong to him
among our architects, who most skilfully plans a model house for the many
of us who have moderate or slender means--a house that shall for the least
outlay best secure the retirement, the refinement, and the health that
make a true home. Honor to the science that has busied itself with this
problem, and to the capital which has tried to carry the solution into
practice thus far!
A true system of popular education in connection with our laws regarding
inheritance, is raising up a generation which will not long be ignorant of
the power of intelligence, industry, and friendly accommodation, in
developing a social policy beyond the reach of the fanatical theorists of
the old world, who have impoverished the nations in their promise of
plenty, and shed blood in rivers in the name of fraternity. The great mass
of the people, it is to be hoped, will continue to have that home feeling,
which is as mighty in conservation as in defence. We shall remain as we
are in the best sense of the term--the most conservative nation on the
face of the earth. That race of Ishmaelites, the homeless, the desperate,
the Bedouins of civilization, whose hand is against every man's, whose
delight is in commotion, whose life is in destruction, whose hope is in
the despair of others, will disappear, kept down in their true place, or
what is better, transformed into intelligent, industrious citizens, lovers
of the state, the church, and the home.
Thus do we commend the worth of industry and the education upon which it
rests, in diffusing the household blessings that we enjoy. But we build
upon a sandy foundation without a positive religious basis. Upon that the
household rests for its primary dependence, and they that sustain and
practise Christian principles are benefactors alike of the dwelling and
the church. Not merely among the wretched and ignorant does the gospel
utter its rebukes, and urge its duties in reference to this point. It is
in quarters far different that the great wrong has been done, and a great
work is demanded. Errors of principle as errors of life, have power from
the station that renders them conspicuous, or the refinement that clothes
them with grace. Of errors of life in those who give to dissipation the
prestige of eloquence, and throw the grace of splendor around vices that
strike at the foundations of domestic purity, I will not now undertake to
treat. A passing word, however, upon certain modes of thinking and
talking, which sow the seeds of those vices in quarters the most opposite.
The pantheistic theories that confound all moral distinctions by
confounding the distinction between God and nature, and make of passion a
devotion, by calling all enthusiasm inspiration, have had their origin
chiefly among secluded dreamers, bent, perhaps, upon amusing leisure by
reckless speculation. Idly as the summer winds that float the thistle-down
on their breath, have they vented their speculations, until amazed that
their own fields and their neighbor's have been sown with tares by these
gossamer voyagers. Wherever pantheism goes, there license follows in its
train. More perilous than atheism, because more alluring, it defies
passion, and in the name of inspiration degrades man to the brute. It
blasts life with its torrid fires, as atheism freezes by its polar cold.
In the extremes of society--the affluent and the wretched--this tendency
is found, alike in its speculative and practical form, in its denial of
personal responsibility, its enthroning of indulgence in the place of
discipline. Many a stately home is desolate, many an humble dwelling
miserable, because the God of the gospel is denied, and that
uncompromising law which secures the home its purity, peace and power, has
been broken.
Chief among the blessings of the household, then, we name the gospel. It
gives the crown to industry and education. Crowning industry and education
thus alike by our personal bearing, our public policy, we give as we have
received, and acknowledge our duty, as we own God's love in our domestic
blessings.
* * * * *
Bring near to ourselves now, in its personal and cheering aspect, the
topic before us. To God, the Lord of nature, Ruler of events, Father of
our spirits, be all the glory. Be his love the spring of our humanity. In
the bounty of our hand, in the bounty of an example personal and domestic,
which in itself is a benefaction, in an enlarged public, nay Christian
spirit, let us freely give as we have received; that plenty, peace, piety,
may cheer the dwellings of men and regenerate the world. This day be our
thanksgiving at once a prayer of faith and a vow of humanity. It is the
old home festival of our fathers that we are to keep. Whose heart does not
yearn with sacred remembrances and affections to-day? The emigrant, the
traveller, the sailor, all turn their thoughts homeward as the day
approaches, and lament that their steps cannot follow their desires. Under
sunny skies, amid the balmy gales and luscious fruits of the tropics, the
wanderer yearns to cross the familiar threshold, and our bleak North in
her wintry robe is dearer than Italy or the Indies. Many an exile has
feelings that speak in such simple words as these:
"My father's bones, New England,
Sleep in thy hallowed ground,
My living kin, New England,
In thy precious paths are found;
And though my body dwelleth here,
And my weary feet here roam,
My spirit and my hopes are still
In thee, my own loved home."
Yet distance does not rob even the exile of all the blessings, and he
knows that he is not forgotten. Families separated throughout the year,
now gather together. Sons and daughters return to the parental fireside
and are children again. The patriarchal times, surely among all of the
Pilgrim race, and not among them alone, come back. The father stands as
head and minister of the family. Many a happy band of children rise up and
call the mother blessed. The absent are not forgotten--the departed are
tenderly remembered--seats vacant at the table have occupants in the
hearts of the survivors.
It is well--it is well--this home-festival of the ingathering. God gives
the abounding harvest, and our fellow-men are to us the stewards of his
bounty. Devoutly to Him, kindly to them, let the hours pass. Health to the
absent, a tear for the departed--a smile for the present--good will to all
on earth--glory to God in the highest.
Let the young rejoice, and the old be young again. Let memory solemnize us
by her images of scenes and days gone by, whilst hope cheers us by
auspicious promises of the future on earth, and of the heavenly mansions,
the soul's eternal home.
_Thanksgiving Day._
The Ideal of Womanhood.
THE IDEAL OF WOMANHOOD.
It is the Eve of Christmas, and above the cheerful family circle that
gathers about the hearth, the faces of the holy family look benignly down,
and Mary's own smile seems to brighten the genial light. All surely must
call that mother blessed, who celebrate the birth of the Holy Child. The
Angel of the annunciation seems always to be speaking anew in the anthem
of the Nativity as if the voice which told Mary of her high destiny
celebrated also its fulfilment, and the "Hail Mary" were but the prelude
of the "Glory to God in the Highest."
Our thought this evening turns upon the Mother of Christ, as illustrating
the ideal of woman and the sources of her power. In the manger at
Bethlehem, the mother and child were together--together during the years
of preparation for the public ministry--together at the cross. We honor
both in honoring either. Especially in calling Mary blessed, do we honor
Christ, for we remember not merely what she was to him, but what he has
been to her and her sex and her race.
* * * * *
Let us look at the subject from our own point of view, nor try to put on
the mask of affected sentiment or to stand on the stilts of borrowed
dogmas. There is much beauty and power in the Catholic notions of the
Blessed Virgin, but they are not our convictions. The sweetest hymns in
the Breviary are in her praise, and her heavenly face has been the chief
charm of Catholic art, else altogether too grim with spectral monks and
ghostly confessors. This one fact it is most interesting to remark, that
as Christianity was divested of its genial and humane graces, and our
Saviour himself was removed from the personal sympathies of men by a faith
too forgetful of his humanity in vindicating his divinity, the affections
of Christians sought in the Blessed Mother the solace denied them by
prevalent views of the Divine Son. As the monkish spirit grew darker, the
face of Mary beamed more brightly. The age that embodied its terrors in
the "Dies Irae," breathed its tenderness in the "Stabat Mater," the
exquisite hymn whose authorship, strange to say, has been with show of
reason ascribed to the most thorough-going of the Popes, Innocent the
Third, the man who dared to put England under an interdict. It is not for
such reasons that we are moved to speak of Mary now. We are not oppressed
by a religion that so crushes the natural affections and rebukes the
domestic feelings, that we need to look for solace to one taken
arbitrarily from her place among women and invoked as Queen of Heaven,
above all saints and angels, next to God. Looking upon our homes, so
pleasant and so genial with woman's graces and children's gladness, we
prefer to say the "Hail Mary" as the gospel gives it, and not as the
priest has understood it. We can say, "Blessed art thou _among_
women"--_among_ them, not _above_ them--among them to illustrate their
mission from God, their work on earth--their part in heaven.
* * * * *
Think of Mary first as illustrating true womanhood in its mission from
God. Fathers and sons, as well as mothers and daughters, think. In our
notions of education, society, reform, we are all afloat unless we start
with right ideas; and whence are they but from the Eternal Mind. We know
God as he reveals himself, and creation in its highest aspects reveals the
thought of God. The Divine Being is Self-Existent, Almighty, All-wise,
Ever-blessed, dwelling in light and love unspeakable. But the moment that
we pass from the contemplation of his attributes to the survey of his
works, we see every where partial manifestations of his fulness. Only as
we bring together the various elements and beings of nature, do we
comprehend the universe as expressing the mind of God. Throughout the
whole we observe a law of duality, a harmony of contrasts, the two
parallel footprints in the majestic march of Him who is the infinite
Wisdom and Love. We see this form of development from the lowest to the
highest plane of nature--in the affinities of the gases--in the strange
and mighty forces of electricity and magnetism--in the rays of light--in
the kingdom of plants--in the animated kingdom. In the human race it has
its fullest expression. There the Most High has left most clearly the
image of himself, and recorded the might and the loveliness of his own
attributes. To the one sex he has given, in largest measure, strength,--to
the other, beauty; to the one, aggressive force--to the other, winning
affections--to the one, the palm in the empire of thought--to the other,
the palm in the empire of feeling. We need not pursue the parallel, nor
rebuke the folly of those who would make the line of separation too sharp,
and deny heart to man or wisdom to woman, forgetting that in man thought
should be pervaded with feeling, and in woman feeling should be guided by
thought. It is enough to look to Mary as she stood in the hour of her joy,
and listen to what she said, who has been called beyond any other of her
sex, to be their benefactor and interpreter:--
My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit doth rejoice in God, my Saviour,
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden;
For behold! from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
Various ages may have various degrees of culture, and in knowledge and
accomplishment the daughters of Christendom may now far surpass those
taught in the simpler homes of Israel. Yet where among those favored with
education or gifted with genius, shall we find a better interpreter of
womanhood in its mission from God, than that trusting Hebrew in her filial
faith and unwavering devotion. Of her, the Aspasias proud of the society
of sages and orators, might learn that there is a faith passing knowledge,
and a purity more refining than any literary taste; from her the Cornelias
might learn of a kingdom greater than that to which they vowed their sons;
from her the Sapphos might hear of a vision beyond that of any
impassioned fancy; and the Cleopatras of a gem brighter than any in their
crown. Her soul attuned to devotion by the Psalms of her great ancestor,
David, and inflamed with hope by the visions of prophets, and schooled to
patient charity by the choicest examples of the mothers in Israel, she
stands at the centre of Providential history, receiving from the former
ages their mantle of honor, and transmitting it to the new ages enriched
with a divine grace, destined to brighten with time.
* * * * *
Of Mary's life and work, few particulars are given--but those few are
expressive of her whole character. She who kept her faithful watch on the
night of the nativity, never belied the promise of that time. With mingled
solicitude and reverence, tenderness and fortitude, she guarded her child,
marked the gradual rising of the consciousness of Divinity within him, and
waited between hope and fear for the development of his mysterious life.
One of the most gifted women of our age, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, thus
portrays Mary's feelings as she looked upon her child sleeping:
"Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One.
* * * *
I am not proud--meek angels, put ye on
New meeknesses to hear such utterance rest
On mortal lips, 'I am not proud'--_not proud_!
Albeit in my flesh God sent His Son,
Albeit over Him my head is bowed,
As others bow before Him, still mine heart,
Bows lower then their knees! O centuries
That roll, in vision, your futurities
My grave athwart!
Whose murmurs seem to reach me while I keep
Watch o'er this sleep!
Say of me as the Heavenly said, 'Thou art
The blessedest of women!' blessedest,
Not holiest, not noblest--no high name,
Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame,
When I sit meek in heaven!--
For me--for me--
I often wandered forth, more child than maiden,
Among the lonely hills of Galilee,
Whose summits looked heaven-laden!
Listening to silentness, that seemed to be
God's voice, so soft, yet strong--so fain to press
Upon my heart, as Heaven did on the height,--
And waken up its shadows by a light,
And show its vileness by a holiness!
Then I knelt down, as silent as the night,
Too self-renounced for fears;
Raising my small face to the boundless blue,
Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears!
God heard _them_ falling often--with his dew."
Think of the lot of Christ, and remember how closely another heart beat in
unison with his heart--how nearly parallel her life ran with his life.
Pass from the manger to the Cross, and those two scenes are enough to
suggest the outlines of her experience during that eventful interval.
Listen to the words--"Woman, behold thy son"--and to the disciple, "behold
thy mother." Think of what followed--the joy at Christ's rising to dwell
in visible presence with his own, and after his ascension to dwell with
them in his witnessing Spirit. Among those who remembered the promise: "Lo
I am with you always, even unto the end of the world," there was one who
added a mother's love to a disciple's faith, as in the coming of the
Comforter to her soul, she received her new birth into the kingdom of God,
through him who had his birth on earth from her. Confided as she had been
to the disciple whom Jesus so loved, a guest in his household, the
constant companion of the growing circle of believers, how could she be
without great influence on their faith and fellowship? When she passed
away, a new light rose for them in the heavens. Their religion was not a
code of moral precepts, or a set of theological propositions, but a gospel
of speaking facts and living words. Their religion was Christ and all that
is Christlike. Their heaven was no ethereal abstraction, no pantheistic
merging of spirits in infinity; but the home of true souls--the mansions
of the Father opened by Christ to all the faithful, and surely unto her
who guarded his infant weakness and wept over his dying agonies. On earth
and in heaven the blessed mother stood to them for the ideal of true
womanhood, and early Christian antiquity is full of traces of the tender
and beautiful affection felt for her, before superstition seized upon the
lovely sentiment and hardened it into a priestly dogma. Yet under the
dogma, the true feeling has never been wholly lost sight of, and with many
who are called idolatrous, the homage to St. Mary is but an exalted form
of reverence to a moral loveliness, now in heaven. Our own Germanic
ancestors shared more deeply in the sentiment probably than any other
people, as they came from their cold homes in northern Europe--received
the gospel of Christ from the missionaries of the church, and rejoiced to
find their national feeling of chivalrous respect for woman confirmed and
spiritualized by the honors paid to her, whom angels hailed as full of
grace, and whose name all Christendom spoke with blessing. This high
sentiment, somewhat sobered by our Protestant faith and our household
utilities, has come to us with our religion and our homes.
* * * * *
It is becoming a somewhat practical, and in both hemispheres, an agitating
question, how far the accepted Christian idea of true womanhood should be
enlarged or amended to meet the demands of our own age. The voice of Mary
Wolstoncroft, claiming masculine freedom for sex, has found a thousand
echoes, and assemblies of women, no strangers to Christian culture, clamor
for a new day of social and political emancipation. Their demands are not
to be treated with ridicule, for under all their extravagance lurk truths
of momentous import. Who can think of the thousands and hundreds of
thousands of the sex, whose utmost labors hardly keep off cold and
starvation--of the wretched notions of education and life, which so
enfeeble the poor and corrupt the affluent--of the false social system
which is so ready to smile upon the destroyer of innocence, and curse the
victim of his arts; who can think of the scenes in the hovels of innocent
poverty, the dens of loathsome vice, and the gilded saloons of painted
misery, upon which the shadows of this blessed eve are now falling, and
not be willing to pardon some thing to the spirit of mercy, even if its
tones seem to us too shrill for gentle lips? Who is not willing to
remember, moreover, that if they assert a folly, who claim for woman the
political offices that must rob the home of her fidelity; they assert, and
actually are diffusing a more dangerous error, who in more silken speech
brand the household virtues as servile drudgery, and whose lives are a
continued and studious round of elegant and jewelled vagrancy from the
sacred uses and blessed companionships of their own fireside; nay, whose
eyes seem only to open when the lights of the theatre and ball-room blaze,
and whose pulses really beat only in exciting assemblies under the
delirium of the wine-cup and the voluptuous dance. From both errors the
true idea of womanhood may save our time, and, nevertheless, confer upon
us the substantial good, which is so dimly seen by the rival schools of
culture--the fashionable and the masculine. Well taught and trained, our
daughters may have all true graces without Parisian levity, and all
intellectual discipline without Amazonian boldness.
No greater mistake can be made than that which would take woman from her
sphere of dignity and power, and make her the rival of man in pursuits
which require his ruder nature and sterner will. Mary, the wife of Godwin,
with her obtrusive band of far more extravagant followers, opens no path
of honor and power compared with that pointed out by Mary of Nazareth, the
light of her home, the guardian of her Holy Child; encouraging the
disciples by a voice, the mightier on account of its not being heard in
the streets, and to them and to all after them, a name for spiritual
loveliness, and all gentle and confiding graces, among the souls exalted
to heaven. Using present agencies, and following the guidance of the
gospel, the mothers and sisters in our Israel, may deal more wisely and
strongly with the social problems of our time, and do their part for the
kingdom of God--than by crowding to the ballot-box, screaming in the
caucus, or snatching at the staff of office. So deeply is this the
conviction of the most judicious of the sex, that many words on the
subject would be superfluous. Nor would we add any to the many words that
have been shed upon the question of the equality of the sexes. As well let
the rays of the solar light dispute for precedence, and the red ray, so
blazing, presume to deny the equal worth of the violet ray, which, science
teaches us, has power to make iron magnetic, and which more than its more
bold companion on the other side of the prism, makes the impression on the
silvered plate--itself the most magical pencil in the skilful hand of that
unrivalled painter, the sun. God has united both rays in the sweet light
of true humanity, and what He has joined together, let not man try to put
asunder.
