A Man's Value to Society Part 10

Moreover, smooth living with men is difficult because of the continual conflict with evil. Integrity can never be good friends with iniquity, nor liberty with tyranny, nor purity and sweetness with filth and foulness. There is no skill by which John can ever live in peace with Herod. Paul, the author of the ode to love, was always at war with Nero, and at last had his head shorn off. William Tell could not get along smoothly with Gesler, the tyrant who robbed the Swiss of their rights. When doves learn to live peaceably with hawks, and lambs learn how to get along with wolves, good men and true will learn how to live in peace with vice and crime. Wickedness means warfare, not peace.

Deviltry cannot be overcome by diplomacy. Not emba.s.sies, but regiments, overcome intrenched oppression. Men of integrity and refinement can have but one att.i.tude toward corruption, drunkenness, parasitism, gilded iniquity--the att.i.tude of uncompromising hostility.

Languorous, emasculated manhood may silently endure great wrongs for the sake of peace and quiet; but robust manhood never. One of the dangers of our age and nation is a tendency to conciliate wrong and smooth over wickedness through a spurious sense of charity. Genius gilds vice, and wit and brilliancy transform evil into an angel of light. Only expel dullness and make evil artistic, and it is condoned; but vice attired in the garb of a queen is as truly vice as when clothed in rags and living in squalor. To become accustomed to evil, to garnish sin, to dim and deaden sensibility to what is right and beautiful, is to extirpate manhood and become a mere lump of flesh. No man has a right to be good friends with iniquity. In a wicked world the only people who are justified in peaceable living are the people in graveyards. In an age and land like ours only men of mush and moonshine can be friends with everybody.

In view of the crime, poverty and ignorance of our age, for a man to live so that his friends can truthfully write on his tombstone, "He never had an enemy," is for him to be eternally disgraced. Such a man should never be guilty of showing his face in heaven, for he will find that the angels, at least, are his enemies. Looking toward integrity, Christ came to bring peace. Looking toward iniquity, Christ came to bring the sword. Not until every wrong has been turned to right, not until every storm has been stilled into peace, not until the fatherhood of G.o.d and the brotherhood of man have been incarnated in inst.i.tutions, will conflict cease and smooth living toward all men become an actuality.

Ambition and the clashing of interests also mitigate against smooth living. Perhaps no age has offered more powerful stimulants to ambition. The field is open to all, and the rewards are great.

Therefore Emerson's phrase, "infinite aspiration and infinitesimal performance." Contentment is the exception, aspiration is universal.

Indeed, the national temptation is ambition. An American merchant lives more in a year than an Oriental in eighty years; more in an hour than an Indian merchant in twenty-four. So powerful are the provocatives to thinking and planning that cerebral excitement is well-nigh continuous. Moving forward, the youth finds every pathway open and is told that every honor and position are possible achievements; the result is that the individual finds himself competing with all the rest of the nation. How fierce the strife! What intense rivalries! What battles between opponents! What conflicts in business!

In politics, coveting national honors, men spend months in laying out a campaign. A vast human mechanism is organized with ramifications extending through the nation. As in the olden times in the court of King Arthur, knights entered the tournament and some Lancelot clothed in steel armor rode forth to meet some Ivanhoe in mortal combat; so it is to-day when one plumed knight meets another in the political arena--one conquers, and one is killed, in that he suffers a broken heart.

