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 THE 
 
 WAYS OF LIFE 
 
 JMjjfct W%% oft Mraug Mag; 
 
 CONTRASTING 
 
 High Wat and the Low Wat ; the True Wat and the Fals* 
 
 thh Upward Wat and the Downward Wat; the Wat 
 
 or Honoe and the Wat of Dishonor. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. O. S. WEAVER, 
 
 AUTHOR 07 HOPES AND HELPS, MENTAL SCIENCE, BT» 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 SAMUEL R. WELLS, 389 BROADWAY. 
 
 1869. 
 
*D 
 
 v% 
 
 ' TWUdom's -ways are ways of pleasantness, and all Iter p&th» 
 are peace." — Solomon. 
 
 BBTIBSD, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CQ.NORE6S, IH THE VIAB 1855, BT 
 
 FOWLERS AND WELLS, 
 
 D.THI CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNII» 
 IT4TII FOB THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW TO»I 
 
\ \v\V>C preface 
 
 It is the sad conviction of every moralist that 
 men are too much under the control of their earth- 
 life. The gross, and not the pure, moves them 
 most to action. And the question rings all the 
 time in his soul, " How can the worth and beauty 
 of the spirit-life be presented to them so as to win 
 their love and secure their approving actions?" 
 With the hope of adding a mite to the upward in- 
 fluence, these lectures were written and delivered. 
 That hope was in part realized upon the minds of 
 those who heard them. And the earnest wish of 
 many of them that they might be published in 
 book-form inspired the hope that they might be 
 still more useful. The ocean is made up of drops. 
 So the influence that lifts the world upward is com- 
 posed of the best thoughts and prayers of earnest and 
 aspiring minds. The style of this little work may 
 be faulty, the thoughts old and not the best, but if 
 the spirit is right, its mission will be good. An 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 abrupt and plain style sometimes bears thoughts 
 quickest to the seat of judgment. Every book 
 should bear to its reader the conviction that its in- 
 tent was good — that it was the offspring of an 
 earnest and gracious wish. If it does, it will 
 leave blessings where it goes in proportion to the 
 strength of that conviction. With the hope that 
 such a conviction may fasten itself upon the mind 
 of the reader of this little volume, we commit it 
 into his hands. 
 
 G. 8. W. 
 St. Louis, Mo., January 1st, 1856. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 lecture ©ne. 
 
 PRINCIPLE AND PLEASURE. 
 
 Principle and Pleasure Opposites— Principle should be the Motive, and Pleasure 
 the Result— Man not Primarily made for Happiness— A Holy Life the End of 
 Our Being— Eternal Life — Christ the Pattern— Pleasure shuns those who Pur- 
 sue her for her Own Sake— The Motive determines the Character and Results 
 of Actions — Going to Church for Pleasure — Fanny Fern on Church-going— 
 Sunday Excuses— The Life of Impulse Dangerous— The Drunkard— The Lady 
 of Fashion— The Novel-Reader— True Pleasure found only in Obedience to 
 Principle. Page 9-18 
 
 SLecture STtoo. 
 
 HONESTY AND POLICY. 
 
 The Two Grand Principles of Action— Honesty— The Martyrs of Honesty- 
 Honesty Triumphant — God's Nobleman — The Three Kinds of Greatness — 
 Greatness in Action— Greatness of Intellect— Greatness of Conscience— A New 
 Era— Policy— The Broad "Way— Politic Honesty— The Politeness of Policy— 
 nonesty and Policy in Life — Honesty and Policy in Trade, Literature, and 
 Religion— A Bargain with God— Honesty Eternal, Policy Temporal 19-30 
 
 3Lecture STfiree. 
 
 EIGHT AND MIGHT. 
 
 The Motive of More Consequence than the Act — God Judges the Motives — 
 Right and Might— Might Childish— Scarcity of True Men— Great Babies— 
 "Wealth and Position— Politics— Power— Might in the Garb of Religion — Christ 
 the Model of Manliness — Might and Right in Every-Day Life — Might in the 
 Presence of Death— Right and Temporal Distinction*— Right must Finally be 
 Triumphant , 81-41 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 SLectuve JFou*. 
 
 SHOW AND SUBSTANCE. 
 
 Impotence of Show without Substance— Show often mistaken for Substan re- 
 laying Lies— Show of Morality— Religious Pretension— Christianity Built on 
 Substance— Mere Show leads to Kuin— Substance without Show— The Wind- 
 Electricity— Human Gre atness— Love, Patriotism, and Eeligion— Substance 
 and Show— Superficial Aspects— Character and Life— The Workman and his 
 Work— True Worth and its Expression Page 42-53 
 
 SLectttte iMbe. 
 
 • LUCK AND PLUCK. 
 
 Early Impressions of Luck— Luck vs. Law— Proverbs— Law, and not Luck, Gov- 
 erns the World— We gain nothing by Chance— Some Seek for Luck in Far-off 
 Places— Some Stay at Home for Luck— The Do-Littles— Bad Philosophy— Luck 
 and Dishonesty— Pluck is the One Thing Needful— There is Luck only in Pluck 
 — How Luck is Lost— Pluck and Reform— Wealth and Honors Useless unless 
 Earned— Labor and Luck 54-63 
 
 3Lecture Sfp. 
 
 THEORY AND PRACTICE 
 
 False Ideas of Theory and Practice — The True Origin of Theory— Theory is 
 Built up from Practice— History contains the Germs of Philosophy— Theory is 
 Sublimated Labor— Present Theories have been Developed from the Past^- 
 Phrenology— Christianity— Practice goes before Theory— Confucius— Plato — 
 Socrates and Aristotle— Many can Practice, Few Theorize— Right Practice Nat- 
 ural and Easy— Truth and Falsehood in Life— Every Man should have a 
 Theory of Life— Theory and Practice should go together— Spirit of the Age- 
 To do Right is easy— False Ideas on this Point— Theory and Practice Com- 
 pared 64-76 
 
 lecture Seben. 
 
 FACT AND FICTION. 
 
 Men Influenced by both Fact and Fiction— Facts Impress us First— Wisdom of 
 Providence in the Presentation of Facts to the Child's Mind— The Use of Fact* 
 by Great Men— The Study of the Universe of Facts leads to Piety— Two Kinds 
 of Facts — Material Facts — Spiritual Facts — Fiction — Dangerous Character of 
 Fiction— Overdrawn Pictures— Figures Omitted— The Heart is Polluted First— 
 Day-Dreaming — Literary Fictions — Tales not always Fictions — A Test to be Ap* 
 plied to Works.of Fiction 77-90 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 Hecture Effll) t. 
 
 THE REAL AND THE IDEAL. 
 
 Two Influences— The Real and the Ideal— Mission of Each— The Material and 
 the Spiritual— Our Alliance with Materiality— Duties Growing out of this Rela- 
 tion— Our Appetites God-given— We should Govern and Educate them— The 
 Sensuous Nature sometimes becomes Master— Consequent Degradation— All 
 Things Given for our Use— Wrong to Misuse Them— There is a Remedy for 
 Every Thing— Christ and the Ideal— The Poet and the Prophet— Beauty of 
 the Ideal— Aim High— The Ideal a "Witness for Immortality— Every One should 
 have a Pure and High Ideal Page 91-1 04 
 
 SLecture Nine. 
 
 THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 
 
 What Appears and what Is — We See the Forms, but not the Spirit of Things — 
 Things and their Meaning — We Swim on the Surface — Immortality — Life and 
 Power Lie in the Unseen — Things Change, Laws are Immutable, Nations De- 
 cay, but the Principles of Social Organization Remain — The Moving Power of 
 All Things is Unseen— Degrees of Materiality— The Mineral Kingdom— Water 
 —Air— The Gases— Caloric— Chemical Affinity— Attraction— Electricity— Si- 
 lence of the Unseen Forces — An Eloquent Extract — The Unseen is Enduring — 
 The Invisible should Reign over the Visible 105-119 
 
 SLectute 2Een. 
 
 CHARACTER AND REPUTATION 
 
 Character and Reputation Defined — The Ass in the Lion's Skin — Character and 
 Reputation Compared— Men do not Read Character well— A Science of Char- 
 acter—General Correspondence between Character and Reputation— Reputa- 
 tion follows Character— We should not meddle with our own Reputations— Il- 
 lustrations— Every Man Forms his own Character— It is not Made in a Day- 
 Character is the Fruit of Culture and Discipline — Where Characters are Made 
 —Washington, Franklin, Burritt^Character the Standard of Progress— Asso- 
 ciations— Influence of Collective Character— Examples 120-131 
 
 Hccturc lEleben. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURE. 
 
 An Old Adage Controverted — Newton and Galvani — A Mere Knowledge of 
 Facts does not confer Power— A Higher Knowledge Necessary— Knowledge is 
 not CultKie— Mental Gormandizing— We Read Much and Think Little— A Few 
 
rill CONTENTS. 
 
 Ttiink for the Many— Knowledge chiefly Valuable as a Means of Culture— 
 Knowledge easy of Attainment— Culture Difficult— Memory— Thinking neces- 
 sary to Development— Responsibility— We are What we Make Ourselves— 
 Means of Culture— Intellect and Conscience— The Mind, like the Body, is 
 Developed by Exercise— Labor and Perseverance Page 132-145 
 
 JLectuve Ctoelbe. 
 
 THE ACTUAL AND THE POSSIBLE. 
 
 The Acorn and the Oak— The Possible of the Potato— The Seed and the Plant- 
 Newton and the Apple— The Steam Engine— Priessnitz and the Water-Cure — 
 The Pilgrim Fathers— The Actual and Possible of Christianity— The Actual 
 may be Known, the Possible can not be Computed— " The Child of Destiny"— 
 The Possibilities of Maternity— Hereditary Descent— Education-^-The Possible 
 of Childhood, Youth, and Manhood— We have too Little Faith in the Possible 
 —We Fail to Reach the Attainable— No Rest short of That— Men are Un- 
 conscious of their Highest Capacities— Knowledge and Culture Within the 
 Beaeh of All— Eternal Progress 146-157 
 
THE WAYS OF LIFE. 
 
 fertan ©tu. 
 
 PRINCIPLE AND PLEASURE. 
 
 Principle and Pleasure Opposites— Principle should be the Motive, and Pleasure 
 the Result— Man not Primarily made for Happiness— A. Holy Life the End of 
 Our Being— Eternal Life— Christ the Pattern— Pleasure shuns those who pursue 
 her for her Own Sake— The Motive determines the Character and Results of 
 Actions— Going to Church for Pleasure — Fanny Fem on Church-going— Sun- 
 day Excuses— The Life of Impulse Dangerous— The Drunkard— The Lady 
 of Fashion — The Novel-Eeader — True Pleasure found only in Obedience to 
 Principle. 
 
 I shall here treat Principle and Pleasure as opposites, 
 though, in their last and highest analysis they meet and em- 
 brace each other, and Principle becomes Pleasure's highest 
 delight. This is the end where Principle governs. Then 
 Principle becomes a motive to action, and Pleasure a result. 
 The honest man is a man of Principle. He finds pleasure 
 in being honest. It is the result of his principle, and is 
 in harmony with it. In all cases where Principle guides 
 and Pleasure follows, they are in unison ; and it may be 
 laid down as a general rule, that Pleasure follows Principle 
 the world over. But Principle never follows Pleasure , 
 1* 
 
10 MAN NOT PRIMARILY MADE FOR HAPPINESS. 
 
 and this is the distinction which I wish to make. Pleas- 
 ure should always be an effect, and never a cause. Prin- 
 ciple should always be a cause, and never an effect. The 
 man of Principle finds Pleasure, but the man of Pleasure 
 never finds Principle. 
 
 " Wisdom's ways are pleasantness ;" they are ways of 
 Principle, and this makes them pleasant. Principle is 
 wisdom. To know, is not always to be wise. But to 
 know and to do from the conviction of knowledge, is to be 
 wise. This is Principle and its ways are " pleasant- 
 ness," or pleasure. 
 
 I said Principle should always be a cause, that is, a 
 motive to action. Pleasure should never be a cause — 
 never be a motive to action. It should always follow, 
 never lead. We should never do any thing for the pleas- 
 ure of doing it. "What!" says the worldling, "never 
 do any thing for pleasure, never seek ease, amusement, 
 society, the good things of life, for the pleasure of enjoy- 
 ing them ?" No, never. That would make Pleasure a 
 motive, and therefore evil ; for where Pleasure is a motive, 
 Principle is forgotten. When Principle steps out, evil 
 steps in. 
 
 " But is not man made for happiness — to enjoy life ?" I 
 hear one ask. In a secondary sense only. Primarily, 
 man is made for Principle. The end of his being is to do 
 right, to be holy in heart and righteous in life. He was 
 not made to be happy ; that would be but a poor end for 
 such a being as man. Just to be happy ! Think of it 
 Were all the worlds and their beautiful garniture made 
 
CHRIST THE PATTERN. 11 
 
 just to make man happy, to be the toys of this great lub- 
 ber of a child ? Did his Creator make the flowers and 
 birds, and all other beautiful things, just for man to play 
 with — to keep him from crying, and make him laugh? 
 Does God deal with him as a mother with her baby 1 
 Then the universe is a nursery on a large scale, and man 
 s an infant at a thousand years old, as much as at one. 
 
 I know it is said, and great poets have written, that hap- 
 piness is the chief end and aim of man's being. But to my 
 mind, this is a crude conception, unworthy of an enlight- 
 ened mind. In Scripture phraseology, " eternal life" is the 
 end and aim of man's being. " Eternal life" is to know 
 love, and serve God. To serve him, is to do right, to do 
 good from pure motives ; or to express it as Christ did 
 to the Pharisees, it is to love God and man with all our 
 mind and strength ; or it is to be swayed, governed, inv 
 bued, sustained, and strengthened by the eternal principle 
 of right. 
 
 It was for Principle, then, that man was made, to be a 
 Godlike soul, to love and practice virtue, to embody with- 
 in himself the spirit and life of Christ, to be perfect as 
 tiis Father is perfect, by becoming his spiritual and im- 
 mortal child, a perfect son of a perfect Father. In being 
 this, happiness will inevitably follow, for God has joined 
 happiness and obedience, Principle and Pleasure, in the 
 eternal wedlock of cause and effect. But when we at- 
 tempt to put Pleasure in the place of Principle, happiness 
 in the place of obedience, we commit a great error, both 
 in our philosophy and in our life, and one productive of un • 
 
12 GOING TO CHURCH FOR PLEASURE. 
 
 told evils. To live for Pleasure is to lose lite ; to live foi 
 happiness is to waste the precious energies of our souls. 
 If we seek Pleasure she will shun us, for she is a coy 
 creature, and will never come when she is sought. But 
 if we leave her pursuit and follow Principle, she will come 
 tripping after with a joyous heart, breathing around us the 
 aroma of her treasured delights. If we do a thing for 
 Pleasure, we miss the pleasure we seek, and waste the 
 energy of soul we have used. If we do a thing from 
 Principle, we get the pleasure that follows, and improve 
 our souls. We may do a thing for Pleasure, and it will /" 
 prove a curse to us, and do the same thing for Principle, 
 and it will bless us. I may read a work of fiction for 
 Pleasure, and my time will be wasted, my mind dissipated, 
 my feelings corrupted, my moral sensibilities blunted. I 
 may read the same work for Principle, and in all respects 
 be benefited. I may go to church for Pleasure, and have 
 my soul injured by the vacant gaze of my mind at every 
 thing, and the slow hardening of my heart to sanctuary 
 influences. I may go to church from Principle, and though 
 I comprehend not a word of the service, I am benefited, 
 because I have been loyal to Principle. And this fact ex- 
 plains why it is that so many people go tp church with so 
 little profit. They go for Pleasure, and not for Principle. 
 Go into a fashionable congregation — how many are there 
 from Principle 1 Some go for the pleasure of listening to 
 a popular and eloquent speaker, for the pleasure of being 
 borne on the wings of his vigorous imagination, tickled 
 with his cleverness and wit, or moved to tears by the 
 
SUNDAY EXCUSES. . 13 
 
 pathetic appeals of his magic words. Some are there to 
 hear the charming music; some to see the charming 
 faces ; some to show their own charming faces, or theii 
 gaudy dresses, and others for the pleasure of the walk or 
 ride. Momentary pleasure is the moving motive with a 
 very great number. A few are there from Principle. 
 Noble souls are they, blest and blessing as they go. 
 Those who go for pleasure can not be expected to get any 
 thing else, and they will be likely to come short in that. 
 Then, if they go for pleasure, they will be quite likely to 
 stay at home for pleasure, when to their pleasure-loving 
 and deluded judgments the chances seem a little more 
 favorable there. 
 
 Fanny Fern has some quaintly said things on this sub- 
 ject, which I may be excused for reading just here. It 
 is a Sunday-morning soliloquy. " I wonder if one can't 
 stay at home from church to-day ? I've a threatening of a 
 headache — it's uncomfortably hot — it's a trouble to dress. 
 It w*>uld be so much more comfortable to sit here in this 
 cool room with closed blinds, en deshabille, than to encoun- 
 ter this hot August sun, and sit down among a handful of 
 people and listen, perchance, to some inanimate preacher, 
 who would drawl out the hymns very much as an ignorant 
 nursery maid might repeat melodies to a sleepy child. 
 Now, here's a nice book to read, newspapers too ; and 
 there's that seductive little rocking-chair. Oh ! I'll stay at 
 home. No, I won't ; it's a bad habit. I always feel hap- 
 pier if I go to church. I always come home wishing I 
 was more of a saint and loss of a sinner. The little 
 
14 SUKDAT EXCUSES. 
 
 trifles and vexations of every-day life dwindle whet* 
 viewed from Mount Calvary. One thinks tearfully of the 
 hasty word when his meek Saviour is mentioned. Ah ! 
 we have need of a J. these helps to arrest the tide of 
 worldliness which rushes over our spirits through the 
 week. The stupidest preacher utters some truths. If 
 the messenger have a stammering torvtme, I'll think more 
 of him, and the Master who sent him. If there are but 
 a handful of people, the more need I should not stay 
 away. Yes, I'll go, and I'll go to the poor man's church, 
 where the pale cheek of labor is not flushed with embar- 
 rassment as the robe of plenty sweeps past ; where side 
 by side as they should, kneel mistress and maid, in God's 
 presence, of one clay. How soothing is that solemn 
 chant ! How impressive are the words of 'Life !' How 
 blessed is the influence of the Sabbath !" 
 
 This is strictly a dialogue between Pleasure and Princi- 
 ple. Pleasure was for staying at home, Principle was for 
 going to church. In this instance, luckily, Principle won 
 the day. Would that it were generally so. Pleasure 
 wins the multitude. Trifles keep them from church in 
 search of pleasure. One sleeps too long on Sunday 
 morning ; one is too lazy to dress ; one is too stupid to 
 muster resolution ; one would entertain a friend ; another 
 would visit a friend ; one would walk in the open air and 
 look at every thing, and see and think of nothing to any 
 profit ; one would get up a good dinner as though it had 
 religion in it ; one would do worldly business, and so on, 
 through the whole round of supposed pleasure-giving en- 
 
SUNDAY EXCUSES. 15 
 
 tainments. A sofa, a rocking-chair, a morning paper, a 
 tete-a-tete, a warm day, a little threatening of a shower, 
 the last novel — each promise more pleasure than the 
 worship of God. So Principle must be content to play 
 second to Pleasure, or be wholly cast out. Poor Princi- 
 ple ! It has a hard chance on Sunday. It will do for 
 the week in trade, but Sunday is Pleasure's day. 
 
 Ask a loitering man on Sunday morning if he has any 
 principles of religion. 
 
 " Oh ! yes, I ' hold' so and so. Thus and so are my 
 church and preacher." 
 
 " Well, are you going to church this morning V 
 
 " Think not ; it's too late now ; can't get ready in 
 t.me ; don't feel very well ; little tiled ; was in a few 
 weeks ago ; not many there now ; I get too sleepy at 
 church ; rather dull music, and poor preaching too ; I 
 can enjoy myself quite as well at home." 
 
 " But how do you sustain your principles ?" 
 
 " Why, they will sustain themselves. They are strong 
 enough to stand alone." • 
 
 Thus feel not a few. A poor day for Principle is Sun- 
 day. It is more given to Pleasure. Now, the genuine 
 man of principle is as true to his religious principles on 
 Sunday as he is to his business principles through the 
 week ; and no trifle turns him from one more than from 
 be other. Religious duty is his business on Sunday, and 
 he is up as early, ready as soon, as active, earnest, and 
 wjde awake as on any other day. 
 
 The influence of Principle and Pleasure can be as well 
 
16 THE LADY OF FASHION. 
 
 seen on Sunday as any other day of the week, and proba 
 bly better. The business world is quiet on that day, si 
 that Sunday is left chiefly to Pleasure. There are three 
 things which chiefly sway men — Principle, Business, and 
 Pleasure. Business rules through the week, and Pleas- 
 ure on Sunday, so that Principle is driven into close 
 quarters at all times. This is the way of the world, 
 but it is wrong. Principle should be at the bottom of 
 all our actions, at. the bottom of our lives. Upon Principle 
 we should do all our business, form our friendships, con- 
 duct our domestic concerns, rear our children, eat our 
 food, clothe our bodies, enter into our amusements, cher- 
 ish our country, sustain our religion, worship our God, 
 improve our minds, conduct our etiquette. Upon Prin- 
 ciple we should do every thing. Not for our especial 
 pleasure, but to sustain what we deem right. 
 
 Hap-hazard living is dangerous in the extreme. An 
 impulsive life is a life on a magazine of powder. A life 
 of Pleasure is a bed of withering roses, under which is 
 nothing but thorns and serpents. 
 
 The drunkard exhibits one phase of a life of Pleasure. 
 He drinks for the pleasure of drinking. The social glass 
 is the seed of his life of Pleasure. He drinks to friend- 
 ship, drinks to mirth, drinks to beauty, drinks to chivalry, 
 honor, and glory, drinks to Pleasure in all her forms. 
 The slow-cutting tortures that pierce him through tell 
 that Pleasure is but a fading rose, which servos only to 
 hide long, sharp, poisonous thorns. 
 
 The lady of fashion exhibits another phase of a life 'if 
 
THE NOVEL-KEADER. 17 
 
 Pleasure, a sacrifice of all that is beautiful and graceful in 
 woman, and all that is noble in humanity, upon an altar 
 where are kindled the fires of jealousy, envy, strife, ma- 
 levolence, and distrust, to burn within her bosom, de 
 dtructive of all righteous principle in her heart, and her 
 own usefulness and peace. To seek Pleasure at the 
 shrine of Fashion is as wise as to seek to strike fire on a 
 rock of ice. 
 
 The reader of fiction, and the light, trashy literature 
 with which our age abounds, exhibits another phase of a 
 life of Pleasure. His reading brings no peace, is pro- 
 ductive of no virtue, abounds in no excellences, is devoid 
 of wisdom, has little common sense, and is as useless as 
 it is dissipating. Such a life is a shallow pool of small 
 circumference, with sandy shore and slimy bottom. 
 
 We all of us, doubtless, exhibit much silly living for 
 Pleasure. We eat, and drink, and ride, and visit many 
 places, for pleasure. But when we do it, experience 
 teaches us that we fail to get the thing we seek. If we 
 would get Pleasure we must get it through obedience 
 The pleasure of appetite comes through obedience to the 
 principle of temperance. The pleasure of dress comes 
 through obedience to the principles of taste, comfort, and 
 convenience. The pleasure of society comes through 
 obedience to the principles of benevolence and affection 
 The pleasure of business comes through obedience to the 
 principles of usefulness and honesty. The pleasure of 
 home comes through obedience to the principles of affec- 
 tion, kindness, integrity and order. The pleasure of 
 
18 PLEASUJRE FOUND IN OBEDIENCE TO PRINCIPLE. 
 
 reading comes through obedience to the principles of 
 wisdom and virtue, in our choice of what we read, and 
 our application of it to the cultivation of our natures and 
 characters. The pleasure of religion comes through 
 obedience to the principles of the great Teacher. 
 
 Every genuine principle of morality or religion is fol 
 lowed by a sweet and holy pleasure. But the Pleasure 
 can only be enjoyed by obedience to the Principle. The 
 man of Principle is he who does every thing because he 
 thinks it is right, and is able to give a reason for his ad- 
 herence to his principles ; who acts not from impulse or 
 pleasure, but from duty. Such a man is a moral Gibral- 
 tar, on whose head glistens the sunlight of truth, and at 
 whose feet sleep the waves of peace. His soul is vir- 
 tue's shrine, his life is the praise of men and joy of 
 angels, and he himself is God's own dear child. \ Who 
 of us will be men or women of Principle ? Will do what 
 is right, whether it seems pleasant or not, and leave the 
 result to God * 
 
$ tctnxt fatoa. 
 
 HONESTY AND POLICY 
 
 Yhi Two Grand Principles of Action— Honesty— The Martyrs of Hcneety— 
 Honesty Triumphant— God's Nobleman— The Three Kinds of Greatness- 
 Greatness in Action— Greatness of Intellect— Greatness of Conscience— A New 
 Era— Policy -The Broad "Way— Politic Honesty— The Politeness of Policy- 
 Honesty and Policy in Life— Honesty and Pol in Trade, Literature, and Be- 
 ilgion— A Bargain with God— Honesty Eternal, Policy Temporal. 
 
 There are two grand principles of action by which 
 men govern their lives. Some choose one, some the 
 other, while a few try to unite the two, but they will no* 
 amalgamate. They are as distinct and separate prin- 
 ciples, as are oil and water. They have no affinity for 
 each other. They dwell apart — are antipodes. Put them 
 together, they will not unite. Force them into the same 
 sou], and one will rise to the top and the other will 
 sink to the bottom. One is from beneath, the other is 
 from above. Men choose them at will, as they do their 
 wives. They are Honesty and Policy. 
 
 There are men who choose Honesty as a soul-com 
 panion. They live in it, and with it, and by it. They 
 embody it in their actions and lives. Their words speak 
 it. Their faces beam it. Their actions proclaim it. 
 Their hands are true to it. Their feet tread its path. 
 
20 THE MARTYRS OF HONESTY. 
 
 vThey are full of it. They love it. It is to them like i 
 God. They believe it is of God. With religious awe 
 they obey its behests. Not gold, or crowns, or fame 
 could bribe them to leave it. They are wedded to it 
 from choice. It is their first love. It makes them 
 beautiful men ; yea, more, noble men, great, brave, 
 righteous men. When God looks about for his jewels, 
 these are the men his eye rests on, well pleased. He 
 keeps his angels employed in making crowns for them, 
 and they make crowns for themselves too ! Crowns of 
 honesty ! To some men they seem not very beautiful 
 in the dim light of earth ; but when the radiance of 
 heaven is opened upon them, they will reflect it in 
 gorgeous splendor. Nothing is brighter ; nothing is 
 better; nothing is worth more, or more substantial. 
 Honesty, peerless queen of principles ! how her smile 
 enhaloes the men who love her! How ready they are 
 to suffer for her, to die for her. They are the martyrs. 
 See them. What a multitude ! Some at the stake ; 
 some in stocks ; some in prison ; some before judges as 
 criminals ; some on gibbets, and some on the cross. 
 But they are all sustained. They smile on their foes. 
 They have peace within. They are strong and brave in 
 heart. Their souls are dauntless as the bright old sun, 
 and nearly as radiant. But they are not all martyrs. 
 Some of them triumph on the field of strife ; some in the 
 halls of science ; some in high places of trust and honor , 
 some in all the common walks of life. Wherever they 
 are, they triumph Victory perches on their banner 
 
THK THREE KINDS OF GREATNESS. 21 
 
 An honest man is invincible. He can not be conquered 
 Come with swords and muskets ; he is brave and calm. 
 Come with smiles and praises ; he is serene and unmoved 
 in resistance. Come with gifts and money ; he still 
 stands a Gibraltar of strength. Intimidation, flattery 
 force, bribery, are alike powerless against him. 
 
 God's nobleman is the honest man. Angels stand b) 
 his side and feel proud of his company. There is great- 
 ness in his soul, the greatness of principle ; such great- 
 ness as lifts a man toward God ; greatness, by the side 
 of which all the men of policy that ever played the strata- 
 gems of war, or managed the game of tyranny, or pulled 
 the wires of promotion, in senate hall or popular forum,; 
 are pigmies. An honest man, be his hands hard or soft, 
 be his face sun-burned or study-paled, be he street-sweep 
 or president, is a great man. And his earthly position 
 does not add one cubit to his greatness, nor take one 
 from it. He is great in himself. He is beautiful, brave 
 and strong. This is the Divine estimate of an honest 
 man. As men grow toward the Divine, they approve this 
 estimate. 
 
 There are three kinds of greatness : greatness of 
 action, greatness of intellect, and greatness of conscience. 
 The last is the highest, the greatest. Honest men pos 
 sess it. These three kinds of greatness have operated 
 upon men's minds in different ages of the world accord- 
 ing to their advancement. Long ago men sought to be 
 great on the field of battle, on the gladiatorial stage, or 
 in the knightly tournament. They wrestled and fought. 
 
