Lessons in Life Part 7

Now that woman did exactly as I should have done, under the same circ.u.mstances. In the first place, I should never have had the heart to doubt a man who carried an honest face, and was cold, hungry, and ragged. I should have regarded his condition as a claim upon my charity. In the second place, I should have had no time to call upon his family, and satisfy myself with regard to their circ.u.mstances; and in the third place, I should have felt very delicate about putting direct questions to them if I had. The same story tells incidentally of one of these men who do good in the proper way. He visited a house which presented all the signs of poverty; but the angel of mercy was too 'cute' to be taken in; so he walked up stairs. Every thing presenting there the same aspect of abject poverty that prevailed below, the angel of mercy looked around him, and discovered a ladder leading to the garret.

The angel of mercy "smelt a rat," and mounted the ladder. In the garret he found half a cord of wood, and any quant.i.ty of goodies for the table. Another denouement and tableau. _Moral:_ as before. If the story has taught me any thing, it is that it is my duty to question every beggar that comes to my door, visit his house, explore it from cellar to garret, and satisfy myself of the truth or falsehood of his representations. Otherwise, my charity goes for nothing, and I do my beggar an absolute unkindness. In other words, while the law holds every man innocent until he is proved to be guilty, charity holds every man guilty until he is proved to be innocent.

It has become the fashion in certain circles to decry that benevolence which sits at home in slippers, and gives its money without seeing where it goes; but it is forgotten that the money dispensed in slippers was earned in boots, and that the man who has money to give, has usually so much business on hand that he can make no adequate personal examination of the cases which are referred to his charity. I can never forget Mr. d.i.c.kens' Cheeryble Brothers, who were so very much obliged to a friend for calling upon them, and telling them of the circ.u.mstances of a poor family.

It was taken as a great personal kindness when they were informed how and where they could relieve want and distress. They had no genius for going about and looking up cases of charity, but their hearts leaped at the opportunity to do good. They did their work in their counting-room, and had no time and no talent for visiting those whom they benefited; but who would question either the genuineness or the judiciousness of their benevolence? The applications for aid made at the doors of our dwellings come oftener to the mistresses of those dwellings than to the masters; and these mistresses, four times in five, are women with the care of children on their hands, or household duties which demand almost constant attention. If a beggar come to the door, they are grateful for the opportunity to afford relief; but they have no time to visit another quarter of the town, to learn whether their charities have been well bestowed, nor do they withhold their charities through fear of being imposed upon.

In my judgment, the character and circ.u.mstances of a man determine his office in the work of charitable relief. I know there are some persons who have a peculiar natural adaptation to the work of visiting the subjects of sickness and of need. Their presence and their sympathy are grateful to those to whom they delight to minister. They are masters and mistresses of all those thrifty economies which enable them to manage for the poor. They have genuine administrative talent in this particular department. They are cheerful and active, and sympathetic and ingenious; and they can do more for a poor, discouraged family with ten dollars than others can do with fifty. I do not suppose that these people are one whit more benevolent than those whose purses are always open to the poor, and who at the same time would feel very awkward upon a visit of charity, and would make the family visited feel as awkward as themselves. The poor we have always with us; and every man and woman who possesses means for their relief owes a duty to them which is to be discharged in the most efficient way. If I have money, and do not feel that I am the proper person to look after the details of its dispensation, I will put it into the hands of one more competent to the business, and I will rationally conclude that I have done my duty. In the mean time, if a man come to my door, and ask for the supply of his immediate necessities, he shall not be turned empty away because I do not happen to have the means at hand for verifying his story.

I know that there are mult.i.tudes of tender-hearted women--women of abounding benevolence and sensitive conscience--who are troubled upon this subject. They have a desire to do good, and to do it in the right way; but, somehow, they find if impossible to do it according to the views of the story-writers. They are any thing but rugged in health, perhaps, or they have a dependent family of young children around them, or the care of their dwellings absorbs their time. They fail to find the opportunity to visit the poor, or they do not feel themselves adapted to the office; and still they carry about with them the uncomfortable suspicion that they are meanly shrinking from duty. My thought upon this point is that my duties never conflict with one another, and that if I can do good in one way better than another, then that is my way to do good. I shall not permit the story-writers to prescribe for me, nor shall I allow them to make me uncomfortable.

