(G-    )   -FOL
IIAIMMERI)m11D FROM POPULAR PI OVYER3S
BY
TISTOTIIIY  T I'TCOlB,
AUTHOR Or   LTTE'     RS T    O TH   YO  U S
u"Plroverbs aro tho daughters of daily experiencee.
aulA Proverb,
BEVENTIEFN'T I' -lDITION.
NEW YORK:
OCARLXVES SCOItNEIC, t    24 (GANI) SThI>ECT
l.R:'.




Entsrced, accordtng to Act of Congrm,. in the year 189, by
C3tARLES SCRIBNEI,
In the Clerk's Office  of the  )istrict Court of the United States for the Jouts.
em  District of  oew York.
Joot. Titow,?riater, Stisretyp r Arnt nE-lee4tr'otlhr,
J4, 4<?1 t~0 (teers! Street,
NBtween  ftur  & A  rtootsn, New Yot,




P It 112F AG 1.E
r111[!i, grass that grows upon the lawn elects and
~   drinks from  th{e juices of the carthl thlo  le
mentts that compose its structure; but if th1e lawn
be cropped year after year, and have no return of
the materials removed, it will cease to thrive.  A
wise husbandry will spread upon its surface  the results of the life that has been taklcn away, and these
will furnish its most htealthful nourishment   So thlt
vital truths, relating to the common life of man, are
elected antd drawn from  soils containing innumeraible ilngredients that may not be assimilated.  Many
of these ingredients, good and bad, are furnished by........~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~... ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~~.   ~~~~~~~~~~  ~.........:.....




4                  Preface.
the schools and by the professional mind, and it
may legitimately be the work of a layman to take
the results of the life that has been lived-the
truths that have been verified and vitalized by human experience-and give them again to the soil
that has produced them. With the records of popular experience in my hand, as they are embodied
in popular proverbs, I aim to do this work in this
book.
THE AUTHOR.
SPRINGFIELD; MASS., 1859.,.,




CONTENTS.
I,                                                     PAGM
AN   EXORDIAL   ESSAY....................................................                                                9
II.
THE   INFALLIBLE   BOOK...........................................               19
III.
PATIENCE.,....................................................                                  31
IV.
PERFECT  LIBERTY................................................  48
V.
TRUST  AND  WHAT  COMES OF   T..................................                                                          55
VI.
THE   IDEAL   CHRIST.......................................................  67
VII.
PROVIDENCE.............................................................                                 9
VIII.
DOES  SENSUALITY   PAY?................................................                                                91
IX.
THE   W AY    TO   GROW     OLD.............................................    102




6                                Contents.
X.
PAGO
ALMSGIVING............................................    113
XI.
THE LOVE OF WHAT IS OURS........................................  124
XII.
THE POWER OF CIRCUMSTANCES......................................  136
XIII.
ANVILS AND HAMMERS..................................................  148
XIV.
EVERY MAN HAS HIS PLACE.............  160
XV.
INDOLENCE AND INDUSTRY............................................  171
XVI.
THE SINS OF OUR NEIGHBORS....................................   183
XVII.
THE CANONIZATION OF THE VICIOUS........1....................  194
XVIIII.
SOCIAL CLASSIFICATION......................   205
XIX.
THE PRESERVATION  OF CHARACTER..................................  215
XX.
VICES OF IMAGINATION..........................................              226
XXI.
QUESTIONS ABOVE REASON..............................................  237




Contents.                                                      7
XXI.
P&GE
PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  LIFE........................................    249
XXIII.
HOME.................................................    260
XXIV.
LEARNING  AND  W ISDOM.................................................    272
XXV.
RECEIVING  AND  DOING..................................................    284
XXVI.
THE  SECRET  OF  POPULARITY........................................    297
XXVII.
THE  LORD'S  BUSINESS.....................................       09
XXVIII.
THE   GREAT  MYSTERY...................................................    84








-  GOLD-FOIL.
T.
AN EXORDIAL ESSAY.
" Cold broth hot again, that loved I never;
Old love renewed again, that loved I ever."
"Get thy spindle and thy distaff ready, and God will send thee flxt."
1    OR the general public, I have written a preface,.    that the aims and character of my book may be
comprehended at a glance, as it is lifted from the shelf
of the bookseller; but to those who read the book, I
have something more that I wish to say by way of
introduction
It is not for the brilliant brace of initial sermons
that we still admire the man whom we love to call
" ur minister."  The old love must be renewed again,
from Sabbath to Sabbath, from month to month, and
from year to year, by new exhibitions of his power
and new demonstrations of his faculty to feed the mo
1"C




10                  Gold-Foil.
tives of a large and luxuriant life within our souls. If
he fail in this-if his power flinch through laziness, or
flag through languor-and he resort to the too common
process of heating again the old broth, his productions
will grow insipid, and our hungering natures will turn
uneasily to other sources for refreshment. It is not for
the fresh cheek, the full lip, the fair forehead, the
parted sweeps of sunny hair, and the jgirlish charm of
form and features, that we love the wives who have
walked hand in hand with us for years, but for new
graces, opening each morning like flowers in the par.
terre, their predecessors having accomplished their
beautiful mission and gone to seed. Old love renewed
again, through new motives to love, is certainly a thing
lovely in itself, and desirable by all whose ambition and
happiness it is to sit supreme-in a single heart, or to
hold an honorable place in  the affections of the
people.
A few months ago, the pen that traces these lines
commenced a series of letters to the young. The let.
ters accumulated, and grew into a book; and this
book, with honest aims and modest pretensions, has a
place to-day in many thousand homes, while it has been
read by hundreds of thousands of men and women in
every part of the country. More and better than this,
it has become an inspiring, moving and directing power
in a great aggregate of young life. I say this with




An Exordial Effay.             11
that kind of gladness and gratitude which admits of
little pride. I say it because it has been said to merevealed to me in letters brimming with thankfulness
and overflowing with friendliness; expressed to me in
silent pressures of the hand-pressures so full of meaning that I involuntarily looked at my palm to see if a
jewel had not been left in it; uttered to me by eyes
full of interest and pleasure; told to me in plain and
homely words in the presence of tears that came unbidden, like so many angels sliding silently out of
heaven, to vouch for their honesty. To say that all
this makes me happy, would not be to say all that I
feel. I account the honor of occupying a pure place
in the popular heart-of being welcomed in God's name
into the affectionate confidence of those for whom life
has high meanings and high issues-of being recognized
as among the beneficent forces of society-the greatest
honor to be worked for and won under the stars. So
much for that which is past, and that which is.
And now, I would have the old love renewed. I
would come to the hearts to which the letters have
given me access with another gift-with food for appe.
tites quickened and natures craving further inspiration.
I would bring new thoughts to be incorporated into
individual and social life, which shall strengthen their
vital processes, and add to their growth. I would con.
tinue and perpetuate the communion of my own with




12                 Gold-Foil.
the popular heart. To do this successfully, I know
that 1 must draw directly upon the world's experience,
and upon the results of my own individual thinking,
acting, living. I know that no truth can be uttered by
a soul that has not realized it in some way with hope
to be heard. Preceptive wisdom that has not been
vivified by life has in itself no affinity for life.
It is a blessed thing that the heart has an instinct
which tells it without fail who has the right to teach
it. The stricken mother, sitting by the side of the lifeless form of her first-born, will hear unmoved the words
of consolation and the persuasions to resignation'which
are urged by one who has not suffered, even though he
eloquently draw  motives from  the highest heaven;
while the silent pressure of her hand by some humble
creature who has hidden her treasure under the daisies,
will inspire her with calmness and strength. The world
cares little for theorists and theories,-little for schools
and schoolmen,-little for any thing a man has to utter
that has not previously been distilled in the alembic of
his life. It is the life in literature that acts upon life.
The pilgrim who knocks at the door of the human
heart with gloved hands and attire borrowed for the
occasion, will meet with tardy welcome and sorry entertainment; but he who comes with shoes worn and
dusty with the walk upon life's highway-with face
bronzed by fierce suns and muscles knit by conflict




An Exordial Effay.              13
with the evils of the passage, will find abundant en.
trance and hospitable service.
The machinery which I propose to adopt for my
purpose is simple enough. It is the habit of the mind
to condense into diminutive, agreeable and striking
forms the results of experience and observation in all
the departments of life. As the carbon, disengaged by
fire in its multitudinous offices, crystallizes into a diamond that flashes fire from every facet, and bears at
every angle the solvent power of the mother flame; so
great clouds of truth are evolved by human experience,
which are crystallized at last into proverbs, that flash
with the lights of history, and illuminate the darkness
which rests upon the track of the future. The proverbs
of a nation furnish the index to its spirit and the results of its civilization. As this spirit was kind or unkind-as this civilization was Christian or unchristian
-are the proverbs valuable or worthless to us. I
know of no more unworthy sentiments, no more dangerous heresies, and no more mischievous lies than are
to be found among the proverbs that have received
currency, and a permanent record in the world; but
here and there among the ignoble paste shine noble
gems, and these, as they may seem worthy, I propose
to use as textual titles for these new essays of mine. I
choose them because they are the offspring of experience-because they are instinct with blood and breath




14                 Gold-Foil.
and vitality. They have no likeness to the unverified
deductions of reason. They are not propositions, conceived in the understanding and addressed to life, but
propositions born of life itself, and addressed to the
heart. They were not conceived in the minds of the
great few, but they sprang from the life of the people.
I give the people their own.
Precisely what these essays of mine are to be, I
cannot tell, because I do not know. I only know that
there is an inexhaustible realm of practical truth around
me waiting for revelation. There are multitudinous
thoughts, now trailing upon the ground, that point
their tendrils tipped with instinct toward this pen of
mine, striving to reach and twine themselves around it
that they may be lifted into the sunlight of popular
recognition. I have got my spindle and my distaff
ready-my pen and mind-never doubting for an instant that God will send me flax. Toward the soul
which places itself in the attitude of reception, all
things flow. For such a soul are all good gifts fashioned in heaven. The sun shines for it; the birds sing
for it; up toward it the flowers swing their censers
and waft their odors. Into it in golden streams flows
the beauty of star-sprinkled rivers. The roar of waters
and the plash of waterfalls give healthful pulse to its
atmosphere. Into its open windows come the notes of
human joy and human woe in the triumphs and the




An Exordial Effay.               15
struggles of the passing time.  Past its open door
Memory leads the long procession of its precious dead,
who look in with sweet faces and whispers of peace.
In front of it, Imagination marshals the forces of the
future, and it thrills with the bugle-blast and trembles
with the drum-beat of the thundering host. For perception were all things made, and to the door of perception all things tend; so that the soul that throws
itself wide open to all that is made for it shall find
itself full.
When a soul thus receptive places itself in the attitude of expression, it has but to move its lips and the
words will flow. The mind that has become a treasure
house of truth and beauty speaks a world into existence
with every utterance. Expression is its instinct and its
necessity. This expression may not always seek the
shape of language, but it will assert itself in some form.
The patriot reveals the secret of his soul when he
gladly dies for his country, and sacrifices his life upon
the altar of his inspiration. The Sister of Mercy tells
the story of her love and her devotion, unseen and unheard of the world, in midnight ministrations to the
comfort of the sick and the dying. The modest mother
expresses the love and life she has received from God
and the things of God in the tutelage of the young
spirits born of her, and the creation of a bright and
graceful home for them. We give what we have re.




16                 Gold-Foil.
ceived-that which is within us wil out of us. Expres.
sion is the necessity of possession.
The form  which expression takes depends upon
natural tendencies and aptitudes, and habits imposed
by circumstances and opportunities. I suppose that to
every man who writes a cook, or is in the habit of
writing books, there comes at the conclusion of each
effort a sense of exhaustion. Then, through days, and
weeks, and months, he walks contentedly, taking in
new food-without method, without design-any thing,
every thing-regaling his sensibilities, ministering to his
appetite for knowledge, exercising his sympathies, absorbing greedily all the influences evolved by the life
around him, till there steals upon him, insensibly, the
desire for another instalment of expression in the
habitual way. He finds himself organizing the truth
he has received into harmonious and striking forms.
He is arrested in fits of abstraction into which he has
fallen unawares. He will not be content until the pen
is in his hand, and his mind has applied itself to the
work demanded by its condition.
But about the flax that God sends to such a man:
this would all seem to be pulled from the earth, softened
by sun and rain, and broken and hackled by natural
processes. True: and yet I imagine there are few
thinking minds in the world that are not aware of a
double process by which expression is arrived at-one




An Exordial Effay.             17
entirely involuntary, lying deep down in the consciousness, and operated independently of volition; and
another, voluntary, lying upon the surface, and mostly
engaged in the invention of forms-dependent for materials upon the process beneath it. This is the reason
why millions of men undertake to do what they never
can do. The involuntary —the divine process-working profoundly in their natures, throws up materials
which they have no power to clothe in language, or
present in forms of art which the mind will recognize
as appropriate. Such men are misled. They strive to
write essays, and fail.  They struggle to produce
poems, but cannot. They have abundant materials for
essays and epics in them, but they are incapable of combining and expressing them. Many men and women
spend their lives in unsuccessful efforts to spin the flax
God sends them upon a wheel they can never use..The trouble with these people is that they have made
a mistake in their spindle. It is with the human mind
as with the plant. Deep down under ground there is a
process of selection going on, by which salts and juices
are drawn by a million roots and rootlets into the stem
-drawn from masses of mould and sand and graveland sent upward to be acted upon again-flax sent up
by God to be spun. Every tree and shrub is a distaff
for holding, and every twig a spindle for spinning the
material with which God invests it. One twig, by a




18                 Gold-Foil.
power of its own, will make an apple, another a peach,
another a pear, another will spin through long weeks
upon a round, green bud, and then weave into it starbeams and moonbeams and sunbeams, and burst into a
rose. The man full of juices and rich with life, who
was made simply to bear Roxbury Russets, and yet undertakes to bear roses or magnolia blossoms, will always
fail. Blessed is that man who knows his own distaff,
and has found his own spindle.
It is with the conviction that this pen which I hold
is my particular spindle that I begin upon the flax God
sends me, through a process entirely independent of my
will, and undertake to. spin a series of essays, kind
readers, for you. That I may be able to contribute a
worthy thread to the warp of your lives, or at least to
furnish a portion of their woof-contributing to their
substance, if not to their beauty-is my warmest wish
and my most earnest prayer.




II.
THE INFALLIBLE BOOK.
" He that leaves Certainty and sticks to Chance,
When fools pipe, he may dance."
"Better ride an ass that carries us than a horse that throws us."
~W/ E live in the future. Even the happiness of the
present is made up mostly of that delightful
discontent which the hope of better things inspires.
We lie all our invalid lives by the side of our Bethesda,
watching the uneasy quicksand upon its bottom, in its
silvery eruptions, and listening to the murmuring gurgle
of the retiring streamlet, yet waiting evermore for the
angel to come and stir the waters that we may be blest.
The angel comes, and the waters are stirred, but not
for us; and, though others grasp the blessing which we
may not, we look for the angel still, and in this sweet
looking fall happily asleep at last, and waken possibly
in the angel's arms;-possibly, where?  As the future




20                  Gold-Foil.
holds our happiness and hopes, so does it also hold our
fears and our apprehensions; and the mind is on a con.
stant outlook for that upon which it can best rely to
avoid the evils which it dreads, and secure the good
which it desires. It reaches in all directions with its
hands, and tries in all directions with its feet, for a solid
basis of calculation and expectation, with reference to
its future pleasure and pain. As the future is inscrutable, it reads carefully the lessons of experience,
studies the nature and tendency of things having rela.
tion to its life, erects theories and institutes schemes of
good, and bends its energies to the achievement and
security of protection, necessary ministry, and all desirable possession. All this it does with reference to
the few years of mortal life which remain to it.
But there is a God above the soul, and there is
something within it which prophesies of another life.
The body is to die; so much is certain. What lies beyond?  No one who passes the charmed boundary
comes back to tell. The imagination visits the realm
of shadows-sent out from some window of the soul
over life's restless waters-but wings its way wearily
back with no olive leaf in its beak as a token of emerging life beyond the closely-bending horizon.  The
great sun comes and goes in heaven, yet breathes no
secret of the ethereal wildernesses. The crescent moon
cleaves her nightly passage across the upper deep, but




The Infallible Book.             21
tosses overboard no message, and displays no signals.
The sentinel stars challenge each other as they walk
their nightly rounds, but we catch no syllable of the
countersign which gives passage to the heavenly camp.
Shut in! Shut in! Between this life and the other
life there is a great gulf fixed, across which neither eye
nor foot can travel. The gentle friend whose eyes we
closed in theirlast sleep long years ago, died with rap.
ture in her wonder-stricken eyes, a smile of ineffable
joy upon her lips, and hands folded over a triumphant
heart; but her lips were past speech, and intimated
nothing of the vision that enthralled her.
So, in the lack of all demonstration, we have but
one resort, and that is to faith. Faith must build a
bridge for us; faith must weave wings for us; and that
faith must find materials for its fabrics brought from
the other side of the gulf, and not produced on this.
We cannot enter the spirit land to explore, record, and
report; so all we get must be revealed to us. We may
talk never so loudly of the intimations of the immortality within us, of the light of reason and of conscience,
of the godlike human soul; we may speculate with marvellous ingenuity upon the future development and destiny of powers that seem angelic even to ourselves, but
it is all conjecture-it is all as unsubstantial as the
dreams that haunt our slumbers. Unless God teach us
of the things of God, or delegate some occupant of a




22                 Gold-Foil.
heavenly seat to tell us of the things of neaven and of
the destiny of the great family of intelligences to which
we belong, we shall know nothing upon these subjects.
Briefly, all knowledge concerning the future condition
of men must come from the other world to this, and
not through any agency initiated in this. We are thus
helplessly, inevitably, left to -revelation. We cannot
help ourselves. We may flutter and flounder under
this conviction as much as we choose, but fluttering
and floundering avail nothing. If the fact that we are
immortal be not revealed to us by a Being who knows,
and cannot lie; if the way to make our immortality a
happy one be not pointed out to us by one who has the
right to direct, then are we in darkness that may be
felt-then are we afloat upon a wide sea, without rudder or compass.
Now, there can be no faith in any revelations concerning the future state, and no faith in the things revealed, without a thorough conviction on the part of
the soul exercising it that the source from which these
revelations come is infallible. They must also be authoritative, and fully received as such into the convictions, or they are nothing. A revelation from any
source, touching whose authority the soul admits a
doubt, is absolutely valueless as an inspirer of faith.
It is for this reason that all the unsettled mind in
Christendom is drifting either towards an infallible




The Infallible Book.             23
Bible, or an infallible church, or an infallible atheism —
infallible because denying every thing-shutting God
and the future out of existence. With many the drifting process is done with, and the journey is completed
in rest and satisfaction. Many can say, with the Bible
upon the heart —" This is God's word. It is my rule
of life. I believe in the God and the immortality which
it reveals. I trust in it, and am happy." Others, educated to believe in an infallible church, or struggling
through frightful years of skepticism, have taken refuge
in Rome, and tied up to the element of infallibility
which they imagine they find there. Others still are
either practically or professedly atheists and infidels,
discarding Bible and church, and resting, or trying to
rest, in the infallibility of a broad negation.
It is not for me.to prove the infallibility of the Bible,
in part or in whole. I have not undertaken the task
in this article, nor do I propose to undertake it in any
future article. Neither do I undertake to show that an
infallible church cannot be made out of fallible materials. Still less do I undertake to prove the existence
of a God and a future life. I take it for granted that
the question of a future life is one of great interest to
all minds, and the question of its happiness or misery,
of the greatest, to most. -I assume that the Bible com.
municates a correct knowledge of God and human
duty and destiny, or that nothing whatever is known




24                  Gold-Foil.
of them. I assert that in the degree in which this
Bible has been received, as a whole and in particulars,
as the infallible rule of faith and duty, have those thus
receiving it found rest, peace, fearlessness of the future,
and hope of everlasting happiness. I affirm that in the
degree in which men have wandered away from this
Bible into skepticism, or taken it into their hands to
cheapen the character of its inspiration-to cut, and cull,
and criticize-have they made themselves and others
unhappy. All that has been done to weaken the foundation of an implicit faith in the Bible, as a whole, has
been at the expense of the sense of religious obligation,
and at the cost of human happiness.
The mind, in such a matter as this, seeks for something reliable, and will have it. If it cannot find it, it
will make it. If it will not accept the Bible as such, it
will make an infallible church, or deify and enthrone
the human reason. One of the most interesting developments of modern spiritualism is the illustration which
it gives us of this fact. Tired with the puerile and
contradictory revelations which it gets, or supposes it
gets, from the spirit world, it has, in multitudes of instances, sunk into a cold rationalism, or thrown itself,
disgusted and discouraged, upon the bosom  of the
Catholic Church, by a very necessity. Now there is
no logical tendency of spiritualism into systems so diverse as these  It is the instinctive leap of a soul, mis"
__ j




-~
The Infallible Book.               25
led by its intellect, yet true to its wants, out of a jargon
of demoniacal whims into something which has, or as.
sumes to have, infallibility. The rush of atheists and
infidels into spiritualism-atheists and infidels practical
and theoretical-is the rush of a class of minds that
find it hard to believe without demonstration, and seek
among these necromantic manifestations for something
better than its reason, and more readily evident, to it
than the revelations of the Bible.
I say that toward an infallible Bible, or an infallible
church, or an atheism and infidelity growing out of the
deification of the human reason, the mind of all unsettled Christendom is drifting, by a necessity of its nature. It will have something uponi which it can rely.
It cannot abide uncertainty; it must have faith. History will teach us something of the different results
thrown up by these three currents of life. It is hardly
necessary to allude to the paralysis of spiritual life that
befalls a soul which places itself in the keeping of a
church-which surrenders itself to the mortifications
and irrational impositions of an irresponsible hierarchy.
The abuses, outrages, corruptions, wars, and awful immoralities that have grown out of a church like this,
are matters which almost monopolize the pages of history, and sufficiently prove that it has its basis in error
andt its authority in arrogant assumption.  When
the people of France pulled down both God and
2




26                  Gold-Foil.
the church, and set up reason in their place, all
the infernal elements of human nature held their
brief high carnival.  That one terrific experiment
should be enough for a thousand worlds, through
countless years.
So, cut off in all other directions, we come back to
the Bible. If that be not authoritative, nothing is. If
that be not infallible, as a revelation from God of his
own character, the nature of the coming life, and the
relations of this life to it, then nothing is infallible, and
the faith, without which earth is a cheat and life a sorry
jest, is impossible. What do we find to be the fruits
of a living, practical faith in an infallible Bible?  The
most prominent, or that which appears most prominent,
in the eyes of the world, is a missionary spirit in contradistinction to a proselyting spirit. The really missionary
work of the world has been done in the past, and is
now being effected, by those who receive the Bible unmutilated as God's word to men. The noblest heroisms
that illustrate the history of the race have their inspiration in implicit faith in the Bible. Men in whom life
was fresh and strong, and women who were the impersonations of gentleness and delicacy, have died for it
the martyr's death of fire, singing until the red-tongued
flames licked up their breath. Out of it have come all
pure moralities. Forth from it have sprung all sweet
charities. It has been the motive power of regenera



The Infallible Book.              27
tion and reformation to millions of men. It has com.
forted the humble, consoled the mourning, sustained
the suffering, and given trust and triumph to the dying.
The wise old man has fallen asleep with it folded to
his breast. The simple cottager has used it for his dy.
ing pillow; and even the innocent child has breathed
his last happy sigh with his fingers between its promisefreighted leaves.
Suppose it could be proved that this Bible is all a
fable: in what would the demonstration benefit us?
It is all we have. If it do not infallibly teach us the
truth concerning the future life, and instruct us in the
way of making that future life a happy one, then there
is nothing that does. Suppose it could be proved that
parts of this Bible are fabulous, and that those portions
which are not so were inspired in a kind of general
way, like the writings of all genius which is both great
and good: who would be the better or the happier for
it? I believe it to be demonstrable that no greater
calamity could befall the human race than either the
general loosening up, or the entire destruction, of faith
in the Bible, even were the whole of it a cunning invention of the brain of man. Better an ass that car.
ries us than a horse that throws us. Better faith in a
fable whichiinspires to good deeds, conducts our powers
to noble ends, makes us loving, gentle, and heroic, eradi.
cates our selfishness, establishes within us the principle




28                 Gold-Foil.
of benevolence, and enables us to meet death with
equanimity if not with triumph, in the hope of a glori.
ous resurrection and a happy immortality, than the
skepticism of a kingly reason, which only needs to be
carried to its legitimate issues to bestialize the human
race, and drape the earth in- the blackness of Tartarus.
So, I say, let us stick to the Bible-the whole of it
-fiom  Genesis to Revelation.  When the apostle,
standing on the heights of inspiration, places the hand
of the second Adam in the hand of the first-the Adam
of Genesis-I believe there was such an Adam, and
that the apostle believed it, and knew it. When I see
Christianity emerging naturally and logically from a
religion of types and ordinances, I believe that that
religion is a portion of the system of divine truth
When Christ, standing in the Temple, declares that
the Scriptures testify of him, I believe they do thus
testify, and that it is right that they be bound up with
the Gospels and the Epistles as an essential portion of
the grand whole. I find the writers of the New Testament constantly referring to the Old, and the Old
prophesying, or recording the preparation for, the
events described in the New. There is much that I
do not understand, and no little that seems incredible;
but I see no leaf that I have either the right or the
wish to tear out and cast away. I receive it as, in it



The Infallible Book.             29
self, independent of my reason and my knowledge, an
authentic, inspired, and harmonious whole. I pig.my
faith to it, and rely upon it as the foundation of my
own hope and the hope of the world.
Rational minds will ask for no higher proof that the
Bible, in its entirety, is reliable as a revelation from
God, than the nature of the faith which is based upon
it, and the results of that faith-the noblest phenomena
of human experience-the consummate fruitage of human civilization.  But were it otherwise, the Bible is
our best wealth. Were it widely, wildly otherwise,
Heaven withhold the hand that would touch it destructively! Crazy Kate, who parted with her sailor boy
at the garden gate half a century ago, believes he will
come back to her again, carries still in her withered
bosom the keepsake which he gave her, and decks her
silvery hair and her little room with flowers, to give
him fitting welcome. This hope is her all. In this she
lives; and in this, fallacious though it be, resides all
the significance of her life. As she stands upon the
rock worn smooth by her constant feet, and gazes
hopefully across the saddening sea into the yellow sunset, to catch a glimpse of the long-expected sail, would
it not be inhuman to plunder her of the keepsake and
toss it into the waves, or tear from her the hope that
fills with blood and breath the long perished object of
her idolatry, and swells the phantom sails that are




30                 Gold-Foil.
winging him to her bosom? Whether true or false,
the Bible is our all-the one regenerative, redemptive
agency in the world-the only word that even sounds
as if it came fiom the other side of the wave. If we
lose it, we are lost.




IlI.
PATIENCE.
"The world was not made in a minute."
" Every thing comes in time to him who can wait."
"For all one's early rising it dawns none the sooner."
"What ripens fast does not last," or, "soon ripe, soon rotten."
IF there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute
of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of
the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a
hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been
wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me
a key to the patience in which the creative process was
effected. Man has but a brief history. A line of nineteen old men, centenarians, would, if they were to join
hands, clasp the hand of Christ; and the sixtieth of
such a line would tell us that his name is Adam, and




32                 Gold-Foil.
that he does not know who his mother was. Yet this
wonderful earth, unquestionably constructed with ref
erence to the accommodation of our race, was begun
so long ago that none but fools undertake to reckon its
age by the measurement of-years. Ah! what baths of
fire and floods of water; what earthquakes, eruptions,
upheavals, and storms; what rise and fall of vegetable
and animal dispensations; what melting and moulding
and combining of elements, have been patiently gone
through with, to fit up this dwelling-place of man!
When I look back upon the misty surface of the dimly
retiring ages-the smoking track over which the train
of creative change has swept-it fades until the sky of
the past eternity shuts down upon the vision; and I
only know that far beyond that point-infinitely farthat train commenced its progress, and that, even then,
God only opened his hand to give flight to a thought
that He had held imprisoned from eternity!
But the old rocks tell us that there was a time
when animal life began-rude and rudimentary; typical and prophetic, the geologists say. We may call it
typical and prophetic, if we choose; and, in a sense, it
undoubtedly is so. But, to me, all. these forms of
animal life are simply patient studies of man. There
seem to be parts of man in every thing that went before
him. As I find in the studio of the artist who has completed a great picture, studies of heads and hands, and




Patience.                   33
limbs and scenes which the picture embodies-convenient prisons of fleeting ideas-experiments in composition and effect-so do I find in the records of preAdamic life only a succession of studies having reference to the great picture of humanity. God was in no
haste to get the world ready for man, and in no haste
to make him. There was coal to lay up in exhaustless
storehouses. There were continents to be upheaved,
seas to chain, river-channels to carve. There was an
infinite variety of germs to be invented and made in
heaven, a soil to be prepared for their reception on the
arth's surface, and a broadcast sowing to be effected.
What infinite detail! What intimate arrangement of
special laws that should not clash with one another!
How could the Creator wait so long to see the being
for whom  all this pains-taking preparation was in
progress?
Well, when the process was at last completed;
when the marvellously beautiful but diminutive form
of Adam walked out of God's thought into the morning
sunlight of Eden-walked through flowers and odors,
and among animals that licked his hand and gambolled
around him unscared; when the impalpable forms of
angels were thick around him in an atmosphere uneasy
with its burden of vitality, how did the Creator regard
aim-the object of all this patient working and wait.
ing?  It was what we should call "a great success."
_______               _________________




34                 Gold-Foil.
It was "very popular." with the observing host. The
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy; but God did not even say that it was
"very good;" He only' saw" that it was so. No
ruffle of exultation swept over the bosom of that sublime patience, for even then he had only made a beginning! He had only made a place for his creatures
to dwell in. Before Him  stretched almost infinite
cycles of duration. In the far perspective, He saw
nations rise and sink, civilizations blossom and decay,
the advent and the mission of Jesus, the struggles of
good and evil, of light and darkness, of truth and
error; and on the remote pinnacle of destiny, faintly
rising to his eye in the eternity before him, the blazing
windows and the white pillars and spires of the Temple
of Consummation!
Some people wonder how God can bear as He does
with human frailty and wickedness. In effect, they ask
why He does not sweep the whole race out of existence, and start again. As if the Being who had pa.
tiently wrought and waited for myriads of ages to
prepare for man had not patience to allow him to work
out his destiny! Ah, short-sighted mortals! Has not
God an eternity to accomplish His ends in?  Is He,
before the eyes of a universe, to relinquish an experiment, and pronounce that to be a failure on which He
has expended such infinite pains and patience? Not




Patience.                  35
He; and the man must be idiotic who cannot draw
from this patience food for hope, even when mercy
seems exhausted.
But this divine element enters more or less int.
human character, and it is with this that we hav
specially to do.  There is no well-doing-no godlike
doing-that is not patient doing. There is no great
achievement that is not the result of patient working
and waiting. There is no royal road to any thing.
One thing at a time-all things in succession. That
which grows fast, withers as rapidly; that which grows
slowly, endures. The silver-leafed poplar grows in one
decade, and dies in the next; the oak takes its century
to grow in, and lives and dies at leisure. This law runs
through all vegetation, through all creation, and through
all human achievement. A fortune won in a day is lost
in a day; a fortune won slowly, and slowly compacted,
seems to acquire from the hand that won it the property of endurance. We all see this, we all acknowledge it, yet we are all in a hurry. We are in haste for
position; we are in haste for wealth; we are in haste
for fame; we are in haste for every thing that is desirable, and that shapes itself into an object of life. In
that worthiest of all struggles-the struggle for selfmastery and goodness-we are far less patient with
ourselves than God is with us. We forget, too, in our
impatience with others-with  their weakness and




36                 Gold-Foil.
wrong-doing-that there is One who sees this weakness
and wickedness as we never can see it, yet is unruffled
by it. " Work and wait "-" work and wait "-is what
God says to us in Creation and m Providence. We
work, and that is godlike; we get impatient, and there
crops out our human weakness.
Man of business, do the gains come in slowly? Do
your neighbors outstrip you in prosperity? Do you
hear of friends grown suddenly rich by great specula.
tions, and is your heart discouraged with the prospect
before you? Does it seem to you that your lot is hard
beyond that of other men? God is only trying to see
how much you are like Him-how much of His own
life is in you. If He is the kind father I take Him to
he, He is quite as anxious to bless you as you are
anxious to be blest; and as He does not appear to be
in a hurry to have you become rich, it strikes me that
it would be quite as well for you to take your stand
with Him, and be willing to work and wait. Don't be
in a hurry. The world was not made in a minute; yet
what a marvel of beauty and wealth it is! You say
that you have worked hard enough, and that is very
well; but have you -done that which is harder than
work, and quite as essential-have you waited patiently
and well? Have you not been fretting and complain.
ing all the time? All things come in time to him who
can wait.




Patience.                  37
Weary mother, with a clamorous family at your
knee-a family clamorous for bread, for clothing, foi
amusement, for change for their restless natures-do
you get impatient; and do the fretful words sometimes
escape to wound those young ears and chafe those fresh
hearts? Do you look forward through ten, fifteen, or
twenty years, and, seeing no intermission of daily care
for these impulsive spirits, and ceaseless ministry to
their fickle impulses, sigh over your bondage?  Be
patient. Think of God's patience with His family-a
thousand millions here on the earth alone-deadly
quarrels going on among them  all the time, cheating
between brethren, wildness with greed for gold, millions of them never looking up to thank the hand that
feeds them  during their life! Think how He looks
down, and sees millions bound in compulsory servitude
to. other millions-sees great multitudes meet in the
madness of war to slaughter one another; sees a whole
world lying in wickedness, carelessness, and ingratitude,
Mark how He causes the seasons to come and go,
how seed-time and harvest fail not, how His unwearied
servant the sun shines on the evil and the good alike,
how the gentle rain falls with no discrimination on
the just and the unjust. Think how He patiently bears
with your impatience. Listen! There comes no outcry from the heavens to still all this wild unrest; but
gently, patiently, the ministry of nature and of Provi.




38                 Gold-Foil.
dence proceeds from day to day and from year to
year-as gently and patiently and unremittingly, as
if it were universally greeted with gratitude, and nourished only plants that were blossoming with praise.
Can you not be patient with the little ones you love
for a little while? You really ought to be ashamed
of impatience, with such an example of patience as God
gives, especially as you are a sharer in its benefits.
Discouraged pastor, mourning over the lack of results in your ministry, do you sometimes get impatient
with the listlessness and coldness of your flock, and rail
at them in good set terms? Surely you have forgotten
who and what you are. You are God's minister-the
promulgator of his religion. He sent the Great Teacher
to the earth eighteen hundred years ago: and those to
whom He was sent maligned Him, doubted Him, persecuted and killed Him. For eighteen hundred years He
has patiently waited to see the religion of Jesus established in the earth, and he is waiting patiently still,
though it spreads so slowly that its progress from century to century can hardly be traced. He planted the
true seed, and He is confident that it will germinate
and grow, until its branches shall fill the whole earth.
He has confidence in His truth: have you? Can you
not be content, like Him, to plant, and nourish, and
water, and tenderly prune, and trust for the issue? He
has distinctly told you that with all your planting and




Patience.                 39
watering the increase is only of Him. If you are faith.
ful in these offices, and get impatient for results, does
it not occur to you that you are getting quite as impatient with God as you are with your people? If He
have reason for withholding increase, you have no
reason to find fault. The work is His, the results are
His-they are not yours. Therefore be content to
work and wait, for no man can work in perfect harmony
with God who is not as willing to wait as to work.
God works and waits always, and in every thing, and
you are a discord in the economy of His universal
scheme the moment you become impatient.
Champion of Truth, lover of humanity, hater of
wrong, do you grow tired and disgusted with your fel.
lows? Do you grow angry when you contemplate instituted cruelty? Are you tempted to turn your back
upon those whom you have striven to bless, when they
stop their ears, or laugh you in the face? Do you feel
your spirit stirred with deep disgust, or swelling with
rage, when those to whom you have given your best
life-your noblest love, your most humane impulses,
your truest ideal of that which is good-contemn you,
misconstrue you, and persecute you;-when those
whom you seek to reform brand you as a pestilent fellow, a disturber, and a busybody? It is very natural
that you should do so, but it is far from godlike. Be
patient. If this world of natural beauty was not made




40                  Gold-Foil.
in a minute; if it had to go through convulsions and
changes, age after age, before the flowers could grow
and the maize could spring, think you that the little
drop of vital power that is in you can reform the world
of mind, and bring out of chaos the realization of the
fair ideal that is in you in the brief space of your life?
Pour into your age your whole life, if it be pure and
good, and be sure that you have done something —your
little all. There shall be no drop of that life wasted.
Where you put it there it shall be, an atom  in the
slowly rising monument of a world redeemed to
goodness.
If you cannot take counsel of God in this thing,
and, with the counsel, courage, take it from the most
insignificant of His creatures-the madrepores that
build islands covered with gardens of wonderful beauty
under the sea. The little polyp may well be discour
aged when it sees how little it can do in the creation
of the coral world to which, by a law of its nature, it is
bound to contribute. But it gives to this world the
entire results of its little life-a calcareous atomand then it dies. But that atom is not lost; God takes
care of that. All He asks of the madrepore is its life,
and though it may not witness the glory of the struc.
ture it assists to rear, it has a place in the structurean essential place-and there it is glorified. Through
those strangely-fashioned trees the green sea sweeps.