22 GKEATNESS OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 It was a battle of muscles and will. Some won, some 
 lost. The winners were great in actions. After that 
 dawned another age ; we may call it the Baconian age. 
 It opeaed with Columbus, Luther, Bacon, and Franklin. 
 It brought navigation, the printing-press, science, and art, 
 and ushered in the era of philosophy, thought, research, 
 reason. In this age men struggled to be great by the 
 might of their minds and the skill of their hands. Poets, 
 sculptors, painters, philosophers, orators, statesmen, writ- 
 ers, and mechanics have multiplied. They have been 
 led on by the splendor of intellectual greatness. 
 
 But there is now another age dawning (so I dare to 
 prophesy), in which men will struggle for principle, for 
 right, for righteousness, for truth in virtue, life, or motive 
 What mean the voices that speak for right, that pro- 
 claim equality, that stand for the higher law and listen to 
 the inward monitor ? What mean the deep subterranean 
 tones of the muffled conscience of restless Europe, 
 moaning like the first low utterings of the wind-harps of 
 the forest ere the storm comes on? What mean the 
 breakings away from the old moorings in the bay of 
 Selfishness, of so many all over Christendom, where for 
 ages men have fancied their spiritual barks were safely 
 anchored, ready rigged and manned to sail for the port of 
 eternal peace? Have they not learned that peace is 
 found only in principle, only in an honest heart and a true 
 life before men and God? 
 
 The men who feel thus are moved by greatness of 
 conscience, Consc/ence has not occupied its true place 
 
THE BROAD WAT. 23 
 
 in the direction of the world. But it is rising. A 
 brighter day is dawning for it. Honest men are nmlti 
 plying. Honest principles are in the ascendant. Men 
 are learning that Honesty has a power above will and 
 intellect. An honest soul in its still, calm purpose has 
 no superior below God. No threat, no force can daunt 
 an honest man. He is nerved with strength that steel 
 can not reach, that chains can not hold, that prisons can 
 not weaken. It is a cheering thought that such a class of 
 men are among us. Well for the world if the class were 
 larger. 
 
 There are men, and their number is not small, who 
 choose Policy to guide them. They are honest when 
 they think it Policy to be honest. They smile when it 
 is Policy, though they design to stab the next minute. 
 They speak and act when Policy dictates, but remain 
 silent and inactive when true honor would demand a 
 sacrificing word and action. They are the men who go 
 with the multitude. Jesus was once asked, " Are they 
 few that be saved V " Enter ye in at the strait gate," 
 was his reply, " for strait is the gate and narrow is the 
 way that leadeth to life, and few there be that find it ; but 
 wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to 
 destruction, and many there be which go in thereat." 
 The multitude to which he referred, that walked the 
 false way, were the men of policy, the men who lacked 
 principle, who acted from selfish motives, in whom the 
 love of gain, emolument, power, ease, or fame was a 
 ruling principle. The " few" were the honest men, tho 
 
24: POLITIC HONESTY. 
 
 men who were true to conscience and to God, though 
 the earth quaked and the heavens grew black. The 
 " strait gate" of Jesus was the Golden Rule ; in other 
 words, the law of righteous principle, the soul's integrity 
 Men of Policy are honest when it is convenient arid plainly 
 profitable. When Honesty costs nothing, and will pay 
 well, they are honest; but when Policy will pay best, 
 they give Honesty the slip at once. When they think 
 Honesty is the best Policy they are most conscientiously 
 honest; but when Policy will, in their judgment, serve 
 them a better turn, their consciences change faces very 
 quickly. Their consciences are convenient articles, 
 which can be put to all sorts of uses with equal facility — 
 chameleon-like things, which change with the color of the 
 circumstances around them. 
 
 They are the men who can smile and be villains still 
 who whitewash the sepulcher; who make clean the 
 outside; who give alms to be seen, and pray to be 
 heard of men ; who are often just what they seem not 
 to be. 
 
 They are your oily men ; and sometimes your honey 
 men ; and your polite men, yes, polite as Chesterfield 
 himself. Judging from their appearance, you might think 
 they had conceived a marvelous love for you, and were 
 about ready to bestow upon you an immense fortune, or 
 open to you some Elysium of blessedness, just because of 
 the respect they have for you. But mark them, and you 
 will find the Policy at the bottom. Your trade, your in- 
 fluence, your vote, or your friendships for some worldly 
 
HONESTY AND POLICY IN LIFE. 25 
 
 purpose, is the object. There is this peculiarity in such 
 men — they overdo their attentions, and overstrain their 
 pretensions and professions. They are everlasting cour- 
 tiers, sickening to men of honest hearts. ' 
 
 There is an inbred meanness in Policy which makes it 
 contemptible. It is always concealing, covering up, keep- 
 ing back something that ought to be known. It is very 
 clear that the truth should not be told at all times. It 
 would do no good, and might do absolute harm. But it 
 should always be told when it is essential to fair dealing 
 and good understanding. " The snake in the grass" is a 
 snake, think about him or copy him as we may ; and it 
 -vill not change his character to call him a bird or a hare. 
 
 There is another class of men between these two who 
 adopt the gray-haired adage, " Honesty is the best Policy." 
 They, no doubt, think they are honest, and gravely assume 
 a great deal of credit for their high-toned philosophy. 
 But why are they honest? Is it because they love 
 Honesty ; because it is an eternal principle of right ; be- 
 cause they value right above all things else, and will cling 
 to it and live by it for its own sake ? Is it because God 
 is honest, and men ought to be, and must be, to be good 
 and perfect men? By no means. They are honest be- 
 cause they think Honesty will serve them best ; honest 
 because there is Policy in it. It is the idea of the success 
 of the policy that moves them. Let them be convinced that 
 in one instance Honesty would not be the best Policy, and 
 they would resort to some other course. It is Policy they 
 pursue, and not Honesty. They are men of Policy. And 
 2 
 
26 HONESTY AND POLICY IN LIFE. 
 
 the adage, though intended to convey a truth, tells a false- 
 hood There is no Policy in or about Honesty. It has no 
 part nor lot, no fellowship nor relationship, with Policy 
 Honesty is a high-toned, out-and-out love of, and reliance 
 upon, principle. It is inside and out, at your face and be 
 hind your back, in God's presence and in the devil's, the 
 same thing, without any thoughts of policy, or stratagem, 
 or success, or any thing else but its own genuine truthful- 
 ness .and sincerity. In such a principle there is no trace 
 of Policy. If a man is strictly honest, a thought of Policy 
 will never have an origin or a lodgment in his mind. 
 Policy is a stratagem, a ruse, a game, a pretense, a fiction, 
 a something not strictly and necessarily true, a plan for an 
 object, a temporary arrangement, the opposite of an eter- 
 nal principle of right. . How, then, can there be any Policy 
 in Honesty ? He who is honest from Policy is dishonest. 
 Honesty is best ; but it is not the best Policy, for there is 
 no Policy in it. 
 
 Honesty is always, and everywhere, and eternally best. 
 It is hard to make Honesty and Policy work together ir the 
 same mind. When one is out, the other is in. Honesty 
 will not stay where Policy is permitted to visit. They do 
 not think or act alike ; and never can be made to agree. 
 They have nothing in common. One is the prophet of 
 God, the other of Baal. 
 
 In common life we see the two principles at work. 
 Honesty is opened-faced, plain-mannered, simple-hearted, 
 pure-souled. Policy is curtained-faced, courtier-mannered, 
 and serpent-hearted. Honesty is sound to the core ; 
 
HONESTY AND POLICY IN TRADE. 27 
 
 Policy is hollow or rotten to the rind. Honesty speaks 
 right out ; Policy hesitates, considers, makes polite round- 
 about speeches, and expresses an equivocal indefiniteness. 
 Honesty is as good at home as abroad ; Policy is most in- 
 teresting among strangers. With Honesty, familiarity 
 creates respect ; with Policy, it breeds contempt. In the 
 market-place, Policy puts the fairest fruit on the top of the 
 measure ; Honesty makes it all alike. Policy conceals 
 the blemishes of the animal or article to be sold; Honesty 
 presents the plain truth, the article as it is, the good and 
 bad alike exposed. Honesty shows goods as they are ; 
 Policy as they should be. Honesty sells for an equivalent ; 
 Policy for what it can get. Honesty believes in quick 
 sales and fair profits ; Policy in the sales and profits it can 
 get. The word of Honesty is its bond ; the word of Policy 
 is what happens to be for its best. Honesty has one price 
 for all its customers ; Policy a price for each customer. 
 Honesty is satisfied with a living profit ; Policy, like the 
 grave, cries forever for more. Honesty makes good its 
 agreements without a word of whimpering ; Policy cheats 
 a little, whines a little, pleads a hard bargain, fails in time, 
 uses poor material, unskillful labor, makes a bad job, and 
 does every thing but the fair thing to get more than it gives. 
 Honesty marks its goods ir plain English or German, as 
 the case may be, so every buyer shall read the price ; 
 Policy has a secret mark. Honesty will sell only at a fair 
 profit ; Policy will often sell at less than cost, and throw 
 in the buttons and thread at that. Honesty will visit a 
 eick patient so long as is needful ; Policy so long as a bill 
 
28 HONESTY AND POLICY IN RELIGION. 
 
 can be made. Honesty tells his client the true jtate of 
 his case ; Policy tells him the case with reference to the 
 best fees. Honesty edits and publishes the truth, though 
 it pricks the consciences and rebukes the lives of half its 
 subscribers ; Policy tells what will be most likely to please 
 the greatest number. Honesty speaks the sins of men 
 and the judgments of God, though every hearer quail ; 
 Policy studies to tickle human ears and lull human souls 
 to rest. 
 
 All circles and all walks in life give audience to Honesty 
 and Policy. The few are Honest ; the many are Politic. 
 The Honest coin is often doubted, because the counterfeit 
 is so rife. The Honest man is often questioned, because 
 the man of Policy has gone before him. The Policy-doc- 
 trine has wrought a universal distrust among mankind. 
 No one knows whom to trust. Brothers are afraid of each 
 other. Parties and sects regard each other as enemies, 
 hypocrites, and evil-doers. They can not realize the power 
 of Honesty in a man of different opinion. When moralists 
 adopt no higher maxims than " Honesty is the best Policy," 
 they can not have confidence in each other. When the 
 best Honesty is but a stroke of Policy, who can trust it ? 
 
 The same prevalence of the Policy-principle is found 
 m the religious world. The religion and life of a man are 
 generally near neighbors. A man's business principles 
 take shape from his religious ; and sometimes religious 
 opinions take shape from business habits. A real man of 
 Policy in life will be one in religion. He can scarcely con- 
 ceive of an honest God, much less of an honest religion 
 
A BARGAIN WITH GOD. 29 
 
 " The loaves and the fishes" stand out before his mind 
 whether the subject be this world or the higher. If he 
 serves God he expects pay for it, and does it for the pay 
 and the pay is a separate thing from the service. The ser 
 vice is irksome ; the pay is pleasant. You can not con- 
 vince him that the pay and the service are so nearly one 
 that they can not be separated with regard to either char- 
 acter or time. It is hard to make him comprehend that 
 love brings its own reward, creates its own heaven ; that 
 charity blesses itself ; that holiness is the medium in which 
 God is always present ; that obedience is a state of mind 
 in which blessedness must necessarily exist ; that this is 
 God's, plan of eternal life and peace. No ; he will believe 
 nothing of this ; for this is an exact ratio of reward accord- 
 ing to merit, a. strictly honest plan. He must bargain with 
 God and get the best of the trade. He wants a million of 
 years of rest and peace for every hour's labor ; he wants 
 an imperishable crown for perishable services ; he wants 
 the free use of God's eternal house forever, for being his 
 steward a few days on earth. Of all bargainers, a Politic 
 religionist is the most exacting and avaricious. 
 
 But some men of Policy are worse than this. They are 
 religious for earthly profit ; for votes, for influence, for 
 trade, for caste in society, for human confidence. No 
 small number stand in this class. Could we get a peep 
 into the great book where are written human characters 
 and actions, we should be startled to find the names against 
 which is written " Policy-service." The most real, power- 
 ul, and bhssed thing that can exist in creatme-hearts is 
 
30 HONESTY ETERNAL, POLICY TEMPORAL. 
 
 religion, but it is little of it that men of Policy possess. 
 Religion is valuable and blessed for its own sake. It is 
 the Father's richest gift to his children. Who would en- 
 joy it, must practice its precepts from honest motives and 
 pure hearts. Its very first precept is one of Honesty. Its 
 worship, its love, its obedience, its faith must be sincere. 
 He who brings not an honest heart to the shrine of reli- 
 gion will find no blessing there. Honesty is an eternal 
 principle in the government of God ; a great pillar in his 
 magnificent " house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens ;" an attribute of his immortal and glorious being. 
 In man it is a God-like thing, simple in its beauty, grand 
 in its simplicity. " An honest man !" Great eulogium ! 
 Crown of immortal worth ! Central seed of the tree of 
 life, whose blossom is spiritual beauty, whose fruit is the 
 soul's blessedness ! The seed has germinated ; the tree 
 must grow ; humanity reap, and God must be eternally 
 and universally praised for its glorious fruitage. Honesty 
 must live ; Policy must die 
 
Vfi^UcTOcT 
 
 ftttnxt ffcm. 
 
 EIGHT AND MIGHT 
 
 The Motive of more consequence than the Act — God judges the Motives — Bight 
 and Mights-Might Childish— Scarcity of True Men— Great Babies— Wealth and 
 Position— Politics— Power— Might in the Garb of Eeligion— Christ the Model 
 of Manliness — Might and Bight in Every-day Life — Might in the Presence of 
 Death — Eight and Temporal Distinctions — Bight Finally Triumphant. 
 
 What is done, is done ; and what is to be done, will be 
 done; but why done and how done, are the questions. It 
 matters not so much, in a moral point of view, whether a 
 thing is done, as why it is done. We read history, but 
 intrinsically it is of little importance to us to know 
 whether Thebes had a hundred gates or none ; whether 
 Hannibal crossed the Alps, or staid in Africa ; whether 
 Napoleon divorced Josephine or never married her, or 
 whether Mary Queen of Scots was dethroned and im- 
 prisoned, or not. As facts of history, these can do us 
 neither good nor harm. But it is important for us to 
 know why these things were done, because the why al- 
 ways reveals a human motive, gives a reason for human 
 conduct, and opens one of the paths of human thought. 
 Human nature is the same in the first and last century, in 
 the garden of Eden, on the plains of Waterloo, or among 
 the rocks of California. Though conduct may differ, and 
 
32 EIGHT AND MIGHT. 
 
 generations change, motives remain the same. The first 
 and the last war, the first and the last marriage, the first 
 and last throne, grew out of similar motives. So history 
 s valuable only as a chronicler of the paths of human 
 bought and feeling, as a daguerreotype of the human 
 
 ind. Who reads it for this is wise ; who reads it for 
 any other purpose gets a doubtful benefit. So religiously, 
 the motive is the all-important matter ; for God asks not 
 what is done, so much as why any thing is done. The 
 motive is what gives color to action with him. In his 
 great book he writes motives in capitals and actions in 
 small letters ; and he writes a multitude of motives with 
 no correspondent actions. They stand as the record of 
 the chameleon complexions of each human soul. They 
 tell its goodness and its badness, its progress up or down. 
 
 We often judge unwisely. We approve or condemn men 
 by their actions. But it so happens that many a man 
 whom we condemn, God approves ; and many a one whom 
 we approve, God condemns. Here below it often hap- 
 pens that we have saints in prisons and devils in priestly 
 robes. We often view things under a false sight, and 
 pass our judgments accordingly ; but God judges from 
 behind the vail, where motives reveal themselves, like 
 lightnings on a cloud. 
 
 Now, Right and Might lie in motive. Personally they 
 answer the questions, Ought I? and Can I? Some men 
 ask, " Ought I to do this ?" Others ask, " Can I do this V' 
 It is the angel that asks, " Ought I to do this?" It is the 
 devil that asks, " Can I do this ?" 
 
KIOriT AND MIGHT. 33 
 
 We all have good and bad in us. The good would do 
 what it ought to do ; the bad does what it can do. The 
 good dwells in the kingdom of Right. ; the bad sits on the 
 throne of Might. Right is a loyal subject ; Might is a 
 oyal tyrant. Right is the foundation of the river of 
 peace ; Might is the mother of war and its abominations 
 Right is the evangel of God that proclaims the " accepta 
 ble year of the Lord ;" Might is the scourge of the world 
 that riots in carnage, groans, and blood. Right is the arm 
 of freedom made bare and beautiful in the eyes of all the 
 good in heaven and earth ; Might is the sword of power 
 unsheathed in the hand of oppression. Right gains its 
 victories by peace ; Might conquers only by war. Right 
 strengthens its army by the increase of all its conquered ; 
 Might weakens its force by every victory, as a part of its 
 power must stand guard over its new-made subjects. 
 Right rules by invitation ; Might by compulsion. Right 
 is from above ; Might from below. Right is unselfish ; 
 Might knows nothing but self. Right is for the whole ; 
 Might is for one. Right is unassuming ; Might is pom- 
 pous as a king. Right is instructive ; Might is dictato- 
 rial. Right reasons like a philosopher, and prepares the 
 ground on which it sows ; Might stalks on like madness, 
 reckless of every thing but the end sought. Right is a 
 lamb, cropping buds and flowers to make itself more beau- 
 tiful ; Might is a tiger prowling in search of prey. Right 
 is a moralist resting in principle ; Might is a worldling 
 eeeking for pleasure. These are inward principles con 
 tending with each other in every human soul. 
 2* 
 
3± SCARCITY OF TKUE MEN. 
 
 Might comes first, because it is earthly. The child's 
 first resolve is one of Might. " I can and I will," he 
 says. Might is born in the flesh ; Right is the child of 
 conscience. Children do what they can. Men do what 
 they ought, when they act from manhood. Some children 
 never become men in this word ; they never " put away 
 childish things." We become men in proportion as we 
 " put away childish things" and adopt manly things. It 
 takes something more than bone and muscle to make a 
 man ; something more than form and strength. Two 
 hundred pounds of bone and blood and sinew molded into 
 the human form and walking about do not make a man. 
 Manhood is within. It is not seen, but felt. It is soul 
 doing right. Children are made up of flesh and blood, 
 with soul in subjection to it. Men are made up of flesh 
 and blood in subjection to soul. It is manhood for the 
 soul to rule the body. It is childhood for the body to rule 
 the soul. Most men are children. We have none of us 
 wholly outgrown our childhood. We have not entirely 
 "put away childish things." Great babies are walking 
 about among us most plentifully. Full-grown men are 
 scarce. Few men say, " I ought to do this, therefore I 
 will do it." The most say, " I can do this, therefore I 
 will." Many times every day most men do as children 
 do in violation of the right. Here :is a child possessing 
 and enjoying a toy. Another child wants it. The first 
 question with him is, " Can I get it V If he can, he takes 
 it by main strength. But if his strength is too small, he 
 must put Might to work in another direction. First, he 
 
WEALTH AND POSITION POLITICS. 35 
 
 tries stratagem. If this fails, he coaxes. If this don't 
 answer, he disparages the toy, says it is good for nothing. 
 If he does not yet get it, he seeks to buy it with less val- 
 uable toys. Thus he employs Might all the way through 
 to accomplish his selfish end. 
 
 Here is a man possessing great wealth. See how he 
 is surrounded by other men, eager for a norsel of his 
 riches ! " Where the carrion is, there will the eagles be 
 gathered together." He must hedge himself about with 
 a triple wall of brass, or he will be robbed of his money 
 or goods. The might of his neighbors will play tho 
 chameleon, the hypocrite, the courtier, or any thing else, 
 to get a few moments' admittance to his coffers. They 
 will do just about as the child did, any thing to accomplish 
 the end. Another man holds a high position. If he can 
 keep it he may thank his stars, for a thousand other men 
 are trying their Might against him. He retains his office 
 by Might, and they do battle against him by Might. It is 
 all a question of Might. The best wins. Victory is 
 with the best player at the game. Just like children, they 
 all strive for the prize. 
 
 How is it in polities'? Every country has its party 
 politics. Who plays on this stage — Right or Might 1 It 
 is true Right is at hand, and tries to act a part in the grand 
 drama. You see her flit like a spirit through the scene 
 now and then. But she is chased by a thousand vam- 
 pires. She sometimes pops in her head and tries to put 
 in a word edgewise, but Might's thousand brawlers urown 
 her " still, sma'l voice." Might has the poi'tical floor a 
 
36 MIGHT IN THE GAKB OF RELIGION. 
 
 good share of the time, and he often cuts such figures 
 before high Heaven as make angels blush. 
 
 Might is a greedy lover of power, and in his greediness 
 he gorges so much as to breed disease in his country's 
 vitals. This is the reason why nations are so short 
 lived, why governments are so spasmodic. All countrie 
 and governments have fallen by diseases engendered by 
 the reign of Might. Greece died of typhoid fever, from 
 excessive luxuries. implicating her whole nervous system. 
 Rome had chronic fits from the same cause. France has 
 had the fever and ague for many generations. Russia is 
 troubled with a rush of blood to the head. Turkey has a 
 plethora, giving a dropsical tendency. Germany has the 
 go it. England has similar symptoms, while our own 
 co mtry is sadly bilious .from intemperance and bad air. 
 Al these national diseases are engendered by the reign 
 of Might over Right. They have all said, " I can, and 
 so { will," not asking whether they ought, or not. 
 
 n he political arena has always been the great field for 
 tht display of Might. Power has been sought and Right 
 mu 'dered to attain it. So general is this fact, that the 
 pol tical and moral codes of nations are no more alike 
 thi 1 Heathenism and Christianity. 
 
 ] Tor is Might thus circumscribed in its reign. It has 
 uiv \ded the domain of religion. Many a man wears a 
 lb la ;k coat, or a pious face, because he hopes thereby to 
 ch\ rin power. The tyrauny of faith is as absolute as the 
 tyi »nny of the sword. Weak, puny man, mitred as a 
 tfi] giovs leader, often covets Might more than Right, and 
 
CHRIST THE MODEL OF MANLINESS. 37 
 
 uses it to the detriment of human souls. The bigot 
 wields the scepter of Might. Prejudice, superstiticn, in- 
 tolerance, Pharisaism are the children of Might. Sec 
 taries toil for victory. They are men of Might. These 
 are all born of the flesh, and belong to the childhood of 
 man. When manhood comes on we shall put them off 
 In Christ they are neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, 
 white nor black, but one in the liberty, spirit, and truth of 
 the gospel ; one in the great Right. We approach man- 
 hood as we approach Christ. He is the divine model 
 man, the embodiment of the Right. All that belongs to 
 clans and sects, to bigots and Pharisees in religion, grows 
 out of Might, and has no part or lot with Right. Keep out 
 of the hands of a sectary. He will put the screws upon 
 you in as little time as possible. He will have your faith 
 on the rack ; your opinions will be thrown into the creed- 
 hopper to be ground out to order, and your worship he 
 will make keep time to his sectarian clock. All false 
 religionists put a check on thought and curb investiga 
 tion. " Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath 
 made you free," is the command of the gospel. It is a 
 gospel of liberty. "Be fully persuaded in your own 
 mind ;" it is a gospel of research and personal responsi- 
 bility. " Prove all things ;" it is a gospel of trial, as by 
 the fire of argument. We may know the false teachers 
 then, by th's ; they wield the sword of Might over their 
 associates. They put fetters on human souls that God 
 hits made free. 
 
 Might is seen sitting on his sinful throne in all thn 
 
3b MIGHT AND RIGHT IN E VERT-DAY LIFE. 
 
 walks cf society. The rich wield the might of their 
 wealth over the poor, and the poor watch for their oppor- 
 tunity to strike back. Companies oppress individuals. 
 Men in authority are often gods on a small scale. 
 Tradesmen worry each other in traffic, like dogs biting 
 each other for mastery. Professional men strive on the 
 arena of public life for victory, which, when gained, 
 shows them to be tyrants. The proud -lord it over the 
 humble; the strong sit on the backs of the weak ; the 
 great make the small lift them up that they may appear 
 greater. The fortunate make game of the misfortunes of 
 their neighbors. The rising kick the falling as they go 
 down. 
 
 It is onjand as it is in the sea : the great fish eat the 
 smaller ; the smaller eat the minnows ; the minnows eat 
 the pin-fish, and the pin-fish eat the animalculae, and all 
 just because they can. This is Might everywhere op- 
 pressing, just because it has the power. 
 
 Now in all this wide realm of Might there is onl\ 
 unmitigated meanness. To oppress just because we can, 
 is rank animalism. What if my brother is weaker than 
 I ? He is a man, a brother for all that. What if fortune 
 has lifted me higher on her wheel than my neighbor 1 
 He is my neighbor still. What if you sit on a throne 
 and I on a dunghill 1 Have I not a heart to be blessed 
 and a soul to be saved as well as you ? What if my skin 
 is black, yours is red, our next brother's is yellow, and 
 the next is white, are we not all of one blood, and does 
 not the great eternal Rght claim us all as his children T 
 
MxGHT IN THE PRESENCE OF DEATH. 39 
 
 Place the king and the beggar on a lone island, shorn of 
 all the world has given them, and who will tell which is 
 the king 1 Lay the millionaire and the day laborer on 
 the bed of "death, and which is the richer? Then noth- 
 ing will be valuable but Right. Here is the empire 
 in that dread hour. Might hides abashed in her awful 
 presence. Might is a short-lived sinner. His days are 
 numbered, his doom is pronounced. Proudly as he has 
 swayed his guilty scepter over men, and meanly as he 
 has approached and scourged the children of earth, his 
 brow must be branded. " Tried, and found wanting," 
 must be written on his face. His power is held in guilt ; 
 it will dissolve in weakness. He was born of the flesh; 
 is only a childish weakness of which we, who call our- 
 selves men, ought to be ashamed ; must die with all 
 temporalities, and yield up his victims to the peaceful and 
 glorious tutorship of eternal Right. Might possesses no 
 intrinsic power, no inborn authority. Its force is only 
 the pressure of greater gravity. All authority and all 
 power lie in Right. In the presence of Right the weak 
 and the strong are equal. The philosopher and the 
 savage are entitled Vi the same consideration. The trap- 
 pings of life count nothing, weigh nothing, in the scales 
 of moral justice. Mind is mind, soul is soul, virtue is 
 virtue. Right never has learned that there is any differ- 
 rence in the color of men. She can never see a throne 
 as such, or understand that it is any different from a 
 lady's rocking-chair, or a child's hobby-horse. She does 
 not know that a statesman is different from a street- 
 
40 EIGHT AND TEMPORAL DISTINCTIONS. 
 
 sweep, or that a minister is entitled to any more con- 
 sideration than a drayman, simply from calling. She 
 looks with as sweet a smile upon a kitchen girl as upon 
 " my lady" of the palace. Temporal distinctions will no 
 cast a shadow in the eye of Right. She is not to blame 
 for the truth is, she can not see them. The things wo 
 wear, the dollars, and eagles, and farms, and houses we 
 try so hard to get from each other, she sees but only as 
 the playthings Which children quarrel over. Whether 
 we have them or not, it is all the same to her. And she 
 looks upon all the machinations of Migbt, in its struggles 
 for these baubles, as fever-fits in men's minds which en- 
 title them to pity, but not to respect. Might belongs to 
 this world ; but Right is of heaven. She is the eternal 
 Lawgiver, who hath framed the government of the 
 eternal spheres, and established the statutes of the Most 
 High. It was from her lips that the " Golden Rule" of 
 the gospel came. She sat enthroned in the mind of the 
 Divine Jesus, and laid her hand in benediction on the 
 chosen twelve. It is her commission to overcome the 
 armies of Might, to deliver them from the servile bondage 
 of oppression, and bring them into the liberty of truth and 
 justice. 
 
 What childish freaks the lovers of Might play before 
 high Heaven ! How chains clank, whips crack, tall 
 forms come down to the dust, the earth grows bloody, 
 and countries groan under the weight of thrones ! Right 
 is charged with authority to put an end to all this. All 
 authority comes from Right. Might has power, but not 
 
RIGHT FINALLY TRIUMPHANT 41 
 
 authority. But its power is short-lived. It is outward 
 and material. It touches not the conscience. This is 
 the realm of Right. She outlives the material. Eterna 
 years are hers. When her reign is established, ther 
 will be no Might save the force of authority. Right m il 
 be the law and the power, the strength and the glon of 
 all Glory and honor and power be unto Right ! 
 
SHOW AND SUBSTANCE. 
 
 Impotence of Show without Substance— Show often mistaken for Substance- 
 Living Lies— Show of Morality— Religious Pretension— Christianity Built on 
 Substance — Mere Show leads to Ruin— Substance without Show— The Wind- 
 Electricity— Human Greatness— Love, Patriotism, and Beligion— Substance and 
 Show— Superficial Aspects— Character and Life^-The Workman and his Work 
 — True Worth and its Expression. 
 