There is a cla.s.s of men and women in all Protestant communities who think it a very neat thing to do good at random. They sow broadcast of cheap seed, content to reap nothing at all, and pleasantly disappointed if they find here and there a stalk of corn to reward their sowing. They do not prepare their ground, they do not cultivate it at all, but they sow, hoping that in some open place a seed may fall and germinate. Some of these people regard this method of doing good as a kind of holy stratagem--a Christian trick--which takes the devil at a disadvantage. I once knew a kind old gentleman who did a business that brought him considerably into contact with rough and profane persons; and as he wished to do something for them, he kept his pockets filled with little printed cards ent.i.tled "The Swearer's Prayer;" and whenever an oath came out, the utterer was immediately presented with this card with a little story on it, and a statement that "to swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise." I very well remember hearing the old gentleman say that, though he had given away hundreds of these cards, he had never learned that one of them had done any good. I do not wonder at it. It was a sneaking way of doing good, or of trying to. If the old man had remonstrated personally with these swearing fellows, and told them that their habit was both vulgar and wicked, does any one suppose that the result would have been so unsatisfactory? He had not pluck enough to do this; so he gave them a card, and they either threw it in his face or threw it away. But then, the cards didn't cost much!

I have been much interested in watching a car-load of pa.s.sengers, while receiving each from the hands of a professional distributor a religious tract. All have received the gift politely, in deference to the motive which prompted, or was supposed to prompt, its bestowal; yet I have never failed to perceive that politeness was really taxed in the matter. Now let me be candid, and confess that I was never pleasantly impressed by being presented with a tract in a railroad car. This fact cannot be attributed to any lack of disposition to contemplate religious subjects; but there is something which tells me that it is improper and indelicate for any man to come into a public vehicle, and thrust upon me and upon my fellow-pa.s.sengers a set of motives and opinions on religion which may or may not accord with my own and theirs--just as it happens. I think the natural action of the mind is to brace itself against influences sought to be sprung upon it in this manner; and I am yet to be convinced that this indiscriminate and wholesale distribution of religious tracts in railroad stations and public conveyances is not doing, and has not done, more harm than good. I know that mult.i.tudes of men--not vicious--are disgusted with it, and offended by it, and that there is something--call it what you may--in the emotions excited by the presentation of a tract under such ill-chosen circ.u.mstances, which counteracts any good influence it was intended to produce. A gentleman will receive a tract politely, and read it or not according to his whim; but it will be very apt to disgust him with the style of Christianity which it represents.

I am aware that the secretary and the agents of the tract societies make very encouraging reports of the results of their operations. I am always interested in these details, and do not discredit at all the statements which they make. Nay, I am convinced that in certain departments of their effort they are successful in doing much good. I believe that their n.o.ble army of colporteurs, going from lonely neighborhood to neighborhood, and carrying with them an unselfish, devoted life, and the living voice of prayer, exhortation, and counsel, win many souls to Christian virtue. I am willing to acknowledge, further, that here and there a tract, chance-sown, may fall into ground ready to receive it; but I have a right to question whether the same outlay of effort and money, applied directly in other fields, would not bring very much larger returns. My point is that in all efforts to do good, in this way, appropriateness of time and place is always to be consulted. I once took my seat in a dentist's chair to have an operation performed upon my teeth. If I remember correctly, an ugly fang was to be removed,--at any rate, pain was involved in the matter; but no sooner was the dentist's arm around my head, and his instrument in my mouth, than the well-meaning and zealous operator began to question me upon the subject of personal religion. Now it seemed quite as bad to undertake to propagate Christianity at the point of a surgical instrument, as it would be to win proselytes by the sword; and the utter incongruity of the two operations disgusted me. At any rate, _I changed my dentist_.

I felt like the man who found upon his landlady's table an article of b.u.t.ter that was inconveniently enc.u.mbered with hair, and who informed her that he had no objection to hair, but would prefer to have it served upon a separate dish.