Patience.                   41
and wondering monsters swim  and stare, till, little by
little, as the ages with heavy feet tramp over the upper
earth, they rear themselves into the light, and hold the
turbulent sea asleep beneath the smile of God. Little
by little they lay the foundations upon which a new
life rests, and become the eternal pillars of a temple in
which man worships, and from which his voice of praise
ascends to Heaven. Therefore, if the patience of God
do not inspire and instruct you, let the self-sacrifice of
the polyp shame you, and the results of that sacrifice
encourage you. Give that little life of yours with its
little result to the twig where you hang, never minding
the surges of the sea that try to dislodge you, nor the
monsters that stare at you, and be sure that the tree
shall emerge at last into the light of Heaven-the
basis and the assurance of a new and glorious life for a
race.
Poet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibili.
ties of life, prophet of the millennium, do you get impatient with the prosaic life around you-the dulness,
and the.earthliness, and the brutishness of men? Fret
not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before
you; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and
plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it
some day. Work for immortality if you will; then
wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a
coming age will not. Plunge into the eternal forest




42                 Gold-Foil.
that sleeps in front, and blaze the trees. Be a pioneer
of Time's armies as they march into the unseen and un.
known. Signalize the advance guard from afar. If
you have the privilege of living the glorious life of
which you dream, are you not paid? Why, there are
uncounted multitudes who walk under the stars, and
never dream that they are beautiful. There are crowds
who trample a flower into the'dust, without once thinking that they have one of the sweetest thoughts of God
under their heel. There are myriads of stolid eyes that
gaze into the ethereal vermilion of a sunset without
dreaming that God lighted the fire. The world could
see no beauty in the greatest life and character that ever
existed, why they should desire it, and yet God does
not get impatient because He is not recognized. The
stars stud the sky as thickly as ever; the flowers bloom
as freshly as at first, and breathe no complaints with
their dying perfume; the sunset patiently varies its
picture from nightfall to nightfall, though no one praises
it; and Christ, in the garb of humble men and women,
looks from pure and patient eyes in every street, and
ooks none the less sweetly because he is not seen.
Therefore, O poet, be patient, though the world see not
the visions that enchain you, and remember what comn
panionship is yours. Aye, be patient!




IV.
PERFECT LIBERTY.
"For the upright there are no laws."
"Laws were made for rogues."
"Love rules his kingdom without a sword."
"Love makes labor light."
TIPSY  man, laboring alike under an uncomfortable confusion of ideas and an incompetent
control of his muscles, is apt to find a sidewalk of common width too narrow for him. The trees and lamp.
posts rush with violence to assault him, curbstones rise
in his path with ruffianly greetings, and the inclination
of a dead level is such that at last he slides into the
gutter, where he breathes out his curses upon the dan.
gers of the way. The sober man walks the same path
without seeing lamp-post or tree, and without being
conscious of the slightest restraint upon his movements.
We put a poke upon a vicious cow, because she has a
disposition to go precisely where she is not wanted to




44                   Gold-Foil.
go-into a cornfield, where she will do serious damage
to the proprietor, and kill herself with over-eating.
She comes up to the fence that she would fain demolish
or surmount, and the new restraint vexes her beyond
measure.  Her companion in the field is an innocent,
docile creature, that is content with her honest grass,
and her honest way of getting it. So, while the thief
stands raving and floundering at the fence, she fills herself with clover, and contentedly lies down to the pleasant task of rumination, without a thought of restraint
or deprivation.  For the innocent cow  there. is no
poke.
The perfect liberty of any faculty of the mind lies
within the range of its office.  Acquisitiveness is a
faculty of mind. It is- endowed with a certain legitimate office, and in that office it has full liberty-liberty
in the field in which it has its life. If it overstep the
bound of its office, and steal, it preys upon the fruits
of the liberty of others, and degenerates into licentiousness. Then it feels the law which defines the boundaries of its field of liberty, but until that time, the law
is a thing unfelt. A horse, standing upon the beach,
and looking out to the sea as a realm forbidden to him,
may be imagined to find fault with the line of surf that
warns him away from a region in which he has no legitimate rights and no legitimate office. The beach may
be free to him for miles, and pastures may recede from




Perfect Liberty                  45
it for other miles, over which he has liberty to run and
range at will, with the opportunity to supply all his
wants, and expend all his vitality. If he plunge into
the sea, he feels the law that defines the boundaries of
his perfect liberty. Laws are the very bulwarks of liberty. They define every man's rights, and stand between
and defend the individual liberties of all men. The mo.
ment that law is destroyed, liberty is lost; and men left
free to enter upon the domains of each other, destroy each
other's rights, and invade the field of each other's liberty.
No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he
remains within the sphere of his liberty-a sphere, by
the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his
powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants.. It
is only rogues who feel the restraints of law. We live
in a free country, and its freedom consists in the protection which the laws give to each man's liberty to
pursue his legitimate ends of life in a legitimate way.
We rejoice in these laws, because they guard our
liberty-not because they interfere with it. We make
them, support them, and obey them, in the exercise of
our liberty. They stand between us and that licen.
tiousness which is the invader and destroyer of liberty.
There is no state of society under heaven, and there
can be none, where perfect liberty exists, without an
obedience to law so glad and so entire that the restraints of the law are unfelt.




46                  Gold-Foil.
Thus much is true, without any reference to God,
or any relation to religion. Thus much is philosophical.
ly true. Advancing a step in the discussion, another
element enters in-the element of love —the perfect law
of liberty. The moment the soul is lifted in love to its
Maker, and extended in love to its fellows, the whole
realm of law is illuminated by a new light, and there is
only darkness beyond its boundaries. Before this illumination, self-interest, or right philosophical judgment
may be sufficient to keep the soul contentedly within
the boundaries of law. After it, it becomes the subject
of duty-duty to God and duty to man. It recognizes
relationships on the lines of which it is to flow out in
piety and good works. The law which defines its individual liberty is in a measure sunk out of sight, and
the law which defines its duty is that only which it sees.
The influx of this new love is essentially the influx of
a new life. This realm  of duty is the one which,
through the vestibule of law, I have endeavored to
lead the reader.
Can the soul enjoy perfect liberty in the realm of
duty? This question I wish to answer for the benefit
of a great multitude of men and women who, with a
sense of great self-sacrifice, have taken upon them the
responsibilities of the Christian life. To these, this life
is a life of crosses and mortifications. They find their
duty unpleasant and onerous. It is to them a law of




Perfect Liberty.               47
restraint and constraint. They are constantly oppressed
with what they denominate "a sense of duty."  It
torments them with a consciousness of their inefficiency, with a painful and persistent questioning of their
motives, with multiplied and perplexing doubts of the
genuineness of their religious experience. Christian
liberty is a phrase of which they know not the mean.
ing, for they are, in fact and in feeling, the slaves of
duty.  They feel themselves enchained within the
bounds of a system superinduced upon their life, and
not in any proper sense incorporated with it.
I ask the question again: Can the soul enjoy perfect liberty in the realm of duty? I answer in the af.
firmative, and express my belief that that liberty may
be of as much higher quality and of as much greater
extent than in the realm of pure law, as the love from
which it springs is superior as a basis of action to an
intellectual apprehension and acceptation of law as the
condition of liberty. Love is its own law, and duty is
only the name of those lines of action which naturally
flow out from love. I apprehend nothing as Christian
duty which does not naturally flow out from Christian
love. All those actions which love naturally dictates
and performs, if performed by any individual as simple
duties-performed grudgingly and difficultly-amount
to nothing as Christian actions. They become simply
bald acts of morality, and have no connection with re.




48                  Gold-Foil.
ligion.  Let me not be misunderstood.  Love may
constrain to acts that, for various reasons, are difficult
of performance; but difficult acts, performed from a
simple sense of duty-acts in no way growing out of
love-acts performed only for the satisfaction of conscience and for the acquisition of mental peace-are
not Christian acts, essentially, and cannot be made to
appear such.
Love, I say again, is its own law. A man who loves
God supremely, and his neighbor as himself, may do
exactly what he pleases-all that he wishes to do-all
that by this love he is moved to do. There is no license here, for a man possessed by these affections will
please to do, wish to do, and be moved to do, only
those things that follow the lines of duty. Here is
Christian liberty, and it is nowhere else. Here is
Christian liberty, and there is no such other liberty as
this under the sun. It is the liberty of angels and of
God Himself. It rises infinitely above the liberty defined by law, and is, in fact and in terms, "the liberty
of the sons of God "-one of the most suggestive and.nspiriting phrases, by the way, contained within the
lids of the Bible. The most beautiful sight this earth
affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty
is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow
and expression of the love which has become the cen.
tral principle of their life. For such men and women




Perfect Liberty.              49
there is neither law nor duty, as a hinderance to perfect
liberty. They are on a plane above both. They live
essentially in the same love out of which law and duty
proceeded. Law and duty were born of love. Love
originally drew their outlines and carved the channels
of their operation, and, rising into an appropriation and
incorporation of the mother element, the soul loses, of
course, the necessity of its offspring,-has, in fact,
within itself both element and offspring.
Perhaps my meaning will be more exactly apprehended by the use of illustrations. A woman finds
herself the mother of a family of children, whom she
loves' as her own life. It is against the law that she
turn them out of doors, or kill them, or maltreat them
in any way. Does she feel the restraint of these laws?
Does she ever think of their existence? Do they curtail her liberty to any extent? Not at- all, for her love
is her law. Rising now into the realm of duty, we see
that she owes to them the preparation of their food,
the care of their persons and clothing, ministry in sickness, home education, sympathy in trouble, discipline
for disobedience, and all motherly offices. Now do
these duties come to her simply as duties? Does she
feed and clothe her children, minister to them in sick.
ness, educate them and sympathize with them, from a
sense of duty? Ah, no! In the domain of motherly
duty, love is her law, and the performance of these
3




50                 Gold-Foil.
duties is simply the natural outflow and expression of
the love which she bears to her children. The stronger
and the more perfect her love, the smaller the restraints
of law and the constraints of duty; and when this love
becomes, as in many instances it does become, an all.
absorbing passion, law and duty, in connection with
her relations to her children, are things she never even
dreams of. Her neighbors may call her a slave to her
children, but she knows that she is in the enjoyment of
a most delicious liberty-the liberty to do precisely
those things which please her most, inspired by a love
that knows neither law nor duty.
Suppose now that this mother die and a step-mother
take her place. She may find among those children
one so intractable and ungrateful that it would be a
pleasure to her to turn it out of the house, but the law
prevents. She then looks upon law as a restraint upon
her liberty. But, in the place she has taken, she perceives that she owes duties to this family of children.
She has an intellectual appreciation of the duties of her
office, and undertakes to perform them. We will suppose that, from a simple sense of duty, she devotes
herself to them as thoroughly as their own mother did
before her.  Under circumstances like these, duty
would become a burden, and a bondage. What was
almost a divine liberty with the mother, becomes to the
step-mother a crushing slavery.  Conscientious but




Perfect Liberty.               51
unloving, she wears out a life of servitude to duty, and
of course is most unhappy..
It seems to me that these simple illustrations throw
unmistakable light upon this whole subject. Christian
love knows no such thing as slavery to law and to duty
The higher, the purer, and the stronger this love, the
more do law and duty disappear, until, finally, they are
unthought of, and the soul finds itself free-without a
single shackle on its faculties, or a single restraint upon
its movements. It acts within the lines of law, because
its highest life naturally lives within them.  Those
lines are not described to it by a foreign or superior
power; they are defined by itself, in the full exercise of
liberty born of love. It performs its duties because
they lie in the path of its natural action. Neither restraint nor constraint is felt, because, in the perfect
liberty which is born of perfect love, it chooses to do,
and does, that against which there is no law, and that
in which abides all duty.
So, if there be any struggling, sorrowful Christians,
who are in the habit of taking up daily crosses, and
doing unpleasant things, because, and simply because,
they deem them to be duties, I have only this to say
to them-that no act of theirs, performed simply because it is a duty, and performed with a sense of constraint that does not come from genuine love to God
and man, can be looked back upon as a Christian duty




52                  Gold-Foil.
worthily performed. As a moral act, conscientiously
performed, there is in it a quality of goodness, but it is
the work of a slave and not of a freeman. My servant
may bring me a glass of water because I command her
to, and in so doing she will perform her duty, though
it may be to her a task. If, when I enter my house,
heated with walking and labor, my daughter bring me
a glass of water, from love of me and sympathy for me,
the character of the act is essentially changed. Her
act is in the domain of perfect liberty, and had its birth
in love. The two acts are identical, they cost the same
amount of labor, both were performed in the discharge
of a duty, yet the dullest intellect will apprehend a difference in their quality that elevates one almost infinitely above the other.
There is no release in this world, or the next, from
the restraints of law and the constraints of duty, save
in love. Duty, especially out of the domain of love, is
the veriest slavery of the world. The cry of the soul
is for freedom. It longs for liberty, from the date of
its first conscious moments. This natural longing is
not born of depravity, but points with an unerring
finger to a source of satisfaction existing somewhere
for it in the universe of God. Law surrounds us while
we are low, and we beat our heads against it and are
baffled. Duty takes us upon a higher plane-on the
plane of conscience, or an insufficient Christian love,




Perfect Liberty.               53
and forces us to the performance of tasks which are
hard and ungrateful. We ask for something better
than this, and we get it when love fills us full of itself,
and absorbs us into itself. What the Christian world
wants is more love. Love rules his kingdom without
a sword. There is no compulsion here. Love makes
labor light. There are no unpleasant tasks here-at
least, none whose unpleasantness destroys a divine
pleasure in their performance. A man who feels t-hat
his religion is a slavery, has not begun to comprehend
the real nature of religion. That heart of his is still
selfish. There is lacking the elevation, the entire con.
secration which alone can introduce him  into that
glorious liberty which the real sons of God enjoy.
Ah, this liberty! How little have we of it in the
world! How we go groping, and mourning, and wail.
ing through the darkness-walled in by law, goaded
on by duty, and filled with the fears which perfect love
casts out, when all the while there hang above us
crowns within our reach,'which, grasped, would make
us kings! Oh, it is very pitiful-this sight of Christian
slaves! Most pitiful, however, does it become, when
we comprehend the fact that in this slavery many think
they find the evidence of their Christianity. They
bear burdens throughout their lives which wear into
their very hearts, and think there is merit in it. Mor.
tification, penance, bondage-are these the rewards of




54                 Gold-F il.
Christianity?  Crosses, servitude, fear-are these the
credentials of love?  Out upon such mischievous error! Into it, God forbid that soul of yours or mine
should be drawn! What great wonder is it that the
world is frightened away from such bondage as this?
No: perfect love holds the secret of the world's
perfect liberty. It is only this that releases us from
law, and discharges us from duty, by making law the
definition of our life, and duty the natural, free outflow
of our souls. Into this liberty Divine Love would lead
us. Up to it would Heaven lift us. In it only is the
perfection of Christian action. In it only can the soul
find that freedom for which it has yearned through all
its history. In it only lives an exuberant, boundless
joy —joy in tribulation, joy in labor, joy in every thing
except that world of slavish life that lives below it,
bound to law and duty, to forms and creeds, to morti.
fications and penances, selfishness and sin. We shall
know more about it up yonder.




V.
TRUST, AND WHAT COMES OF IT.
"He who sows his land trusts in God."
"Trust everybody, but thyself most."
"Trusting often makes fidelity."
"If you would make a thief honest, trust him."
"Trust thyself only, and another shall not betray thee."
T  is sadly humiliating  to  think  that more than
a moiety of the world's trust in God is blind and
unconscious.  We trust in lines of precedent, and links
of succession, and laws and principles. Very little of
our trust is immediate.. We sow our seed, and bury it
in the earth, trusting that the germs we deposit will
proceed to the beautiful unfolding of the harvest; yet
our trust is in the seed, the season, the sun, the soilany thing but the God who instituted vegetable life,
and all its laws and conditions.  We are compelled to
trust something, however, or we should die.  Trust
lies at the basis of every scheme of human life, and is




56                 Gold-Foil.
the corner-stone of the temple of human happiness.
If our trust fail to reach God directly, or if it fail to
become transitive through nature into God, then it
must abide in nature. It must live somewhere. We
trust to some power or principle for the rising and the
setting of the sun, for the sleep of winter, the resurrection of spring, the fructification of summer, and the
fruition of autumn. We know nothing of the future.
We do not know that rain will fall-that seed-time
and harvest will come; but we trust that they will;
and this trust is so strong that, practically, it answers
the purposes of foreknowledge-it brings the feeling
of security to the heart, and furnishes a basis for the
plans necessary to perpetuate the life of the race. But
we trust no further than we can see. Something must
come between us and the Being upon whom we rely
for every thing, before our hearts will poise themselves
in trust. We trust nature, our fellows, and even God
Himself, because we are obliged to. We would trust
nobody and no thing if we could get along without it.
We trust nature because, if we did not, we could not
live. We trust God, strongly or feebly, because we
know that in the life beyond this our destiny is in His
hands. We trust our fellows, because it is necessary
to have one heart, at least, in whose confidence we may
dwell. A man who is poor in trust is the poorest of all
(4ndO' creatures.




Truft, and what comes of it.         57
Now why this strange reluctance in trusting?
Why should it be necessary to force us into trusting
when, without it, we cannot be happy for a momentwhen, without it, we cannot institute a single plan relating to the future? I think that the lack of trust in
God and our universal distrust of men grow out of a
sense of our own ill desert and our ownTuntrustworthiness. I find always those who are the richest in trust
toward God and man the most trustworthy in themselves. I find those who go about with open hearts
and honest lips, with no intent of evil toward others,
those who trust men the most invariably. The child
trusts because it finds no reason il itself why it should
not. The charity that- thinketh no evil trusts in God
and trusts in men. The heart that knows itself to be
false, trusts neither in God nor men. So, naturally,
and after the common order of things, we shall get no
more trust in this world until the world which must
bring the grace into exercise is better. As this world
grows better, the trust which forms the basis of its
happiness will grow broader, a more luxuriant social
life will spring up, and the great brotherhood of humanity will not only come nearer together, but they
will be blended and fused in an all-pervading sympathy.
Naturally, and after the common order of things, I
say, the world will have no more voluntary trust until
it is better; but trusting as a policy may be instituted
3I*_




58                 Gold-Foil.
for the purpose of making the world better, and it is
this policy that I propose to make the subject of this
article. A child that comes to me in danger, or sorrow, or perplexity, and takes my hand, and looks into
my eyes, and utters its wants in trust, begets in me
trustworthiness, on the instant. It rouses into action
all within me that is good and honorable and true, and
I cannot betray that trust without a loss of self-respect
that will make me contemn myself for a life-time. A
maiden who comes into my presence in guileless trust,
and in any way places her destiny in my hands, would
shame me. into trustworthiness were my heart teeming
with impurity. Even the timid hare, hunted from
field to field, and hard beset by the baying hounds,
would find a protector in me should it leap desperately
into my arms, and lay the tumult of its frightened
heart upon the generous beatings of mine. The child,
the maiden; the hare would beget in me trustworthiness, simply by trusting me. They would make me
considerate and generous and honorable. I should
despise myself were I to harm either by a thought.
uch beings, under such circumstances, would come to
me as missionaries, bearing one of the very sweetest
of the lessons of Christ.
These illustrations seem to me to be pregnant with
meaning, and instinct with illumination. They open
to me the door of a policy, and reveal to me a ministry




Truft, and what comes of it.          59
equally beautiful and beneficent, yet they involve no
new law, and spring out of no newly-discovered princi
pie. All seed produces after its kind. If I plant corn,
I reap corn; if I plant lilies, I gather lilies. Like produces like in the spiritual no less than in the material
universe. Love begets love; anger begets anger. If
I sow to the wind, I reap the whirlwind. So, if I sow
trust, I reap trust. The soil will honor the seed. Of
course, I state this as a general fact. There are souls
as well as soils that will produce nothing good. There
are souls as well as soils so sour, so rank with pollution,
or so poor, that nothing but weeds will grow in them;
but, as a general fact, in the worlds of mind and matter, the soil will honor the seed. Wherever there may
be the slightest promise of return, we are to sow our
trust.
Now what is the aspect that life presents to us?
Is it not that of universal distrust?  Nay, has not distrust become an instituted thing, that has taken form
in maxims and proverbs? There is hardly a language
that does not contain a proverb which says in words,
or effect, "Trust thyself only, and another shall not betray thee"-a proverb that bears the very singe and
scent of hell. Thus distrust is not only a fact, but it
has become a policy. It is inculcated by universal
human society; and as like produces like, distrust is
everywhere reaped, because it is everywhere sown




60                 Goid-Foil.
We take no pains to nurse honor by trusting it. We
trust interest and appetite, and every thing base and
selfish in a man, quicker than we do any good quality
in him. We trust that which is beast-like in men, and
refuse to trust that which is godlike. We decline to
bring honor into exercise, and honor dwindles under
the treatment.
One of the most notable illustrations of the evil
consequences of distrust is that afforded by the relative
positions of the sexes. The institutions of society and
education, so far as they have to do with these relations, are established on the theory that men and
women are not to be trusted together. Our colleges
and schools, and all the institutions and usages of social
life, recognize, as a cardinal fact, the untrustworthiness
of men and women. They proceed upon the theory
that men will betray if they can, and that virtue in
women is only a name. Wherever this theory is
pushed to its extreme, there we shall find always the
qualities suspected. I suppose that there is no country
in the world where young women are guarded with
such care as in France. The very extreme of punctilio
is exacted on the part of parents, and a woman is hardly
allowed to see her lover alone until after her marriage.
The duenna is her companion in society, as constantly
as her own shadow. Yet in France, as in all countries
where this extreme of caution is observed-where this




Truft, and what romes of It.          61
distrust takes its severest form-is female virtue the
rarest, and masculine licentiousness the most universal.
Virtue shrinks and refuses to live in the atmosphere of
universal distrust. Manly purity and honor find no use
for themselves where they are neither believed in nor
appealed to. This distrust of the sexes, so persistently
and powerfully inculcated by society, breeds untrustworthiness, and sows broadcast the seeds of impurity.
It always has been so, and it always will be. There is
no remedy but in releasing society from the control of
men and women who are sadly conscious of their own
weaknesses, and in the assumption of the functions of
education by men who are something more than saintly
and suspicious grandmothers.
Just look at this thing. Here are two sexes, intended by Heaven to be the companions of each other
-intended to ennoble and purify each other, to enter
into the most intimate, endearing and permanent relations with each other, to draw from each other the
very choicest of their earthly happiness-the two hemispheres of humanity necessary to the perfection and
beauty of the great sphere of life-yet trained from the
first dawning of their regard for one another to believe
in their mutual untrustworthiness  They are seated on
different sides of the room where they meet to worship
a common Lord. They are caged in boarding-schools,
kept from association by all possible nmans, kept as




62                  Gold-Foil.
much as may be from  all knowledge of each other,
trained to impurity of imagination by the very restraints
which are put upon them to keep them pure. I believe
in manly honor and womanly virtue; and that the
more we trust them the more we develop them. I believe that an honor never developed by the trust of
pure and womanly hearts, and a virtue that has always
lived in the poisonous atmosphere of distrust, and has
never come out to stand alone in its own sweet self.
assertion, are as good as brown paper, and only better
in exceptional instances. I believe that all that is
needed in America to make our nation as untrustworthy
as France, is to draw the reins still tighter, build the
walls of partition still higher, and come up, or down, to
the policy of ignoring or contemning any power of
virtue in men and women that will keep them from
sin.
Now let us take a very simple and suggestive illustration of this principle of trust as it bears upon our
general life. We meet, passing through the streets of
the city or town where we live, a stranger. He approaches us, and informs us that he has lost his way,
and inquires the direction of his lodgings. He places
himself, in his ignorance and helplessness, in our hands.
He trusts the direction of his footsteps entirely to us.
We can deceive him if we will;' but we are upon our
honor at once. We are trusted, and our hearts spring




Truft, and what comes of it.          63
naturally and instantaneously up to honor that trust.
Now there is not one man in one hundred, in any class
of society, who will not honor so simple a trust, and
who does not feel that he is happier and better in consequence of honoring it. As polite and hearty offices
of kindness has it been my lot to receive from entire
strangers, under circumstances like these, as I have
ever received ini my life. To my mind, this little illustration denotes the general trustworthiness of men, and
shows to me that if I approach my fellows in a simple,
honest trust, they will deal fairly with me. Perhaps I
should except itinerant dealers in crockery and glassware, professional Peter Funks, Irishmen who work by
the job, and others whose sole living it is to get large
returns for insignificant investments. But I do not
propose to deal with these. They are not my fellows,
and I have no relations with them.
Everything good in a man thrives best when prop.
erly recognized. Men do about what we expect of
them. If a man with whom I have business relations
perceive that I expect him to cheat me if he can, he
will commonly do it. If, on the contrary, he see that
I place implicit faith in his honor-that I trust himevery thing good in the man springs into life, and demands that that trust be honored. The sordid ele.
ments of his character may possibly triumph, but they
will triumph by a struggle which will weaken them.




64                 Gold-Foil.
If I am unwilling to trust my son or my daughter out
of my sight, I may reasonably expect to plant and nourish in them precisely those qualities which would make
it dangerous for them to be out of my sight. If I refuse to trust the word of an honest man, I may reasonably expect that with me, at least, he will break faith
at the earliest opportunity. If I place all men and
women at arm's length, in the fear that one of them
will be treacherous to me, I place myself beyond the
desert of good treatment at their hands-beyond the
reach of their sympathies and their good-will-in short,
I insult them, and voluntarily institute an antagonism
which naturally breeds mischief in them toward me.
So I advocate the policy of universal faith, as an
essential condition of universal faithfulness-of universal trust as a pre-requisite for universal trustworthiness.
The world does not half comprehend the principle of
overcoming evil with good, but clings to the infernal
policy of overcoming evil with evil. I know of no
power in the world but good, with which to overcome
evil; and when I see on every side exhibitions of a
ack of personal honor, I know that I can foster the
honor that remains in no way except by recognizing it
and calling it into development by direct practical appeal, One of the most remarkable and suggestive passages in the Bible, as it seems to me, is this:-" If we
love not our brother whom we have seen, how can we




Truft, and what comes of it.         65
love God, whom we have not seen?"  Many will fail
to see how such a conclusion naturally follows from
such premises; but a little consideration will show that
by the amount in which godlike elements erter into
humanity, do human elements enter into divinity; and
that if we fail to recognize and love these elements as
they are exhibited to us in human life, we shall necessarily fail to recognize and love the same elements in a
Being removed beyond our vision, and, save as we see
Himin humanity, beyond our comprehension. Now
this thing is just as true of trust as it is of love. If we
fail to trust that which is good in our brother, whom
we have seen, how can we trust the same qualities in a
Being whom we have not seen, and of whom we know
nothing definitely, save as He has exhibited Himself to
us in human life? I know of nothing that antagonizes
more directly with trust in the divine Being than the
attitude and habit of distrust which we maintain
towards our fellows. I believe that history and observation will prove the entire soundness of this principle,
and will show that every soul that sits apart from its
brotherhood, in settled distrust, is devoid of faith and
trust in the Being from whom it sprang. I believe that
God has laid the way to trust in Himself through hu.
inanity, and that those who refuse to walk in it will
fail to find a short cut to Him.
Trust in man, then, is not only the true policy for




66                 Gold-Foil.
the development of trustworthiness in man, but it is
the legitimate path over which we must walk to the at.
tainment of a secure and happy piety. Let us then
throw the door of our hearts wide open. Let us give
our hand to our brother in honest trust. One may
possibly abuse our trust; but ninety-nine in one hundred
will not; and we cannot afford to sacrifice so great a
good for ourselves, and the great mass of men, to save
our confidence from a single betrayal. We do not refuse our dirty pence to a beggar who appears to be in
need, because he may abuse the gift; but we say that
it is better that ten betray our trust than that one innocent man should suffer want. When the universal
heart longs for trust, delights in trust, is made better
by trust, and needs trust, we should give so cheap a
thing freely. Especially should we do it when we can
legitimately apply those precious words to the gift"Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did
it unto me."




VI.
THE IDEAL CHRIST.
"Like master, like man."
DEALS are the world's masters. That self which
thinks, and judges, and knows, is always in advance of that other self which wills, and acts, and lives;
and all the spare capital of the soul-all that is not appropriated to the daily uses and experiences of its lifeis invested in ideals-projected into forms where it may
be kept, contemplated, and worshipped, as the instituted sources of its inspiration. That which is godlike
ui men goes ahead of them into some form of their own
choosing, to beckon tnem toward perfection and to lead
them toward God. Wherever our affections cluster,
there springs up an ideal character. Our ideal may not
be up to the character which serves as its nucleus, nor
identical with it in any way; but, wherever God sees




68                  Gold-Foil.
our love concentrating, He plants himself in the form
of our noblest conceptions of honor, purity, and good.
ness, that we may be attracted towards Him. We follow the lines of the flight of our conceptions as the bee.
hunters follow the flight of bees, for a little distance,
and then we pause and let them  feed again at our
hearts, and follow their flight again, and repeat the
process till, deep in the heart of the tree of life, we
discover the store-house of the Divine Sweetness. God
uses the ideals that we build as the media through
which He inspires us. He employs them as agents by
which to mould our character, so that if we could know
the precise form of a man's ideals, we could know the
influences at work upon him for his elevation and purification.
To illustrate the fact that our ideals are framed upon
the objects of our affections, or the subjects of our nobler sentiments, and that all their inspiring influences
come to us on the lines of these affections and sentiments, let me suppose an instance of the passion of
love between the sexes. A man makes the acquaintance of a woman who inspires him with love. His reason, and all his previous knowledge of women, tell him
that she is imperfect. His friends may tell him that
she has a bad temper, that she is weak, that she is vain.
But his love is fixed, and is as strong as a passion can
be that lives in his nature; and his imagination springs




The Ideal Chrift.              69
to clothe her with all human perfections. Her movements are poetry, her eye is heaven, her voice is music,
and her presence that of an angel. To him she is a pure,
exalted, and beautiful being, and he worships the quali
ties with which he invests her. Now it is very evident
that he does not love the woman herself, but his idealthe creation of his own mind-the embodiment of his
highest ideas of womanly loveliness.
Mark how this ideal becomes an active power upon
him-how it works a miracle upon him.  Impure
thoughts are banished from his mind, all inferior and
unworthy aims are forsaken, he withdraws himself from
degrading associations, and becomes ennobled and purified. This character, made by himself, transforms him.
He has made, for the time, a divinity; and this divinity
becomes his leader, strengthener, purifier, and inspirer.
The God within us seeks for incarnation no less than
the God without us; and the philosophical basis of the
influence upon men of the incarnation of God's ideal is
identical with that of the influence of their own in.
carnated ideals.
From this illustration I proceed to the proposition
that it does not matter what legitimate passion or sentiment may be called out with relation to an object, the
result will always be the same in kind, if not in degree.
We may admire, revere, esteem, love, and in many
ways enjoy, through the exhibition to us of an infinite




70                  Gold-Foil
variety of characteristics; and our admiration, revs
erence, esteem, love, and enjoyment, become the basis
of the structure of ideals which shape the model of our
own character, and inspire the life which it evolves
Idolatry is but the enthronement of the ideals of men
who are ignorant of the true God. These ideals are
formed of the highest qualities and conceptions of those
who make them. They may be very low, but they
shape the life of the people that produce them. Mari
olatry is the worship of a very pure ideal, and the
tributes offered to the multiplied saints of the Roman
calendar are all paid to the incarnations of the noblest
conceptions of their devotees. The marvellous gift of
song possessed by Jenny Lind makes her very admira.
ble to us; so we clothe her with the loveliest attributes,
and make her a goddess. The real power of Washington upon the American mind is exerted, not by his simple self but by his character, modified, magnified, exalted, harmonized, and enthroned by that mind, as the
impersonation of its highest conception of patriotism.
In the American imagination, he is a demi-god-a grand
Colossus-before whose august shade we stand as pig.
mies. "All history is a lie," simply because no man
can write it without being attracted to characters in
such a way as to make ideals of them, and thus to throw
all the facts connected with them out of their legiti.
mate relations.




The Ideal Chrift.              71
I repeat the statement, that ideals are the world's
masters. They order our life, they dictate the form of
our history, they are the very essence of poetry, and
the staple of all worthy fiction. Our affections choose
an object, and straightway our imaginations lift it into
apotheosis. We garner in it that which is best in our
thought, and it becomes a power Upon us for the eleva.
tion of our life.
I have attempted thus far only to reveal and illustrate one of the most beautiful laws of mental action
and re-action with which I am acquainted; and if my
reader is as much interested in it as I am, he will follow
me into a consideration of its bearings upon Chris.
tianity. I do not moot the question of the nature of
the founder of Christianity,-that is, I do not say that
Christ was God, or was not God,-but I say, what few
will dispute, that he was God's incarnated ideal of a
man-that Christ was all of God and his attributes
that could be put into a man. It follows, that unless we
can fully comprehend God's ideal, the Christ that we
hold is our own ideal; and his power upon us is measured and described by the character of our ideal.
"What think ye of Christ? " The answer to this great
question, addressed to a soul or a sect, defines the type
of Christianity possessed by such a soul or sect. He is
what He is, a complete and definite character, but what
we think of Him-our ideal of Him-determines the




72                 Gold-Foil.
exact measure and kind of power with which He in.
spires us, and the quality and extent of the develop.
ment He works in us.
It does not matter to this discussion whether Christ
be what we believe Him to be, or a myth. If we admit that He is the first fact in the Christian system of
religion, and the. primary source of all inspiration to
Christian movement and progress, it will follow that
every soul and every sect must possess the highest possible idea of Christ before it can reach its highest point
of development and its highest style of Christian life.
According to our ideal of Christ-in the measure by
which we invest Him with great attributes and authority-does He become to us an inspiring force. A person who thinks that Christ was only a good man, with
frailties like other men,-an individual who lived a very
pure life-a reformer-can possess only a very shallow
Christian piety, because he can find in his ideal of Christ
no inspiration to a piety more profound. A man who
thinks the grand characteristics of Christ were meekness, self-denial, and patience under injury, without apprehending the other side of His character, will be a
mean and abject man. A man who thinks that there
was nothing in Christ but love-that contempt of all
meanness, supreme reverence for justice, displeasure
with all sin, and hatred of all cruelty and oppression,
had no place in Him, will expend his sympathy on pris.




The fdeal Chrift.                 73
oners, and build palaces for convicts; and circulate petitions for the abrogation of death penalties.
If the doctrine I have advanced be sound, it is not
necessary to refer to history to prove that the progress
of Christianity has depended in all the past, (nor is the
gift of prophecy requisite to the assertion that it will
depend in all the future,) upon the prevalent ideal of
Christ. The stream cannot rise higher than its fountain. Christ, as the inspirer of Christian life, is to the
Christian world what that world makes Him to be. He
must keep forever in advance of us, or there is no such
thing as an infinite Christian progression.  If there
shall ever arrive a point in the history of any soul
when its conception of Christ will cease to be higher
than its own life, then that soul will have exhausted
Christianity, and must stand still. If the history and
being of Christ, as delineated by the Evangelists, forbid
the world to form of Him the highest ideal which it is
possible for it to conceive (which, of course, I do not
believe), then those delineations must ultimately, by a
philosophical necessity, become an insurmountable obstacle to the development of the highest style of Christianity of which the world is capable. I believe thereis no proposition in moral philosophy more clearly de.
monstrable than this, and I hold myself in no way responsible for the conclusions to which it leads.
I believe in the proverb that any religion is better
4




74                 Gold-Foil.
than no religion, -because every man's conception of
goodness and duty is an advance of his character; and
when this conception is imbodied in an object of worship, it becomes an elevating power upon his life that
makes him capable of a certain degree of civilization.
All the ideals of all ages have been developed in the
direction of the perfect man-toward God's ideal.
The shadowy gods that were grouped about Olympus
were voiceless echoes of poor hearts crying after this
perfect man. Hugh Miller, the inspired apostle of Science, found the rudiments of Christ in the rocks, and
may we not find them in the souls of men? He found
Jesus Christ in every lamina of the earth's crust; and
as, with faith in his heart and the iron in his hand, he
toiled among the old red sandstone, he saw the fossil
flora of his own Scotch hills tipped with tongues of
flame and the fauna rigid with the stress of prophecy.
It was as if the blood of Calvary had stained and informed with meaning the insensate mass in which he
wrought; or as if he were, with a divine instinct, hewing away the rock from the door of the sepulchre
where the ages had laid his Lord. With a vision that
was too wonderful and too glorious for the protracted
entertainment of his mighty brain, he saw the varied
forms of life climbing through the rugged centuries,
and leaping from creation to creation, until they took
resolution i:iaithe union of matter and spirit in man.