The greater danger is in a servile acquiescence in prevalent worldliness
and mediocrity--a disposition to repeat the common pleas of precedent,
and to live solely in the externals of society. In our own beloved
country, where liberty, without example, is extended to woman, and a
courtesy, without limit, is shown her, they who hold in their keeping the
future of their sex should not be content to follow the rule of court
journals, or bow to the dicta of Parisian modists, who are fond of ruling
over morals, as over costume. Our liberty should give them a stronger and
more rational intellectual discipline than in the lands more enslaved by
precedent. Our courtesy, that national chivalry, which insists on
deference as much towards the rustic maiden as the city belle, will be
sadly abused if made the occasion of an obtrusive arrogance, which claims
precedence as a right, and elbows its way through crowds of men who are
more ready to yield by grace than by command.
Our country has from the first cherished a noble idea of womanhood, and
under its influence the strength of its sons, and the refinement of its
daughters have been nurtured. Kindly omens abounded in the first days of
its history. Our continent itself is one of the omens. That you may not
call me too fanciful or sentimental, let me quote from an eloquent writer
on the philosophy of geography, as he compares the Old and New Worlds.
"The number of the continents in the Old World," which is double that of
the New World, their grouping in a more compact and solid mass--make it
already and pre-eminently the continental world. It is a mighty oak, with
a stout and sturdy trunk, whilst America is the slender and flexible
palm-tree, so dear to this continent. The Old World, if it is allowable to
employ here comparisons of this nature, calls to mind the square, solid
figure of man; America the lithe shape and delicate form of woman.
So America stood like a fair bride in her ocean home, adorned for her
husband, that mighty race from the East, that came in the path of the
sunshine, as if following the lord of day, who is as a bridegroom coming
out of his chamber. Our heroes bore with them a Christian ideal of
womanhood, and by it were gentle as they were strong. It came with
Columbus in the cherished image of that noble queen, who gave gold and
hope to an enterprise elsewhere rejected with derision; and the thought of
Isabella mingled with that of the Blessed Mother, as he planted the cross
on the western shores. It came with the cavaliers who gave Virginia its
name and honor, and whose foremost and noblest chief found a counterpart
of his own ideal in the Indian girl, who saved his life by risking her
own, giving Christian mercy, to receive in return the Christian's faith
and home; owning, by the baptismal vow, the Great Spirit whom she had seen
in cloud and heard in the wind, thenceforth, as the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. It came with the Huguenots of Carolina, the Catholics
of Maryland, the Friends of Pennsylvania, the Hollanders of Manhattan, and
not last nor least, with the Pilgrims of that Mayflower, whose seeds
struck deep into the New England soil, and whose scions have borne beauty
and fragrance to the hills and valleys, the farms and cities of our
motherland, making the wilderness blossom as the rose, when the sweet
Marys gave grace to Puritan homes.
Herein lies a great element of power and of hope for our country. Our soil
is rich, our lakes and rivers are vast, our strength is great, our courage
good, our schools are many, our wealth is unexampled. But these are not
all--nor are these the elements that are to tame our barbaric borders, and
lead to harmony our chaotic and scattered members. The church and home
must go together, and unite our nation under the empire of Christ, as
under the empire of civil law. The church and home are advancing together
from the Atlantic to the Pacific shore. The farmer of Oregon, the miner of
California, are not to be beyond the pale of Christian civilization. Even
they shall hear the chimes that tell of the nativity of the Saviour--they
shall find in their homes, rude cabins though they may be, pleasant faces,
whose womanly grace and childish confidence shall reveal a light kindled
of old by the Blessed Mother, and nurtured for ever by her Holy Child.
Here patriotism and Christianity blend in one. Anathema upon the false
speculations and foul vices that assault the family institution. Blessed
be the gospel of Him who asserts the uncompromising law of domestic
purity, and opens most tenderly the Divine benignity, when most urging the
Divine commandment.
* * * * *
There is a branch of this subject which I cannot treat--one, perhaps, that
dwells too much in the region of higher sentiment to be the theme of
popular discussion, and which no writer can easily handle, without seeming
to be borrowing from the ancient theology its comments on the Song of
Songs, or delving in the dark but rich mines of Swedenborg's Arcana. Yet
it would be no far-fetched topic, whilst speaking of her who has been
called the Queen of Heaven, and regarded by the Fenelons and Catharines of
faith, as the type of celestial loveliness, to treat of the ideal of
womanhood in the spiritual world. Surely the higher a true culture rises,
the more clearly each great family of souls becomes more true to its own
genius, and the higher companionship known on earth, in the most refined
society, and the worthiest families, illustrates the permanence of those
traits that give man and woman their intellectual and moral
characteristics. The earthly loves, which Christ came to consecrate, bear
the germs of immortal uses, and are like Mary's own emblem the rose,
which, though born in the earth, lifts its bloom and wafts its fragrance
to the heavens. I know no more elevated illustration of this view than
that given by the Milton of Italy, the solemn Dante, who, in his vision of
Heaven, wanders through the celestial courts with the spirit that had been
the charm of his earthly life, and who, often as he stood confounded
before some new mystery, found his perplexities solved by the readier
intuition of his sainted companion. The higher companionship in
literature, art, society, religion, which we enjoy in this world, and
which is so incomplete when men or women are alone, gives some idea of the
state of souls on high, where they that shine most, and they that love
most, cherubim and seraphim, blend their holy ministries and bow together
before the Eternal Presence.
A homelier view of the subject must end our meditation--a view, however,
that opens into the heavenly world. The homelier the better--the nearer to
our hearts. Let us call Mary blessed to-day for ourselves, and for our own
families and friends. Bless her, now that we are thinking of all good
mothers, whether the queen true to her children on her island-throne, or
the faithful mother in the farmer's cottage;--so many on the earth--so
many who have gone from the world, and whose remembered faces now bring
heaven near. Bless her now, that we are thinking of the happy children
gathered together in the name of her Holy Child--as we think of the hosts
of little children whom He has called and is calling to Himself. It is a
time to be sober, and a time to be merry. In our soberness and our mirth,
alike let us remember God's love for us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
God's blessing, readers, upon you all--mothers, fathers, children,
brothers, sisters, friends--meeting or to meet in the sanctuary, or in
your homes! His love bring all together at last around the tree of life,
whose fruit is peace eternal!
_Christmas Eve._
The Hope of Childhood.
THE HOPE OF CHILDHOOD.
The account of the Flight to Egypt, so illustrated by the old masters,
brings three images before us, all in themselves interesting, and
expressive of lasting realities. Central, is the figure of a young child,
speaking at once of childhood and the God who blesses it. On either side
what contrast in the associated forms! On one hand stands Mary, watching
with unwearied vigils over her precious charge. In the distance, in his
stately palace, the dark form of the tyrant king rises before us; his
hands stained with the blood of a noble wife and three sons, his
conscience torn by remorse, his wrath the more inflamed from the
consciousness of deserving vengeance, his despotic will brooking no
thought of rivalry, and dooming to death the infant innocents of a whole
town to make sure of destroying the predicted Messiah.
Here is an emblem of what is over in the world. Here is childhood, its
guardian angel, and its evil genius. May not the scene suggest some
thoughts upon Christianity as the guardian of childhood against the spirit
of the world, which is its foe?
The mother and child fled to Egypt, there to languish or be forgotten?
Herod sat in his palace hall, there to rule and prosper? No. Ere the year
closed, he died; before death came, already a mass of putrefaction. He
died, signing with his fainting hands his will and the death-warrant of
his oldest son; thus dispensing death and empire in his last act. He died,
and the magnificence of his funeral mocked the wretchedness of his
decease. The body was borne aloft on a bier, which was adorned with gems;
the winding-sheet was of purple; his whole army, native and foreign,
marched in war array to his grave. As the gorgeous procession by slow
stages passed to the stately mausoleum, twenty-five miles distant at the
Herodium, word went to the fugitives in Egypt, that the tyrant was dead.
Who at that time, in the excitement of the funeral, or the festivities of
the succession--who cared for the obscure family, that stole on its way
quietly to Nazareth? The mother and child lived! They founded a kingdom
that dies never.
Richly that Christ-child repaid his mother's watching, alike to her and to
her sex. The religion of Christ has been the strength and comfort of
parents, and the hope of their children. Its power in the nurture of the
young mind has been illustrated in every age, and connects itself now
momentously with the most important topics of our time. What topic more
congenial with this Christmas season, so consecrated to associations with
childhood and youth, leading us back to the cradle of the infant Redeemer,
and opening a festival in which young hearts all over the world rejoice?
The child ever needs protection; Herod ever in some form rages;
Christianity like a mighty maternal heart needs ever to keep its watch.
* * * * *
Look upon the past history of Christendom from this point of view, and how
novel and interesting is the result! We have been taught to associate the
progress of Christianity with the account of theological controversies,
bitter disputes, bloody persecutions, proud hierarchies; and thus we too
often read the annals of the Church with shame or contempt. But take a
fairer and more intimate view: think of Christianity in connection with
childhood and youth, trace its influence upon the home, the school, the
Church, in this aspect. Do this, and we shall find ourselves moved by the
annals of every age to tenderness and gratitude; for in every age
Christianity has been the guardian of childhood against the spirit of the
world, its foe. When the Saviour took young children in his arms and
blessed them, he performed an act which has not been without significance
in all subsequent time.
In the primitive time the Christian confessors showed how fondly they had
been taught to regard their offspring, to care for their souls in life and
in death, to commend them with deathless love to Him who had opened the
gates of everlasting life. In the Roman catacombs, far beneath the city,
the places of early Christian worship and burial, the inscriptions on the
tombstones well express the parental feelings of that time. An uncommonly
large portion of the epitaphs given in the description belong to
children, and they express the tenderest affection. "Virginius remained
but a short time with us." "Sweet Faustina, may you live in God."
"Laurence to his sweetest son, Severus, borne away by angels on the
seventh Ides of January." How different the spirit breathed in such
inscriptions from that inspired by the idolatry, that formed a god of the
war-spirit that makes childhood desolate and orphaned, or bows down before
Moloch and casts children into the fire at his feet!
Turn even to those ages that are called by eminence dark--the time of
monkish austerity and priestly sway. There is much in their annals to move
indignation and sometimes horror. But interpret them fairly, and we find
much to move our admiration and love. Consider that embodiment of the
middle ages, the Gothic cathedral, wonderful alike for the vastness of its
proportions and the delicacy of its details. There may be austerity in the
priests that attend its altars, fanaticism in the monks who chant its
litanies, cruelty in the mailed men who kneel at its chancel. But how
tender is the expression of the whole in reference to childhood! The Holy
Mother and her Divine child beam upon the worshipper from illuminated
missals and painted windows. Conspicuous at the vestibule or by the altar,
stands the baptismal font. Thither the child of the poorest peasant is
brought, and by the baptismal water the child is recognized as belonging
to the kingdom not of this world, a lamb of the good Shepherd. Not for the
few rich, noble or mighty, but even for him, the least of the earth, this
temple was erected, and by that rite the church, imperial in its stately
palace, promises to watch over the child, care for his soul in sorrow,
sickness and death. What would childhood have been in the dark ages
without the Church? What other power could have stood between innocence
and its tempter and destroyer? Who would have withstood Herod, if the
mother heart of Christianity had withheld its guardianship?
The Protestant Reformation consider, and through all its conflicts and
persecutions, what tenderness is shown on both sides towards childhood! To
secure the young heart to Christ and the Church, the rival parties labored
with indefatigable zeal. In the zeal and policy of Loyola we may see how
tenderly the old Church sought to keep or regain her hold upon the young
by measures suited to the time. Would we know Luther's mind, look upon him
as he sits with lute in hand at his fireside, enjoying the gladness of his
children at the Christmas tree;--look at him, as with pen in hand and the
veins of his forehead dilated with the excitement, he writes the immortal
appeal to the powers of Germany in behalf of free schools, which has
joined his name with Milton's as champion of popular education. Think too
of the Pilgrim Fathers, so tender and thoughtful in their stern
self-denial, in their wilderness home erecting church and school-house
side by side, both sacred to God and his people.
* * * * *
But it is time to look round upon the world as it now is. The most
important question is: What is to be done for the young? This question
comprises every other, for the generation that is growing up will soon
have the destinies of the race in its charge. Surely Christianity needs to
be watchful, for Herod is still abroad. His spirit is still the spirit of
the world--of the world's passions and its policy--breathing now in the
oppression that neglects or overburdens the young, and now in the
capricious indulgence that betrays with a kiss and kills in the name of
love.
The world's passions conspire against childhood and youth. The lust and
intemperance, which degrade the parent, press heavily upon the child, and
because of them, thousands of young hearts find themselves in a world that
for them has few smiles. All the temptations that inflame the senses,
prompt to vice, and kindle hatred, conspire against the young, alike by
corrupting those who should be their protectors, and sowing prematurely
the seeds of wickedness in youth itself. Every haunt of dissipation, every
resort of revelry, whether the drunkard's den or the fashionist's
brilliant saloon of corruption, is a conspiracy against youth, and coins
its gold from the life-blood of young hearts. The massacre of the
Innocents still goes on. The spirit of Herod yet lives, and acts in a
manner more insidious than an open death-warrant. It lives in the passions
of a world ready to sacrifice all to its lusts.
And the world's policy is not kind to childhood. What murderers are those
its chief idols, Mars and Mammon! How cruel the game of war and the lust
of gold! Who rules over the strife that robs children of parents who go to
die in foreign lands? What genius, Herod or Christ, presides over the
scene, when death-dealing batteries are planted before peopled cities, and
the blood and brains of women and children are dashed out at every volley?
Ye Christian chivalry, ye battle-loving parents, answer that question as
for yourselves and your children!
The lust of gold, that moves the world's habitual policy, is less savage
but not much more merciful. The spirit of trade demands gain, and claims
childhood too much as an instrument of gain. In the Old World, what
myriads whom school or church never blesses or knows, are, almost from
infancy, trained to the mine or loom, shut out from free air and play,
cramped in body, as in mind. The conscience of Christians is waking up to
the subject, I know, still what a world of wretchedness remains
unalleviated! No poem in the language contains more terrific truth, than
that noted ode, called "The Cry of the Children," blending, as it does,
the tragic depth of Aeschylus with the tender pathos of Cowper.
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheek of infancy--
"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;"
"Our young feet," they say, "are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary--
Our grave-rest is very far to seek!"
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,--
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old!
Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
And at midnight's hour of harm,--
"Our Father," looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.
We know no other words, except "Our Father,"
And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within his right hand which is strong.
"Our Father!" If He heard us, He would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
"Come and rest with me, my child!"
And well may the children weep before you;
They are weary, ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun:
They know the grief of men, but not the wisdom;
Are bitter with despairing, but not calm--
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom--
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm,--
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly
No dear remembrance keep;
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly:
Let them weep! let them weep!
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,
For you think you see their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity.
An ode such as this was not without effect upon the heart of England; nor
is the humanity which it imbodies rare in our land. The spirit of trade
among us is not wilfully cruel, but it is too devoted to gain--negligent
of the claims of youth, when not unkind. Neglected ones in our own streets
have too frequent cause to reproach us--neglected ones who are strangers
to the blessings of our civilization, and who learn our laws first from
their penalties, and become acquainted with the lessons of the prison, not
of church or school. They, alas, who might be an honor to their sex, are
made to recruit the ranks of shame, and what is the spirit of Herod
compared with the world's heart to fallen woman, alike in the wickedness
that tempts and the scorn that awaits the fall.
And not solely among the neglected of the earth does the spirit of the
world lie in wait for childhood and youth. We might speak of the
indulgence that pampers and vainly ruins the soul--of the kindness that
kills those whom it aims to bless--of the neglect of health, natural and
spiritual laws, which luxury introduces into modes of home education--of
the want of a firm discipline that is kindest when firmest--of a practical
infidelity that robs childhood of its sacred birthright, by robbing it of
trust in God and the eternal life. Herod rages truly in the passions and
the policy of the world.
* * * * *
But not unchecked! Christianity with its great maternal heart is true to
her watch, and calling helpers to her side. Let us acknowledge it. The
great work of Christians now, is with the young. The work is two-fold, one
of growth and of conquest, one that would rear up the offspring of faith
within the divine kingdom, and one which would visit the neglected and
reclaim them from the enemies' power.