 The radical ideas represented by Show and Substance 
 are very different ; yet' in the world one is often taken for 
 the other. The former is well enough in its place, but it 
 makes a poor substitute for the latter. Moonshine looks 
 well, and makes a fine show, but when it is substituted for 
 sunshine, it is found sadly deficient. It is minus nearly 
 every thing substantially valuable. It will not ripen a peach, 
 expand into bloom a rose, nor cause a corn-ear to grow. 
 It will not stir a current of air, nor warm the land, 
 nor lift a cloud above us to give the earth its morning 
 shower-baths. If the earth were bathed in perpetual moon- 
 shine, with no sunshine, it would lie in it like a corpse in 
 its winding-sheet. It would be a dead, round world, hung 
 in the sepulcher of eternal silence. Not a wave would 
 rise on its sleeping oceans, not a shrub would deck its 
 dead, oW mountains, not a breath would move its stagnant 
 
snow without substance. 43 
 
 air; but, yet it would make a gorgeous show. Its moun- 
 tain pillars, with their bare, old heads and jagged brows 
 and cragged sides, standing away up in the cold, dazzling 
 light, with its broad, silvery-faced seas sleeping at their 
 feet, would look like the tombstones of departed ages 
 standing over the dead tenants of the magnificent cemetery 
 of coffined centuries. It would be a splendid show, lack- 
 ing the essential substance of life. Show and Substance 
 are often united, as an object and its shadow, the sun and 
 its glory, the soul and body, mind and its outward actions, 
 love and its face of sweetness. And on this account men 
 have associated the two so closely together, as often to 
 mistake the one for the other, and hence have sought for 
 Show as though it were Substance ; and deceivers have put 
 the former in place of the latter to cheat the word thereby. 
 
 Show paints the hypocrite's face and wags the liar's 
 tongue. To discriminate between Show and Substance, 
 to determine what is Show and what is Substance, and 
 what are Substance and Show, is a work of critical judg- 
 ment, and one upon which the excellency, majesty, and 
 strength of our life in no small degree depends. There 
 is Show without Substance, there is Substance without 
 Show there is Substance and Show together. 
 
 I. Show without Substance is a word without meaning, 
 a body without soul, powder without ball, lightning wjjA- 
 out thunderbolt. It is dress on a doll, paint on sand. 
 There is much of this in the world. We see it in respect 
 to every thing considered valuable. The counterfeiter gives 
 the show of gold to his base coin, and the show of va J uo 
 
44 SHOW WITHOUT S-'BSTANCfc. 
 
 to his lying bank note. The thief hangs out the appear- 
 ance of honesty on his face, and the liar is thunderstruck 
 if any body suspects him of equivocation. The bankrupt 
 carries about him the insignia of wealth. The fop puts 
 on the masquerade of dignity and importance, and the poor 
 belle, whose mother washes to buy her plumes, outshines 
 the peeress of the court. Many a table steams with cost- 
 ly viands for which the last cent was paid, and many a 
 coat, sleek and black, swings on the street and in the sa- 
 loon on which the tailor has a moral mortgage. Often do 
 the drawing-room and parlor, the wardrobe and coach, 
 speak of wealth and standing when, if they w*.re' not 
 dumb deceivers, they would cry out, " It's all a lie." This 
 is Show without Substance in domestic life. K is the 
 grandest lie of the world, and cheats more poor people 
 out of their birthright than any other one species of wick- 
 ed show. All their thoughts, and labors, and money, and 
 credit are spent to fabricate a gorgeous cheat to the world, 
 to make themselves appear to be what they are not; when, 
 if they would be honest, and labor for the true substance 
 of life, they might be, in reality, what they are clownishly 
 aping. They cheat their soids out of honesty, and a re- 
 spectable and comfortable moral character, their bodies 
 out of the substance of a good living, themselves out of 
 a good name among their fellows — -yea, they cheat every 
 thing but the very world they intend to cheat. That world 
 sees through their gossamer show, and laughs at the fool 
 ishness which seeks to conceal a want of substance. 
 Nearly all the men in our country talk as though they 
 
LIVING LIES. 45 
 
 were real, live democrats ; but all the way up, from the street 
 sweep to the president, there is an eager, awkward aping 
 of something a little aristocratic — a striving to run up the 
 colors of Show a little higher than Substance will warrant. 
 You may see it in the slave, the hired servant, the day- 
 laborer, the trafficker, the mechanic, merchant, the profes 
 sional man, the statesman, and, too frequently, in the minis 
 ter of the gospel. It is a general sin, to which there are 
 but few exceptions ; a great falsehood, which almost every 
 man is striving to make greater. This great evil turns 
 society into a grand show-room, in which the most dex- 
 trous show-master wears the tallest plume. Besides the 
 sinfulness of the thing, it is a great domestic bane. It 
 makes the poor poorer, and the rich more avaricious. It 
 causes almost every body to over-live, over-dress, over-eat, 
 over-act in every thing that will make a show. It is a 
 great root of selfishness, a great weight of oppression, a 
 great sink of meanness, a great burden of woe, a great 
 cloud of despair. In the world of thought the same am- 
 bition for Show without Substance is visible. Ignorant 
 men make astonishing efforts to appear wise. Unlettered 
 men mouth hard words and guess at erudition, and puff 
 themselves up to the bursting point with scholastic dignity. 
 They try to conceal their ignorance with as many feats of 
 show as a master of jugglery can perform. They show 
 the little they do know, and then try to spread it over the 
 whole field of human knowledge, till it becomes so thin 
 and transparent that every body can see that it is all Show 
 without Substance. 
 
46 SHOW OF MORALITY. 
 
 Substance generally shows itself, and every attempt to 
 make it appear more than it really is, makes manifest the 
 hollow form of show. Ambitiously paraded crudities look 
 badly. Their show excites laughter in mirthful minds, 
 disgust in minds of strong honesty, and pity in those of 
 benevolence. A scholastic swagger is a strong emetic to 
 men of good sense. There is much of this in the world 
 It is Show without Substance. 
 
 We see not a, little of this same puff-ball pretense in 
 matters of morality. There are scores of mock philan- 
 thropists in every community. They talk large, swelling 
 words of benevolence so continually, that one might think 
 their pockets were charity-boxes, and their .hands angel 
 censers to distribute alms among the poor. And then, 
 what a show of honesty ! It would make one think that 
 truth had embodied itself and become a sort of Christ in 
 the flesh. Such men would carve integrity into statuary 
 and write it in poems and speak it in orations, but are the 
 last to embody it in life. If they possessed the Substance 
 they would not make such effort to exhibit the Show. 
 True worth is modest. It retires to the corner and shuns 
 •he open center. It comes out only when pressed out by 
 duty. It has a quiet manner, a low, guarded voice. 
 
 But Show is seen first and heard loudest. In morality 
 it talks most of the public good; is noisy in plans and 
 theories and denunciations. It abuses the wicked, de- 
 nounces the erring, despises the vile, christens the unfor- 
 tunate with hard names, and completes the Pharisee by a 
 careful and systematic display of its own excellences. It 
 
RELIGIOUS PRETENSION. 4" 
 
 seems to be greatly interested in others, but its efforts to 
 display that interest prove a profound selfishness at the 
 bottom. 
 
 Then in religion, the same melancholy exhibition of Show 
 without Substance meets the careful observer at every point 
 Pretension! profession! how haughtily they stride into 
 the kingdom of the lowly Redeemer, and usurp the highest 
 seats, and put on the robes of sanctity, and sing the hymns 
 of praise, and utter aloud, to be heard of men, the prayers 
 which the spirit ought to breathe in silent and childlike 
 confidence into the ear of the listening and loving Father ! 
 How they build high domes of worship with velvety seats 
 and golden altars and censers and costly plate and baptis- 
 mal fonts by the side of squalid want and ragged poverty ! 
 How their mocking prayers mingle with the cry of beg- 
 gary, the curse of blasphemy, the wail of pain and the 
 lewd laugh of sensuality ! How mournfully their organ- 
 chants of praise, bought with sordid gold, go up from the 
 seats of worldliness and pride, and how reproachfully the 
 tall steeples of cathedrals and synagogues and churches 
 look down on the oppression and pride and selfishness 
 which assemble below them, and the slavery, poverty, and 
 intemperance which pass and repass their marble found- 
 ations ! Oh ! shade of religion, where art thou 1 Spirit of 
 the lowly Bleeder on Calvary, hast thou left this world in 
 despair ? Comforter of the mourning, Dweller with the 
 inful, how long shall these things be ? Religion is made 
 a show-bubble. Pride is her handmaid and selfishness 
 her leade- What a tawdry show they make ! A.nd who 
 
48 SHOW LEADS TO RUIN". 
 
 believes the Substance is equal to the Show, the root as 
 deep as the tree is high, the foundation as firm as the 
 structure is imposing 1 Nowhere does Show more wicked- 
 ly usurp the dominion of Substance than in the, realm of 
 religion. In the world we might expect to see Show with 
 out Substance. But the true religion is above the world. 
 ' My kingdom is not of this world," said its Founder. It 
 has a world of its own. It is built on substance. But 
 men have sought to make it a world of show, to carry the 
 deception and Pharisaism of this world up into the Re- 
 deemer's world, and palm them off there for the golden 
 reality that shall be admitted to heaven. But poorly will 
 Show answer for Substance at the bar of God. No coin 
 but the true one passes there. No gilding will hide the 
 hollowness of a false soul. No tawdry displays will avail 
 with that Eye whose glance, like a sword, pierces to tbe 
 heart. All is open there. All Show without Substance is 
 vanity ; worse than vanity. It is sin. It is a gilded lie, 
 a varnished cheat. It is proof of hollowness within, the 
 sign of corruption. Yea, more ; it is itself corrupting, a 
 painted temptation. It lures men away from the substance ; 
 wastes their energies on a shadow ; wins their affections 
 to fading follies, and gives them a disrelish for the real, 
 the substantial, and enduring. Who can expect that God 
 will not hide in every hollow show intended to deceive, 
 a sharp two-edged sword that shall cut with disappoint- 
 ment and pierce with inward, wasting want ? 
 
 Show without Substance has drawn the red plowshare 
 if rr.ir through the prospects of individuals, communities, 
 
ELECTRICITY. 49 
 
 and nations. It has corrupted its millions. From the 
 family to the cabinet it has sown its seeds of deception 
 and reaped its harvest of lies. And still it is luring 
 us all, and in ten thousand little ways we exhibit in 
 Show what we have no warrant to pretend to from 
 Substance. 
 
 II. I said, there is Substance without Show. It is even 
 so. In God's great house of natural industry the most effi- 
 cient agents in the performance of their natural functions 
 work steadily and powerfully onward, without any show. 
 Among her elements, in the secret laboratory over the 
 door of which is written, " No admittance" to human eye, 
 are at work the busy and numerous gases, powerfully and 
 rapidly evolving the solid framework of nature, as well as 
 the delicate finish which garnishes and garlands her 
 glorious temple. They are eternal Substance without 
 Show. Coming out, we find the whole outward temple 
 swept by the viewless plumes of the wind. Over every 
 continent, island, and ocean she shakes her ethereal 
 pinions, and whirls, dashes, plays, shrieks, and moans 
 among her strong mountains, and forests, and waves, 
 tossing, and tearing, and upturning, as in lawless sport or 
 maddened fury, in proof of a powerful Substance without 
 any Show. 
 
 Examining a little closer, behind the wind and the ele- 
 ments, we find a still more ethereal agent working, with a 
 still more wonderful power, and evolving its results from 
 a still deeper mystery. It seems to be the nervo-vital 
 fluid of the body of Nature. It never shows itself save 
 3 
 
50 LOVE, PATRIOTISM, A3TD RELIGION. 
 
 when in fits of sport or moods of anger it flashes and 
 rattles among the clouds for a moment, and then retires 
 to its unseen caves. Here is a sublimely wonderful Sub- 
 
 tance with no Show, when in the performance of its 
 
 atural functions. 
 The most valuable and imperishable things in nature 
 have Substance without Show. It is equally so among 
 men. The largest, noblest, most valuable qualities of 
 manhood are not showy. And the largest and noblest 
 men are alike unshowy. Conscious of possessing the 
 Substance, they care little for the Show. Great worth is 
 modest and retiring. The more a man has to enjoy in 
 himself the less he cares to become a showman for others. 
 Charity loves to accomplish its mission in secret. Ho.i 
 esty is content to be . honest without heralding its own 
 virtue. Love is timid in the open world ; she delights 
 in the sweets of domestic retirement. Humility dwells 
 in a sequestered spot, the hermit of the vale. Worship 
 loves most the closet or the still grove for its altar. The 
 noblest patriotism is that which honors its country with a 
 dutiful life, and the best religion is that which does its 
 alms and pours its prayers so far from ostentation, that 
 its left hand knows not what its right does. The purest 
 integrity is that which walks in duty's path for duty's own 
 sake, and the most hearty goodness is that which does 
 its work for the sake of goodness. All this is Substance 
 without Show ; and it is the very essence of righteous- 
 ness, the vitality of morality, and the life-blood of religion. 
 Substance without Show is the highest form of moral life, 
 
CHARACTER AND LIFE. 51 
 
 the nearest approach to the heavenly the first step fully 
 and fairly in the realm of the spiritual. 
 
 III. I have said, there is Substance and Show together 
 This, too, is true. Man is a microcosm, an epitome of 
 the universe ; what is true of the universe is true of him. 
 He is the spiritual daguerreotype of the great outward 
 world. In this outward world Substance and Show arc 
 often united. This is especially true of superficial aspects. 
 The sun, an opaque body, shines with a glorious show. 
 The moon, a dense and dark globe of solid matter, glit- 
 ters in gorgeous splendor. The stars are other suns and 
 other worlds lit up with the torch of unapproachable 
 magnificence. On our earth the broad sea shines with 
 the reflex of the bending heavens ; the tall mountain 
 shows its mingled work of rock and tree, and light and 
 shade ; the prairie glows with its living gems of flowers, 
 and the forest waves in matchless grace. In all these 
 Substance and Show are united. But Show is always 
 based on Substance ; there is no Show without Substance. 
 But where Substance and Show are united, they are sim- 
 ply the result of superior forces which lie behind them, 
 which are Substance without Show. So in man. Our 
 characters may and should be seen. Our lights should 
 be set on bushels. Our wisdom should shine in our 
 lives ; our love should breathe in our acts ; our prayers 
 should be heard in our daily piety of deed ; our taste 
 should write itself on our outward forms, chisel itself in 
 our homes and public edifices. We praise the poet when 
 he embodies nature in a poem. That poem is but the 
 
52 THE WOEKMAN AND HIS WCBK. 
 
 outward Show of the poetic Substance within him. The 
 sculpturer's statuary is the Show of the profoundest Sub- 
 stance in his character. The religionist's prayer and 
 song are the Show of his highest Substance of will and 
 love. The mechanic's work is the outward Show of his 
 inward Substance. So our dress, our houses, our equi- 
 page, and style of life and manner of address, if truthful, 
 are but the Show of the Substance we possess in and of 
 ourselves. And so far as all these are the simple reflex 
 of our real substance, they are truthful and right. Taste 
 is as much a real Substance as beauty is a real Show. 
 The two are the legitimate correspondents of each other ; 
 they are halves of the same golden whole. And religion 
 recognizes them as readily as philosophy. Religion can 
 never clothe all men in drab, nor domicile them in the 
 same form and style of dwelling, nor cut their garments 
 after the same pattern, nor mold their manners to the 
 same etiquette. Religion asks that men should be truth- 
 ful, and yield their spirits to the superior law of eternal 
 Substance which is without Show, and then that the fash- 
 ioning which shall follow shall exhibit itself truthfully, 
 humbly, and happily in the daily life. 
 
 The sum, then, is this. Show without Substance is 
 vain, foolish, and wicked. It is a species of deception 
 and dishonesty, which leads others astray, and dwarfs and 
 corrupts the soul that uses it. It is a species of wicked- 
 ness widely practiced and wofully ruinous. Few are they 
 whose garments are wholly free from its stain. Sub- 
 stance without Show is that essence of goodness which 
 
TRUE WORTH AND ITS EXPRESSION. 53 
 
 originates with the Divine Fountain, that root of purity, 
 that fount of righteousness which is a law unto itself, the 
 first and highest form of spiritual force ; such as dwelt in 
 Jesus ; such as exists in the fullness of infinity in God ; 
 such as some great and pure souls feel ; and such as 
 makes heaven the glorious place it is. Substance and 
 Show together consists in tho possession of real worth 
 with its. honest expression ; of divine qualities with their 
 humble but faithful exhibition — an exhibition not for the 
 mere purpose of show, but for the good they may do. It 
 is that form of moral life, attainable by all, useful to all, 
 between the abstractly spiritual and the sensualistic mate- 
 rial, which leads along the beautiful path of the Redeem- 
 er's kingdom below, and is a meet preparation for the 
 eternal home above. 
 
Sedan Jfiirt. 
 
 LUCK AND PLUCK. 
 
 Early Impnssions of Luck— Luck vs. Law— Proverbs— Law, and not Luck, Gor» 
 ems the World— We gain nothing by Chance— Some Seek for Luck in Far-off 
 Places— Some Stay at Home for Luck— The Do-Littles— Bad Philosophy— Luck 
 and Dishonesty — Pluck is the One Thing Needful — There is Luck only in Pluck 
 — How Luck is Lost— Pluck and Reform — Wealth and Honors Useless unless 
 Earned— Labor and Luck. 
 
 These are common words, and suggest a common sub- 
 ject. . We are common men and women, and wish to take 
 a common view of it. 
 
 Since we were boys and girls we have heard of Luck. 
 Our fathers and mothers talked of good luck and bad luck, 
 of lucky and unlucky days. What was meant we did not 
 exaetly understand, nor is it probable they did ; but the 
 most vivid impression conveyed was, that things happen- 
 ed so and so ; some happened well and some happened ill, 
 without any particular cause ; or, in other words, certain 
 things chanced to be as we wished, while certain other 
 things chanced to be contrary to our desires, undirected by 
 any steady and unvarying laws. 
 
 The word Luck is suggestive of a want of law. This 
 idea has passed into many common proverbs, sucli as 
 these : " It is more by hit than good wit ;" " It is as well 
 
LAW, NOT LUCK, GOVERNS THE WORLD. 55 
 
 to be born lucky as ricb;" "Fortune is a fickle jade;" 
 "Risk notbing, win nothing;" and more of a similar im- 
 port, all ignoring the grand rule of law, and resting upon 
 the atheistical idea of chance. . 
 
 Our fathers were good, religious people, and did not 
 mean to foster atheism when they talked about Luck, and 
 gave a half-way assent to its Godless reality. If the uni- 
 verse were an infinite chaos ; if order had no throne in its 
 wide realm ; if universal law were a fable of fancy ; if 
 God were a Babel, or the world a Pandemonium, there 
 might be such a thing as Luck. But while from the par- 
 ticle to the globe, from the animalcule to the archangel 
 there is not a being or a thing, a time or an event, dis- 
 connected with the great government of eternal law and 
 order, we can not see how such a game of chance as 
 the word Luck supposes can be admitted into any corner 
 of the great world. Luck ! What ite it ? A lottery ? A 
 nap-hazard 1 A frolic of gnomes ? A blind-man's-bluff 
 among the laws ? A ruse among the elements ? A trick 
 of dame Nature ? Has any scholar defined Luck, any phi- 
 losopher explained its nature, any chemist shown us its 
 elements ? Is Luck that strange, nondescript unmateriality 
 that does all things among men that they can not account 
 for ? If so, why does not Luck make a fool speak words 
 of M'isdom ; an ignoramus utter lectures on philosophy ; 
 a stupid dolt write the great works of music and poetry ; 
 a double-fingered dummy create the beauties of ait, or an 
 untutored savage the wonders of mechanism 1 
 
 If w*» should go into a country where the sluggard's 
 
56 WE GAIN NOTHING BY CHANCE, 
 
 farm is covered with the richest grains and fruits, and 
 where industry is rewarded only with weeds and brambles ; 
 where the drunkard looks sleek and beautiful, and his 
 home cheerful and happy, while temperance wears the 
 haggard face and eats the bread of want and misery; 
 where labor starves, while idleness is fed and grows fat; 
 where common sense is put upon the pillory, while twad- 
 dle and moonshine are raised to distinction ; where genius 
 lies in the gutter, and ignorance soars to the skies ; where 
 virtue is incarcerated in prison, while vice is courted and 
 wooed by the sunlight, we might possibly be led to believe 
 that Luck had something to do there. But where we see, 
 as we everywhere do in our world, the rewards of industry 
 energy, wisdom, and virtue constant as the warmth in sun- 
 light or beauty in flowers, we must deny in toto the very 
 existence of this good and evil essence which men have 
 called Luck. 
 
 Was it Luck that gave Girard and Astor, Rothschild 
 and Gray, their vast wealth ? Was it Luck that won vic- 
 tories for Washington, Wellington, and Napoleon 1 Was 
 it Luck that carved Venus de Medici, that wrote the 
 " iEneid," " Paradise Lost," and " Festus ?" Was it Luck 
 that gave Morse his telegraph, or Fulton his steamboat, 
 or Franklin the lightning for his plaything ? Is it Luck 
 that gives the merchant his business, the lawyer his 
 clients, the minister his hearers, the physician his pa- 
 tients, the mechanic his labor, the farmer his harvest? 
 Nay, verily. No man believes it. And yet many are the 
 men who dream of Luck, as though, such a mysterious 
 
SOME STAY AT HOME FOR LUCK. "57 
 
 spirit existed, and did sometimes humor the wh « s of 
 visionary cowards and drones. 
 
 Many are the young men who waste the best part of 
 their lives in attempts to woo this coy maid into their em- 
 braces. They enter into this, or that, or the other specu- 
 lation, with the dreamy hope that Luck will pay them a 
 smiling visit. Some go to California, or Australia, or the 
 " Far West," or to the Torrid or the Frigid Zone, or some 
 wondrous away-off place, with no fair prospect or hope of 
 success from their own energies and exertions, but de- 
 pending almost wholly on a gentle smile from capricious 
 Luck. Poor fellows ! they find that Luck does not get 
 so far from home. 
 
 Some less daring and more lazy loiter about home, drawl 
 around town, or loll through the country, whose only trust 
 or expectation is in a shuffle of Luck in their favor. They 
 know they deserve nothing, yet with an impudence hard 
 as brass they will pray to Luck for a " windfall," or a 
 " fat office," or a " living," and foolishly wait for an answer. 
 These are the men that make your gamblers, your house 
 thieves, your counterfeiters, your gentlemen loafers. 
 They are not men that originally mean any harm. But 
 they believe in Luck, and their trust is in Luck, and they 
 are going to have it out of Luck some way. They de- 
 spised meanness at first, perhaps, as much as you and I do ; 
 but somebody told them of Luck, and they believed, and 
 lo ! they got duped. Little by little they went over to 
 meanness, waiting all the while for a shake of the hand 
 from Luck. 
 
 3* 
 
58 BAD PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Some of the believers in Luck, of more moral firmness, 
 dally with all life's great duties, and so do about the same 
 as nothing, and eat the bread of disappointment. They 
 do a little at this business, and Luck does not smile. 
 They do a little at that, still Luck keeps away. They 
 do a little at something else, they hear not a foot-fall from 
 Luck. And so they fritter away time and life. These 
 are the do-littles. Hard-working men they are frequently. 
 It is with them as though they had started to go to a place 
 a thousand miles distant, leading to which there were 
 many roads. They set out at full speed on one road, go 
 a few miles, and get tired, and so conclude to turn back and 
 try another. And so they try one road after another, 
 each time returning to the starting-place. In a little 
 while it is too late to get there at the appointed time, and 
 so they mope along any road they happen to be on till the 
 day is over. 
 
 There is a bad philosophy in the world. Our boys are 
 full of it ; our young men are its victims ; our middle- 
 aged men have not outgrown it, and our old men can not 
 make themselves believed on it. It is the idea that the 
 good which man needs, comes, or may come, some other 
 »y than by wise application and hard industry. 
 
 besides the moral evil and intellectual stupor which 
 .ome upon the men who adopt this philosophy of Luck, 
 ilieir lives are embittered by constant forebodings of evil 
 Clouds overshadow them ; blue spirits of evil gather 
 around them ; they occasionally have strange fits of 
 laughtGr, and at times enjoy a delirious happiness, whon 
 
LUCK AND DISHONEST Y. 59 
 
 their natures break away from the cold load of doubt that 
 is laid upon them. But they soon go back to the specu- 
 lating, dreamy mood ; they know not the joy of the man 
 who trusts in his own good right arm ; they know not 
 the peace of him whose ambition is to earn his bread by 
 the sweat of his brow ; they feel not the exultation of 
 him whose life is a constant series of victories over the 
 impediments which oppose his progress. The exuber- 
 ance of the honest laborer's spirits is not in their hearts. 
 Again, their philosophy breeds dishonesty within thern. 
 They crave a good they do not earn ; they pray to Luck 
 to give what does not belong to them ; their whole in- 
 ward life is a constant craving wish for something to 
 which they have no just claim. It is a morbid, feverish 
 covetousness, which is very apt to end in the conclusion, 
 " The world owes me a living, and a living I'll have," and 
 so they go out to get a living as best they may. They 
 fancy that every rich and honored man has got his good 
 by some turn of Luck, and hence they feel that he has no 
 special right to his property or his honors, and so they 
 will get either from him if they can. They look upon 
 the world, not as a great hive of industry, where men are 
 rewarded according to their labors and merits, but as a 
 grand lottery, a magnificent scheme of chance, in which 
 fools and idlers have as fair a show as talent and labor. 
 
 In my humble opinion, this philosophy of Luck is at the 
 bottom of more dishonesty, wickedness, and moral cor- 
 ruption than any thing else. It sows its seeds in youth- 
 ful minds just at that visionary season when judgment 
 
60 THERE IS LUCK ONLY IN PLUCK. 
 
 has not been ripened by experience nor imagination cor- 
 rected by wisdom. And it takes more minds from the 
 great school-house of useful life, and more arms from the 
 great workshop of human industry, than any other one 
 tiling to which my mind reverts. It is a moral palsy, 
 against which every just man should arm himself. The 
 cure of the evil is found in Pluck. 
 
 It is not Luck, but Pluck, which weaves the web of 
 life ; it is not Luck, but Pluck, which turns the wheel of 
 Fortune. It is Pluck that amasses wealth, that crowns 
 men with honors, that forges the luxuries of life. I use 
 the term Pluck as synonymous with whole-hearted energy, 
 genuine bravery of soul. 
 **\ That man is to be pitied who is too fearful and coward- 
 ly to go out and do battle for an honest living and a com- 
 petence in the great field of human exertion. He is the 
 man of Luck, bad luck. Poor fellow ! He lost his Luck 
 when he lost his Pluck. Good pluck is good luck. Bad 
 pluck is bad luck. Many a man has lost his Luck, but 
 never while he had good Pluck left. Men lose their 
 Luck by letting their energies eke through bad habits 
 and unwise projects. YT>ne man loses his Luck in his late 
 morning naps, another in his late evening hours. One 
 loses his Luck in the bar-room, another in the ball-room ; 
 one down by the river holding the boyish fishing-rod, an- 
 other in the woods chasing down the innocent squirrel 
 One loses his Luck in folly, one in fashion, one in idle- 
 ness, one in high living, one in dishonesty, one in brawls, 
 one in sensualism, and a great many in bad management- 
 
PLUCK AND REFORM. 61 
 
 Indeed, bad management is at the bottom cf nearly all bad 
 luck. It is bad management to train up a famifyyof bad 
 habits, to eat out one's living and corrupt his life.' It is 
 bad management to drink liquor, and eat tobacco, and 
 smoke, and swear, and tattle, and visit soda-fountains, and 
 cream saloons, and theaters, and brothels, and live high, 
 and chase after the fashions, and fret and scold, and get 
 angry, and abuse people, ana mind other people's business 
 and neglect one's own. It is bad management to expose 
 one's health or overtax one's powers, and get sick, and 
 take drugs to get well ; to be idle or extravagant, or mean 
 or dishonest. All these things tend to bring that evil 
 genius which men call bad Luck. 
 