The Ideal Chrift.              75
But science with a pining heart behind it was not satis.
fied even then. Not until the complex creature man
was united with God was the chain complete. Then,
with the last link fastened to The Throne, the grand
riddle of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world" swung clear in the sight of angels and of men.
So, to the delver in the stratified history of the race,
do the dead ideals point toward and prophesy the ad.
vent and the character of the divine man.
Any religion is better than no religion because there
exists in the ideal which inspires it a rudiment of Christ,
and there is nothing in any religion that tends in any
direct and legitimate way to the good of the soul which
entertains it that is not a fraction or fragment of Christianity. - Now it is manifest that every soul which gives
in its allegiance to a fragmentary ideal of Christ stands
really, for the time, upon the plane of paganism. In
the degree in which Plato's ideal man, or ideal god,
was greater than any given Christian's ideal Christ,
was his paganism better than that Christian's Christianity-better in its essence, and better in its practical
power upon life. The moment that a mind definitely
circumscribes, measures, weighs, and comprehends its
Christ, it limits its own Christian development, by fixing a point beyond which no Christian inspiration will
come to it. The moment we cease to grow "in the
knowledge of Jesus Christ," because there is no more




76                 Gold-Foil.
to know of him, God's ideal will become inferior to out
ideal, for reaching it we shall immediately conceive an
ideal beyond it, in accordance with that law of progress
which always keeps our conceptions of goodness and
greatness in advance of our life. So I ask the question: will God's Christ answer the purpose of eternal
progress, or will the time come when we shall be
obliged to make a Christ for ourselves? I let every
man answer this question in his own way.
This leads me to a thought which I consider of the
highest practical importance to the Christian world,
and which I should be glad to develop more fully than
my space will allow. If the view which I have presented of the law of progress in Christian life be correct, then theology is a progressive science, and there
is, and there can be, no standard of belief and faith
good for all ages.  As our ideal of Christ grows
toward, or into, God's ideal, will that ideal change its
relation to all the great facts of theology, as they are
now comprehended by theologians.  The theological
systems of men and schools of men are determined
always by the character of their ideal of Christ, the
central fact of the Christian system. All the other
facts arrange themselves around this ideal, and in har.
mony with it. Thus, as our ideal advances, gathering
new glory and greatness and goodness, will certain
doctrines which we now consider essential recede into




The Ideal Chrift.              77
insignificance, and others now scarcely insisted upon
spring into prominence, and others still, now unknown,
will be developed. Preachers and professors, churches
and synods, may protest against innovations, but they
must come by necessity, if there be any genuine Chris.
tian progress.  A  prescriptive standard of faith in
Christianity-a system of everlasting progress-must
forever remain an officious and sacrilegious intermeddling with the grand fundamental law of Christianity.
There is a time coming when all the sects which
now  divide Christendom  will be melted into one.
Nothing but the blotting out of Christianity can hinder
it. My Presbyterian friend has his fragmentary ideal
of Christ, my Episcopal friend another, my Roman
Catholic friend another, and so on, through Baptists,
Methodists, Universalists, and all the rest; but as the
Christian world's ideal of Christ advances, and he is
apprehended in something of the fulness of his being
and character, will the world's theologies approach
each other. They must do so, and they are doing so
to-day. The best evidence in the world that Christianity is advancing is found in the fact that the walls between the sects are growing weaker, or falling in ruins.
When they all come up to the point of any thing like
a just idea of the sun in the centre of their systems,
they will find that there is no difference between them.
Therefore, let our ideal be kept well in advance, and




78                Gold-Foil.
always in advance; and let that ideal be the law of a
man's theology. If my neighbor's ideal of Christ be
better than mine, then, not only his life, but his system
of theology, will be better than mine; and God forbid
that I should curb him, or try to impose upon him my
ideal and my theology. Ah, these Procrustean prescripts of belief-what unspeakably useless things are
they 




VII.
PROVIDENCE.
"Man proposes and. God disposes."
"Saint cannot, if God will not."
"Nothing is lost on a journey by stopping to pray or to feed your horse."
"God puts a good root in the little pig's way."
" God gives every bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest."
" He that is at sea has not the wind in his hands."
T    HE  progress of modern science, the opulence of
modern invention, and the splendor of modern
achievement in the arts, are themes of ceaseless glorying and gratulation. I rejoice with the gladdest, and
glory with the proudest; yet I feel that the world
around me and the world within me have lost something, even more precious than they have gained-not
irrecoverably, but, for the time, practically. The more
the knowledge of material things has crowded in upon
the apprehension of the world-the more the world
has learned of the laws of matter, and the more stu



80                 Gold-Foil.
pendous the results it has achieved by laying those
laws under tribute-the more from a large class of
minds has faith retired, and Providence become a
meaningless name.  We drive toward materialism.
We have become practical believers in necessity.
Every thing is controlled by law. The machine has
been wound up, the being who made and set it in operation has retired, and all that we can do is to fall
into our place, and be borne on, careful only that no
cog-wheel catch our fingers, and no weight descend
upon our heads.
It is. not only the irreligious world that disbelieves
in Providence. I am inclined to think that there are
Christians in large numbers who never dream of receiving blessings in answer to their prayers-Chris.
tians who would be absolutely startled  with the
thought that God had directly, and with special purpose, granted one of their petitions. God has come to
be " counted out of the ring." Practically, we believe
that He never interferes with the operation of one of
His own laws-that no influence, under the control of
His will, acting from daily and momently arising mo.
tives, can, or does, act with supreme power upon the
chain of cause and effect established at the creation of
the universe. Too much, even in the Christian imag.
ination, God is a prisoner, shut up within the walls of
His own laws-a Being who has farmed out the uni.




Providence.                  81
verse to the great firm of Laws and Principles, and is
quietly waiting, with nothing to do, and no power to
do any thing, till the lease expire. The man who declared that there was no use in praying for rain so long
as the wind was in the north, illustrates the essential
position of every nine minds in ten throughout Christendom. This, I know, is a sweeping statement, and I
shall be very glad to be convicted of its falsehood.
There is, doubtless, a strife constantly going on in a
great multitude of minds to escape from the clutch of
laws, and to find a Father's embrace, yet the majority
of them "take things as they come," and, at most, expect God to do only those things for them which are
outside the strict domain of natural law. Law is God,
practically-Law, a thing of God, an institution born
of Him, is put in His place, and He is shut out behind
it. Thus the world is turned into a great mill, established on certain principles for the grinding out of
certain results; and into the hopper all this great aggregate of individuals is poured like grain to be ground.
I will not say that the absorption of the modern
mind in scientific studies and the production of great
material results is entirely responsible for this reduction
of the universe to essential orphanage, but its tendency,
joined to the natural gravitation of our appetites and
passions, has had the decisive power to sink us in that
direction. To reveal this tendency to those in whom it
4*



82                 Gold-Foil.
unconsciously exists, and to counteract it io far as 1
have any power, is the present aim.
God is either supreme or subject. If subject, then
I become an Atheist at once, for a subject God is no
God. If He has passed over the line of my life to the
control of a law, or a series of laws, then, so far as I
am concerned, He is dethroned. If any law of the
universe stands between me and the direct ministry of
God to my wants and my worthy wishes and aspirations, then I may as well pray to my next door neigh.
bor as to Him. Thus Providence is to me a question
which involves the existence of a God. If law is a
greater and a more powerful thing than He who established it, then, to me, He is practically of no account.
I live and move and have my being in law, and not in
Him. I sprang from law, I exist in law, and I am carried on by law I know not whither. If God pity me,
He cannot help me. If He would save me, He cannot.
Between Him and me His law places an impassable
gulf, across which we may stretch our helpless hands
toward each other to all eternity without avail. He is
a prisoner, and I am a prisoner; and I may legitimately pity His weakness as much as he pities mine.
Again, God is either benevolent in His feelings toward each individual child in His universe, or He is utterly indifferent, or positively malicious. We look to
Elim as the author of all things-as the father of our




Providence.                83
spirits and the maker of our bodies, no more than as
the author and founder of all law. If I decide in my
mind that He has voluntarily placed it out of His power
to help me, by instituting between me and Him a law
which shuts Him from direct ministry to me, I decide,
in effect, that He is indifferent to me, or malicious toward me. When I decide this, I dethrone Him just as
essentially as when I decide that He is subject to His
own law, and helpless in regard to its operation; for a
God who is either indifferent or malicious has no claim
upon my fealty or my affection. A God who does not
love me has no claim upon my love. A God who voluntarily puts it beyond His power to aid me, or do me
good, puts it equally beyond His power to do me direct
harm. He is, therefore, nothing to me.
Thus, if there be not a God of Providence who
ministers to my daily individual wants, and prescribes
for me the discipline of my life-a God who hears mie
when I cry to Him, and holds immediate relations with
every moment of my life, so far as I am concerned,
there is no God at all. Ah! but there is a God. Few
are the men who doubt this, and they are not those
who would be convinced of their error by argument
of mine. All healthy souls recognize the existence of
this Being, and recognize among His attributes utter
supremacy-and infinite benevolence. Now the. point
that I make is this: that the moment we recognize God




84                 Gold-I oil.
as supreme in power and infinitely good and loving to.
ward all His intelligent creatures, that moment we admit the doctrine of universal and special Providence.
There is no God, and there can be none, who is not a
God of Providence. It is only to such a God that we
can pray. It is only such a God that can, by possibility, call out our affections, or hold us to allegiance.
Every thing that passes under the name of religion becomes a mockery and a delusion the moment we place
Him behind laws which, like prison-bars, restrain Him
from all participation in human affairs.
I know too well that in this thing I am not setting
up and endeavoring to bring down a man of straw. I
know many men who are professedly, at least, men of
prayer, yet who declare in terms that the benefits of
prayer are only to be looked for in the exercise of
prayer. They attempt to explain the matter phil.
osophically. There is something in the humble attitude of the soul before its Maker, incident to prayersomething in confession and the exercise of penitencesomething in abstraction from  worldly and impure
thoughts-which, really, has the power to do great
good, and in which reside all the benefits of prayer.
While I recognize the immediate benefits of prayer as
a mental and moral exercise, this partial and unworthy
view of it is to me utterly contemptible. A man on his
Inees talking to God as if He could help him, yet be




Pro iidence.                85
lieving that He will not, or cannot, and praying for
blessings which he has no reason to expect, is a sight
to be pitied of angels and of men. If this be all of
prayer, it is an insult to a man, either to ask or com.
mand him to pray. Low as human dignity is, it would
be compromised, and, if in any degree sensitive, offend
ed, by being forced into attitudes and language which
are a sham and a lie, for the purpose of securing inci.
dental results of good.
No, prayer is not a legitimate, it is not even a de.
cent and dignified, exercise, unless offered to a God of
Providence who knows and is interested in all our affairs, is able to interfere with them and change their
order through or above law, and is willing to do so, according as the motives in which our petitions are based
show us ready for the reception of the blessings which
we seek, and He in infinite paternal benevolence is
ready to bestow. Well, we are commanded to pray
throughout the Bible. We are promised answers to
prayer, in no ambiguous language, throughout the
Bible. We are taught after what manner to pray, by
Him who spake as never man spake-Humanity's Great
Teacher; and to the truly faithful Christian heart this
should forever settle the question of Providence.
There is to me no thought more precious than that
my Maker is my constant minister, direct and immediate. There is no thought that would sooner drive




86                 Gold-Fo.l.
me mad than that I am in the iron grasp of laws which
will work out their results within me and around me
though they tear me in pieces, while the Maker
of those laws and of me cannot help me, though I cry
to Him out of the depths of my helplessness and dis
tress. A natural law is only one ofthe regular rules by
which, for good purposes, God works. It exists as a
rule only by His constant will; and, in my opinion,
drawn from every available analogy, He has a myriad
irregular ways of reaching an end to one which is regular-ways constantly starting out from new impulses
born of new motives within Him. The regular. way of
reaching New York or Washington is by a certain rail.
road, but I can reach either city by countless irregular
ways, as circumstances or motives may dictate and
direct. I may reach either city by other railroads less
direct, yet having the same termination, as my will may
decide; and to confine the supreme will of the universe
to such regular channels of action as we happen to be
acquainted with, is to assume that that will is weaker
than our own.
I assume, that without a belief in a general and
special Providence, no man who thinks at all upon the
subject can be truly happy. We are all breakers of
law-we are a race of law-breakers. The moment the
mind swings loose from  a belief in Providence, it
plunges helpless and overwhelmed into a wild waste of




Providence.                87
penalties, from which there is and can be no extrication
while existence endures. What has the history of the
race been but that of law-breaking? Yet in spite of
this-in spite of a violation which has become the
habit of the world-it lives, and, thank God! progresses toward goodness. If law had been left alone
of God's Providence to work out its own blind ends,
there would not be a breathing man upon the face of
the earth to-day. It is for the reason that we live and
move and have our being in God, and not in law, that
there rises to Heaven the smoke of a single city, or
waves.upon the hillside the burden of a single cultivated harvest.
Let no man be deceived by that subtlest of all infidelities which dethrones a God of Providence. The
very hairs of our heads are numbered by Him, and not
even he life of a sparrow that He has made is extinguishe. without His notice. There is not an infant's
wail, a s)dPh of anguish, a groan of pain, or a word of
prayer, breathed in the humblest abode, that He does
not hear. Over all our struggles and toils He stoops
with a loving eye, and with a heart anxious that the
discipline He has established for us may do us good.
He knows all our doubts and fears; He rejoices in all
our worthy hopes and joys. When we kneel He sees
us; when we pray He hears. His presence envelopes
us, His knowledge comprehends us, His power upholds




88                  Gold-Foil.
us. All law and all being are alike dependent, moment
by moment, upon Him  for existence. The ultimate
root of every flower that bends beneath its weight of
dew is planted in His will. It is His breath that
breaks the bosom of the sea into billows; it is His smile
that soothes it into rest. The blue sky that bends over
us is but the visible image of His loving bosom, holding
myriad worlds in the infinite depths of its tenderness.
Ah, let it never be hidden to the eye of faith by the
showers of blessings which come from it, borne on the
wings of natural law!
I know of no skepticism more fatal to the develop.
ment of religion in the heart than that which dethrones
a God of Providence. In vain shall we look for a true
piety among those who, through absorption in scientific
pursuits, or devotion to the details of natural law in
mechanical and similar callings, are brought to the
deification of law.  Law has no love, no pity, no
mercy, no patience. Law has nothing in it to touch
our sympathies, or call out our affections. If it have
power in an indirect way to rouse within us a sense of
esponsibility for our conduct, it is only to curse us
with the thought that it has no power to forgive. The
idea that man can be truly religious, with a God voluntarily bereft of power for good or evil, is simply absurd. We never find, and we never can find, true
piety in a heart that does not so thoroughly believe in




Providence.                 89
a God of Providence that it can pray with an honest
faith that God can grant its petition.
It is well that we have law, that we understand it,
and that we obey it. Law is essential to our highest
liberty. It defines the bounds within which we may
safely be allowed to exercise our wills, and work out
our destiny. It draws the lines along which we may
legitimately labor in the development of our powers.
It reveals the relations which exist between material
things and ourselves. Law is never to be ignored as
an important part of the machinery by which its founder
administers the world's great affairs, but we are never
to shut God out of it, nor to shut him behind it. It is
intended that we shall accomplish all through law that
we can accomplish for ourselves-that we shall earn by
the use of law all that we can earn for physical sustenance, and our spiritual satisfaction. God gives every
bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest. He
does not unearth the good which the earth contains,
but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of
getting it ourselves.
The time has already come to -multitudes of men
when the providence which orders their lives is a de.
monstrated reality. There is no tractable soul that
has, by yielding to the indications of the supreme will,
and obeying law, worked its way into the light, that
does not recognize a wisdom and purpose in its life




90                  Gold-Foil.
and history superior to, and independent of, itself, and
the laws within and around it. In darkness or light
this demonstration will ultimately come to all. It shall
be seen by every soul that the discipline of its life was
chosen in infinite wisdom as that which was best calcu.
lated to enlarge and ennoble it, whether it produce the
desired result or not. To all souls emancipated from
the clutches of necessity, and clinging with love and
faith to the hand of the Great Dispenser, life becomes
a great and glorious thing. They recognize every affliction, every reverse, every pain, as portions or fea.
tures of an infinitely beneficent ministry. Every joy
that visits them, every hope that cheers them, every
good that they receive, is a renewed testimony of the
love in which they are held by Him who has ordered
their life in the past, and who is pledged by all His
previous ministry to lead it to its divinest issues. It is
to this height of human happiness that I would lead the
blind, mistaken, discontented spirits that grope among
laws as blind as themselves. Poor orphans! Happy
for you is it that your belief, or lack of belief, does not,hut out Providence from you, nor hinder its constant
efforts to bring you to its recognition!




VIII.
DOES SENSUALITY PAY?
"Cent. per cent. do we pay for every vicious indulgeace."
"If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away, but the good re.
mains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away but the evil
remains."
"Virtue and happiness are mother and daughter."
IFE  would appear to be a very dangerous sea,
judging by the number of wrecks that strew its
shores-more remarkably unsafe, perhaps, for pleasure
yachts and such other fancy craft as may fail to main
tain the proper relations between canvas and ballast.
I know of no object of contemplation more sad than a
human wreck.  I can look upon death when it brings
release to a happy soul, or even to a miserable body,
with an emotion akin to satisfaction; I can contemplate
a great calamity, when it involves no stain of honor
and no loss of character, with equanimity-content that
the hand of Providence is in it, and that good must




92                 Gold-Fo. 1.
consequently come out of it; I can read cf great conflicts upon the battle-field, where the atmosphere is
burdened by expiring life, and blood flows in rivers,
and rise from the picture inspired by its heroisms; but
I cannot look upon a human wreck, a lost life, a ruined
man or woman, without being sick with horror, or saddened into an unspeakable pity.. To think of youth's
bright hopes and precious innocence-of love of truth
and purity-of honor, and manhood, and womanhoodof genius and talent-of all goodly gifts of person and
graces of mind-of all sweet affections and aspirations
gone down-down into the alyss of perdition, blotted
out or spoiled-ah, this is, by awful eminence, the horror of the world!
Yet visions of ruined men and women are not uncommon. We walk out into the world on some pleasant day, every thing fair and fresh around us, and,
with health in our blood and peace in our hearts, we
think how good and beautiful a thing life is; yet we
rarely walk far without meeting some one to whom all
its goodness and beauty are lost. We meet some
wretch whose haggard face and feeble limbs and fetid
breath betray the victim of debauchery, dying by his
last foul disease. Behind him walks the bloated form
of one who has surrendered his will to his appetite.
His bloodshot, meaningless eyes, and heavy, staggering
feet, give index to the curse which is upon him. We




Does Senfuality Pay?            93
turn our eyes away from him with a shudder, but only
to be greeted by a sight that makes us still more sad.
We meet a form of beauty-a woman-but the wanton
grace of her step, the artificial flush upon her cheek,
the hollow eye and brazen gaze, tell of the prostitution
or loss of that which seems to us the one angelic element of the world. All these are human wrecks-lost
lives-men and women who have surrendered all that
is best in them to that which is basest-men and women
who have turned their backs upon God and heaven,
and gone down into a very hell of beastliness. Whence
and why are these wrecks? Let us see.
In the constitution of man-a constitution which
associates spirit with matter by marvellous marriage
of organisms, and intimately interchanging sympathies,
and subtle interdependences-the Creator has so constructed the body that it shall convey to the mind, for
its comprehension, the properties and qualities of material things. These properties and qualities are communicated by and through the senses, and these senses
are so constituted as, in their exercise and office, to
affect us by pleasure or by pain. Chiefly the office of
the senses is that of conveying pleasure. For the sense
of smell, the vital alchemy at: work in the flowers elaborates an infinite variety of perfumes. For the sense
of taste, the food is prepared in meats and fruits and
grains of an infinite variety of flavors. The auditory




94                 Gold-Foil.
sense is regaled by birds and brooks, by instruments
which the cunning hand of man has made, and by that
greatest of all instruments, the human voice. Light
ministers to the pleasure of vision, reflected by number.
less forms of beauty. In fact, there is no pathway that
leads into the penetralia of our natures, and gives passage to the comprehension of the good things of God,
that does not absorb something of the divine aroma of
that which it bears. The process of eating, by which
we prepare for deglutition the food necessary for our
support, is a process of pleasure. We do not gorge
our food like the anaconda, impelled by a bald and
beastly greed; but its qualities please our senses.
Now, so long as these senses are kept to their appropriate ministry-always a subordinate one, in that they
deal entirely with, the qualities and properties of matter -sQ long will it be well with the soul to which they
minister; but whenever the soul turns to them as the
source of its highest pleasures, and seeks for the multiplication and intension of those pleasures as the great
end of its life, then the whole being is prostituted, and
absolute, unmixed evil is the natural and inevitable result. There is no law in the universe more certain in
its operation than that which punishes sensuality. The
man who makes a god of his belly feels the result in an
unwieldy, gouty frame and a stupid brain. The man
who delights in the intoxication of his senses by the use




Does Seniuality Pay  95
of stimulants, wears them out, and poisons, even to
their death, both body and soul. The man and the
woman who seek, by the gratification of desires un.
chastened by love and unwarranted by law, to filch
fi-om a heaven-ordained relation the delights of its hallowed commerce, and give themselves up to this form
of sensuality, never fail to win to themselves moral
corruption or induration, and bodily imbecility and disease., At the gate of this garden of sensual pleasure
the angel stands with his sword of flame, and no man
enters unsmitten of him. In the path of sensuality, in
all its multiplied forms, God has placed barriers mountain-high, to stop men, and frighten them back from
the certain degradation and destruction to which it
leads. The path to life is in the opposite direction.
I have said thus much upon the philosophy of the
prostitution of the soul to sense, that I might the more
readily reach the convictions of a generation which, active as it is in intellectual and Christian development,
has stronger tendencies to sensuality than any of its
predecessors in this country. As wealth increases in
any country, the tendencies to sensuality, through the
temptations of idleness and the growth of the means of
gratification, always increase. The history of national
decline and downfall is but a detail of the effects of sen.
suality. The elevation of style in living beyond a cer



96                  Gold-Foil.
tain point, always impinges on the sensual. Beyond
this point, that which we call luxury commences, and
luxury is but sensuality refined. In this country we are
all seeking for luxury; and those who cannot afford it,
associated with homes, home pleasures, and home restraints, embrace such forms of sensual gratification as
come within their means to purchase. Men who are
poor, look on with envy, and are seeking on every side,
in new philosophies and systems, and phases of religion,
for the license which shall give them more of sense
with smaller drafts on conscience. As the free spirit
of the age breaks away from bondage to old ideas, old
bigotries, and old superstitions, it goes wild, and in its
newly-found liberty runs daringly and blindly into forbidden fields. The free-love doctrines and free-love
practices of the day, the multiplication of cases of divorce, and the shameful infidelities that prevail, are all
indications of the sensual tendencies of the age.
Where penalty succeeds so poorly, there may seem
tobe rather poor encouragement for preaching; but,
in my opinion, the teachers and preachers of the age
should direct more of their power against a tendency
which is doing more to undermine the character of the
American people than their sateless thirst for gold.
Even in the general strife for wealth, the desire for
luxury is largely the motive power. The object kept
prominently in view is feasting-eye-feasting, ear-feast



Does Senfuality Pay?             97
ing, tongue-feasting, or the feasting of other or of all
the senses-and this beyond natural desire, and with
the wish and intent to coax from the organs cf sense
more of pleasure than they can afford with health to
themselves and the souls to which they minister.
Now, my opinion is, that to a man, or a body of
men, prostituted or in process of prostitution to sense,
there is very little use in talking of religion or morals.
Those are motives which they do not understand. So
I address myself to the selfishness of the age, as a motive,
the strength of which may not be questioned, and bid
it withdraw its hand from this fire on pain of losing it.
"Cent. per cent. do we pay for every vicious indulgence," says the proverb; but it is too moderate by
half in its estimate of expense, for a youth of sensual
pleasure can never compensate for a life of pain. If
you do not believe this, ask the debauchee whose senses
and sensibilities were long since burned to ashes. Seek
further testimony, if you will, of her whose brief life
of sensuality is closed by abandonment; or of him
whose gluttony has made him a disgustingly bulky bundle of ailments, or of him whose nerves shiver with the
poison on which they live. If you say that I am deal
ing with extremes, without analogies to yourselves, retire into your own consciousness, and question what
you find there-old sins of sense that start up and fill
you with remorse and fear-old wounds of conscience
5




98y~~          Gold-Foi..
gaping and bleeding still-old fractures of character
that refuse to unite, and make you shudder at youi own
weakness-old stains upon your purity that memory
will not allow to fade. This process will prove to any
man of ordinary weakness, who has been subjected to
ordinary temptations, that never, in a single instance,
has he indulged in an unlawful sensual pleasure without
paying for it a thousand times in pain.
The universal fact, based in universal experience, is,
that there is nothing in the world that makes so poor a
return for its cost as sensual pleasure. No man ever
traded extensively in this line without becoming a bankrupt in happiness. It does not pay, and cannot be made
to pay, and every man would see and understand this
if he would keep an account of his receipts and expenditures. Let me help you to open a book of this kind.
Credit sensual pleasure for a spree-a night of hilarity,
produced by drinking and feasting; and then turn to
the other side of the account, and debit it with the details of cost-money enough to furnish bread for a hundred hungry mouths; a day of languor, pain, and indolence; a damaged reputation which may interfere
with the projects and prospects of a whole life; a loss
of self-respect, and a deadening of moral sensibility; a
reduction of the capacity of enjoyment and of the stock
of vitality; the sullen pangs of a reproving conscience;
the tears of a mother and the severer anguish of a




Does Senfuality Pay?               99
father,-all these, and more, for an hour of artificial in.
sanity! How does the account look?
Suppose we try another: Credit Sensual Pleasure
for the illicit indulgence of a powerful passion. Then
place the cost upon the debit side of the ledger: shame
and fear, conscious loss of purity, the possession of a
foul secret that is' to be carried into all society, and into
all relationships, disease and remorse, or, what is more
than all these, hardness, brutality, and the formation of
habits whose only end is ruin. I may not, through fear
of giving offence, enter into all the details of the debit
side of this account. They may be found and read of
all men in graveyards, in hospitals, in brothels, in gar
rets, and cellars, in ruined families, and ruined hearts
and hopes. Now does this thing pay?
I have presented only the private side of this ac
count, and that but imperfectly. There is a public
side. The innumerable paupers, whose life is supported
by the State, owe their pauperism, directly or remotely, in three cases out of four, to sensuality-to strong
drink, licentiousness, or some form of extravagance that
proceeded from a devotion to sensual pleasure. Idiots
begotten in drunkenness, lunatics through various forms
of sensual vice, criminals whc are caged in every jail
and prison like wild beasts, diseased creatures, alike
loathsome to themselves and others, crowded into numberless pestilent hospitals,-all these are public burdens.




100                Gold-Foil.
imposed by the sins of sensuality. If we run through
the whole catalogue of crimes, we shall find them all
growing directly or indirectly out of this comprehensive vice. In fact, it may be said that all crime, with
all its consequences, is but a manifestation of the dominance of sense over reason and conscience.
In this view-and no one knows better than its victims that it is the correct view-Sensuality rises into
the position of the grand scourge of mankind. It is
the mother of disease, the nurse of crime, the burden
of taxation, and the destroyer of souls. Oh, if the
world could rise out of this swamp of sensuality, rank
with weeds and dank with deadly vapors-full of vipers,
thick with pitfalls, and lurid with deceptive lights, and
stand upon the secure heights of virtue where God's
sun shines, and the winds of heaven breathe blandly
and healthfully, how would human life become blessed
and beautiful!.The great burden of the world rolled
off, how would it spring forward into a grand career of
prosperity and progress! This change, for this country, rests almost entirely with the young men of the
country. It lies with them more than any other class,
and more than all other classes, to say whether this
country shall descend still lower in its path to brutality, or rise higher than the standard of its loftiest
dreams.  The devotees of sense, themselves, have
greatly lost their power for good, and comparatively




Does Senfuality Pay?            101
few will change their course of life. Woman ivll be
pure if man will be true. Young men, this great re.
suit abides with you. If you could but see how beautiful a flower grows upon the thorny stalk of self-denial, you would give the plant the honor it deserves.
If it seem hard and homely, despise it not, for in it
sleeps the beauty of heaven and the breath of angels.
If you do not witness the glory of its blossoming during the day of life, its petals will opien when the night
of death comes, and gladden your closing eyes with
their marvellous loveliness, and fill y(e r soul with their
grateful perfume.
lb




IX.
THE WAY TO GROW OLD.
"Good morrow, glasses I Farewell lasses "
"All wish to live long, but none to be called old."
"Every dog has his day."
"A hundred years-hence we shall all be bald."
"If you would not live to be old, you must be hanged when you are
young."
IF we except the Chinese, (who have a remarkable
talent for being exceptions to general rules,) all
men and women make an idol of youth.  Manhood in
its fresh embodiment-healthful, strong, and majesticand womanhood in its rosy morning-fragrant with
sweet thoughts and hopes, and radiant in its dewy beauty
-attract the love and admiration of all —jerhaps even
the envy of many. Childhood looks up to them, and
longs to grow to their estate. Old age regards the
memory of them with a sigh, and rarely fails to find in
them its most congenial society. We walk to our mir



The Way to grow old.             103
rors, and scan with gathering sadness the lines that the
graver of care has traced, and pluck from our temples,
with unhappy surprise, the first stark threads of silver
that Time slips through our chance-thrown locks, or inlays upon their plaited black and brown; yet "we feel
as young as we ever did."  We are not estranged from
the young, but stand among them with strong hands
and hearts, unable to realize that they look upon us as
men and women who are " getting considerably along
in the world."  The cheek and lip of Beauty, her
sparkling eyes, and plump outline, and graceful and
elastic step, touch us with the same thrill of pleasure
that they did in the early days of sympathy and passion. Youth-ah! Beautiful Gate of the Temple of
Life! It matters little how gorgeous the temple may
be when entered,-how majestic the arches, how long
the vista, how richly illuminated and emblazoned the
windows, or how heavenly the music that thrills its iristinted silences,-we never forget the precious moments
spent in lingering at the portal, the glorious rosette
above it, and the sky-born melody of the chimes that
filled our ears and hearts with welcome.
Our life's ideal is always filled with the blood and
breath of youth. Our finest conceptions of human
beauty evermore embrace youth as their prime element. Strength, enthusiasm, hope, purity, love,-all
these when combined and embodied in their most at



104                Gold-Foil.
tractive forms, rise in our imaginations as youthful at.
tributes. So true is this, that in looking forward to the
day when the dust of those who have gone before us
into the land of spirits shall rise, and assume the forms
they are to wear in the celestial city, there springs up
always a vision of their youth. We expect to meet the
tottering father whose eyes we closed, and whose
wasted and feeble limbs we composed, as young, and,
fresh, and strong as when he bore us to the baptismal
font. There are to be no thin, silvery curls upon the
brow of the mother, but in some sweet way, all the hallowed graces of maternity and the unfathomable tenderness of a soul disciplined by sorrow are to be associated-interfused-with the beauty and the youth of
the bride. Immortality-twin-sister of Eternity-is
always young, and brings no thought of age and decay.
An angel with a wrinkle? A cherub with a feeble or a
weary wing? We cannot imagine such beings. Heaven
and everlasting youth ar6 inseparable thoughts.
So it is that the first consciousness we have of growing old comes to us with a pang. There seems to be
something unnatural in it. We feel the soul within us
expanding, and know that its vision is clearer, its power
greater, and its capacity for happiness diviner, yet the
body in which this soul lives shows signs of decay.
There is an increasing incompatibility between the
tenant and the tenement. Some people feel so badly




The Way to grow old.            105
about it that they undertake to repair the old taber.
nacle-to put in porcelain teeth, and dye their hair,
and don artificial curls, and put on feathers and finery.
It is all a pretty little device, and harmless, because it
cheats nobody, and really makes the world better
looking. And this brings me to what I desire to say
touching the duty of growing old gracefully and
happily.
There is a homely kind of-philosophy that will help
those who are not up to any thing higher. The alternative of growing old is dying young. The only way to
keep hair from becoming gray is to have "it clipped off
as a memento of a departed man, or laid away to decay
with him. Wrinkles are either to be made out in
God's sunlight, among living things, by the hand of
Time, or by worms working in the dark. I take it
that there is an easy choice between these two evils,
and that whatever the evidences may be that God has
answered our wishes-whether gray hairs, or feeble
knees, or dull sight-we should regard them with
gratitude.
Again, keeping alive our sympathy with the race
to which we belong, and manfully willing to take our
chance with the rest, we should remember that when
we perceive the signs of age upon ourselves, we have
enjoyed our own single term of youth, like all men
who have gone before us, and that those who come
5*




106                Gold-Foil.
after us will have no more. Every dog has his day.
Those who are young to-day, and who are doubtless
the subjects of envy to some of us, will be old tomorrow. They are enjoying the day we have already
enjoyed, and will soon reach the point where we are
standing. It is an even thing; and it compromises all
that is unselfish and chivalrous within us to wish for a
better lot in this respect than is meted out to the rest
of the great brotherhood of men. Still again, if we
find the evidences of age creeping upon us, we cannot
avoid their further encroachment except by committing
suicide; and this would be a very bad alternative.
What we cannot help, we must bear; and it is for our
interest to bear it cheerfully. It is very pleasant to
be young, but as the body can only be young once, the
next best thing is to have the privilege of growing old.
We are to remember that if we look back with regret
to the period we have passed, the young are looking
forward with hope that they may reach the period at
which we have arrived. They may not like to be
called old, but they all wish to live long.
But there is a better point than this from which to
regard this matter. To go back to our theory that
every thing immortal in its nature is, by necessity of
that nature, young, I make the proposition that the
secret of growing old gracefully and happily resides in
the comprehension of this fact, and in the institution




The Way to grow old.             107
of such measures as may be necessary to keep a decay.
ing body from infecting or injuring in any way the
soul's health while attached to it. No man on God's
footstool feels old, or realizes that he is old, whose soul
has not been improperly affected by his body. The
feeling of age in the mind is like the effect upon life of
being in'an old, damp house, dingy with dirt and reeking with rottenness,-more perhaps like the effect of
the close, bed-fellow association of age and infancythe former drawing off the vital forces of the latter,
and imparting to it the taint of its diseases. There is
no such thing as an old soul in the universe, but there
are a great many diseased or depressed souls-diseased
or depressed by a great variety of causes, prominent
among which is the decay of the bodies which they
inhabit.
The natural idolatry exercised by the old for the
young, though owing greatly to the unpleasant associations of age, has a deeper meaning in it than we have
generally comprehended. God turns our hearts toward
the young that the influence of youth upon them may
be a power conservative of their health, and preventive
of the depressing influence of bodily age. It is a part
of the beautiful ministry of children.to preserve unin
jured by the passage of time the souls of those with
whom they are associated; and in the general rule of
life the Good Father provides children for those who




108               Gold-Foil.
live to middle age, and when those are grown up, lie
gives them grand-children, so that they shall never be
without this beneficent influence. Those who remain
unmarried, or are not blest with children, grow old in
feeling as they grow old in years, from the lack of this
influence upon them, though there are exceptions to
this rule-the exceptions illustrating the principle even
better or more forcibly than the general rule itself.
There are some among the childless old who are passionately fond of children, and I have never known
such men and women who were not genial, sunny, and
young in feeling. They-seem instinctively to turn to
children for that influence, whatever it may be, which
will preserve their souls from the depressing power of
age. I make the broad proposition that there is not
an old man or woman living, at this moment in close
sympathy with the hearts and minds of children and
youth, who feels the influence upon his or her soul of a
decaying body.
The springs of the soul's life abide in the affections.
If these are properly fed, either by love of the young,
or by love in its higher and stronger manifestations,
they mount into perennial youth. Next above the
love of the young-special or universal-comes connubial love, as a conservator of the youthful feeling of
the soul. Two married hearts that came together in
early life, and have lived in the harmony and love




The Way to grow old.            109
which constitute real marriage, never grow old. The
love they bear to one another is an immortal thing.
It is as fond and tender as it was when they pledged
their faith to each other at the altar. Such a love as
this can rise from no other than an immortal fountain.
The fires of passion may die, desire may burn out like
a candle, yet chastened and purified, this love-a
product of essential youth-becomes the conservator
of youth. The pine produces its resin, and the resin
preserves the pine from decay, centuries after the life
that produced it has passed away. The little spring
that bursts up from where nature prepares her waters
for the healing of the nations, deposits for itself a wall
which shuts out all impurities, and keeps it always
sparkling and young.
Above this love-better than this and every other
love-is the love of the soul for the Father Soul-the
sympathy of that which is immortal in it for Him from
whom it came. The man who comprehends his relation to this Being, and whose heart goes out toward
Him in true filial affection, knows that age is only a
word, and that it has no more relation to his soul than
it has to God himself. God is doubtless intimately as.
sociated with this material universe. It is blent with
all His plans. It is the organ in multitadinous methods
of IIis thought. In many ways it is the means by
which He manifests His will, so that, in a certain sense,




110                Gold-Foil.
we may regard it as a body of which He is the resident
and president soul. Yet this universe is to wax old
like a garment. It is to fade like our own bodies; but
no one supposes that the old age of the universe will
touch the immortal youth of its Maker. The extinguishment of one of the lamps that He has hung out in
space brings no shadow upon His brow. The wreck
of a sidereal system works no weakness in His arm.
Wrapped in the aura of His own ineffable love, He
lives; and because He lives, we shall live also; because He is immortally young shall we also be immortally young; because no organized material system,
however intimately associated with Him, can affect, by
its decay and wreck, the fountain of His life, the decay
of our bodies, if we are like Him, and live in the same
atmosphere of love, will not affect us, either in fact or
feeling.
A man who lives wrapped in this atmosphere of
love-love of children, love of a bosom companion,
love of men, love of God-imparts to his decaying
body something of the youth of the spirit within. As
the body may and does affect the spirit when no coun.
teracting agencies prevent, so does the spirit act upon
the body as a preservative power when in its normal
condition and exercise. Many an old man's and woman's face have I seen luminous with the fires of youth,
9utshining from the soul. The clogs are lifted from




The Way to grow old.            111
the mortal when the soul comes into sympathy with
this element of immortality. The love that gushes for
all is the real elixir of life-the fountain of bodily
longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces
the feeling of age. Upon a soul not filled and exercised
by love, the decaying body encroaches with its weak.
ness and poison, till the belief of many in the immor.
tality of the soul-a soul independent of matter-be.
comes uprooted.
Whenever men or women find themselves losing
their sympathy with youthful hearts and pursuits, they
may be sure that something is wrong with them; for it
is not in the nature of the soul to grow old. It may
grow in height, and depth, and breadth, and power,
but the passage of years can bring it no decay. Consequehtly, all those who feel themselves dissonances in
the song which the young life around them is singing,
are allowing their bodies to do their souls damage. I
believe that every healthy old saint in Christendom
finds his heart going out more and more towards the
young. As his evening sun descends, and heaven
grows glorious while the shadows gather upon the
earth, he loves more and more to gather around him
that which is essentially heavenly-young men and
maidens, and the bright forms and innocent faces of
children. Prepared for heaven, it is only in such socie.
ty and that which sympathizes with it, that he finds his




112               Gold-Foil.
heart at home. I believe that social life, in all its
healthful manifestations, is that which combines all
ages-which brings youth and middle age together
with old age and childhood. Every age needs the in.
fluence of every other age to keep it healthful. There
is no such thing as age with those who, in a few years
at most, will be as the angels in heaven. As we shall
be, and as we shall associate, there, so should we be,
and so should we associate here; and let-this truth
never fail to be remembered: that unless the aged sym.
pathize with the young, they will get no sympathy, save
in the form of pity, from the young. God does not
send young sympathies in that direction. He always
holds us back with them, while our bodies goon to decay
and death, and we forget, in immortal youth, that we
were ever old.
1^^^~~




X.
ALMSGIVING.
"Give and spend,
And God will send."
"Charity and pride have different aims, yet both feed the poor."
" What the Abbot of Bamba cannot eat, he gives away for the good of his
soul."
"He steals a pig, and gives away the trotters for God's sake."
I   HAVE no idea of absolute property but that which
is born of absolute creation by an independent,
self-existent power.  There is but one genuine proprietor in the universe, and that proprietor is its Maker.
All that we call ours — all that we win by toil, and are
allowed to hold, for our use and at our disposal, by the
laws of civil society-was made and is owned by Him
who made and owns us.  The mite that makes a home
for itself in our cheese does not, by the processes of
burrowing  and feeding, institute a claim  to property in the cheese.  The robin that builds a nest in our
maple, from materials selected upon our land, cannot be