The work must begin, indeed, in the hearts of the mature, fostered there
by communion with God and Christ, fostered by sacred thought and earnest
resolution. Beginning there, it is to be carried out into the great
spheres of life, in which childhood receives its direction. Vain for us to
attempt to imbue the young mind with truths, which we receive only in
name--vain the attempt to feed yearning souls with empty words, or breathe
into them a higher life, with appeals so faithless and loveless as to bear
falsity in their very tone, and fall dead upon the ear. As the bee watched
by Solomon alighted upon the living rose, and shunned the pretended one,
so childhood knows well the tone of sincerity, and craves reality for its
mental food. Let it find the reality.
Let it find it in the home. Home, blessed word always, thrice blessed,
this day, that speaks to us of Jesus, who has secured to the household so
much of its purity and affection, and that brings to mind the loved ones
beneath our own roofs, who have hardly slept the night from anxious
waiting for the morning dawn. Home--what an engine of power, alike to harm
and to bless! Let it be Christian in form and in spirit. There let God be
acknowledged in praise and prayer. There let the eternal world be
unveiled, and every blessing bring it near in gratitude, and every trial
draw down its consolation. There let the young breathe in the spirit of
the gospel. There let Mary keep her watch of love, and Herod waits in vain
to destroy.
Let the world's bad spirit be withstood, too, in the schools. The cry is
now rising in every part of Christendom--from the backwoodsmen of the
Rocky Mountains to the cities of the Old World, of late, stirred by a
mighty want--Education, Universal Education! In no section, certainly, of
our land, is this spirit comparatively more earnest than with us--for,
beyond question, this State has been recently passing through an
intellectual revival altogether unexampled in the annals of our Free
Schools. Christians should rejoice in the movement, and should rescue
popular education from the blighting touch of avarice and superstition.
Let it go on in its work of growth and conquest--nurturing the children of
the privileged, reclaiming the offspring of the neglected, carrying out a
mode of education based upon the laws of God and the soul of man, mindful
of every faculty, grace, affection, that God has hallowed and human wisdom
unfolds. Let nothing that has been done lead us to be unmindful of what is
to be done, alike in the extension and elevation of the schools. We wonder
at the system of training pursued of old, which led youth to regard the
school as a prison. Higher yet the idea must rise, as better views are
entertained of the capacities of the child, and the intellectual helps and
moral associations that bring them out. We need the idea of the
Christ-child in the school. Let that haunt the minds of parents and
teachers, and that sacred ideal of childhood will not be without loving
disciples, whose voices shall make the songs of the schoolroom as sacred
and acceptable as temple chants or choral litanies. A better spirit, and
one that demands the co-operation of all Christian people, has shown
itself in our city of late, in the new efforts to seek out neglected
children, and open to them the blessings of education, and industry and
religion. The establishment of the Mission at the Five Points, of the
Children's Aid Society, of the Asylum for Friendless Boys, have made an
era in the Christian annals of New-York, which all right-minded persons
should bless, alike in their word and their work. Add to these efforts for
the poor and neglected, the new institutions, such as the Free College and
the Cooper Institute, which offer such unwonted privileges to worthy boys
of the humblest means, and we have no reason to despair of the future of
this great city, or to distrust the school as a noble ally of the church.
The Christian church! Here the spirit of the guardian mother ought
eminently to prevail. The church should be the mother of the young. Oh,
how cold and dreary is the idea, deemed by many the essential of
Protestant truth, the idea that the young, or at least, little children,
can have no vital connection with the Church; but must wait for some
preternatural visitation in maturer years to call them to the arms of the
great spiritual mother, and make them feel themselves hers. How
unsatisfactory the doctrine, that children are to grow up, as if outside
of the church, with the prospect of one day being taken in. Be ours the
cheering view, sanctioned, surely, by the analogies of revelation, the
faith of centuries, and by the love of parents, that the child should be
regarded as by birth and baptism admitted into the Christian kingdom, and
to be nurtured from the very first in the principles and affections
congenial with the government of God. Let this idea be accepted, and power
and blessing would come in its train. Higher consecration would crown the
home, better wisdom would guide the strength of father, and holier love
fill the soul of mother, from their communion with the kingdom that claims
parent and child for its own. The Christ-child should be remembered in the
Christian Church. When remembered truly, he will save childhood from
Herod's hands.
This season is a time of anticipation and hope. It needs no very vivid
imagination to bring before us the myriads of homes over Christendom, that
ring with young mirth, and look cheerfully upon the opening age. Yet the
grave question cannot but press itself upon us, What is in store for the
generation, that is soon to stand in our places, and bear the burdens of
life in our stead? Interesting, engrossing indeed are the fields of
science, art, enterprise, enjoyment, now dawning upon us and promising a
bright meridian to the new generation. Yet fearfully many dark spots in
the horizon rise in the distance, and portend ill to many whose experience
of the world is yet to come. The great want is of an earnest purpose,
looking to an eternal aim, and enforced by a true plan of social life. The
young host is ready, but needs better guidance. Muratori, the Italian
historian, tells us, that in the twelfth century, in the contagion of the
crusades, children caught the spirit, and an army of 30,000 was gathered
from village and city, and marshalled by a child, started for the Holy
Land and the Tomb of Christ. They marched on till they came to Marseilles,
and the great sea stopped their fond dream. They wandered about
distracted, and thousands miserably perished. Perhaps too romantic story
for sober truth! But what a parallel to it in our age! A mighty host of
youths starts on its way to a land of imagined holiness and peace. Vague
aspirations, selfish passions, spiritual yearnings for the good and true,
move their hearts. A child will lead them; the child who is to be the
strong man of the age, and who is not yet known. Sadly, sadly, will they
be disappointed, unless the leader is himself divinely led, and the heart
of the Christ-child lives in him, and thus in the hearts of this
generation, the Messiah is born anew.
Every true purpose, all genuine faith speeds the day of his new coming,
and hastens the downfall of Herod and his host.
* * * * *
Friends, Readers, let your hearts apply the lesson of this day, and let
your hearts be cheered and solemnized by its associations. Think of your
homes and the loved ones there. Think too of the loved ones departed, and
deem them not lost, but gone before! Love your children, and love them the
more by looking on them in the gospel light, by loving them as in God and
Christ!
Think too of our own early days. How vividly they at times come back, so
that we almost forget maturity and its cares, and are children once more.
Let them come back now, and with them all their tender associations--with
them thoughts of early home; brothers, sisters, father, and more than all
of her, who stood to us in Mary's place, and blessed us with a Christian
Mother's love!
But can the association rest there? No! Upward to Him, so holy in
childhood, so glorious in maturity--to Him, Friend and Saviour, Messiah,
from whom our best blessings flow, let our gratitude rise, and to God,
through Him, let our devotion be exalted! We have no hymn to the Virgin
Mother, no Ora pro Nobis for the beatified Madonna. Simple faith is better
than romantic tradition. To us heaven is fairer for possessing that Mother
and that Child.
_Christmas Day._
New Things.
NEW THINGS.
Measured by any human standard, how daring was the vision of the Christian
seer! From Patmos, his watchtower of rock in the Aegean Sea, midway between
the hemispheres of ancient civilization, he surveyed the ruling powers of
the world, declared their doom, and the rise of a new kingdom, even the
City of God. The predominant forces of the existing age took visible shape
before his inspired imagination. Jewish bigotry, Pagan idolatry, Roman
despotism, led on by the master spirit of evil, stood before him, as so
many fearful monsters. Equally vivid were the forms of divine agency by
which they were to be subdued. From Him who sat upon the throne revealed
in heaven, came the decree, "Behold, I make all things new." Our pen need
not lose its cheerfulness in writing of this opening year, with such
imagery in view.
How much of that vision has been proved true? Enough surely to save it
from the charge of presumption, enough to ascribe its daring rather to a
devotion mindful of divine guidance than to a wilfulness impatient of
delay. The former things have passed away. The old temple is remembered
only for the sake of its spiritual archetype. The despot's purple has
faded before the bloodstained robes of the martyrs. The idols to which
men bowed on both the Aegean shores, the European and the Asiatic, have
fallen. Even the crescent, that has for a time displaced the cross, and
which now in the city of Constantinople gleams from the dome of St.
Sophia, forms no exception to the statement, for it marks no idolatrous
shrine, but like the orb which it represents is but a partial reflection
of the great source of light, before which it must one day grow pale.
Gradually, but none the less mightily, the new power went on its way, and
ere long from beyond the Mediterranean on the Carthaginian shore, there
came a great response to the exile of the Aegean. When Augustine wrote his
"City of God," the philosopher of history confirmed the vision of the
seer, as he celebrated the triumphs of that word which planted the cross
above the throne of the Caesars. Tempting indeed is the historical survey
this presented, but we must not yield to the enticement. We must quit this
grand prospect of the nations, and speak of the Gospel, as sent chief of
all for the renewal of the soul and the redemption of the home.
World-regenerating power as it is, its first prerogative is its
life-renewing office.
This principle we are prepared to lay down at the outset, that in the
order of Providence Jesus Christ is the spiritual head of the human race,
and that men and nations find redemption and true life from God through
Him. What was said of old, needs to be said now "Behold I make all things
new"--now in the ears alike of those who have never heard Christian
truth, and of those who have lulled themselves to slumber beneath its
familiar sound. Nay, the most sincere Christians need constant renewing in
the light of first principles and by the spirit of true life. Their piety
is apt to harden into formalism--their charity to narrow into some kind of
clanship--their industry to sink into a low worldly prudence apart from
all divine aims.
It is not easy for any of us to begin the New-Year without a pleasant
sense of freshness or renovation, as if some former burdens had passed
away and many things had become new. This is well, and needs only to be
made better. As we renew our friendships, we should not fail to renew our
relation with the Great Friend, and invoke his blessing upon the opening
months.
* * * * *
We need first of all to review our principles. These we regard as
constituting the essentials of our faith. However right they may have
been, we are very apt to lose sight of them, or gradually, perhaps almost
unconsciously, allow others to creep into their place. The word of Christ
to us now is as of old, "Believe." What do we believe? What to us is the
greatest reality? Many things are true--what to us is the truth? Many
words are important--what to us is _the_ word? Answer not in the language
of decent custom or technical phrase, but from the heart. We have all said
at some time more or less definitely, "We believe in God, the Creator of
the world, in Jesus Christ his Son and express image, in the Holy Spirit,
the witness within the soul." When we believe thus truly, then we have
the true principles of living. We own the Divine government, acknowledge
its representative, honor its form of life. But our belief becomes an
empty word, unless with enlarged knowledge and experience, it is
constantly renewed; and as we pass into new fields of thought, action,
observation, we subdue this added territory to the rightful sovereignty,
and interpret all things in the light of Divine truth. Have we done
this--are we doing it? Or have we left our faith behind us, and in our
world of business or pleasure, do we find ourselves either utterly without
God, or with Him only in the most vague and distant idea? True faith is
not overcome by the world, but overcomes the world.
We learn a great many things as our years pass, and there is a
knowledge--do we not know it? that increaseth sorrow. Such is all the
knowledge that shuts out the light of God; and leads man away from a
filial faith in the Eternal Parent and the heavenly home. Such stores
indeed increase our nominal domain, but only as he would enlarge his
estate who were to conquer Sahara and pitch his tent among desert sands
where no living water is.
Faith--the faith that God is Father of men--that he is in Christ, and
through Him will visit us in the soul and the life, makes all things
new--constantly leads us into new experience of Divine truth, and makes
old things appear in a new light. This is no narrow creed for the recluse
or the mystic. It is for men of all tempers and conditions. Nay, they need
it most, whose pursuits are most likely to chain them down to the earth.
For them indeed occasional leisure and recreation has no small solace.
But, the best solace for world-weariness is the rest of the soul in God;
the mind's trust in the greatest of realities, the Being of beings. All
pleasure that deadens this trust but adds to the weariness which it would
charm away and is the serpent's whisper, that promises the peace which
comes only from the heavenly dove. Above all our prudence, all our labors
and expedients, we are compelled to look for the true light. Revive,
increase our faith, and straightway all things are new. God reveals new
features of his Providence, and things familiar have a new expression, and
speak no longer only of the earth.
* * * * *
Who can recur thus to first principles and find from them better light and
peace, without carrying the renewing influence into the sphere of the
affections? Here the Divine Word has a voice for us--a voice too much
neglected because identified either with a perplexing theological system
or a shallow sentimentalism. God is love, and he that loveth not knoweth
not God. This truth came from Him who made the soul, and knows well its
wants. Bring it near to us and feel its renovating power. There seems
always indeed to be a peculiar peril in moralizing upon the affections,
and they are very apt to be chilled by the precepts that most insist upon
their vitality and warmth. But the Christian Gospel is little disposed to
waive its imperious claims from fear of the metaphysician or the
sentimentalist. It says Love God and the brethren, and bids us make this
truth practical. As the years pass, instead of having less affection, we
ought to have more. A true life always has more, as it enlarges its
experience and its faculty--not indeed more of that superficial
sensibility which is the burden of so many moon-struck rhymesters and the
great staple of the common romancers, but more of that divine charity,
that vital good-will, which holds filial communion with the Father, and,
striving to be perfect even as he is perfect, carries the light and warmth
of its presence into every sphere of life. In fact, the highest human
wisdom is affectionate as it is mature. The novice in thought may be sharp
and crabbed, but the sage is tolerant and kind. He who sees the truth in
its reality, sees that it is the form which contains and expresses
goodness. If there be a kind of intellectual power that is bitter and
malicious, it is sure to be only some shape of low cunning or some
perversion of the better reason--some perversion that shows Lucifer's
fall, if it shine with something of his light. The Master and they who
learned of him were full of love as of wisdom. Such is the plan of God's
moral government based upon the nature of his own being.
The Father calls us to be followers of him as dear children, and in the
sober thought of mature years to cherish more than the impulsive affection
of childhood. He demands that our whole life-plan should be guided, nay,
pervaded with good-will. If there be less sensitiveness upon the surface
of the character, there should be a deeper sentiment within. He is ready
to help us win the grace, which he commends. Through devout thought,
whether of meditation or prayer--through every act which brings us near to
himself, whether of self-denying humanity or of common neighborly
kindness, he is ready to impart to the soul something of the fulness of
his Spirit, and renew our being in its central spring.
We need this influence in our near affinities and remoter relations. The
ice gathers about us, and should be melted away. The most intimate ties
become dull and indifferent through custom, and the nearest friends,
because of their nearness, lose interest as if estranged. In the same
Divine fountain we refresh every home feeling and social sympathy.
Realizing anew our relation to God, we are ready to see more of his
goodness in all things around, and regard every aspect of humanity, as a
call upon us to appreciate his love for us by our own for his creatures.
The point of view is at once changed, and we look upon our fellow-beings
no longer in the spirit of harsh critics, exacting all things and owing
nothing, but as ourselves dependants upon Divine favor, and owing mercy
even as we have received. Every human tie is in peril, when this sentiment
is forgotten. When its force is felt, every sphere of life has a blessing.
Home wears a new smile, and its mutual deference repeats the great law of
Heaven. Strifes among kindred and acquaintances cease. The sternest censor
of the follies and vices of mankind mingles mercy with his judgment, and
considers with thoughtful compassion the infirmities at which the cynic
scoffs. Because he opens his heart, he does not shut his eyes, but with
judgment keen, yet tender and forbearing, in a spirit wise and benign,
nay, Christlike, he looks upon the strange drama of human life, and whilst
he cannot wholly solve its problem, sees enough of God in the universe and
among men to submit the ultimate solution to the Divine Power, and finds a
very sure way of helping on the Divine plans by a life of justice, energy
and good-will. Who of us does not need more of this spirit, more sense of
God's love to us, as the great source of kind affection to one another?
* * * * *
For want of it, and of the filial faith in which it has its root, we
wither up, and our best strength is lost. Nay, our very work
languishes--our labor, whatever it may be, loses its zest. There is no man
of generous mind, who has not at some time accepted his life-work in a
spirit truly religious, feeling that its burdens are to be borne in a
Christian temper, and its duties done with reference to exalted aims. But
how often the better purpose languishes, and we pursue our toil away from
the fountains of true life, separating the spheres which God has joined
together, robbing our daily life of the freshness and power, which our
youthful zeal possessed without care, and which need only to be truly
cared for to be preserved, nay, to grow in vigor. It is not always so with
us, but too often; and there are none who do not need renovation in
respect to their life-plan and work. Some things we should do, that we
have not done--some things, that we have done, should have been left
undone. There is much efficacy in a sober and honest review of our
personal career, of what we have achieved, suffered, gained, lost, and of
what has been our use alike of our successes and disappointments. God has
given to us something of his own power of judgment, and we are the better
either by the rebuke or the encouragement of the "Ill-done" or the
"Well-done," pronounced by ourselves upon ourselves. More power still
comes from bringing all the higher resources of our being upon our labor,
refusing to become the serfs of a slavish routine of task-work, and
keeping our hours and weeks fresh alike by the faculties that we exert,
and the aims to which we look. Happy, indeed, the man, whatever be the
sphere of his action, whose being is renewed rather than exhausted by his
toil. Only a filial faith and love can insure this blessing. A cheerful
temper is much, but not all; and no merely animal spirits can suffice to
renovate the mind under so many vicissitudes and disappointments as most
lives present. A man's _spirit_ is the chief fact in determining his
_spirits_, and the spirit can be kept fresh and strong only by communion
with the God who gave it. They who take the work of life as given by God
in kindness, and as to be done faithfully and cheerfully, filially, keep
and enlarge their power. Whatever their sphere, they wait upon the Lord,
and they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength--they shall
mount up with wings as eagles--they shall run and not be weary--they shall
walk and not faint.