 But notwithstanding all these species of bad manage- 
 ment, if one has genuine Pluck he can reform. The man 
 of energy can quit his drams, and hold his temper, and 
 bridle his tongue, and direct his life by the maxims of 
 common sense. Moral courage is the right arm of reform. 
 True reformers are the men of Pluck. All men should 
 be reformers. Life, when properly understood, is one 
 great work of reform. Reform is but another word for 
 improvement, progress. Progress is life's business, life's 
 duty, life's end. Luck is not progress. It is getting to 
 the end without the journey ; it is getting rich without 
 making money ; it is getting honors without deserving 
 them ; it is having good things without knowing how to 
 use them. Such Luck is an evil. It is no Luck. Indeed, 
 there is no Luck. Life's great good is wrought out, ay, 
 wrought on, the anvil of industry. We can not cheat 
 
62 HONORS USELESS UNLESS EARNED. 
 
 Providence of its rule. Life is a vineyard, and men are 
 rewarded in it for what they do and deserve. Talent 
 and labor gauge the pay. Fortunes are made, not won. 
 Wealth and honors are not a fortune. Give them to a 
 youth, and he knows not how to use them. They will 
 prove his ruin. Steal money, steal a million of dollars, 
 and lock it in your own coffers, and with it you steal a 
 curse. You will be poorer than before. No man knows 
 how, or can know how, to use stolen money well. There 
 is no receipt-book or commercial regulation in the uni- 
 verse by which it can be disposed of to profit. It must 
 be a losing game. Wealth is not a good, money is not a 
 blessing. The good lies in knowing how to use it. 
 Honors are of themselves of no avail. They are not a 
 good. The good is in knowing how to wear them. 
 Where wealth and honors come unearned and undeserved, 
 they are not a good, nor can they be. They are an evil, 
 and work a terrible ruin. An edged tool in a mechanic's 
 hand is a good thing; but in the hand of the unskillful 
 it is a danger. A steam-engine in the hand of its master 
 is a glorious machine ; but to one knows not how to use 
 it, it is an instrument of death. The generous and noble 
 horse, under the care of his groom, is a most useful ani- 
 mal ; but the man unused to such creatures had better let 
 him alone. So it is with the things men covet in life. 
 They are blessings only as they are wisely used. The 
 good they confer is not in themselves, but in the using. To 
 use them is the thing to learn. This can be learned no way 
 except by patient application in their attainment and use 
 
LABOR AND LOCK. 63 
 
 The rule is, to learn how to use wealth, we must make 
 it ; to learn how to wear honors, we must earn them ; to 
 learn how to enjoy pleasures, we must create them. Out 
 of ourselves the good comes. The fountain is within us. 
 If we would drink the water, we must draw it from the 
 well If we would have statuary, we must carve it ; if 
 we would have fame, we must do something to secure it. 
 If we would live well in life, we must do well. If we 
 would conquer, we must fight. Labor is the price of suc- 
 cess. He who has Pluck to labor, and labor wisely, has 
 naught to fear. Men may be what they would be, and 
 have what they would have if they only will. All lies in 
 the resolute will. The stalwart arm and the determined 
 soul will work out life's greatest good. Good is in work. 
 Not in the thing made or earned is the good, so much as in 
 the making and earning. He who does the most is truly 
 the wealthiest man. In activity is our bliss. 
 
 Idleness is death ; activity is life. The worker is the 
 hero. Luck lies in labor. This is the end. And labor 
 the fruit- of Pluck. Luck and Pluck, then, meet in labor. 
 Pleasure blossoms on the tree of labor. Wisdom is its 
 fruit. Thrones are built on labor. Kingdoms stand by 
 its steady props. Homes are made by labor. Every 
 man of Pluck will make him one, and fill it with the fruits 
 of industry. In doing this he will find no time to wait 
 or, or complain of, Luck. 
 
Tfttiut Si*. 
 
 THEORY AND PKACTICE 
 
 False Ideas of Theory and Practice— The True Origin of Theory— Theory ii 
 Built up from Practice— History contains the Germs of Philosophy— Theory is 
 Sublimated Labor — Present Theories have been Developed from the Past — 
 Phrenology— Christianity— Practice goes before Theory— Confucius— Plato- 
 Socrates and Aristotle— Many can Practice, Few Theorize— Kight Practice Nat- 
 ural and Easy— Truth and Falsehood in Life— Every Man should have a 
 Theory of Life— Theory and Practice should go together— Spirit of the Age— To 
 • do Ejght is easy— False Ideas on this Point— Theory and Practice compared. 
 
 " It is one thing to preach and another, to practice," is 
 an old proverb. It expresses the idea, that Theory is 
 much easier than Practice. But it is a question whether 
 philosophy would be willing to concede this point. 
 
 The proverb is old, and its origin may be easily traced. 
 It was born of humble parentage ; it grew up among the 
 common people ; it was the pupil's retort to the teacher 
 when a hard problem was presented for his solution ; the 
 subject's reply to his king when strict laws were to be en- 
 forced ; the people's response to the philosopher when the 
 theory of a true moral Ike was presented to them. Times 
 are changing. Things are not exactly as they were. The 
 difference between the high and low of men, the learned 
 and unlearned, the teacher and the student, is not so great 
 as it was. The two extremes of humanity are appro'icb- 
 
FALSE IDEAS OF THEORY AND PRACTICE. 65 
 
 log each other ; and when, they meet the- proverb will be 
 changed, and Theory will be considered harder than 
 D ractice. 
 
 When the world's teachers were few and its students 
 many, when philosophers were scarce and the multi 
 tude ignorant and base, that multitude looked upon philos 
 ophy as something easy of attainment — looked upon the 
 precepts of wisdom as costing only the opening of the 
 mouth and a little pleasant use of the tongue — looked 
 on sage advice as costing only a few breaths of common 
 air ; and the best theories of life and practice as being the 
 delightful day-dreams of ease-loving men, who lived upon 
 the hard labors of the many. Science cost nothing, they 
 thought. Learning was a sort of God-given vision, Which 
 a lucky turn of fortune gave to some favored sons of men. 
 Eloquence was a divine gift, denied the many. Genius 
 was of the gods. All rare powers of mind were divine 
 endowments, costing the possessor nothing. Such was 
 the common view. Hence, when from the lips of eloquence, 
 or the storehouse of learning, or the genius of philosophy, 
 were issued the precepts of morality, the rules of correct 
 living, or the religion of human duty, the common people, 
 who could scarcely believe such a practice possible, ex 
 claimed, by way of retort and excuse for their non-perform- 
 ance, " It's one thing to preach, but quite ar other to 
 practice. It is very easy for you to sit up there in your 
 easy chairs and theorize, but just come down here into 
 every-day life, and you will learn the difference between 
 Theory and Practice." 
 

 66 HISTORY CONTAINS THE GERMS frF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The proverb ignores the true origin of Theory, the night- 
 toils of genius ; and the hard, slow, weary, up-hill road 
 to learning. Theory is born in hard travail ; it is a child 
 of long and painful labor ; it is made in brain-sweat and 
 toil ; it is beat out on the anvil of thought. Vulcan never 
 hammered half so hard for his iron instruments of torture 
 and profit, as the true theorist for his plan of moral life. 
 
 Theory is the philosophy of things obtained chiefly 
 from the crucible of experience, ay, and the experience 
 of ages, too. Theory is built up on Practice — on acci- 
 dental, spontaneous, natural practice — the practice of all 
 men in all times. Men have always been doing right and 
 wrong. They have strewn all through the march of hu- 
 man existence the elements of the true theory. The He- 
 brews, the Chinese, the multitudes of India, the Egyp- 
 tians, Scandinavians, Tartars, Persians, Grecians, Romans, 
 Northmen, Britons, the feudal men, and those of modern 
 times, have been strewing the elements of Theory all 
 through their long existences. Their histories contain 
 the seeds of all moral philosophy. Who would gather up 
 those seeds and plant them in the garden of thought, and 
 combine, arrange, and cultivate them till they produce the 
 true philosophy of life, must labor. Then, the life of all 
 these nations, and all their hordes of men, is but one 
 man'a life lived under little different circumstances. The 
 experience of the world is all compassed in the experience 
 of one full-lifed man. The material universe, multiformed 
 and myriad-like as it appears, is all reducible to a few 
 simple substances, probably not twenty. So human expe- 
 
THEORY IS SUBLIMATED LABOB. 67 
 
 rience, varied and million-fold as it appears, spread out on 
 the wide map of the past, is reducible to a single life. To 
 study oneself is to read the book of the race. To reduce 
 the lives of mankind to a single unity, and to extract from 
 that unity the essence of the whole ; to obtain therefrom a 
 simple formula that will solve the moral problems of hu- 
 manity, is not the task of a moment, nor of an idle mind. 
 It is not a small labor, simple as may appear the result. It 
 is a great work of reason. To study oneself in connection 
 with the race ; to systematize and generalize the facts of 
 all history ; to compare government with government, ac- 
 tion with action, nation with nation, code with code, 
 principle with principle, and from the great chaotic whole 
 to draw out one perfect, simple, sublime theory of right, 
 and have that theory accord with one's own-life experience, 
 is no small task. To go into the grand Pandora's box of 
 the world and put it all in order, is more than ease -loving 
 minds like to do. Theory is indeed sublimated labor. It 
 is not the labor of one man, but of thousands. The best 
 minds of all ages have been gathering the facts and evol- 
 ving the principles upon which every correct theory of 
 moral life is established. Each age of philosophers has 
 taken the work of the last where they left it. Thinkers 
 have succeeded each other in generations. Learning has 
 had its successive schools. Thought has traveled from 
 mind to mind. The true theory of moral life is the work 
 of nearly six thousand years of humaji progress, and of mil- 
 lions of years of individual thinkers. Our age has not 
 risen up of itself. It has grown out of the past. It is the 
 
68 PRACTICE GOES BEFORE THEORY. 
 
 last step in the world's progress. And its correct theoi 
 are not the growth of a day in the world's calendar, but of 
 all its days. Phrenology is a theory of the last ages ; bu 
 it has been growing through all time. Its seed was plant 
 ed in Eden. It did not bear fruit till the later ages pour 
 ed upon it their ripening sunlight. The theory of the 
 material universe which philosophy now receives, is the 
 growth of the ages. The theory of electrical agency is 
 apparently of this age ; but it took all past periods and 
 powers to perfect minds capable of its development. The 
 theory of republicanism, which we deem just and. right, 
 is modern in its development, but world-old in its 
 growth. The theory of morality and religion spread 
 out in the Gospel is not even yet comprehended but by a 
 few of the highest minds of earth. Many have practiced 
 very near to it ; but few have risen to a clear conception 
 of the sublime theory itself. 
 
 And it will be ages before Christianity as a theory will 
 be comprehended by the masses of mankind. They are 
 approaching that sublime period of attainment ; but they 
 are far below it yet. Its Practice must be greatly improv- 
 ed before its Theory can be understood. No man can 
 understand Christianity till he practices it. Its very 
 theory is so interwoven with personal experience, and so 
 ingrained with spirituality, that a practice of its precepts 
 and an experience of its spirit are necessary to its intel- 
 ectual comprehension. 
 
 Practice goes before Theory, just as fact goes before 
 reasoning. Experience is the mother of Theory, and rea- 
 
 
MANY CAN PRACTICE, FEW THEORIZE. 69 
 
 ecn. is ts father. Theory is the logical deduction of ex- 
 perience. It ripens out of Practice. Men could never 
 have comprehended republicanism till they had begun to 
 put it in practice. 
 
 It takes a multitude to Practice what one puts into 
 Theory, and perhaps of all the multitude, that one is the 
 only one that could deduce a correct Theory from that 
 Practice. Confucius was the theorist of his country, and 
 probably the only one of its multitudes who was equal 
 to the theories he advanced. He was the concentrated 
 power of his nation. Was his Theory easier than its 
 Practice ? Thousands could practice it ; but one alone 
 could evolve it. Plato was the sun of Grecian philos- 
 ophy. He alone, perhaps, of all Greek minds, was equal 
 to what he developed. Multitudes could practice it with 
 an effort equal to that which he used in its development. 
 Which was the easier, the Theory or the Practice 1 
 Socrates and Aristotle were theorists. Who in their age 
 have originated higher conceptions of moral life 1 Many 
 might have practiced them, with far less mental power 
 than was necessary to conceive them. Which, then, was 
 the easier 1 Take the moral philosophers of our day, who 
 give the world its true theories of life ; are their theories 
 more difficult to practice than to form? 
 
 Many can practice them, few can form them. This is 
 said of true theories, not false. Every crazy brain can 
 produce absurd and ridiculous theories, as easy as many 
 men can produce a rickety and wicked practice. Tha 
 proverb which says, It is easier to preach than to practice, 
 
70 EIGHT PRACTICE NATURAL AND EAST. 
 
 means to preach right and practice right. It has nothing 
 to do with false Theory or Practice. The false may be 
 easily obtained, but it is dear in the end. Error is always 
 in the market, and sold cheaply, but always at a poor 
 bargain. It wears badly, and looks worse. False prac 
 tice is plenty enough, and can be had on easy terms, bu 
 is terrible in its results ; it ends most horribly. This 
 discussion is on true Theory and right Practice. 
 
 We have said that Practice goes before Theory. This 
 is true. Right practice is spontaneous. Men naturally 
 love the right in practice. A right-doer is honored in all 
 countries. The gods of the ancients were supposed to 
 be right-doers, and men worshiped them spontaneously 
 •Worship is natural. It is the embodied right that men 
 worship, not wrong. The worst of men do reverence to 
 virtue. All ages have bowed to goodness. The ideas 
 of virtue have differed ; but to virtue, as it has been un- 
 derstood, men have paid their best respects. The human 
 heart is virtue's shrine. That heart loves the good when 
 't acts naturally and freely. The child-heart is the best 
 type of the natural man. That heart utters truth, and acts 
 without art. It is simple, outspoken, spontaneous ; it 
 speaks the truth naturally ; it has to learn to lie. De- 
 ception and fraud are the result of long practice and hard 
 tutorship. We all have to study to deceive. We can be 
 true naturally ; we have to serve an apprenticeship to bo 
 false. 
 
 This spontaneity of good in the practice of men has 
 furnished the facts for all true moral theory. Theory is 
 
 
MEN SHOULD HAVE A THEORY OF LIFE. 71 
 
 a web woven out of the threads of fact ; these threads 
 are the lives of men. Philosophy has wound then up 
 from the whirling spindle of life, reeled them into skeins 
 warped and put them into the loom of reason, and woven 
 hem into the webs of Theory. 
 
 There is much that is true and much that is false in 
 every man's life. The thread of truth must be separated 
 from the entanglements of falsehood. This is the work 
 of philosophy. Out of all men's lives something may be 
 got to form a true theory of moral living. This theory is 
 vastly important. If there were no evil, and could be 
 n6ne, Theory would not be so especially needed. Spon- 
 taneous action would always be right ; life would always 
 be true. But as the Avorld is, Theory is needed as a 
 guide through the perplexing mazes of temptation. 
 
 Every man should have a theory of life, formed in med- 
 itation and prayer, either by himself or by another. He 
 has been so educated into much that is false, that unless 
 he does lay down some fundamental principles, and build 
 on them the structure of a moral theory, he will hardly 
 be able to withstand the storms of life. To form his 
 theory, he must go into his own heart as it was in its inno- 
 cent days, as it is in its best moods, and see what he finds 
 there. He need not seek for a new theory ; an old one 
 may be true. To understand a truthful one, he must study 
 — study his heart, men, the world, history, providence 
 evelation, progress, and whatever enters into the mora 
 ife of man. The fundamental principles of the true 
 irgory are evidently in Christ's teachings. But these 
 
72 THEORY AND PRACTICE SHOULD GO TOGETHER. 
 
 must be understood and applied. In this work, man's 
 intellectual nature will be developed. Reason is the pio- 
 neer of life. To theorize correctly is the highest work 
 of reason; to theorize rightly on moral and religious- 
 subjects is the sanctification of reason. Men do not rea- 
 son enough on ethics and religioa ; and this is the reason 
 why it is so hard to practice as they know they ought 
 Practice is the fact with which reason builds Theory 
 Then Theory in turn guides Practice in the way of right. 
 They are mutual helpers. To theorize well is to prepare 
 for a noble practice. The rule is, that Theory and Prac- 
 tice are a united pair. They go up and down the earth 
 together ; they love each other, and seek to dwell together. 
 This is the rule ; it has exceptions. Some men have 
 good theories and bad practice ; but these are anomalies 
 — monsters. To violate one's own theory, formed in the 
 solemn hour of meditation, is a high-handed outrage. 
 There are some who adopt good theories of other's form- 
 ing, with little reflection and no consecration of thought, 
 and then violate them, simply because they have never 
 realized them, never sounded to the depth of their princi- 
 ples. Let men realize the true theory of moral life and 
 adopt it as their own, and it will sanctify their lives. To 
 meditate on business, science, mechanism, politics, and 
 form theories on them, will indeed develop reason and 
 empower thought ; but to meditate on moral life, and form 
 a theory for its direction, not only does as much, but it 
 strengthens the moral sense, and prepares the man to em* 
 body his theory in life. 
 
8PIRIT OF THE AGE. 73 
 
 The great evil of this age is the dearth of sanctified 
 thought. The intellect is not quickened by the moral 
 sense. Reason is educated unmoralized. Physical 
 science and life are the studies. Mechanism, trade, and 
 politics have captivated the world. Moral philosophy is 
 secondary. Our schools serve the intellect, and not the 
 whole man; our graduates are educated intellects, not 
 educated men ; our professional men and statesmen are 
 great intellects, not great men ; our education often 
 dwarfs the man while it makes the intellect gigantic. 
 The intellect is only a part of the man. To develop the 
 man is to magnify all his parts. 
 
 " 'Tis education forms the common mind." 
 
 So the life of the age is more intellectual than moral ; 
 more material than spiritual ; more sensual and worldly 
 than religious. Here is the bottom of the evil. Let 
 thought be moralized ; let intellect be baptized in religion ; 
 let moral philosophy be the grand, captivating study, and 
 Theory will quicken life, and Practice be in harmony with 
 it. At present men love to think better than pray, simply 
 because they are more accustomed to it. They are edu- 
 cated to think, aud not to pray. The moral man is as 
 easily educated as the intellectual. It naturally loves 
 the right ; and if that love be generously educated, it will 
 pursue the right. When men are thus educated they will 
 study for the'true theory of moral life. Theory then will 
 be noble, grand, powerful, and Practice will be easy and 
 right. 
 
 4 
 

 74 10 DO EIGHT IS EASST. .' 
 
 About Practice men have a false impression. They 
 seem to think it easier to do wrong than right. They are 
 ever croaking about the difficulties of a right practice. 
 This is a mistake. A good practice is not so exceedingly 
 hard. Any man can tell a truth easier than a lie ; can do 
 a good deed easier than a bad one ; can be honest easier 
 than dishonest. The natural inclination is to do right, 
 and it is easy to do right. It is not an irksome task, as 
 some maintain — : a sacrifice of all pleasure, a hard, doleful 
 crucifixion of the natural man, to do right; far from it. 
 Right lies in the straightforward path of life ; error is in 
 the byways and behind the hedges. To do right is both 
 easy and pleasant. Rectitude smiles Upon her followers 
 and pays them well for their service. There is glory 
 in the right, and every body knows it. To live honor- 
 ably is to get the world's esteem ; men know this. Why 
 then do they not live honorably ? That old theory, That 
 it is hard to do right, has frightened them from an attempt 
 to follow the true practice. 
 
 Many a man has given up in despair, just because he 
 has heard the delusive tale that it is next to impossible to 
 do right. Men are but children of a larger growth, and 
 are just as easily discouraged. The common idea is, that 
 geniuses only can be learned and useful men, and natural- 
 born saints only can do right The multitude are given 
 over to ignorance and Satan. False idea, and wicked, 
 too. If I wanted to ruin a child, I would teach him that 
 moral righteousness is an almost impossible thing. Th<* 
 truth is, every body can be useful and good. The way of 
 
THEORY AND PRACTICE COMPARED. 73 
 
 right is not barricaded ; it is the highway opened by 
 God for his children to walk in. To practice the right 
 is not to meet enemies at every point and wage a constant 
 war against unseen powers ; the war is in the practice of 
 wrong. Enemies gather around the wicked ; swords 
 hang over the evil-doer. The just have nothing to fear 
 " Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all hei 
 paths are peace f " The way of the transgressor is hard.' 
 It is wise to practice the right ; it is easy ; it is pleasant. 
 Discourage not him who would practice well ; clip not 
 the wings of the aspirant for a good life. It is wicked to 
 put impediments in the way of him whose heart pants 
 for goodness. See that young man : his soul is eager to 
 practice righteousness ; but a false teacher tells him that 
 a thousand difficulties attend such a course, that the Theory 
 of right is pleasant and easy, but the Practice is a Hercu- 
 lean task which few, if any, can perform. How his coun- 
 tenance lowers, his brow darkens ; the light within him 
 fades, and he goes to the practice of evil. It is true, ed- 
 ucated as we are, there are difficulties attending the prac- 
 tice of right ; but they are chiefly occasioned by false and 
 early formed habits. Effort and self-denial are needed, 
 but the recompense how great ! 
 
 The sum is this. Theory is the reason of things, the 
 plan of life based on facts which are the spontaneous 
 practice of natural unperverted hearts ; is difficult of 
 attainment ; is the grand problem of moral living ; the 
 concise statement of the formula of practice, and should 
 be sought with unwearied assiduity by all. Practice 
 
76 THEORY AND PRACTICE COMPARED. 
 
 is that theory in actual life ; is easily wrouglu when 
 the heart is stout and the will is resolute ; is that moral 
 life which all honor, the good love, and which all may 
 attain ; is full of pleasantness and high reward. Prac- 
 tice is Theory in action. The few theorize ; the many 
 ractice. Theory is the lesson ; Practice is the school 
 Theory teaches ; Practice reads. Theory is science 
 Practice is life. Theory commands ; Practice performs. 
 Theory is the general ; Practice fights the battles, and 
 wins the victory. They belong together, are halves' of a 
 golden whole; neither could live without the other 
 They are the rule and the work in the mathematics of 
 life : let the rule be learned ; let the work be performed. 
 
Sectary Ssiun. 
 
 FACT AND FICTION 
 
 Hen Inflaeuced by both Fact and Fiction — Facts Impress us First — Wisdom of 
 Providence in the Presentation of Facts to the Child's Mind — The Use of Facts 
 by Great Men— The Study of the Universe of Facts leads to Piety— Two Kiudi 
 of Facts — Material Facts— Spiritual Facta— Fiction— Dangerous Character of 
 Fiction — Overdrawn Pictures — Figures Omitted— .The Heart is Polluted First— 
 Day-Dreaming — Literary Fictions — Tales not always Fictions — A Test to be Ap« 
 plied to Works of Fiction. 
 
 The influences which shape the actions, direct their ca- 
 reers, and color the lives of men, are from two great worlds 
 — the world of Fact and the world of Fiction. No man 
 is influenced wholly by one or the other ; some men are 
 Fact-men, other men are Fiction-men ; but the Fact-men 
 are not all fact, nor the Fiction-men all fiction ; neither 
 lives wholly in his own world ; each encroaches some- 
 what on his neighbor. Some men boast of being matter- 
 of-fact men, but they do not always consider how much 
 they give themselves to fiction. It is not our province to 
 inquire whether Fact or Fiction moves men most. That ' 
 they both influence men is a fact. There can be no doubt 
 but Fact reigns first. The babe is born among facts. The 
 child looks first on facts - r feels facts ; hears facts ; tastes 
 facts. The fast world te which the mind opens is a fact* 
 
78 FACTS IMPRESS US FIRST. 
 
 world ; the first impressions it receives are fact-impres- 
 sions; its first delights come from a contemplation of 
 facts, and its first sorrows arise from the same source. 
 This is true of all minds. Mind first feeds on fact. The 
 outward world is all fact. The sun, moon, and stars ; the 
 cloud, storm, and bow ; the house, the dress, and the rose ; 
 he food, the toy, and the tool, are all facts. From these and 
 ur associates we get our first impressions. These lay 
 the groundwork of human culture. The angels, for aught 
 we know, commenced their being in a similar way. We 
 know that all earth-mind does, and why not all heaven- 
 mind ? Is not creature-mind the same in all worlds ? 
 And if so, must not the foundation of its culture and pro- 
 gress be laid in a similar manner, and gathered from fact- 
 material ? This view shows that the material fact-world 
 is of no mean service in the grand school of intelligence 
 into which the Father has sent his family of children. 
 
 This world is a school-house, and its multitude of ma- 
 terial facts are the apparatus for leading the pupil-minds 
 onward to principles. Facts are the rounds in the ladder 
 that leads up to principles. Back of all facts, and spirit- 
 ually above them, lies the world of principles. Principles 
 can not be learned first. The things which principles 
 produce come first in the mental lesson. These things are 
 facts. Facts are always results ; they are effects of un- 
 seen causes. Causes lie in principles, and are not seen ; 
 nothing is visible but effects. Causes are concealed 
 among the eternal things ; the end of mental research is 
 cause. That research must begin with effect. Hence H 
 
THE USE OF FACTS BY GKEAT MEN. 79 
 
 is that we begin with facts. Hence it. is that the fact- 
 world is the first we see and can see, the first we car con- 
 ceive. 
 
 There is infinite wisdom in opening the child's mind 
 upon facts ; so there is in delighting the youthful mind 
 with the beauty, variety, and splendor of the fact-world. 
 This material fact- world ought to be enchanting to the 
 young mind. That mind was made for culture and pro- 
 gress, and this world for its school-house. If it did not 
 like the house, it would not study ; if the lessons were dry 
 and uninteresting, it would not give attention to them ; if 
 there were not variety, and splendor, and amazing beauty, 
 and interest in the furniture and garniture of the house 
 spread around and through it for the young mind to study 
 it would do nothing for its development. 
 
 There is a beautiful testimony to the divine wisdom and 
 goodness in the power of material facts over the human 
 mind. This is seen when we remember that the mind is 
 made for culture, growth, eternal progress ; and, that be- 
 ing a created thing, it must commence at nothing and 
 commence with facts. How Facts impress themselves on 
 the young mind ! How they engrave their images, never 
 to be forgotten, on the plastic substance of the soul ! 
 How the grand pageantry of Facts which the Supreme 
 Teacher is causing to move before us, stirs our souls to won- 
 der and amazement, and awakens our powers to reflection 
 and research ! How Facts have appealed to the Newtons, 
 Herschels, Humboldts, Miltons, and Franklins of our 
 world ! They have fed on Fact and grown strong. \y 
 
80 THE STUDY OF FACTS LEADS TO _?D3TY. 
 
 they stand on the mountain steps of human progress, where 
 their tall heads reach up into the clear sunlight of the 
 world of everlasting principles. They have walked up to 
 these immortal heights on the steps of Facts. 
 
 Facts are not intended simply for the childhood cf mind 
 All through life we draw fresh nutriment from Facts. Not 
 nly is our common life built upon Fact, but all science is 
 founded upon it. Men follow Up the streams of Fact to 
 their mountain sources, and from these deduce the con- 
 clusions of science. But to do this, Facts must be com- 
 prehended. Their depths must be sounded ; their rela- 
 tions studied ; their significance found. A natural fact is 
 a word of God. To make it useful, it must be read. To 
 read it, requires attention, study, research. The true and 
 devout mind reads it ; the dolt and drone make no attempt. 
 
 It has been said that " an undevout astronomer is mad." 
 Can there be an undevout astronomer ? He who reads 
 the magnificent facts which God has written all over the 
 sky, all through the blue depths of immensity, with an un- 
 derstanding heart, reads a volume of God which is infi- 
 nitely glorious. There is devotion in such reading ; there 
 is aspiration toward God ; there is culture, progress, men- 
 tal growth. This devotion may not be so enlightened as 
 it should be ; but does not God look with complacency upon 
 it ? Do not the angel-hosts regard it with joy 1 Is not 
 6uch reading a fit preparation for a deeper devotion and a 
 grander mental glory by-and-by 1 Must not all fact-read- 
 ers be thus preparing for sublimer realizations of piety and 
 holier ascriptions of praise and adoration ? 
 
TWO KINDS OF FACTS. 81 
 
 It appears to me that the geographer who explores the 
 earth, the naturalist who collects and classifies the facts 
 of the material kingdom, the agriculturist who studies and 
 acquires a knowledge of the soil and growth of plants, tho 
 mechanic who applies material facts to the comfort and 
 progress of life, are all doing a work well-pleasing to their 
 Maker. They are using his facts for their proper purposes 
 and if not putting them to the best use possible, are still 
 using them for good. If they read any part of the great 
 book of God, and understand it a little, it will do them 
 good. There is a divine glory in the physical sciences, 
 and divine influences in their pursuit, which by-and-by will 
 be more developed than now. So the facts of human his- 
 tory are valuable. They have their richly instructive les- 
 sons ; they are higher than simple, material facts. 
 
 There are two worlds of original facts — the material 
 and spiritual. The facts of human history are a medium 
 between them, a sort of mutual blending of the two. The 
 use which mind has made of material facts is here indi- 
 cated ; the different readings of the elder book of God are 
 aere recorded ; the foot-prints of human progress are left 
 on the sands of Time, as the foot-prints of birds and ani- 
 mals are on the rocky strata of the earth. They are import- 
 ant facts. History is strictly a science ; it is built on 
 facts. These facts should be studied, their meaning com- 
 prehended. Every fact in history has a grand significance ; 
 it is linked with the two worlds — the material and spirit- 
 ual ; is dual in its origin ; is a growth of the past, a se- 
 quence of previous facts, and a cause of future ones. To 
 4* 
 
82 SPLBITUAL AND MATERIAL FACTS. 
 
 understand the facts of history is to comprehend the prin- 
 ciples out of which they grow. So to understand any 
 fact is to comprehend its causing principles. 
 