114                Gold-Foil.
said to own the tree, if we have a purpose for it that
interferes with her nest. That God is the grand pro.
prietor must be received as a cardinal, vital fact by all
who do not deny the existence of God himself. It is
not for me to declare to the world the manner in which
He regards this portion of His property; but I cannot
help thinking that He looks upon it as a great mansion
which He has taken infinite pains to construct for the
shelter and support of a family of children in whom tie
takes infinite interest. These continents of verdure,
this great and wide sea, swinging like a pendulum between its shores, overhung by the moon's mysterious
dial, these rivers, nursed in their crystal infancy at the
bosoms of these motherly hills and mountains, this
downy atmosphere, that feeds our breath, and fans our
brows, and springs over us its canopy of blue, this wonderful variety of. animal life, that rejoices in forest wildernesses and smooth pastures, and swims in the sea and
floats upon the air-all these were made and are supported by His power, for the benefit of the intelligent
creatures whom He has placed among them.
Now, if we have any thing like ownership in these
things, this ownership has its basis in God's beneficence.
If we hold any thing by right, for our special use, and
at our disposal, we hold it as a gift of God, and as a
temporary gift. We are allowed to use these things
for a time; and then we pass away, and they are trans



Almsgiving.               115
ferred to the possession of others. Not unfrequently
they are taken from us while we live. The patient Man
of Uz exhibited his idea of property-the true ideain the familiar words, "The Lord gave, and the Lord
hath taken away." In making this world, the Creator
furnished it with all the materials necessary for the support of His entire human family. For the best devel.
opment of our minds and bodies, He made it necessary
for us to labor, so that, by moulding the agencies and
recombining the materials He permits us to use, we
may secure that which is necessary for our sustenance
and shelter. He knew that some would be able to se.
cure more than enough for sustenance and shelter, and
that others would not be able to secure enough, yet He
did not intend that any should lack food and clothing,
or any of the essentials of healthful bodily and mental
life. He knew, and, I verily believe, intended, that some
should be poor and that others should be rich; and
thus instituted the emergency for human beneficence or
charity. It is better, on the whole, that the world
should be made up of benefactors and beneficiaries
than that each man should be independent of every
other man.
Thus, every man whom He has made, or whom He
has allowed to become, rich, He has by that favor com.
missioned to be an almoner of His bounty to those whom
He has not thus favored. The sick, the helpless, the




116                Gold-Foil.
utterly poor through misfortune-these are always with
us. The Saviour Himself stated this as a fact good for
all time; and I know of no man who dares to deny
that these unfortunate ones have an absolute right to
live, and, consequently, a right to so much of the property of others as may be necessary to support them.
The pauper systems established by all Christian states
have their basis in the absolute right of the helpless to
aid at the hand of society. If you, who read these
words, are rich, you recognize, every time you pay a
tax for the comfort and support of those who can do
nothing or little for themselves, the fact, that a portion
of your wealth, at least, belongs to somebody else.
Whether you recognize it or not, the fact is the same.
What we call State charities, are essentially State equities. The lunatic asylums, the pauper establishments,
the hospitals, the reform schools, all grow out of the
duty which the element of wealth in society owes to
the element of weakness.
But the State is a great body, and moves clumsily.
There are countless fields of beneficent or charitable
effort and privilege to which its operations are not
fitted. There is a great amount of work which it
neither can do, nor should do; and precisely here arise
the duties of individual wealth to individual want-of
individual wealth to the need of the world for food, rai.
ment, Christian light, educational and religious institu



Almsgiving.               117
tions, and almost numberless schemes of public good.
If, in the economy of Heaven, there exist the necessity
of institutions and schemes for private and public good
which are manifestly outside of the legitimate sphere of
the State-institutions and schemes which can only be
established by the contributions of wealth-it is as ii
God had laid His finger upon every rich man's purse,
and pronounced the word, "Give!"  What do you
think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to
satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around
and see how many are in absolute need of that which
you do not need? Can you not take the hint?
Men may give from a compassionate, or generous
impulse-from a momentary excitement of their sympathies-and very much is given in this way, without
doubt. I will not quarrel with this variety of charity;
but I believe that a genuine spirit of beneficence can
be exercised by no mind that does not recognize all the
wealth it enjoys as the gift of God, to be shared with
the children of penury, or devoted to institutions that
contemplate the general good. God is the giver, life a
partnership, humanity a brotherhood. The selfish accumulation, and sequestration from society of superfluous good, is at war with the economy of the Universe. Every thing in nature tends to equilibrium, and
the universal compensation of expenditure. The rill
takes the gift of the mountain spring and passes it on




118                Gold-Foil.
to the brook, and the brook pours the waters it receives
into the river,-alndthe river bears the burden of its
gifts to the sea, and heaven itself descends to lift from
the sea and return in cloud-winged argosies to the
spring from whence they came the waters which it gave,
and glorifies the spot by hanging over it the beauty
of its rainbow. What earth sends up, heaven sends
down, and what heaven sends down, earth returns.
Circulation, diffusion, tendency by multiplied methods
to equilibrium-these are the universal laws of nature.
It is only man that hoards. It is only man that accumulates, and for selfish ends holds imprisoned superfluous good, and refuses to let it go out on its beneficent mission.
The charity of the day is, as a general thing, but a
sorry apology for that beneficence which springs from
a true apprehension of the primary source of wealth,
its real ownership, and its legitimate uses. Millions
have doubtless been given for the gratification of
pride, and for the purpose of securing the applause of
the world. If the time ever come when even and exact justice shall be meted out to the various agencies
operative in the world toward beneficent results, the
recipients ofcharity in its several forms will find themselves largely indebted to the devil. Bread is bread to
the hungry, and clothing raiment to the naked, and the
Bible light to the benighted. It does not matter to




Almsgiving.                119
the needy from what source a charitable ministry proceed. If they are fed and clothed and enlightened,
they have cause of satisfaction and gratitude, without
questioning the sources of the good which reaches
them.
I suppose that one of the severest trials of a sordid
man is that which is caused by the disgust he feels in
the society of his own soul. I once heard a preacher
remark that were it not for the interposition of sleep,
by which all men are separated once in twenty-four
hours from the consciousness of their own meanness,
they would all die of self-contempt. I judge the statement to be somewhat broad, but it holds within it a
truth which lies at the basis of a moiety, more or less,
of the charities of wealth. Every man who achieves
riches by great speculations, by sharp practices, by
trade which involves operations not altogether honorable, has his own method of maintaining self-complacency, or self-toleration; but his efforts usually take
the form of charity. There is no scoundrel living who
does not feel obliged to convince himself, in some way,
that he is as good as the average of mankind. Poor
scoundrels, who have no more than money enough to
feed their vices and themselves, depreciate the excellence of the character about them, and win the selfcomplacency they seek by dragging it down to the dirt
which defines their own level. Rich scoundrels, find.




120                Gold-Foil.
ing themselves respectable as the world goes, naturally
resort to sacrifices-to throwing out and abandoning
to the maw of the wolf that follows them some contemptible portion of gains gotten meanly and kept
foully. Even the highway robber boasts that if he has
taken from the rich, he has given to the poor. Not
unfrequently these men, grown rich by doubtful courses,
become special patrons of the church, or of educational
institutions. We see them installed in the most ex.
pensive pews on Sunday, or adorning a select position
devoted to the annual exhibition of a board of trustees.
But these are all comparatively tolerable men.
They do good in the world, and evince a degree of
sensitiveness which demands more or less of our sympathy. There is a form of self-conciliation, however,
which would be laughable were its results less disastrous. Though not laughable, it is really admirable,
as a specimen of the most perfect type of meanness;
for I take it that every thing perfect in its kind is, in a
sense, admirable. It is exhibited by those who undertake.to satisfy themselves with themselves by initiating
ecret schemes of good to go into operation after they
are dead-schemes which, sooner than establish or
assist, they would pluck their eyes out, if they were
expecting to live forever. They are thus enabled to
gratify their greed for gold-to overreach, exact usury,
and hoard, and at the same time save themselves from,______________________________________j




Almsgiving.                121
a crushing self-contempt by contemplating in secret
the fact that their gains are already devoted to a good
end! But the devil never leaves them here. He in.
duces them to trample under feet the sympathies and
claims of consanguinity, to cut off with a dirty shilling
old servants whose lives have been devoted to them,
to institute schemes of beneficence impracticable even
to ludicrousness, or to leave their wills so imperfectly
drawn as to create quarrels among their natural iheirs,.
and destroy the peace and harmony of families that
will hold their memories fit subjects of execration so
long, as they hold them at all.
It is time that wealth in nominally Christian hands
were bestowed upon the weak, the needy,. and the suffering, from higher motives than a compassionate impulse or desire forl public applause and private satisfac.
tion. I know that it is very hard to admit that we do
not hold our superfluous wealth and superabundant
means by absolute right-that what we earn by toil or
win by traffic is not ours to hoard or dispense at our
pleasure; but if we are really and truly owners of what
we possess, then beneficence is no duty. It is simply a
favor shown to God through care for His unfortunate
children, for which He owes us either adequate compensation or appropriate gratitude. The simple truth
is, that in the degree by which a man's wealth is in.
creased, is his family enlarged. Over against every
6




122                Gold-Foil.
pile of superfluous dollars, God places a pile of
needs.
I account the office of benefactor, or almoner, to
which God appoints all those whom he has favored
with wealth, one of the most honorable and delightful
in the world. He never institutes a channel for the
passage of His bounties that those bounties do not en.
rich and beautify. The barren moor that parts before
the steel of the mountain brook betrays the furrow by
a fresher green and rarer flowers. Noble cities and all
fornis of beautiful life mirror themselves in rivers that
become highways for the passage of commerce. God
gives leaves to every stalk that bears juices up to the
growing fruit, and presents a flower in advance to
every twig that elaborates a seed. The sky weaves
radiant garlands for itself from the clouds to which
it gives transportation. So every man who becomes
heartily and understandingly a channel of the divine
beneficence, is enriched through every league of his
life. Perennial satisfaction springs around and within
him with perennial verdure. Flowers of gratitude and
gladness bloom all along his pathway, and the melodi.
ous gurgle of the blessings he bears is echoed back by
the melodious waves of the recipient stream.
We need at this period of the Christian development a more thorough recognition of the great truths
Z have endeavored to reveal. Churches are crippled




Almsgiving.                123
with debt, or languish for efficient support.  Educational institutions are begging for aid to enable them
to meet the wants of the time. Missions encroach but
feebly upon the domains of superstition and ignorance.
The people are unsupplied with good public libraries.
Hundreds of thousands of helpless children are growing
up ignorant and vicious. Sickness and want are evermore around us. Need in a thousand forms cries for
aid by a thousand voices; and while there is wealth
enough in Christendom to satisfy this cry, and the cry
remains unsatisfied, there will remain wrongfully withheld from its appropriate use the wealth God has sent
to satisfy it. So open your hands, ye whose hands are
full! The world is waiting for you! Heaven is waiting for you!  The whole machinery of the divine
beneficence is clogged by your hard hearts and rigid
fingers. Give and spend, and be sure that God will
send; for only in giving and spending do you fulfil the
object of His sending.




XI.
THE LOVE OF WHAT IS OURS.
"There is one good wife in the country, and every man thinks he hath
her."
"Every bird likes its own nest the best."
"Every man thinks that his own geese are swans."
HENEVER  that becomes a personal posses.
sion which is legitimately an object of love,
and which involves one's character for good taste,
sound judgment, and personal power or prowess, its
value, in the eye and heart of its possessor, is raised
above the estimate and appreciation of other minds.
If we select a horse for certain points of organization,
and certain characteristics of temper and training, and
purchase him, we feel that, to a certain extent, that
horse's reputation is a part of our own. We identify
ourselves with the animal.  If he trot a mile in three
minutes, we are proud, as if the fact were in some way




The Love of what is ours.         125
creditable to us. If he can travel eighty miles in a
day, and continue it, we feel as if the fact were a compliment to ourselves. We see grandeur in the carriage
of his head, and grace in the movements of his limbs,
that no one else sees. So we look over our dwelling,
in the arrangement and furniture of which we have expressed our best ideas of home, or into our:garden,
which is as we made it, and their harmony and beauty
impress us as they impress no others. Our friends pass
both without a thought, perhaps, or they give them a
quiet compliment that means but little. Our dog may
be a very ugly brute, but we own him, and do not like
to hear his ugliness alludedto. We are complimented
in the admiration bestowed upon the prints and paintings which adorn the walls of our parlors, quite as much
as if we had made them ourselves. There are numberless beautiful and good and graceful women in the
world, but that one of the number which has been the
subject of our choice, and the mother of our children,
is a little better than any other, although, for reasons
best known to the world, we may not be the objects of
any-man's envy.
So it is that each man has bread to eat that
the world knows not of. So it is that each man is
richer than the world estimates him  to be. There
is more than one sense in which no man makes an
honest return of his property to the assessors of




126                Gold-Foil.
taxes. All those objects of possession into which we
have cast our thought, or which have come to us by a
purchase involving choice and the exercise of taste and
judgment, become partakers of our own life-a part of
ourselves and of our own personal value. We identify all
our productions with ourselves. We have a private
opinion of all our literary children that no one else entertains, particularly if they are abused. Even our
opinions upon the most important subjects are so recognized by us as a personal possession that we cannot sep.
arate them from our personality. It is for this reasor
that political and religious conflicts are so bitter. Meu
do not get angry because an opinion is attacked, but
because they feel themselves attacked with any opinion
which they hold. Their conscience, judgment, tasteevery thing in them that joined in the formation or
choice of an opinion-is affronted with the attack upon
the opinion itself. This is the secret of the great majority of the personalities and bitternesses that grow
out of the high conflicts of opinion in the world. There
is nothing to quarrel over and get excited about in an
opinion, any more than in a potato, if it do not happen
to belong to us. It is amusing to see the indifference
with which a man will regard a public attack" on an
opinion which he has not accepted, and the excitement
he will manifest when some cherished notion of his own
is assailed.




The Love of what is ours.          127
Now, when I find a law like this running through
all mankind-a law which has none but good effects
when held within legitimate limits of operation-I
know that it means something. Such laws are never
instituted for nothing. God's benevolence is in them
somewhere-that we may be sure of-and it becomes
our pleasant task to find it.
The first benevolent design that shows itself to us
in this law and its operation is that of making men contented and happy. If each man feel that he has got
the best wife in the world, the brightest and prettiest
children, the finest horse, the cleverest dog, the most
convenient and tasteful home, the soundest opinions in
politics and religion-that all which he possesses has
advantages apparent enough to himself over the possessions of his neighbors-it is that he may be happy and
contented in them. Every man may see in the peculiar
pleasures which he derives from his possessions a pro.
vision of God for his special individuality-things in nature and art that answer with single and special intent
to his judgment and taste, and the peculiar wants of
his nature. The value that he places upon these things
is not fictitious. They hold relations to him-to his
nature and his wants-that they hold to no one else,
and that no other things hold to him. They are, then,
in a sense, a part of him. His life passes into them,
and they pass into his life. He is identified with them,




128                 Gold-Foil.
and they partake of those primary values which are
based in each man's need of ministry.
It is in these things that we are to look for God's
special manifestations of benevolence to us. We receive pleasure from the sunshine and the rain, from the
stars overhead and the flowers under feet, from ocean
and air, from sea and sky;-all these, in fact, are pos.
sessions-but they come to us, or are held, in common
with all of our race. We are not proud of them. We
do not point to the sun in vanity, nor do we boast of
the nebulous silver that sheets the milky way. From
the general ministry of God to the wants of the race
we get no idea of His special provision for us. We see
benevolence in it, but it is not meant particularly for
ourselves. We find ourselves different from other men,
and we firnd specially prepared for us those objects that
arrange themselves with delightful relations around our
individualities. It is not strange that they appear more
valuable to us than to others, for they are, in fact, more
valuable to us than to others. My friend loves devoted.
ly a woman whom I, and perhaps no one else, could
ever love at all, or love so well, and that wife is God's
expression of special benevolence toward him.  So is
every thing which, among his possessions, has a special
value in his eyes-a value not apprehended by others.
If men will examine their lot in this light, they will
find themselves much richer than they generally sup.




The Love of what is ours.         129
pose themselves to be. There is, notwithstanding the
line of facts which I have developed, abundant discon.
tent and envy in the world; and every man should look
into his lot to see whether, on the whole, he would be
willing to exchange it for that of any other man. Suppose that each individual who reads this article summon
before his imagination the individual whose lot he has
been inclined to envy. Think the matter all over, and
decide, my friend, whether you would exchange places
with him. Would you give up your wife, your chil.
dren, your home, your associations, your sentiments
and opinions, your friendships, your temptations, and
your name, for his wife, children, home, associations, friendships, sentiments, opinions, temptations,
and name? No? Why not? Ah! you own something
too precious to surrender-you possess that wealth
which is of inestimable value with relation to your own
peculiar self, and which you cannot afford to exchange
for any thing else under the sun. Now this wealth is
the measure of God's special expression of love for you,
and it is given to you to make you contented with your
lot. Receive it as such, and be happy in it. Identify
yourself with it. Rejoice in it, for it is something set
apart by God for you, and is sacred to your use. He
marries you to every one of these special blessings as
truly as He marries you to the woman of your choice.
As the mind advances towards a richer life and no6*




130                 Gold-Foil.
bler issues, another benevolent intent reveals itself as
an end of this law. We dwell now among opinions,
dogmas, creeds, institutions, conventionalisms, and as
these lie nearest our life, we identify ourselves with
them. We fight for them when they are assailed, and
we are wounded in their destruction. To us they are,
in certain aspects, the representatives of the will and
way, the law and life of God; and it is only in moments
of inspiration or exaltation that we are able to pass
through, or by, these representatives, and grasp the
great realities between which and our weak minds
they mediate. When the soul can lay its hand on truth
itself, and appropriate it; when it can say " my Lord
and my God;" when it can enter sympathetically, with
a rapt appreciation of the greatness and glory of its
birthright, into the brotherhood of all pure intelligences; when, answering to the thrill of the blood of
the Godhead in its veins, it can say "My Father;"
when, with an imagination that ranges the glories of
the universe, it apprehends an infinite kingdom, and
sees itself a prince of the reigning house, and feels itself at home, ah! then it learns, or begins to learn,
something of a law which, beginning like a rill in its
humbler experiences, spreads into a river, that sweeps
it into the ocean of identity with God Himself.
This is what the world, and especially the Christian
world, wants to-day. It identifies itself with the shell




The Love of what is ours.         131
of religion, while it needs identification with the truth,
with God and His life, with all the things of God. It
needs to recognize all truth, as its property, God and
His life as its property, and all the things of God as it
property; and so to identify itself with this property
that it shall feel its honor, its name, its all, bound to it
-indissolubly connected with it. It was out of this
thorough identification of the soul with God that came
those pregnant words: "Do not I hate them that hate
thee?  It is refreshing, in such a time as this, to look
back upon the histories of the ancient saints, and see
how closely they stood by the side of God, and bound
their own personal honor to his throne. God was their
God; His truth was their truth; His honor was their
honor; and any attack made upon Him, His character,
His truth, or His honor, was received as an attack upon
themselves. We fight for our opinions, for our sect,
for our church, for our institutions; they fought for
Him and for His truth-for that which only gives significance and value to any institution of man. Oh!
how far, how very far, are we from any just appreciation of the infinite wealth upon which we may legiti.
tnately lay our hand, as our own property! We stand
and hear the name of God blasphemed with a lighter
shock and a smaller draft on personal feeling than we
experience when we hear a pet dogma denounced, and
this simply and alone because we identify ourselves




132                Gold-Foil.
with the dogma, as our possession, mere than we do
with the Deity.
I can conceive of no reason, and I believe there is
no reason, why God and Heaven, and the brotherhood
of angels, seem  so remote from those who believe
themselves to be the sons and daughters of God, save
in the fact that they have no recognized property or
interest in them. The moment that these beings and
things come into relation with a soul in any important
sense as possessions, that soul will identify itself with
them. When a soul approaches God as its Father,
Heaven as its home, and all pure spiiits as a portion of
a family in which it rightfully holds a place, its interest
and sympathy and honor are linked to them by a tie
which cannot be dissolved. They enter into vital rela.
tions with its life. They enter into and become a part
of its life. Its destiny is hung upon them. In short,
it is identified with them in such a way that it will be
wounded the most keenly and honored the most gratefully through them.
Again, the benevolence of this law, by which we
identify ourselves with the things which we love as
possessions, is manifested by the influence they are
thus brought to bear upon our chaiacter. A man
whose most highly valued possession is a horse, will so
identify himself with his possession that he will rise ho
higher in the scale of dignity than his horse. His




The Love of what is ours.           133
horse and those who are identified with a similar pos.
session will be the best society he has. He will enjoy
no other. All his talk will be horse-talk. That which
holds the most intimate relation to his life will deter
mine that life's development and character. Any stu.
dent of human nature understands this. The class of
what are strictly horse-men is just as distinctly marked
a class as can be found; and its characteristics are de.
termined by their identification with the animal to
which they are devoted.,The benevolence of the operation of this law may not be so apparent in this, but
the operation itself is illustrated with peculiar force.
As we pass on, however,.to the consideration of the
influence of higher possessions, we find the benevolence
for which we seek.
Let God be apprehended by the soul as its own
Father, and all truth as its own wealth, and all the universe as its own home-the domain of its Father-and
all pure intelligences as its brethren; let all these come
into the soul as possessions-as beings and things in
which abide its rights and privileges-so that it identifies itself with them for time and eternity, and in the
place of horse-men we have divine-men. There is no
dignity in all God's world like this. It raises man
above all the distinctions of wealth, above all titles, and
above all earthly dignities whatsoever. It places a
man where he can look up with a pure adoration. and




134                Gold-Foil.
down with a true charity. It releases him from bondage to creeds, and formularies of worship, and prescriptive lines of duty, and introduces him into the freedom
of the sons of God. He is no more an alien-an outsider-a slave spurred to the performance of his taskfor God's life is in him as a possession, and that life is
its own law. He holds the hands of angels in his own.
He lives in truth, and truth lives in him. He walks
the world a prince, knowing and feeling that he is an
heir of God-a joint heir with Jesus Christ. I can
conceive of no dignity like this; and when I see the great
world of mankind identifying itself so exclusively with
its meaner possessions, content with the dignity which
they confer, I see how exceedingly wide the gap is which
divides the present time from the promised millennium.
Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also
-the heart with all its manifestations of love, devo.
tion, charity, and honor. I know of no good reason
why the earth should differ essentially from heavenwhy men may not so identify themselves with their
highest treasures here that they will partake of the
home feeling of those who walk in white upon the
banks of the river of life-why they may not feel with
relation to God and that which is most precious to
Him-His children, His realm, His heaven-as they do
toward their earthly father, the paternal mansion, and
the brothers and sisters that cluster there.




The Love of what is ours.          135
Give us an age of gallant, chivalrous Christianity —
of men who maintain the honor of their Father's house.
Give us an age that shall enlist the respect of all who
respect earnestness and honor. Give us an age that
shall appreciate that which it is fighting for, and will
not crawl before the inferior and infernal powers that
make war upon the throne. Give us an age in which
Christians will fight for and stand by one another, and
not fight against one another.  Give us an age in
which Christian manhood shall assert itself as the high.
est earthly thing and the noblest earthly estate. Give
us an age that, instead of whining and groaning under
the truth, shall rejoice in the truth. Give us an age
which, lifted into identity with its highest possessions,
shall be made by those possessions patient, pure, heroic,
and honorable. Give us the blessed thousand years I




XII.
THE POWER OF CIRCUMSTANCES.
"The straightest stick is crooked in water."
"Opportunity makes the thief."
"The orange that is too hard squeezed yields a bitter juice."
"Circumstances alter cases."
IN making up our judgments upon men and women
who have fallen from  their integrity, we fail to
consider sufficiently the circumstances in which their
fall occurred. While these may never justify the lapse
which they occasioned, they furnish abundant basis for
the compassionate and charitable judgment of all who,
like them, are subject to temptation, and liable to circumstances that weaken the soul in its power of resistance. The straightest stick is crooked in water,
and the most upright character bends, even if it do not
break, when subjected to a great temptation, in circumstances that favor the wrong and tend to paralyze
the power to withstand it. Before God, he or she who




The Power of Circumstances.    i37
falls is guilty; but their fellows should be the lasI to
point the finger of contempt, or indulge in self-righteous gratulations that they are not fallen also. It may
reasonably be doubted whether, if there were to be a
universal exchange of individualities in the world, the
amount of sin would be sensibly diminished. In other
words, if you, or I, had been subjected to the same
temptations, under the same circumstances, that resulted in the sending of our old acquaintance to the
state-prison for forgery, the probabilities are that we
should to-day be dressing stone for the public good.
If your daughter or mine had been exposed to the
wiles of a villain, under the circumstances which sur-:ounded our neighbor's daughter when she fell, and
sqat neighbor's daughter had been in the place of ours,
the probabilities are that our daughter would be lost
to us and a true life, and that our neighbor's daughter
would be safe. Our business, then, is to thank God
for the circumstances which have favored us, to pity
those who have not been thus favored, and to be very
careful of our censure.
To a greater extent than the most of us imagine,
the wrongs, sins and errors of the age were born of,
and have been perpetuated by, circumstances. We
are accustomed to inveigh against slavery. We denounce it as a high crime in those who sustain it, and a
curse to all the parties concerned in it. We wonder




138                Gold-Foil.
why anybody can regard it in any different light. On
the other hand, the upholders of slavery regard it as a
divine institution, beneficial to the blacks and to them.
selves, and hold its opponents to be fanatics, hypocrites,
disorganizers, and inexpressibly contemptible men. To
make both parties feel more kindly toward each other,
it ought.to be only necessary for them to remember
that, had they exchanged dwelling-places and circumstances at their birth, they would have exchanged
sentiments and opinions.  Our craziest abolitionists
would,-from their natural temperament, have been in
Charleston the craziest fire-eaters, and the.most zealous
advocate of slavery would at the North have been the
principal speaker at the Syracuse conventions.  If
Wendell Phillips and Lloyd Garrison had been born in
New Orleans, to an inheritance bf three hundred slaves
apiece, and Robert Toombs and Alexander Stevens
had grown up under the shadow of Bunker Hill, they
would have been diametrically opposed to each other
as they are to-day. It is the most senseless thing in
the world for these parties to feel unkindly towards
each other. Each may struggle strenuously for the
maintenance of his own ideas of the right, but both
should always remember that it is from no merit or
demerit of theirs that they differ. Circumstances, in
ninety-nine cases in a hundred, make both the oppo.
nents and the defenders of slavery.




The Power of Circumstances.         139
Thus it is in the matter of religion. The Catholic
regards the Protestant as no Christian, and the Protes
tant regards the Catholic as the upholder of the gross.
est errors. Each class regards the other with contempt, and wonders how it can embrace a system
which it deems utterly illegitimate and fatally danger'ous. What makes them differ?  Circumstances, not
choice. England and Ireland sit side by side, subjects
of the same Queen. The English, born of Protestant
parents, are Protestants. The Irish, born of Catholic
parents, are Catholics. They stand in the relation of
religious enemies, and talk about each other as bitterly
as if they had really had something to do in making
themselves what they respectively are, when, in ninetynine cases in a hundred, they have had nothing to do
with it whatever. The circumstances in which they
were born and bred have made them what they are.
The Catholics emigrate to this Protestant country.
We regard them as misled in the main, and intentionally misleading in the exceptions. We wonder how
they can pin their faith to their church in the way they
do. Yet circumstances, over which they had no control, led them naturally into the Catholic church-circumstances' gave them  Catholic parentage, and surrounded them with Catholic influences. No Protestant can reasonably doubt that had he been born and
reared under the same circumstances, he would now




140                Gold-Foil.
be a Catholic; and there are probably not ten in a
thousand Catholics who would not be Protestants had
they been born and bred under Protestant influences.
Now, while this fact should make no difference in the
estimation in which each holds the other's system of
religion, it should dispossess them at once and forever
of all bitterness of feeling toward each other, and of
the'self-righteous assumption of superiority.
It would be relevant to allude to political parties in
this connection, but it is not necessary. The same fact
holds good, in a general way, with relation to all the
great subjects that divide men into: opposing masses.
It may be well, however, to say that in the matter of
social position, so far, at least, as it is based in birth,
there is no cause of glorying on.the part of any man.
Two children play together, and grow up together.
One is the offspring of a man of wealth and high social
standing. The other is the son or daughter of a laborer, poor, and, perhaps, ignorant.  One of these children comes in time to look down upon his humble
neighbor, and the other is brought to feel,'sooner or
later, that he is proscribed. What makes these chil.
dren to differ?  Nothing. but circumstances, over
which neither had a particle of control, yet one of them
gets proud in his adventitious position-proud of his
circumstances. Circumstances, ordered by Providence,
doubtless, grade society through all the steps that




The Power of Circurrstances.          141
reach from the bottom to the top of it. This fact may
be recognized-all the classes of society may be recog.
nized —and yet between each class there cannot legitimately be a particle of bitterness, of envy, of jealousy
or of pride.
Again, to leave this class of generalizations, let us
instance a lad in the city born of drunken parents, and
trained to familiarity with the observation and the
practice of vice from the earliest conscious moment of
his life.; He is a beggar at six, a thief at ten, a drunk.
ard attwelve, a libertine at sixteen, and a murderer at
twenty. Another lad is born in a quiet country home,
with a Christian father and mother. His whole training
is in the direction of virtue. As soon as he can speak,
he is taught to pray. He is carefully guarded from all
vicious influences, educated in the atmosphere of a pure
and self-sacrificing love, becomes the possessor of a lofty
Christian purpose, and, at thirty, finds himself by the
side of the poor convict boy of the city, endeavoring
to prepare him for the change of worlds which will
come with his execution. What makes the lives of
these two men differ so widely?  What, but circumstances?  I do not say that this city boy is, in his his.
tory, the representative of all the vicious men and
women in the world, but he is, in many respects, the
representative of the larger part of them, as the country boy is the representative of the larger part of the




1.42               Gold-Foil.
virtuous. How ought this fact to open wide the arms
of our pity and our charity towards those.whose steps
are bent toward ruin! How inconsiderate is that self.
righteous contempt and abhorrence with which a virtuous world regards those who only needed favoring
circumstances to make them  pure and worthy as
itself.
The truth is, that the great brotherhood and sisterhood of sin groan under the uncharitable judgments of
those who, but for circumstances interposed by other
power than their own, would have been among their
number. These judgments may not be unjust, but they
are uncalled for. They may be just, coming fiom Him
who sees the heart, but they are illegitimate, proceeding from those whom kinder circumstances have aided
to preserve. I say they groan under these judgments.
They feel bitterly in regard to them, and they will accept no beneficent ministry at the hands of the good
until they receive the sympathy to which they believe
themselves entitled. Any man who approaches this
class in an attempt do them good, with censure on his
ips, and the assumption of a self-won and self-preserved
righteousness in his bearing, will find, to the cost of his
mission, that every heart is closed against him. There
is a basis of brotherhood and tender sympathy in this
connection of circumstances with the development of
character afid life, and on this basis every man must




The Power of Circumstances.         143
stand who would raise the fallen, strengthen the weak,
and reclaim the erring.
Leaving classes, we come to individuals.  The
orange that is too hard squeezed yields a bitter juice
Here and there, in the path of our observation, we see
men and women who, having lived good and reputable
lives, yield to some sudden and overwhelming temptation, and fall with a crash that startles our hearts with
terror. Some man whom, through a life of strict in.
tegrity, we have regarded as a model of honor and
honesty, suddenly stands before the world condemned
as a defaulter, a swindler, a forger.  Did it ever occur
to you to stop for a moment, and think what a band of
circumstances must have conspired against, and what
temptations must have assailed him, even to lead him
one step towards the resistance of conscience, the sacri.
fice of his peace of mind, the forfeiture of his good'
name, and the danger of the surrender of his personal
freedom? Did you ever pause in your judgment, and
attempt to measure the solitary, secret, hand-to-hand
conflict with the devil by which he was at last disarmed, baffled, and ruined? Did you ever attempt to
realize the fact; that if you had been in his place you
might have fallen like him? Do you sit coldly above
the fallen man, and, with the unthinking world, con.
demn him? Ah! pity him;- pity him. Pray that you
enter not into temptation, and, while you hold his sin




144                Gold-Foil.
in horror, remember that kinder circumstances and
smaller temptations have probably saved you from his
fate.
Some gentle girl, full of all sweet hopes and bright
with innocent beauty, gives her heart to one who is
unworthy of her. She yields him her faith to be betrayed, her love to be abused, her trust to be deceived.
Enslaved by circumstances, shorn of will by the blind
devotion of her passion, ensnared by the toils of one
whom she believes incapable of wilful wrong, she wakes
from her mad dream a ruined woman. What have you
to say to her, or to say about her? God forgive you, if
you, man or woman, can stand over the prostrate creature from whom hope has departed, and breathe into her
ears words of condemnation and scorn! Why are
you, woman, who read these words, better than she?
Madame, Maiden, the straightest stick is crooked in
water. Condemn her sin if you will, hold it in abhorrence as you must; but when, with beseeching look,
she comes into your presence, her self-righteous aocusers around her, remember how the Christ that is in
you impels you to delay judgment, and, while revolving
the pitiful circumstances of her fall, to stoop humbly
and write that judgment in the sand.
The track, upon which the train of human reformation runs, is laid in sympathy, and this sympathy car
never be established so long as there exists in the heart




The Power of Circumstances.    145
of virtue the same feeling of hatred towards the sinner
that is felt towards the sin. The world will accept and
can have no Saviour who has not been tempted and
been surrounded with circumstances that exhibited to
him the measure of human weakness. A being must
be tempted "in all points like as we are" before we
can give him our hand to be led up higher. The soul
that does not appreciate the power of temptation has
no mission to the tempted. It is a law of the heart
that it will not accept the ministry of natures that have
no sympathy with it. Go the world over, and select
those preachers who have the greatest power over men
-power to move them in high directions, and power
to attract them with strong and tender affections-and
they will, without exception, be found to be those who
betray hearts and experiences that show that they are
sympathetic with the tempted. The exceedingly proper
young men who graduate from the theological institutions, in white cravats and white complexions, are men
who have little power in the world, as a general thing.
Tlie world knows at once that such men know nothing
of its heart; but when it finds an earnest, Christian
worker, who has passed through the fire, and exhibits
the possession of what we are wont to call "human
nature," it turns to him with the feeling that he has a
right to teach it.
There area great many brotherhoods in the world,




146                 Gold-Foil.
but none so large as the brotherhood of temptation and
untoward circumstance. A race of beings find them.
selves in the world without any act of their own, in
circumstances not of their own choosing —some better,
some worse-and all the subjects of temptation. The
riddle of life is unsolved. The meaning of their relations to that which tends to degrade them is not comprehended. Now the situation of this race is, to me, one
of touching and profound interest. With a God over
its head and a law in its heart that hold it to accountability, and with appetites and passions within, and cir.
cumstances and temptations without, urging, coaxing,
driving it to transgression-what a spectacle is this for
angels and for God! Yet here we all are, struggling,
toiling, falling, rising, hoping, despairing. Now, if this
great fact, of common subjection to evil influence do
not give us a basis for a common sympathy, I do not
know what other fact in God's world does. Doubtless
the brotherhood of true Christianity is a purer tie than
this, but it is less a human tie and more a divine.
Doubtless the love proceeding out of a pure Christian
spirit is a stronger motive of labor for the elevation of
men than this sympathy, but uncoupled with it, it can
accomplish but little. This brotherhood is first to be
recognized; this sympathy is first to be felt, before a
Christian purpose with relation to the race can be indulged with any practical effect for good.




The Power of Circumstances.         147
I stand by my kind; and I thank God for the
temptations that have brought me into sympathy with
them, as I do for the love that urges me to efforts for
their good. I hail the great brotherhood of trial and
temptation in the name of humanity, and give them assurance that from the Divine Man, and some, at least,
of his disciples, there goes out to them a flood of sympathy that would fain sweep them up to the firm footing of the rock of safety. I assure them that there are
hearts that consider while they condemn, and pity
where they may not praise-that there are those even
among Christian men and women, who feel attracted
toward them as they cannot feel attracted toward the
self-righteous and uncharitable men and women who
have named the name Ineffable, and claim a place upon
the rolls of the redeemed. I can never fail to remember that whatever I possess of good, of light, of liberty,
of love, has come to me mainly on the wings of circumstances, and that a greater portion of the evil, the ignorance, the bondage and the hate that I see all around
me was borne to those who hold and exhibit them,
by the same purveyors. I come not between God's
law and man's accountability, but I take the great fact
as I find it, that life, in the main, follows the line of its
original lot, as a basis of sympathy on which I stand
with one hand in the hand of all humanity, and the
other pointing hopefully toward the stars.