* * * * *
Thus following the leadings of Divine Providence, we find the true
fountain of life. All things are ever new, and in our faint human
experience we are able to know something of the bliss of that Infinite
and Omniscient, to whom all things are known--to whom there is no past or
future, yet whose is the fulness of an ever-renewing life, the great I Am,
from everlasting to everlasting. Existence becomes more serene, yet more
earnest; less impassioned, not less affectionate; less impulsive, but far
more interesting. There are two kinds of renewal, distant as are earth and
heaven. The one comes from the novelty of a constant variety, the other
from the freshness of an ever truer life. Just across the sea the exile of
Patmos could have found an excellent example to place in contrast with the
spirit of renewal which he urged. The Athenian--and he is in this respect
more favored with followers than in his Attic refinement--spent his time
in seeking for some new thing. Common life was stupid, its business was
contemptible and fit only for slaves. Different the spirit, as the lot of
this novelty hunter from that of the Christian with his ever renewed mind.
The one finds what is new by skimming over surfaces, the other by drawing
from inexhaustible depths. The one scatters his forces as he seeks to
refresh them, the other concentrates his powers in the very process of
renovation. The one yields to a passion for mental dissipation that burns
and wastes like a fever, the other follows a law of life, whose pulses
beat in ever serener health--nay, beat in ever-renewing vigor, and sound
no funeral marches to the grave. In short, the one indulges in a mental
distraction that has in itself the principle of exhaustion; the other is
nurtured by the Divine aliment which gives a life that is eternal.
Are not our own experience and observation full of illustrations of the
truth that has been presented. Are not history and biography constant
witnesses of the ever-renovating power of a genuine faith, and love, and
work, and also of the fate of worldly passion to exhaust its own springs
of enjoyment. How signal an illustration we may take from the destiny of
two men of the last century, who, more than any others, moved France and
England--the nations to which they spoke. Mirabeau, a man of robust frame
and singular native eloquence, was cut down in the very meridian of his
day by a disease which was an expressive close and consequence of the
fitful fever of his life of passion. His last words, in their gorgeous
rhetoric, showed with what opiates he had drugged his soul: "Sprinkle me
with perfumes, crown me with flowers, and thus let me sink into the
eternal sleep." Within that very month, a far different death-scene was
presented across the British Channel. An old man of nearly four-score
years and ten, rests peacefully upon his bed, surrounded by a company of
friends, who feel quite as much joy as grief, as they look upon his face
and hear his words. Although of frame naturally delicate, and of gifts by
no means brilliant, he has moved the hearts of myriads by his appeals, and
won a name better than that of founders of empires. The very week previous
he had continued his round of labors, and his strength was not abated as
he pleaded his Master's cause. He sank to his rest in God with the words
of the anthem,
"I'll praise my Maker with my breath,"
on his lips, and the strain which was broken by the touch of death seemed
to his companions to be finished by a voice from the spiritual world,
saying:
"Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
My days of praise shall ne'er be past,
While life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures."
Mirabeau and Wesley! Thus different are the ends of wilful passion and
unswerving fidelity. All lives, according as they are true or false, renew
this contrast.
* * * * *
"Behold, I create all things new," saith the Lord. For good or for ill,
this decree must be applied to us. In some way we are all changing as the
years pass. Our lives are wasting away, unless they are renovated by a
truer spirit, and thus winning ever more than they lose. What do we most
need that time may be ever newer and happier, and the hours move on
neither with lagging weariness nor drunken haste, but in the Divine order
marked out for them by their Lord?
Are there not some things to be put off, as well as some things to be put
on? Answer honestly as we look the New Year in the face--answer as to a
messenger from God. What weight are we carrying, that we need to lay
aside? What evil habit is fixing itself upon us, shutting out the light of
God, chilling the better affections, deadening the nobler powers, and
threatening, perhaps, beneath its insidious smile to take from existence
more of its beauty and joy and strength? Let each consider well his own
besetting sin, and put it off. With the falling burden, scales fall from
his eyes--he sees God anew. For him the former things have passed
away--all things are become new. What makes our being fresher and happier
than the conviction that the coming years are better than the past!
Off with the old burdens, and put on the new armor. There is something for
each of us to do--something for each one of us specific and peculiar as
our own individuality--something for all of us as universal as our common
humanity. The specific thing and the universal good pursue as if for life
itself. God bless us in the striving, and crown us in the work. Each year
in its sober experience give us new hopes for ourselves and the future of
our race.
_New Year._
Solicitude of Parents
SOLICITUDE OF PARENTS.
Our thoughts turn now more particularly to the circle of home relations,
and we propose to give some plain views of them with an especial eye to
the temptations of city life. The duty of parents is the topic first in
order.
Few if any words are given in the Scriptures to persuading parents to love
their children, or to wish to provide for them. The affection is taken for
granted, and they who have it not are set aside by themselves as monsters.
If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house,
he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.
It is not upon the parental sentiment itself, but upon its due direction,
that Christianity rests its emphasis; as well it may, for what sentiment
has gone more astray from the true mark, and in mistaken kindness hurt
those whom it would most bless. "What man," asks our Saviour, "would give
his son a stone instead of bread, or a serpent instead of a fish?" Not
one, if he really knew it or saw it. Yet what is more frequent than such
wrong indirectly done?
* * * * *
Take the first and most obvious form of parental solicitude, the form
literally connected with the question just cited--we mean the physical
maintenance of children. It would be wasting words in this or any
respectable assembly, to try to prove that parents should provide food and
clothing for their offspring. Yet here, and every where, in our mode of
making this provision, many very grave questions may arise. Kind feeling
is not enough. Without knowledge and forethought, we may hurt where we
wish to help--we may kill where we wish to cure. At every step we need
better counsel than any instinctive fondness, or childish caprice, or
worldly fashion. The Creator has a lesson for us in the use of all his
gifts, and if we do not heed it, what we give as bread may turn out a
stone, and what seems to us a fish may sting like a serpent.
In providing food, clothing, air, exercise, for our children, we are to
study those solemn and inexorable laws which God has enacted for the rule
of the body. In this lower court of creation there is no pardoning power,
and the wrong done to the constitution in childhood is a wrong for a
lifetime. We apprehend that in no one point is our American society more
in error and more at variance, not only with natural laws, but even with
the best European standard, than in the physical education of children.
They are fed often on the trash of the confectioner, instead of the simple
aliments nearest the hints of nature, and by improper dress and hours they
are forced into a precocious maturity of mind and body, equally hurtful to
both.
Does any one doubt the importance or dignity of such caution? The doubt
vanishes the moment we see the connection between physical education, and
the whole tone of thought and feeling--nay, the entire aim of life. The
tastes for food, and dress, and amusement, cherished in children of tender
years, may be committing them to a judicious or a corrupt method of
life--may be their initiation into a school of self-control and wisdom, or
passion and extravagance. The drunkard, the sot, nay, the debauchee, may
date their wretchedness from childhood. Many a family has been ruined by
habits of extravagance that began in the finery and feasting of the
nursery. They that dwell in cities should take close heed to the prevalent
danger, and not think themselves safe merely because they do as other
people do. Consider how common the error is to mistake precocity for
promise--to disturb the sacred reserve of nature--to tear open the
curtained bud of childhood, and boast of the forced growth so ruinous to
the tender plant, and then let us learn anew to respect the bidding of the
Creator and follow his appointed way. Here we should be willing to take a
stand as nonconformists, and have it appear in the beginning, that we are
not educating our children to be the apes of the world's fashions, or
slaves of its caprices, but to be rational and moral creatures, a blessing
to their home and community, a light in the kingdom of God. Let them learn
early to find happiness in common things--to enjoy simple pleasures--to
love the glow of healthful action above the fever of artificial
excitements, the constant bounties of nature beyond the costly gifts of
luxury.
What we have said applies more directly to providing for children during
their tender years. In rude communities here the care mostly stops, and
the boy at least, as soon as he is strong enough to be master of his
limbs, is left pretty much to take care of himself. But as society becomes
more refined and luxurious, it is very obvious that the solicitude of
parents looks more towards providing for the maturer years than for the
minority of their children. It becomes, perhaps, the absorbing question,
how shall we establish them properly in life--what effort or self-denial
must we use to secure their future success?--a great question, and one
which troubles many an earnest mind, and heaves society itself with
misgivings.
It often presents itself in a very tangible form, and by some is confined
to one point--to concern for property. I will not disparage the desire of
parents to secure a comfortable living to their children. But it is safe
to say that this desire is strong enough when compared with matters more
essential even in their bearing on a comfortable living. Surely the chief
assurance of a sufficient livelihood is a good practical education. A
reasonable man will not think it important to leave more than a frugal
competence to his children, yet he ought to think himself unkind, nay
cruel, if he spare any labor or sacrifice needed to educate them to do
their part effectively and happily in the world. A large inheritance is
easily lost, and may be retained without adding any happiness or dignity
to its owner or the community, but a good education stands by its
possessor; the strength of his trials and the ornament of his joys.
We need to look well to this at a time when, under the very name of
education, foul wrong is done to the active energies, and a systematic
imbecility of mind and body has the stamp of elegance. That only is a good
education which so stores the mind and brings out the powers as to fit one
to take an honest place in life, and do well the work given us to do. Such
a culture will have an eye upon the uncertainties of fortune, and prepare
the pupil to provide for himself, and all who are reasonably dependent
upon him. Such a culture it is the duty of every parent to give, and the
right of every child to receive. It is clear, however, that it cannot be
given without going in the face of many dainty prejudices, which are so
ready to pamper unreasonable wants and slight the plain utilities. The
Hebrew laws required, that children, even those of nobles should be taught
some useful art, and the Saviour of men and the chief of his apostles were
bred in accordance with this law. There is no security against shameful
servitude short of this, that a youth shall have enough in himself, know
enough, and can do enough, to take and keep an honorable place in the
world. Too often this great truth is slighted, and men toil in such a way
as to procure for their children a dainty training that enlarges the
surface of their wants, whilst it lessens the domain of their energies,
and so puts a mill-stone upon a son's back, whilst thinking to give him
bread.
Yet more sternly we must carry out the doctrine of the need of an
education essentially self-relying. The father has and should have more
tender solicitude for the daughter than the son, and there is no
affection that the blessed God has breathed into the human heart more
beautiful and holy than this, giving as it does such grace to the rudest
and the most refined homes, teaching gentle speech to many a rough
peasant, and imbuing the most cultivated man with a delicacy and
tenderness beyond any of the charms of courts or chivalry. Yet this
sentiment needs to be wise as well as kind; nay, wise in order to be kind;
and a just father will strive to train his daughter to be equal to either
fortune. However large or small his fortune, he will remember its
uncertainties, and beware of sanctioning the too prevalent folly which
regards woman as born to be petted and dependent, and brands a rational
and self-relying education as masculine and ungraceful. If we have our
eyes open, we must see the wretchedness of this system, and regard every
daughter as cruelly treated who is not enabled without loss of
self-respect, in case of need, to take a stand for herself, and prefer to
an uncongenial marriage or a degrading dependence, reliance upon her own
arts of accomplishment or utility. The same preparation that fits her to
meet the time of trial, fits her to adorn prosperity, and to be that noble
creature, the woman who guides an affluent household with energy and love,
and who adds to the graces most prized in the social circle the grace that
is born of God and radiates the light of Heaven.
* * * * *
Of course it is utterly idle to urge the need of such an education for
sons and daughters, by limiting its uses solely to worldly advantage. We
go up to the true basis of life for firm ground to build upon. Take that
ground decidedly, and then we view all true culture as part of the
training of souls under the Kingdom of God. We are not to live by bread
alone, but by every Divine word, by all of God's gifts to us. They are
cruel parents who slight the moral and spiritual wants of their children
and train them in worldly passions. This is, in the saddest sense, giving
them a stone instead of the Bread of Life. So we all think and are ready
to say. Take care lest our conduct belies our words. Whatever its position
or professions may be, that is a wretched household, whose polity is not
based upon a Divine standard--which does not acknowledge a rectitude above
the world's ways and breathe faith in God and things eternal. The very
discipline of a true home will be modelled after the heavenly order, and
will try to win the spirit of the benignant Father of all, who tempers
firmness with kindness so wonderfully in the government of his creatures.
Firmness is not enough--kindness is not enough, but the two must go
together. Firmness without kindness becomes the stony austerity that
crushes the will into servile conformity instead of training it to filial
obedience; kindness without firmness readily becomes a feeble expediency
that changes with the hour in a facility serpentine in more senses than
one. Firmness with kindness gives a discipline authoritative and flexible,
applying just principles in a mild prudence suited to all times and needs.
Of old perhaps the rigid temper most abounded, and austerity made
parental rule a rod of iron; but now the other extreme most prevails, and
a feeble indulgence allows self-will to be the law of childhood, and
fosters in many a dwelling a juvenile jacobinism, which needs only time
and chance to ripen into utter anarchy. This error does cruel wrong to
parent and child--to the child by fostering an ungovernable temper, a
perverse caprice that scoffs at all restraint and chafes even at the
limitations which God has imposed; to the parent by bringing upon him the
contempt of those who owe him respect, and by the painful conviction that
the indulgence begun in apparent kindness has been as fatal as wilful
severity. Away with the folly and the puny sentimentalism from which it
springs! Let us look at the law of God founded in the written Word and in
the very nature of things. The family is the safeguard of society--a
government founded by Heaven itself. Parents are to rule, children are to
obey. This principle, if carried out with energy and discretion, will
adapt itself to the various ages and circumstances of life. The element of
authority will be imbued with the attractive power of the truth and love
upon which it rests, and as the child grows into youth or maturity, the
authority that trained him, without losing its dignity, will appear less
and less an arbitrary will--nay, authority itself will seem but the
sterner aspect of persuasion.
For all this we need an unworldly faith and a spiritual mind. They that
would nurture others in the true life must themselves be nurtured upon its
true element. For themselves they must breathe the prayer for daily bread
in a true sense of its meaning--a true sense of dependence on God for
moral power as for bodily strength. Nothing short of a temper and purpose
truly religious will make the household a school of faith and a home of
wisdom and peace. We are apt to be too negligent, indeed, of modes of
instruction and forms of worship. Too often a parent neglects to tell his
children what is deepest in his own heart, and with many not wholly
worldly persons, the years pass away without any regular habits of
Christian teaching and worship in the family. The remedy cannot come from
mere formalism, but it must spring from a truer heart--more of the right
spirit showing itself in the right way--in all wisdom and prudence,
charity and devotion.
Speaking thus, who of us does not see a startling thought staring us in
the face--the thought that our own personal character is the measure of
our influence, and that we cannot expect to teach or impress what we have
not taken to our own hearts. We cannot cheat our children into the virtue
which we affect, for they will find us out, and distinguish what we do and
are, from what we say. Influence cannot rise above the level of character,
nor the fountain above the fountain-head. What motive to a truer
life--what warning against vice and godlessness--what encouragement in all
good--that the chief patrimony of children is the character of their
parents, and with this treasure small gifts are wealth, and without this
treasure rich gifts are poor indeed. Unhappy is the man who leaves to his
children the influence of a heart hard as stone and a worldliness wily as
a serpent! Precious the influence--blessed the memory of a parent, whose
life has made the ways of wisdom pleasant and peaceful, secured to his
offspring a childhood pure and happy, given a sacred and cheerful
remembrance to be the handmaid of an immortal hope.
The affections, it has been said, press downward more strongly than they
rise upward, and parents love their children more than children can love
them in return. If this were so, it would but the more illustrate the
fact, that life is not utterly selfish, and men live not for themselves
alone. It is true, that we do not live for ourselves alone. The merchant
at his counting-houses has thoughts beyond his gold and
merchandize--visions more fair and kindly than these; and the hard-handed
workman who does his ruder labor, spares of his earnings for his children
at school. But the love is not all on one side, although time may be
needed to adjust the balance, and teach childhood to appreciate a true
parental care. God holds the balance, and will make it true. In the motive
and in the result, he secures the reward of fidelity. Time and eternity
will show, that the love which he has inspired shall win harvests of
blessings that cannot perish.
Reverence in Children.