 Human history being dual in its origin, being the use 
 which mind has made of material fact, is a higher study 
 than material science : it is a step upward ; its facts then 
 are solemnly significant. The student of history should 
 go to his task with a devout mind. Grandly interesting 
 are the steps of human progress. The strides of nations 
 have made large tracks in the fields of Time. Genera- 
 tions have made mighty highways on which they have 
 traveled over the continents of human existence, and along 
 these the milestones of their progress are set up as signif- 
 icant facts which the historian should read with a solemn 
 interest and reverent mind. Every fact in human history 
 is a word in God's providence. How reverently it should 
 be read ! There are also mental and spiritual facts, the 
 facts which relate to man as a rational intelligence and 
 those which relate to God as a primary cause and an 
 omnipotent and omnipresent spirit. These are a tertiary 
 order of facts, and can not be comprehended till the 
 others have been read and studied in order. 
 
 First, material facts affect the mind ; secondly, human 
 actions ; thirdly, mental and spiritual experiences. The 
 steps are regular and natural, and operate alike upon all, 
 only in different degrees. We first see and touch material 
 things. "We then contemplate and comprehend something 
 of the actions, objects, and uses of our fellows about us . 
 and these bring us to a contemplation of our experiences, 
 
FICTION. 83 
 
 of what we feel, know, imagine. And this brings us at 
 once to the borders of the world of Fiction. We deal 
 with facts at first in their orders. These develop our ca- 
 pacities ; or, rather, our powers of mind develop by the 
 use they make of facts till they begin themselves to create 
 another world or order of imaginative facts. These con- 
 stitute the world of Fiction. When these begin to be cre- 
 ated in the chambers of the mind, a new and powerful 
 order of influence is brought to bear upon it ; a new world 
 is opened, and often an apparently lawless one ; new pow- 
 ers are rapidly developed, new scenes are spread before 
 the mind's eye ; gorgeous prospects often rise before it ; 
 bewitching and bewildering forms and colors float around 
 it, and entrancing beauties captivate its visions. 
 
 When the young mind first develops within itself the 
 capacity to create an imvard world of Fiction, it is often 
 like a child with new playthings, or a little girl with her 
 first doll, all delighted and taken captive. This is the pe- 
 riod of early youth, a very interesting and a very danger- 
 ous period in every one's life. It is made both interesting 
 and dangerous by the opening world of Fiction. With 
 childish blood yet frolicking in his veins ; with many sights 
 and facts just imaged on his mind, with experiences fresh, 
 and warm, and seemingly spontaneous, he feels a power 
 within him to combine and arrange all his knowledge at 
 his will, to create such scenes as he pleases, and live in 
 such a world as his new tastes and desires may crave. 
 And this power he puts to daily and hourly tasks. It is 
 simply the power of imagination. We speak of it often 
 
84 DANGEROUS CHARACTER OF FICTION". 
 
 but little think how grand and dangerous a power it is. It 
 will create the beautiful or the hideous, the true or the 
 false to Fact, the good or the bad, and do either with 
 equal facility. And .what it creates has much the influ- 
 ence of Fact upon the mind. It looks like Fact ; it im 
 presses like Fact ; it is remembered like Fact. It stirs 
 the mental powers like Fact ; it awakens the passions, 
 fires the desires, and causes emotions like Fact, and often 
 becomes more vigorous and awakening in its influence 
 than Fact itself. 
 
 The fictions of the imagination are often more potent 
 than facts, because they are exaggerations of reality ; they 
 bring before the minds of common life uncommon scenes. 
 They are overdrawn pictures ; too intense to be real, ex 
 cept in rare cases. If bright, they are too bright ; if 
 dark, they are too dark ; if good, they are too good ; and 
 if bad, they are too bad for ordinary human life. Thus 
 the stimulus they bring is unnatural and unhealthy; it 
 makes common life irksome, common duties unpleasant, 
 common pleasures insipid. It is often the case that, in 
 youthful minds, the proper and virtuous feelings are 
 burned up by this strange fire of Fiction, enkindled upon 
 the altar of a wayward imagination. 
 
 In vicious minds these fictions are usually as intense 
 as in virtuous minds, and are generally base, vulgar, and 
 brutal, not to say devilish. Crime originates in the base 
 fictions of the mind. Vice paints its own portraits, and 
 hangs them on the walls of the inner temple. Lewdness 
 has its fiction-pictures within. The inner fiction-scenerv 
 
OVERDRAWN PICTURES. 85 
 
 of a wicked heart is more revolting than any realities of 
 which the world kiwws any thing. Who ever visited a 
 brothel until he had had a thousand brothel scenes hung 
 in fiction-pictures around the apartments of his soul? 
 Who ever committed theft, or robbery, or murder, till he 
 had learned how in the fiction-practice of his heart 1 
 Who ever practiced art, deception, or fraud till he had 
 tried the awful experiment in the secret recesses where 
 no eye enters but God's ? Fiction-wickedness is always 
 worse than Fact. For the fiction is always successful 
 and prosperous. He who draws a fiction-picture of 
 fraud, puts no officer of justice in the background, no 
 frown of an outraged conscience over it like a cloud of 
 wrath, no lightning-glance of God playing through that 
 cloud, and no wreck of hopes and peace in the distant 
 shadings. These should all have been in the picture. 
 And here is just where Fiction is false to Fact. When 
 lust pictures its lewd scenes, it never gives a shadow of 
 misery, a skeleton of wretchedness stalking away as the 
 inevitable consequence of the career of lust. Vicious 
 fiotions are terribly false ; if they were true they would 
 be useful. For then they would show the live, triple- 
 headed monster of misery, run, and despair wedded to 
 the vicious heart. But they do not do it, but, instead, 
 portray the beautiful form of Pleasure smiling upon the 
 devotee of vice. 
 
 The very fountain-head of evil is in the fiction-chambor 
 of the soul. That fountain is wide and deep ; it is not 
 found only in a few hearts whose outward 'ives are daik 
 
00 DAT-DREAMING. 
 
 and bad, but in many hearts, and perhaps I ought to say 
 all hearts. Who would be willing to have all his fiction- 
 pictures hung on his face for the world to see? Who 
 in his heart has no scene of lust, passion, or pride before 
 which his face would not blush with shame if the world 
 could see it as he does. Then there is another class of 
 fiction-pictures, not so bad as these, but bad enough, and 
 too bad by far: the folly-pictures, the vanity-colorings. 
 See how many young minds are literally crowned with 
 the fictions of their own vanity, grand parades of folly. 
 These are not true to fact ; they leave out the shallow- 
 ness and moral corruption of vanity, its utter baseness. 
 Then they do not call it vanity ; they give it another 
 name — beauty, or taste,. or dignity, or high-life, or respect- 
 ability, or some other passable cognomen. Purify men's 
 imaginations, or, in other words, make their fiction-views 
 true to fact, and you would take off the plumes of vanity 
 at once, and vice would be brought to close quarters very 
 soon. We should soon have another world, and a better 
 one by far. 
 
 There is still another kind of fiction-picturing which is 
 a prolific source of evil ; it is day-dreaming, revery, a 
 letting loose the reins of thought to let the coursers steer 
 where they will; it is a kind of mental chaos, or, more 
 strictly, dissipation. I do not mean meditation, for in 
 meditation the reins of thought are held steadily and 
 firmly in the hands of the will. But in revery the will 
 is dismissed from its post, the guards are all put to sleep, 
 and away go the mental powers with the most active in 
 
DAY-DREAMING. 87 
 
 the lead at full gallop after — what? Why nothing, ab- 
 solutely nothing ; or sometimes it may be a shadow or a 
 ghost from the past, the shade of some buried hope, or 
 some old disappointment, or some half-forgotten sorrow, 
 or some vision of darkness never to be realized, or some 
 unreal evil or sprite from the cell of fear, thus filling the 
 mind with unpleasant shadows and unfitting it for active 
 duties, for being happy itself, or making or even permit- 
 ting others to be so. In minds that have realized much 
 sorrow, or that are gloomy or ascetic by nature or educa- 
 tion, or those of a fearful and foreboding cast of mind, 
 this form of fiction-picturing is baneful in the extreme. 
 It poisons and corrupts lives otherwise sweet and beauti- 
 ful, and wastes powers and virtues otherwise useful and 
 inspiring to others. Sorrows which are long past, and 
 which have been sanctified in the soul for good, are thus 
 revived afresh ; the shadows of clouds that have passed 
 away never to return are brought up, and trials, and 
 troubles, and vexations never to be realized, are made as 
 though they were . Many a mind has been all ruined by 
 such gloomy reveries without any real cause, and many a 
 soul beautifully virtuous has, like a star in gloomy night- 
 time, waded through clouds to its setting, having given 
 but a fickle and feeble light. Other minds of an opposite 
 make, this species of revery has elated to a feverish gid- 
 diness, a sort of lunatic intoxication. They have over- 
 drawn the picture of life, overcolored it, overdressed it, 
 made it a gala-day sport or a splendid pleasure scene. It 
 has made them great, sporting babies only not half so in- 
 
88 LITERARY FICTIONS. 
 
 nocenfc nor so pretty, because too old. Day-dreaming is 
 perilous ; it unbalances the mind and unfits it for duty 
 for improvement, for happiness. Day-working is, better 
 whether it be in study or handicraft. 
 
 Fiction has assumed two general forms. The first we 
 ave considered ; it is mental fiction, or the fiction we 
 create in our own minds for our own contemplation. 
 The second is the fiction created for others, untruthful 
 and unnatural stories, the written dreams of distempered 
 minds, or, in our words, novels. That can not be consid- 
 ered Fiction which is true to Fact. A representation of 
 truth is not a Fiction. A story every element of which is 
 true to common fact is not a Fiction. A tale which justly 
 illustrates a principle, or a real life, or a genuine experi- 
 ence, is not a Fiction. In all these cases Fact would be 
 fairly expressed and elucidated. A true picture is not a 
 Fiction. It is faithful, reliable, and proper. For truth 
 may be told, is expected to be known and studied. Fic- 
 tion is false, not true to Fact, Fact distorted, Fact partly 
 concealed, Fact in mask, or in some way changed so 
 as to be essentially false. Fiction is not a direct false- 
 hood made of whole cloth, but a falsehood made of patch- 
 work, or a false coloring, or exaggerated statement, or 
 deceitful representation that " leads to bewilder and daz- 
 zles to blind." It presents life, nature, fact in an unnat- 
 ural, and therefore untrue, aspect. It is an expression of 
 the possible, but not the probable. If Fiction was true to 
 Fact, it would be for all purposes of mental culture as 
 good as Fact. But just here is the evil of F'ction ; it is 
 
LITERARY FICTIONS. 8S 
 
 not true to Fact, and therefore the culture it imparts is 
 not healthy. To read fiction and to feast on revery may 
 impart to the mind a certain kind and degree of culture 
 but the culture is sickly and of doubtful value. If day- 
 dreams were visions of nature, they would do the mind 
 good. If written tales give us life just as men live it 
 truthful, impressive, with all its great lessons, they are 
 useful. They recite before our eyes the ever-instructive 
 story of life, and impress us with its varied and infinite 
 uses. But if they discolor life, they are false prophe- 
 cies and teachings, deceptions, hypocrisies, " old wives' 
 fables." They corrupt the very fountains of thought and 
 feeling ; they pour poison into the mental chalice ; they 
 light unnatural and sinful fires on the soul's altars ; 
 they breathe malaria into the spiritual atmosphere ; they 
 infect the garments worn within with the virus of moral 
 death. 
 
 Bad things are fictions. Handle a serpent, taste poi- 
 son sooner. In the youthful mind they are ignis fatuus, 
 burning to deceive, a grand cheat inviting to conquer, a 
 gilded charm seducing to kill. The world is full of writ- 
 ten fiction. It is a steaming hot-bed of vice. It panders 
 to depravity, and does reverence to the devil. It is 
 basketed about our streets, huddled into our cars and 
 cabins, pushed into our doors, spread before our children, 
 and crowded into our papers and bookstores. These fic- 
 tions multiply upon us like the swarms of locusts upon 
 Egypt ; and they are equally destructive. A novel is not 
 necessarily a fiction ; it may be a laithful picture of life; 
 
90 TALES NOT ALWAYS FICTIONS. 
 
 may hold up before us glittering virtues, noble lessons of 
 self-sacrifice, pity, and benevolence, and exhibit what 
 man should most know, self-reliance and trust in God. 
 Between such a picture and fiction there is a world-wide 
 difference. One is written for good, as a sermon is 
 preached or a moral essay composed ; the other for ag- 
 grandizement, money, or to pander to passions. One is 
 written from the heart of goodness to breathe its fresh- 
 ness into others ; the other is written from the head of 
 selfishness to dupe the young and giddy to praise and 
 pay. A true novel is Fact in picture ; a false novel is 
 Fiction in mask. Between Fact in picture and Fiction 
 in mask, who shall decide ? Not inexperienced youth ; 
 not uncultured mind ; but wisdom and sage experience. 
 Here is a rock on which many a well-meaning sailor will 
 split. Who shall tell him which is which? He may 
 not heed the voice of wisdom. But this one rule may 
 serve him well : Ask the object in every novel, and the 
 color of the author's spirit. If both are good, such as God 
 approves, read ; and as he reads, let written fact with 
 life's experience be compared well ; then Fact on his 
 soul will pour its stream of light, and Fiction cloud not it* 
 radiant face. 
 
jKtwn tfigftt. 
 
 THE EEAL AND THE IDEAL. 
 
 Two Influences — The Real and the Ideal — Mission of Each — The Material and 
 the Spiritual— Our Alliance with Materiality— Duties Growing out of this Rela- 
 tion—Our Appetites God-given— We should Govern and Educate them— The 
 Sensuous Nature sometimes becomes Master — Consequent Degradation — All 
 Things Given for our Use — Wrong to Misuse Them — There is a Remedy for 
 Every Thing — Christ and the Ideal — The Poet and the Prophet — Beauty of 
 the Ideal — Aim High — The Ideal a Witness for Immortality — Every One should 
 have a Pure and High Ideal. 
 
 Men are acted upon from two sources, the Actual and 
 the Ideal. It is right that they should be thus acted upon. 
 The question to be decided is, How much should the Real 
 and how much should the Ideal operate upon us, in form- 
 ing our characters and molding our lives ? 
 
 If only the Real influences us, we shall be gross, sen- 
 sual, earthly. If only the Ideal operates upon us, we shall 
 be vapid, visionary, and ethereal. We are suspended be- 
 tween the two antipodes. From one side pour in all the 
 gross, weighty, and deceitful influences of the flesh — the 
 appetites, lusts, and passions, with their commingled union 
 and acquaintance with material and earthly things. From 
 the other side come the ten thousand fancies, with their 
 stories of pleasures untasted, beauties unseen, and delights 
 un»«?alized, and all the gorgeous and alluring phantasies 
 
92 THE KEAL AND THE IDEAL. 
 
 that take being and form in the creative chambers of the 
 imagination. Thus, between these two opposing forces 
 all men are suspended, like planets hung in the sky- 
 Earth is on one side, heaven on the other ; the material 
 is drawing them one way, the spiritual the other; the 
 devil holds on from below, while God invites from above. 
 
 Some men yield to the grasp of the sensual, and walk 
 amid the gross sensuosities of the flesh, sink the animal 
 down to the devilish, and bury the angel in the mire of 
 corrupted earth. Some men listen to the Divine Voice, 
 and, captivated by its unearthly sweetness, turn away from 
 the realities of the lower life, and fly on outstretched wings 
 to ideal scenes pictured on the retina of their souls. 
 
 There are two lives— one earthly, the other heavenly ; 
 one born of the flesh, the other of the spirit. Things Real 
 minister to the first ; things Ideal to the last. So there 
 are two worlds — one the gross material, the other the re- 
 fined spiritual. One is tangible and sensible, the other is 
 invisible and ethereal. So there are two universes — one 
 breaks on our outward senses, and its glory bewilders our 
 eyes ; the other shines only on the spiritual sight, and its 
 beauty steals into and entrances our souls. One is out- 
 ward, the other is inward ; and they are related to each 
 other as the nut and its shell, or the soul and its body. 
 They correspond with and minister to each other. The 
 material life gives substantial aspect and grandeur to the 
 spiritual, and the spiritual imparts vHality and beauty to 
 the material. That which belongs to the outward and 
 visible life ajad world we denominate the Real ; that which 
 
MISSION OF EACH. 93 
 
 rises before our minds, and glitters on the walls of the 
 spirit's chambers, painted by unseen fingers, and touched 
 by the exquisite radiance of ethereal colors, we call the 
 Ideal. In strictness of speech, in philosophical exactness, 
 in the last analysis, the Ideal would become ir. this view 
 he most and only Real. • Spirit is more rea ? than matter; 
 mind more real than body ; life more real than form ; God 
 more real than the tangible universe, But sufficiently ex- 
 act for the moral lesson we have before us, is the definition 
 we have given. 
 
 That the Real should occupy its proper place among the 
 objects of life, should engage its proper share of our time, 
 and engross its due proportion of our attention, is most 
 clearly the dictate of wisdom. In this state of being we 
 are wedded to materiality. Flesh is our bride. Matter is 
 our brother. Earth is our mother. We are related to our 
 gardens and farms, our shops and ships. The rocks and 
 trees are our kindred ; the sun and stars greet us with 
 fraternal smiles. We ought to feel a friendship for these 
 things, and cultivate that friendship with the hand of a 
 careful tiller. Our bodies are our earth-houses. To 
 neglect them would be folly ; to abuse them would be 
 wicked ; to feed them with kindly and judicious care, to 
 clothe them with friendly comfort and affectionate taste, 
 to adorn them with the rose of health and the form and 
 color of beauty, to preserve them from danger and decay, 
 are the lessons which wisdom is ever teaching her chil- 
 dren. Our forms are of God's making ; and if he deems 
 them worth making, we shall deem them worth keeping 
 
94 OUR APPETITES GOD-GIVEN. 
 
 and keeping well. Our appetites are contrived and made 
 by Divine Wisdom and skill, and it becomes us to hold 
 them as choice subjects of our guardian care. Our desires 
 are divine gifts ; it were base to abuse the gifts of love. 
 Our marriage with the flesh was solemnized by God ; i 
 were ungrateful in us not to rejoice in the union, and seek 
 to make u a pure and holy one. The propensities result- 
 ing from this union are its God-ordained offspring ; it were 
 infidelity in us not to hold these children as our own, and 
 govern and educate them according to the precepts of 
 wisdom and righteousness. Our appetites, desires, and 
 propensities are right in themselves, and are worthy of our 
 most careful training ; we should not only receive them 
 with gratitude as God's, gifts, but we should delight in their 
 proper gratification ; for when we thus enjoy them, they 
 minister to our higher nature, and are the waiting servants 
 to our spiritual faculties. And this is their true office. 
 They are innate powers, apprenticed for time to work for 
 the higher faculties. They are low loves, designed as the 
 embryos of higher ones. They are the seeds of immortal 
 aspirations, planted in the soil of earth. They are the 
 first loves of the child, and mingle more or less with all 
 the loves of manhood, and form the rudimental types of 
 spiritual affections. As servants, they are vastly use ful. 
 They awaken, inspire, warm, vjvify, and empower all the 
 higher loves. They apply material things to spiritual 
 uses. Their objects of interest are material things Their 
 mother is materiality. Hence they link us with the out- 
 ward universe. They attach us to thing? real. They 
 
CONSEQUENT DEGRADATION. 95 
 
 show us material beauty. Without these' we should care 
 little for the universe. Where is the value or beauty ot 
 fruit, without appetite 1 Where is the charm hid in the 
 flower, without the idea of fruit that grows out of it, aud 
 the genitive love of which it is born, and the inviting 
 aroma it throws out, and the material forms and colors it 
 spreads. 
 
 Things Real minister to what we denominate our animal 
 affections. And then these affections in turn minister to 
 our spiritual natures. This is true when our sensuous 
 natures are held in their proper spheres, and act in their 
 proper directions, and in conjunction with our higher 
 natures. But it is too frequently the case that our sensu- 
 ous nature acts alone. It too often becomes the master, 
 overpowers the mental faculties, establishes a strong tyran- 
 ny in the soul, and devotes all the inner powers to its pur- 
 poses. Sometimes a particular propensity rules, as in the 
 inebriate, the libertine, the epicure, and miser. Sometimes 
 the whole sensuous nature assumes the throne, as in the 
 worldling. This is the more general form of evil. The 
 sensuous nature rises and rules. Things Real become the 
 all-absorbing objects of pursuit. Things to eat and to 
 wear, for pleasure and show, for time and sense, become 
 the all for which to live. The Real appears like the infi- 
 nite. Earth glows as though it were heaven. The fruit 
 which tempted Adam grows yellow before the eyes 
 Pleasure smiles as a goddess. Folly decks herself as 
 though she were an angel. Show rears ner gaudy front 
 as though sne were enduring substance. Sense takes tfrt 
 
96 EVERY THING GIVEN FOR OUR USE. 
 
 place of soul. Matter puts on the crown of mind. The 
 Real becomes the all ; man, first a beast ; then a brute ; then 
 a devil. Soul is baptized in sense. The springs of pol 
 lution rise in every propensity, and their waters overflow 
 the fields of life. Then almost incarnate evil seems and 
 is the once fair child of God, and its beautiful talents are 
 trampled in the mire of moral corruption. This is the sad 
 result of living for the Real. This is the abuse of mate- 
 rial things, which the Scriptures denominate sin. 
 
 Every thing on this fair earth, and every thing in our 
 fairer natures, were made to be used by us in our earth- 
 life ; and when used properly, with right motives and feel- 
 ings, administer to our moral advancement and real happi- 
 ness. To eat for the- real objects of eating, is to beautify 
 and strengthen our bodies and minds, and to quicken our 
 hearts with grateful emotions to God. To eat for the 
 simple gratification of sense, is to corrupt soul and body, 
 and sacrifice the pure and high on the Epicurean altar 
 To dress for the proper objects of dressing, is to cultivate 
 a pleasing and elevating taste, to subdue an arrant desire 
 for show which always appears in rude, uncultivated races 
 and people, and protect and adorn, as God does his uni- 
 verse, the dwellings which he has made for our spirits ; 
 but to dress to catch the eyes of the world, and cheat man- 
 kind with a tawdry show, is a barefaced lie, a bald and 
 foolish sin, sensual and corrupting. To engage in business 
 from cold and selfish motives, from ambition, avarice, or 
 sensualism, and hoard up wealth for the gratification of 
 of these unhallowed passions, is a prostitution of talents 
 
WRONG TO MISDSE THEM. 97 
 
 which is an abomination in the sight of God, and a burn- 
 ing sin and shame in man ; but to engage in business, and 
 honorably accumulate this world's good for the noble pur- 
 poses of business, the development of our own powers, the 
 support and comfort of ourselves and families, the advance- 
 ment of social interests, and the promotion of the objects 
 of benevolence, is one of the most efficient means of hu- 
 man elevation devised in the economy of Infinite Wisdom. 
 
 Things Real were made for good; but they may be 
 misused. The manner of using is the all-important point 
 to determine. If used for good, they are good ; if used 
 for evil, they are evil. But the first and most palpable 
 office of things Real is to awaken and administer to sen- 
 sualism ; so that the constant danger in pursuing the Real 
 as the object of life, is of becoming absorbed in this lower 
 and material life ; of being gross, groveling, and sensual. 
 To pursue wealth with a constant and eager chase, is to 
 expose our souls to the danger of forgetting its spiritual 
 uses, and becoming lost in its sensuous glory. So of all 
 pleasure, amusement, and station, all purely worldly ob- 
 jects. They often drown their devotees in their own 
 waters. And this danger can be guarded against only by 
 giving the Ideal its proper place in our affections. Hence 
 to the Ideal we must turn as the antidote to the Real. 
 
 Every disease has its remedy ; every sin a Saviour. 
 When Christ would save the world from sin he said, 
 " Have faith." The world was bound to the Real. In 
 that bondage was its sin and misery. He would break 
 this sensuous chain, and break it by faith. The phil- 
 5 
 
[)8 CHRIST AND TH£ IDEAL. 
 
 osopliy of his exhortation was, " Turn, turn, for why will 
 ye die in your bondage to sense ? See, a new kingdom 
 is set up. Have faith, and it is yours. Unbar the grated 
 dungeon of sense, spread your spiritual wings, and come 
 up into the clear, blue realm of faith, where all beautiful 
 things cluster. Here ye may dwell in perennial peace 
 and love ; here ye may meet the graces of heaven and the 
 virtues of earth'; here ye may make an altar to the True, 
 the Beautiful, and the Good ; here grow the fruits of the 
 spirit, and from the tree of faith ye may pluck them 
 freely and joyously ; here ye may enter the ante-chamber 
 of God, where he will come and dwell with you." 
 
 Nothing is clearer than that Christ sought to turn the 
 minds of men from the things Real, which so engross 
 and absorb human affections, to the things Ideal, which 
 take form and being in the cultured field of Faith. Faith 
 gives existence to things that are not, but will be. It 
 forms the Ideal of the life we should live ; prefigures the 
 good we should do ; paints the virtue we should possess 
 the beauty we should wear ; and the joy we should feel. 
 Faith beholds in other and higher beings what we may 
 attain, and what we >ught to strive for. It writes in the 
 heart the moral poem of life, and breathes through the 
 soul the music of perfect moral harmony. The Ideal is 
 the poetical ; it is the world, life, beauty, and blessedness 
 which the imagination creates as a prophecy of the pos- 
 sible and probable. It is the present order of things per- 
 fected ; it is the chaos of the present harmonized in the 
 future ; it is order developed from disorder ; peace 
 
THE POET AND THE PROPHET. 99 
 
 wrought out of war ; life, pure and perfect, grown out of 
 death. The Idealist is the poet, prophet, and child of 
 Faith. The poet sees the perfect, beautiful, harmonious, 
 and grand ; the prophet contemplates results in their final 
 issues, the future completeness of present things, rising to 
 a higher and more glorious order of things ; the child of 
 Faith views the perfect and the prophetic as Real and 
 attainable ; so that the Ideal includes poetry, prophecy, 
 and faith. The moral influence of these on life is pure, 
 elevating, and spiritualizing. They counteract the down 
 ward and narrowing tendency of the Real. They check 
 the influence of material things. They stay the tides 
 which set toward infidelity. They hold the glass to the 
 dull eye of doubt ; and show a God to the stupid compre- 
 hension of Atheism. They strengthen human vision, 
 quicken reason, animate the spirits, enlarge the affec- 
 tions, widen the sympathies, deepen the emotions, elevate 
 the aspirations, in a word, magnify and dignify all human 
 powers. Take the poet alone, and he is vastly superior to 
 the dull, plodding, purblind devotee of sense. He lives for 
 higher and nobler purposes. His companions are the most 
 beautiful things and beings that exist in nature, or people 
 the realms of spirit. He lives in the blaze of beauty, 
 surrounded by the perfect and companioned by the pure. 
 The prophet is the poet baptized in the font of religion. 
 He sees the Divine Hand moving among the worlds 
 and nations, the divine law set for the purposes of eternal 
 order and glory, and the Divine Judge administering the 
 awards of justice and illuminating the grand scene with 
 
100 BEAUTY OF THE IDEAL. 
 
 the sunshine of mercy. The child of Faith is the prophet 
 spiritualized. He sees another world within this out- 
 ward one, another life below, or rather abuve, the sen 
 suous, a beauty behind all Real things, eternal, undefiled, 
 and glorious. He lives for the unseen, for the other 
 world, and the other life. And that other world and other 
 life are in and around him. He sees them in his mental 
 visions ; he feels them in his communions ; he enters 
 them in his prayers ; he realizes them in those high 
 modes of thought and elevated emotions, and those flights 
 into the pure realm of spirit which be makes when he 
 Sosens his hold upon the Real and sensuous, and dwells 
 m the inner sanctuary of his being. The influence of the 
 Ideal is always toward the upper and inward world. 
 