A good many years ago, I read a Sunday-school book ent.i.tled, if I remember correctly, "Walks of Usefulness." It represented a man going out into the street, and "pitching into" every person he met with, upon the subject of religion, or starting a conversation and immediately giving it a spiritual twist. I thought then that he was a remarkably ingenious man--a wonderful story-teller, to say the least of him. I am inclined to think now that he romanced a little. Every operation was so neatly done, and turned out so well, that I really suspect it was pure fiction. I have this to say, at any rate, that if he did and said what he professed to have done and said, under the circ.u.mstances which he described, he owed it to the politeness of those whom he addressed that he was not dismissed with a decided rebuff, and told to go about his business. "A word fitly spoken, how good it is!" Ah yes! how very good it is! Christian zeal is no excuse for bad taste, nor is Christian effort exempt from the laws of fitness and propriety which attach to human effort of other aims in other fields. If I wish to reach a man's mind upon any important subject, and circ.u.mstances do not favor me, I wait for circ.u.mstances to change, or I pave my way to his mind by a series of carefully-adjusted efforts. Abrupt transitions of thought and feeling, and violent interruptions of the currents of mental life and action, are never favorable to reflection. If I wish to cheer a man who is bowed to the earth in grief for the loss of a companion, I will not break in upon his mourning with a lively tune upon a fiddle. If I wish to attract him to a religious life, I will not interrupt the flow of his innocently social hours by some terrible threat or warning.

In truth, I know of nothing that calls for more care, or nicer discrimination, or choicer address, than a personal attempt to move an irreligious mind in a religious direction. The word of gold should always have a setting of silver.

There seems to be a prevalent disposition in the religious world to do good by indirection and stratagem. If a man can reach one mind by scattering ten thousand tracts, the result is more grateful than it would be if that mind were reached by direct personal effort without any tracts; and it makes a larger and more interesting show in the reports. This disposition is manifest in the matter of charitable fairs. The women of a religious society will make up a batch of little-or-nothings, freeze a few cans of ice cream, hire a hall, and advertise a sale. We all go, and buy things that we do not want, with a good-natured and gallant disregard of prices, and the footings of receipts are published in the newspapers. The charitable women feel pleasantly about it, and think that they have done a great deal of good at a small cost, without remembering that all the money they have made has cost somebody the amount of the declared figures. It seems to be a great deal pleasanter to get possession of the money in this way, than it would be to obtain it by a general subscription. They forget that all they have done is to obtain a subscription by a graceful and attractive stratagem, and that the motives which they have pocketed with the money would not stand the test of a scrupulous a.n.a.lysis. The main point seems to be to get the money, and do the good with the least possible sense of sacrifice; as a man goes to a charitable ball, and pays two dollars for the privilege of dancing all night, in order to give a shilling of profits to the widow and fatherless without feeling the burden of the charity.

Of all the means of doing good, I know of none so repulsive as that which is purely professional. I think we do not have so much of this in these days as our fathers had. Our pastors are more thoroughly our companions and friends than they used to be. They do not a.s.sume to be our dictators and censors as they did in the earlier days of Puritanism. The idea of the regular parochial visit is essentially changed. But I know clergymen, even now, who visit the house of mourning professionally, and give their professional consolation in a professional way, and depart feeling that they have faithfully performed their professional duty. I know clergymen who go round from house to house with their professional inquiries, and do up any quant.i.ty of professional work in a day. The family come in, (those who do not run away,) and take seats around the room, and answer questions, and listen to a prayer, and then they bid their pastor a good afternoon with a sense of relief, and go about their business again, while he pushes on to his next parishioner, and repeats the professional task. It is all a dry and unfruitful formality on the part of the families visited, and a professionally-discharged duty on the part of the pastor, and a pitifully-ridiculous caricature of the visit of a religious teacher to his disciples every way. What shall be said of an interview of which the pastor's part consisted of these words: "Very late spring--Hem!" (looking out of the window)--"who is building that barn?--potatoes seem to be getting along very well;" (turning to a member of the family)--"Jane, how do you enjoy your mind?" A spiritual frame that could stand such a transition as that, without taking a fatal cold, must be based upon a very sound const.i.tution, and toughened by frequent repet.i.tion of the process.