In commerce the strife is not less fierce. Men literally stand over against each other like gunboats, carrying deadly missiles. If to-morrow conflict and strife should spring up in each garden--if the rose should strike its thorn into the honeysuckle; if the violet from its lowly sphere should fling mire upon the lily's whiteness; if the wheat should lift up its stalk to beat down the barley; if the robin should become jealous of the lark's sweet voice, and the oriole organize a campaign for exterminating the thrush, we should have a conflict in nature that would answer to the strife and warfare in society. The universality of the conflicts in society is indicated by the fact that England's national symbol is not a dove, but a lion; America's is an eagle, and other nations' are the leopard and the bear. In national wars, where men by years of toil have planted vineyards, reared orchards, builded houses and cities, they proceed to burn up the homes, destroy the granaries, cut down the vineyards and orchards; and these periodic public quarrels do but typify the equally destructive private feuds and troubles. Darwin thought that men have descended from animals, and some men have so literally descended. Some seem to have come through the wolf; some have the fox's cunning; some have the lion's cruelty, and some are as combative as bull-dogs. Now, it is not easy to maintain one's dignity when a little cur nips your heels behind, and a mastiff threatens you before. And some men seem to unite both elements; they run behind you and nip, they go before to bark and threaten. Under such circ.u.mstances it is not easy to live smoothly and charitably. It is easy to tame lions, but to tame men is not easy. It is easy to breast the current of rivers, but to stand against the full force of public opinion is hard. But midst all life's conflicts and clashings this task is upon us. We are to maintain peace, love our enemies, and ultimately master the art of right living with our fellows.

To all persons interested in the betterment of society comes the reflection that getting on with men is life's abiding aim and end.

Schools can teach no other knowledge comparable to this. It is important to train the child in music, to drill him in public speech, to teach him how to handle the horse and dog, how to swim and ride, the use of tools and engines, the nature and production of wealth; but it is of far greater importance that youth should be given a knowledge of men, and become a skillful student of human nature; to learn how to read the face as an open book. If the jurist studies men and their motives to find out the truth; if the physician studies men for reasons of diagnosis; if the merchant studies thinking of his profit, and the politician thinking of preferment, the citizen must understand his fellows in the interest of securing their happiness and highest welfare. Incidentally, it is important that a man should be well groomed and well kept; should be educated and refined, just as it is proper that the pipes of an organ should be decorated on the outside.

Nevertheless, the test of an organ is the melody and harmony within.

And the test of manhood is not outer polish, but inner skill in carrying his faculties. Man is only a rudimentary man when in those stages he blunders in all his meetings with his fellows, and cannot buy nor sell, vote nor converse, without harming, marring, depressing, discouraging his fellow men. In our age many books have been written similar to Lyman Abbott's volume called "The Study of Human Nature,"

and the time has fully come when each child should be made ready for life's battle beforehand, and taught how to armor himself against the tournament. When the schools have trained the child to the use of tools, given the tongue skill in speaking and the mind skill in thinking, it remains to teach him the study of men, the peculiarities of each of the five temperaments; the nature and number of the animal impulses; the use of the social and industrial impulses; the control of the acquisitive and the spiritual powers. For man's carriage of himself in the presence of fire and forest is the least of his duties.

That which will tax him and distress, and perhaps destroy him, will be the carriage of his faculties midst all the clash and conflict, the din and battle of market and street. And midst all the strife, this is to be his ideal--to bear himself toward his enemies and toward his friends, after the pattern of Him who "makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, His rain to fall upon the just and the unjust."

The measure of manhood is the degree of skill attained in the art of carrying one's self so as to pour forth upon men all the inspirations of love and hope, and to evoke good even from the meanest and wickedest of mankind. Pa.s.sing through life, the soul is to be a happiness producer and a joy distributer. Without conscious thought the violets pour forth perfume; without volition the magnet pulls the iron filings; with no purpose the candle pushes its beams of light into the darkness; and such is to be the weight of goodness in each man, that its mere presence will be felt. For the soul carries power to bless or blight; it can lift up its faculties for smiting, as an enemy lifts the hammer above the fragile vase or delicate marble; through speech man can fill all the sky with storms, or he can sweep all clouds from the horizon. The soul can take the sting out of man's anger, or it can stir up anger; it can allay strife or whet the keen edge of hatred. The thermometer is not so sensitive to heat, the barometer to weight, the photographer's plate to light, as is the soul to the ten thousand influences of its fellow men.