 Whatever be our pursuits in life, the Ideal of our 
 attainments is a close approach to what it should be. 
 The youth's Ideal of manhood is likely to be high and 
 noble. Every man's Ideal of success is good. The tyro 
 in learning pictures the fair fields of mental culture rich 
 in the blossoming fruits of knowledge, wisdom, and use- 
 fulness, and gazes at his Ideal life with ambitious rapture 
 The young artist has in his mind the Ideal creations of 
 genius, which enthrall his imagination and inspire his soul 
 to toils and trials which real things would fail to give him 
 power to meet. The youthful patriot yields to a similar 
 inspiration, and puts forth a strength of purpose and a 
 heroic zeal in his country's cause which do him infinite 
 honor. The zealous philanthropist is moved by the Idea] 
 of benevolence which works upon his soul like a myste- 
 
BEAUTY OF THE IDEAL. 101 
 
 rious and divine charm, awakening within him a strong 
 and glorious desire to do good unto all. And the Chris 
 tian, inspired by the electric fires of divine truth and love 
 forms in the eye of his faith a life of divine beauty and 
 perfection, for which his soul pants as the thirsty traveler 
 for the water-brooks. The same is true of the men and 
 women of all trades, professions, and callings regarded as 
 honorable or useful in life. They form ideals of noble 
 attainments in their several callings, and these ideals are 
 becoming angels, inviting, urging, pressing them onward. 
 It is true of us all in the journey of life. Our ideal life 
 goes before us like a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by 
 night — a form of beauty and a blaze of glory for which 
 we bear to live and dare to die. In that Ideal we have 
 faith, perhaps not perfect, but more or less strong, and 
 that faith prompts to action, toil, privation, sacrifice, and 
 death. When Paul said of Christians, " we walk by 
 faith," he expressed a great truth applicable to all men 
 in a lower sense. Christian faith is the highest .type of 
 the Ideal. We all walk by faith. The only difference 
 is in the object upon which we fix our Faith. The 
 infidel and the Atheist who scoff at Christian faith are 
 themselves walking by faith. In metaphysical principle 
 it is the same. Faith is as natural as sight. The Ideal 
 is as natural as the Real. They are the iypes of the 
 two worlds, the material and spiritual. The little child 
 walks by faith. I have seen a child that would throw 
 itself from the eaves of a house, when its father standing 
 below with uplifted arms and eyes, would say, " Come 
 
102 AIM HIGH. 
 
 jump, my dear." Down it would come like a bird. It 
 came on the wings of faith. Children live by faith even 
 more than men, because they are more natural. 
 
 How often the little boy exclaims in joy, " When I am 
 man," and the little girl, " When I am a woman." It is 
 he Ideal that glitters on their sight. It is the faith that 
 ees the glory of a completed life. Does not the voice 
 of age and wisdom bid youth set high its mark 1 " Shoot 
 at the sun," is the sage advice of experience. And what 
 does this mean, but that the Ideal be perfect, the object of 
 faith shall be noble and high ? " Aim high," our fathers 
 have always said to us. Complete the Ideal, is its mean- 
 ing-. The nobler and more perfect the Ideal, the truer 
 and higher the life. 
 
 Some laugh at the Ideal as though it were folly. But 
 they are poor philosophers, and know little of themselves. 
 In proportion as we check or corrupt the Ideal, we de- 
 grade life. Where there is no Ideal, there is brutality. It 
 has been said that " Man is an animal, and something 
 more." That " something more" is his capacity to enter- 
 tain the Ideal. We had better be dead than to annihilate 
 the Ideal which we create within us. It is true the Ideal 
 should be regulated by discretion. Judgment should 
 guide it. Its lawless rule has given birth to superstition, 
 fanaticism, bigotry ; has peopled the past with ghosts, 
 witches, fairies, naiads, and demons. But, with all its 
 abuses, it is the symbol of human greatness, the inslru- 
 mentality of human good, and the pledge of human ro* 
 demption. 
 
A PURE AND HIGH IDEAL. 103 
 
 The Ideal, to me, is the natural testimony of immor- 
 tality, the inward witness of spiritual existence, the 
 corroborative voice of Christianity. Christianity is based 
 on the unseen. Its glorious structure rises where eye 
 hath not seen. Christianity is itself invisible, and he- 
 longs to the department of the Ideal. It is Real, but 
 spiritually so. It is not a thing of sense, but of spirit. 
 Its principles are not seen, but comprehended. Its laws 
 are not felt by touch, but by spirit. Its step of progress 
 is not heard by the ear, but by the understanding. It all 
 comes to us by faith. It falls upon the inward sight. To 
 be Christians, we must cultivate the Ideal. We must 
 seek for the true in fact and doctrine, the right in prin- 
 ciple, the perfect in morality, the pure in spirituality. 
 " Seek first the kingdom of heaven," said the Saviour, 
 " and all these things shall be added unto you ;" that is, 
 seek first for the correct in faith and the right in princi- 
 ple, or, in other words, make the Ideal right, and all things 
 Real which you need will come as a natural consequence. 
 Our first care should be for a perfect Ideal of life. When 
 this is formed, our next should be to embody that Ideal. 
 In doing this, things Real will take their proper places and 
 perform their proper office in administering to our good. 
 The world has committed two errors. The first is, it 
 has given too great prominence to the Real, and sought it 
 with too great and too blind an avidity. The second is, 
 it has not sought to regulate the Ideal v/ith sufficient 
 strength of purpose ; it has not seen the importance of 
 purifying, elevating, and perfecting the Ideal life. Against 
 
104: A PUKE AND HIGH IDEAL. 
 
 these errors men should direct their efforts of leform. 
 The Real must not, and can not, be sought with impunity 
 as the principal object in life. The Ideal is the first 
 object of our righteous care. The forms that people our 
 maginations are vastly more important than dollars, food 
 r raiment, than thrones, kingdoms, or principalities 
 They should be pure and perfect. When they are, our 
 life is modeled after them, and becomes the self-formed 
 work of faith and duty which it should be, a blessing and 
 joy to us and mankind, and an honor to God. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 
 
 What Appears and what Is — We See the Forms, but not the Spirit of Things- 
 Things and their Meaning — We Swim on the Surface — Immortality — Life and 
 Power Lie in the Unseen— Things Change, Laws are Immutable, Nations De- 
 cay, but the Principles of Social Organization Remain— The Moving Power of 
 All Things is Unseen— Degrees of Materiality— The Mineral Kingdom— Water 
 —Air— The Gases— Caloric— Chemical Affinity— Attraction— Electricity— Si- 
 lence of the Unseen Forces— An Eloquent Extract— The Unseen is Enduring— 
 The Invisible should Reign over the Visible. 
 
 It is a trite old saying, and no more trite than true, that 
 appearances are often deceitful. The world is full of 
 illustrations of this remark. The sun appears to rise and 
 set ; but grave men tell us it stands still in the center of a 
 family of worlds. The stars appear to move ; but they, 
 too, we are wisely informed, are fixed centers, fastened by 
 the Almighty fiat to their points in space. The sky 
 appears to be a vast concave of polished crystal ; but 
 this is an illusion of sight; for it is only the immense 
 ethereal sea in which the worlds swim as the fish in the 
 ocean. The rainbow appears to be a dense and perma- 
 nent arch of beauty, reared against a cloud of immovable 
 substance ; but philosophy etherealizes both the bow and 
 the cleud. Fire appears to burn ; but chemists would tax 
 5* 
 
106 WHAT APPEARS AND WHAT IS. 
 
 our credulity with the assertion that it is caloric — an in* 
 visible substance, which produces the effect which we call 
 burning. And when a combustible substance is burned, 
 it appears to us te> be nearly annihilated ; but our Rabbis 
 in science solemnly assure us that not a particle is lost. 
 
 We turn our eyes toward a beautiful landscape, and we 
 fancy we see it ; but, alas ! it is not so. It is only the 
 image of the landscape that we see — a shadow cast upon 
 the retina of the eye. No human creature ever saw the 
 earth or the sky, or any thing therein. It is only the 
 reflection that we see, like that caught in the camera 
 of the daguerreotypist. 
 
 . Our bodies appear to us to be the same from year to 
 year ; but physiologists are bold enough to declare this a 
 delusion ; for so rapidly are we changing, that every seven 
 years we become entirely new creatures, not a particle 
 being left of that which once constituted our bodies. Man 
 appears to die ; but Revelation assures us that " all live 
 unto God ;" that the seemingly dead, " the absent," are 
 " present with the Lord," living " in a house not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens." 
 
 We might call all heaven and earth to witness, that 
 things are not what they seem to be in this lower sphere. 
 There is something behind all we see that makes it other- 
 wise than it appears. We look at the face of all tempo- 
 ralities, but do not look into them. We look at the face 
 of a clock and learn the passing hour of time ; but the 
 moving power of that clock lies in the mystery hidden be- 
 hind its face We look at a man and admire his beauty 
 
THINGS AND THEIR MEANING. 107 
 
 and power ; but all of the real man is out of sight. He 
 lives and works behind the curtain of flesh. The arm is 
 strong ; but the will is stronger. The arm we see ; the 
 will we do not. We are sensuous, and take sensuous 
 views of things. Our senses are caught with the blaze 
 of the outward. Sight allures us, and deceives us too ; 
 not necessarily, but because we rest in the visible. All 
 things have their interior and exterior, their soul and body, 
 their essence and life. We look on the exterior, and ask 
 no admittance within. We see the body, and stop with 
 that. We see, and stop with sight ; we hear, and stop 
 with sound ; we feel, and rest in feeling ; we taste, and 
 end there. We do not push in. 
 
 The meaning of things is always behind them and in- 
 visible. A word and its meaning are two things. The 
 word Ave see ; its meaning we do not. A dollar and its 
 value are two things. The dollar we see ; its value is 
 out of sight. A figure and its number are the substance 
 and its representation. This rudimental life we now live 
 is a grand system of Algebra. We work by signs. The 
 Seen intimates the Unseen. In Algebra the known rep- 
 resents the unknown. In life we seldom work out the 
 problem. We see the sign, the representative, and ask 
 not for the represented. Every thing seen is equivalent 
 to something unseen. But we seldom study the grand 
 aw of equivalents — some call it correspondences. If we 
 were more spiritual we should do so. 
 
 We are not so much too sensuous as not enough spirit- 
 ual. We are not too much acquainted with the Seen, but 
 
108 THINGS SEEN PASS AWAY. 
 
 not enough with the Unseen. We do not see too mi ch, but 
 perceive too little. We are little insects that swim on the 
 surface; not great fish that go down among the clear, 
 calm deeps in the everlasting ocean of waters. Being on 
 the surface, every breeze dashes us about, every wind 
 visits us roughly. We have no " abiding city," no firm 
 resting-place, no " anchor sure and steadfast." The deep 
 waters of everlasting truth are below us ; their signs and 
 symbols are flashing up in the sky above us. We see the 
 signs, but do not read the truths they represent. We walk 
 by sight, and not by faith. A few men in all ages have 
 seen a little way into some things. That number is in- 
 creasing. The sensuous life is calling attention to the 
 spiritual. So it should. Men are more than they seem 
 to be. " What is man that thou art mindful of him ?" He 
 is something great, glorious, and eternal. Every man has 
 an eternal depth of life in him. He lives. This he knows. 
 Who shall say he will ever die 1 Who shall prove that 
 his thinking and loving shall ever stop 1 Who shall dis- 
 prove man's immortality? 
 
 Men have reasoned wrongly on immortality hitherto. 
 Immortality is not to be proved. It stands out a fact, of 
 itself to be disproved. The burden of proof is on him who 
 denies it. I know I live. Who will prove to me that I 
 hall cease to live 1 Immortality is predicated on the Un- 
 seen. Things Seen pass away. The visible of man, his 
 body, dies. We know this ; but who knows it of the 
 Unseen part of man ? The Unseen is the real man. It 
 is the Unseen that thinks, wills, loves, and enjoys. It is 
 
THINGS PEBISH, LAWS ARE IMMUTABLE. 100 
 
 the Unseen that has strewed the world with the monu- 
 ments of human power, and written human history in 
 lood and glory. It is written, ." No man hath seen God 
 at any time." It may be written also, " No man hath seen 
 man at any time." Wh"» hath seen the Unseen man? 
 Flesh and blood are not n.an. Bone and muscles are not. 
 Brain and nerves are not man. These are only the instru- 
 ments he uses in this life to effect material objects. But 
 the instruments are not the uses. The real man is back of 
 them, behind them, Unseen. The fact that the instruments 
 break and decay, is not a proof that the user will. When 
 they are gone he may have other instruments — better, more 
 lasting. Who shall show that man, the real man, the 
 reason, the love, and the will, will die ? Why is it that 
 we stop at the Seen — the sensuous 1 Does not the Un- 
 seen within us remind us of unseen realities in every 
 thing ? The gem, the flower, and the bow are passing 
 beauties which flash on our sight ; but tbey are but three 
 bright words, hieroglyphics, written by invisible powers, 
 which ought to convey to our minds lessons of wisdom 
 concerning the Unseen realm of nature. The gem, the 
 flower, and the bow are short-lived, but not so the laws 
 that made them. Those laws are Unseen, and doubtless 
 eternal. We know they exist; who shall prove that they 
 will cease ? Their visible productions tell us they exist. 
 Did they not exist before their productions ? And will 
 they not exist after 1 Their visible productions are tem- 
 poral • they themselves are eternal. Other visible things 
 are temporal also. The rock is an emblem of durability 
 
110 EMPIRES CHANGE. 
 
 in our minds. Its mountain shaft strikes us like a petrified 
 eternity. But it will pass away. The elements, with 
 their busy fingers, are carrying away its particles. The 
 little rain-drops pick up and run away with its flinty atoms. 
 The lightnings, with their red hammers, cleave off its 
 masses The winds gather up its poAvdered cement, and 
 steal away unseen with their granitic burden. In a few 
 hundred centuries the mountain is gone. But the ever- 
 lasting laws of wind, and water, and chemical action 
 remain. Their Unseen powers are fresh as in the morn- 
 ing of youth. 
 
 We sometimes think and speak of empires, nations, and 
 institutions as enduring. And so they appear to us as we 
 gaze at them for a moment. But they rise and fall like the 
 dew of morning, by means of an Unseen power which lives 
 through all their changes. They are the visible productions 
 of invisible mind. That which produced them still lives, 
 though they have ceased to exist, save in the memories 
 of those who brought them into being. 
 
 We talk about our gold as enduring, though it may take 
 wings and flee away, may wear away by attrition, may 
 dissolve in liquid, be converted into base alloy, or disap- 
 pear in many ways ; but those Unseen forces which oper- 
 ate upon it, those mysterious affinities and repulsions in 
 the great laboratory of Jehovah, still exist, still operate 
 unchanged, and will through time, and perhaps through 
 eternity. And those human powers, which gathered, used, 
 and loved that gold, still live, and will continue to live, 
 " nameless and eternal th'ngs." We build monuments of 
 
DEGKEES OF MATEKIALITY. Ill 
 
 Btone and iron, and brass, to tell the ages to come that we 
 lived but we ourselves shall see them crumble, and rust, 
 and molder away. Our visible bodies, which we are 
 accustomed to regard as immutable till the hour of death, 
 are scarcely less changeable than the clouds, though our 
 minds which inhabit them remain the same things, con- 
 scious of a continued and changeless identity, and, Ave are 
 assured by Revelation, will continue that identity through 
 the countless cycles of eternity. The stars, so beautiful 
 on night's radiant brow, are subject to endless mutations, 
 and science assures us that they will pass away, and 
 appear in other forms, and as other worlds, subject always 
 to the hidden forces that control their outward appearance. 
 So it is ; nothing Seen is permanent. From the dust-atom 
 to the world all is mutable. " Passing away" is the 
 mournful farewell of the visible universe. 
 
 But not so with the Unseen. All this mighty and end- 
 less concatenation of events is produced by Unseen 
 agencies. Back of all we see, lying in endless activity and 
 permanency, are the moving forces of creation. The 
 magnificent pageantry of visible things, from microscopic 
 to telescopic wonders, splendid, powerful, enduring as it 
 is, is all in abeyance to something hidden behind the cur- 
 tains of sense, to the original and endless laws of the 
 Unseen world. 
 
 Nor does durability alone belong to the Unseen. Power 
 resides there. It is not the outward but the inward man 
 that holds the key of power. It is not the arm, but the 
 will, that is strong. It is not the body, but the mind, that 
 
112 MINERAL KINGDOM — AIR: 
 
 performs great deeds. Authority is not in tl'e great frame 
 but in the great soul. The command that millions obey 
 comes not from the Seen, but the Unseen man. Nor is 
 this true respecting man only, but it is true respecting th 
 universe. Through all material things the power tha 
 moves them is Unseen. This is contrary to common 
 appearance, but it is nevertheless true. A little attention 
 will make it clear: 
 
 Materiality has degrees running from the more to the 
 less gross. It rises, as it were, strata above strata, from 
 solid, inert, powerless earth, cognizable by all the senses, 
 to that which rises to the very top of the sensorium, and 
 borders close upon the precincts of spirituality. Solid 
 earth, or the mineral kingdom, is at the bottom. This ad- 
 dresses itself to all the senses, and is of itself perfectly 
 powerless. When at rest it can not move ; when in mo- 
 tion it can not stop. It is powerless upon all other sub- 
 stances, save by the force of attraction, and that is an 
 invisible power. 
 
 The next sphere of visible substance above this is wa- 
 ter. This is cognizable only by the two senses sight and 
 touch, and only slightly so by these. Water is a far more 
 effective agent of power -than solid matter. It often 
 sweeps down its currents with tremendous energy, bearing 
 before it the fairest productions of God and man. I 
 bursts mountains asunder, upheaves the earth, carries the 
 commerce of the world, and performs the labor of millions 
 of artisans. 
 
 One step above wate^ lies the ambient air, unseen, cop 
 
THE GASES — CALORIC. 113 
 
 nizable only by the sense of touch, and this only to keen 
 perception. It is almost wholly removed from the sensu- 
 ous, yet it holds in its viewless grasp the storm-god's deso- 
 lating weapons. How it plows the earth, rends the for 
 est, rolls the ocean into tumbling hills, and shakes the 
 n.oun tain's solid base ! 
 
 Next above the air, in the ascending scale of material 
 ity, are the gases, half spiritual agencies in appearance, 
 holding in their unseen hands the elements of uncomputed 
 power. Among these we may take steam for an illustra- 
 tion. In this age of steam we know something of its 
 force. The million engines it is driving are thundering in 
 the ears of the world the strong evidences of its power. 
 Steam is invisible ; the eye can not detect it. In its unseen 
 state it is mightier than ten thousand giants. Ribs of rock 
 can not hold it ; bands of steel it snaps like threads of gos- 
 samer. It is a giant unchained and unchainable. But in 
 using its power it becomes visible, and the moment it is 
 visible it is powerless. It wastes its power in making 
 itself seen. Above the gases comes that indefinable, ethe- 
 rial, nondescript agent called caloric, more powerful than 
 all below, holding material things subject to its mysterious 
 and unseen agency. Mathematical science stands aghast 
 in attempting to compute its power. Even the power of 
 steam is the result of this ethereal principle. It holds ma- 
 teriality at its will. It has power sufficient to reduce the 
 material universe to a liquid ocean of white-hot lava. 
 
 Above this, in nature's unseen and invisible laboratory 
 are coiled up from sight the indefinable powers of chemi- 
 
114 CHEMICAL AFFINITY — ELECTRICITY. 
 
 cal affinity, and how great, how mighty are they ! The 
 earthquake's shock, the volcano's belching fire and thun- 
 der and many of the most astounding phenomena in 
 nature's vast workshop, are the results of this unseen 
 power. From the particle to the world lies the realm of 
 ts active agencies. The soda you drink, the soap you 
 use, the medicine you take, the bread you eat, the lime 
 and much of the material of which your houses are built, 
 many of the most useful products, and beautiful and won- 
 derful provisions and exhibitions of nature we enjoy at the 
 hands of this viewless power. 
 
 Ascending one step higher we meet attraction, operating 
 with the power of a God through all the universe. It 
 holds the drop of water and the swinging world in its un- 
 seen hands. 
 
 Next and last in the material scale, at the very top of 
 the region of sense, we approach the mysterious and 
 awful power of electricity. So far removed from the sen- 
 suous it is, so subtile and so ethereal, that we can not but 
 regard it as almost spiritual. We doubt not that it borders 
 closely upon the spiritual world. Here the realms of 
 matter and spirit nearly approach each other, if they do 
 not meet. Who shall utter a voice that shall declare the 
 extent and mightiness of the electrical agency 1 It is no 
 doubt the secret spring of animal and vegetable life, the 
 balance-wheel of creation, the secret wand by which 
 mind, both finite and infinite, rules over the realms of 
 matter. Electricity we can not see, feel, or taste. In its 
 ordinary movements it is all beyond the region of sense, 
 
SILENCE OF TIIE UNSEEN FORCES. 115 
 
 silent, still, and grand. At times, it is true, in some dis*. 
 turbance of nature, it becomes visible, but the moment it 
 does it loses its power. The moment we see the light- 
 ning's flash its force is wasted ; its visible appearance is 
 but the flash of its eye in death. Step, again, one flight 
 more up, and we enter the realm of mind, altogether and 
 always invisible. Eye hath never beheld it ; ear hath 
 never heard it ; hand hath never touched it ; it is back of 
 and above all the senses. But oh, how powerful! Ma- 
 teriality is its servant. Mineral, water, air, and steam, 
 caloric, chemical affinity, attraction, electricity, all do its 
 bidding, perform its labor, obey its will. See these slaves 
 of mind making the busy earth tremble and hum with the 
 din of their wheels and engines. How true it is that mind 
 is more powerful than all these ; and that power increases 
 as we ascend from the material toward the spiritual, 
 proving that all power resides in the Unseen. 
 
 It may be well to remark that these unseen forces are 
 altogether silent in the natural exercise of their undis- 
 turbed power. Here, again, we are often led strangely 
 astray by appearances. We see no power in the silent 
 puttings forth of the bud and blossom, the still progress of 
 the growing forest, the calm affinities and forces Which 
 make the world teem with life, usefulness, and beauty, in 
 the quiet and faithful shining of the bright old sun, and 
 the noiseless tread of the worlds through the fields of 
 ether. But let a meteor fly wildly through the skies, let a 
 volcano uncase its caldron of fire to burn the earth and 
 paint the heavens, let the cloud send out its white-hot 
 
116 AN ELOQUENT EXTRACT. 
 
 bolts and seething flames, and we are startled and awe- 
 struck in the presence of such powers. This is a false 
 estimate. These are really only freaks of nature, disturb- 
 ances in her forces, weaknesses which she exhibits some- 
 times in moments of disorder. What is a flash of light- 
 ning compared to that silent operation of the electric 
 agency, which clothes the whole earth with vegetation, 
 and fills it with the teeming myriads of living beings with 
 which every continent, island, and element swarms. There 
 is more power in developing a flower than a flash of light- 
 ning. Man can produce the lightning, but he can not the 
 flower. An eloquent writer says, " The prairies waving 
 with wheat, and the forests studded with oaks, make no 
 noise~; and the electricity which roars in the thunder- 
 peal is not a tithe so powerful as that which sleeps in the 
 light, and holds the cups of a drop of water in their liquid 
 poise. The world's estimate of power gives greater pro- 
 minence to that which upheaves and causes disorder. 
 The eruption of a volcano, to almost all minds, symbolizes 
 more strength and grandeur than the silent swing and 
 radiance of a planet. If there could be some splendid 
 confusion produced amid the serenity of the present uni 
 versal order ; if some broad constellation should begin to- 
 night, to play off from its lamps, volleys of Bengal lights, 
 that should fall in showers of many-colored sparks and 
 fiery serpents down the spaces of the heavens ; or if some 
 blazing aril piratical comet should butt and jostle the 
 whole outworks of a system, and rush like a celestial 
 fire-ship, destroying order and kindling the calm fleets 
 
AN ELOQUENT EXTRACT. 117 
 
 ftiat sail upon the infinite azure into a flame, how many 
 thousands there are that would look up to the skies for 
 the first time with wonder and awe, and exclaim inwardly, 
 'Surely there is tb 3 finger of God!' They do not see 
 any thing surprising or subduing in the punctual rise and 
 steady setting of the sun, and its imperial and boundless 
 bounty ; and yet there is fire enough in the sun to spurt 
 any quantity of flaming and fantastic jets. It could fill the 
 whole space between Mercury and Neptune with brilliant 
 pyrotechnics and jubilee displays, such as children gaze 
 at and clap their hands. But the great old sun is not self- 
 ish, and has no French ambition for such tawdry glories. 
 It reserves its fires, keeps them stored in its breast, spills 
 over no sheets of flame from its huge caldron, but shoots 
 still and steadily its clean white beams into the ether, that 
 evoke flowers from the bosom of every globe, and paint 
 the far-off satellites of Uranus with silver beauty." Thus 
 silently sleep the unseen forces about us. So it is with 
 mental powers. That which is showy and noisy is weak 
 and childish, and expends its force in exploding. Noise 
 has no power ; the thunder never kills. The spiritual 
 force of mind is serenely calm and silently grand. New- 
 ton, in the serenity of his study, gazing upon a rude dia- 
 gram to read the invisible statute-book of God, is a more 
 splendid symbol of power than a thousand brawling poll 
 ticians or thundering religionists, startling the world with 
 their humdrum eloquence. There is more strength of 
 friendship in the silent clasp of the hand and the noiselcsa 
 pressure of the lip than in the mrst burning words the 
 
118 THE UNSEEN IS ENDURING. 
 
 tongue can utter. And there is often more religion . n the 
 voiceless prayer of the heart and the deed of charily that 
 no eye but God's can see, than in a thousand prayers and 
 psalms that shake the sanctuary, and alms that stir the 
 world to praise. Illustrated on every hand are the propo- 
 sitions that durability and power belong to the Unseen, that 
 that power is calm and silent in the exercise, of its natural 
 missions. Have we not abundance of reason to believe 
 that unseen tilings are more real, enduring, and powerful 
 than the things which we behold? Do not the, hidden 
 things in our hearts, and the secret forces coiled in every 
 thing around us, tell us of the positive realities of those 
 spiritual entities and relations which Christ has revealed 
 as existing beneath or within the vail of materiality ? If 
 so, why are we so material and sensuous in our opinions 
 and lives 1 Wealth and glitter catch and hold our most 
 earnest gaze. Sensuosities are the things we love. We 
 spend our money and our labor for that which is not bread, 
 and which satisfieth not. There is back of all this allur- 
 ing, perishing sight-world a realm of beauty and harmony, 
 infinite and eternal, in which our invisible powers of love 
 and thought, of memory and faith, are to live for ever. 
 The men we look on are but the masked beings which 
 are to be real and present to us in other spheres. The 
 living men we do not see. Wisdom admonishes us to look 
 " within the vail ;" the object of our love and care is there. 
 To live for sense is madness. To waste life on a man 
 of straw or dust is folly ; to live a butterfly's life is fool- 
 ishness ; to multiply sensual wants is to invite leeches to 
 
THE INVISIBLE SHOULD GOVERN THE VISIBLE. 119 
 
 suck out our blood ; to labor for the visible in life is to 
 sow and reap not. The flower of human beauty and the 
 wheat of human harvest are unseen. In the realm of 
 mind, when Reason is king and Love is queen, we should 
 find the objects of life. To discipline and develop the 
 children of the spirit, the immortal powers of our inmost 
 being, is the true end of life. Not for the Seen, but the 
 Unseen, should Ave labor, think, and hope. The visible 
 world should be our field, and its garniture and all therein 
 should be our implements. Sense should administer to 
 soul ; matter pay court to mind ; time serve eternity ; the 
 Seen augment the glory of the Unseen. Over all that is 
 sensuous should the spirit rule. Sublime is the beauty of 
 a spirit enthroned in sense. How all the appetites, and 
 passions, and lusts bow down in abeyance, and become 
 beautiful in their garniture of humility and labors of use- 
 fulness ! Every sense is a servant of the mind, a»d when 
 held in subjection is beautifully useful. " He that ruleth 
 qis own spirit is greater than he that taketh a t ity " 
 
CHAEACTEE AND REPUTATION. 
 
 Character and Reputation Defined— The Ass in the Lion's Skin— Character ud 
 Reputation Compared— Men do not Read Character well— A Science of Char- 
 acter — General Correspondence between Character and Reputation — Reputa- 
 tion follows Character— We should not meddle with our own Reputations— Il- 
 lustrations— Every Man Forms his own Character— It is not Made in a Day- 
 Character is the Fruit of Culture and Discipline— Where Characters are Made 
 — Washington, Franklin, Burritt— Character the Standard of Progress— Asso- 
 ciations — Influence of Collective Character — Examples. 
 
 By Character I understand what a man is ; by Reputa- 
 tion what he is thought to be. Falstaff was a coward ; 
 but he wanted the reputation of a man of valor ; and if 
 he had labored as hard for the character of bravery as he 
 did for the reputation, he would have gained both. 
 