I suppose there will always be obtuse men in the pastoral office-- men who know no way of getting into a sensitive soul except by knocking in the door and walking in with their boots on; but all such men are out of their place. The souls of an average people-- tied to the tasks of life, burdened by care, oppressed by routine, and depressed in many instances by bodily weakness--need sympathy more than counsel, and encouragement and inspiration more than a solemn, professional catechetical probing of their religious state. But I think, as I have already said, that the world is improving in this matter. Our pastors are more social, more facile, more appreciative of the fact that, in all their personal intercourse with their people, they must win love and give sympathy if they would do good in the line of their profession.

So much in the vein of criticism; and if I am asked what guide a man shall have in the matter of doing good in the world, I shall answer: a loving, honest, and brave heart, and a mind that judges for itself. The heart that loves its fellow-men will move its possessor to do good; and the mind that thinks and judges for itself will decide in what direction its efforts ought to be made.

If a man be moved to do good, he will do it, and his heart will lead him in the right direction. Under a mistaken sense of duty, inculcated by incompetent counsellors, men find themselves in fields of benevolent action to which they are very poorly adapted; and the world is full of these blunders; but an honestly-loving heart and an ordinarily clear brain, that n.o.body has been allowed to meddle with and muddle, will tell a man where he belongs and what he ought to do. If a man have a gift for ministering to the sick, let him do it. If he have a gift for dealing personally with the poor, let him do that. If he have a gift for making money, and none for properly applying his charities, let him hand his money to those who are competent to dispense it. I do not believe that many loving hearts, coupled with unsophisticated judgments, are engaged in indiscriminate and random efforts to act for religious ends upon the minds they meet with. I believe that with all such hearts and judgments there is connected a sense of that which is fit and proper in time, place, and circ.u.mstance, so that wherever they strike they leave their mark. I believe that such hearts and judgments will scorn to do that by indirection which they can do better directly, and that if it be fit and proper for them to offer reproof to a man, they will do it by the brave word of mouth, and not sneak up to him and put a card or a tract into his hand. I believe that men with such hearts and judgments would prefer making a subscription directly to a charitable object, to making one indirectly by paying double price for articles they do not want. And last, I think that pastors, with such hearts and judgments, are not at all in danger of becoming coldly professional in their n.o.ble duties. A life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of G.o.d and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction.

LESSON XV.

MEN OF ONE IDEA.

"Cultivate the physical exclusively, and you have an athlete or a savage; the moral only, and you have an enthusiast or a maniac; the intellectual only, and you have a diseased oddity--it may be a monster. It is only by wisely training all three together that the complete man can be formed."--SAMUEL SMILES.

When the heats of summer have dried up the streams, and cataracts only trickle and drip, and the dams of brooks and rivers cease to pour the arching crystal from their lips, I have always loved to explore the forsaken water-courses. An imprisoned fish, a sh.e.l.l with rainbow lining, a curiously-worn rock, a strangely-tinted and grotesquely-fashioned stone--these are always objects of interest. Then to sit down upon a ledge that has been planed off by ice, and smoothed by the tenuous pa.s.sage of an ocean's palpitating volume, and watch the shrunken stream slipping around its feet, and hear the gurgle of the faintly-going water, and growl so drowsy with the song that it breaks at last into surprising articulations, and talks and laughs, and shouts and sings--ah! this, indeed, is enchantment! There are few men, I suppose, so fortunate as to have enjoyed a country breeding, who do not recall scenes like this,--who do not remember a half-holiday, at least, spent in the bed of a summer stream, and at the feet of scanty cataracts, making fierce attacks on water snakes, watching lizards lying among the stones of an old raceway, creeping up, hat in hand, to a gauze-winged devil's needle that shivered on a sunny point of rock, and looked as if it might be the ghost of a humming-bird, starting to mark the sudden flight and hear the chattering cry of the king-fisher as he darted through the shadows and disappeared, and noting the slim-legged wagtail, racing backward and forward upon the border of the stream.