XIII.
ANVILS AND HAMMERS.
"When you are a. anvil, bear; when you are a hammer, strike."
"There is never wanting a dog to bark at you."
"An honest man is not the worse because a dog barks at him."
" He laughs best who laughs last."
E VERY man in the world who gives blows must
take blows.  Every man who occupies the position of a positive force, bearing upon the thought and
life of the world, is a hammer that, more or less, must
submit itself to the fulfilment of the office of an anvil.
Those whom he assails, or the supporters of that which
he assails, will turn up his face, and undertake to
straighten their crooked nails on it, or re-fasten the
rivets of their broken cisterns on it, or pound the
wrinkles out of their battered opinions on it, or punish
it with spiteful indentations.  The perfection of art
with such a man is to strike heartily when he assumes
the office of a hammer, and bear bravely when he is




Anvils, and Hammers.            149
compelled to,be an anvil. Until a man becomes as
good an anvil as he is a hammer, he fails to be thoroughly fitted for his work. What an indurate old anvil Martin Luther was! He smote errors and abuses
and sins with blows that sent their resonant echoes
through all the centuries. He was a moral sledgehammer, assailing a system that shook through all its
rotten timbers; but that system and its defenders returned his assaults, and tested his resistance and endurance. The diet of Worms made an anvil of him;
and the kind of steel he had in him was manifested in
his reply to the friends who undertook to dissuade him
from going to Worms to be hammered: "Were there
as many devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would
on! "  That was the way of Luther, the anvil.
The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres
of every true reformer's character. They are, in fact,
the two aspects of every leader, let him be never so
high, or never so humble. Every man who strikes
blows for power, for influence, for institutions, for the
right, must be just as good an anvil as he is a hammer.
If he is not, he may properly conclude that he has no
very important mission in the improvement and pro.
gress of his race. If private and instituted sin, error,
prejudice and wrong would be kind enough to stand
quietly, and let us batter in their sides, or knock them
down, reform would become a fine art, with great at



150                Gold-Foil.
tractions for men of weak constitutions and gentle
pedigree; but they always object to tnis mode of
treatment; and any man who attacks them must cal.
culate on his power of resistance, or his power to bear
without flinching the blows he will receive in return.
A pugilist, who is an inferior hammer, not unfrequently
wins a fight, in consequence of being a superior anvil.
If victory were always with the hammer the French
would always be victorious; but the anvil won at
Waterloo.
But the blows which a reformer receives in direct
response to his own are not always the hardest things
he has to bear. Many become so hardened to these
that they rather enjoy them. Direct and powerful opposition is a kind of compliment to the assailing power,
and demonstrates fear, or the consciousness of damage
on the part of the assailed. Every system and institution of wrong, error and sin has its defenders; but, beyond these, it has adherents and friends in multitudes,
who, being unable to enter the lists as champions, resort to smaller and meaner arts of enmity. There is
never wanting any number of dogs to bark at an honest
man. Now this playing the part of an anvil, and being
the object of the vocal demonstrations of a popular
quadruped, are two very different things. Many a
man can withstand the fiercest blows of an individual,
who will shrink from the barking of the people. Many




Anvils and Hammers.              151
a man can give blows valiantly and receive them brave.
ly, who is made very nervous and miserable by clamor
about his heels, and spiteful feints at the terminal por.
tions of his pantaloons. In fact, there is nothing which
a true man cannot bear, provided he is conscious of
possessing the sympathy of the people.
When a reformer utterly loses, or fails to gain, the
sympathy of the people, strong indeed must be his
conviction, profound indeed must be his charity, and
vital must his faith and purpose be, if he can still strike
lustily in their behalf. Oh! how few enter upon a
career of reform, in whatever department of life, and
come out of it uninjured! How few are able to battle
through a lifetime with the errors and sins of society,
and escape unembittered toward those whom  they
have endeavored to benefit!  How few can close a
life of self-sacrifice,-misconstrued, misrepresented and
abused,-with the immortal words, welling up from a
heart of love still full and overflowing, " Father, forgive them, for they know not.what they do!"
I suppose that indifference to direct opposition and
popular clamor, even if in some sense desirable, is impossible in a nature worthy of any good work. Every
man who becomes the subject of these should, how.
ever, guard himself against the consequences to which.
I have' alluded.  Every man should guard himself
against a waning faith in humanity.  Moral forces




152                Gold-Foil.
move slowly, partly from their nature and tAe compli
cation of their processes, and partly from the lack of
social sympathy among the masses of men. The most
that a reformer can hope to do in his short life is to
introduce a leaven into society which shall at length
work the elevation he desires to effect. He can rarely
move masses to his will by the immediate exercise of
power, because there are, in sympathy, no such things
as masses of men. There are loosely bound aggregations of individualities, but no masses through which
runs so thorough a sympathy that action upon one will
be action upon all. It must be remembered that a man
may apparently have all society against him, and yet
be engaged in a work which will certainly and thoroughly revolutionize its opinions and habits. An airline railroad, running straight through home-lot and
garden and dwelling, through hill and valley and
meadow, will throw everybody upon its course into
wild confusion during the progress of its construction;
and were we to sympathize with the clamor of those
with whose private interests it temporarily interferes,
we should unite with them in calling it a curse. But
when, after long preparation, and great individual
labor and sacrifice, it is completed, and the cars commence their regular trips, the abutters upon the road
adapt themselves to it, reap gladly and gratefully its
advantages in the appreciation of their estates, and




Anvils and Hammers.              153
iearn to regard it as a blessing which they cannot
spare.
There are many good reasons why a reformer
should be slow to lose his faith in humanity. The first
and most obvious is, that there is always involved in
this loss the loss of faith in God and in himself. I have
yet to see the first reformer who has lost his faith in
men-who has become sour and bitter toward his fellows-who has not also ceased to be a religious man.
The religious anniversaries in the great cities nearly
always are accompanied by gatherings of men who,
having exhausted their faith in their fellows, and become bankrupt in charity, meet to pour into one another's ears, and into the ears of a curious multitude,
the horrid discords of their blatant infidelity. The reformer feels, too, that he comes into any general judg.
ment of his kind. If he do not feel this fully, he at
least loses faith in his power over men, and, disap.
pointed, sinks back into fretfulness over the failure of
his mission, and the miscarriage of his life.
Another reason why a reformer should be slow to
lose faith in men, is because they cannot at once understand him. They have lost faith in leaders, and for
good cause.  Leaders have been accustomed to use
them for the accomplishment of selfish purposes. Thus,
when a new leader arises, it takes them a long time to
become fully assured of his motives. As there are al.
7*




154                Gold-Foil.
ways men enough whose selfishness leads them to misconstrue these motives, it may sometimes require many
years for a man to vindicate himself, and secure confidence. There is no justice in blaming the people for
this cautiousness: they have been deceived too often,
and would be fools were they not to exercise it. A reformer has no right to expect immediate reception into
the confidence of the people. They must be satisfied
of the motives of him who undertakes to lead them,
measure his ability, sound the depths of his charity, and
intellectually comprehend his plans before they ought
to consent to be guided by him. It is no more than
just to say, that every reformer who has lost his faith in
men, and become embittered by the loss, proves that
the judgment of the people upon his character is just.
He undertook a task for which he was not fit, and the
people found him out.
A stronger reason still for the preservation of faith
in men, is, that the more intractable and unreasonable
they may be, the greater their need of reformation, and
the larger draft do they make upon faith. Faith in humanity, under divine guidance and blessing, is the hope
of the world. Christianity comes to us with no comr
pulsory processes. It has faith in itself, doubtless; but
without faith in men, it would never have come, or
never would have made its appeal to voluntary choice.
All powers that have no faith in men act by compulsion,




Anvils and Hammers.             155
or by circumvention. There can be no action upon
will-no motives of action presented to voluntary
choice-that do not proceed upon the basis of faith in
humanity. The moment we lose this faith, our efforts
are paralyzed, and we turn railers and accusers. A man
who desires to benefit his fellows cannot proceed a single step without faith in those whom he would benefit.
No matter how bad men may be, there must be,
on the part of him who would reform them, the faith
that there is that in them which will respond to the
truth when it can be brought into contact with their
judgment and conscience, or he can do absolutely
nothing.
The people owe a duty to all who come to them
with the professed wish to do them good. A man is
not necessarily bad because a dog barks at him, and an
honest man is never the worse because a dog barks at
him. If you will look over your town, your state, your
country, you will readily select the names of those
against whom there is more or less of popular clamor.
You will recall here and there names that are names of
reproach. You shrink from association with those who
bear them. If you enter their presence, you enter suspiciously, as if you feared a taint, or guiltily, as if you
thought them conscious of the contempt in which-you
hold them. You think, because there is so much outcry against them, there must be something bad in them.




156               Gold-Foil.
Now, no considerate, generous man will join in this outcry, or allow it to prejudice him against its object. It
is, I believe, the general rule, that these men are men
of power-of genuine progressive ideas-men who have
an errand of good to their race.
Look back over the past, and see how many of those
whom the world once abused are the world's idols.
Who are the preachers whom you most delight to
hear? Have they not, at some time in their history,
been the objects of the world's outcry, and of yours,
too? Look at the ballots which you carry to the polls
with confidence, and perhaps with unlimited enthusiasm. Do they not bear the names of men whom you
once verily believed to be the incarnations of selfishness and demagogism? Think of the statesmen, hunted
to their graves by the hounds of popular clamor, who
are now enthroned among the nation's immortals. Remember all the men against whom you have joined in
denunciation, and whom you have learned to respect,
if not to love, by getting near to them, and obtaining
a look into their honest hearts and a vision of their devoted lives. Look over the whole track of history, and
see how every one who ever did great good in the
world has been the object of the world's maledictions,
and then be careful how you join in an unreasoning outcry against any man.
While the world should be more careful and consid



Anvils and Hammers.             157
erate in its treatment of those who come to it with a
mission of good, the reformer himself should be very
patient with the world. He must not only retain his
faith in it, but he must not be in too great a hurry to
be understood and accepted. He must draw close to
the world, where it can look into his heart, and the
world should draw close to him, until it is rationally
satisfied that he has nothing for it. The efforts of opposing forces, backed by the indorsement of the unreasoning multitude, should throw no worker for the
world off his poise, nor should they deprive him of the
honest judgments of those who think. No true man
will ever be in haste to vindicate himself before the
world by direct efforts for that end. He has faith in
men, and that gives him faith in the ultimate judgments
of men. He lives, and speaks, and acts, and he is content to let his life, his words, and his actions speak for
him, By them he knows that, sooner or later, the
world will judge him, and he is content. Show me a
man who gets excited and uneasy under popular clamor,
and betrays his unhappiness and anxiety by frequent
private or public explanations and justifications, and
you will show me one who is not to be trusted. He
has not the spirit nor the stamina for his work. But
he who goes straight forward, confident in his own motives, true to his own convictions, and calmly trustful
of the ultimate issue of his efforts and his life, is of the




158               Gold-Foil.
true metal, and one maybe sure that there is something
good in him.
He laughs best who laughs last. The wheels of
progress do not stop. The world advances toward and
into a better life, and will advance until, leaving the
hard, clumsy and jarring pavements of the marts of
selfishness behind, it will strike off joyously into the
broad avenue of the millennium. No man can be a
true worker for human good who does not believe that
the cobble-stone pavement has an end, and that there
is an avenue ahead where it will be his turn to enjoy
himself. He believes that the time will come when
what he is doing, and has done, will be accepted at its
true value. He may be laughed at now; he may be
scoffed at and scorned; his motives may be maligned;
he may be hammered by opposition and barked at by
popular clamor; but he knows that sometime in the future it will be his turn to laugh, and he is confident that
he will laugh last and laugh best. He knows that God
will prove to be a good paymaster, and he believes that
the world will, in the long run, be just.
If any man, propound ideas in advance of the world,
the world, in its progress, will come up to them, as cer.
tainly as the world continues to exist, and then, if not
before, it will remember. -Those who cherish truth
and stand by the right, must be at warfare with those
who hold to falsehood and to sin. There is no con



Anvils and Hammers.            159
scription in this war. It is a voluntary service on both
sides, and neither is in want of cowards. There is a
contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of
the blows and clamors of opposing forces. There is no
honorable fighting for any man who is not ready to forget that he has a head to be battered and a name to be
bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as
ready to be struck, as to strike, for her. The eye that
can see the triumph of that which is good in the world
from afar, the heart that can be certain of victory,
though now in the sulphurous thickness of the fight,
can afford present contumely and even present defeat.
The bearer of such a heart and eye knows that, sooner
or later, the time will come when' he and the band to
which he belongs shall celebrate a nnal victory over all
that oppose them-that they shall come home from the
contest "with songs and everlasting joy upon their
heads." He knows that the last shout will be his, and
that the severer the conflict the heartier will that shout
be. Ah! what peans of triumph, what sweeps of ma.
jestic music, what waving of banners, what joyous tumult of white-robed hosts, shall greet him who goes
home, worn and weary, to take a crown worthily won
in the contest with error and with wrong. May that
crown be yours and mine I




XIV.
EVERY MAN HAS HIS PLACE.
"You stout and I stout,
Who shall carry the dirt out?"' Every man cannot be vicar of Bowden."
" He that cannot paint must grind the colors."
HO  shall be vicar of Bowden and who shall
carry the dirt out-who shall paint and who
shall grind the colors-are questions which, in various
forms, have agitated the world since human society
existed. Dissatisfaction with position and condition is
well nigh universal. Every man walks with his eyes
and wishes upwards-some moved by aspiration for a
nobler good, others by ambition for a higher place;
some )y- emulation of a worthy example, others by discontent with the allotments of Providence. The infant does not forget to climb when he learns to walk,
qor is the man less a climber than the boy. Every
thing is towering, or climbing, or reaching, or looking




Every Man has his Place.           161
upward.  The elm  stretches its feathery arms and
waves its hands toward the clouds that hang over it,
the vine pulls itself up the elm by its delicate fingers;
and the violet sits at the foot of the vine and looks up,
and breathes its fragrant- wishes heavenward. Even
the sleeping lakelet in the meadow dreams of stars,
and will not be satisfied without a private firmament
of water-lilies. It is as if God had whispered into the
ear of all existence, the moment it was emerging from
lhility, the words-" look up!" and, hardly knowing
why, it had been looking up ever since. Well, this is
right; for, far above every thing shines the great
White Throne-sits the Father Soul-abide the treasuries of all good-burns the uncreated fire at which
the torches of life were lighted. It is a natural, instinctive thing to look upward.
Discontent may be a very good thing, or a very
bad thing. There is a discontent which is divine,which has its birth in the highest and purest inspirations that visit and stir the soul. All that discontent
which grows from dissatisfaction with present attainment, or springs from a desire for higher usefulness, or
has its birth in motives that impel to the worthy
achievement of an honorable name and an honorable
place, is a thing to be visited by blessings and benisons.
Discontent which comes from  below~-which comes
from a soul disgusted with its lot-a soul faithless in




162                Golc Foil.
God, and out of harmony with the arrangements and
the operations of Providence, is an evil thing-only
evil-and that continually. One holds the principle
of love; the other of malice. One is attracted from
above; the other is instigated from below. One tends
to the development of a symmetrical, strong, and har.
monious character; the other to disorganization and
depreciation. One is from heaven, the other is from
hell.
I look out of my window, and see a carriage rolling
by, with its freight of richly-dressed ladies. On the
coach-box sits a man who drives the horses when they
go, and opens the door of the carriage and lets down
the steps when they stop. Further up the street there
is a building going up. The architect stands by with
his hand in his breast, giving directions, The hod.
carrier, smeared with mortar, passes him, climbs the
giddy ladder, and drops the bricks upon the scaffolding, and these, one after another, are driven to their
places by the ringing trowel of the brick-layer. I rise
from my seat, and walk through the rooms adjoining
my own. Here sits an editor, hastily putting together
the thoughts that will form to-morrow's leader. At
another table sits another editor, culling from a pile of
exchanges bits of intelligence that come in on a thousand paper wings from other communities. At their
eases stand the compositors, setting up, type.by type,




Every Man las his Place.          163
the matter which the editors prepare for them. The
pressman and the engineer have their respective parts
to perform. I find the great aggregate of life to be a
network of duties-an organized system of duties. In
order to secure the comfort of the whole, there is a
certain amount of work to be done, infinitely various
in kind. There must be an architect to plan, there
must be a hod-carrier to bear mortar, and a brick-layer
to lay the bricks, or we shall have no buildings. There
must be an editor, and a compositor, and a pressman,
or there will be no newspaper. Who shall do the
thinking, and who shall perform the manual labor?
Who shall paint, -and who shall grind the colors?
Every man cannot be vicar of Bowden.
It does not suffice to tell discontented people that
every man has his place, and will find his highest account in seeking to fill it, and to fill it well. What
particularly troubles them is, that they were made for
so low a place. They really call God's wisdom and
benevolence in question for assigning to them subordinate offices in operating the machinery of society. A
man finds himself distinguished by clumsy hands and
broad shoulders, with a hod on his back, and complains
that he was not made for a brick-layer; and the bricklayer wishes he had the ease and the honor of the
architect, and wonders why his power of achievement
is so closely circumscribed. The coachman rubs down




164                Gold-Foil.
his horses, siid marvels that he was not born to their
ownership, and that the owner was not born to drive
for him. So people quarrel with their position, the
world over. Every thing in the world is unequal to
these people. They do not see the impartial justice
of conferring upon one man great mental faculties,
pleasant address, and commanding presence, while
another is condemned to be a dwarf, both in mind and
body, and to serve his more highly-favored neighbor
that he may win bread and raiment.
Well, there is all this work to do: who shall do it?
A link broken in the chain will spoil the chain. There
are all these places to fill: who shall fill them? I fill
a subordinate office in the world: why should not you?
Is there any good reason why you should be vicar of
Bowden, and the vicar of Bowden should.tend a tollbridge, or conduct a railroad train?   Since these
things are to be done by somebody, you and I may as
well take the part that comes to us, and perform it.
It is-not best to stop the wheels of society on our pri.
vate account. If you and I have had any injustice
done to us in the assignment of our duties, it will not
mend any thing to fasten our ill-fortune upon somebody else; and you and I are not the men to skulk, I
think. Genuine, manly pluck and good nature will
settle much of this difficulty. If our advance involve
nothing more than a change of places with others, it is




Every Man has his Place.          165
not exactly the manly thing to whine about our
lot.
But there is a better and a broader basis for the
settlement of this matter- than this; and did we pos.
sess even a modicum of the faith in God that we ought
to possess, we should feel certain there would be such
a basis, though we might fail to find it. The instinctive, persistent search of the soul is for happiness. We
seek for office, or place, or wealth; we pine over the
fact that our mental endowments and acquisitions are
comparatively indifferent or positively mean; and why?
Because, while we lie dreaming upon our pillow of
stone, the places and positions of life shape themselves
into a ladder on which angels ascend and descend, the
last round leaning on a heavenly landing; because that
which is above us, in allotment, gift, and acquisition,
forms so many steps of the gradatory that leads from
the cells where we do penance, to the temple where we
expect peace and heavenly communion.  In other
words, we are discontented because we believe there
is more happiness on the upper steps of society than
on ours; and here is where the great mistake is made.
If there be any thing which human history teaches
more thoroughly than any other thing-if there be any
fact revealed to observation more clearly than any
other fact- it is, that happiness does not depend upon
condition and position-that it has its birth in posses.




166                Gold-Foil.
sions and relations superior to, and in most respects
unaffected by, those facts of individual and social life
which divide men into classes.  Here is where the
Good Father equalizes human lot. High position, considered by itself, is not a positive good-is not, in and
of itself, a source of happiness to the souls planted upon
it. There is no good reason to be found in the whole
universe of God why the coachman should not be as
happy as the dainty ladies whom he serves. There is
no reason why the hod-carrier may not be as happy as
the bricklayer, and the bricklayer as happy as the
architect.  Wants keep pace with wealth always.
Responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and
power. Of him to whom much is given much will be
required. Posts of honor are evermore posts of danger
and of care. Each office of society has its burden, proportioned to its importance; so that men shall find no
apology for murmuring at the better lot of their neighbors, while all are made dependent for happiness upon
common sources-open alike to him who wears fine
linen and fares sumptuously every day, and the beggar
who waits at his gate.
I am inclined to think that if our minds were capable of apprehending the essential facts of the life we
see, we should be convinced that happiness is one of
the most evenly distributed of all human possessions.
The laborer loves his wife and children as well as the




Every Man has his Place.           167
lord, and takes into his soul all the tender and precious
influences that flow to him through their love as well
as he. Food tastes as sweetly to the ploughman as the
placeman. If the latter have the daintier dish, the
former has the keener appetite. -Into all ears the brook
pours the same stream of music, and the birds never
vary their programme with reference to their audiences.
The spring scatters violets broadcast, and grass grows
by the roadside as well as in the park. The breeze that
tosses the curls of your little ones and mine is not softer
in its caresses of those who bound over velvet to greet it.
The sun shines, the rain falls, the trees dress themselves
in green, the thunder rolls, and the stars flash, for all
alike. Health knows nothing of human distinctions,
and abides with him who treats it best. Sleep, the gen.
tle angel, does not come at the call of power, and never
proffers its ministry for gold. The senses take no bribes
of luxury; but deal as honestly and generously by the
poor as by the rich; and the President of the United
States would whistle himself blind before he could call
our dog from us.
If we examine this matter critically, we shall find
that the sweetest satisfactions that come to us are those
which spring from sources common to the race. If you
and I are worthy men, that which is most precious to
us, as the material of our daily happiness, is precisely
that which is not dependent upon the positions we re.




168                Gold-Foil.
spectively occupy in the world. Now, if we look above
this range of common Providence into that realm of
fact, in which abides our common relationship to a
common Father, the distinctions of society and the variety and contrariety of human lot fade away and become contemptible. If God smile on me and fill my
heart with peace; if He forgive my sin, and give me
promise and assurance of a higher life beyond the
grave;;if He call me His child, and draw out from my
cold and selfish heart a filial love for Him; if He inspire me with a brotherly charity that embraces in its
arms all who bear His image; if He give me a hope
more precious to me'than all gold, and transform the
narrow path in which I walk into the vestibule of Heaven, it will very naturally be a matter of indifference
to me whether I paint, or grind the colors-whether I
carry dirt, or officiate as the vicar of Bowden. If we
were all made in His image; if we are all held amenable tu the same law; if we all have offer of the same
salvation; if we are all to be judged according to our
deeds; if we have the promise of the same heaven on
the same terms, it shows, at least, wauat God thinks of
human distinctions.
The.ministry of nature, and love, and sympathy,
are common to all men. On the'broad platform of
morals, the king stands uncovered by the side of the
peasant, and wealth and place flaunt no titles and claim




Every Man has his Place.         169
privileges. In religion, all men kneel and worship a
common Lord. Men are placed in different positions
in this world simply because there is a great variety of
work to do, and no one man can do all kinds. If you
and I have found our places-if we find ourselves engaged in doing that thing which, on the whole, we can
do better than any thing else, then low discontent with
our lot is not only sinful but mean. God gives to you
and to me just as many sources of innocent happiness
as he has given to anybody, and opens to us just as fair
a heaven as he has opened to anybody. It becomes us,
therefore, to fill our places, and do our particular duties
well, hold up our heads in front of every man with selfrespectful complacency, do honor to the office which
God has selected for us, by a faithful performance of
its functions, and take and pocket contentedly the
penny a day which we get in common with others.
The Creator doubtless knew what weak, unreasonable,
and inconsistent creatures we should be when he made
us; but if you and I had made a world full of people,
and set them at work with pledge of even pay and
equal plivilege in all essential good, and they had set
themselves to erecting artificial distinctions among
themselves, and gone to whining over the parts we had
assigned to them, we should be exceedingly disappointed, not to say disgusted.
Still, we may all look up. There are steps to be
8




170                 Gold-Foil.
climbed in life, but we can only climb them worthily
by becoming fit for the ascent. It is only after beconing prepared for important places, through the education involved in the intelligent and faithful discharge
of the duties of the place in which we find ourselves,
that it is best, or even proper, that we be advanced.
It is not those who pine and Whine, and quarrel with
their lot, who are apt to change it for one which the
world calls better. Aspiration, worthy ambition, desire for higher good for good ends-all these indicate a
soul that recognizes the beckoning hand of the Good
Father who would call us homeward toward himselfall these are the ground and justification of a Christian
discontent; but a murmuring, questioning, fault-finding
spirit has.direct and sympathetic alliance with nothing
but the infernal. So while God gives you and me the
privilege of being as happy as any other man, and
makes us responsible for nothing more than he gives us
let us be contented, and,
"Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."




.XV.
INDOLENCE AND INDUSTRY.
Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man."'Constant occupation prevents temptation."
" Idle men are the Devil's play-fellows."
"Business is the salt of life."
UHAlANITY is constitutionally lazy.  I have yet
to see the first child take naturally to steady
work, or the first young man look forward with no de.
sire to an age of ease. There are multitudes of men
who love work, but they have learned to love it, and have
learned that they are made truly happier by it. We are
all looking forward to some golden hour when we may
"retire from business," read the newspapers at leisure,
drive a pair of steady bay horses, walk to the postoffice with a well-fed belly and a gold-headed cane, and
be free. I do not believe that any man ever became
thoroughly industrious, save under the impulsion of




172                 Gold-Foil.
motives outside of the attractions of labax. We labor,
because it is necessary for us to labor for sustenance, or
to achieve an object of ambition, or because idleness is
felt to be a greater evil than labor. The number of
potatoes unearthed in the world "for the fun of it,"
would not feed a flock of sheep. In fact, I believe that
God made us lazy for a purpose. He did not intend
that we should have any thing but air and water costless. If labor were a pleasure, we should have really
to pay for nothing, and, as a consequence, we should
prize nothing that we have. All values have their basis
in cost, and labor is the first cost of every thing on
which we set a price. But labor has a higher end than
this, and I will try to reveal it.
Every man and woman is born into the world with
a stock of vitality which must be expended in some
way. It may be breathed out in unnecessary sleep, or
appropriated wholly to the digestion of unnecessary
food, and a good deal of it runs to waste in these ways.
It may be expended in sport and in play, it may be exhausted in sickness, or it may be applied to labor.
This vitality is naturally a restless principle. In the
boy, to whom existence is fresh, we find it unchained,
and betraying itself in antics and races, and foolhardy
feats, and various play. It impels him to exercise and
activity in all places and at all times. This vitality is
alike the basis of mental ard muscular power. Forth




Indolence and Ir dustry.         173
from it proceeds all action whatsoever. When we pos.
sess it, we live; when it leaves us, we die.
This vitality is, then, the matrix, as it is the meas.
ure, of inherent power;yet one man with a given
stock of vitality may have a hundred times the practical power of another man whose stock of vitality is the
same, the reason being that the organs of action,
through which vitality manifests itself, and by which it
works, are better trained in one case than in the other.
Use is the condition of development of all the powers
of the body and the soul. Facility of action comes by
habit. A man from any outside profession, obliged to
write a daily brace of leaders for the newspaper, would
break down in six months, while the accustomed editor
would not find himself fatigued beyond his wont. The
greatest mind in the nation would find itself perplexed
and exhausted in the attemipt to make a horse-shoe,
while some humble apprentice of the smithy would
make one of superior excellence with comparative ease.
The greater the facility that may be acquired in the
use of organs and faculties, the smaller the draft will
be upon the vitality that feeds them. The reason why
some men accomplish'o much more than others is not,
generally, that they have more vitality than others,
but that the facility of labor which use and habit have
given them enables them to do more without vital ex.
haustion.




174                 Gold-Foil.
Now life means but little unless it means that we
are in a state of education-a condition in which our
powers and faculties are to be educed. If we are not
in training for something, this life is one of the most
serious of all practical jokes. Labor in all its variety,
corporeal and mental, is the instituted means for the
methodical development of all our powers, under the
direction and control of will. Through the channels
of labor this vitality is to be directed. Into practical
results of good to ourselves and others it is all to flow,
and those results will prescribe the method which we
need. It is, to secure this great end of development
that the prizes of life are placed before us as things to
be woirked for. When we get these prizes, they seem
small; and, intrinsically, they are of but little value.
They are, in fact, little better than diplomas that testify
of long labor, worthily performed. Still before us rises
worthier good, to stimulate us to harder labor and
higher achievement. Still the will urges on the organs
of the body and the faculties of the mind till that habit
which is second nature gives them the law of action,
and employment itself becomes its own exceeding great
reward.
Still, the most industrious of us feel, at times, that
we are laboring by compulsion. Often both the spirit
and the flesh are unwilling and weak. We are goaded
to labor by need. We are urged to labor because we




Indolence and Industry.          175
cannot enjoy our leisure. We labor because we are
ashamed to be idle. Many a man, bowed down by his
daily toil, looks forward to the grave for rest; and
far be it from me to tell him that he is looking and
hoping for that which he will never experience. I do
not believe there will be any hurry in eternity, or any
such necessity of labor as we have here. If I have a
competent comprehension of the spiritual estate, it will
tax us but little for food and clothing; and if the labor
to which we devote ourselves here shall train us to
facility in the use of our powers, the work that will be
given to us to do there will be something to be grateful for. We shall have all the rest we want. A sleep
of a century will make no inroads upon our time, if we
need any such sleep. But I have an idea that when
the clogs are off, and the old feeling of youth comes
back, we shall be glad to have something to do, and
that the use of powers which labor has trained under
the direction of will for worthy ends will be everlasting play, as keenly enjoyed as the play of the rest.
less boy.
It is only as we look upon labor in this light that
we understand its real value and significance. If the
prizes we win here are all the reward that labor brings,
it pays but poorly. But labor, like all the passages
through which God would lead our life, is full of incidental rewards. The man who carves the channel of a




176                Gold-Foilaborious life, taps the springs of tributary joys through
every mile.  Health is an incident of powers well
trained and industriously employed. Self-respect wells
up in the heart of him whose energies, under the con
trol of his will, are directed to worthy ends. Popular
regard crowns him  who is a worthy worker.  The
sleep of the laboring man is sweet, ahd none but he
knows the luxury of fatigue. Temptation flies from
the earnest and contented laborer, and preys upon the
brain and heart of the idler. Labor brings men into
sympathy with the worthy men of the world. So,
there is enough of joy to be found in labor, if we will
only mark its source, to encourage and content us, even
if the great end of labor be somewhat hidden from us,
as it doubtless is from multitudes of men.
This vitality of which I have been talking will find
vent somewhere. If, under the direction of the will,
it is not taxed for the support of methodical labor, it
will demonstrate its nature in irregular ways. Wherever
we find a profession or calling, excellence in which demands great vital power, and exercise in which taxes
that vital power but little, or only for brief periods of
time, there we shall find vitality seeking demonstration
through the passions. No person can be a great sing.
er, a great actor, a great orator, or a great writer
without great vitality. In the case of the singer, the
actor and the orator this vitality, absolutely necessary




Indolence and Industry.           177
for great success, is only subject to draft on occasions.
In the lives of all these people there are long intervals
of repose, in which the unused energies seek expenditure. As a natural consequence, they are subject to
great temptations, and their lapses from virtue are notorious. I would traduce no class of persons in the
world. There are among these classes as pure and
noble men and women as are to be found in any class,
and the purer and nobler because their virtue costs
them something. There is always something peculiarly
dangerous in a calling that requires great vitality at
irregular intervals; and the followers of such callings
should understand the philosophy of their danger, and
guard themselves with peculiar care.
This will illustrate very well the influence of idle.
ness upon the morals. There are those in the world
upon whose vitality labor makes no draft- whatever.
They are not subject even at intervals to legitimate
expenditures of vitality; but they have it, and, unless
impotent in will or imbecile in passion, that vitality
will have expenditure. No truly Christian man can be
truly an indolent man. He must necessarily have established legitimate channels of methodical, vital expenditure, or his Christianity will be a very weak affair.
There is really nothing left to a genuine idle man, who
possesses any considerable degree of vital power, but
sin. A man who has nothing to do is the devil's play.
8




178                Gold-Foil.
fellow. He has no choice in the matter. Hle can find
no sympathy anywhere else. Good men find nothing
in him congenial. Industrious men have no time to
devote to him, and would have no sympathy with him
if they had. All the decent world is in league against
an idle man. Everybody despises him, whether he be
rich or poor. Everybody feels that he is a nuisancethat he is a sneak, who refuses to employ the powers
with which he has been endowed, and declines to contribute his quota to the support of the race. He is
driven by the very necessity of his position into secret
or open vice, and he finds in obedience to the calls of
temptation the only delights that season an otherwise
insipid life.
Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man. A man
whose will refuses to direct the vitality within him into
regular channels of labor-who simply feeds and sleeps,
or nurses his passions and his appetites-whose highest
satisfaction comes from sense-is as good as dead and
buried. Of what use is such a man in the world, to
himself or others? If he will not work, he is a burden
upon society, even if he prey upon a pile of inherited
wealth. That wealth, if he were out of the way, would
pass into better hands; and the world has need of it
for its workers. No man has a right to be idle if he
can get work to do, evenif he le as rich as Crcesus,
simply because he cannot be an idle man without inl




Indolence and Industry.         179
jury to himself and to society. He destroys his own
happiness, buries his powers of usefulness, and furnishes
to the world a pestilent example.
If any rich young man read these words, I have
something of importance to say to him. Your father,
either by business enterprise or family inheritance, is
rich. You know the amount of his wealth, and you
know there is enough of it to support you while you
live, without labor. Here is a great temptation. As
I have said before, humanity is constitutionally lazy;
and when you see how severely the prizes of life are to
be struggled for, you naturally shrink from the sharp,
and, what seems to be, the unnecessary competition.
There is also, perhaps, in your mind, a prejudice against
labor. It may not appear to you a very genteel thing
to tie yourself to a daily round of duties. You like to
be independent, and to show that you are so. Now
be very careful here, or you will make the great mistake of your life-a mistake which some day you will
be willing to give all your wealth to recall. I know
that you cannot be happy without fulfilling the end of
your being, and so do you. I know that you cannot
fulfil the end of your being without the thorough development of your powers by the regular, systematic
expenditure of your vitality in labor. I know that unless you do this, time will be left upon your hands to
be dreamed away alone, or inflicted as a bore upon




180                Gold-Fcil.
others who have something to do, or to be filled up by
ministry to appetites which will degrade you. So I
say to you, never dream, for a moment, of a life of
idleness. Such a life will curse you and injure others.
Such a life is as unmanly as it is ungodly. It has no
redeeming feature and no apology. Have a profession,
or a calling, of some kind, which shall make a regular
tax upon your powers. Only in this way can you be
reasonably safe from low temptations, acquire selfrespect, secure the esteem of men, and place yourself
in sympathy with this working world.
I know that there are many who are obliged to
work too hard-whose vitality is taxed beyond measure,
and beyond the profit of the organs and faculties by
which it is expended. While this fact is partly owing
to the multiplicity and extravagance of artificial wants,
it might be greatly modified by a more universal adoption of the habit of labor. The burdens of the world
are unequally borne. A great multitude live without
labor; they are drones in the hive. A still greater
multitude live by' their wits; and over all this country
-never more than at the present time-is there a dis.
position to gain wealth out of the regular channels of
business. The real " English" of this mode of acquiring wealth  is to get it without earning it-a way of
legally gaining possession of what others have earned
by the sweat of their brows. Nearly all the popular




Indolence and Industry.          181
modes and means of speculation are modes and means
of legal gambling. Not a dollar is produced in the
world that is not either taken from the ground, or
pulled from the sea by somebody; and it is a shameful
fact, that the popular means of winning wealth contemplate its acquisition without a particle of labor bestowed upon its production. I do not believe that
wealth won in this way is the right way. There is a
legitimate business of mediation between producers and
consumers, and a legitimate line of service to both, but
further than this, all those who seek for wealth without
adding a grain to the general stock, are leeches,
sponges, nuisances.
There is a more honorable way. There are legiti.
mate offices of service to the world for which the world
will pay well; and, in one of these, at least, every man
should have a place, and there do the work of his life,
winning competence as he will, and wealth if he may.
Wealth, legitimately acquired, is valuable, and it is only
valuable when thus acquired. Honest labor for the
world is the only true basis of wealth, and the grand
pre-requisite for its enjoyment. I have said that everybody lboks forward to the time when he can retire from
)usiness. There may be something in this beyond the
the natural laziness of men, or their desire for ease. It
may be that some intuition of the soul overleaps its
earthly life, and, seeing tle heavenly goal but dimly,




182                Gold-Foil.
plants its reward of labor on this side the river, when
it should be placed among the gardens upon the otl-Pr
bank. Be that as it may, retiring from business has
most commonly proved a disastrous operation.
There are old men and old women whose work of
life is really done, and who may in peace and content
sit down and wait their mysterious transit. We love
these weary workers, and bid them be happy. But a
man who retires from business before the work of life
is done, in the full possession of his powers, retires from
happiness and health. His stock of vitality is unexpended; and uneasy and discontented must his life be, unless that vitality find an outlet through legitimate channels. A life of active business carves deep channels,
and it is very hard to change them. Better far to die
in the old harness than to try to put on another. But
all may look forward to an age of leisure, lying in the
unknown land, where powers, trained to ease of action
by labor, will find themselves fed by a vitality immortal
as that in which abide the springs of all power.




XVI.
THE SINS OF OUR NEIGHBORS.
"You have daily to do with the Devil, and pretend to be frightened at a
mouse."
"Don't measure other people's corn by your own bushel."
T HERE  is little in the conduct and condition of
men that is not the subject of a false valuation;
and I can imagine nothing, save larger hearts and more
plentiful brains, that would be of so much use to the
world as a catalogue of sins, arranged upon an intelligible scale, so that their comparative enormity might
be settled at a glance. Such a catalogue might serve
a good purpose, generally, perhaps, by pointing out the
real sinners of the world, and thus bringing the materials of society to their true level; but its chief benefits would inure to those who are in the habit of overestimating their own virtues, under-estimating their
own vices, attaching fictitious importance to the sins of




184                 Gold-Foil.
others, and clothing in the crimson of crime acts and
practices as harmless and sinless as the prattle of children, as well as to those who
" Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to."
There are men, for instance, who attach a peculiar
merit to the entertainment of a certain set of theological opinions-who entertain those opinions very decidedly, and maintain them wonderfully well, while
they make dissent, an absolute sin, and regard dissenters
with pity and contempt. There are men who judge
their neighbors with great uncharitableness; who drive
hard bargains; who gamble in stocks; who are selfrighteous and censorious; who fail in tenderness toward God's poor; who never pay what they ought to
pay for the support of the religious institutions to
which they are attached, yet who would consider a social
dance in their own parlor a terrible sin, and a game of
whist a high crime that should call down the judgments
of Heaven. There are men who stalk about the world
gloomy, and stiff, and severe-self-righteous embodi.
ments of the mischievous heresy that the religion of
peace and good-will to all mankind-the religion of
love, and hope, and joy-the religion that bathes the
universal human soul in the light of parental love, and
opens to mankind the gates of immortality-is a ret




The Sins of our Neighbors.         185
ligion of terror-men guilty of misrepresenting Christ
to the world, and doing incalculable damage to his
cause, yet who find it in them to rebuke the careless
laughter that bubbles up from a maiden's heart that
God has filled with life and gladness.
This fallacious estimate of the respective qualities and
magnitudes of sins has not only blinded the reason and
befooled the conscience of the world, but it has spoiled
its language by parallel processes of exaggeration and
emasculation. Little words, that legitimately repre.
sent little things, have become monstrous words, repre.
senting monstrous things. Great sins have pleasant
words attached to them, which serve as masks by which
they find their way into good society without suspicion.
Individual notions-no bigger than a man's hand, at
first-have spread themselves into overshadowing ecclesiastical dogmas. Phrases have been invested by the
schools with illegitimate meanings and deceptive sanctity. The age is an age of words, and is ruled by
words rather than things; and there is hardly one of
them that has not shrunk from its original garments, or
outgrown them. Men are saved by words, and damned
by words. Religion rides the nominal and casuistry
the technical; and the unfortunate wight who does not
get out of the way will be crushed by words, or run
through by a fatal phrase.
The religious newspapers of the day are full of




186                Gold-Foil.
quarrels about words-quarrels instituted in the name
of the Prince of Peace, and carried on for the benefit
of the Prince of Darkness-quarrels over non-essential
matters of opinion-quarrels growing out of rivalries
of sects —quarrels fed by the fires of human passion —
quarrels maintained by the pride of opinion and by the
ambition for intellectual mastery-quarrels whose only
tendency is to disgust the world with the religion in
whose behalf they are professedly instituted, and to
fret, and wound, and divide the followers of Jesus
Christ. Yet these same religious papers will deplore
the personal collision of two drunken congressmen in
the streets of Washington as a sad commentary on the
degeneracy of the age, and moralize solemnly over a
dog-fight. They can lash each other with little mercy
-they can call each other names, abuse each other's
motives, misconstrue each other's language, criminate
and recriminate, but faint quite away with seeing a carthorse over-whipped, or a race-horse over-tasked. They
have daily to do with the devil, and pretend to be
frightened at a mouse.
What is true of the controversial religious newspapers, is true, I fear, of a great many Christian men
and women. They have pet sins-poodle sins-with
silky white hair-sins held in by a social collar and a
religious ribbon-that bark at good honest dogs, or
imaginary dogs, although their little eyes are red with




The Sins of our Neighbors.        187
the devil that is in them. As sectarians, they are given
to slander. They speak disparagingly of those who
differ with them in belief. They judge uncharitably
those who engage in practices which only their particular dictionary makes diabolical. They blacken a multitude of good deeds by dipping them into bad motives of their own steeping. Now, if I were called
upon to decide which, in my opinion, is the least sinful
in itself, and the least demoralizing in its tendencythe traducing of one of Christ's disciples by another of
Christ's disciples, or engaging in or witnessing a horserace-I should turn my back on the traducer and shake
hands with the jockey.
I know men not religious, who bear about an exceedingly sensitive idea of honor that scorns all littleness and meanness and trickery-chivalrous menreliable men-men really of pure lives and honest and
honorable impulses-yet men so warped in their reason
and their moral nature that they will follow their party
leaders through all the treacheries, perjuries, and innominable rascalities that party leaders, driven to desperate straits, can invent; who stand squarely up to
the endorsement of deceit, injustice, robbery, and murder; who pamper and patronize the most brutal and
dangerous elements of society, and who give money to
be used for party purposes that they have no reasonable doubt will be directed to the corruption of the bal.




