The Hearth Stone Part 2

The l.u.s.t 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, G.o.d 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 s.e.x, 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 G.o.d and the eternal life. Herod rages truly in the pa.s.sions 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d be acknowledged in praise and prayer. There let the eternal world be unveiled, and every blessing bring it near in grat.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sing 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 superst.i.tion.

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 G.o.d and the soul of man, mindful of every faculty, grace, affection, that G.o.d 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 a.s.sociations 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 inst.i.tutions, such as the Free College and the Cooper Inst.i.tute, 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 n.o.ble 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 a.n.a.logies 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 G.o.d. 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, 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 pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.sociations. 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sociations--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 a.s.sociation 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 grat.i.tude rise, and to G.o.d, through Him, let our devotion be exalted! We have no hymn to the Virgin Mother, no Ora pro n.o.bis 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 G.o.d. 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es, 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 sh.o.r.e, there came a great response to the exile of the aegean. When Augustine wrote his "City of G.o.d," 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tuting 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s, and there is a knowledge--do we not know it? that increaseth sorrow. Such is all the knowledge that shuts out the light of G.o.d; 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d; 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. G.o.d 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. G.o.d is love, and he that loveth not knoweth not G.o.d. 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 G.o.d and the brethren, and bids us make this truth practical. As the years pa.s.s, 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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 compa.s.sion 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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," p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d who gave it. They who take the work of life as given by G.o.d 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 impa.s.sioned, 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 pa.s.sion 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.