Among the objects of interest very often, if not always, to be found at the feet of dams and cataracts, are what people call "pot-holes." They are round holes worn in the solid rock by a single stone, kept in motion by the water. Some of them are very large and others are small. When the stream becomes dry, there they are, smooth as if turned out by machinery, and the hard, round pebbles at the bottom by which the curious work was done.

Every year, as the dry season comes along, we find that the holes have grown larger and the pebbles smaller, and that no freshet has been found powerful enough to dislodge the pebbles and release the rock from their attrition. Now if a man will turn from the contemplation of one of these pot-holes, and the means by which it is made, and seek for that result and that process in the world of mind which most resemble them, I am sure that he will find them in a man of one idea. In truth, these scenes that I have been painting were all recalled to me by looking upon one of these men, studying his character, and watching the effect of the single idea by which he was actuated. "There," said I, involuntarily, "is a moral pot-hole with a pebble in it; and the hole grows larger and the pebble smaller every year."

I suppose it is useless to undertake to reform men of one idea.

The real trouble is that the pebble is in them; and whole freshets of truth are poured upon them, only with the effect to make it more lively in its grinding, and more certain in its process of wearing out itself and them. The little man who, when ordered by his physician to take a quart of medicine, informed him with a deprecatory whimper, that he did not hold but a pint, ill.u.s.trates the capacity of many of those who are subjects of a single idea.

They do not hold but one, and it would be useless to prescribe a larger number. In a country like ours, in which every thing is new and everybody is free, there are mult.i.tudes of self-const.i.tuted doctors, each of whom has a nostrum for curing all physical and moral disorders and diseases,--a patent process by which humanity may achieve its proudest progress and its everlasting happiness.

The country is full of hobby-riders, booted and spurred, who imagine they are leading a grand race to a golden goal, forgetful of the truth that their steeds are tethered to a single idea, around which they are revolving only to tread down the gra.s.s and wind themselves up, where they may stand at last amid the world's ridicule, and starve to death.

Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of G.o.d, whether spoken through nature or revelation. There is no one idea in all G.o.d's universe so great and so nutritious that it can furnish food for an immortal soul.

Variety of nutriment is absolutely essential, even to physical health. There are so many elements that enter into the structure of the human body, and such variety of stimuli requisite for the play of its vital forces, that it is necessary to lay under tribute a wide range of nature; and fruits and roots and grain, beasts of the field, fowls of the air, and fish of the sea, juices and spices and flavors, all bring their contributions to the perfection of the human animal, and the harmony of its functions.

The sailor, kept too long upon his hard biscuit and salt junk, degenerates into scurvy. The occupant of the Irish hovel who lives upon his favorite root, and sees neither bread nor meat, grows up with weak eyes, an ugly face, and a stunted body. It is precisely thus with a man who occupies and feeds his mind with a single idea. He grows mean and small and diseased with the diet.

The soul bears relation to such a wealth of truth, such a mult.i.tude of interests cl.u.s.ter about it, it has such variety of elements--as ill.u.s.trated by its illimitable range of action and pa.s.sion--it touches and receives impressions from all other souls at such an infinite variety of points, that it is simply absurd to suppose that one idea can feed it, even for a day.

A mind that surrenders itself to a single idea becomes essentially insane. I know a man who has dwelt so long upon the subject of a vegetable diet that it has finally taken possession of him. It is now of such importance in his eyes that every other subject is thrown out of its legitimate relations to him. It is the constant theme of his thought--the study of his life. He questions the properties and quant.i.ties of every mouthful that pa.s.ses his lips, and watches its effects upon him. He reads upon this subject everything he can lay his hands on. He talks upon it with every man he meets. He has ransacked the whole Bible for support to his theories; and the man really believes that the eternal salvation of the human race hinges upon a change of diet. It has become a standard by which to decide the validity of all other truth. If he did not believe that the Bible was on his side of the question, he would discard the Bible. Experiments or opinions that make against his faith are either contemptuously rejected or ingeniously explained away. Now this man's mind is not only reduced to the size of his idea, and a.s.similated to its character, but it has lost its soundness. His reason is disordered. His judgment is perverted--depraved. He sees things in unjust and illegitimate relations. The subject that absorbs him has grown out of proper proportions, and all other subjects have shrunk away from it. I know another man--a man of fine powers--who is just as much absorbed by the subject of ventilation; and though both of these men are regarded by the community as of sound mind, I think they are demonstrably insane.