188                 Gold-Foil.
lot-box. I know women of delicate instincts antc really
modest natures who turn the cold shoulder to a fallen
sister-passing her with a shuddering sense of pollu.
tion-yet who gladly associate with, and even marry,
men who are notorious for their infamous gallantriesyielding to the salute of the seducer the lip that curled
with scorn in the presence of his victim.
I have dealt thus far in matters of fact. They are
patent; everybody apprehends them. I will go still
further in these matters of fact, and declare that it
may be recorded, as a rule pretty universally reliable,
that a man or woman who is particularly severe upon
the minor sins of mankind-who lacks compassion for
the fallen, and consideration for the weak and tempted
-carries, nine times in ten, a large sin, with a little
name, in the sleeve. Those who see much to find fault
with in others, and who are prone to magnify and
dwell upon the shortcomings of their neighbors, are
those who have an interest in depreciating the life and
character around them. Men do not work for nothing.
They work for pay; and when I see one who seems
particularly desirous of depreciating others, I know it
is only for the purpose of bringing them down to the
mean standard which he is conscious measures his own
life.
Is this uncharitable? I think not. Is it not always the purest woman who is the last to suspect im.




The Sins of our Neighbors.         189
purity in other women, the most unwilling to believe
ill of her neighbor, the first charitably to palliate the
offences of those who fall, and the first to give them
the hand of sympathy? Is not the Christ within them
always saying-" Neither do I condemn thee; go, and
sin no more? " Is it not always the noblest man who
deals the easiest with the foibles of his neighbor? Is
it not always the best man who is busiest with looking
after his own sins, and who has neither time nor disposition to discover and denounce those of others? Is it
not always the most Christlike Christian who esteems
others better than himself, and who modestly regards his own heart as altogether untrustworthy? I
think so.
"Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?"  Who gave you authority to measure other
people's corn by your particular bushel? Who gave
you liberty to thrust forward your fallible judgment,
your warped and weak reason, your little notions, your
uncharitable heart; your long and lathy creed, and your
rule of life taken at second hand, and badly damaged
at that-p-as the standard of the great world's life?
Why will you be always sallying out to break lances
with other people's wind-mills, when your own is not
capable of grinding corn for the horse you ride?
Doubtless the world is wicked enough, but it will not
be improved by the extension of a spirit which self




190                 Gold-Foil.
righteously sees more to reform outside of itself than
in itself. Doubtless there are great sins, practiced by
multitudes of men, but they will hardly be diminished
by thpse who bring into the enterprise of extermination a greater amount of baggage than they can
defend.
It so happens, in the great economy of life, that
there is but one thing by which men may legitimately
be judged; and that is the heart. It so happens, also,
that only the Being who made it is capable of judging
it. If we are determined to measure every thing developed by the life around us by our own bushel, let us
first of allego to the divine standard, and get our bushels "sealed."  Let us endeavor to apprehend something of the infinite love which flows out unmeasured
from the Father's heart to every creature proceeding
from the Father's hand. Let us recognize that essential fact in the human constitution which renders.uniformity of belief and faith with relation to all truth,
and identity of action from identity of motive, im.
possible.
There are no twin souls in God's universe. Each
stands alone in its relation to each particular truth
within the range of its apprehension. In the field of
life, each has its standpoint, from which it observes,
and at which it receives impressions from all the facts,
persons, and phenomena of the field. This round world




The Sins of our Neighbors.         191
of ours rolls ceaselessly in the sea of light poured from
the exhaustless fountains of the sun. All around it,
thick strewn with stars, bends the blue firmament. It
seems to every man as if he were standing in the centre
of the world.  The heaven that swells above him,
skirted by a horizon that may be narrow or broad, is
the true heaven. The constellated lights that rise and
set upon his vision have relation to him as a kind of
sentient centre. That which is up, is necessarily above
his head, where his sun shines and his moon sails; that
which is down is beneath his feet; and he can hardly
conceive why his antipodes do not die of apoplexy, or
drop out of the system of things into the ethereal abyss.
So this world of human life revolves, a perfect sphere,
in the eye of God. So embracing it all around-a
fathomless heaven at every angle and aspect-sweeps
the firmament of his love, on which eternal principles
glow with steady flame, holding to rhythm and harmony the constellated truths which wheel around and
among them. It doubtless seems to every soul that it
sits in the centre of all this great system of thingsthat God is directly above it-that the essential truths
which have relation to life are those, and only those,
that come within the range of its vision; and it wonders how other souls can possibly live and thrive while
looking out upon God and the firmament of love and
truth from other points of vision. Yet, as a matter of




192                Gold-Foil.
fact, all Christian men see the same sun, and the same
heaven of truth-only they see them from different
angles.
I am aware that the two subjects which I have as.
sociated together in this article only touch each other
at certain points; but those are important ones, and
justify that which might otherwise appear far-fetched
and arbitrary. My aim has simply been to arouse the
mind of the reader to a more just and impartial estimate of those acts denominated sins, and to refer the
minds of those who are inclined to sit in judgment
upon their fellows, to the legitimate standard of judgment. A man does not necessarily sin who does that
which our reason and our conscience condemn. A
man is not necessarily in error who entertains views
and opinions widely different from ours. We are constantly prone to fix arbitrary values upon our own
good deeds, and to exaggerate evils that we see in
other systems of belief, and sins that we see in other
men. The true Christian charity is doubtless that
which grows out of true Christian love.  Essential
Christian brotherhood is doubtless based in the cor.
mon possession and entertainment of the divine life,
though that life exist amid error and sin and ignorance, through the wide range of differing beliefs. But
if we cannot have these realized as we would have
them, we can have something which counterfeits them,




The Sins of our Neighbors.       193
and is better, on the whole, than nothing. We can
have a charity growing out of a common conscious
ness of weakness, shortsightedness and sin, and a brothb
erhood of common imperfection.
p^^^




XVIL
THE CANONIZATION OF THE VICIOUS.
Carrion crows bewail the dead sheep, and then eat them."
"'Ladies have ladies' whims,' said Crazy Ann, when she draggled her cloak
BI the gutter."
"The dog gets into the mill under cover of the ass."
" He that spares vice wrongs virtue."
A     S there is one class of men in the world which is
interested in magnifying the sins of others, so
there is another, hardly less numerous, bent upon making the sins of others respectable. Out of this disposition and policy spring many of the celebrations of the
birth-days of men whose lives have successfully associated splendid genius with ungovernable passions, great
intellectual achievements with detestable vices, and ad.
mirable works with weak or wicked lives. So far has
this been carried, that there exists, more or less definite, in the public mind, the impression that great genius




The Canonization of the Vicious.   195
and low morals are generally found together, and that,
in some way, the former justifies, and, in some in.
stances, even glorifies, the latter. A drunken physician
is supposed to be very much better than any other physician, "if you can only catch him when he is sober,"
and it is imagined that there is somewhere a mysterious
but very fruitful connection between the disposition to
sottishness and skill in the treatment of disease.
I believe it is universally conceded that "the MIan
Christ Jesus" lived a purer life than any other man,
sympathized with the poor and the lowly as no other
man ever sympathized, did more for the comfort and
the elevation of the humble and the wretched than
any other, impressed himself upon the civilization of
the world beyond all predecessors and successors, and
revealed a religion which, over-arching all the elaborations of human philosophy, imparts to them whatever
of significance they possess, and holds in itself alone
the power of regenerating humanity; but, outside of
the church, there are none who, of their own motion,
meet to celebrate his birth-day. I have never heard of
the celebration of the birth-day of John Milton, the
great bard who sat in darkness, and evolved his more
than mortal dreams, and who, grappling with immortal
themes, wrested from them immortality for himself and
the language in which he wrote. I see no tributes paid
by the world to the memory of Montgomery. I never




196                Gold-Foil.
had the opportunity of drinking a toast to the gentle
Christian, Cowper, or filling a bumper to Isaac Watts,
whose lyric muse has given wings to more hearts bur.
dened with praise and surcharged with aspiration than
that of any other man since the sweet singer of IsraeL
I have never had an invitation to a dinner given to the
memory of Howard, whose life was one of Humanity's
most touching poems; or attended a supper in honor
of Martin Luther. I find the great of the world-who
were good in their greatness and great in their goodness-pretty generally let alone by the men who are
accustomed to express their obligations to those who
have been pre-eminent in government, literature, and
art, while the memory of men whose weaknesses called
for an extra cloak of pity, and whose vices made sight
drafts on all the ready charity in the market, were
toasted to -the echo.
No great man who has scandalized his age by his
personal vices, or done violence to the avowed principles of his public life by a great apostasy, can fall without drawing to his funeral all the apostates around him
-men clinging to him by the sympathy of vice and
falsehood, and using that sympathy as a platform which
shall elevate them into the respectability which his ge.
nius won for him. Even the manes of Tom Paine is
annually summoned into the congenial atmosphere of
the banquet-hall, to make respectable by its power and




The Canonization of the Vicious.   197
fire an infidelity and libertinism which stink in the nostrils of a Christian nation, and which otherwise would
suffocate themselves in their own effluvia.
Everybody knows how it is with the memory of
Burns. It cannot well be doubted that more revellers
assemble every year to celebrate his memory, through
sympathy with the steaming whiskey which he loved so
well, than with the aroma of his genius. " Poor Burns! "
they exclaim; "what a pity he drankL"   "Gifted
Burns! Child of Nature! Let us forgive him that his
gifts were not dedicated to the promotion of the purity
which hallows the names of mother, sister, and wife!"
"Sad dog, that Burns  True, he loved wine and wo.
men; but then, didn't he suffer for it? Let us compassionate him. He wasn't so much to blame, after all.
The only wonder is how a man, with the tremendous
fire-works he had in him, did not blow up with the first
flash of a woman's eyes that smote him."  And thus,
the carrion crows bewail the dead sheep, and then eat
them. Thus, with cloaks covered with the mud of the
gutter, they flock together to contemplate the mud
that a prostituted genius has gathered upon its gar.
ments, and foster their self-complacency by charitably
transmuting its sins into whims. Thus the dogs endeavor to get into the mill under cover of the ass.
One of the most mischievous and fallacious of the
current notions of an easily-erring world I conceive to




198                 Gold-Foil.
be that which makes the possession of great gifts, and
the achievement of great works, an offset to, or an
apology for, indulgence in vices which compromise in.
dividual and social purity, and outbreaks of passion that
come within the cognizance of the police. I believe
that I respect all there is to be respected in the memory
of Burns; but he was a weak-in many respects a
vicious-and, in most respects, a miserable-man. He
was the slavt of a debasing appetite. and though, at
brief intervals, he surrendered himself to the higher
and purer inspirations that floated down to him from
heaven, he loved to put them aside, and envelop himself in an atmosphere of sensuality. If he had a manly
sense of manhood, wakened into life by the arrogance
of wealth and place, it found its issue in words and not
in life.. It was the outburst of a protesting impulse
rather than the self-assertion of a principle standing in
the centre of the motive forces of his being.
Burns has left enough upon record to show that he
possessed the subtlest apprehension of all that is noble
in religion, all that is sweet and pure in woman, all that
is strong and fruitful in manly virtue, and all that is
praiseworthy in individual and national character. His
best poem, "The Cotter's Saturday Night," is a revelation, clear as light, of his knowledge of goodness, and
his convictions touching that which is noblest and
truest in life. By a kind of necessity he, and all the




The Canonization of the Vicious.   199
brotherhood of vice-enslaved genius, have been made
to reveal such a degree of knowledge of the truest
truth and the best goodness, that all apology for their
inconsistent and inconstant lives must be gratuitous.
If great men have great passions, they have great
minds with which to regulate and keep them in subjection; and in the degree in which God has given them
power to move the hearts and attract the admiration
of men, are they bound to teach, by word and pen, and
exemplify by life, that which is truest and best in their
convictions, and divinest in their faculties.
There is an abundance of vice in the world that legitimately calls for our charity, but it is not that which
is associated with such genius as fully apprehends the
beauty and the claims of virtue. Goethe is one of the
great-Goethe, "the many sided man," Goethe, the
man of science, the poet, the philosopher-yet his life
was almost an unmitigated nuisance. If he ever failed
to be a curse to a woman with whom he was thrown
into association, it was not because he failed in effort
for that end. The beast that was in him toyed through
more than a filthy half century with the most delicate
instincts and the most sacred sympathies of the female
nature. Yet there are those who beg us not to judge
Goethe too harshly-who bid us remember the power
of his passions and the license of the age in which
he lived. It is a competent answer to this plea to say




200               Gold-Foil.
that Goethe was as cool a man-a man as thoroughly
under self-control-as any whose history we know;
and that he flagrantly scandalized even the age which
is thrust forward as his apology. I say, that to treat
such a life as his with any thing softer than downright
execration-to drape it with the velvet of charity, and
trim it with silky apologies, is an outrage-direct and
indefensible-upon the cause of virtue in the world.
While vice is made venial when associated with
transcendent powers; while tributes of honor are offered to the memory of lives perverted, by men who
have a covert interest in making perverted lives respectable; while even good men allow their admiration
of genius to soften their judgments upon its prostitution, and substitute for a well-earned condemnation, a
magnanimous gratuity of pity, it will not be strange if
men with smaller intellects find excuse for such license
of appetite and passion as they may see fit to indulge in.
Our literary Pet got drunk, and sung about it, in a
rollicking way, and we weep and smile as we think of
the debauchee, and say, "Poor Pet!"  Tom Jones
gets drunk, and we kick him as he lies in the gutter,
refuse to recognize him when he gets upon his feet,
and blame the police if he fail to get into the watchhouse. Our Pet, armed with the enginery of a smooth
tongue, well practiced in all the arts of intrigue and
deception, besieges the citadel of a woman's heart,




The Canonization of the Vicious.   201
and, standing once within it, sets it on fire, and lays it
in ashes. We sigh, and say, "Sad Pet! " Tom Jones
betrays the confidence of his neighbor's daughter, in
imitation of Our Pet's example, and gets his brains
blown out, and we say it served him right. Our Pet
was improvident.  He spent his money without a
thought of the debts he owed, or the cash he had bor
rowed; and we say, "Unfortunate Pet! He did not
seem to know any thing of the value of money! " Tom
Jones borrows money, runs in debt, and forgets to
pay; and we conclude that the rascal has no very
acute sense of moral obligation-in fact, that Tom
Jones is a swindler. Now, I have an idea that a moral
code that is good enough for Our Pet is good enough
for Tom Jones, and that Tom Jones has good cause of
complaint when treated more harshly by the decent
public than his great exemplar.
I cannot help thinking that the indulgence with
which great men are treated by the world, in their
moral obliquities and eccentricities, has much to do in
making them what they are. An unprincipled man of
genius who can achieve and maintain power over the
minds of good men, independently of his moral charac.
ter, and secure at the same time the sympathy and sup.
port of bad men, by participating in their vices, will
always do both. The prevalent disposition which I see
on all sides to make heroes and martyrs of the infamous
9*




202                Gold-Foil.
great, amounts to, premium on all that is despicable
and horrible in unbridled ambition and limitless lust.
What means the attempt of the world's greatest living
writer to apotheosize the brute whose choice it was to
be buried with his horse? What will its effect be but
to obliterate moral distinctions, and lift up for imitation a character as much out of place in this Christian
age as a wild boar would be in a conference meeting?
Within the last three years, hundreds of thousands
of hearts have been turned in sympathy and affection
toward the character and life of one who sacrificed upon
the altar of his rabid ambition hecatombs of his countrymen, and filled all Europe with the wails and curses of
widows and orphans,-of one who had no God higher
than Fate, acknowledged no leader but Destiny, and
who, in following her, put to shame all of manhood in
mankind by trampling under his feet a true heart and
a sacred vow, that the Devil might give him the child
that God had denied to him. What will the effect of
this be upon ambitious natures, but to prove that a man
has only to use all of the world he can lay his hands on
for selfish ends, to secure the services of a Christian
eulogist?  Even Aaron Burr, the infamous traitor,
murderer, and libertine, finds a man to speak well of
him-praise only assuming the significance of a harmless joke, in consequence of the freshness of the stench
which his memory has left behind him.




Tile Canonization of the Vicious.   203
Over all that realm, where high or humble mind is
struggling honestly with the great problems that concern its spiritual life and its immortal destiny —struggling toward the light through devious ways of errorI would see a broad-winged liberality spread its luminous shadow. To all those whose education in the
truth has been limited, whose circumstances of life
have been adverse to the development of purity, who
are weak and ignorant, and low in instinct and aspiration, I would extend a charity that pities while it
blames, and considers while it condemns. But to sin
in high places-among men and women who are
crowned kings and queens in the realm of intellectthose whose brows have been lifted into God's own
light, and whose tongues and pens reveal something of
the divinity which struggles to enthrone itself in them
-no excuses, no palliations, no patronage. Over a
great, bad life, let us sigh once, and then be silent; and
when we choose among the memories of memorable
men for the subject of a public tribute or a personal
eulogy, let us take one out of which shall spring in.
spirations to a pure life, and motives to a noble heroism..When we choose heroes for deification, let them at
least believe in the God who made them, and present
a life for delineation and contemplation unblotched by
all the sins forbidden by the Decalogue.
He who spares vice or apologizes for it in the high




204                Gold-Foil.
places of the world, wrongs virtue in every place. He
helps the good to look upon it leniently, and thus to
lower the tone of morality within themselves. He as.
sists the bad to make it respectable, and thus to give
them warrant and license in* its imitation, and even m
its emulation. He discourages virtue in the humble
and poor-the great masses who form the real basis of
society, and upon whose goodness and truth the state
must rely for its character before the world, and its
stability in the world. He disturbs the moral apprehensions and unsettles the moral balance of all to whom
his words and influence come. Let us braid no more
wreaths to hide the mark of Cain on the brow of murder. Let us send up no more clouds of incense to veil
the front of shame. The intellect will bow, if it must,
but let it be with a protesting tongue and arms closely
folded over the heart!
l~bl




XVIII.
SOCIAL CLASSIFICATION.
"When the crane attempts to dance with the horse, she gets broken
bones."
"Like plays best with like."
"It is dangerous to eat cherries with the great; they throw the stones at
your head."
" Like seeks like-a scabbed horse and a sandy dike."
T    HERE  is a very general entertainment of the fallacy that all the distinctions of society are arti.
ficial. I call it a fallacy, because I believe it to be
susceptible of proof that the most of them are natural.
The aristocracy of a town or state is always founded
upon what the majority of the people of such town or
state hold to be the chief good.  No class arrogates to
itself the aristocratic position without the accordance,
tacit or declared, of all classes.  Wherever noble family
descent is popularly regarded as the most honorable of
all things, aristocracy is founded upon blood.  Wher



206                 Gold-Foil.
ever high intellectual culture is accounted the most
honorable of all possessions, the aristocracy will be
composed of savans, poets, artists, and men and women
of brilliant parts and attainments. So, too, where
money is regarded universally as the chief good, alike
by rich and poor, the aristocratic element will reside
in wealth. It would be easy to cite specimens of these
varieties of aristocracy. I suppose that Paris, as the
representative of France, furnishes an instance of the
aristocracy of talent and culture; that London repre.
sents England in its aristocracy of blood, and that New
York represents America in the aristocracy of wealth.
In each of these types there is a blending of the other
two. The three herd together, more or less, but the
nucleus is distinct in each, and the other elements
crystallize around it.
So I say that the aristocracy of any country is
nothing more than a declaration, in conventional form,
of that country's sentiment and opinion upon the chief
earthly end of man. Every aristocrat is made such by
a popular vote; and by the same vote is he endowed
with all the privileges, immunities, pride, supercilious
ness, and exclusiveness which are supposed to piertain
to the aristocratic estate. It matters nothing how
humble, genial, and good a popularly conelituted aristocrat may be, he gets little credit for it, for the people
regard him as a superior, who can only be humble by




Social Claffification.          207
condescension, genial for a purpose, and good by anomalous exception. Having entered the charmed circle
of those who have won the highest prize of life, his old
friends forsake him, misconstrue him, and force him
into aristocratic association, whether he will or no.
There is no aristocratic class in any state possessing institutions measurably free, which can sustain itself for
ten years beyond the choice and voice of the people.
I have no idea that while human society exists
there will fail to exist an aristocratic element, for so
long as human society exists there will exist a popular
ideal of a chief good, the achievement of that good by
a fortunate few, and the association of that fortunate
few, by natural affinity and corresponding position.
If this class exist, other classes will exist, receding, by
grades more or less distinctly defined, to the lowest
figure of the scale-all measurably regulated by this
idea of the chief good and the degree of its attainment; measurably, I say, for there are subordinate
standards of respectability, aswell as affinities of natural temperament and business pursuit, that come in as
modifying influences. So I say that classes exist in
society by a law as immutable as any law. They always have existed, and they always will-their character determined by the character and aims of the people, and their relations regulated by the spirit of the
people.




208                Gold-Foil.
On this track of general statement I proceed to the
lesson of this article. The more readily to arrive at
this lesson, let us institute an experiment. Let us
bring together, to form a single social assembly, representatives from each of the classes that we know, and
see how they will get along together. Let us shut
into a single parlor a Marquis, a savan, a Crcesus, a
farmer, a merchant, a tallow-chandler, a blacksmith, an
Irish hod-carrier, a stage-driver, a dancing-master, a
fop, a fool, and a fiddler. They come together for
social enjoyment; and the question as to how much
of that article they will be able to obtain is that to
which I ask an answer.  All the probabilities are
against any thing like enjoyment. There are no tastes
accordant, no pursuits common, no habits of thought
at all similar, no common ground of communion. I
can imagine no other position in which any member of
the company could be placed where he would be more
utterly miserable.  The hod-carrier would probably
feel the worst of the whole number, and would wish
himself a thousand times on the topmost round of a
s3ven-story ladder, while only the fool would be the
subject of envy.
We should have, in an experiment like this, the demonstration of the truth of one of bur proverbs, that
"like plays best with like." There is not, and there
can never be, social enjoyment without social sym



Social Claffification.          209
pathy. In all healthfully organized social life there
must be correspondence of position, of education, of
moral sentiment, and of habits of thought and life-a
correspondence with limits of variation which every
class tacitly acknowledges. This sympathy is born of
facts, and not of will. A man sees a circle with which
he has had no association; and, as he deems its en.
trance desirable, he accomplishes his desire, only to
find himself a discordant element, and, consequently,
an unhappy one. In short, there is a class with wh.ch
each man has more sympathy than with any other
class,-a class in which he finds himself the happiest
and the most at home. Therefore he belongs in this
class, socially; and he will go above it, if there be any
thing above it, and below it, if there be any thing below it, only to make himself, and those with whom he
associates, uncomfortable.
I have frequently noticed the operation of this law
in a large circle of women met to prosecute an object
of benevolence, as in the sewing circles connected with
the various religious organizations. They meet for a
common object. They all have respect for each other,
and a pleasant word for each other. There are no
jealousies and no rivalries. They pass their afternoon
and evening happily, and separate with mutual good
feeling; yet one who knows them all sees the secret
of their concord, in the way in which they associate,




210                 Gold-Foil.
Never, unless a directly opposing design, instituted for
a purpose, interfere, do they mingle indiscriminately
The rooms where they meet, and even the corners of
the roomis, are so many.nuclei of crystallization, around
which sympathetic social elements arrange themselves
for communion and happiness. They follow the general
law inside of thein organization, just as naturally as
they do out of it. Like talks best with like, laughs
best with like, works best with like, and enjoys best
with like; and it cannot help it. Therefore, let like
come together with like everywhere, nor seek to prevent it, for social position, under the general law, elevates no one and depresses no one. It is simply a
classification of individualities, according to conditions
and sympathies which exist independent of class, and
which would exist all the same were they not brought
into association.
I have thus exhibited what I believe to be the
rational basis of social classification-a law as certain
in its operation as the law of chemical affinity, and one
which I believe to be founded in unmixed benevolence.
I have done it for the purpose of exhibiting the unreasonableness and the mischief of jealousy between
classes, and especially that entertained by classes nominally low in the social scale toward those nominally
high. A man in the lower class may be as good as a
man in the higher. He may, in fact, be much better;




Social Claffification.          211
but so long as he combines with others in making the
chief earthly good to reside in wealth rather than wisdom, in gold rather than goodness, he must not complain if those who get wealth get superior position,
while wisdom and goodness are at a discount. The
spirit and aim of a nation inevitably fix the basis of its
aristocracy. This nation is mad for gold, and those
who get it will inevitably be the central and controlling
element in the nation's highest social class. There is
no way under heaven to change this fact but by changing the popular aim. Make high culture or great excellence of character the leading aim of the country,
and then you will get your chance. All that goodness
and wisdom enjoy of social eminence, save in special
localities, is through the patronage of wealth. This I
state as the general fact with relation to this country.
In other countries, where the leading aristocratic element resides in nobility, or intellectual pre-eminence,
these respectively become the patrons of the elements
thrown into inferior relation.
Every man is a common centre of multiplied circles
of association. First in order is the family circle; embracing that is the circle of remoter kindred; beyond
that, at longer or shorter distances, sweeps around the
social circle. Then comes the circle of religious fra.
ternity; then the political circle; then the broad circle
of human brotherhood, embracing family, kindred, so



212                 Gold-Foil.
ciety, the church, the state, and the world; and still
more broadly sweeping, runs the golden chain that en.
closes each soul in the universe within the sphere of
relation to all created intelligences.  These are all
natural circles-or circles dependent on natural law for
their definition. Family and kindred are based in nat.
ural affection, growing out of identity of blood. So.
ciety is based in natural affinity and similarity and sym.
pathy of position and pursuit. -The church is formed
by sympathy of religious belief; the state by a common
political creed and common institutions; and so on to
the utmost boundary of relationship. From each minor
circle all outside of it are shut out; yet, as the circles
enlarge, all come upon a common level. -In the state,
we are fellow-citizens; in the church, we are Christian
brethren. In all our higher and more majestic relations, the hands of mankind are joined. We sit at the
same communion table, we bow to the same law and
the same Lord, we cast an equal ballot.
Now, as to the matter of duty with relation to
these social circles; no man should despise the circle
n which he finds himself, but should seek to elevate
and make it better. There are positions of power and
usefulness in each circle, worthy of-any man's ambition;
while the entrance to another circle, nominally higher,
under the patronage of its central, controlling element,
is a disgrace to any man. A man willingly patronized,




Social Claffification.          213
is a man voluntarily disgraced; and a man who seeks
for respectability in a social position into which he does
not naturally fall, shows himself to be lacking both in
sense and self-respect.
Nothing but a popular change in the standard of
respectability can ever make the first social classes in
this country what they should be; and that change,
sooner or later, will as surely come as the redemption
of the world to the highest type of Christian manhood
shall come. When manhood becomes the leading object of humanity, then the books of heraldry, and the
diplomas of the schools, and the ledgers of wealth, will
cease to furnish passports to respectability. Until that
period shall arrive, wealth and blood and intellectual
attainment, without the slightest reference to morality
or religion, as standards of character and life, will hold
the social sway of the world. And this is right. It is
as God made it, and would have it. It is the result of
the operation of one of his irreversible laws. It is the
popular penalty of a popular sin. To hasten the arrival
of that period, it should be the aim. of every man,
laboring faithfully and diligently where God has placed
him, to elevate the standard of respectability to the
place where God would have it. Whenever the great
popular voice practically declares that Christian manhood is the chief good, Christian manhood will take its
position at the head of the social life of this country,.




214                Gold-Foil.
and of the world. Then, if a man be not admitted to
it, it will simply be because he is not good enough;
for like will come together with like, by a natural law,
I would not say that there is no Christian manhood
in the aristocracy of this country. I believe there isthat there is as much there as anywhere. I simply say
that Christian manhood and womanhood are not credentials which of themselves secure high social recognition. They achieve their position by circumstance,
and not by character; for the successful stock-gambler
and the libertine stand side by side with them, upon an
equal footing. That this fact should not be, is very evident; that this fact is, is chargeable upon all classes
alike; and they have no just cause of quarrel with it, so
long as they manifest no disposition to change it, by in.
stituting another standard.
x




XIX.
THE PRESERVATION OF CHARACTER.
* A full vessel must be carried carefully."
"He is so full of himself that he is quite empty."
"If you had had fewer friends and more enemies you had been a better
Brian.'
"That is often lost in an hour which costs h lifetime."
N  observing man is never without sources of
amusement, and it is certain that among these
sources the unconscious devices resorted to for the
creation and preservation of character, in the eye of
the world, deserve a prominent place,  We meet in
every town men who feel that they have filled up the
measure of their character, and have nothing further to
do in life but to bear that character, like a full vessel,
to their graves, without spilling a drop. They walk the
streets as if they were bearing it upon their heads.
They bow  to their acquaintances with the conscious.




216                Gold-Foil.
ness of their precious burden constantly uppermost.
They refrain from all complication with the stirring
questions of the times through fear of a fatal jostle.
They speak guardedly, as if a word might jar their
priceless vase from the poise of continence. There is
nothing so important to them as what they are pleased
to consider their character; consequently, that is alalways to be consulted before any course of action can
be determined upon. All questions of morality and
reform, all matters of public or political interest, all
personal associations, are considered primarily with
reference to this character. If they prove to be consistent with it, and seem calculated to reveal something
more of its glory, they are entered upon, or adopted;
otherwise, they are discarded.
When a man arrives at a point where the preservation of his character becomes the prime object of his
life, he may be considered a harmless man, but one
upon whom no further dependence can be placed in
carrying on the work of the world. As a member of
society, he becomes strictly ornamental. We point to
him as one of the ripe fruits of our civilization. We
bring him out on great occasions, and show him. We
make him president of conventions and benevolent associations. We introduce strangers to him that they
may be impressed. We chronicle his arrival at the hotels. We burn incense before him, because we know




The Prefervation of Character.    217
it will please him, and because we know that he rather
expects it. Small children regard hUi  in respectful silence as he passes. He becomes one of our institutions,
like a City Hall or an old church. We always know.
where to find hinm  as we do a well-established townline. But one thing we never do; we never go to him
in an emergency that demands risk and self-sacrifice,
because we know that those things are not in his line.
His character is the first thing, and that is to be taken
care of. When we want any thing of this kind done,
we go to men who have no character, or, having one,
are not uncomfortably conscious of it.
Good and harmless as these people usually are,
sources as they are of amusement to those who understand the secret springs of their life, fne as they are
when regarded as specimens, they are, nevertheless, the
victims of a mistake. Personal charapter with them
has come to be the grand object of life-personal
character as a thing of popular repute, when it should
always be a resultant of true action, instituted for un.
selfish purposes. The meanest and the most illegitimate of all human pursuits, is the direct pursuit of a
reputation. It is supremely selfish and contemptible;
and there is no man who really deserves a good repu.
tation who does not make its acquisition subordinate,
as an aim, in all his actions. A-man whose action with
relation to the questions that come before him is regu.
10




218                 Gold-Foi.
lated by its preconceived effect upon his character
with the public, is entirely untrustworthy, and will be
trusted by the public no further than his interest is seen
to coincide with the wishes of the public.
Character is a thing that will take care of itself;
and all character that does not take care of itself is
either very weak, or utterly fictitious. A man who
does as nearly right as possible, according to the dictates of his judgment and his conscience, will achieve a
character without giving a thought to it, so that all attention bestowed upon the direct acquisition of character before the public, is so much attention wasted and
so much time thrown away. By their works are we to
know men; and we have no other standard by which
to measure them. We tolerate a harmless, selfish man,
but we do not trust him with our interests. The most
of those whom  we find supremely devoted to the
preservation of their character, won their character
honestly enough, originally. They struck out boldly
at the beginning of life, did nobly, succeeded, won the
praise of the people, and then, like men grown rich,
became suddenly conservative and timid. Finding
themselves in possession of a character, and realizing
something of the preciousness of the possession, they
immediately began to nurse it, and arrange all their action with relation to it. Then they ceased to grow, and
retired essentially from business.




The Prefervation of Character.    219
3Much better would it have been for all of this class
had they had fewer friends and more enemies. In fact,
there is a fault in the reputation of every man who has
no enemies, for no man can be a positive power in the
world, moving in right lines through evils, and abuses,
and wrongs, without treading upon the toes of somebody. As this world is constituted, no man can be
without enemies unless he be without power, or unless
he adapt himself to the evils and the evil men encountered in his course. Consequently, no man has a reputation which is really significant and valuable that is
not won in about equal measure from the blessings of
one class and the curses of another. The praises of the
good are no better testimonials of a sound and valuable
character than the maledictions of the bad. In fact,
reputation and character are widely different things,
though they are so closely coupled in the minds of those
whom we are discussing that they see no difference between them. Character lives in a man; reputation outside of him. A man may have a good character and
no reputation, or he may have a good reputation and
no character; but with self worshippers they are nearly identical.
Of all the bondage in the world I know of none
more senseless and useless than bordage to one's character or reputation. The "fogyism I and "hunkerism"
of politics, and the rigid conservatism of religious opin



220                 Gold-Foil.
ion, grow mainly out of this bondage. Consistency is
clung to with almost an insane tenacity, It is more
important in this bondage that a course of action should
be consistent with a man's past life than with truth and
justice. A man's past is elevated as the highest standard of his present and his future. He pledges himself
against progress by making his present character and
his past course the law of his life. He clings to the institutions, the opinions, the policy, and the sentiments
in which he has cast his life; and when these are gone,
or are superseded, he clings to their pames, and so
"walks in vain show." If a party dies, it does not die
to him; because, if he were to admit the fact, or the
idea, of its death, he would doubt his own infallibility,
If an institution falls, he will not acknowledge it, for it
will make a hole in a reputation which he considers
compacted and complete.  No man who progresses
can be consistent with himself. Maturity cannot be
consistent with immaturity. All the consistency God
requires of any man, or approves in any man, is consistency with the best light of the present. Let the dead
bury its dead. It is only God himself who has even the
right to be consistent with His past life.
The, worthy young men who read these words are
dreaming of the attainment of a character which shall
give them not only reputation —not only praise-but
weight in the world. If this be your prime object,




The Prefervation of Character.    221
young man, you are very likely to take the wrong
course and make wreck of yourself. Let me tell you
that if you do right, your character will take care of
itself, no less than your reputation. Serve God and
your generation well, leave the consideration of your
character and yourself behind, seek to be consistent
with the highest life you have, be not afraid to change
your opinions or your course on any thing if you think
you are wrong, and God and your generation will take
care of you. As soon as it is seen that you are unselfish, and that you are free to act rightly and justly with
relation to whatever comes before you, a place in the
world will be made for you, and work will be given
you to do. Do not be disheartened if you make enemies, for if you are really a good power in the world,
you will be sure to make them. I do not say that a
man who has enemies is necessarily a good man, but I
do say that no man can be a good power in the world
without making them.
There are a hundred things that I could mention
more valuable than reputation. Self-respect is one of
these; a conscience void of offence is another; the re
formation and the progress of those around you are
others; and God's approval is another. Maintain your
self-respect; keep a spotless conscience; and do good
to all around you with supreme reference toe Him in
whom you live, and your character will grow health.