 Men often possess one kind of character and another 
 kind of reputation. Some men possess white characters 
 and black reputations ; other men have black characters 
 and white reputations. The ass sometimes wears the 
 lion's skin, and when he doubles down his ears and keeps 
 his mouth shut he gets the lion's reputation. But folding 
 down his ears, sealing up his braying mouth, and covering 
 up his donkey feet never so adroitly, will fail to dignify 
 him with the lion's character. Philosophers in their day 
 
CHARACTER AND REPUTATION DEFINED. 121 
 
 are often thought to be fools, and genius is often nick 
 named " crackbrains." The most rigid and literal readers 
 of nature among the ancients had the reputation of being 
 visionary, while the most visionary of their senseless 
 mythologists were resorted to as oracles of the all-per 
 vading Divinity. The history of the Christian Church, 
 written in the blood of martyred saints, records a thou- 
 sand instances of Christian character dying at the stake 
 of heretical reputation ; and the great Teacher, Founder, 
 and Liver of the true religion died as a malefactor. 
 
 Character and Reputation, then, are very far from being 
 synonymous. Character relates to the man, Reputation 
 to the world. Character is personal property, Reputation 
 is public domain ; Character is capital in trade in a man's 
 own business, Reputation is stock in public affairs which 
 is managed by the community. Every man has a char- 
 acter and reputation, and between them there may be a 
 beautiful and truthful correspondence, or there may be a 
 great difference. Between Character and Reputation 
 there generally is a greater or less degree of correspond- 
 ence. Few are the men so fortunate as to be estimated 
 at their true value. The plodding day-laborer is often 
 estimated at not more than forty shillings, when he is 
 worth his weight in gold ten times over, and the half uf 
 his value is not told then ; while the pompous, bloated, 
 professional man or office-holder is put down at a hundred 
 thousand pounds, when his real value js only a few far- 
 things. 
 
 Men are not always what they appear to be t° the un 
 6 
 
122 THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN. 
 
 practiced eye of the world. The reason wh\ men s rej 
 utations differ so much from their characters, is because 
 men are such poor readers of character and have such 
 false standards of judgment. They learn to read every 
 thing else — books, cattle, markets, merchants, nature, the 
 signs of the times, but do not learn to read the language 
 of Character. They have no literature elucidating the 
 scenic beauties ' and varying proportions and relations of 
 the man within. Nearly all men are Yankees in this re- 
 spect — they guess out their neighbor's character. , And 
 such guessing — it ought to make all honest Yankees blush ! 
 The ass is guessed a lion, the goat a sheep, the dove a 
 hawk, and the serpent a very clever fellow. Now the 
 truth is, there is a science of Character which reveals to 
 the proficient student the exact conditions of the inward 
 man. There is a law by which the outward man is made 
 a reflex or copy of the inward, by which the form and 
 features are molded, by which the voice is keyed, the 
 eye lighted, the countenance sketched, the head balanced, 
 the bearing gauged, the step controlled, and every motion 
 of every member of the body directed. There is a law 
 which illuminates the outward man with the revelations 
 of the soul, and sketches the character in the thousand 
 minute expressions that fall in l'ving language as from 
 many tongues, from the constant and varying movements 
 of the human form which is instinct with Character 
 The knowledge of this law is the science of Character. 
 Whoever is a faithful interpreter of this science under- 
 stands the characters of the men who pass before him 
 
CHARACTER AND REPUTATION COMPARED. 123 
 
 And if all men were both theoretically and practically 
 learned in this most beautiful and sublime of all sciences 
 our characters and our reputations would correspond ; 
 every man would be known as he is, estimated at his real 
 value ; deception would lay down her gossamer mask ' 
 the gaudy circumstances of life be assigned their propel 
 places ; Character would become the standard of the 
 man. 
 
 But after all the ignorance of men in the language of 
 Character, their native shrewdness will guess prettj 
 closely at each other's qualities. If they are at first de 
 ceived, they will shoot very near the mark after a while 
 So it may be considered a truism, that men's reputation* 
 generally correspond very nearly with their characters 
 In some points they may be over-estimated, in others un 
 dervalued ; so that after all most men stand just about at 
 par in the market. They are valued at just about what 
 they are worth in the long run. 
 
 Although philosophers have been called fools and 
 knaves good men, these are the exceptions rather than 
 the general rule. If one man is over or undervalued, the 
 thousand will be very nearly rightly estimated. Then 
 the inference is, that if a man would have a good reputa- 
 tion he must have a good character. The former is the 
 natural growth of the latter. If Reputation is valuable, it 
 is made so by the value which Character gives it. As 
 the general rule is that Reputation depends on Character, 
 its entire value is drawn from its origin. Hence Char- 
 acter is the all-important, all valuable matter of consider 
 
124 A SCIENCE OF CHARACTER. 
 
 ation Character, and not Reputation, should be the grand 
 goal of human ambition. Character should be the inspir- 
 ing glory that should burn on the mountain summit of 
 uman hopes Character should be the mark of distinc 
 ion, the epaulette, the scepter, the crown of power, and 
 he robe of redemption, for which man should aspire 
 This should be his honor, his religion, his life, and his 
 heaven. Before his mind's eye should be placed the 
 beautifid and divine proportions of a perfect Character, 
 like that which crowned and consecrated the soul and life 
 of Jesus. It should hang before his mind like a vision of 
 celestial beauty, enchanting his love and stimulating his 
 ambition. Before this ideal Character he should bow 
 down in reverence. It should be to him a poem of di- 
 vinest beauty, a harmony wrought into life, a divinity in 
 its relative proportions and combined finish. This is the 
 Christian's great advantage, that this ideal character of a 
 perfect man is glittering on his sight and shining through 
 his soul, the creative light of its beauty and power. 
 
 If Character is attained, its corresponding Reputation 
 will follow. Reputation is the consequent of Character. 
 A great Character will insure a great Reputation, a mean 
 Character a mean Reputation. For a season a false Rep- 
 utation may be bolstered up ; but the Character in the 
 end like truth, will make itself known and felt. Reputa- 
 ion is important, vastly important ; but it derives its chief 
 mportance from the inestimable nature of a true Charact- 
 er. The world places a vast estimate upon Reputation. 
 In this it is ".ght. But it errs in the way to secure it 
 
REPUTATION FOLLOWS CHARACTER. 125 
 
 It seeks to make, build, buy, force, win, beg, earn a Rep 
 utation — to get it honorably if it can, but to get it. Its 
 practical motto is, " Any thing for a blazing reputation. 
 This is wrong in principle and absurd in theory. A 
 strong and enduring reputation can not be established 
 without a character on wh-ch to build it. An attempt to 
 create for oneself a good reputation without a character, 
 would be like attempting to make moonshine without a 
 moon or sunshine without a sun. The truth is, Reputa* 
 tion can not be made. It comes of itself. It is the 
 world's estimate of a character ; it is what men say of 
 men. He who runs about to make himself a reputation, 
 runs about sowing folly-seed to the wind. He will reap 
 a harvest of lean shadows of nothing. 
 
 One should have nothing to do with his own reputation. 
 The more he attempts to look after it, the worse he will 
 make it. If it is ever so pure, he pollutes it if he at- 
 tempts to touch it. Reputation is always in the third 
 person ; Character is in the first. 
 
 Timothy Sanburn had the Reputation of being an 
 honest man. Some villainous fellow circulated a lying 
 report about him. Nobody believed it, and it did hi? 
 Reputation no harm. But at length it got to his ears. 
 He was wounded, and thought he must look after his 
 reputation. So off he starts, fretting and foaming, to trace 
 out the lying story. His earnest manner and phrensied 
 tone cast suspicion upon himself. His neighbors began 
 to think all was not right with nonest Tim, and a brood 
 of flying whispers and suspicions were scared on to win^ 
 
126 EVERY MAN FORMS HIS OWN CHARACTER. 
 
 by his attempt to mend up his reputation. There was a 
 way to mend it. He should have let it alone, and forti- 
 fied still stronger his character. A man must never touch 
 lis own reputation. - 
 
 Gilman Gordon was ambitious of fame. He fancied 
 himself a great man, and he took great pains to convince 
 the world of it. But the more he tried, the more every 
 body thought he was a very small man. Had he gone to 
 work with himself and formed a great character, the 
 world would have taken good care to have honored him 
 with a great reputation. But so it is, the very attempt to 
 meddle with one's own reputation spoils it. 
 
 But I do not mean, to say that a man shall not be 
 jealous of his own Reputation. The merchant's, the law- 
 yer's, the mechanic's, the day-laborer's Reputation is of 
 immense value to each one. It is capital stock for each 
 one's business. But each one must let it alone, or 
 he will spoil it. But fortunate for us is it, and for our 
 reputation, it is in our own hands after all. Our reputa- 
 tion is the fragrance of our characters cast into the world. 
 Our characters are our own. They bloom roses or thorn- 
 flowers, as we will. Every man forms his own character. 
 He forges it on the anvil of life. He does not make it in 
 a moment, but he is making it all the time. Hence he 
 makes his own reputation. Both Character and Reputa- 
 tion, in this view, become his own. He is the author of 
 both. And this is true of every man whose Reputation is 
 just, or in keeping with his Character. 
 
 Now it is a mighty and glorious truth, that every man ia 
 
CHARACTER IS THE FKUIT OF CULTURE. 127 
 
 the author of his character. And the privilege of carving 
 one's own statue, of giving an actual existence to the 
 ideal of his highest thought of a man, of cultivating him- 
 self into his noblest conception, is second to none enjoyed 
 on earth or in heaven. But a noble character is not made 
 in a moment, or with little effort. It is the meed of con- 
 stant and well-directed labor ; it is the reward of industry 
 in goodness ; of faithfulness in the moral stewardship. 
 Our minds are given us, but our characters we make. 
 Our mental powers must be cultivated. The full measure 
 of all the powers necessary to make a man are no more a 
 Character than a handful of seeds is an orchard of fruits. 
 Plant the seeds and tend them well, and they will make 
 an orchard. Cultivate the powers and harmonize them 
 well, and they will make a noble Character. The germ 
 is not the tree, the acorn is not the oak, neither is the 
 mind a Character. God gives the mind ; man makes the 
 Character. The mind is the garden ; the Character is 
 the fruit ; the mind is the white page ; the character is 
 the writing we put on it. The mind is the metallic plate ; 
 the Character is our engraving thereon. The mind is the 
 shop, the counting-room ; the Character is our profits on 
 the trade. Large profits are made from quick sales and 
 small per centage. So great characters are made by many 
 little acts and efforts. A dollar is composed of a thousand 
 mills ; so is a character of a thousand thoughts and acts 
 The secret thoughts never expressed, the inward indul 
 gences in imaginary wrong, the Tie never told for want of 
 eouragc, the licentiousness never indulged in from fear ox 
 
128 WASHINGTON, FRANKLIN, BUKKITT. 
 
 public rebuke, the irreverence of the heart, are just as 
 effectual in staining the character as though the world 
 knew all about them. A subtile thing is a character ; and 
 a constant work is its formation. Whether it be good or 
 bad, it has been long in its growth, and is the aggregate 
 of millions of little mental acts. A good character is a 
 precious thing, above rubies, gold, crowns, or kingdoms, 
 and the work of making it is the noblest labor on earth or 
 in heaven. 
 
 Professions, callings, trades, places are small matters. 
 They are only shops in which to make characters. That 
 is the noblest which turns out the best characters. If the 
 farm makes a Washington, honor be unto the farm. If 
 the tallow-shop makes a Franklin, praise be to the tallow- 
 shop. If the forge gives the world a Burritt, let the forge 
 be a place of distinction. If the shoe-bench has en- 
 throned poets, philanthropists, and statesmen, let it be a 
 seat of dignity. No calling or station can honor a man. 
 A man is above a profession, or throne, or a crown. A 
 true character is the onty adornment a man can wear. 
 If. he dotes on the bubbles of place and station, he lacks a 
 true character. If place was a representative of Charac- 
 ter, it would be vastly important. If the bar represented 
 justice, the throne righteous authority, the pulpit religion, 
 the counting-room honest trade, then would they demand 
 our reverence. But they do not, or but poorly, represent 
 them. They are trifles compared with character. Char 
 acter is the source of peace or misery. It gladdens or 
 glooms life, suns o^ chills the soul. It is the devil or the 
 
CHARACTER THE STANDARD OF PROGRESS. 129 
 
 angel to pierce or crown the man. It is his heaven or 
 hell, the cloud of wrath or the glory of joy that over- 
 arches his life. 
 
 Sum it then as we will, Character is the great desider- 
 atum of human life. This truth, sublime in its simplicity 
 and powerful in its beauty, is the highest lesson of 
 religion, the first that youth should learn, the last that ag 
 should forget. 
 
 Reputation ! Let it go ; it will not be likely to get far 
 from the Character. Watch well, make well the Charac- 
 ter, and the world will see that the Reputation is faithfully 
 established. The world loves to pet its good children 
 and emblazon its good characters. 
 
 The value of Character is the standard of human pro- 
 gress. The individual, the community, the nation tells 
 its standing, its advancement, its worth, its true wealth 
 and glory in the eye of God by its estimation of Charac- 
 ter. That man or nation who or which lightly esteems 
 Character is low, groveling, and barbarous. Wherever 
 Character is made a secondary object, sensualism and 
 crime prevail. He who would prostitute Character to 
 Reputation is base. He who lives for any thing less than 
 Character is mean. He who enters upon any study, pur- 
 suit, amusement, pleasure, habit, or course of life, without 
 considering its effect upon his character, is not a trusty or 
 an honest man. He whose modes of thought, states of 
 feeling, every-day acts, common language, and whole out 
 ward life, are not directed by a wise reference to their 
 influence upor. his character, is a man always to be watch 
 6* 
 
130 INFLUENCE OF COLLECTIVE OHAEACTEK. 
 
 ed. Just as a man prizes his character, so is he. This 
 is the true standard of a man. 
 
 All these remarks are equally applicable to an associa 
 tion of men. In an association the whole character is 
 made up of all the parts, or the characters of the individ 
 uals. They are all thrown together, the black, white, red 
 and mixed, and the resultant character is the alloyed com- 
 pound. One liar will detract from the character of ten 
 honest men, one drunkard will tinge with blue the char- 
 acter of many sober men. Satan is always surrounded 
 with blackness. 
 
 Fifty men formed themselves into an association profess- 
 edly for mutual benefit ; ten were drinkers ; thirty were 
 indifferent; ten were abstemious. The two tens balanced 
 each other, and the Character of the association stood 
 indifferent to the great virtue of temperance. It being in 
 a temperance community, this gave it a bad odor. The 
 axiom of Christ was applied, "He that is not for us is 
 against us," and so the Reputation of the association stood 
 against temperance. 
 
 Another association of a hundred men was formed, 
 professedly a reform association. Twenty of its members 
 were profane swearers ; nineteen were devoutly respect- 
 ful toward God ; sixty were indifferent ; hence the Char- 
 cter of the association stood in favor of profanity, which 
 in a religious community gave it an unlovely and grovel 
 ling reputation, and utterly destroyed its influences. 
 Other instances might be named to show that the Charac 
 ter of an association is made up of the united character 
 
EXAMPLES. 131 
 
 of aii its members. Some suppose it is the name, pro- 
 fession, or object of a society that gives it character. 
 But this is not true any more than of an individual. Pro- 
 fession is a shallow vail, and is good only as it is sup- 
 ported by a corresponding Character. If a society would 
 have a good Reputation, it must have a good Character ; 
 and its Character must not be professional or superficial, 
 but based in the characters of its members. No man can 
 be a good member of a good association and a bad man ; 
 for however much he may labor for the good of the asso- 
 ciation in its peculiar work, his character is a dead weight 
 on his labors, and the reputation he will give the associa- 
 tion will correspond with the reputation he bears in the 
 community. Hence every association, like every individ- 
 ual, must stand upon, and be measured and estimated by, 
 its Character. Character is, then, the " sine qua non" of 
 human existence, of moral intelligence. It is that which 
 wins human confidence, awakens angelic love, and secures 
 the smile of the All-Father. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURE. 
 
 An Old Adago Controverted — Newton and Galvani — A Mere Knowledge cf 
 Facts does not confer Power — A Higher Knowledge Necessary — Knowledge ia 
 not Culture — Mental Gormandizing— "We Bead Much and Think Little— A Few 
 Think for the Many— Knowledge chiefly Valuable as a Means of Culture- 
 Knowledge easy of Attainment— Culture Difficult— Memory— Thinking neces- 
 sary to Development — Responsibility — We are What we Make Ourselves — 
 Means of Culture— Intellect and' Conscience— The Mind, like the Body, is 
 Developed by Exercise— Labor and Perseverance. 
 
 Knowledge and Culture are two objects of permanent 
 interest; but they are very far from being of equal 
 interest. They are to each other as means and end. 
 Knowledge of itself and in itself considered is not of such 
 inestimable value as many have supposed. It has been 
 said that " Knowledge is power," but this is not strictly 
 true. Many men of vast knowledge possess but little 
 power ; while other men possessing far less knowledge 
 hold the scepter of a tremendous domination. One may 
 know all the facts in the universe, and not be able to apply 
 them so as to evoke their power and multiply sublime influ 
 ences till his power shall be as universal as his knowledge 
 Another may know a few facts, and so understand their 
 multitudinous uses, and have his own soul so wrought 
 
MERE KNOWLEDGE CONFERS NO TOWEK. 133 
 
 upon by their rich meanings that he may possess a varied 
 and resistless power. 
 
 One fact, and that a simple and common one, led out 
 the mind of Newton to its sublime discoveries. One acci- 
 dental fact stirred Galvani to the study of the mysterious 
 and subtile agent that takes his name, and opened the way 
 to the magnificent conclusions of that most stupendous 
 and brilliant of the physical sciences. These facts known 
 to other minds might have been as though not known. 
 All antiquity had known that an apple loosened from its 
 parent stem would fall to the ground with a force propor- 
 tionate to its quantity of matter. And yet this is the fact 
 that revealed the principle by which the worlds move in 
 their march of eternal glory, and the universe is hung 
 along the infinite spaces of immensity. All antiquity had 
 known that a piece of glass or amber rubbed with the dry 
 hand or a piece of silk would attract light substances fo« 
 a moment, and then repel them. And yet this fact was 
 the opening door to the field of electrical discoveries. 
 The same facts in uncultured minds had produced nothing. 
 When they fell upon soil where thoughts were taught to 
 grow, they were good seed, and sprung up and bore glo- 
 rious fruit. Certainly it is not Knowledge simply that 
 confers power, or is useful to man. 
 
 Knowledge is an acquaintance with facts. I may 
 know that the trade-wind? blow steadily from west to 
 east ; that the heated air in the equatorial regions rise 
 and spreads out north and south, and that the cold air comes 
 in to supply its place, and still be little acquainted with the 
 
134 MERE KNOWLEDGE CONFERS NO POWER. 
 
 uses of these facts, and have little ability to read in all this 
 the splendid plan of Divine Wisdom for heating, ventilating 
 and tempering the house of mortal men, for carrying the 
 heated air north and the cold air south in our latitude, and 
 bearing in its invisible grasp the vaporous burdens that fall 
 n mist and gentle rain and washing shower all over the 
 earth, to keep it clean and pure and make it nutritious. I 
 may know that the ocean is salt without being able to read 
 in this fact the benevolent uses of its saltness, that the 
 greater saltness of the equatorial regions, occasioned by 
 the greater evaporation in that hot climate, causes the sur- 
 face waters to settle to the bottom by their great heavi- 
 ness, so the surface waters from the poles may come in, 
 while the bottom waters are driven toward the poles, 
 causing counter currents in the ocean similar to those in 
 the air, thus keeping pure the waters and equalizing the 
 temperature of the earth. I may know the fact that the 
 highest mountains of the earth are in the torrid zone, 
 without understanding therefrom their causes and uses. 
 The knowledge of the fact of their existence will not in- 
 form me that they are eternal ice-houses, reared there by 
 the Almighty Hand, by causes which lie beneath the tor- 
 rid girdle, to moderate the heat and irrigate the land of 
 that sunburned clime. Then, again, I may know the 
 physical causes and uses of all these facts, and not be 
 able to glean therefrom their spiritual uses in developing 
 within myself that world of wisdom and virtue which 
 ought to exist in every mind. I may know my neighbors, 
 their characters and habits, without comprehending the 
 
KNOWLEDGE IS NOT CULTUKE. 135 
 
 various relations of mind to mind, man to man, a' mar to 
 God. I may know a multitude of great men, without 
 comprehending the secret of their greatness. I may 
 know the different races, nations, and tribes of men, their 
 histories, characters, and habits, and not learn from them 
 all the value of a human soul, nor the way to make it 
 what it may be in power and glory. It is not simple 
 Knowledge that confers power or dignity upon a man. 
 
 There are men who can repeat half the history of the 
 world, and yet have reaped but little benefit from their 
 knowledge, have not made it the substratum of mental 
 power, nor the means of culture or development. There 
 are men who can repeat half the Bible, and yet are not 
 theologians, nor religionists, nor even moralists or men 
 of respectable parts. There are men who are learned in 
 the history and letter of the laws, both common and stat- 
 ute, and yet are not jurists, nor respectable at the bar, nor 
 yet as counsel. There are men who have learned the 
 whole of a college course, and come out graced with a 
 diploma and all the essential facts of a college education, 
 and yet, in the graphic language of the world, " are born 
 fools." They have got knowledge, but not culture. The 
 minds of all such men are like dyspeptic stomachs ; they 
 do not 'igest the food that is put into them ; they do not 
 extract the nutriment of knowledge ; they do not grow by 
 what they know ; neither power of thought nor strength 
 of conception is increased by their accumulation of facts 
 Knowledge is the mind's proper food ; but it is as often ill 
 digested as is the food of the body. We overload both our 
 
136 WE READ MUCH AND THINK LITTLE. 
 
 bodies and our minds, and give them but little exercise , 
 and both suffer by the operation. We ar-e rearing a pam 
 pered race of people ; soul and body are pampered alike. 
 Intemperance is the crying evil of our time. It consists 
 chiefly in the want of harmony between the use of food 
 and drink and exercise. We eat and drink, and lounge 
 and sleep. Luxury makes us stupid and effeminate. We 
 have not the stalwart arms and vigorous bodies that we 
 ought to possess with our unparalleled physical advantages. 
 The same general fact is true mentally. Ours is an. age 
 of mental luxury. Knowledge hangs on every bough, 
 and blossoms in every flower. We gather as we go. 
 Books multiply upon us like the sheaves of autumn ; 
 we devour them and cry for more. We gormandize our 
 mental dishes. Huge volumes that cost an age of thought, 
 a lifetime of brain-sweat and soul-growth, are consumed 
 as a few days' feast. We load our minds as epicures do 
 their bodies, and make them equally effeminate. 
 
 Knowledge is' not the most important thing. What is 
 food to a dyspeptic ? what is knowledge to a mental epi- 
 cure ? We read too much for our thinking ; we know too 
 much for our wisdom ; we explore more than we put to 
 use ? we plow more than we sow ; we gather more than 
 we consume. We are a generation of mental gormand- 
 izers. We luxuriate on knowledge ; we bloat with the 
 richest facts of history and science ; we read without 
 reason ; we follow our masters without thought ; we have 
 many readers, but few thinkers ; many pearl-gatherers 
 but fe\» pearl-wearers ; many men of knowledge, but few 
 
A FEW TIIINK FOR THE MANY. 137 
 
 men of culture. Our thinkers rise upon us .ike new 
 stars, a few in a century. The multitude run after them, 
 and, like Lazarus, eat the crumbs that fall from their table. 
 They follow them by instinct ; they adopt their theories 
 and accept their thoughts at sight. Calvin rose and 
 thought. What a multitude swallowed his hard, rocky 
 thoughts, as though they were digestible mental food! 
 Wesley rose, and another multitude followed him, much 
 as Mohammedans followed their prophet. Swedenborg 
 rose in the North, and straightway a cloud of witnesses 
 appeared about him to testify to all he wrote. Davis 
 came above the horizon, and lo ! an army follows in his 
 train. So it is ; men swallow whole what they eat, 
 wheat or chaff, meat or bone, nut or shell. They do not 
 masticate their mental food ; they do not examine the 
 facts they learn ; they do not digest their knowledge. If 
 they did we should not have schools of men, sects, part- 
 ies, but one grand lyceum of individual thinkers ; every 
 one making his own use of his knowledge, forming his 
 own conclusions, and working out his own kind and de- 
 gree of culture. We read enough to have a generation 
 of philosophers. 
 
 The masses of our people possess more knowledge 
 than did Confucius, Plato, or Socrates. The Roman Sen- 
 ate did not know so much as so many schoolboys in our 
 day. Very limited was their knowledge of history, sci 
 ence, or philosophy. Yet they were great men, of vast 
 power, and rich culture. Their little knowledge was put 
 to its best use. Every fact was pressed into constan 
 
138 KNOWLEDGE EAST OF ATTAINMENT. 
 
 service, and its uses and meanings were all studied till 
 it became a light in their minds, imparting strength and 
 beauty. 
 
 Knowledge is chiefly valuable as a means of Culture. 
 So far as it administers to this it does good. When it 
 fails to do this it often does injury. In the hands of 
 wicked and designing men, it is often an evil, or used for 
 evil purposes. The men whose paths have been like 
 simoon blasts among their fellow-men, have had great 
 possessions of knowledge. 
 
 In our day Knowledge is easy of attainment. Every 
 newspaper teems with information ; books, rich in varied 
 knowledge, are multiplied on the people's shelves. An 
 hour a day devoted to the attainment of information for a 
 few years, gives a pleasant daily repast, and will store a 
 mind with a wealth of knowledge. The people are 
 pressed with teachers. Every science has its professors 
 and lecturers, its amateurs and masters, urging it upon the 
 popular attention. When knowledge is so easily attain- 
 ed, there is great danger of people's minds becoming like 
 huge lumber-rooms, where every thing is stowed away in 
 glorious confusion. 
 
 Men will read as they eat, for the pleasure of gorging. 
 There is a natural appetite for Knowledge in the human 
 mind. That appetite must be gratified in wisdom, and 
 even in moderation, or it is in danger of leading to men 
 tal intemperance. There are bookworms by the hundred 
 in our world, who read much and think little. To me 
 Ihe danger of our age is not so much in over-reading as 
 
CULTURE DIFFICULT. 139 
 
 in under-thinking ; not so much in too much Knowledge 
 as in too little Culture 
 
 Ours is a galloping age, and the road up the old steps 
 of Knowledge, which was once so difficult of access and 
 travel, is now made gently inclining and pleasant, along 
 which men can ride in their easy-chairs, inhaling the 
 fragrance and basking in the beauty of the ascending 
 highway. And our people seem to think Culture may be 
 obtained as easily and quickly as Knowledge. But the 
 truth is, it takes an oak about as long to grow now as it 
 did a hundred years ago, and practical farmers have found 
 that corn and cabbage will not grow much sooner. The 
 same holds true of children and youth. It is hard mak- 
 ing a man out of a boy under twenty-five years of the 
 best Culture, or a woman out of a girl in less than twenty- 
 three years. And if the Culture is bad it takes much 
 longer. Experience has taught that the blacksmith's arm 
 requires as much time to enlarge and strengthen now as 
 years ago, and must strike as many blows. And it is 
 doubtful whether a mind can acquire strength and culture 
 with less thinking now than a century ago. ^Thought is 
 the grand instrument of Culture. 
 
 Knowledge has sometimes a tendency to awaken 
 thought and sometimes to stifle it. Bookworms are often 
 very small thinkers. Most people imagine that a reten- 
 tive memory is indispensable to a great mind and great 
 Culture. Sad mistake. A retentive memory is a grand 
 knowledge-^ox, but quite often stands in the way of Cul- 
 ture And for this reason — the mind that remembers 
 
MO MEMORY. 
 
 every thing it hears, learns, or reads, hai its learning 
 always at hand, and finds it easier to use oilier people's 
 thoughts than to elaborate thoughts of its own. He who 
 has his food always cooked to his taste, seldom learns 
 how to cook. The child whose parents furnish all the 
 supplies for its wants at the mere asking, seldom learns 
 to supply itself. Necessity is the mother of invention 
 The retentive memory never invents, but uses the sup- 
 plies it has on hand, and always using these it never 
 learns how to think. It becomes a parrot, repeating 
 everywhere other people's sayings and sentiments. It is 
 easier to repeat than to think new thoughts. It is easier 
 to use tools at hand than to make new ones, and often 
 pleasanter when the tools at hand are better than we can 
 make. But using them does not give us the ability to 
 make them. A retentive memory always has on hand, 
 in its youth especially, better thoughts of others than its 
 possessor can originate. Who, then, will object to its 
 using them ? But to use them is to put its own powers 
 of thought in the easy-chair, and rock a lullaby to them. 
 So it is generally with very retentive minds. Other 
 people do their thinking, and hence they get none of the 
 real benefits of thinking. As well may one eat another's 
 dinner as do another's thinking. No man can be wise or 
 great without hard thinking ; no man can be well culti- 
 vated without systematic thinking. It is thinking that 
 makes the man. To think is to develop ; to think "sys 
 tematically is to cultivate. A parrot does not think ; a 
 repeater of other men's thoughts does not think ; a mem 
 
RESPONSIBILITY. 141 
 
 ory that is the grand store-room of all knowledge does 
 not think ; books do not think ; knowledge does not 
 think. No man can think by proxy to do himself any 
 good. Thinking is like loving or eating, every man must 
 do it for himself to get the benefit of it. Every man is a 
 separate intelligence, and must use the same means fo. 
 his development and culture that he would if there wei 
 no other intelligence known to him. 
 