If we rise into larger fields, we shall find more notable demonstration of the starving effect of the entertainment of a single idea. Scattered throughout the country we shall find men who have devoted themselves to the cause of temperance, or abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Here is a grand, a humane, a most worthy and important cause; yet temperance as an idea is not enough to furnish food for a human soul. Some of these men have only room in them for one idea, and, so far as they are concerned, it might as well be temperance as any thing, though it is bad for the cause; but the majority of them were, at starting, men of generous instincts, a quick sense of that which is pure and true, and a genuine love of mankind. They dwelt upon their idea--they lived upon it for a few years--and then they "showed their keeping." If I should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable, bigoted soul, in the smallest possible s.p.a.ce of time, I would look among those who have made temperance the specialty of their lives--not because temperance is bad, but because one idea is bad; and the men afflicted by this particular idea are numerous and notorious. They have no faith in any man who does not believe exactly as they do. They accuse every man of unworthy motives who opposes them. They permit no liberty of individual judgment and no range of opinion; and when they get a chance, they drive legislation into the most absurd and harmful extremes. Men of one idea are always extremists, and extremists are always nuisances. I might truthfully add that an extremist is never a man of sound mind.

The whole tribe of professional agitators and miscalled reformers are men of one idea. That these men do good, sometimes directly and frequently indirectly, I do not deny; and it is equally evident that they do a great deal of harm, the worst of which, perhaps, falls upon themselves. Like the charge of a cannon, they do damage to an enemy's fortifications, but they burn up the powder there is in them, and lose the ball. Like blind old Samson, they may prostrate the pillars of a great wrong, but they crush themselves and the Philistines together. The greatest and truest reformer that ever lived was Jesus Christ; but ah! the difference between his broad aims, universal sympathies, and overflowing love, and the malignant spirit that moves those who angrily beat themselves to death against an inst.i.tuted wrong! As an ill.u.s.tration, look at those who have been the prominent agitators of the slavery question in this country for the last twenty years. Are they men of charity? Are they Christian men? Is not invective the chosen and accustomed language of their lips? Do they not follow those against whom they have opposed themselves, whether for good cause or otherwise, into their graves with a fiendish l.u.s.t of cruelty, and do they not delight to trample upon great names and sacred memories?

Are they men whom we love? Do we feel attracted to their society?

Teachers of toleration, are they not the most intolerant of all men living? Denouncers of bigotry, are they not the most fiercely bigoted of any men we know? Preachers of love and good will to men, do they not use more forcibly than any other cla.s.s the power of words to wound and poison human sensibilities?

It is not the quality of the idea which a man entertains that kills him. Freedom for every creature that bears G.o.d's image--the breaking of the rod of the oppressor and letting the oppressed go free--this is a good idea. It is so great, so broad, so full, so flowing, that a world of men might gather around it for a time as they do around Niagara, and grow divine in its majestic music and the vision of the wreath of light which heaven holds above it. If a man undertake to live upon a single idea, it really makes very little difference to him whether that idea be a good or a bad one.

A man may as well get scurvy on beans as beef. I suppose a diet of potatoes would be quite as likely to support life comfortably as a diet of peaches. It is because the human soul cannot live upon one thing alone, but demands partic.i.p.ation in every expression of the life of G.o.d, that it will dwarf and starve upon even the grandest and most divine idea.