222.                Gold-Foil.
filly, without a thought given to it. The moment the
preservation of your character and reputation becomes
the great object of your life,-the'moment that you
begin to arrange your life with reference to a character
already achieved-that moment you will cease to grow,
and pass to your place among the harmless fossils that
occupy the ornamental niches of society.
The influence of enemies upon a really sound character is always healthful. A certain degree of recognition and praise does any man good; but the usual
effect of a great deal of it is debilitating. It.spoils the
child, and weakens the preacher, and enervates the
orator. It injures the character of almost every man.
Praise is very sweet, but the soul cannot thrive upon a
diet of sugar any more than the body. A man who receives a great deal of praise, and drinks it in with
genuine appetite, soon comes to regard it with an unhealthy greed. He wants it from every body, wants
it all the time, labors to get it, and is disappointed and
uneasy if he does not get it. It is well for every man,
therefore, to have enemies, to hear what they say about
him, and to experience the weight of their opposition.
Enemies drive the soul home to its motives, rouse its
finest energies, compact its character, render it watchful of the issues of its life, keep it strained up to its
work, and help to eliminate from it selfish consideras
tions. There hardly ever lived a reformer who might




The Prefervation of Character.    223
not have been strangled and silenced at the outset of
his career by praise. Thank God for the enmity that
developed into giants the reformers of our own and of
past times.  May He in mercy forbid that any of the
young and noble hearts now yearning for the good
work of the world be spoiled by too much praise and
too few enemies!
A character once worthily won is to be preserved
in precisely the same way that it is won. A character
is easily tarnished, and a good name easily lost; but
neither is to be preserved by making it the supreme
object of attention. Here it becomes necessary to keep
a broad distinction between reputation and character,
for one may be destroyed by slander, while the other
can never be harmed save by its possessor. The malice of others may tarnish a good name-may load it
with suspicions-may associate it with gross scandalmay blacken it even beyond the reach of total recovery, but the character can receive no injury save by
the voluntary act and choice of its owner. A man, in
order to retain his reputation, may be required, not
unfrequently, to compromise his character; and in
order to keep his character pure, may be obliged to
compromise his reputation. Character is as much more
valuable than reputation, as it is more valuable than its
own name.
Reputation is in no man's keeping. You and I can



224                Gold-Foil.
not determine what other men shall think of Us ald say
about us. We can only determine what they ought
to think of us and say about us; and we can only do
this by acting squarely up to our convictions of duty,
without the slightest reference to its effect upon ourselves. There are two ways in Which men lose their
character and their reputation with it. The selfish
means instituted fbr the direct purpose of preserving
character and reputation are damaging to any man.
How mahy statesmen and politicians have " fixed themselves up" With a character which every one sees is intended for a market, and how few of all the number
ever arrive at the goal of their ambition! Many of
them become the laughing-stock of the country; and
when the great conventions meet, their names are
passed by, and new ones elevated, of those who have
been employed in minding their business, and letting
their character and reputation take care of themselves.
One great reason why so few of the truly great men of
the nation have failed to be placed in the presidential
office is that they spoiled their reputation in the selfish
desire to preserve it for the purpose of winning office.
Another way of losing character and reputation is
by yielding to some sudden temptation to sin, or by
the secret entertainment of a vice that with certainty
undermines both. A single deed of shame, ah I how it
blackens beyond all cleansing the character that has




The Prefervation of Character.    225
been builded in the struggles and toils of half a century  There is no wealth under the sun so precious as
a good name worthily Won, and there is no calamity so
great as such a name shamefully lost. Far be it from
me to depreciate the value of character, or to depreciate pride in its maintenance. While it should be the
natural, unsought consequent of a life controlled by the
purest and noblest motives, it doubtless may be entertained as a choice possession) always subordinate as a
motive of action to Christian principle and duty.
10'




xx.
VICES OF IMAGINATION.'It is dangerous playing with edged tools."
" He who avoids the temptation avoids the sin."
" Keep yourself from opportunities, and God will keep you froinsins"
"The pitcher that goes often to the well gets broken at last."
T   HERE is an enchanted middle ground between
virtue and vice, where many a soul lives and
feeds in secret, and takes its payment for the restraint
and mortification of its outward life.  I once knew an
old dog whose most exalted and delighted life was
lived upon this charmed territory. The only brute
tenants of the dwelling where he lived were himself
and a cat.  Rover bore no ill-will toward his feline
companion-in fact, he was too good-natured to bear
ill-will toward any thing. He had been detected once
or twice in worrying her, and one or two severe floggings had taught him that the sport would not be




Vices of Imagination.          227
tolerated. Still he did not stop thinking about it; and
at every convenient opportunity he planted himself in
her way, watched her as she lurked for prey, scared
her by growls and feints, and kept her in a fever of ap
prehension and fretfulness. Now, while I do not be
lieve that he intended her the slightest mischief, I have
no doubt that, in his bloody imagination, he had slain
her a thousand times, chased her all over the neighborhood, and torn her limb from limb. In short, while he
knew that he must not worry her, he took the satisfaction that lay next to it-that of being tempted to worry
her, and found in the excitements of this temptation
the highest rewards of his self-denial.
Humanity has plenty of Rovers of this same sortmen and women who lead faultless outward lives, who
have no intention to sin, who yield their judgment-if
not their conscience-to the motives of self-restraint
but who, in secret, resort to the fields of temptation,
and seek among its excitements for the flavor, at least,
of the sins which they have discarded. This realm of
temptation is, to a multitude of minds, one of the most
seductive in which their feet ever wander. Thither
they resort to meet and commune with the images,
beautiful but impure, of the forbidden things that lie
beyond. In fact, I have sometimes thought there were
men and women who were really more in love with
temptation than with sin-who, by genuine experience,
_j




228                 Gold-Foil.
had learned that feasts of the imagination were sweeter
than feasts of sense, Whether this be the case or not.
I have no doubt that the love of temptation, for the excitement which it brings, is very general, even with
those whom we esteem as patterns of virtue. The surrender of the soul to these excitements is the more
dangerous from the fact that) by some' sort of sensual
sophistry, they are conceived to be harmless, and without the pale of actual sin. There is no intention to sin
in it, but only an attempt to filch from sin all the pleasure that can be procured without its penalty,
Playing with the temptation to sin is doubtless accompanied with less apparent disaster than the actual
commission of it, and, so far, is a smaller evil; but it is
an evil, and, essentially, a sin. The man who loves
and seeks the excitement of temptation, shows that he
is restrained from sin by fear, and not by principlethat, while his life is on the side of virtue, his affections
lean to vice. This is a sham life) and a mean life.
There are multitudes to whom temptation comes from
the forbidden world of sin, but it comes unbidden an.
unwelcome-on the lines of old appetites and old pas.
sions not yet thoroughly under control-and it is
fought against and driven out. It is the voluntary
going out of the soul after temptation, as a kind of
unforbidden good, that I challenge and question. It
is the willing, secret sin of imagination that I denounce,




Vices of Imagination.          229
as not only a sin essentially, in itself, but as the path
over which every soul naturally travels to the overt act
of transgression which lies beyond.- It is a kind of sin
that injures none but the sinner, directly  but fouler,
more rotten-hearted men I have never met than the
cowardly hypocrites whose lives are spent in dallying
with the thought of sins which they dare not commit.
We often wonder that certain men and women are
left by God to the commission of sins which shock us.
We wonder how, under the temptation of a single
hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of
honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are
no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These
men and women are those who have dallied with temptation-have exposed themselves to the influence of it,
and have been weakened and corrupted by it. If we
could get at the secret histories of those who stand
suddenly discovered as vicious, we should find that
they had been through this most polluting preparatory
process-that they had been in the habit of going out
and meeting temptation in' order that they might enjoy
its excitements-that underneath a blameless outward
life they have welcomed and entertained sin in their
imaginations, until their moral sense was blunted, and
they were ready for the deed of which they thought
they were incapable.
I very earnestly and gratefully believe in the exer.




230               Gold-Foil.
cise of a divinely restraining influence upon the minds
of those who are tempted, but I believe there is a point
beyond which it rarely goes. I do not believe that
God will interpose to prevent a man from sinning who
either seeks, or willingly encounters, the temptation
and the opportunity to sin. When a man finds charm
m opportunity, and delight in temptation, he has already committed in heart the sin which he shrinks
from embodying in action; and God rarely stands be
tween him and further guilt. We are to keep ourselves from opportunities, and God will keep us from
sin. It is all that can be expected of a being of infinite
purity that he shall guard us from the power of temptation that comes to us. He must be a hard and irreverent, or a very ignorant and deluded man, who
can pray to be delivered from the overcoming power
of a temptation into whose atmosphere he willingly
enters. In fact, we are taught to pray, not that we
may be delivered from the power of temptation, but
that we may not be led into it.
It may be said with measurable truthfulness that
half the art of Christian living consists in shunning
temptation. A man who has lived to middle life has
observed and studied himself to little purpose if he
have not learned the weak points of his own character,
and the kind of temptations that assail him with the
most power; and it is doubtless true that any man who




Vices of Imagination.           231
really loves a pure and good life will avoid a tempta,
tion as he would the sin to which it would lead him.
I can have but little charity for those who apologize
for their frequent falls from virtue by charging the
blame upon the power of temptation, because temptation and opportunity come to them unsought no oftener
than to others. It is the man who loves vice, and delights in temptation, who is subject to their power. I
have no faith in the reformation of a drunkard who
carelessly passes his accustomed:tippling-shop, and
carelessly looks in.
We are to avoid temptation because it is only as
vice is glorified, and its charms exalted by the power
of imagination, that it appears charming and attractive
to us. A vision of naked vice, of whatsoever sort, is a
vision of deformity. There are thousands among those
who delight in the excitements of temptation, voluntarily sought, who would shrink with horror and disgust from:a sudden introduction to the presence of a
vice toward which they have been attracted from a
distance. There is no beauty in beastliness, save that
which an excited imagination lends to it. It is by no
inherent charm that it draws men and women toward
it. It is as low and loathsome as the serpent around
whose evil eyes the poor bird flutters, until it drops, a
victim to the fangs that await its certain coming.
I have said thus much generally of the sins of the




232                Gold-Foil.
imagination, aware that my remarks apply mainly to
one variety of temptations —the most dangerous and
the most seductive of all. There is nothing charming
in the thought of murder, in the contemplation of a
great revenge, in theft, and in the majority of crimes.
Imagination has no sophistry by which such crimes
may be justified, and no power to wrap them in an
atmosphere of beauty. The sins of the imagination are
mainly those which contemplate the illicit indulgence
of natural and normal passions and appetites, the temptations to which come in upon the lines of legitimate
and heaven-ordained sympathies.  It is among the
meshes of that which is legitimate and that which is
illegitimate-that which is forbidden and that which is
unforbidden —that the moral sense becomes involved
and moral purity is compromised. It is because men
and women are led out into the field of temptation by
some of the sweetest and strongest sympathies of their
natures that they feel no alarm and apprehend no
danger. It is because they entertain no design to sin
that they linger there without fear. Oh! if this im.
ginary world of sin could be unveiled-this world into
which the multitude go unknown and unsuspected-to
dream of delights unhallowed by relations that may
only give them license —how would it be red with the
blush of shame!
This world of sense, built by the imagination —how




Vices of Imagination.           233
fair and foul' it is t Like a fairy island in the sea of
life, it smiles m1 sunlight and sleeps in green, known of
the world not by communion of knowledge, but by
personal, secret discovery! The waves of every ocean
kiss its feet. The airs of every clime play among its
trees, and tire with the voluptuous music which they
bear. Flowers bend idly to the fall of fountains, and
beautiful forms are wreathing their white arms, and
calling for companionship. Out toward this charmed
island, by day and by night, a million shallops push un.
seen of each other, and of the world of real life left behind, for revelry and reward! The single sailors never
meet each other; they tread the same paths unknown
of each other; they come back, and no one knows, and
no one asks where they have been.  Again and again
is the visit repeated, with iio absolutely vicious intention, yet not without gathering the taint of vice. If
God's light could shine upon this crowded sea, and
discover the secrets of the island which it invests, what
shameful retreats and encounters should we witnessfathers, mothers, maidens, men-children even, whom
we had deemed as pure as snow-flying with guilty
eyes and white lips to hide themselves from a great
disgrace!
There is vice enough in the world of actual life, and
it is there that we look for it; but there is more in that
other world of imagination that we do not see-vice




234                 Gold-Foil.
that poisons, vice that kills, vice,hat makes whited
sepulchres of temples that are deemed pure, even by
multitudes of their tenants. Let none esteem themselves blameless or pure who willingly and gladly seek
in this world of imagination for excitements! That
remarkable poem of Margaret Fuller, which ascribes
an indelible taint to the maiden who only dreams of
her lover an unmaidenly dream, has a fearful but entirely legitimate significance. It is a forbidden realm,
where pure feet never wander; and all who would remain pure must forever avoid it. It is the haunt of
devils and damned spirits. Its foul air poisons manhood and shrivels womanhood, even if it never be left
behind in an advance to the overt sin which lies beyond it.
The pitcher that goes often to the well gets broken
at last. I presume that there is not one licentious man
or ruined woman in one hundred whose way to perdition did not lie directly through this forbidden field of
imagination.  Into that field they went, and went
again, till, weakened by the poisonous atmosphere, and
grown morbid in their love of sin, and developed in all
their tendencies to sensuality, and familiarized witA the
thought of vice, they fell, with neither the disposition
nor the power to rise again. It is in this field that
Satan wins all his victories. It is here that he is transformed into an angel of light. It is on this debatable




Vices of Imagination.           235
ground, half-way between vice and virtue, whither the
silly multitude resort for dreams of that which they
may not enjoy, that the question of personal perdition
is settled. A pure soul sternly standing on the ground
of virtue, or a pure soul standing immediately in the
presence of vice, not once in ten thousand instances
bends from its rectitude. It is only when it willingly
becomes a wanderer among the wiles of temptation,
and an entertainer of the images it finds there, that
it becomes subject to the power that procures its ruin.
To the young, especially, is the exposition of this
subject necessary —to those whose imaginations are active, whose passions are fresh and strong, and whose
inexperience leaves them ignorant of consequences.
There is no field of danger less talked of than this.
Through many years of attendance upon the public
ministrations of Christianity, I have never but twice
heard this subject pointedly and faithfully alluded to.
Books are mainly silent upon it. Fathers and mothers,
faithful in all things else, shrink from the administration of counsels upon matters which they would fain believe are all unknown to the precious ones they have
nurtured. Thus is it in schools, and thus is it everywhere, where counsel is needed, and where it is demanded. An impure word, a doubtful jest, a tale of
sin, drunk in by these fresh souls, excites the imagina.
tion, and straightway they discover the field of contem.




236                Gold-Foil.
plation, so full of danger and of death, and learn all its
paths before they know any thing of the perils to which
they subject themselves. Let me say to these, what
they hear so little from other lips and pens, that whenever they find themselves attracted to it, they can
never abide in it, or enter upon it, without taint and
without sin. Sooner or later in their life will they find
that from all willing dalliance with temptation, and unresisted entertainment of unworthy and impure imag.
inations, their character has suffered an injury which
untold ages will fail to remedy.




XXI.
QUESTIONS AOVY1 REASON.
Anoint a villain, and he will prick you; prigk a villain, and he will anoint
you."
"Give a rogue an inch, and 4e will takp an 11."; He who lies down with dogs, gets up with fleas."
G    OOD  men never make any thing by treating vil
lains as equals. A conscious villain who is
treated as an equal by an honest man who is conscious
of his villany, recognizes the man at once as a coward,
and treats him accordingly. Treated as an inferior, a
bad man becomes polite at once, or plays defiantly the
bully and the blackguard that he is. We may go the
world over without finding any man who, in his own
soul, knows his place so well as a very bad man; and
there is no way of securing his respect so easily as by
giving him to understand that he is understood, and
appreciated at his true value. Bow to him, and treat




238                Gold-Foil.
him like a gentleman,. and he flounders and swaggers
in the respectability conferred upon him. Shun him,
or show him in any way that he is known and despised,
and he becomes respectful and decent, nine times in
ten. There is no social or Christian relation in which
good and bad men are equals, and any good man who,
for any cowardly reason, is willing to ignore the dis.
tinction, commits a crime against society and against
Christianity, and secures to himself the contempt of
those to whom he defers. Anoint a villain, and he will
prick you; prick a villain, and he will anoint you.
I know of no whip so effectual in its power when
held over the back of an unprincipled man as social
proscription. The worst men, save in exceptional cases
of brutal self-abandonment, have a longing for respectability. It is a hard thing for any man to walk through
the streets, and meet among respectable men nought
but stony faces, and to know that those faces are set
simply against his sins. It is a hard thing for the worst
men to feel that all good hearts and all decent hearths
are shut against them, because their entrance would be
regarded as a contamination. So these men strive to
cheat us into respecting. them by the assumption of
false names, or endeavor to purchase respect and posi.
tion by exhibitions of public spirit. The professional
gambler, who is simply a leech upon the social body —
who gets his living without earning it, and wins the




Queitions above Reafon.         239
wealth of others by games of chance-the most heart.
less, ruthless and mischievous of men-calls himself a
sporting man, and loves to be called a sporting man.
He would be much obliged to society ifit would never
mention the word "gambler" in connection with his
name. In fact, he would be willing to sacrifice a little
something for the public good, if by so doing he could
keep his chin above water.
Again, give a rogue an inch, and he will take an
ell. Any favor shown to such men as these is an essential license for further sin. They want countenance,
and they seek it in many ways. If they can create a
party for themselves, or manage to secure among men
nominally respectable apologists and defenders, they
are delighted, and feel themselves safer in their schemes
and operations. We have only to recognize them as
equals to lengthen the rope that holds them to decency.
The moment I recognize a well known scoundrel as an
equal, that moment I descend to his standard of moral.
ity or immorality, assist to lower the general standard
of respectability, and furnish to him a new point of departure from which he may plunge into further scoundrelism. The fact is that no man who preys upon
society for a livelihood, or habitually engages in practices which compromise social purity and good order,
can, by possibility, be a gentleman; and no gentleman
can deal with such a man on an equality, or eat of




240                 Gold-Foil.
his dainties, or accept of his company or his favors,
without compromising his position as a gentleman.
He who lies down with dogs gets up with fleas
When a decent man lowers his standard of respectability so far that he can consort with a foe to society
and morality, he damages himself beyond cure, in most
instances. Confounding moral distinctions and coLpromising with sin are dangerous operations. In the
measure by which a decent man confers respectability
upon a rascal, does the rascal transfer reproach to him.
The act is one which changes both parties for the
worse. A respectable man who comes to look with a
degree of complacency upon one who has no title to
respectability, is morally damaged. He becomes a
weaker man, more open to temptation, and more liable
to fall. The princely gamblers of New  York and
Washington understand this prinnipletthoroughly, and
initiate all their victims by bringing them into communion with rascality over their costly viands and
their abundant wines and cigars. There, is no common ground of communion between the two classes.
There is not even debatable ground, The distinction
is heaven-wide on its very face.
I have stated these fects, first, because they are
true, and should be made useful; and, second, because
they introduce me to, and assist to illustrate, a principle
not sufficiently recognized in the contacts and pontests




Queftions above Reafon.          241
of truth with falsehood in the moral and religious
world. It will be remembered-for the occurrence
was a recent one-that a champion of slavery and an
opponent of slavery met in an American city as disputants or wranglers upon this question. If slavery
were only a political question, a discussion like this
might be legitimate, though it might not be very useful. But it is recognized everywhere as not only a
political, but a moral question. I enter upon no discussion of this question, because it is not relevant to
my present purpose, but I say that to the opponent of
slavery the right of every man to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, is a self-evident truth-a truth
which calls not for argument but statement-a fundamental truth, which lies at the very basis of all freedom and all sound institutions. Now, the moment a
man holding such a view as this meets a champion of
slavery on even ground, to argue the question, he
yields the battle, and is worsted before he opens his
mouth. By consenting that the question admits of
argument, for a moment, he yields ground which is
imp-regnable, places himself on a common footing with
his antagonist, and damages himself and his cause. I
have seen Christian men enter into arguments with
avowed infidels in bar-rooms and vicious assemblages,
as a matter of duty; and such sights have always
oppresssed me with a sense of humiliation. Infidelity
11




242                Gold-Foil.
is not the equal of faith in any sense. Light has no
fellowship with darkness, and Christ no concord with
Belial. Religion may enter a pothouse as a minister of
good, but it may not lay aside its dignity to argue its
rights and claims there. The moment that it does this,
it is shorn of its power. A man in whom Christianity
has become a life, knows that Christianity is a verityknows that no argument under heaven can convince
him of its falsehood. He knows that the highest claims
of Christianity are not based in argument. He knows
that he was not intellectually argued into religion, that
he is not kept in it by force of argument or logic, and
that the highest demonstration of the truth of Christianity which he possesses-his own individual experience
-is precisely that which he cannot bring forward in any
dispute with an infidel. The moment, therefore, that
he comes down from the position of positive knowledge,
and admits that there is room for argument, he surrenders the citadel, and the conflict is to be decided
simply by personal prowess. The truth of Christianity
admitted between two opponents, there is, of course, a
legitimate theatre of discussion opened for questions
connected with it; but until that be admitted, there
can be no discussion that does not compromise the position and the power of him who enters as the cham.
pion of Christianity.
I say that infidelity is not the equal of faith, be



Queftions above Reafon.           243
cause, while infidelity abides in, and relies upon, pure
reason, faith, with reason abundantly satisfied, relies
upon the demonstrations of an experience which infi.
delity will reject as a matter of course. I say that
faith and infidelity can never meet on common ground
to argue the truth or falsehood of Christianity, because
faith, as its first step, must surrender its stronghold,
and yield the question to the arbitration of reason, by
which it can never be settled. I say,further, that no
Christian man has a right to do this, and that he can.
not do it without weakening himself, and damaging his
cause. I may be willing, and should be willing, to give
my reasons for my belief in Christianity, but I should
not be willing to surrender a question to the judgment
of reason which I know and feel to be mainly out of
its realm. There is nothing that infidelity more thoroughly delights in than argument, because, in arguJment, it brings faith down to its own level, and takes it
at a disadvantage. It is lifted into importance and re.
spectability by the consent of faith to meet it on common ground-ground where none but weak minds will
ever meet it-minds that will be mastered in a battle
of reason almost as a matter of course.
Many of the best things received into the belief and
faith of the best men-things relating to the heart of
the individual and the life of society-demand that
they shall never be submitted to the combats and con




244                Gold-Foil.
elusions of reason on a common ground with error. A
gentleman will not fight a duel with a churl, simply be.
cause the churl is not his equal. He could gain no victory that would compensate for the social disgrace in
volved in meeting an inferior on a footing of equality.
Men of the world, who will scout my reasoning upon
the management of a certain class of moral questions,
will understand this illustration, and find it somewhat
difficult, I imagine, to get away from it. It is recognized as a rule of law, based on a fundamental principle
of justice, that a man shall be tried by his peers-a
body of men capable of appreciating all the ca'cum.
stances and evidence of his case, and dispossessed of
those prejudices of class and condition which would
have a tendency to mislead them. The same principle
demands that all those questions, which relate to things
above the realm of pure reason, shall be judged by those
who are capable of appreciating, and willing to accept,
the evidence that lies in that realm. As there is no
confession of cowardice on the part of a gentleman who
refuses to fight a churl, and no self-conviction of guilt
in him  who declines to be tried by other than
his peers, so there is no admission of weakness on
the part of him  who refuses to place his faith on
the footing of another man's infidelity, and to submit the questions touching his highest life, to the
judgment of those who are incapable of understand.




Queftions above Reafon.           245
ing, and unwilling to admit, the evidence relating to
them.
The power of Christianity before the world, as a
system of religion, no less than the power of all those
objects and subjects of faith and belief which lie above
the domain of pure reason, abides in assertion-bold,
broad, direct, confident, and persistent assertion. If a
man were to deny that the rose is beautiful, and challenge me to the proof of its beauty, what more could
I do than to hold the rose before his eyes, and say that
it is beautiful? If the rose could speak, would it thank
me for admitting that its beauty is a matter of argument? The settlement of the question of its beauty
is utterly beyond the power of reason. I know it
is beautiful; I feel that it is beautiful; its beauty
thrills me with the most delicious pleasure. That is
enough for me; but that would not be enough for him
who denies its beauty. I arrive at a knowledge of its
beauty by no process of reasoning, and I can maintain
the fact of its beauty by no power of argument, because
the determination of its quality and character is without
the realm of reason.
In my judgment, a great mistake has been made by
well-meaning and zealous men, through treating error
and infidelity with altogether too much respect. I believe that it is safe to say that Christianity is indebted
for none of its progress in the world to rational conflicts




246                Gold-Foil.
with infidelity. I do not believe that a single great
wrong has ever been overthrown by meeting the advo.
cates of wrong in argument. Assertion of truths known
and felt, promulgation of truth from the high platform of
truth itself, declaration of faith by the mouth of moral
conviction-this is the New Testament method, and the
true one. If a man say to me that he does not believe
in the existence of a God, my judgment tells me at
once that, if he is sincere, he is -insane or a fool, and
that if he is insincere, he is a liar. Shall I sit down to
argue the question with him after this? Shall I admit
that his atheism  is as good as my belief?  No.
If he make his assertion, let him  be content with
that. If he ask of me the reason of my belief, I will
give it him, but I will not admit that to be a subject of argument which is the first fact in the mental and moral universe. By so doing I should commit an absurdity that would stultify me, and inflict a
dishonor on the Being of whom I make myself the
champion.
If I have made myself understood on this point, I
have dwelt upon it long enough, and have only to add,
that he who allows himself to be placed in a false position by consenting to stand on the platform of reason,
with relation to questions beyond the domain of reason,
will find himself damaged in the end.  If he lie down
with dogs, he will get up  ith fleas. A man who con.




Queftions above Reafon.          247
sents to the purely rational decision of a question which
reason can never settle, will find himself open to the invasions of error-weakened in all his defences. Forsaking an impregnable position, he enters a field
full of doubts and dangers; and if he consent to
remain there, he will become a subject of their
attack at every point. More men have been argued, in a measure, or entirely, out of faith, than
have ever been argued into it-not because their
faith was irrational, but because they have prostituted
that to the basis of reason which is beyond the realm
of reason.
Assertion, proclamation, exhibition, illustrationthese are the instruments of the progress of all truth
relating to the highest life of the world. The Gospel
is promulgated by preaching, not by-wrangling. The
reformation of the sixteenth century was effected by
the assertion of a few simple truths, and the denunciation of errors and abuses. The idea of Luther consenting to meet Tetzel before a public audience, to argue
the question of the legitimacy and morality of peddling
indulgences to sin, is simply ridiculous. That thing was
not to be soberly argued, but soundly denounced. No
truth held to be self-evident, and no truth whose demonstration lies in personal experience-and therefore above
reason-can ever be submitted to argument without
prostitution or without danger. Reason dethroned




248                  Gold-Foil.
truth in France, but truth resumed its seat, in spite of
reason, by simple self-assertion. All truth that lives
independent of reason asks no favors of it, and takes
no law of it.




XXII.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE.
" Many a cow stands in the meadow, and looks wistfully at the commoa."
"Grass grows not upon the highway."
"Life at court is often a short cut to hell."
HERE  is no human estate or condition around
which gathers so much that is fallacious in glory
and fictitious in attraction as around that which is de.
nominated  " public life."   To be exalted in public
office, to be observed of a state or a nation, to be
sought out and honored of public assemblages, to be
known and recognized by the public press-this seems
to a great multitude, whose fortunes are cast in private
life, to be the most desirable, the most enviable thing,
in all the world. If we could read the secret of nine
hearts in ten that we meet, we should find that under
their seeming content with private life and apparent
satisfaction with private pursuits, there is a longing for
L______-__I




250                 Gold-Foil.
a position that will give their persons, powers and
names a public recognition.  The greed for office,
which is evident on every hand, and among all classes
of people, is but a demonstration of this universal appetite. It is not confined to a sex, but manifests itself
among women as well as among men. We hear much
of "woman's rights," from the lips of women who have
a taste for public life, or a desire for public recognition,
and they make their proselytes among those who are
exercised by a similar ambition.
It is a very sad thing to me —this discontent with
private life-because the larger part of it has no noble
element in it. The majority of men and women who
are ambitious of public life do not wish for it for the
sake of'doing more good, nor because they believe
themselves to be transcendently adapted to the performance of public duties. They are not willing to
work and wait, in their private spheres of action, until
they demonstrate their ability and fitness for public
position, and are sought for by the public as those
worthy of trust and honor. No, they desire place for
the sake of place; they seek for public life simply from
a greed for notoriety or fame. They desire to be
known, to be looked at, to be talked about, to be
lionized. It is publicity that has charms for them-not
public duty, nor public responsibility. All this is ut.
terly selfish-utterly contemptible. It is unworthy of




Public and Private Life.         251
sound manhood and true womanhood, and its tendency
is directly demoralizing. When we remember that the
public offices of the country are filled mainly by those
who have attained them by direct seeking, spurred on
by this base ambition, it will not be hard to account for
the low morals that are to be found in public life.
We can go further than this. It may truthfully be
said that a man whose chief ambition is publicity of
name and position, demonstrates, by its possession and
exercise, his unfitness for that to which he aspires. If
in this great world of discontented private life there
are men or women who read these words, let them
consider that in the degree in which their ambition to
be known is the predominant motive within them, do
they demonstrate their unfitness for the honors which
they seek. The ambition is essentially a selfish and a
mean one, and proves directly, and unmistakably, the
possession of a nature unworthy of great public responsibilities. A surpassing, overweening desire for public
life, for the sake of public life, and the kind of honor
which it brings, demonstrates a nature that will subordinate public to private good, and elevate personal
reputation above the requirements of public duty. The
cowardice of politicians, and the shameful devotion to
private interests that prevails in legislative bodies, only
show how many have found place through this selfish
seeking of it.




252                 Gold-Foil.
But all public life, or all notoriety, is not to be
found in politics. Literature, journalism, the pulpit,
the bar-all these are aspired to as objects that are
calculated, more or less, to satisfy the appetite for public notoriety. The consequence is that literature is
crowded with weak or vicious pretenders, journalism
with greedy self-seekers, the pulpit with men who
have no qualifications for their calling, and the bar
with brawling pettifoggers. The question with great
numbers who embrace these professions is not-" What
have I within me, for the world, that I may convey
through the profession which I choose to the world? "
but-" What has the world for me, that it can convey
through this profession to me?"  There is a proper
kind of self-seeking, but it is that which has its basis in
worthy doing. A  man who gladly grasps an honor
which he has not earned, because it is an honor, is a
man unworthy of trust and without shame.
But is there any thing, after all, in this public life
that is so very desirable? Is there any thing so very
sweet in having one's name public property? Is there
any thing in the burden of public responsibilities and
cares that is so exceedingly pleasant to bear? I am
willing that any man who bears worthily the burden
of public life shall answer these questions. Any man
who takes upon his shoulders, and faithfully and con.
ecientiously carries, the responsibilities of a public po



Public and Private Life          253
sition, knows and feels that he is a slave, and that the
careless hind who whistles behind his plough has a
peace of mind which has left him forever.
It matters not what kind of publicity or notoriety
any man, worthy or unworthy, may have, he will be
the object of the meanest envy and the most inveterate
enmity. A name that has become public property is a
name to be bandied about, coupled with foul epithets,
criticised, contemned, or to be made the subject of extravagant laudation-more humiliating, if less maddening. The alternative of a public life of mingled praise
and abuse, or of unmeasured abuse, is that of a public
idol-is a public life that shall be the object of universal flattery. There are some men who can withstand
the influences of such a position as this, but they are
few, and far between. A public life is always a life of
great temptation; and few lead it who do not feel, in
the depths of their souls, that they have been damaged
by it. A host of evil influences cluster about it. It
interferes with domestic peace, absorbs the mind, and
blunts the affections. It depresses the tone of the
moral feelings, and hinders the development of piety
in Christian souls. When entered upon, it is found to
be full of intrigues, petty jealousies, and selfish contentions; while its rewards are the most hollow and illusory that can be imagined.
I will not deny that to be loved and recognized by




254                Gold-Foil.
the public for a character worthily won, and for ser.
vices faithfully and unselfishly rendered, is a boon to
be gratefully received and genially cherished. An ambition to be worthy of public honor and popular recognition is a legitimate motive of a noble mind. That
there are sweet rewards in such a recognition as this,
is not to be denied; but a notoriety, sought for its own
sake, and attained for purely selfish ends-a public life
entered upon for the rewards of fame-is one of the
basest things and most miserable cheats in the world.
Estimated legitimately, all public life is a private burden, to be assumed as a matter of duty, and borne un.
selfishly. Such public life as this deserves honor, as
one of its incidental rewards, but there is not a worthy
mind in the world that occupies a prominent position
before the public that does not turn, and return, to the
little circle of home and its affections-to the grateful
sphere of its private life-for that which is sweetest
and best in the material of its earthly happiness.
Grass grows not upon the highway, but by the
highway side-in humble pasture-lands, in quiet meadows, and in well-fenced homesteads. Where horses
tramp, and wheels roll, and cattle tread, and swine are
driven in hungry droves, every thing is foul with dust
and offal. It is only on the other side of the fence that
the clover blooms, and the daisy nods, and the grass
spreads itself, undisturbed, into velvet lawns. It is not




Public and Private Life.           255
where unclean beasts rove freely, and browse at will,
that the maize perfects its golden product jand the
bending tree its fruit, but in secluded fields, where the
husbandman works and watches unseen. No more is
it in public life that the best affections of our natures
blossom, and the little virtues spring and spread to
give to life the freshness of velvet verdure. No more
is it in public life that a golden character is perfected,
and fruit is matured and borne unto eternal life. It is
only in private life that the highest development, the
purest tastes, the sweetest happiness, and the finest
consummations and successes of life are found. To
these conclusions reason guides us, and experience
holds us.
I have alluded to the desire of women for public
life, and in this connection, the subject naturally arises
again. With women who desire a public career, the
question is one of rights and privileges, as if public life
were the grand estate of humanity. With me, it is not
a question of rights at all, though, if I were to make it
such, I should not find myself greatly at variance with
those who maintain the rights of women most stoutly.
Abstractly, a woman has a right to be, and to do,
what she pleases, but the question is not one of right
and privilege. It is a question of duty. I believe that
it is the right and privilege of woman to remain in
private life, if she choose so to remain. It is not the




256                Gold-Foil.
right of man to shirk public responsiblity, if it be laid
upon him. Man's physical structure and intellectual
constitution-his power to labor and endure-his free.
dom from the sexual disabilities incident to womandesignate him as the world's worker. While private
life is his best sphere and his happiest lot, he may not
slip his neck from the yoke of public responsibility. If
women were needed in public life, they would be in the
same condition-they would have no right to decline
public duty; but, in the present constitution of society,
they are not needed. Duty, therefore, does not call
them into public life, and they have the right and the
privilege to remain away from public affairs-a privilege which, if properly estimated by them, would prove
to them that, for whatever God has denied to them, and
for whatever of hardship He has laid upon them, He
has made abundant compensations.
It is strange that, in matters like this, men and women will not receive the testimony of competent experience. There is no worthy public man living who will
not testify to the surpassing excellence and charm of
private life. The higher a man is raised in public life,
the more is he removed from that sympathy with the
popular heart which flows from common pursuits and a
common condition. The frigid isolation of power, the
vexations of popular misconstruction, the jealousy and
envy of mean minds, the clash of public duty with




Public and Private Life.          257
private friendship-all these are hard to bear, and there
is no sensitive and worthy nature that will not shrink
from them. The very best of those whom the world
has delighted to honor, turn from the dreary loneliness
of their sphere to the simple joys of the private life
they have left-to its honest, neighborly friendships, its
pure habits, its quiet flow of family life, its freedom
from care, and its pleasures, with a yearning memory,
and sometimes-nay, often-with a memory which
does not fail to lament the loss of a sensibility that
ought to-be touched to tears.
I am inclined to think that much of this vicious
longing for public life and notoriety arises from a vice
in the character of the private life in which it is born.
I am convinced that much of it would be obviated if
private life were all that it should be. Man is a social
being, and, in his love of approbation, seeks for the
recognition of society. If private life moved in large
circles, he would get this recognition, and be content
with it; but it is a fact, that private life is too much without congenial relationships. It is essentially selfish, and
helps to cherish rather than to destroy the appetite for
public life. In looking over the world of public life,
and the world of those who are seeking it for its own
sake, I think it will be found that a large majority of
its men and women are those whose private life is
meagre in its rewards, or positively unhappy. I be.




258                Gold-Foil.
lieve that the majority of notoriety-hunters are men
and women with uncongenial companions, or with no
companions at all, or with an insufficient circle of
friends, or with a circle of insufficient friends. If
private life were entirely what it should be, this disease
would doubtless be greatly abated.
I suppose that no one can read the Evangelists without being impressed with the evident shrinking of the
Master from publicity. The performance of many a notable miracle was followed by the command that it should
not be published. " See that thou tell no man," was His
modest mandate. He preached in the synagogues, on the
mountains, and by the water-side, but it was because He
had a work to do-a mission to perform. His severest
words were for those who prayed at the corners of the
streets, and gave their alms to be seen of men. There was
nothing meaner in His eyes than the thirst for notoriety,
and some of the most charming exhibitions of his charac.
ter were given in the private circle of His disciples, and
in the humble homes of such as Mary and Martha. His
publi, life was a life of service. He had a work to do,
and was straitened until it should be accomplished.
His was a life of privation and discomfort. With the
burden of a public life upon Him, moving among the
palaces of Jerusalem and the rural homes of the villages
of Judea, it was more than an exhibition of His poverty when He said-" Foxes have holes, and the birds of




Public and Private Life.         259
the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where
to lay His head."
It will, of course, be useless for me to talk to those
who have eaten of the insane root; but to the world
of young life, now emerging into manhood and womanhood, something may perhaps be said with profit.
There is nothing good in public life, nothing valuable
in notoriety, that can compensate for the abandonment
of a private sphere those men and women who make
the sacrifice. If duty call you to office, or a worthy
character and worthy works lift you into public notice,
bear the honor well, but grudge the smallest charm
that it steals from your private life. Let that be as generous in its conditions and as wide in its sympathies asyou can make it, and be sure that in it will be found
the truest wealth that the world can give you. Learn
to look upon all hunters for notoriety, for notoriety's
sake, all itching for public life for the sake of its publicity, all greed for office for the purpose of catching
the public eye, with contempt, as the meanest of all
mean ambitions. And when you find yourself listening
to the suggestions of an ambition like this, regard it as
a disease, which only a more worthy and generous pri.
vate life can cure.




XXIII.
HOME.
"The fire burns brightest on one's own hearth."
"A tree often transplanted neither grows nor thrives."
"He who is far from home is near to harm."
"He who is everywhere is no where."
IND  and water wander round the world, and
grow fresher for the journey.  The lost diamond knows no difference between the dust where it
lies and the bosom from which it fell; but every thing
that has vitality requires a home. Every thing that
lives seeks to establish permanent relations with that
upon which it must depend for supplies. Every plant
and every animal has its country, and in that country a
favorite location, where it finds that which will give it
the healthiest development, and the most luxurious life.
Maize will not grow in England, and oranges are not
gathered in Lapland.. The white bear pines and dies




Home.                    261
under the equator, and the lion refuses to live in polar
latitudes. The elm of a century may not be transplanted with safety, unless a large portion of its home
be taken with it. In jungles and dens, in root-beds and
parasitic footholds, in rivers, and brooks, and bays, in
lakes and seas, in cabins, and tents, and palaces, every
thing that lives, from the lowest animal and plant to
the lordliest man, has a home-a place, or a region,
with whose resources its vitality has established relations. I have no doubt, with analogy only for the basis
of my belief, that God, the fountain of life, has a home,
and that there is somewhere in space a place which we
call heaven.
What is true of all organic material life is equally true
of all mental and spiritual life. It is not because the soul
is the tenant of a body which must have a home, that it,
too, is subjected to a like necessity. The soul is alive, and
must feed that it may continue to live, and that it may
thrive. It takes root in material things, or in the spiritual
facts that invest and permeate them, no less than in society, through multiplied filaments of relation; and its
roots may never be violently dislocated without serious
damage to its life. Let a man be removed from his
accustomed place in the world, and from the society of
wife and children, and friends and neighbors, and twenty-four hours will suffice to make him a weaker man,
and to institute in him either a general or special pro.