REVERENCE IN CHILDREN.
The Ten Commandments, the foundations of all law, both religious and
civil, among civilized nations, are divided, all are aware, into two
tables: the first treating of duties relating directly to God--the second
treating of duties relating to man--the two covering the essential grounds
of religion and morals. The command to honor father and mother begins the
second table of the Law. Why should it not? for what so fitly stands at
the head of the moral code, as the law that puts order into the household?
The family is the form of government, first in time and first in
importance. Home is older than church or court; a parent's authority prior
to that of priest or judge. With the family, social order began--without
family union, social order must end.
There is something striking in the transition from the first to the second
table--the transition from Jehovah's assertion of his own sovereignty to
his tender regard for the welfare of men. We seem to be looking down from
the awful mountain with its barren crags into the peaceful valley with its
pleasant homes and grassy lawns, rejoicing that the summits pealing with
thunder send down refreshing breezes and fruitful showers into those
plains below.
Looking up to God, who claims of us supreme homage as his due, and then in
his own sovereign right urges upon us to fulfil our dues to each other, we
speak now of the duties of children or the honor to be rendered by them to
parents.
* * * * *
Do any ask what are the grounds of the Commandments? The grounds are
obvious, and the law, which God enacts, instead of being an arbitrary
decree, is in entire harmony with the nature of things. It would perhaps
be needless to dwell on these grounds, were there not something in the
temper of our times, that calls them in question--in fact, certain notions
of intellectual liberty among theorists, that combine with the passions
and caprices of youth to unsettle many a household, and threaten the peace
of society itself. Against the sentimentalist, who makes light of all
natural ties to glorify the individual's own intuitions or affinities, and
against the little rebel, who comes to the same conclusion by a much
shorter process, we urge the Divine law, "Honor thy father and thy
mother."
Honor them, because God bids it, and bids it not merely in the written
code, but by the whole order of his providence, by the very constitution
of society. However we may dispute about the best form or true foundation
of government--maintain monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, to be the
best form--declare Divine law, social compact, or popular will, to be the
true foundation, all must agree in the Divine origin of the family and
the Divine right of parental government. The instincts of nature, the
words of revelation, the dictates of experience and expediency, all agree
in this, and all illustrate the mind of God, the Creator of the family.
The mind of God himself speaks or should speak through the parent to the
child, so, that filial obedience is fitly another name for piety; so, that
prayer itself borrows its most hallowed word from the reverence nurtured
at home.
Trace out the law of dependence, and see how fully it urges the
commandment--the law of dependence that rests with parents so much of the
welfare of the child. Not merely food, clothing, and home, but all the
higher goods of life, experience, wisdom, virtue, are to be looked for
thus. As a general rule, benignant Providence itself has its chosen
almoner in father and mother, and the gifts are blessed as they are
received in reverence. We may indeed suppose monstrous cases, in which
unnatural parents exact such folly or wrong, that obedience ceases to be a
virtue. Such cases are not frequent enough to alter the general law, and
even in these, a true child, in refusing to conform to what is evil in the
sight of God, will do it in such a way as still to keep the commandment,
and treat tenderly even a perverse father, and expostulate with his
tyranny in a temper fitted more to subdue than irritate its violence. Such
monstrous cases need little notice in any Christian community, where
parents are generally ready enough to do the best, and give the most in
their power for their children. In fact, for them, the Decalogue has no
law, as if nature needed no decree to enforce parental love, and the
affections of themselves pressed heavily enough downwards. The great need
was and is of enforcing the obligation, that looks upward from child to
parent. Our modern culture, with all its scope and refinement, has no
substitute for this obligation; nay, needs it more than ever to check the
wilfulness and laxity so likely to come from precocious fancy and
unbridled temper. Experience is constantly showing, that even the external
promise connected with the commandment meets the wants of our own times
also, and now, as of old, filial obedience secures an efficient life and
peaceful civilization,--"that it may be well with thee, and that thy days
may be long in the land which the Lord thy God shall give." How many
bright and dark chapters of recent history show how close is the
connection between stability of society and filial respect--between
allegiance to every worthy institution and the discipline that learns to
regard a superior authority at home. This outward sanction the Gospel
accepts, and carries it into the spiritual kingdom. By many a precept the
apostles enforce the command, and by word and example, by the beatitudes
of the mount, and the obedience of the cross, our Saviour imparts new
blessing and worth to its observance.
* * * * *
We have a foundation then to build upon, and filial respect rests upon the
Word of God, the welfare of the home, the good of society, and the peace
of the soul. Let the sentiment be worthy of the Divine foundation. If
worthy it will appear first of all as a feeling of affectionate reverence.
It will not be worship as with the Chinese absolutist, nor mere
friendship, as in the code of many a radical. The parent is of the same
nature with the child, and is not to be adored; he is superior in age,
experience and authority, and should have more than the friendly courtesy
of an equal. Superior in degree, though not in kind, he is to be regarded
with affectionate respect and deference. Any subjection more or less than
this comes of wrong, and leads to wrong. To exact utter servitude is
tyranny--to lower reasonable authority into flattery, entreaty, or
apology, is an imbecile indulgence which a child should be as unwilling to
ask as a parent to give.
If any hearers are ready to quarrel with us for presuming to define the
quality and conditions of one of the great social sentiments, and to say
that all the affections are best let alone without any forcing process, we
are not troubled for a reply. No modern folly has been more thoroughly put
down by analysis and experience, than the sentimentalist's notion, that
the affections are wholly their own law, and are not to be trained under
reason, conscience and religion. Even in those sentiments which have most
of the spontaneous play of genius--those which rejoice in poetry, music,
and all the beautiful arts, the perceptions must first be trained to the
nicest sense of the truth of things, and the rigid discipline of every
true artist shames the folly of the dreamers who would make it appear,
that the great art of life, as a school of the affections, is to be left
to itself. No--our principles have vast power over our feelings, and they
who from the beginning are trained to accept the great loyalties of a
divine kingdom, will be loyal in their affections as in their creed, and
their affections will come forth and grow up as the vine does by help of
the very trellis which overlooks it.
* * * * *
The filial sentiment thus accepted and nurtured will not be idle, but will
show itself in the tone of manners, the rule of conduct, the law of life.
Manners are but lesser morals, and closely connected with the greater
morals. Good manners begin at home, and if they do not begin there, the
desire for them is apt to end in poor affectation. The soul of politeness
is mutual deference, and where should this have its origin but in the
respect most directly sanctioned by God? Too often the true filial honor
is forgotten, and, perhaps, from thoughtlessness more than disrespect,
children are sometimes seen usurping the prerogatives of age, speaking in
tones of petulant authority, and crowding themselves into the places of
elders. The best place for them is their own place. Their own dignity, as
well as that of their parents, is best furthered by the deference, that
gives the household its best order and makes it the school of the graces,
that adorn society with its pleasing gradations, and cheer the way to its
best virtues. Full enough is the temptation, especially in cities, to fall
short of this true deference and to rob childhood and youth of their best
character. Manners, instead of being nurtured on the Christian root, are
left too much to the dancing-master, and there are hosts of boys and
girls adept in postures and airs proper for the ballet, and strangers to
the reverence and simplicity that most honor them in honoring their
elders. Precocious passion for dress and society is the bane of the one,
and ridiculous affectation of manhood, especially of its follies, is the
shame of the other. The girl, instead of being calmly at rest in a child's
healthful slumber, is aping the belle in the ball-room; and the boy is
walking the street with his cigar, perhaps boasting of his powers at the
bottle, instead of being where he should be, in his bed, getting strength
for true manliness, not fevering himself into a ludicrous manikin. "Learn
to show piety at home," is thus another form of the ancient law, "Honor
thy father and thy mother."
The sentiment so essential to good manners will show itself as a rule of
conduct, and filial honor will take the form of obedience. During the
years of dependence this obedience is to be entire, for the parent must
think and act for the child. No matter what precocity of memory or
imagination, what privileges of education or amount of attainments, may
seem sometimes to reverse the order of precedence, the child is to follow
the parent's counsels, and in so doing will gain alike in wisdom and
discipline, for the experience of age is wiser than the pert wit of youth,
and submission to a superior will is essential to a true schooling for the
vicissitudes of life. It is not well to overstrain prerogative, and to
insist on obedience as a sacrifice, where it might be made an attraction,
if the reasons of the case are fully set forth. Nor is it well to make
obedience wholly dependent upon a statement of reasons, for many things
must be done for reasons that youth cannot appreciate, and kindness is
never so decided as when the impatient shortsightedness of childhood is
overruled by the far-seeing wisdom of maturity. Reason there should be in
every request; but if the request were allowed to wait until the reasons
could be understood, parental care would cease with the first restraint,
and childhood would be left to itself at the first task or pain. God
himself is our helper here, for he, who calls us in so many things to walk
by faith without sight, has fitted youth for the same discipline, and made
mild authority in the end more attractive and efficient than premature
argument or feeble flattery.
Obedience, thus considered, will not be servile but filial, and will find
its own honor in doing honor to its guardians. It will lead children to
ask constantly what they can do for the happiness of the family and the
welfare of its members. This duty is too little thought of, especially
where there is none of that pressure of want which compels children to
help in the maintenance of the family. No matter how great the wealth of
parents or the retinue of servants on the watch for every care, there is
still place for the earnest co-operation of each member of the family, and
no refinements of living have abolished the duty of mutual help, and the
grace of mutual deference. In most families the services of the children
are needed for many friendly offices of greater or less importance, and
none will deny that the comfort of every household is closely connected
with what the children do or fail to do for its welfare. So early does the
work, the responsible work of life begin, and so early may its springs of
beneficence be opened.
Let any true household illustrate what we mean. What beauty in the filial
confidence that reveals its troubles and needs, and asks counsel of
superior wisdom! What comfort in the countless little services that
lighten a father or mother's care, or soothe their troubles! What grace in
the unbought courtesies that youth may throw around the home, the refined
deference, the kind remembrances too often left to the parade of
drawing-rooms, but the proper ornament of the family circle! What power
over the pains of sickness, or the languor of convalescence, in the
solicitude and consideration which children may show, and showing, may
bring to the weary pillow a balm more healing than medical art! And if
stinted means require frugal expenditures, or even the active labor of the
young, what worth in the filial thoughtfulness that anticipates the
necessary economy, instead of repining encourages frugality, and asks to
be useful instead of insisting on being indulged.
And when fortune, station, or intellectual eminence reward youthful
aspiration, the aspirant never wins more respect than when he makes his
parents his confidants and companions. Here our common nature is not at
fault, for whenever in any public exercise or examination a young person
does remarkably well, we all think at once of the parents, and the
pleasure of the assembly is not complete until the people have confirmed
their own enjoyment by sympathy with the father and mother. There is great
power in this fact, and what it implies--great power in the fact that
children honor parents by being truly honorable, and repay best the
sacrifices of so many anxious years by making their own lives a credit and
comfort to father and mother. This benefit lasts as long as life itself,
and the integrity and efficiency of mature years carries out to the limit
of existence the affectionate reverence of childhood.
Here the whole world is one, and the human heart is the same in all ages,
and history and experience meet. What state of society can be blind to the
meaning of the imprecation which was pronounced at the entrance into the
promised land, and joined in the same doom the idolator and him who should
"set light by his father and mother?" What philosophy can gainsay the sage
of the Book of Proverbs, whose sententious moralizing rises into prophetic
grandeur as he speaks of the unnatural son: "The eye that mocketh at his
father or refuseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick
it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." Who needs any interpretation
of the feelings of David, or Joseph, or Solomon, in their joy or trial?
How heartrending was the grief of the Psalmist over his recreant
son--"Would to God, I had died for thee, my son, my son!" What beauty, as
well as simplicity in the inquiry of Joseph for his father, when the prime
minister of Egypt dismissed his courtly train, and weeping aloud, could
only ask "Doth my father yet live?" What grandeur far above its gold and
gems surrounded the throne of Solomon, when he rose to meet his mother,
and called her to a seat at his right hand. "And the king said unto her,
Ask on, my mother, for I will not say thee nay." What pathos and sublimity
in the Saviour of men, when, embracing home and heaven in his parting
words on the Cross, he commended his spirit to the Eternal Father, and
intrusted his mother to the beloved disciple's care. We need no more than
this to show how the gospel glorifies the law, and crowns its morality and
piety alike in its perfect love--"Woman, behold thy son"--"Disciple,
behold thy mother."
Hear the amen that goes from Calvary to Sinai--and Honor thy father and
thy mother!
Brothers and Sisters.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
When Cain asked "Am I my brother's keeper?" it seemed a very strange
question to come from a man who had just murdered his brother and held him
so cruelly in his keeping. Fear led Cain to disguise his guilt by
repudiating his obligation, through an interrogation more negative than a
flat denial. What he said in guilty fear, many are now ready to say in
pretended humanity, and it is one of the conceits of our time to make
light of ties of kindred in the name of a world-wide philanthropy. A
melo-dramatic patriotism not particularly famous for domestic attachment
has been ready to swear brotherhood to the whole nation, perhaps the whole
race, and many a scape-grace who has been a sad plague to his own kindred,
has been heard shouting at the top of his voice the three noble watchwords
of which fraternity is a climax. Philanthropists sometimes labor under a
similar error, and people who have had no especial solicitude or felicity
in helping their own families and neighbors, presume to despise such near
at hand interests as trivial, and seek to reform the world in a wholesale
way. Professed Christians are not wholly free from the error. Some
certainly there are who are ready to _brother_ and _sister_ all
Christendom with most profuse generosity of tongue, who show their little
sense of the meaning of the term by pinching selfishness towards those of
their own blood, that seems to say, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
It is well, that large views of social obligation are making headway, and
that Christianity has so mightily rebuked the narrowness of exclusive
cliques and clanships. But if humanity is to be true in its progress, it
must be true in its source; and if a man love not his brother whom he hath
seen, how can he love not merely God whom he hath not seen, but the
brother whom he hath not seen? In fact what is regard for our brother but
the first and most obvious application of the second of the two great
commandments? Our brother is our next neighbor, and even our humanity must
begin with him, that it may be really worth any thing. We turn now to the
collateral relations of the household, or the duties of brothers and
sisters. Sacred and suggestive subject, speaking to each of us in the
tones of our own peculiar experience. Let it speak to the conscience as
well as to the sensibilities and the memory.
* * * * *
Where shall we begin but at the beginning, that is with the will of God,
which is the ground of every duty? The family, as we have seen and
believe, is the first form of society, a government founded by the
Creator. All that can be said in favor of its peace and order, goes to set
forth its collateral as well as its ascending and descending ties--to urge
the obligations of brothers and sisters as well as parents and children.
Co-operation between the former is as essential to the home, as are
protection and dependence between the latter.
But to come more closely to the point, is it not true that proper respect
for parents urges the duty now under consideration and just filial love
must needs be fraternal? Children cannot be true to their parents without
being true to each other, and the welfare and charm of the household
depends in no small degree upon the mutual help and moral harmony of its
younger members. Children are not regarded as so many separate units, but
as an organic whole, as members one of another; and when they are
considerate and harmonious, they have new grace and worth in the parent's
eye, more so to his heart, than the features of the fairest landscape
where the particulars combine in the whole, and light, shade, grove and
river, hill and valley--fair in themselves, are fairer together, can
possibly have to the eye of the lover of nature. What under the heavens is
more pleasant and lovely than brethren who with all their differences of
taste and temperament still agree in aim and spirit? It is indeed like the
dew of Hermon, that threw its silver veil over mountain and valley, and
refreshed and beautified each tree and flower with a baptism from heaven.
But this relation of fraternal love to filial is but one of its aspects.
Brothers and sisters are related by what they owe directly to each other,
as well as by what they owe to parents. The will of God, that bids them
agree for their parents' sake, bids them also agree for their own sake.
Mutual educators of each other they must be, and by means far more
powerful than school-books or lessons. They are constantly together, and
this intercourse must be a selfish collision, if it be not a friendly
reciprocity. In childhood, they must needs be frequent rivals for the
favors and duties of the home, subjects of indulgences or sacrifices, that
must awaken strife, unless they are shared in mutual deference. With
childhood, however, the relation does not end, but may have in mature
years its gravest importance, for in the order of nature parents are
likely to be first taken from the world, and to all human view they may be
beyond the reach of kindness or unkindness. But the relation of children
to each other promises to last far longer, may create between the elder
and younger a relation parental as well as filial, and for good or ill it
must in some way continue as long as life itself. How essential, then,
that a tie so enduring should be rightly regarded, and that in childhood,
youth and maturity, it should keep its benignant hold over the family!