The agitators and reformers are very ready to see the dwarfing effect of a single idea or a single range of ideas upon the Christian ministry, and a large number of Christian men. I admit the accuracy of their observations in this matter, and, admitting this, I can certainly ask the question whether they hope to escape depreciation when the Christian idea--the divinest of all---is insufficient of itself to make a man, and fill him, and give him all desirable health and wealth and growth. As I have touched upon this point, I may say that it is coming to be understood that a man or a minister, in order to be a Christian, must be something else--that Christianity received into nature and life is only one of the elements of manhood--and that a man may become starved and mean and bigoted and essentially insane by feeding exclusively upon religion. What means the vision of these sapless, sad, and sanctimonious Christians--these poor, thin, stingy lives--but that all ideas save the religious one have been shut out from them? Is it not notorious that a minister who has fed exclusively upon religion is a man without power upon the hearts and minds of men? Is it not true that he has most efficiency in pulpit ministration who has the largest knowledge of and sympathy with men, the broadest culture, and the widest acquaintance with all the ideas that enter as food and motive into human life? Is it not true that in the life-long, absorbing anxiety and carefulness of a mult.i.tude of souls to secure their salvation, those souls are constantly becoming less valuable, and thus--to use the language of the market--less worth saving?

I cannot fail, however unwilling, to see much that is dry and stiff and unlovely in the style of Christianity around me. It has no attraction for me. I do not like the people who ill.u.s.trate it; and the reason is, not that they have got too much of Christianity, but that they have not got enough of any thing else. Flour is good, but flour is not bread. If I am to eat flour, I must eat it as bread; and either milk or water must be used to make it bread. If a little milk is used, the bread will be dry and heavy and hard. If a good deal is used, the flour will be transformed into a soft and plastic ma.s.s, which will rise in the heat, and come to my lips a sweet and fragrant morsel. Christianity is good, but it wants mixing with humanity before it will have a practical value. If only a little humanity be mixed with it, the product will be dry and tasteless; but if it be combined with the real milk of humanity, and enough of it, the result will be a loaf fit for the tongues of angels. No: the divinest idea that has yet been apprehended by the human mind is not enough for the human mind.

That which G.o.d made to be fed by various food cannot be fed with success or safety by a single element. We cannot build a house of dry bricks. It takes lime and sand and water in their proper proportions to hold the bricks together.

This selection of a single idea from the great world of ideas to which the mind is vitally related, and making it food and drink, and motive and pivotal point of action, and supreme object of devotion, is mental and moral suicide. It makes that a despotic king which should be a tributary subject. It enslaves the soul to a base partisanship. It is right to make money, and it is right to be rich when wealth is won legitimately; but when money becomes the supreme object of a man's life, the soul starves as rapidly as the coffers are filled. It is right to be a temperance man and an anti-slavery man, and an advocate of any special Christian reform; but the effect of adopting any one of these reforms as the supreme object of a man's pursuit, never fails to belittle him.

One of the most pitiable objects the world contains is a man of generous natural impulses grown sour, impatient, bitter, abusive, uncharitable, and ungracious, by devotion to one idea, and the failure to impress it upon the world with the strength by which it possesses himself. Many of these fondly hug the delusion to themselves that they are martyrs, when, in fact, they are only suicides. Many of these look forward to the day when posterity will canonize them, and lift them to the glory of those who were not received by their age because they were in advance of their age. So they regard with contempt the pigmy world, wrap the mantles of their mortified pride about them, and lie down in a delusive dream of immortality.

Whether the effect of devotion to a single idea be disastrous or otherwise to the devotees, nothing in all history is better proved--nothing in all philosophy is more clearly demonstrable-- than the fact that it is a damage to the idea. If I wished to disgust a community with any special idea, I would set a man talking about it and advocating it who would talk of nothing else. If I wished to ruin a cause utterly, I would submit it to the advocacy of one who would thrust it into every man's face, who would make every other cause subordinate to it, who would refuse to see any objections to it, who would accuse all opponents of unworthy motives, and who would thus exhibit his absolute slavery to it. Men have an instinct which tells them that such people as these are not trustworthy--that their sentiments and opinions are as valueless as those of children. If they talk with a pleasant spirit, we good-naturedly tolerate them; if they rant and scold and denounce, we hiss them if we think it worth while, or we applaud them as we would the feats of a dancing bear. If they say devilish things in a heavenly sort of way, and clothe their black malignities in silken phrases, we hear them with a certain kind of pleasure, and take our revenge in despising them, and feeling malicious towards the cause they advocate. It would kill us to drink Cologne water, but the perfume t.i.tillates the sense, and so we sprinkle it upon our handkerchiefs.