For majesty and beauty of subtle influence, nothing is comparable to the soul. Not the sun hanging upon the horizon has such power for flower and fruitage as has a full-orbed Christian heart, rich in all good influences, throbbing with kindness and sympathy, radiant as an angel. Great is man's skill in handling engines of force; marvelous man's control of winds and rivers; wondrous the mastery of engines and ideas. But man himself is greater than the tools he invents, and man stands forth clothed with power to control and influence his fellows, in that he can sweeten their bitterness, allay their conflicts, bear their burdens, surround them with the atmosphere of hope and sympathy.

Just in proportion as men have capacity, talent and genius, are they to be guardians, teachers, and nurses for men, bearing themselves tenderly and sympathetically toward ignorance, poverty and weakness.

All the majesty of the summer, all the glory of the storms, all the beauty of galleries, is as nothing compared to the majesty and beauty of a full-orbed and symmetrical manhood. Should there be in every village and city a conspiracy of a few persons toward this refinement and culture, this beauty and sweet Christian living, the presence of these Christ-formed persons would transform the community. One such harvestful nature carries power to civilize an entire city. We no more need to demonstrate the worth of the sane, sound, Christ-like character than we need to prove the value of the all-glorious summer, when it fills the earth with fragrance, the air with blossoms, and all the boughs with luscious fruit. Each Christian youth is to be a man-maker and man-mender. He is to help and not hurt men. This is to walk in love. This is to overcome evil with good. This is to be not a printed but a living gospel. This is to be a master of the art of right living and a teacher of the science of character building.

THE REVELATORS OF CHARACTER

"Some men move through life as a band of music moves down the street, flinging out pleasure on every side through the air, to every one far and near, that can listen."--_Beecher._

"Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling members of the body.

No man need be deceived who will study the changes of expression. When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, and sometimes asquint."--_Emerson._

XIII

THE REVELATORS OF CHARACTER

In ancient times personal property bore the owner's trademark. All flocks and herds fed together upon the common. That each might know his own, the herdsman slit the ears of his sheep, or branded his oxen with the hot iron. Afterward, as wealth increased, men extended the marks of ownership. The Emperor stamped his image into the silver coin. The Prince wrought his initial into the palace porch. The peasant moulded his name into the bricks of his cottage. One form of property was slaves. Athens had 80,000 free citizens and 400,000 bondmen. As these slaves were liable to run away, their owners branded them. Sometimes a circle was burned into the palm, or a cross upon the forehead; and often the owner's name was tattooed upon the slave's shoulder. One of the gifts of antiquity to our modern life is the use of the trademark. To-day manufacturers blow their initials in the gla.s.s; they mould the trademark in steel, and weave it in tapestries.

Lying in his dungeon, everything reminded Paul of these marks of ownership. His chains bore the Emperor's initials. The slaves that brought him food carried Nero's brand. The very bricks of his dungeon floor were stamped with the tyrant's name. But, moving out from these marks of servitude, his vision swept a wider horizon. He, too, was property. A freeman, indeed, was he, yet he was not his own. Mind and heart were stamped with G.o.d's image and superscription. No hot iron had mutilated him, but trouble had wrought refinement, and love divine had left its indelible stamp. Gone indeed the fresh, bright beauty that was his when he sat a boy at Gamaliel's feet! Since the day when the mob in Lystra had lifted stones upon him; since the time of his scourging at Philippi, he had carried the marks of martyrdom.

Suffering had plowed deep furrows in his face. But honorable were all his scars. They bore witness to his conquest over ease and self-indulgence. Dear to him these marks--they bound him to his Master, the Lord Jesus. They filled him with high hopes, for the same marks that made him a bond slave to G.o.d and immortality freed him from earth and earthly things. Musing, in kingly mood, the scarred hero exclaimed: "Let not hunger nor cold, let not the scourge nor the tyrant's threat trouble me, for I bear about in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."

Now, G.o.d hath ordained that, like Paul's, every human body shall register personal history, publishing a man's deeds, and proclaiming his allegiance to good or evil. The human face and form are clothed with dignity in that the fleshly pages of to-day show forth the soul's deeds of yesterday. Experience teaches us that occupation affects the body. Calloused hands betray the artisan. The grimy face proclaims the collier. He whose garments exhale sweet odors needs not tell us that he has lingered long in the fragrant garden. But the face and form are equally sensitive to the spirit's finer workings. Mental brightness makes facial illumination. Moral obliquity dulls and deadens the features. There never was a handsome idiot. There never can be a beautiful fool. But sweetness and wisdom will glorify the plainest face.