Nor does its importance end here. The method of God is, that the
affections shall grow outward from within, and that being trained in
kindness at home, men should be prepared to show good will to each other
in all the concerns of life. As the patriarchal dispensation, in the grand
course of ages, widened into the universality of the gospel, so in every
true life, a just family culture is to expand into a generous humanity,
that learns at home how to speak of a broader brotherhood, and a higher
fatherhood. Whether God's method is not wiser than man's let experience
show by contracting the windy declamation, that mistakes rhetorical
generalities for comprehensive benevolence, and the judicious,
unostentatious beneficence that carries out in all its relations the sober
good will cherished in a wholesome household discipline, and so on a true
pattern strives to build up the larger household of faith. The one begins
at the root, and so branches out in blessing--the other would begin with
the branches, which wither away when parted from the root.
* * * * *
So then in the will of God, revealed in the constitution of the family,
the welfare of its members, the spirit of humanity, we find the foundation
of the duties of brothers and sisters. The fraternal sentiment must be in
accordance. In all our affections, there must needs be some lights and
shades that depend upon the individual's gifts and experience, for no man
is a rule for all, and we must differ in our likings as in our looks. Yet
all primal obligations have essential features in common; and the
fraternal sentiment, although less instructive than the parental, and more
complex than the filial, has quite as decidedly a character of its own.
The phrenologist may not locate it in a special organ of the brain, and
the metaphysician may not make of it an instinct by itself, but it has its
root none the less in nature, and loses no interest from expanding so
generously under true associations and culture. When true, the fraternal
sentiment unites congeniality with consanguinity, and developes friendship
from kindred blood, as the parted branches open into leaves, and
blossoms, and fruits, kindred in their aims as their source. Its nature is
better shown by tracing out its just influence than by attempting to
arrest its flitting shades of hue, or to analyze its constituent elements.
Here, too, is the practical bearing of the subject, a bearing which many
slight far more from thoughtlessness than from indifference. In what light
are brothers or sisters called to regard each other?
Their first obvious duty is that of due consideration for each other. They
are to consider each other's circumstances, needs, trials, dispositions,
opportunities, and never allow selfishness or indifference to blind them
to what belongs to them in common. Does this need to be said of persons
who are so near, as of necessity to be always in each other's thoughts?
Ah, what is more frequent and obvious, than that familiarity tempts
indifference, and that our very primal duties, like the stars which are
their emblems, are easily forgotten because they may at any time be seen?
The things most significant are likely to be near at hand, and religion,
like philosophy, finds its chief triumphs in opening the meaning of what
God has brought to our very door. A part of the power of absence from home
lies in breaking the spell of familiarity, and leading the absent one to
look impartially upon the familiar circle, and upon his own place and
conduct there. Many a youth or maiden has returned from a journey or
voyage wiser far in sense of home duties than proud of the accomplishments
of travel. True consideration will not need absence to teach this lesson,
but from its calm point of view the absent one will survey the common
spheres of life, and try to live for others as under the eye of God.
In each family there will be decided need for mutual consideration, and
there must be strife, unless there is mutual deference. All cannot have
all the favors, and the division of them may embroil a household as
bitterly as the division of an empire has embroiled rival heirs of
thrones. Where means are limited, mutual sacrifices not always easy must
be made, and few families pass many years without feeling the power of
consideration, or of selfishness in meeting the privations that must go
round their circle. When means are abundant, and every wish has ready
wealth at its command, the form of forbearance may change, but its
essential spirit is none the less needed. There will still be differences
of talent, looks, manners, opportunities, health, experience, that require
in the most prosperous household the same virtues, that give the humblest
cottage its dignity and peace. In every family, there will be some call
for peculiar consideration or regard to some member of it, according as
sickness, infirmity, youth, age, deficient or extraordinary ability, may
call upon the stronger to serve the weaker. What wretchedness when the
call is slighted, even by one! Who can calculate the mischief wrought by a
sensual or reckless brother, who makes every thing secondary to his own
passions and pleasures, or by a frivolous and heartless sister, who makes
a god of fashion and enslaves the whole house to her monstrous vanity!
Who, too, can calculate the influence of a high-minded brother in guiding
and cheering the younger members of the family, or of a devoted and
judicious sister in soothing every impatient humor with a face in which
shines, perhaps, the light of the sainted mother's countenance? When all
unite in some common solicitude, God gives their daily bread and cup a
sacramental grace, and from some sufferer whom they watch over together, a
mighty blessing, uniting, exalting them all, comes forth, and seems to say
in the sacred name, "Ye have done it unto me."
Consideration will lead to confidence, and will banish deceit, that viper
of society, from the hearth-stone, which too often warms it into life. Let
confidence begin early, move the lips first lisping for utterance, and
continue in maturity, when the world's folly that sometimes names itself
experience shall try to teach disguise as prudence, and artifice as
wisdom. Whatever we may think of the confessor, as an official person,
confession is founded in the nature of things, and God bids us confess our
faults one to another. Who ought to be confidential, if not those whose
experience and destiny so unite their lives? I cannot even glance at the
chief forms of this confidential relation. One aspect may be specified
which is too often forgotten--that between brother and sister. If these
were more candid advisers, each would be better for it--each imparting to
each the counsel that each can give. With feminine insight and purity,
what a kind and gentle, yet strict and earnest censor of youthful excess,
the one may be. With manly judgment and honor, what a firm and scrupulous,
yet tender and considerate adviser in reference to many follies and
dangers may the other be. Giddy as young people often are in their
pleasures and caprices, it has sometimes seemed to me, that if a plan of
life were to be drawn up by the youth of a family for each other, few
treatises of morals would surpass it in purity of spirit or rectitude of
principle. Some follies would be sure to fall. Where would intemperance
and its kindred vices be, if sisters were taken as counsellors? Where
would indecent costumes, immodest dances, equivocal friendships be, if
brothers were more frequent advisers? This negative influence is not a
tithe of the worth of the relation, which God in his infinite tenderness
and wisdom has decreed--a relation so able to enrich ties of nature by
every grace of mind and heart, and from likeness and unlikeness of
constitution to develope one of the finest harmonies of our being. Its
beauty cheers many a dark age of ancient rudeness, and adorns many of the
brightest chapters of our modern culture. Would we know what brother and
sister have been to each other, listen to the triumphal song of Miriam, as
she braced anew the great heart of the law-giver with timbrel and psalm;
or look to the grave of Lazarus, where Mary and Martha stood with Him who
was the Resurrection and the Life. Do we ask more modern instances, stand
under the open heavens and remember how Caroline Herschel shared the
vigils of their illustrious explorer--open the pages of Neander, and think
of her whose devotedness made a pleasant home of his otherwise solitary
study, and encouraged him in his noble work of tracing out the progress of
the divine life throughout all the mazes of theological controversy, and
making church history a book of the heart, instead of the disputatious
understanding. Do we need more--only conjecture the number of cases nearer
at hand in which youth have been counselled and helped on through years of
preparation to their calling or profession by a sacrifice that looked not
to the world for motive, and asked not of the world reward for its
success.
I need only name the crowning duty of brothers and sisters--the duty of
being mutual helpers, for this is implied in what we have said of
consideration and confidence. They whom God has so united should stand by
each other in every worthy way--not selfishly exacting favors, but earnest
to do good. Too often the contrary has indeed been the case, and history
in most conspicuous passages, from the death of Abel and the exposure of
Joseph to the wars of the Plantagenets and the feuds of the Bourbons,
shows that strifes are bitterest when nearest home, and "a brother
offended is indeed harder to be won than a strong city, and their
contentions are like the bars of a castle." Less conspicuous, because less
monstrous, are the opposite cases, and Christianity itself leads the noble
list of fraternal worthies, by presenting in its first disciples so many
who carried ties of blood into bonds of faith, and strove together to the
last for the kingdom that would make all brothers in God. The various
forms of fraternal aid need not be specified, nor the cases described in
which the death of parents or peculiar circumstances enhance the
obligation, and the responsibility of parents devolves upon the elder
children. Whatever the age, the welfare of children is closely connected
with their mutual conduct, and its power reaches not merely to the
division of time and cares, but to the highest interests of mind and
heart. Firm principle, spiritual faith, devoted purposes, act and react
collaterally with great power, and in the social as in the natural world,
it is the side light and warmth that most applies the cheering rays from
above. Happy the home where true peace dwells between kindred, and all
various gifts are held in unity of spirit! While the circle remains
unbroken, it is strong against the world. When broken it is still not
desolate, and the orphan is not without a helper. There is love enough on
earth to join with the love that has gone heavenward to make life
cheerful, and keep hope firm.
Let all apply these thoughts. Children, apply them, and be kind in all you
do and say. Youth, apply them, and be thoughtful where you are often
tempted to be reckless. Elders, apply them, and never allow care or
worldliness to chill the better affections of early days. Deep in the
heart let the old home live, and its pleasant memories, brightened by
kindly offices, open ever into immortal hopes. Old things must pass away,
but from the Christian they can only pass away by being all made new--new
in a spirit, that remembers best when progressing most, and crowns all
friendships with charity divine.
Marriage.
MARRIAGE.
It is a remarkable fact, that He who came to be the Saviour from sin,
whose name is coupled with the sorrow that he would alleviate, began his
public ministry at a marriage, and gave the first proof of his powers
amidst its festivities. Yet why wonder at it--for where should the Gospel
begin its work if not with the union that founds the family and should
secure every social and moral good? How, moreover, could the genius of
Christianity better show itself than by such a practical rebuke of the
asceticism that scorned the social affections, and would make of life a
ghostly austerity, just as if man were heavenly by being unearthly? It
needs no great ingenuity to imagine our Lord's feelings, as with his
kindly and majestic thought he looked upon that scene, and gave his
blessing to the youth and maiden who were probably of his own kin. He saw
all the serious and trying aspects of human life even in its best estate,
yet none the less gave them joy upon their union.
It is well that he was at that feast. The ages since have remembered his
presence, and his sacred name, heard still at the marriage, deepens its
memory, and consecrates its joy. The two ideas thus connected in fact are
connected in principle, and the moralist need not in any enlightened
community fear to speak of the Christian view of marriage, or care at all
either for the giggling levity that sees nothing solemn in the subject, or
for the sanctimonious gravity, that considers religion profaned by being
made practical. There are some difficulties in the way of a frank
treatment of the subject; I know our customs do not favor the homely
simplicity of the language of the Bible in the discussion of marriage, and
he must be very adventurous who undertakes to use the plain speech of the
old divines, whether in the quaint aphorisms of Thomas Fuller or the
jewelled periods of Jeremy Taylor. Yet it is not well to be very
fastidious or mystify any subject by ingenious circumlocution, and we
propose to say some plain words on the relation of husbands and wives in
continuation of these thoughts upon home duties.
* * * * *
Not much need be said upon the foundation of this relation. It rests
clearly upon the will of God, the best good of the parties, and the
welfare of society.
As the Creator and Preserver of mankind, as the Lord of Nature and the
Father of Spirits, God has made us social beings, and decreed that the
most important association should be a lasting one. The natural law, which
in lower creatures establishes a transient union, enacts the permanence of
the higher relation, and when profoundly studied agrees with the precepts
of Revelation and the results of the best experience.
God's will is clearly shown in the effect of marriage upon the moral
condition of the parties themselves. It is generally essential to their
true life--to the proper development of their affections and faculties.
Under good Providence, it is the school of the heart, the motive to the
most laudable exertion and sacrifice. There are persons indeed whose
peculiar duties may exempt them from its cares,--scholars, devotees,
philanthropists, who may give their whole heart to their chosen
speciality, and make of science, religion or humanity their family and
home. Yet these are not the general rule, and even these generally prove
that the peculiar power acquired by concentrating their whole mind upon a
single pursuit gives them force at the expense of breadth of culture, and
may be morbid because preternatural. The monk and nun, in the convent or
out of it, have done noble things, and every faithful memory must bless
them for it--but not the noblest things. They have shown much mercy, yet
quite as much spiritual pride. If they have fed the poor, they have framed
the Mass Book and the Confessional. If they have cared for the orphan,
they have also invented infant damnation and the Inquisition, insisting on
hell hereafter for all not baptized by their priesthood, and devising a
hell here below for all heretics against their creed. Unmarried people
ruled Christendom for a thousand years, and that they did not rule in
wisdom, the Bible, history, and our best modern culture all declare. Nay,
the very sage of modern celibacy, Swedenborg, gave years of his life and
the chief labors of his pen to prove, that the best wisdom comes from
minds united conjugially, imbuing thought with affection, and informing
affection with thought, and so best interpreting the God in Christ. They
who may be puzzled by his mystical lore will have no difficulty with the
more practical argument, or refuse to allow that the most healthy thought
and feeling, the most comprehensive culture, frequents the home which a
true marriage makes.
"Marriage," says Jeremy Taylor, "is the mother of the world, and preserves
kingdoms and fills cities and churches and heaven itself. Celibate, like
the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but
sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like
the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower,
and labors, and unites into societies and republics, and sends out
colonies, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the
interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath
designed the present constitution of the world."
To carry out the argument and show the necessity of this relation to due
provision for children, to the peace and purity of society at large, would
but lead us into common-places that can as well be spared. Better pass on
and speak of the nature and duties of the relation in question.
* * * * *
It differs from the other relations that we have thus far considered,
first of all in the fact, that it is elective or voluntary. The tie is one
of choice, not of blood, and of course this fact of itself speaks to
reason and conscience to stir themselves in the choice, instead of leaving
it to a giddy eye or a silly ear. The relation, moreover, is exclusive,
and in this fact it is distinguished from all ties of blood and all other
ties of choice. Again it is entire--extending to all the interests of
human life. Elective, exclusive, entire, marriage is thus the most
momentous of human relations. Decalogue, Gospel, Providence, experience,
all declare it such, and rest upon an act of choice the only obligation
that brooks no rival and allows no limitation.
In accordance with the tenderness and dignity of the relation, the ruling
sentiment and correspondent duties must be. Of the sentiment, more than
filial or parental love, more than brotherhood, for which friendship is an
inadequate name, and which at once fascinates by natural affinities and
binds with the sacredness of religion, I have no elaborate analysis to
give. We escape at once the peril of maudlin sentimentality and
metaphysical abstraction, by speaking of the sentiment in the practical
fruits, which best show its nature.
* * * * *
We say first of all, that husband and wife should be true to each
other--true first and last. Wo to them, if they begin their relation with
a lie, either spoken or acted. They promise to love, honor and cherish
each other, and they lie abominably in the sight of God and their own
consciences, if they nullify the solemn promise by capricious levity or
sordid selfishness. Full liberty of conscience must be allowed for the
action of various minds, temperaments, circumstances, and not all
dispositions are to be judged by the same degree of the moral thermometer.
Yet of all diversities of gifts, this statement holds good, that marriage
begins in an impious falsehood, if the parties do not regard each other
with affection and respect, and do not mean to be mutual helpers. An
earth-born impulse should not steal a sacred name, nor a mercenary bargain
intrude its traffic into precincts more sacred than the temple courts. The
sale of a human creature under the marriage ring is more degrading because
more voluntary than under the auctioneer's hammer, and God will not
withhold his verdict against the profanation of his altars by such outrage
against nature and the Gospel.
The beginning is true, when the bond is sincerely assumed, and spirit and
truth go fully together when the whole mind and heart agree in a
congeniality without alloy and without misgiving.
True in the beginning, husband and wife are to be true in their progress
together. Of that gross falsity against which God launches an express law
of the Decalogue, and of whose curse on the offender and the victim, so
many wretched lives and homes are the providential commentary, I need not
speak with minuteness. Fidelity demands more than any negative
policy--demands truthfulness throughout the whole relation, the confidence
that will not mask its face or thought in reserve, and will deem it a
fraud to confer with any third party upon any matter belonging in its
nature to the two. It is the beginning of bitter sorrow, when this limit
is overstepped, and that enamel of mutual confidence is broken, which kind
Heaven has given for the protection of so delicate a nerve.
Nor does truthfulness end here. It must be positive in word and in
action--prompting the parties to share their thoughts and plans together,
and to prove by devotion to each other's welfare the truth of what they
say. We spare the digression to many satirists so attractive, and saying
nothing of the cheats of married life, whether the frauds of selfishness
or the wiles of overfondness, we are better pleased to leave the other
aspect of the picture uppermost, and speak of God's blessing upon all who
keep their truth by being true as well as kind.