No great cause can be forwarded by the advocacy of men who have no character, and no man can devote himself to an idea without the loss of character. When a man comes forward to promulgate an idea, we inquire into his credentials. How large a man is this? How broad are his sympathies? How wide is his knowledge? What relation does he bear to the great world of ideas among which this is only one, and very likely a comparatively unimportant one?

Is he so weak as to be possessed by this idea, or does he possess it, and entertain a rational comprehension of its relations to himself and the community? I know that mult.i.tudes of good men have been so disgusted with the one-sided, partisan character of the advocates of special ideas and special reforms, that they would have no a.s.sociation with them. We have only to learn that a man can see nothing but his pet idea, and is really in its possession, to lose all confidence in his judgment. When in a court of justice a man testifies upon a point that touches his personal interests or feelings or relations, we say that his testimony is not valuable--not reliable. It decides nothing for us. We say that the evidence does not come from the proper source. We do not expect candor from him, for we perceive that his interests are too deeply involved to allow sound judgment and utterly truthful expression.

It is precisely thus with all professional agitators and reformers--all devotees of single ideas. They are personally so intimately connected with their idea--have been so enslaved by their idea--are so interested in its prosperity---that they are not competent to testify with relation to it.

LESSON XVI.

SHYING PEOPLE.

"It is jealousy's peculiar nature To swell small things to great; nay, out of naught To conjure much: and then to lose its reason Amid the hideous phantoms it has formed." YOUNG.

"I will not shut me from my kind; And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with sighs a pa.s.sing wind."

TENNYSON.

"Fear is the virtue of slaves; but the heart that loveth is willing." LONGFELLOW.

Reader, did you ever drive a horse that had the mean habit of shying? If so, then you will remember how constantly he was on the lookout for objects that would frighten him. He would never wait for the bugbear to show its head; but he conjured it up at every point. Every hair upon his sides seemed transformed into an eye; and there was not a colored stone, nor a stick of wood, nor a bit of paper, nor a small dog, nor a shadow across the road, nor any thing that introduced variety into his pa.s.sage, that did not seem to be endowed with some marvellous power of repulsion. First he dodged to the right, after having foreseen the evil from afar, and wrought himself up to a fearful pitch of sidelong excitement; and then he dodged to the left, having been surprised into pa.s.sing a cat without alarm; and so, dodging to the right and left, he has half worried the life out of you. Being constantly on guard, and always watching for objects of alarm, and suspicious of dangers in disguise, he has had no difficulty in maintaining a condition of permanent fright, which has worked itself off in spasms of shying.

To a man who has driven a horse up to a locomotive without danger or fear, such an animal as this seems to be unworthy of the name of a horse; and to one who has read of the spirit and fearlessness of the war-horse, a shying horse seems to be the most contemptible of his race.

Well, I have met shying men, and I meet them upon the sidewalk almost every day. I have watched them from afar, and known by their eyes and a certain preparatory nervousness of body, that they would "shy" at me. I have been conscious, however, that there was nothing in me to shy at. I have had no pistols in my pocket, and no Bowie knife under my coat-collar. I have been innocent of any intention to leap upon and throttle them. I have had no purpose to trip their heels by a sudden "flank movement," and not even the desire to knock their hats off. Indeed, I have felt toward them a degree of friendliness and kindness which I would have been very glad to express, had they afforded me an opportunity; but they were shying men by nature, or by habit, or by whim. So far as I have been able to ascertain the causes of their infirmity, it is the result of a suspicion that they are not quite as good as other people, and a belief that other people understand the fact. Far be it from me to deny that their suspicions touching themselves are well-grounded; but that is no reason why other people should not speak to them politely. There is a cla.s.s of men and women who are always looking out for, and expecting, slights from those whom they suppose to be their superiors. They get a suspicion that a certain man feels above them; so when they pa.s.s him in the street, they shy at him--go around him--will not give him an opportunity to be polite to them.

They are martyrs, as they suppose, to unjust social distinctions.