Physicians tell us that no intensity of disease avails for expelling dignity and majesty from a good man's countenance, nor can physical suffering destroy the sweetness and purity of a n.o.ble woman's. It is said that after his forty days in the mount Moses' face shone. All the great artists paint St. Cecilia with face uplifted, listening to celestial music, and all glowing with light, as though sunbeams falling from above had transfigured the face of the sweet singer.

Those who beheld Daniel Webster during his delivery of his oration on the Pilgrim Fathers say that the statesman's face made them think of a transparent bronze statue brilliantly lighted from within, with the luminosity shining out through the countenance.

But the eyes are the soul's chiefest revelators. Tennyson spoke of King Arthur's eyes as "pools of purest love." As there is sediment in the bottom of a gla.s.s of impure water, so there is mud in the bottom of a bad man's eye. Thus, in strange ways, the body tells the story of the soul. Health hangs its signals out in rosy cheeks; disease and death foretell their story in the hectic flush, even as reddening autumn leaves foretell the winter's heavy frost; anxious lines upon the mother's face betray her secret burdens; the scholar's pallor is the revelation of his life, while the closely knitted forehead of the merchant interprets the vexing problems he must solve.

Thinking of the pathetic sadness of Lincoln's face, all seamed as it was and furrowed with care and anxiety, Secretary Stanton said that the President's face was a living page, upon which the full history of the nation's battles and victories was written. We are told that when the Waldenses could no longer bear the ghastly cruelty of the inquisitors, they fled to the mountain fastnesses. There, worn out by suffering, the brave leader was stricken by death. Coming forth from their hiding-places, the fugitives gathered around the hero's bier.

Stooping, one lifted the hair from the forehead of the dead youth and said: "This boy's hair, grown thin and white through heroic toil, witnesseth his heroism. These, the marks of his fidelity." Thus, for those who have skill to read the writing, every great man's face is written all over with the literature of character. His body condenses his entire history, just as the Declaration of Independence is condensed into the limits of a tiny silver coin.

Calm majesty is in the face of Washington; pathetic patience and divine dignity in that of Lincoln; unyielding granite is in John Brown's face, though sympathy hath tempered hardness into softness; intellect is in Newton's; pure imagination is in Keats' and in Milton's; heroic substance is in the face of Cromwell and in that of Luther; pathetic sorrow is found in Dante's eyes; conscience and love shine in the face of Fenelon. Verily, the body is the soul's interpreter! Like Paul, each man bears about in his body the marks, either of ignorance and sin, of fear and remorse, or the marks of heroism and virtue, of love and integrity. To the gospel of the page let us add the gospel of the face.

But let none count it a strange thing that the soul within registers its experiences in the body without. G.o.d hates secrecy and loves openness. He hath ordained that nature and man shall publish their secret lives. Each seed and germ hath an instinctive tendency toward self-revelation. Every rosebud aches with a desire to unroll its petals and exhibit its scarlet secret. Not a single piece of coal but will whisper to the microscope the full story of that far-off scene when boughs and buds and odorous blossoms were pressed together in a single piece of shining crystal. The great stone slabs with the bird's track set into the rock picture forth for us the winged creatures of the olden time. When travelers through the Rocky Mountains behold the flaming advertis.e.m.e.nts written on the rocks, the reflection comes to all that nature also uses the rock pages for keeping her private memoranda of all those events connected with her history of fire and flood and glacier. When we speak of a scientific discovery, we mean that some keen-eyed thinker has come upon a page of nature's diary and copied it for his printer. The sea sh.e.l.ls lying upon the crest of the high hills make one chapter in the story of that age when the ocean's waves broke against the peaks of the high mountains.

Journeying in his summer vacation into the region about Hudson Bay, the traveler brings back pieces of coal containing tropic growths.