 Men may assist each other in Culture, but each muot 
 cultivate himself after all. Aids are all about us, but the 
 power and the work are within us. Knowledge is one 
 of the aids, and a great one, and if rightly used is of in- 
 estimable benefit. But it must be used with wisdom. 
 The primary law of manhood and culture is that each 
 man must make himself. Man is mentally responsible. 
 Responsibility is at the bottom of our being. No man 
 can escape it. The object of it is human development 
 and culture. The most important fact for us to know 
 connected with our being is the fact of responsibility — 
 thorough, inborn, God-given responsibility. Its counter 
 fact, scarcely less important, is that Culture is the end of 
 creature existence. Man was made to grow, and not to 
 stand still ; to progress, not to remain " in statu quo ;" to 
 ascend to heaven, not to stay in the earth. And he was 
 made to grow, too, by his cwn exertions. The ladder on 
 which angels go up is the one on which he must go up, 
 "f he goes at all. His progress is in his own feet, or, 
 rather, brains ; his powers of mind are his talents, and 
 for their use he is responsible to the Giver. " Thou 
 
142 WE AKE tVHAT WE MAE!E 0UKSELVE8. 
 
 oughtest, therefore, to have put my money to the ex 
 changer's, and then at my coining I should have received 
 mine own with usury," expresses the great obligation of 
 humanity. His money is our minds. The exchangers 
 are the operations of those minds which produce thought* 
 and emotions. The usury is the Culture received by 
 these operations. Turn it as we may, this is the grand, 
 universal human obligation. It pertains to the whole 
 mind. It is not only moral, but social and intellectual. 
 Human life is a school, the spirit-world its college de- 
 partment. Men are, and are to be, what they make them- 
 selves ; are to enjoy what they possess ; to grow in the 
 ratio of their wisely-directed endeavors ; to shine by the 
 light that is in them, as tapers, stars, or suns. This is 
 the law. Men ought to know it. By this law the path 
 of human destiny is glorious beyond conception. It rises 
 slowly and securely along the way of life, ascends and 
 still ascends among the hills of increasing thought and 
 wisdom, mounting from burning height to blazing ones 
 above, up, on, increasing still, ever grander, brighter, sub- 
 limer in eternal progress. It rises in proportion to hu- 
 man endeavor. Some minds, like the skylark, seem to 
 go up in circling gyrations, singing, shining as they go on 
 rapid wing, with steady eye and aspiring heart, fixed, as 
 it were entranced in the ascending thought. Sunny, 
 happy, genial minds are they, absorbed in just views and 
 warmed with holy aspirings for spiritual Culture. 
 
 Every thing along life's journey is or may be the means 
 »f Culture. Books ma/ be found in running brooks 
 
INTELLECT AND CONSCIENCE. 143 
 
 sermons in stones, and good in every thing. He who 
 studies will grow ; and one may study everywhere. 
 The farm, the shop, the counting-room, the kitchen o 
 drawing-room may be a place of study. Wherever min 
 is engaged in the pursuit of good, wherever its active en 
 ergies are earnestly applied to produce a supply for hu 
 man wants ; wherever it strives to draw instruction from 
 the wells of knowledge ; wherever it is producing thought, 
 exerting its powers in their legitimate and lawful spheres 
 of action, there it is being cultivated. 
 
 The rapidest Culture is»in originating thought. The 
 profoundest and truest thinker possesses the most culti- 
 vated intellect. The ripest scholar is really the richest 
 thinker ; the moralist is a cultured man. To conform to 
 the moral law, to bring the strong will to obedience, the 
 obdurate heart to submission, to subdue the passions to 
 the spirit of humility, to hold in check the impulses, and 
 put the whole turbulent family of the soul under the reign 
 of right, is the highest evidence of moral Culture. A 
 true moral Culture requires a corresponding intellectual 
 Culture. The intellect measures and sounds moral prin- 
 ciples ; conscience adopts them as the standard of right. 
 Thus the two become mutual co-workers in Culture. 
 
 The socialist is a cultivated man. To bring the affec 
 tions into harmonious action ; to direct them to their 
 proper objects ; to so order them that one shall not op- 
 ose the other, and that all shall have their due exercise, 
 .s indeed a beautiful evidence of Culture ; and when the 
 affections thus work in faithful zeal and fervor, their Cul- 
 
144: THE MIND IS DEVELOPED BY EXERCISE.' 
 
 ture is rapid and their influence chaste and happy. f« 
 this wise development of the affections, the intellect de- 
 velops the philosophy of their government, and the moral 
 sense pronounces upon its righteousness, so that a general 
 Culture proceeds from a wise activity of the social na 
 ture. Activity is the great law of Culture. 
 
 The mind grows as does the muscle, by its use 
 Knowledge cultivates only so far as it uses the mind in 
 its attainment. Where Knowledge is gained by experi- 
 ence, by close research, or hard study, it is the great and 
 most efficient means of CuMfcire. But where it comes 
 .easily, as it were, of its own accord, it Cultivates but lit- 
 tle. It is often the case that those who acquire Knowl- 
 edge easiest, get the least of Culture in the study of 
 life, and make but small men ; while the plodding stu- 
 dents, and those duller of comprehension, rise to great 
 height and strength of mental power. The reason lies 
 chiefly in the fact, that the former acquire Knowledge so 
 readily that it affords them but little Cultivation, while 
 the latter grow strong by every new thought, so great is 
 their struggle to get it. A quick and easy power of per- 
 ception and comprehension, though capable of everv 
 thing, not unfrequently hinders mental growth and culture, 
 something as does a retentive memory. It can do great 
 works in a short time, and so it works but little of the 
 time. It thus prevents that continued action and steady 
 labor which are necessary to great Culture. 
 
 Labor is the right arm of Culture. Persevering effort 
 makes mind Genius ofter sits down in the cool shade 
 
LABOR AND PERSEVERANCE. 145 
 
 to dally with itself, while labor plods steadily onward, 
 acquiring strength with each blow till it too can stride 
 onward, and with masterly speed and giant strength it 
 leaves its weak companion far behind in the race of life. 
 All youth should learn this truth, and learn to believe 
 that they may be what they wish to be, if they will wise- 
 ly spend the labor and time necessary to the attainmeni 
 of the end. Labor and time are the elements of Culture. 
 When life is filled with wise labor, both physical and 
 mental, the soul departs enriched with a glorious Culture, 
 as a preparatory step to a sfc.ll more glorious Culture 
 above. 
 
 7 
 
THI ACTUAL AND THE POSSIBLE 
 
 The At., n and the Oak— The Possible of the Potato— The Seed and the ] 
 Newt; n and the Apple— The Steam Engine— Priessnitz and the Water-* 
 The Pilgrim Fathers— The Actual and Possible of Christianity— The Actual 
 may be Known, the Possible can not be Computed — "The Child of Destiny" — 
 • The Possibilities of Maternity— Hereditary Descent— Education— The Possible 
 of Childhood, Youth, and Manhood— We have too Little Faith in the Possible 
 — We Fail to Reach the Attainable — No Rest short of That— Men are Un- 
 conscious of their Highest Capacities— Knowledge and Culture Within the 
 Reach of All— Eternal Progress. 
 
 The Actual is what exists, what is. The Possible is 
 what may be. The acorn, looked upon as the Actual, is 
 only an acorn, with its shell and meat ; a squirrel's din- 
 ner ; the body of a child's top ; the fruit of the oak. 
 But considered as the Possible, it is an oak, with huge 
 trunk and massive arms, and umbrageous foliage, and 
 showering fruit ; yea, more, it is a forest of oaks, a wil- 
 derness of those venerable kings of the wild, stretching 
 over a continent, crowning mountains, covering vales, 
 affording a lair for a thousand beasts, a home for millions 
 of birds, and ship-timber for the world 
 
 The Possible of an acorn is no mean matter. We can 
 not compute it. It might cover with proud old oaks all 
 the land of the eaith; and if it could send its seed to 
 
THE SEED AND THE PLANT. 147 
 
 other wcrlds of congenial clime and soil, it might adorn 
 them with its children, even till the universe was clothed 
 all over, and every world had had its soil enriched with 
 a thousand harvests of autumn leaves, and entombed w ithin 
 itself generation after generation of oaken boles. 
 
 What possibilities lie enfolded in the actual little acorn ! 
 It is instinct with life. It has within it the germ of an 
 endless growth, if circumstances do not prevent it. It is 
 a prophecy of future oaks, and forests of oaks in genera- 
 tion after generation. Who reads this prophecy will look 
 reverently on the acorn — the Adam ot a race. 
 
 It is so of all seed. An Actual bushel of wheat is a 
 Possible harvest, a ship-load of flour, a thousand ovens full 
 of bread loaves, the staff of life to generations of men. 
 
 The actual potato which Sir Walter Raleigh took into 
 the British dominions in the sixteenth century, has proved 
 that it possessed rich and vast possibilities. It has given 
 life to a million of Irishmen, stayed full many a time the 
 hand of famine, and blunted the edge of the sword of 
 death. It has vitalized the Saxon blood and muscle, and 
 contributed not a little to the wealth, power, and glory of 
 England and young America. Sir Walter saw not the 
 Possible of the Actual root he took home from mere curi- 
 osity. 
 
 Great possibilities lie coiled up in little actualities 
 The world is full of secret springs ; we know not when 
 we touch them ; we touch them every day. Every step 
 is on an unseen spring. Every Actual seed is a Possible 
 plant and succession of plants in an almost infinite ratio 
 
148 PEIESSNITZ AND THE WATEK-CURE. 
 
 And what is not a seed ? An apple falls on Newton's 
 head, and the accident proves the seed of a magnificent 
 science which has been, and is, and will everlastingly be 
 shedding its light and glory in a universe of minds 
 That apple fell on a spring of thought ; and the recoil of 
 that spring lifts a universe into glory. It was an Actua 
 accident holding within itself the Possible culture, devel 
 opment, and growing* light and reverence of countless 
 millions of minds. A little seed was that apple-fall, but 
 it embosomed magnificent possibilities. 
 
 A* merry devotee of Bacchus drinking off bis flask of 
 brandy threw it in reckless sport into the fire, containing 
 a little liquor. Lying quietly in the coals for a few 
 moments, it burst with a loud report. Wonder seized the 
 reveler. A spring of thought was touched and the power 
 of steam discovered. A strange, drunken seed to hold 
 such glorious possibilities. Yet from that seed has grown 
 the mighty engine that propels our commerce and drives 
 our world of machinery. 
 
 A German boy crushed his finger, and to quiet the ach- 
 ing plunged it into a spring of cold water ; the finger 
 healed marvelously well ; and now ten thousand men and 
 women bathe every day in cold water, and as many babies 
 laugh and jump in its liquid tides, while round the world 
 are sung in verse and pronounced in oration the marvels 
 of its healing and health-giving power. Who would have 
 believed that such splashing, bathing, showering, douching, 
 rubbing, sheet-wrappirg, cleansing, health-blooming possi- 
 bilities were coiled up in the German boy's accident? 
 
ACTUAL AND POSSIBLE OF CHRISTIANITY. 149 
 
 Not long since Robert Raikes formed a little class of 
 poor children to teach them on Sunday. And now almost 
 every church in Christendom has its Sunday-school, the 
 nursery of early piety, the recruiting office of the army 
 of the Cross, the promise of the Church, and the hope of 
 the World — a little Actual with a rich Possibility. 
 
 In the winter of 1620 there stood on the cold, bleak 
 rock of Plymouth the little crew of the Mayflower. 
 Viewed in its Actual aspect, it was a cheerless, pitiable 
 sight. What sympathetic heart in the Old World would 
 not have bled could it have seen that famished and wea- 
 ried band of exiles as they climbed up that inhospitable 
 shore, with the rolling ocean behind them which they 
 could not recross, the wild, savage world before, and the 
 cold winter gathering around them ? Yet could the glo- 
 rious Possible of that sight have burst on any mind, those 
 forlorn strangers would have been pronounced the most 
 fortunate and happy of their kind. Not a king in Europe 
 but would have changed places Avith them. 
 
 1854 years ago Jesus preached his singular sermon, "Re- 
 pent ; for the kingdom of heaven is' at hand" — that king- 
 dom which he said was as a grain of mustard seed. Its 
 Actual was the least of all kingdoms, the most unpromis- 
 ing of all enterprises — a lone son of a mechanic, from a 
 despised village, rejected of the elders, despised of all the 
 wise and great. Its Possible no tongue can describe, no 
 pen foreshow, no prophet announce, no vision cempre 
 hend. It is to be the kingdom of all kingdoms, ihc con- 
 summation of all good, the triumph of truth, the universal 
 
150 "the child of destiny." 
 
 reign of right, the hallowed home of eternal love and 
 peace. 
 
 The Actual and the Possible of things are wide apart. 
 They bear not the faintest resemblance to each other. 
 The prophecies that lie hid in the Actual no man may 
 read ; and when read, no man may wisely deny them. 
 It is not safe to say what may not be. It is wiser rather 
 to reverently conclude that all things are Possible with 
 God. What he will bring forth conservative man may not 
 predict. 
 
 What Possibilities are in a drop of water, a magnet, an 
 accident, a word, a truth, an event, a life, a soul, no man 
 knoweth. The future is hid. The Possible is God's se- 
 cret. The Actual is all we may know at the time of its 
 existence. The history of the outcomings of past Actual- 
 ities should teach us to have a reverent faith in all things, 
 to expect much of little, to look for power out of weak- 
 ness, wisdom out of folly, holiness out of sin, glory out of 
 darkness, and death out of life. If history teaches us any 
 thing, it is to be believing, hoping, to have a reverent look- 
 ing for something great and good. 
 
 There is a fearful danger hanging over many Actuali- 
 ties. Events that seem happy in the Actual are some- 
 times pregnant with death. There is an outcome to every 
 thing. What it is we may not know till it appears. Yet 
 events are not a little in our hands. The Possible of our 
 lives is somewhat within our control. Our Possible des- 
 tiny is much of our own molding. " The child of destiny,* 
 as Napoleon was called, was rather the child of his own 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF MATEKNITY. lOJ 
 
 will. The Actual Napoleon, in childhood, could he hav« 
 been seen as he was, would have predicted the Napoleon 
 of manhood. 
 
 Childhood is a prophecy of manhood ; just as an acorn 
 is a prophecy of an oak. Parents hold their Possible 
 child not a little at their will. The springs that move 
 every power in his soul lie in them. They do much to 
 mark his possibilities. Genius is made before birth. It 
 is a bright parental gift. Mysteriously grand is the parent 
 power. Who can tell how the mother's awakened soul, 
 how a lofty mood of mind, a trance of love, a glow of faith, 
 a vision of beauty, a resolute purpose, a flash of wit, may 
 mark the mind of her embryotic child 1 What Possibili- 
 ties sleep in the Actual power of maternity ! It is a grand 
 but fearful power. Could Joan of Arc have brought forth 
 a child from the fresh, high inspirings of her soul, in its 
 period of power and beauty, Avho can tell what Possibili- 
 ties would have slept in its young soul 1 We undervalue 
 maternity. It. is the grandest gift of God to mortals. It 
 embosoms richer Possibilities than any other. The short 
 period of maternity has ages of Possibilities in it. Mothers 
 should know it, and harmonize their souls for the exerciso 
 of their marvelous gifts. The mother-mind should be ; 
 model of what the child-mind should be. Thus her Actual 
 mind will be the ripened seed of what its Possibilities 
 will be. 
 
 Estates are not all that go by hereditary descent to chil 
 dren. The parents themselves go. They live again in 
 their children. Not only their forms, complexions, and 
 
152 EDUCATION. 
 
 features go to their children, but their powers and states 
 of mi-nd, their mental conditions ; not, perhaps, in full 
 force, but in part, at least. The parent is the A.ctual; 
 the child is the Possible, growing legitimately from it 
 Men know not yet what Possibilities lie in the paren 
 power. 
 
 After this parent power there comes the educationa 
 power — the Archimedean lever by which the soul is 
 moved. And here the Possible stretches far away from 
 the Actual. The Actual man is small by the side of the 
 Possible man. The Actual child but faintly resembles 
 the Possible youth. Let the child's activities be brought 
 into harmonious growth, let every power of body and 
 thought be brought out to its Possible harmonious extent, 
 and how fair would appear the youth. His body, round, 
 fresh, healthy, and tair, would be beautiful to look upon — 
 a tower of strength, a temple of mind. His intellect, 
 quick, penetrating, strong, would read its way through the 
 dark passages and problems of life, as a rich scholar reads 
 a well-written book. His conscience, sensitive, active, 
 vigorous, would lay hold of the right with joy, point duty's 
 way with ease, and sanction righteous actions with a 
 priestly benediction. His affections, rich as Venus' love, 
 yet high and pure, would shed a sunshine through his 
 oul, breathing spring in its beauty among all its powers. 
 This, then, becoming the Actual youtl , the Possible man 
 may be beauty and strength of body and mind harmonized 
 
 Youth, as we have it, is a burning firebrand or a stupe 
 6ed emptiness. It is all out of proportion, and put to- 
 
WE HAVE TOO LITTLE FAITH IN THE POSSIBLE. 153 
 
 gether as a cobbler's work. It is flabby, coarse, weak, 
 indecisive, puerile, mawkish, not half what it ought to be, 
 and might be. Actual manhood is equally below its right 
 and Possible standard. The high-breathing soul and the 
 warm-beating heart are not in it — are not as they should 
 be, and might be. Men rest in the Actual, and think they 
 must. They aim not nor strive for the Possible. The 
 parent accepts the Actual child that accidentally comes 
 into his arms. He educates it the Actual youth of fortui- 
 tous circumstances ; and the youth grows into Actual man- 
 hood, as a potato grows, just as it happens to. In all this 
 course the question of the Possible is perhaps never 
 asked. The parent does not ask, " What may I make my 
 child ?" The youth asks not, " What may I make my- 
 self?" nor the man, " What may I become ?" We are all 
 less than we ought to be. 
 
 We have not sufficient confidence in the Possible. 
 Poets, scholars, philosophers, statesmen, saints, good 
 Samaritans, are all about us. Every school has its em- 
 bryotic excellences, and might make a senate, a synod, or 
 an academy of arts. The Actual blacksmith was the Pos- 
 sible Elihu Burritt. He rested not in the Actual. His 
 soul yearned toward the Possible. So does every one's 
 soul. He obeyed the yearning. He listened to the God- 
 voice within him. All do not so. There is a voice in 
 every soul crying for the Possible. The sinner weeps 
 when he. hears it calling him to be a saint. The sluggard 
 is restless when it urges him to action. The ignorant is 
 disquieted when from the hills of knowledge he hears the 
 7* 
 
154 WE FAIL TO BEACH THE ATTAINABLE. 
 
 cry, ' Come up." There is a great unrest all through the 
 heart of humanity, because the spirit saith " Come," and 
 men obey not. There is no peace to the undutiful. 
 
 Every man feels that he is not what he ought to be, and 
 might have been. He is not the master of his own inward 
 domain. He rules not his own spirit. All along through 
 life he has failed to hearken to the voice of the Possible. 
 Little by little the false life has encroached upon the true. 
 He has let slip many opportunities ; he has wasted many 
 hours; he has yielded to many evil suggestions ; and 
 amid the remembrances of all these failures, the voice still 
 cries, " Come." And its cry is retributive. It is a partial 
 punishment for neglect. Weak manhood trembles under 
 it ; age weeps and warns youth, while youth hears the 
 cry and the warning, and still pays folly its daily visits. 
 But youth is not easy. It is desponding and anxious. It 
 hears the voice of the Possible, and wants to go up, up to 
 honor, to usefulness, to harmony, and happiness ; but it 
 doubts its capacities, doubts its own constancy, and fears 
 the labor necessary to the attainment of the goal of its 
 aspirations. Little rest has youth ; little rest has human- 
 ity. It never can rest till it heeds the voice of th© 
 Possible. 
 
 When a man feels that he is not what he ought to be, 
 nd might be, he can not be at peace. A wasted life is a 
 bitter death. And in proportion as it has been wasted, it 
 has bitterness. Few men are so self-complacent as to 
 elieve themselves all they ought to be. The spirit of 
 good leaves not any soul. It may sometimes lie still; 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR CAPACITIES. 155 
 
 but it never leaves. And that spirit avenges in part the 
 neglect and sinfulness of our lives. This human sea is 
 ever rolling, beating against its shores, and chafing its 
 bottom, and ever Avill while the Actual of human life is s 
 much below its Possible. Our only hope is in this rest 
 lessness.. If we found peace in this low life, we shoul 
 not aspire to a higher ; if the false satisfied us, we shoul 
 not desire the true ; if the Actual met our wants, we 
 should not crave the Possible. But how low is the actual 
 life of humanity ! Take our own civilized society. How 
 few possess the current knowledge of our literature and 
 sciences ! How few of our people possess any thing more 
 than a scanty, stingy culture ! How few resist the open 
 temptations to evil ! How few base firmly their lives on 
 great principles, live by great moral truth, and walk in 
 the ascending paths of wisdom ! How few are any thing 
 more than a shadow of what they might be ! Some attain 
 a noble intellectual strength, but this is often so marred 
 and weakened by immoralities as to prove an evil rather 
 than a blessing. It is the unrestrained power of the 
 steam-engine. 
 
 One cause of this low life is men's unconsciousness of 
 their capacities. They know not the possibilities that 
 are in them ; they dream not what they might be. When 
 men do develop themselves, they astonish themselves 
 more than any body else. Men often have less confidence 
 in their own powers than others have in them. The 
 majority of us are self-distrusting. We lack moral cour 
 age and persistent energy. If we could reach our desires 
 
156 KNOWLEDGE WITHIN BEACH OF ALL. 
 
 to-day we would do it ; but we tire at the thought of a 
 year's labor, and are actually dismayed when a life of 
 effort is contemplated. We are not hopeful enough. The 
 Possible life does not stand bright enough before us. Our 
 faculties need inspiring with brighter visions. 
 
 We ought to believe that we can be what we wish to 
 be. Our faith should be a mighty power within us. 
 Doubt and fear we should throw to the winds. Not by 
 what we are should we judge what we may be. Time 
 and toil win all prizes. Is knowledge desired? A'life of 
 study, of continued accumulation Avill lay up vast stores 
 where moth and rust do not corrupt. All sciences will 
 come and lay their treasures at the foot of the student. 
 Their mines yield liberally to the searcher after their 
 gold. Is mental culture an object of desire ? It is not 
 difficult of attainment; it is no. recluse hid in some 
 enchanted cave, to which unseen spirits lead the ambi- 
 tious searcher. The wise, active, and energetic exercise 
 of the mental powers will give it. Every youth, be he 
 farmer or mechanic, rich or poor, a genius or a dull com- 
 mon-sense stripling, may obtain both knowledge and 
 culture. They are hid from none ; nor are they so very 
 difficult of attainment. A few years of faithful effort will 
 confer the boons. And glorious boons they are, revealing 
 to their possessors the vast possibilities of their souls. Is 
 virtue the coveted treasure 1 How ready of attainment! 
 Everywhere in life may virtue be cultivated. Any virtus 
 hat a man really desires, he may possess. The highest 
 order of virtues are the Christian graces. They lie with- 
 
ETERNAL FR0GRB3S. . 157 
 
 m the reach of all. Christ's life may be re-lived. The 
 diamonds of his character may be set in every soul. The 
 lifo of moral heroes, philanthropists, philosophers, and 
 Christians may be re-lived by all of fair endowments 
 The true life is not above the mass of men. The riches 
 of the divine kingdom are open to all. Common men and 
 women may possess them. They may adorn the mothers, 
 and sisters, and wives, and daughters of us all. They 
 may give dignity, grace, and strength to our men. The 
 men in humble walks may rise in dignity and importance 
 by the magic power they possess. 
 
 Mind is a thing of progress. Use it, and it will grow 
 forever. Exert it strongly and wisely, and it will soon 
 stand among the sons of light, and ere long shine among 
 the cherubim and seraphim. There is no limit to its 
 knowledge, culture, virtue, growth, and progress. It is a 
 deathless, immortal thing, instinct with Godlike capabil- 
 ities. Its true life is angelic. Its false life is devilish. 
 One urges up and onward, the other downward and 
 backward. In every soul a light shineth, a voice crieth 
 for the true life, for the mighty and glorious possibilities 
 within it. The light should cheer up and onward the 
 ascending spirit ; the voice should encourage it. The 
 Actual of itself and its life should seem to it only as a 
 seed of its possible attainments. The true life is in pro- 
 gress. A day of no progress in good, is a day of false 
 life. Every progressive moment is a moment of the life 
 that never dies, the true, the immortal, the Godlike life. 
 
Sent prepaid by first post at prices annexed. 
 
 TUiLIBHED BY 
 
 SAMUEL R. WELLS, No. 389 BROADWAY. 
 
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 How to Read Character ; a New 
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 the sizes of the different Organs of the 
 Brain, etc. Paper $1 ; in muslin ... $1 25 
 
 Annual of Phrenology and Physi- 
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 Annuals for 1865-6-7-8-9 and '70, 
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 American Phrenological Journal. 
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 Chart for Recording' Developments. 
 
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 Constitution of Man. By Geo. Combe. 
 
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 Complete "Works of Dr. GaU on 
 
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 Defence of Phrenology; Arguments 
 and Testimony. By Boardman .... $1 50 
 
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HYlE@FA^HYs ©B, WATBR CURS. 
 
 Children, their Hydropathic Management 
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 Hydropathic Encyclopedia: illus- 
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 Water-Cure in Chronic Diseases; 
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 WORKS OH PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
 Alcoholic Controversy. A Review of 
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 adapted to general circulation, are in- 
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 application, or on receipt of stamp. 
 
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 j'a Fables. People's Pictorial 
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 ly illustrated. Gilt, bev. boards 1 00 
 
 Aims and Aids for Girls and Young: 
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 Footprints of Life ; or, Faith and Na- 
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 By Philip Harvey, M.D. Part 1st- -The 
 Body. Part 2d— The Seal. Part 8d— 
 The Deity. Something new 1 '" 
 
 Fruit Culture for the Million ; 
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 Home for All. The Gravel Wall, a New 
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 according to the best Parliamentary Mod- 
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 Man, in G-enesis and in Geology : 
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 Origin and Antiquity. By Joseph P. 
 Thomson, D.D., LL.D. In one volume, 
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 Saving- and "Wasting-; or, Domestic 
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 Temperance Reformation- Its His- 
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 Father, Mother, Child, Brother and Sis- 
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 please tddiess, SAMUEL R.WELLS, 389 Broadway, New York, U.S. A. 
 
Tlie Study and Improve- 
 ment of Man in ail his Relations is our object . 
 Tlie Natural History of Man 
 
 —including the Manners, Customs, Religions 
 and Modes of Life in different Families, 
 Tribes and Nations will be given. 
 
 Physiology, the Laws of Life 
 and Health, including Dietetics, Exercise, 
 Sleep, Study, Bodily Growth, etc., will be 
 presented on strictly Hygienic principles. 
 
 Phrenology.— The Brain and its 
 
 Physiognomy} or, "The Human 
 
 Face Divine ."with " Signs of Character, and 
 How to Read Them" scientifically. 
 
 The Human Soul— Psychol- 
 ogy. — Its Nature, Office and Condition in Life 
 and Df.aJi ; Man's Spiritual State in the Here 
 and in tlie Hereafter. Very interesting. 
 
 Editox-. 
 
 Biography.— In connection with, 
 Portraits and Practical Delineations of Char- CS 
 acter of oar most distinguished men. 
 
 Marriage forms a part of the life of 
 every well organized human being. The ele- 
 ments of love are inborn. The objects of 
 Ma.riage stated. All young people require 
 instruction and direction in the selection of 
 suitable life-companions. Phrenology throws 
 light on the subject. Let us consult it. i 
 
 The Choice of Pursuits.— 
 How to select a pursuit to which a person is 
 best adapted ; Law, Medicine, Divinity, In- 
 vention ; Mechanics; Agricmture ; Manu- 
 facturing ; Commerce, etc. " Let us put the 
 right man in the right place." 
 
 Miscellaneous. — Churohes, 
 
 ship. Education, Training, and Treatment, 
 given in the new vol. of The Phrenoloqical 
 
 JOURNAL AND LIFE ILLUSTRATED. 
 
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 Published monthly, in octavo form, at $3 a year in advance. Sample numbers 
 sent by post, 30 cts. C'lnbs of Ten or more, $2 each per copy. Subscribe now. 
 
 PLE/[SS-J* STRESS 
 
 ",; j SA MUEL M. WE LJLS, 
 
 i"f IsTO. 389 33E,0-A.I3'W--A.-Z-, 
 
 NEW YORK, IT. S. A. 
 


 
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