* * * * *
We add now a second duty of married persons--one that has a very prosaic
sound, touching a matter so near the springs of feeling. We say that
husband and wife should be reasonable--reasonable that they may be true in
fact as well as in purpose. Feeling of itself, even when healthy, is a
poor guide, sadly blind without reason. Whether it go with love or
indifference, folly carries misery into the home. The proverb is true
enough--
"A stone is heavy and the sand weighty,
But a fool's wrath is heavier than both;"
and we might add, a fool's love is quite as heavy as his wrath. We speak
not of the folly, which is a natural misfortune, but that of minds
befooling themselves by levity, or dissipation, or idleness. Nothing
wears better than good sense, and nothing is more essential to permanent
congeniality and usefulness. It is sometimes a stern censor, but only
because it wishes to be an honest friend. Let married persons take it for
their counsellor and it will settle for them many questions, which inflame
self-will and disturb love itself. They need above all others to be
reasonable, to look to reason with all its revealed lights as the
interpreter of God's will to them, and of their own relation to each
other. It is a great thing for them to start in life with reasonable views
of the most common-place arrangements of the household. How much
disappointment, and bitterness, and sin, come from unreasonable views of
expense, and who will undertake to estimate the amount of domestic misery
resulting from household extravagance? The dress of many a wife, and the
wine account of many a husband has been the ruin of the family. Let every
couple start with a fair understanding as to what they can afford to
spend, and keep sacredly within the limit. If the world laughs at their
simplicity, they can well afford to laugh at the world's folly, and time
will be very likely to put the laugh upon the right side. Much might be
said of the deplorable influence of the extravagant notions of most young
women in preventing thoughtful men from taking the risks of marriage, and
we hazard nothing in saying that the worst vices of cities are closely
connected with the growth of feminine extravagance. America will lose her
birthright and have no trace of the old domestic order, if the folly runs
through the land, and most girls are brought up to exact more expense
than the average returns of industry and talent can earn.
Good sense, that honest counsellor, will save the parties from all
controversy about prerogative, will interpret their peculiar jurisdictions
duly; teaching the man to take the lead without magisterial assumption, to
be the guardian without playing the tyrant; teaching the woman to follow
his fortunes without being his slave, and to accept his deference without
becoming his imbecile toy; exhibiting both in their likeness and
difference, equals and not equals, so that the twain are made one by a due
balance of gifts and harmony of contrasts.
Is there not need of urging with some emphasis the worth of reasonable
relations between husband and wife? Are they not too ready to make a
compromise of follies--the one annoyed by having her tastes and habits
reviewed in the strong light of a masculine understanding--the other
irritated at having his hard worldliness criticised by feminine refinement
or sensibility--the two sometimes settling the difficulty by
non-interference--the one left to extravagance and frivolity, if she will
consent not to insist upon having her husband's time or thought--the other
allowed to drudge as he will, if he will not intrude his utilitarianism
into her sphere, or apply common sense to the charming follies that devour
the dollars and the days. It is all wrong, and no gifts of fortune can
make up for the want of thoroughly rational companionship between parties
so allied, and so apt to belittle each other by triviality. Both are
gainers by it, and intellectually as well as morally--the more gainers as
in generous studies of nature, art, history, society, they take a common
interest in the enlarging and ennobling fields of thought, and their
habitual confidence makes them educators of each other. Without being
alarmed by the valiant Minervas who brandish their flashing spears from
reform platforms, and declare an independence at which the old
Revolutionary signers would have stood aghast, we believe that the most
thorough practical discipline is to be found in this home school, and the
enlargement of feminine perception and the refining of masculine vigor,
would advance vastly under such a culture. There would be a better mutual
understanding of the two great domains of life, and a holy alliance
between the two great families of minds. In plain language, if husband and
wife would advise with each other fully on all important subjects, the
robust understanding would be much helped by the quick wit, and fewer
foolish things, far fewer evil things would be done in the world. In
phrase more ideal, yet equally true, if insight were better allied with
argument--ready sensibility with executive strength--nice perception with
comprehensive judgment, reason would have a new avatar on earth, and the
light of God would shine as never before in its beauty and its power into
each household, and over the great globe.
* * * * *
One more aspect of the class of duties before us now, we have to state,
and one that comprises and carries out every other. They who marry are to
live united in all the interests and purposes of existence.
The most obvious ground of union is the maintenance of the home and the
welfare of the family. The order of Providence seems to require the one to
provide by his labor or enterprise the means of livelihood, and the other
to see that they are properly used. As manners are simple, and fortunes
limited, the union of interests here is a very grave matter, and
inefficiency or self-will on either side brings discomfort, perhaps
wretchedness. As manners are refined, and luxuries abound, the same unity
of minds is equally essential to give grace and true worth to the home.
Let each respect the other in the several spheres, and combine to make
both what they should be. Let not a man's laborious gains be squandered in
folly, nor a wife's faithful care be disparaged as trivial. To use a
homely word with a sacred meaning, who will not ask a blessing on good
housekeeping? Is it not one of the fine as well as the useful arts--do not
its very utilities like the fountain of living water sparkle into beauty?
Happy they who know more of it than the tender mercies of hotels and
boarding-houses reveal. They do _not_ learn it well, unless they mingle
faith with their economies, and keep the home in divine peace, as well as
in worldly thrift. A home divided against itself cannot stand. Who shall
keep it one save He in whom alone all souls can have the unity of the
spirit and the bond of peace, and whose blessing is needed quite as much
in a ducal palace as in the plainest farm-house?
How shall we urge at length this point of union, or illustrate its bearing
upon all interests, plans, and hopes? It is a great thing for two frail
natures to live as one for life long. Two harps are not easily kept always
in tune, and what shall we expect of two harps each of a thousand strings?
What human will or wisdom cannot do, God can do, and His Providence is
uniting ever more intimately, those who devoutly try to do the work of
life and enjoy its goods together. For them there is in store a respect
and affection--a peace and power, all unknown in the heyday of young
romance. Experience intertwines their remembrances and hopes in stronger
cords, and as they stand at the loom of time, one with the strong warp,
the other with the finer woof, the hand of Providence weaves for them a
tissue of unfading beauty and imperishable worth. A blessing on the brave
and gentle spirit of the elect poet of our time, Alfred Tennyson, for
speaking in his exquisite verse a truth that might too much task our
prosaic analysis:--
"For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse; could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this
Not like to thee, but like in difference;
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breath, nor fail in childward care:
More as the double-natured Poet each:
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other even as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men:
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm:
Then springs the crowning race of humankind."
"It is the worst clandestine marriage," said old Thomas Fuller, "when God
is not invited to it, wherefore, beforehand beg his gracious assistance."
Equally bad, we add, is the marriage, where His presence is not retained,
and they who at first sought His blessing do not hold to it ever to keep
them true and thoughtful, to lift them into a union to which the Beloved
Son was not ashamed to compare His own communion with souls. Perfection on
earth we may not ask, nor call a hasty word or impatient thought
unpardonable. They who love much must expect to forgive something and
forbear sometimes. But this may be expected and is demanded, that they who
take each other's welfare in charge should never do any intentional
unkindness, or fail of aught that may be done for the other's welfare.
This may be expected and is demanded, that when the tie that binds them is
severed by the only power that can fitly part them, and they are to part
at death--they should look back with mutual blessing to the hour of their
first union, be assured that through all vicissitudes and infirmities,
they have tried to make each other better and happier, and that they have
learned of Him whose name at their Cana made their wedding sacred, to
trust in the realm where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but
are as the angels of God.
Shrink not from applying the truth now before us to ourselves. Parents,
apply it, and in training your sons and daughters use good sense upon a
subject so often left to utter folly. They talk and think about it enough
in a certain way, and with such poor aids as trashy novels and paltry
gossip. Let them think and talk about it wisely, and let them not, if you
can help it, learn wisdom at the cost of wretchedness. Respect Heaven's
own laws, and do not allow the world's fashions and tyrannies to get the
better of reason and conscience in controlling the most important of
destinies. Husbands and wives, apply the troth--allow no routine to chill
affection--no monotony to break down thoughtfulness. If the envious years
should not allow you to celebrate your golden or even your silver wedding,
live while you may in the wisdom which is the word of love, and the worth
of it is beyond silver or gold or rubies.
Our Friends.
OUR FRIENDS.
Every important word in human language is of itself a chapter of history,
and if we could read it rightly would tell us the mind of all the ages
that have shaped its form, and all the individuals who have given its
meaning. Starting from the beginning, every such word passes from century
to century, nation to nation, and makes of itself a medium as universal as
the air which forms its tones. We cannot open our mouths, in any kind or
honest way, without declaring the creed of humanity, that began with man's
creation, and has been enlarged or exalted by every sage and benefactor of
our race. What word that is applied to men expresses this creed more than
that of "friend?" From the very first, men have called each other friends,
and our Saviour did not create, but developed the sense of the term, when
he called his disciples friends. In the language in which Jesus was
educated, the word flowed in the melody of David so true to friendship and
to faith, and in the sentences of Solomon, never forgetful in his keenest
prudence of the worth of friends. In the language which the evangelists
borrowed from Greece, the word had won to itself many a classic charm, and
in passing from the conversations of Socrates to the gospel of Christ, it
deepened its meaning without damping its joy. St. John took from his
Master's lips more than Plato took from the mouth of Socrates, when that
evangelist penned the words, "I have called you friends." This holy
sanction has not been forgotten, nor has Christ's spirit left the word.
Every age fills it anew with meaning, as the golden chalice from age to
age is filled anew at the altar. Daily life and high art and letters show
its power. It is breathed in many a song and hymn of home affections and
fireside companionship. To what pathos it subdues the majestic muse of
Milton in his lament for Lycidas--to what solemnity it lifts the wayward
heart of Shelley in his elegy on Adonais--and when since the Hebrew harp
that thrilled such sorrow at the death of David's friend, has there been a
holier and lovelier tribute to friendship than in the offering which in
our utilitarian age the genius of Tennyson has laid on the tomb of Arthur
Hallam? These are great instances indeed, but they speak what all may
feel. Nay, what is the secret of the power of the poet or sage, except
that he can best say what comes home to us all?
Friends,--We have and must have some whom we call such. Happy are we if
they can be truly so called. It is not for us to choose, whether we shall
have friends at all or in any sense, but it is ours to choose, whether we
shall have them in the right sense. All people, however depraved, will
have some associates whose company they to some extent enjoy, and he who
cares for nobody and for whom nobody cares, may be set aside from the
human family as essentially monstrous. Of monsters we are not treating,
but of men, and with our common nature in view, I speak now of the duties
of friends.
* * * * *
This relation is founded in the will of God and the being of man. God has
made us dependent upon each other for protection and comfort. The
dependence is not limited by family ties alone, but extends to a large
circle, in some measure indeed to all with whom we deal or speak. Nor is
it confined to material interests. Friendship is as much a moral fact
under Providence as light or gravitation is a physical fact. We like to
see and talk with people for the pleasure of their society, and are
unhappy when long away from those we know best. God has made this to be so
in the structure of our nature, and His work as Creator has been
constantly carried out by His providential care for society and all its
affinities.
Our need of friends shows His designing will, and His designing will is
all the clearer as this need is well supplied. In fact, we cannot be truly
ourselves without society. Our thoughts and feelings cannot fully come out
apart from congenial companionship. It cheers us, it quickens our powers,
stirs our purposes, and the very best things that have been done in the
world prove its worth. Christ himself needed it, rejoiced in it,
consecrated it. As His disciples went forth two and two to found the
heavenly kingdom, the social element kept company with the religious in
their own hearts, and in their creed. The divine charity which the gospel
inspired, cherished personal friendships as well as general humanity. The
grim hermit, in an age whose faith gloried in sacrificing companionship to
piety, was glad to know that other persons like himself were in the same
wilderness, and would have been frantic at the very idea of being the only
person living in the world. His lonely cell was many a time lighted up by
images of friends still loved.
A freer age has brought out anew the friendship of the gospel, and little
as enlightened people nowadays may be inclined to put on the dress and
phrases of the Quaker, there has probably never been a time when so many
accepted the essential ideas which led George Fox, William Penn and their
associates to reject the old names and forms, and call the Christian
Church simply a society of friends. There is a kindly feeling over the
world now, and much of the best hope of humanity rests upon the fact, that
so many judicious and influential people of every land know each other
pleasantly and wish each other well. So friendship even in this sinful
world is showing God's will for us, bringing out our own faculties and
fulfilling the divine plans for mankind.
* * * * *
The sentiment, that animates the relation, needs little definition or
analysis. In some sense, all understand it, although its best sense a
true life only can teach. They are friends, who are attached to each
other, with any kind of liking or loving. The attachment may begin in
interest, as with parties in business or in pleasure, as with the votaries
of some art or science, and as the interest or the pleasure is low or
elevated, the attachment will shape its character. But however it begins,
it never continues well and becomes genuine, unless the parties stand upon
the same platform of principle, agree in what is highest and best, and in
some way come within the scope of the Master's sense of a true friend,
when he said, "I have not called you servants--I have called you friends."
Undoubtedly they are the best friends who differ much in incidental traits
and agree in the essentials of character. Their likeness and their
unlikeness brings them together. Their likeness makes them congenial, and
their unlikeness makes them instructive and interesting to each other.
Herein they follow the law of elective affinities, that runs through
nature, and which makes a certain contrast essential to true harmony.
Elective, yet not exclusive or entire, as the relation is, friends choose
each other freely without ties of kindred blood, and however cordial the
choice may be, it does not imply exclusive regard or entire union of
interests. Affection, as well as esteem, enters into the sentiment, but in
comparison with relations of blood and marriage, the element of esteem is
generally larger in its composition than that of affection. It is esteem
growing into affection rather than affection growing into esteem.
Come now to the practical point of view, and consider the duties of
friends for ourselves. We have and desire to have friends, those who are
such in general and those who are such particularly. What are we to do to
keep or make them?
First of all we are to be sincere. Herein we must stand directly at issue
with the fashionable world, that looks upon all sociability as an affair
of manner, and manner as but one branch of costume--the mere dress of the
tongue and eyes and looks. Let manner be respected, as it should be, yet
what is it in its best estate but the simple and thoughtful expression of
a gentle heart and a noble mind? It cannot be put on like a cloak, but
must grow out as foliage and bloom from the life. It is so generally with
manners in promiscuous society, but especially so between friends. They
must be sincere alike for the sake of giving and of gaining the true goods
of friendship. The heart itself thus acts happily, delighting in the free
utterance of its convictions away from the world's folly and harshness. It
craves a congenial sphere to breathe freely and fully. Sincere alike in
his playful talk and serious conservation, a man finds his nature
expanding as his life opens under genial influences refreshing as sunshine
and dew. Sincerity indeed needs a grain of caution, and a thoughtful
person will not tell his whole mind always. But judicious reserve need not
be won at the cost of truth or by the sin of hypocrisy. Taught discretion
by some experience of the ridicule or the deceit in store for garrulous
frankness, a true friend will be sincere always, yet need not feel
himself called upon to open his whole heart to those unable or unwilling
to give his confidence hospitality. His spirit will not be without answer.
Truth will sit upon his lips and win truth for him. The true will find the
true.
But not only are we to be sincere for the vast comfort and gain of free,
genial companionship, but for its direct service to others. If we wish to
know ourselves, we should be willing to help others know themselves by
telling them the truth. Says Lord Bacon, "there is no such flatterer as a
man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self
as the liberty of a friend." It is easy enough to get more or less than
the truth regarding our failings, and friends often fret and spoil each
other by a mutual retail of compliments and scandals which they make a
business of collecting to be used in congratulation or condolement. What
is better in view of such tale-bearing than a sincere counsellor, who at
due times will tell the simple and entire truth, and above flattery and
calumny will give honest advice upon faults of character and errors of
conduct,--mingling kindness with caution, and never so encouraging as when
thoroughly frank? This is a nice point, and one full of difficulties, yet
the point is a main one, and a brave, generous heart need not fear the
difficulties. No man is a true friend, who is not ready to be a faithful
adviser, willing to wound self-love in its tenderest part, and give
passing pain for the sake of lasting blessing. Not often and never with
any assumption must he do this, but humbly as before the searcher of
hearts, and in view of the benign and majestic being who washed his
disciples' feet before telling them of their defects, and opening to them
the fulness of his wisdom and love.
Again, friends should be earnest as well as sincere--earnest not merely in
feeling or temperament, but in the aims of life. What are we good for to
others, unless we have heart ourselves for what is worthy, and are trying
to be and do something for whatsoever is true, honest, pure and lovely,
and of good report? A man is worth little or nothing to others unless he
is earnest for worth in itself. What more frequent cause is there of the
too frequent flatness of what passes for society, than the want of
earnestness in its members, the prevalence of a monotonous mediocrity of
thought and manner, which makes people uninteresting because they are not
interested in much of any thing sensible or elevating? How much power
there is in the true companionship to which each brings the zest of his
own pursuit, the enthusiasm of his own favorite aim, and all are made
wiser and happier by the thought and spirit of each. Part of the influence
of such friendship is seen at once in cheerful looks and renewed courage.
The better part is not seen, for wherever persons really in earnest meet
together, no matter what their calling or topic may be, there is a power
among them, that brings their heart into closer relation with the eternal
heart, and whether conscious of it or not, men go away confirmed in
faith--deepened, whatever their creed, in the sense that God is, and his
spirit is abroad among his people.
The nobler their pursuit or their habitual aims, the greater power do
friends give and take by their earnestness--the better the spirit which
they bring to their personal intercourse. They are more interesting as
individuals, as they are mutually interested in matters above themselves,
and instructive and attractive to each other. Every honorable interest
unites those who cherish it, and beautifully has Jeremy Taylor said, "He
that does a base thing in zeal for his friend, burns the golden thread
that ties their hearts together." Of every honorable interest the quaint
old poet's saying upon honor itself holds good:--
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.