These carbon notebooks of nature tell us of a time when the regions of ice and snow were covered with tropical fruits and flowers, and suggest some accident that caused our earth to tip and a.s.sume a new angle toward the sun. Indeed, our earth bears about in the body the marks of its entire history, so that the scientist is able to tell with wondrous accuracy the events of a hundred thousand years ago.

Already the Roentgen ray foretells the time when "nothing shall be covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known; when that which was done in secret shall be proclaimed from the housetops." Professor Babbage, the mathematician, has said that the atmosphere itself is becoming one vast phonograph upon whose sensitive cylinder shall be written all that man hath said, or woman whispered.

Not a word of injustice spoken, not a cry of agony uttered, not an argument for liberty urged, but it is registered indelibly, so that with a higher mathematics and a keener sight and sense, the future scientist may trace each particle of air set in motion with as much precision as an astronomer traces the pathway of a moving star or a distant planet.

Recently the story has been told of a burglar who accidently discharged a magnesium light connected with a kodak on the shelf. The hour was midnight and everyone in the house was asleep. But the kodak was awake and at work. Frightened by the sudden light, the thief fled, leaving his spoil behind. But he also left his face. The next day in the court the kodak convicted him. Thus the new science is causing each man to stand in the center of an awful photographic and telegraphic system which makes an indelible record of man's words and deeds. No breath is so faint that it can escape recording itself; no whisper so low, no plan so secret, no deed of evil so dark and silent.

Memory may forget--but nature never. Upon the pages of the physical universe the story of every human life is perpetually before the judge of all the earth.

It is deeply interesting to see how each living thing bears about in its body the story of its degradation, or the history of its rise and exaltation. Even in things that creep and crawl, the whole life-history is swept together in the animal body. The ship barnacle began its career with two splendid eyes. But it used its vision to find an easy place upon the side of pier or ship. Giving up locomotion, it grew sleek and fat, and finally its big eyes grew dull through misuse, and now they are dead. When the squirrels left the forests in the west and journeyed out upon the open prairies, they began to burrow in the ground. Finally, for want of use, they lost all power of climbing. Among the birds the lazy cuckoo began by stealing the nest another bird had built. But it paid a grievous price for its theft, for now when the cuckoo is confined by man and wants a nest of its own it toils aimlessly, and has lost all power to make for itself a soft, warm nesting-place.

In northern climes the mistletoe has a healthy normal taproot. But in our rich soil it became too dainty for dirt, and chose the life of a parasite. So the little seed struck its outer roots into the bark of the oak, and lazily sucked away the tree's rich sap. Soon luxury and living upon another's life ruined the mistletoe, just as the generation of young Romans was ruined by the father's wealth; just as an active and healthy boy is wrecked when he begins to be a sluggard and goes to the aunt--some rich aunt--and waits for her to die. And since all the lower creatures bear about in the body the marks of the full life-history, it seems natural to expect that man's body, through its health and beauty, or weakness and decay, should tell the story of how the soul within has lived and wrought. A short journey through our streets will prove to us that iniquity sets its mark in the face.

d.i.c.kens describes f.a.gin as a man who was solid b.e.s.t.i.a.lity and villainy done up in bone and tissue. Each feature was as eloquent of rascality as an ape's of idiocy. Contrariwise, in the kingdom of morals there are men who seem solid goodness, kindness, and virtue, bound together with fleshly bands. Even distant ancestors leave their marks in man's body.

It has recently been discovered that the handwriting of one of our presidents was almost exactly that in his grandfather's will. The Bourbon family has always been distinguished by the aquiline nose. One of the oldest New England families is known for its singular length and strength of arm. Beauty is a mark in one family, and size is a mark in the other. Because man is made in the image of G.o.d we naturally look for those divine trademarks in man's body called comeliness and complexion, just as we look for the artist's name on the corner of his picture, or the sculptor's name on the pedestal of his statue. By so much as a babe's cheek is higher than the blushing peach, it ought to be more beautiful. And because the trees of the forest go forward toward October and death arrayed in their brightest robes, we have a right to expect that man in his old age also will reach the highest beauty and perfection.

But not so. Man's history has been a history of selfishness and sin, and his body bears the marks thereof. His features are "seamed by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by pa.s.sion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded by remorse." Men's bodies are consumed by sloth, broken down by labor, tortured by disease, dishonored by foul uses, until beholding the "marks" of character in the natural face in a gla.s.s mult.i.tudes would fain forget what manner of men they are. For the human face is a canvas, and nature's writing goes ever on. But as the wrong act or foul deed sets its seal of distortion on the features, so the right act or true thought sets its stamp of beauty. There is no cosmetic for homely folks like character.

Even the plainest face becomes beautiful in n.o.ble and radiant moods.

He who ever beholds the vision of Christ's face will at last so take on the likeness of his Master as to bear about in his body also "the marks of the Lord Jesus."

Consider the habits and the unconscious desires as marks of character.

When Arnold of Rugby took his boys for a holiday to London he found the revelators of personality in the objects which they first visited.

The youth who had spent each spare moment in sketching made his way immediately to the gallery. Young Stanley, even then brooding upon moral themes, turned his face toward the abbey, whose fame he was to augment. The eager aspirant for political honors rushed toward the houses of Parliament. Thus also the students of physiognomy try to catch the subject off his guard, when the unconscious and habitual lines appear in the face. The kind of books one loves to read, the amus.e.m.e.nts one seeks, the friends he chooses, are all revelators.

Recently an English traveler published a volume of impressions concerning America. Finding little to praise, the traveler finds much to criticise and blame. During his two or three weeks' sojourn in our cities, he tells us that he found sights and scenes that would shame Sodom and Gomorrah, and bemoans the fact that in this young, fresh land things should be as bad as in London and Paris, whither the sc.u.m and wrecks of society have drifted.

What a revelation! not of the city, but of the critic himself. But because he was interested in other things, the editor of an English Review found here material for a fruitful discussion of "The Higher Life of American Cities." Mult.i.tudes have sojourned here during a score of years and have not so much as heard of orgies and excesses.

Yet if the bee is blind to all save flowers; if the worm cares only for rotten wood; if the mole bores downward, so there are natures that cannot rest until they have ferreted out that which they lovingly seek and eagerly desire to find. Habits also reveal personality. First the river digs the channel, then the channel controls the river, and when the faculties, by repet.i.tion, have formed habits, those habits become grooves and channels for controlling the faculties. What grievous marks were in poor Coleridge! Once this scholar spent a fortnight upon an annual address. But while the audience was a.s.sembling Coleridge left his friends and stepped out the rear door of the hall to go in search of his favorite drug, leaving his audience to master its disappointment as best it could.

And here is Robert Burns, bearing about in his body also the marks of his ownership. For this matchless genius was wrecked and ruined not by the wiles of him of the cloven foot, but by temptations that have been called "G.o.dlike." This glorious youth was not beguiled from the path by a desire to be a cold and calculating villain in his treatment of Jean, or to die of drink in his prime, or to leave his widow and orphans in poverty. Burns loved upward, loved n.o.ble things and beautiful; and his very love of beauty and grace, his love of good company, of wit, laughter and song, and all the stormy splendors of youth at springtide--these are the snares and wiles that caught his beautiful genius and led it away captive.

To-day, for him who hath eyes to see, the marks of a like immoderation are upon our generation also. What a revelation of the taste of our age is found in the new love of highly spiced literature! All history holds no n.o.bler literature than that in the English tongue. Our poetry furnishes nectar for angels! Our philosophies bread for giants! The essayists furnish food for the G.o.ds! Nevertheless, a mult.i.tude have turned from this glorious feast to the highly spiced literature of fiction.

A traveler tells of watching bees linger so long beside the vats of the distillery that they became maudlin. And the love of high stimulants in literature is one of the character marks of our generation. Excess threatens our people. Men are anxious to be scholars and hurry along a pathway that leads straight to the grave.