What earnestness for every generous aim filled the heart of him who sat at
the table of communion, inflamed the earthly minds around with heavenly
faith and fervor, as he bade them be one with him in God, after he had
said, "I have called you friends." Blessing repeated in some measure where
any sincere and earnest people interchange thoughts and feelings! Blessing
written on all true companionship since Jesus lived and died!
Need we add kindness to sincerity and earnestness as essentials of
friendship, for is it not implied? Implied, certainly, although there is a
certain kind of earnest sincerity, that lacks the tenderness which this
word expresses. It expresses none other than the crowning grace of charity
in its familiar application. Kindness, genuine and between persons of
congenial minds, watchful to yield its balms and dews, when fortune is
sharp or the world is a weariness, instant ever with a sympathy unaffected
and unobtrusive in trouble and in joy--living commentary upon the sacred
sentence:--
"A faithful friend is the medicine of life,
And they that fear the Lord shall find him."
Then griefs by being communicated are less and joys greater. "Indeed,"
says South, "sorrow like a stream loses itself in many channels, and joy,
like a ray of the sun, reflects with a greater ardor and quickness when it
rebounds upon a man from the breast of a friend."
In such kindness there will be an element of magnanimity which will check
the selfish calculation that measures regard by gold, and exchanges
relations of affinity for bonds of profit and loss. We will not say there
is no friendship in trade, but that it is incongruous to make trade of
friendship. The more the relation is one of reciprocal sentiment, and the
less it is unbalanced by patronage or dependence, the more it moves in its
own element and yields its own reward.
The more likely too it is to be lasting, and crown sincerity, earnestness,
and kindness, with constancy. Too many things there are to break the unity
of our lives, and scatter into fragments our book of experience. Yet some
ties we need, and may have, that run their silken thread through its
various chapters, and make a volume of the leaves else fragmentary as the
Sibyl's. True friends are such ties, and whether of our kindred or not,
they can be won by friendliness and kept only by constancy. Some deemed
such may fall off and become indifferent, perhaps false, but who that has
any heart cannot feel happy in some form of constant kindness, and say
with the Scripture and from experience:
"A friend loveth at all times,
And a brother is born for adversity."
Happiness indeed, when as we go through life and take its ups and downs,
and look upon its ever-enlarging horizon, we can meet betimes and often
some one or more whom we have known from youth, and whose very faces and
voices express our best remembrances and hopes. As rising above dull
etiquette, we call them by their familiar names, and say William, or
Henry, or Mary, or Ellen, grim time seems to drop his inexorable scythe,
and the roses that appeared withered in our path bloom out as amaranths of
immortality. Power, as well as pleasure, comes from the interview,
especially if, under the incentive, noble friendship gives its
fascinations to wisdom, and thus stirred we review our lives closely,
scrutinize our ways seriously, and our whole experience rises up under a
new charm to warn us of evil and urge us to good, ready to say
religiously:
"Change not a friend for any good, by no means,
Neither a faithful brother for the gold of Ophir."
Do we think enough of this whole subject of companionship--enough of it
for ourselves and our children? In some way, perhaps, we may think enough
of being in society, and we may have a sharp eye on our list of
acquaintance, be eager enough for the silly race of ostentatious eating,
drinking, and dressing, that is the life of our semi-barbarous fashion, or
for the frivolous social circles, where friendship is part of the play,
and they who flatter each other to the face, laugh at each other as soon
as the back is turned; and in perhaps honeyed words character is depicted
as sharply as if cannibals had but changed their policy, and brought their
teeth to bear in a different way, not upon the flesh but upon the life.
Perhaps we have a better ambition, and desire for ourselves and our
children the society of the refined, and wise, and good. This is well, but
one point must not be overlooked. There is no getting into really good
society but by growing into it. We may win entrance to the houses and
tables of distinguished people perhaps, but our real friendship with
persons of sterling character must depend on our character and culture.
Ask honestly--what are we, what have we made and are making of ourselves
and our children? And our worth will be the precise measure of the
friendship we deserve and are likely to have. Here is motive for the best
culture of the mind and heart. A man's own essential character--what he
thinks, knows, is, and can do,--it is this that opens to him true
companionship, and by a law as universal as that of specific gravity, he
rises or falls to his own level. Is it not worth a life's effort to be
worthy to win and enjoy the intimate companionship of choice minds?
Do we think of this in the training of our children? Do we try to educate
their social affections morally and intellectually--strive to make our
houses attractive to sensible people, to give our sons distaste for
profligates, and our daughters disgust for fops and fools? Are we laying
the foundations of sincere and elevating relations that shall put the due
check upon the evil communications that so corrupt good manners? If not,
think seriously of the neglect, and do better, as you fear God and love
the best in the life he has given us.
Cheerfully, gratefully, leave the subject as we consider what He has done
for us, and ask His blessing on all whom we hold dear. God bless our
friends! Bless them all in their widest and their inmost circle; bless all
the kindly people with whom we have interchanged pleasant words, and who
more than the landscape have reflected in any way his light and love;
bless all who from age or wisdom have taught us truth and reverence,
instructors, guardians, counsellors, pastors, on earth or gone from the
earth; bless those nearer sharers of our lot, sincere, earnest, tender,
constant companions, whose names are familiar at our table and sacred in
our prayers; bless Him, whose gospel crowns all good will with its divine
love, and calling all friends who lived in God's love, leaves to all the
benediction of His parting prayer: "Holy Father! keep through thine own
name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are."
Master and Servant.
MASTER AND SERVANT.
We are careful how we treat our equals--very careful how we treat our
superiors. Do we think seriously enough of our treatment of inferiors? We
ought to think of this, for their sake and our own--for their sake,
because they are so much under our own influence; for our own sake,
because we deserve just such treatment from those above us as we give to
those beneath us? Do any try to escape the latter inference by denying the
premises and saying that they are their own masters and ask no favors from
any one? This will not do, nor will any petulant rhetoric change the
solemn facts of the Divine government. We all have superiors as well as
inferiors; in some points we are all masters, in some points all servants.
* * * * *
It is the law of God certainly, that there should be inequalities of
gifts, and from these diverse gifts, whether of talent or opportunity or
both, come varieties of place and influence. There is no such thing as
perfect equality in the universe, except in the mathematician's calculus,
or the metaphysician's theory. Neither God nor man has ever made two
things exactly alike, and the diversity that appears between two blades of
grass from the same stalk, or two needles from the same mechanism, is of
course greater as we rise in the scale to creatures, so various and
complex in faculties and discipline as mankind. Think not, however, that
this inequality favors pride on the one hand, and sycophancy on the other.
The Creator has more wisely adjusted the checks and balances of his
government. In some respects, he has made every man dependent upon his
fellows. The greatest sage needs to learn something from the peasant, and
to receive much from his toil. The king must serve the country which he
professes to rule, and the best wisdom of his counsellors must serve the
throne. The merest glance at society round us shows an endless gradation
of varied service. The ablest lawyer is quite as much bound to devote his
talents to his client's cause, as his client is bound to requite his
labor. The merchant prince, creditor to many, has creditors also of his
own. He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's
freeman; likewise also, he that is called, being free, is Christ's
servant. In some sense, then, every man is a servant, and in some sense,
too, every servant is a master, or in something commands.
Is not this arrangement well? The fact that it is so essential to the
Divine government would prove this; but can we not see its good fruits?
The difference of relation calls out the various faculties of our being,
and life, like nature itself, teaches us to use our eyes and minds by
looking and striving above, below, and around. If we would bring out the
skill and strength of the hand, we must lift up, as well as hold on, and
so, by dealing with things high and low its muscles are pliant and strong.
It is the same with all our powers, and there is no man, who is thoroughly
educated or brought out, who does not obey as well as command. The motto
of the Black Prince, "Ich Dien," "I serve," is written on every true man's
standard, and no man is fit to rule who has not learned to obey.
Society in all ages, and especially in our own, has been testing this
truth, and nothing is more obvious now than the general striving after a
truer adjustment of mutual service. It haunts us at every turn. In the
topic of work and wages, it is the problem of the political economist,--in
the relation of people and ruler, it agitates every government on
earth,--in the question of master and servant, it comes home to every
family. Our position towards it now is a very simple and practical one.
Carrying out our plan of treating home duties, we come now to the
treatment of inferiors, especially those of our own household, or the
relation of masters and servants.
* * * * *
We start with a clear principle, that defines at once the sentiment that
belongs to this relation. Both parties have the same essential nature, and
we use the term inferiors simply as denoting the fact of service, and the
attendants of that fact. The servant may be, and often is, a better man
than his master--sometimes a wiser one. Yet his position, in a very
obvious sense, is inferior, and whilst having privileges of his own, he
is subject in his sphere of service to his master's orders. This
subjection implies no surrender of moral dignity. The service should be
given as from man to man, and so received; and the difference of position
affects the office, and not the moral worth of the parties. Even the bond
servant, according to St. Paul, is not to be deprived of his moral
dignity, but is to be treated as under God a serving brother. As much as
this is asserted now by the moralists of slavery, such as Dr. Thornwell
and his school, who maintain that purchase does not make the buyer owner
of the slave, but merely of his labor. Surely less than this position,
which is so speciously assumed to justify bond-service, should not be
allowed to the servant who is freely such. Let the service be what it may,
and implying whatever lowliness of gifts, so long as it can be honestly
rendered, it implies no degradation; and a good servant is morally to be
respected as much as his master. Premising this, and remembering that
whatever is said of one kind of service has a bearing upon all kinds, we
are ready to look practically upon the duties of the relation.
* * * * *
It is most profitable for us, in addressing a community who employ so many
people in their homes and business, to treat the subject chiefly as it
bears upon masters or employers, although in doing this the duty of
servants must needs be implied. This is implied, certainly, in the
position which we lay down at starting, when we say, that it is the
master's duty first of all, to have in himself the fidelity which he
requires from his servant. Here both parties meet, and are called to be
trusty. The best examples and the plainest reasonings establish this
ground. Does a great commander, like Washington, send an officer or
soldier upon some difficult expedition, he asks of his inferior to be true
to the principle which he accepts, and his whole tone and manner says, "I
serve the country in my way, and so do you under my orders and in your
way." Our Saviour himself cherished the very allegiance which he required
of his followers; nay, he grounded its obligation upon the very nature of
the Divine mind, when he bade them work, while it is day, and said, "My
Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Whenever a master or employer takes
lower ground than that of mutual trust, he puts himself below his servant.
If he professes only to follow his own caprices, and yet asks his servant
to be faithful, he exacts fidelity, whilst he cherishes caprice, and so in
the moral scale takes a place below his inferior.
He thus fails of setting the true example of trustiness to his servant,
and of having, by due fellow feeling, proper consideration for him. He is
like the harsh creditor in the parable, who, having first been a reckless
defaulter to the king, after having begged forgiveness for the enormous
debt of fifteen millions, turned at once upon his poor fellow-servant,
took him by the throat, and had him cast into prison for the paltry sum of
about fourteen dollars. He was a treacherous man, and so could neither
reasonably demand fidelity, nor have fellow feeling for honest misfortune.
His lot is due to every man who repudiates his solemn responsibility to
God and his neighbor, yet insists upon utter deference from those beneath
him in a capricious tyranny, which is far beneath faithful service. Every
household should learn the lesson, and wherever its most favored members
do not feel the solemn obligations of life, and live for objects beyond
their own caprices, they are rebuked by their very exactions, and should
be shamed by the very fidelity they ask. A true family will set this
matter right by teaching practically, that no wealth, nor station, nor
elegance, nullifies responsibility, and its daily method will prove that
the doctrine of stewardship is accepted in parlor and chamber before it is
preached to the basement and attic. In fact, no true man will be content
with being less useful than his servants, and certainly many an affluent
and high-minded master meets an amount of responsibility, and does an
amount of labor, chiefly mental, perhaps, compared with which the round of
domestic service is light. He is in his way trusty, and may well ask his
inferiors to be so. It is this spirit only that will effectually procure
the service we need, and provide domestics who will be friends instead of
mere hirelings; helpers in the care of our children, instead of debasers
of their speech and manners; specimens of the good servant, who, says an
old author, "is one that out of a good conscience serves God in his
master, and so hath the principle of obedience in himself."
Stating thus a duty common to both parties, we pass on to a second point,
pressing more directly upon one of them, however, and carrying out the
idea already presented. The apostle's words urge it best when he says:
"Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing
that ye also have a Master in heaven." It is probably needless to urge
this point here in its external sense, and insist upon giving fair wages
and punctual payment. It may be important for some persons, however, who
are so absorbed in their own comfort as to be almost unaware that poor
people can suffer from a cause to themselves so trifling, to be reminded
that, in dealing with the poor, small sums affect great interests, and
that great wrong is done by overlooking the value of a few days of time or
wages to people in their employ. A dollar withheld for a week from a needy
seamstress, may be a greater harm than the non-payment of thousands to
creditors rolling in wealth.
But there is a higher sense of just and equal due. Character is a great
thing, and quite as much to servant as to master. Character in service
should be sacredly respected, and it is shamefully wronged when men pass
sweeping judgment upon a whole class because they have been duped by a
portion, or, when in a feeble good nature, they are as tolerant of
falsehood as truth, of fraud as honesty. There is, indeed, sad want of
veracity and fidelity in the class most frequent in our domestic
service--the class by religion and associations almost a distinct caste in
our nation. There is also among them much kindness and industry--sometimes
wonderful self-sacrifice, and, with all their failings, their place could
not well be supplied. The greater their ignorance and obtuseness, the
more need of training them to a sense of right by setting a bounty upon
good character. It is a foul wrong to commend the thievish or lazy, in
order to be rid of them, or withhold due name to the faithful, in the hope
of retaining their services. Certainly the ages in which loyalty was the
crowning virtue have abounded in examples of devoted service, and our own
anomalous and unsettled times are not without countless instances of like
temper. Now, as of old, the apostle's word is remembered by many:
"Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord, and not unto men;
knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance.
But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done,
and there is no respect of persons."
Just to servants in appreciating their character, we are to yield them due
privileges favorable to character. We shall not, then, voluntarily hurt
them by their ready disposition to copy their masters' failings. We shall
not then, by our white lies, give them the material which so readily turns
black by a little wear. We shall not deal in inuendos and irreverence,
that so easily become ribaldry and blasphemy in passing to less dainty
lips, nor yield to an excess at our tables, which teaches drunkenness to
coarser palates. We shall be unwilling to disturb for our dependents the
quiet which we ask for ourselves on the Lord's Day; and therefore shall
dispense with needless feasting or riding on that day, shunning the too
frequent error of increasing our hospitality in entertaining guests by the
sacrifice of the religious privileges of our servants, and of estimating
the social respectability of a church by the number of rational souls who
wait at its door in companionship with horses, while lords and ladies sit
or kneel on downy cushions at the altar to speak of communion with Him who
is no respecter of persons, and of the utter damnation of all the
unbelieving and ungodly. The good master, says Thomas Fuller, remembers
the old law of the Saxon king Ina: "If a villain work on Sunday by his
lord's command, he shall be free."
Nor should this regard for the character of servants end in mere
negations. They should have the positive influence of a Christian temper
in the family, and, when arbitrary creeds do not prevent it, they should
have liberty to be present at such family devotions as may be held for the
edifying of the household. So do we interpret justice in this relation in
its bearing on fortune and character. Some might think our view very
defective, from leaving out the element of entire social equality. If by
this be meant a recognition of the moral worth of faithful servants, we
make the recognition, and deem them the equals of all whom they equal in
character. But, if social familiarity be the test of equality, it is
answer enough that this is a matter of congeniality or elective affinity,
and nothing could be more arbitrary and unjust than to force persons into
a familiarity for which their education, tastes, and labors disqualify
them. Such a course would comport as little with justice as with mercy.
Mercy,--rest upon that word. We have said that both parties should be
trusty, and have urged justice upon the master especially. We now add,
that he should merciful.
We are all frail and erring, and need great forbearance for ourselves. Why
be unwilling to bestow it on the less favored? We all make some mistakes,
and how can we expect the less intelligent to be freer from error? Why be
irritated if every thing is not done precisely to our liking? They that
forbear threatening may win better service by that fact, for nothing so
provokes carelessness and disheartens effort, as the impatience that
regards a mistake as a crime, and brands an oversight as an insult.
We ourselves are variable in health, spirits and energy, and must make
allowance for the like variation in persons probably less disciplined than
ourselves. We may show due consideration without fickleness, and kindness
without familiarity. Cruel, indeed, is the wrong that confounds the
fidelity that is struggling to do well in spite of temporary illness, with
the idleness that wantonly neglects any well-known duty. Some misgivings
very kind people may reasonably have in regard to servants in feeble
health; and the Christian
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