262                 Gold-Foil.
cess of demoralization. The home-sickness of the Swiss
soldier is a genuine disease, with a natural cause which
operates independently of his will and beyond his con.
trol. The soul that has once adjusted itself to its conditions, and has found the food necessary to nourish its
growth and augment its vital wealth, is nearest to its
good; and the moment it leaves these conditions for
those which are strange, it approaches its evil. Let
the accustomed influences which hold it to virtue, and
strengthen its power to resist temptation, and nourish
its religious life, be escaped from, and it will more readily become the prey of its own evil propensities, and of
the demoralizing influences that assail it from without.
These facts find confirmation in familiar popular experience. The influence of vacation and summer travel
has been felt by multitudes. Some of our most exemplary men, who have never been known to kick over
the traces of propriety at home, break in the dasher and
run away with the vehicle at a sea-side hotel. The
glass of wine, which never meets their lips at home, is
indulged in without alarm among strangers. Bowling
alleys and whist tables and billiard rooms, which are
considered very bad things when among acquaintances, are transformed into excellent institutions in dis.
tant locations. Dignified gentlemen-officers of the
church and officers of the state-become boyish and
hilarious-not unfrequently uproarous-in an unfamiliar




Home.                   263
presence. The cords of the moral nature, kept taut in
the presence of familiar associates, adapt themselves
with marvellous readiness to the prevalent feebleness of
tension found in the humid atmosphere of watering
places.
Fixedness of location becomes, then, a condition
vitally necessary to the growth of a true character, and
the preservation of the health and harmony of the
functions of the soul. The soul, like the body, lives by
what it feeds on. It must increase, or it must diminish.
Travel has its benefits, but they are indirect. They
come from rest-not from growth. The direct influence of travel is dissipation. No man ever comes back
from travel with his powers unimpaired. The power to
concentrate the mind, and to perform labor in the accustomed way, is, in a measure, lost, and must be re.
acquired.  Now, if this condition of fixedness be
necessary to those who already possess character and
Christian principle, how much more necessary is it to
those who are mainly held to propriety and virtue by
outward influences. The young men who leave Christian homes in the country, go to the city, and, finding
the restraints of home removed, plunge into various
forms of sin. The young women who gather in boarding-houses, which are so far without a home-character
that they are regarded only as places to eat and sleep
in, rarely fail of receiving serious moral injury. A con




264                Gold-Foil.
stant traveller who is constantly devout may possibly
exist, but I have never seen him. The itinerant pro.
fessions have never, I believe, been noted for exhibitions
of intellectual growth, or profound piety. Gold hunters.n California and Australia become in a few months
semi-savages. -No genuine observer can decide otherwise than that the homes of a nation are the bulwarks
of personal and national safety and thrift. A  curse
upon all those fantastic methods of living, dreamed of
by socialism and communism, which would sacrifice
home to the meagre economies of great establishments,
where humanity is fed in stalls like cattle!
I may legitimately qualify or adapt what I have
said so far as to admit that a poor home with a pocr
location may be exchanged for a better one. A plant
may be dislocated from an old, and removed to a new
bed, not unfrequently with advantage. It may exhaust
the soil where it stands, and demand more room for its
roots. I have seen many men greatly improved by
transplantation, but the process of adaptation and acclimation through which they were obliged to pass,
before they could establish intimate relations with the
new soil, was proof of the difficulty and danger of the
process. This transplanting process is constantly going
on, however, with good results. The wife in the new
home is more than the daughter in the old one. New
food, new influences, more room, fresh functions are




Home.                    265
always beckoning us to better locations; but the lives
are comparatively few that exhaust a home of medium
advantages. The acquisition of a good home is one of
the first objects of life-a home where the soul has exclusive rights-a home where it may grow undisturbed,
sending out its roots into a fertile society, and lifting
up its branches into the sunlight of heaven-a home
out from which the soul may go on its errands and
enterprises, and to which it may return for its rewards
-a home which, along the conduits of memory, may
bear pure nourishment to children and children's children while it stands, and even after it has fallen.
I recall a home like this, long since left behind in
the journey of life; and its memory floats back over
me with a shower of emotions and thoughts toward
whose precious fall my heart opens itself greedily like
a thirsty flower. It is a home among the mountainshumble and homely-but priceless in itg wealth of associations. The waterfall'sings again in my ears, as it
used to sing through the dreamy, mysterious nights.
The rose at the gate, the patch of tansy under the window, the neighboring orchard, the old elm, the grand
machinery of storms and showers, the little smithy
under the hill that flamed with strange light through
the dull winter evenings, the wood-pile at the door, the
ghostly white birches on the hill, and the dim blue
haze upon the retiring mountains-all these come back
12




266                Gold-Foil.
to me with an appeal which touches my heart and
moistens my eyes. I sit again in the doorway at sum.
mer nightfall, eating my bread and milk, looking off
upon the darkening landscape, and listening to the
shouts of boys upon the hill-side, calling or driving
homeward the reluctant herds.  I watch again the
devious way of the dusty night-hawk along the twilight
sky, and listen to his measured note, and the breezy
boom that accompanies his headlong plunge toward the
earth.
Even the old barn, crazy in every timber and gap.
ing at every joint, has charms for me. I try again
the breathless leap from the great beams into the bay.
I sit again on the threshold of the widely open doors
-open to the soft south wind of spring-and watch
the cattle, whose faces look half human to me, as they
sun themselves, and peacefully ruminate, while, drop
by drop, the dissolving snow upon the roof drills holes
through the wasting drifts beneath the eaves, down into
the oozing offal of the yard. The first little lambs of
the season toddle by the side of their dams, and utter
their feeble bleatings, while the flock nibble at the hay
rick, or a pair of rival wethers try the strength of their
skulls in an encounter, half in earnest and half in play.
The proud old rooster crows upon his dunghill throne,
and some delighted member of his silly family leaves
her nest, and tells to her mates and to me that there is




Home.                  267
another egg in the world. The old horse whinnies in
his stall, and calls to me for food. I look up to the
roof, and think of last year's swallows-soon to return
again-and hear the tortions of their musical morocco,
as it wraps their young, and catch a glimpse of angular
sky through the diamond-shaped opening that gave
them ingress and egress. How, I know not, and care
not, but that old barn is a part of myself-it has entered
into my life, and given me growth and wealth.
But I look into the house again, where the life
abides which has appropriated these things, and finds
among them its home. The hour of evening has come,
the lamps are lighted, and a good man in middle lifethough very old he seems to me-takes down the well.
worn Bible, and reads a chapter from its hallowed
pages. A sweet woman sits at his side, with my sleepy
head upon her knee, and brothers and sisters are
grouped reverently around. I do not understand the
words, but I have been told that they are the words of
God, and I believe it. The long chapter ends, and
then we all kneel down, and the good man prays. I
fall asleep with my head in the chair, and the next
morning remember nothing of the way in which I went
to bed. After breakfast the Bible is taken down, and
the good man prays again; and again and again is the
worship repeated through all the days of many golden
years.  The pleasant converse of the fireside, the




268                Gold-Foil.
simple songs of home, the words of encouragement as
I bend over my school-tasks, the kiss as I lie down to
rest, the patient bearing with the freaks of my restless
nature, the gentle counsels mingled with reproofs and
approvals, the sympathy that meets and assuages every
sorrow and sweetens every little success-all these re.
turn to me amid the responsibilities which press upon
me now, and I feel as if I had once lived in heaven, and,
straying, had lost my way.
Well, the good man grew old and weary, and fell
asleep at last, with blessings on his lips for me. Some
of those who called him father lie side by side with him
in the same calm sleep. The others are scattered, and
dwell in new homes, and the old house and barn and
orchard have passed into the possession of strangers,
who have learned, or are learning, to look back upon
them as I do now. Lost, ruined, forever left behind,
that home is mine to-day as truly as it ever was, for
have I not brought it away with me, and shown it to
you? It was the home of my boyhood. In it I found
my first mental food, and by it was my young soul
fashioned. To me, through weary years, and many
dangers and sorrows, it has been a perennial fountain
of delight and purifying influences, simply because it
was my home, and was and is a part of me. The
rose at the gate blooms for me now. The landscape comes when I summon it, and I hear the voices




Home.                   269
that call to me from  lips which memory makes im.
mortal.
Thus the memory of the past joins hands with the
experience and observation of to-day, to illustrate and
enforce the philosophy which I have propounded. A
homeless man, or a man hopeless of home, is a ruined
man. A man who, in the struggles of life, has no home
to retire to, in fact or in memory, is without life's best
rewards and life's best defences. Away from home,
shut off from the income of those influences which feed
his life-from those relations along which the life of
God is accustomed to flow to him-a man stands exactly where evil will the most readily get the mastery
of him. A man is always nearest to his good when at
home, and farthest from it when away.
One of the very first duties of life, I say again, is
the establishment of a home which shall be to us and
to our children the fountain and reservoir of our best
life; and this home should be a permanent one, if pos.
sible. Home is the centre of every true life, the place
where all sweet affections are brought forth and nurtured, the spot to which memory clings the most fondly, and to which the wanderer returns the most gladly.
It is worth a life of care and labor to win for ourselves,
and the dear children whom we love as ourselves, a
home whose influence shall enrich us and them while
life lasts. God pity the poor child who cannot asso



270                 Gold-Foil.
ciate his youth with  some dear spot where- he
drank in life's freshness, and shaped the character ne
bears!
The choosing of a home is one of the most momen.
tous steps a man is ever called upon to make.  If we
plant a tree with the hope to sit some time beneath its
shadow, and eat of its fruit, we do not plant it in the
sand, or in a stream of running water. It is astonish.
ing to see the multitudes that thoughtlessly plant their
homes in moral and intellectual deserts-to see them
building houses where there is no society, or only that
which is bad, where the church-bell is-never heard, and
where a fertile and fruitful home-life is absolutely impossible. For money men will rush from the healthful
and pleasant country village to the feverish and stony
city, or forsake a thousand privileges that are valuable
beyond all price, and settle in a wilderness where the
degeneration of their home is certain. Circumstances
may force one into locations like these, but they can
only be regarded as calamitous. Communion is the
law of growth, and homes only thrive where they sustain relations with each other.
The sweetest type of heaven is home-nay, heaven
itself is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive
the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is
the great object of life. It stands at the end of
every day's labor, and beckons us to its bosom;




Home.                   271
and life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we
not discern across the river that divides it from'the
life beyond, glimpses of the pleasant mansions pro.
pared for us.
J^^d~




XXIV.
LEARNING AND WISDOM.
" A mere scholar at court Is an ass among apes."
" A handful of common sense is worth a bushel of learning."
" Wisdom does not always speak in Greek and Latin."
"A man must sell his ware at the rate of the market."
HE intrinsic value of learning, as a possession and
a power, is exhibited most remarkably, perhaps,
in a man who knows every thing, and is nothing. He
may be likened to a pond full of water, without an outlet.  The water is aU very well in itself, though none
the better for being stagnant. A few lazy lily-pads
may seek the sun upon its surface, but its chief office is
to drink old starlight, to entertain the shadows of the
tall trees that grow upon its banks, and to receive
them when they fall. If it can be artificially tapped,
for the purpose of feeding some literary institution, as
the Bostonians have tapped the Cochituate, it is very




Learning aid Wifdonl.             273
well; and this seems to be about the only use it can
be appropriated to. Very unlike this is the learning
that has a natural, common-sense delivery, through a
stream that carries out into the world, full and free, its
aggregated crystal, to feed the roots of flowers and
grasses, and slake the thirst of focks and herds, and
torture the sunshine as it slides down rocky rapids,
and turn the mill-wheel that grinds the corn and
weaves the fabrics of the poor, and
"Repeat the music of the rain"
at the feet of plashy waterfalls, and join and mingle in
the river of human action that sweeps on to fill the
ocean of human achievement. I do not think that it
can be said, truthfully, that learning possesses intrinsic,
independent value, or that it has power, in and of itself, to make a man either valuable to himself or the
world.  Learning may as, well lie dormant in dead
books as in dead men. I would as soon have a library
that costs nothing, after purchase, but the dusting, as
a learned man who eats and drinks and wears respecta.
ble broadcloth.  In fact, the library is more ornamental and less troublesome than the man, and is not
always painfully reminding one that it might possibly
have made a good tin-peddler if it had begun early
enough in life.
I am aware that this is not the usual view of this
12*




274                Gold-F oil.
subject. Some, perhaps, assent to it rationally, but
practically it is hardly entertained at all. The pupil
in the humblest school is estimated entirely according
to his capacity to cram into his mental maw and retain
the facts in philosophy, science, and history set before
him. Memory is everything; reason, thorough intellectual digestion, and symmetrical intellectual develop.
ment, are nothing. This runs up the whole grade of
educational institutions, and comes to a head not unfrequently on Commencement days, when the ass of a
class pronounces the valedictory, to subside into nonentity, and the really educated man leaves without an
appointment, and with the pitying contempt of the
Faculty, to win the world's prizes, reflect honor upon
the college, and to take rank among the intellectual
giants of his time. Learning and education are widely
deemed identical things and synonymous words. Consequently we have among the learned, in a work-a-day
world like this, constant surprises. They find themselves shelved, laid aside, left behind, while the unlearned take their places in the world's eye, in the
world's heart, and in the world's work.  Cobblers
represent a state full of colleges in the national councils, machinists become brilliant speakers and wise
governors, and country merchants stand at the head
of educational systems that embrace the growing mind
of a state. All the developments of the age serve to




Learning and Wifdom.             275
illustrate the superiority of wisdom and common sense
to mere learning, and the utter worthlessness of all
learning, when dissociated from those qualities and
powers which can bring it into relation with the practical questions and every-day life of the time.
I am not seeking to depreciate learning, but to define its real value and its only value. It has stood in
the way of the world's progress, almost as much as it
has contributed to it. Its tendency is to worship the
old —to abide within the bounds of old formularies invented by a less developed life than ours, to look chaosward for light instead of millennium-ward, to seek for
truth among the broken fountains of the schools rather
than at truth's own fountain, to follow in the track of
old systems grown too narrow for the expanding life
of the present, and to enchain itself with the bonds of
old creeds and old philosophies. The spirit of learning,
particularly as manifested through the learned professions, is an arrogant, self-sufficient, self-complacent, and
proscriptive spirit. It lays its ban on all schemes of
improvement, all experimental search for truth, all
speculation in the field of thought, which itself does
not originate. All trade carried on outside its marts
is contraband. It calls unlearned thinkers "quacks,"
indiscriminately. All systems of philosophy and art,
of which it is not the father, are illegitimate.
Medicine is a " learned profession," and its learning




276                 Gold-Foil.
has been converted into its bane. It is bound to its
books, and its formulas, and its unreasoning routine
with a devotion so insane, that its professors band
themselves in societies by which every member is kept
to his creed through fear of proscription, and by which
all outside experimenters in the healing art, however
truth-loving, ingenious and scientific, are professionally
and socially damned. Any man who leaps out of the
regular old professional frying-pan, alights in a fire of
professional malediction. It is all a regular physician's
reputation is worth to seek for truth out of the welltrodden, regular channels, particularly if the new channels have become objects of professional prejudice and
jealousy.  The consequence of this is, of course, to
retard the progress of medicine as a healing art. Medical learning has absolutely fought against every great
medical discovery, and not unfrequently against important discoveries in the constituent sciences. All
other arts have advanced within the last century be.
yond calculation. It has been a century of progress in
art and discovery in science; but we look in vain for
those advances in medical science and art which place
them even-footed with their thrifty sisterhood.
Let me not be misapprehended in these statements.
I am neither talking about nor against any system of
medicine.  I am  simply condemning that arrogant
spirit of professionally associated learning, which as.




Learning and Wifdom.            277
sumes the monopoly of all that is truly known of the
subject of medicine, and the privilege and right of
making all changes and discoveries in medical art and
science. I condemn the spirit which refuses to see, and
hear, and consider, and treat respectfully, all truth, by
whatever man discovered-from whatever source it
may proceed. I condemn the spirit which makes a
man a bond.slave to a system devised by other men,
and whose prominent effect is to create more reverence
for authority than for truth. I condemn the spirit
which sets learning above wisdom and common sense.
I condemn the spirit which, in effect, binds men to a
blind, unreasoning routine, and forbids their entrance
into the field of intelligent, rational experiment. I
condemn the spirit which makes medical heterodoxy a
social crime, to be punished by social proscription. I
condemn the spirit which is the principal hindrance to
the development of the noblest, most humane, most
useful, and most important of all the arts.
The law, too, is a learned profession, whose only legitimate office is to promote the ends of justice among
men, and whose constant practice is to pervert justice,
or prevent it, by resort to the technicalities and forms
with which it is hide-bound. There is no department
of human interest that is so full of the lumber-the old
dead stuff-of learning, as the law. A simple matter
of justice between man and man would seem to be a




278                Gold-Foil.
simple matter to adjudicate, on a competent represen.
tation of facts. It would seem to be a matter easilyto
be handled and quickly disposed of; but learning resorts to forms for delay, and picks flaws in forms for
escape, and hunts among maggots for precedents, and
bewilders with the array of authority, until that which
is simple becomes complicated, and an affair of thirty
minutes becomes a thing of ten years. I have such a
respect for the law, that I believe that if every law and
law-blok ever written were smitten from existence, the
honest, commoni-sense lawyers of to-day could frame
codes of law and' rules for their administration that
would shorten and cheapen the processes of justice by
the amount of nine-tenths. I believe that every lawyer believes this, yet he allows this rotten, cumbersome
conglomeration of relics of effete institutions, and products of defunct ingenuities, to warp, and mould, and
modify his nature, till he becomes a slave of authority
and precedent in every thing, with red tape in every
button-hole, and a green bag on his head.
Religion is a simple thing, so simple that "a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein."  The
only fountain of religious truth is the Bible. We have
it in our native tongue, and many a simple soul, without the aid of clergyman or schoolman, has drawn from it
the inspiration of a new life and all the instruction that
he needed toucrhing his relations to God and men. Yet




Learning and Wifdom.            279
theology-human invention and human learning —has
made religion a very complicated thing. It has elevated dogma, and creed, and formulary into prominence, and debased love and life into obscurity. It in
sists more on faith in tenets than in God, and denies to
a Christian spirit the fellowship which it accords to
rational belief. The disgraceful wrangles of the religious newspapers, the great disputes of the schools, and
the high controversies of the pulpit and the pamphlet,
are the quarrels and strifes for mastery of theologians,
not Christians-of learning, not love. Theology clings
to old words and phrases after their life has departed.
Theology is arrogant, selfish, and proud. Theology excludes from the table of the Lord those whom He has
accepted. Theology denies fellowship and communion
to those whom Love expects to meet in Heaven. Theology casts out of the synagogue those who rise to
think, while Christ forgives those who stoop to sin, and,
without condemnation, bids them sin no more. Theology builds rival churches, pits against each other rival
sects, and wastes God's money. I believe that it would
be every way better for the world, if every book of
dogmatic and controversial theology could be blotted
out of existence, and Christendom were obliged to
begin anew, drawing every thing from  the great
Book of Books, leaving Paul and Apollos, and
Princeton, and New Haven, and Cambridge, behind.




280                Gold-Foil.
and learning of Him  "who spake as never man
spake."
The long and short of the matter is, that the learned
world has become so deeply involved in the thoughts
of those who have gone before-so accustomed to following old channels, and to paying reverence to the
opinions and systems of schools, that it cannot step out
freely into the field of truth and handle things as it
finds them. The common sense that deals with things
instead of systems which treat of them, and the wisdom
which grows out of this intimate contact and loving association with the actualities of human life and expe.
rience, are worth more to the world than all the learn.
ing in it. This handling of the vital realities of to-day
with the gloves of dead men; this slow dragging of
the trains of the present over old grass-grown turnpikes; this old monopoly of power and privilege among
interests that touch every individual-the highest and
the humblest; this stopping of the wheels of progress,
at every toll-gate and frontier, for the benefit of learned
publicans, is certainly against the common sense of the
world, as it undoubtedly is against " the spirit of the
age," if anybody knows exactly what that is. Any
thing and every thing which places fetters upon the
spirit of inquiry, which blinds the eyes of discovery,
and abridges the freedom of thought, whether it be
contained in the lore of past ages or of the present




Learning and Wifdom.             281
time, is a thing to be contemned and abjured. A living
man with a carcase lashed to his back may creep but he
cannot run.
Learning runs back for every thing, and reaches forward for nothing. It educates the young Christian
mind of to-day by leading it through a literature whose
highest inspirations were found in paganism. It seeks
for models of style and expression among authors enthroned among the classical, who only became worthy
of the distinction by laying their hearts by the side of
Nature, that realm which is spread all around us now,
illuminated with Christian light, yet forsaken for secondhand sources of instruction. It ignores the theory and
the fact of human progress, and reverses the order of
nature by making an old world obedient to a young
world.
But I stay too long from the definition of the legitimate sphere and real value of learning. Whenever
learning becomes tributary to wisdom, it occupies its
legitimate sphere, and by the amount of its tribute is it
valuable. The soul that abides in learning as an endthat pursues learning as an end-that finds in it food,
raiment, and guidance-that surrenders itself to the
records of other minds, perverts learning and perverts
itself. The soul that uses learning as a means by which
to project itself into a higher life-that stands upon it,
with all its truth and all its falsehood, as upon a platform




282                Gold-Foil.
from which it may survey a better truth and a nobler
issue-uses learning aright, and is enriched. The fa.
ture is an untrodden realm. Around each step, as the
world advances, new circumstances will gather, new
emergencies arise, new problems present themselves for
solution. With these circumstances, emergencies, and
problems, the common sense and wisdom of the world
are to deal, and not the world's learning. We do not
repeat through unvarying cycles the experiences of the
past. Comparatively little of the records of life and
thought of the ages that are gone can have direct relation to the ages that are to come. If the learned men
of the present find themselves left behind in the race
of life, it is simply and only because, while they have
been walking among graves, or busying themselves
with facts for which the real life of the world has no
use, the wisdom and common sense of the world have
got in advance of them. A man must sell his ware at
the rate of the market, not only, but he must supply
the market with what it demands.
But learning has a noble value. It is like the mould
that accumulates from the decay of each succeeding
year of vegetation. It furnishes a humus into which
the roots of mental and moral life may penetrate for
nourishment, but out of which that life must spring and
mount into the air and sunlight. Human life is not a
potato-a bloated tuber that battens in the muck of




Learning and Wifdom.           283
other times, but a stalk of maize, burdened with golden
fruitage, and whispering through all its leaves of the
life within it and the influences without it. It is not a
thing whose issue and end are in its roots, but in a life
to which those roots are tributary; and all the learning
which may not be assimilated to that life is as valueless
as the dust of its authors.
13r




xxv.
RECEIVING AND DOING.
"Virtue consists in action."
"Ho who does no more than another, is no better than another."
" Lt not him who has a mouth ask another to blow."
"Do good if you expect to receive good."
T HERE is no healthy physical life without a proper
balance of the active and receptive habitudes of
the body. If a man eat too much and act too little, he
will become gross and gouty, or dull and dyspeptic.
If he act too much and eat too little, he will be weak
and inefficient, or spasmodic and irascible. It is not
enough to eat; it is not enough to work; but eating
and working should go hand in hand-the first being
sufficient to supply the vital expenditure, and the vital
expenditure being sufficient to exhaust the supply furnished by the food. By this balance, the digestive
functions are kept sharp and healthy, and the muscular




Receiving and Doing.            285
organs are developed to the measure of their power,
The man who eats much and works little is necessarily
a stupid man; but the man who expends in labor what
he has received in food, in a legitimate way, finds him.
self, under favorable conditions, the possessor of a happy
and a healthy life.
We can have no better illustration than this of the
necessity to healthy mental life of the preservation of a
proper balance between the active and receptive attitudes and habitudes of the mind. The mind that imagines that its grand good is to be achieved while in its
receptive attitude-that is bent on receiving and acquiring-will find itself greatly mistaken; yet the
theory of education is mainly the theory of acquiring,
and contemplates almost entirely a receptive habit.
The honors paid to simple learning are tributes to the
faculty and fact of mental stuffing. A large proportion of the very learned men of the world are those
who really do nothing for themselves or their racewho are not recognized as powers in society, and
whose simplicity, lack of common sense, and inability to
take care of themselves, make them the laughing-stock
of boys who have ciphered through the Rule of Three,
and learned to look out for number one. There is a
curse on all intellectual gormandizing-all reception
of mental food that is not made tributary to mental
power. An individual who is simply a man of learning




286                Gold-Foil.
-whose life has been expended in acquisition-is no
man at all. A man of science who does not go out
from books into discovery, or who does not aim to
apply his knowledge to practical life, or who does not
become active inorganizing and imparting the knowledge he has acquired, must become intellectually an
invalid, or an imbecile.
This is an age of reading, and I am glad that it is;
but there is a great deal of reading that is as much
mental dissipation as there is eating that is a waste of
bodily power. Newspapers, books, and magazines, are
devoured by the cargo, for which the devourers render
no return, and from which they gain no strength. A
great reader-a constant and universal reader-is rarely
a good worker. A receptive habit of mind, that can
only find satisfaction in ievouring, without digesting,
illimitable print, is mental death to a man. It is essential dissipation, opposed alike to healthy mental life and
development, and positive usefulness in the world. This
perfect balance between reception and action-between
acquiring and doing-cannot be disturbed in the men.
al any more than in the muscular world, without bring.
ing with it disease and imbecility.
The facts that I have stated with regard to the body
and the mind are important enough in themselves to
call for exhibition, but they serve to illustrate, with
peculiar force, the dangers of the receptive habit that




Receiving and Doing.           287
prevails in the realm of spiritual things. It is no less
an age of preaching than of reading. All over this
land congregations of uncounted thousands go up every
Sunday to be played upon by sermons-to have their
intellects quickened, their sympathies excited, their
imaginations inspired, and their whole spiritual natures
acted upon by their preacher. They want a morning
sermon, and an afternoon sermon, and many of them
would be glad to have an evening sermon. They go to
their weekly prayer-meeting, and would always be glad
to have a sermon there. They love to have their
hearts raked open and stirred up by an eloquent exhortation, or melted by the pathos of a touching prayer.
Their hearts are not only open and crying for more
from the preacher, but they are open toward od, and
crying to Him for more. They thirst for the influx of
divine influences that shall elevate their spiritual frame.
Receptive always, thirsting and hungering always, always eating and drinking, they become thoroughly dissipated in religion, their spiritual life degenerates into
an emotional form, and so they become unfitted for
Christian action.
I have known multitudes of good and pure people
who were almost utterly useless in the world, and
powerless iithemselves, by remaining for years in this
strictly receptive attitude. I have known multitudes
who go to a prayer-meeting to have a good time, pre.




288                Gold-Foil.
cisely the same as others would go to a ball to have a
good time. Their religious exercises have become a
sort of holy amusement. They go to be stirred and
refreshed, to have their emotions excited, and to receive something which shall make them feel. They
care not so much to learn how to do better as to be
made to feel better. Exaltatidn of emotion-spiritual
intoxication-is the object mainly sought for. Woe be
to the preacher if he fail so to act upon them  as to
procure the fulfilment of this object. It will not be
enough that he lay down the law and line of duty with
faithfulness, and spend his days in visits and labors of
sympathy and love. He must preach with power; he
must pour forth with abundance; he must bring stimulating draughts to the greedy lips of decaying emotions, or he will be proscribed.
It is precisely thus with the music of the sanctuary.
The number of hearts that go up actively in a song of
praise, in a congregation of five hundred persons, is
very small. Hearts and ears are thrown open to drink
in the influence of the music, as if the congregation,
and not God, were addressed by the hymn. In the
minds of too many ministers prayer itself is something
to be addressed in about equal parts to the congregation and to the Most High. It is regarded not altogether as the vehicle for aspiration and petition, but as
a portion of the machinery by which their people are




Receiving and Doing.             289
to be moved. I have heard theology, exhortation, and
even personal condemnation mingled with addresses to
the throne-not unfrequently a whole family history.
It is hard sometimes to tell a sermon from a prayer. If
ministers so far forget the proprieties of prayer as to
prostitute it to the purposes of declamation, the people
may well talk of "eloquent prayers," and of men
" gifted in prayer," and forget that it is God and not
themselves who is the object addressed. Thus it is
that nearly all the "means of grace," technically speaking, contemplate a receptive attitude on the part of the
people. They are preached to, sung to, prayed to;
and, as the preaching and singing and praying are calculated to feed their emotional natures, or otherwise,
are they satisfied or dissatisfied.
Now the whole tendency of this thing is to spiritual
debility and imbecility. Some of the most inefficient
churches in this country are those which have what is
called great preaching, and "splendid music."  They
enjoy their Sabbath; they have most refreshing seasons
of communion, they hold delightful prayer-meetings,
and imagine that all is right with them, while they see
no results of good to others around them, and wonder
at it.  How  long must the world live before the
Christian church will learn that its power in the world
depends on what it does, and not on what it feels?
How long must the church live before it will learn that
13R




290                Go.d-Foil.
strength is won by action, and success by work, and
that all this immeasurable feeding without action and
work is a positive damage to it-that it is the procurer
of spiritual obesity, gout, and debility?
The world of Christian life wants to be turned
squarely around, and be made to assume a new attitude.
The world is never to be converted by Christian feeling. What difference will it make with my careless
neighbor that I have enjoyed a fine sermon, if it do not
move me to efforts for his good? What will it avail
my sweet friend who languishes upon her death-bed
that my sympathies have been played upon by eloquent'ips, if they do not lead me to her bedside with offices
of kindness and words of cheer? Why and how is the
world better for the powerful representation to me of
the claims of Christianity, if it do not stir me up to the
work of gathering and saving the neglected little ones
who are growing into a vicious and ignorant manhood
and womanhood? Am I selfishly to congratulate myself that I have obtained new views of the divine nature and the divine love, without zealously endeavoring
to bring the dumb and dead souls around me to the
same recognition?  "He that does no more than
another is no better than another." Life has language
always. Expression is the natural offspring of possession. If my life and my spiritual possessions exceed
the measure of another man, they will demonstrate




Receiving and Doing             291
their superiority in action. If my humane but unchristian neighbor do more good than I do, then his
humanity, as a motive principle of life, is better than
my Christianity.
There are three distinct aspects in which Christian
action may be viewed with propriety and profit. The
first relates to spiritual development. There can be no
growth of power, in any faculty of the soul, or any
combination of faculties, without use. Action is the
law and condition of spiritual development, as it is of
muscular development. That which we try to do, and
persist in doing, becomes easy to do, not because its
nature is changed, but because our power to do is developed. Christian beneficence is a grace that grows
by cultivation. A man who is accustomed to give is
the man who gives freely and gladly. An excellent
thing for spiritual plethora is the bleeding of the pocket-book. It is only those who do-who act-that become powers in the Christian world. A man may hear
a hundred and fifty sermons in a year, and five hundred
prayers and as many hymns, and be melted and stirred
and exalted by them, and still be a spiritual baby,
without nerve, or faculty, or power, and even without
having learned any thing practically. It is only those
who do their duty that learn the doctrine aright. It
is only those who come into contact with human nature and human condition in the work of Christianity




292                 Gold-Foil.
that learn and appreciate its relation to that nature
and condition. We know the truth of a principle by
applying it in practice. The principle of Davy's saiety
lamp may be received as true, but it is not known to
be true till the lamp is made and used. We accept the
proposition that it is more blessed to give than to receive, but we know nothing about it, until we try it
and demonstrate it. It is in the line of duty that all
the highest truth becomes incorporated into the soul's
knowledge. A Christian who does nothing is not only
undeveloped as a man of power, but he absolutely
knows nothing. All truth is to be digested, assimilated, developed into life, before it really becomes a
possession-no less than before it becomes a power.
The second aspect in which Christian action may
be viewed is that which relates to the outside world.
In the development of the subject this has already
been touched upon, but more remains to be said. It
is a notorious and well-recognized fact that, consider.
ing the agencies engaged in the Christian work, the
results are small. I place the responsibility for these
insignificant results upon the constantly receptive and
persistently inactive position of the church itself.
There was never so much good preaching, praying,
and singing in the world as row. There was never a
more general disposition to'go to meeting."  The
Christian ministry were never so put up to the exhibi




Receiving and Doing.             293
tion of every faculty within them as in this age. It is
all feeding, feeding, feeding. It is all ministry to the
greedy flock. We pay better salaries than we used
to, and expect more for the money, yet we grow dead
and dumb from year to year. The church is not generally aggressive. Now and then, here and there, it
becomes active, and immediately there springs up a
great reformation, but the lesson is unheeded, and we
go on gorging and gormandizing, and wonder why
nothing comes of it but increasing weakness and a
growing disposition to inaction.
It is not enough that the Christian give his money
to feed the poor, and sustain efforts for the reclamation
of the vicious, and send the Gospel to the heathen, and
support the church at home. The money is wanted,
and there must be a more general opening of the purse.
strings before very great things will be accomplished*
but more than all is wanted direct personal effort on
the part of the church. Everywhere a Christian should
be a positive power, distinctly pronounced in some
way, so that wherever he carries himself, he will carry
the power of Christianity.  The world says " what
does he more than others?" of the constantly receptive Christian, and entertains a contempt as damaging
as it is just for all those Christians who do nothing.
The opinion that the world entertains of a man's
Christianity is usually a just one. It is rarely far from




294                 Gold-Foil.
right. It is perfectly legitimate to say of a man who
professes to be a Christian, and gives no evidence m
his life and influence of the possession of Christianity
as a motive power, that his religion is vain.
It is not only essential to an undefiled religion, that
a man keep himself unspotted from the world, but he
must visit the widows and the fatherless-demonstrate
the life in him by ministry. When the church shall
become active, and leave behind its laziness and languor, and seek for food that it may have more power
to work, and expend the strength it gets, the world
will beconverted, and it is pretty safe to say that it
will not before.
The third aspect in which Christian action may be
viewed, contemplates its relations to God himself.
Many a man conscientiously goes up to the weekly
pulpit-feeding, through storm and sickness, as a matter
of duty, who never thinks of doing a work of Christian
mercy, or engaging in any kind of ministry during the
week. Sometimes a considerable sacrifice of time and
convenience is made, in order to attend the weekly
prayer-meeting, by those who-manage to keep themselves comfortable in their consciences only by this
means. Now the Christian world knows its duty well
enough. It has no need of half the teaching it gets.
It is always feeding beyond its necessities, and, as I
honestly believe, to its own damage. Let it ask itself




Receiving ar.d Doing.            295
which would please its Master best-teaching some
ignorant child the way of life, or going to hear a great
sermon-visiting and consoling some poor mourner, or
going to a prayer-meeting-stirring up some weak soul
to duty, or seeking for an hour of emotional excitement-going to meeting always, or laboring occasionally for the reclamation of some sad wanderer from the
path of virtue?
Considering the amount of good which the church
has received, how great a return has it rendered?
What is it doing, and what has it done, outside of its
own immediate necessities?  It hires ministers, and
pays for tracts, and contents itself with the acquisition
of a cartilaginous and an oleaginous spirit and life. Oh,
for bone and muscle, and blood and nerve, and courage
and power! Is religion one of the fine arts, that it
should consist in going to meeting in good clothes
every Sunday, saying grace at table, and praying night
and morning?  Is there every thing to receive, and
nothing to give? Are we so literally a flock that we
have nothing to do but to be fed all the year, yielding
only the annual fleece which forms our pastor's salary?
Practically this is the popular Christian notion, but
how miserably unworthy it is!
Action, then, is alike the condition of the develop.
ment of Christian life as it relates to the Christian him.
self, of aggressiveness as it relates to the world, and




296                 Gold-Foil.
of appropriate return for benefits received. Religion
is not a thing of emotion exclusively, nor even mainly.
It is a motive power of life in all beneficent directions
toward man, and in all devotional ways toward God.
It is a life of reception in one aspect, and a life of action
in another. Of him to whom much is given much is
required. Every imbibition of truth and every influx
of spiritual life is to thrill along the nerves, and invade
the veins, of the soul's faculties, and find manifestation
in action. Emotion, feeling-these are well enough if
they feed the springs of power. Prayer, praise, preaching-these are all good, and never to be dispensed with;
but if the life to which they minister have no manifes.
tation out of them, it is a failure.




XXVI.
THE SECRET OF POPULARITY.
"Self-love is a mote in every man's eye."
"If you love yourself overmuch, nobody else will love you at all."
"If I sleep, I sleep for myself; if I work, I know not for whom."
" The way to be admired is to be what we love to be thought."
T    HERE  is a class of men in every community that,
more than any other class, desires popularity,
and less than any other class gets it.  They may be
men of pleasant address and honorable dealing, but
there is something about them that repels the popular
sympathy.  If the people were to be questioned as to
the reasons of their antipathy, they would, in most in.
stances, find it difficult to make an intelligent answer.
They would say with Tomr Brown:"I do not love thee, Doctor Fell;
The reason why I cannot tell,
But this alone I know full wellI do not love thee, Doctor Fell I"
13*




298                 Gold-Foil.
The unfailing heart recognizes an unworthy and
repulsive element in these men, though the intellect
may fail to comprehend it. Now, if the intellect will
make direct inquiry, it will find that these lovers of
popularity are supremely selfish-that they love themselves better than any thing, or anybody'else, and that
all the popularity they long for and seek for is demanded by their self-love. They are not men of generous impulses, but of cool and painstaking calculation.
If they make a gift, it is for a purpose. A policy that
has its centre in self overrules all their actions.
This element of popularity in a man's character is
very little understood. On looking about us, we shall
find the popular favor bestowed with comparatively
little reference to personal character. Many a man,
known to be immoral, will have troops of friends, while
a multitude of others, of whom nothing bad can be
said, will have the affections of no man.
These facts show me how closely, side by side, the
better intuitions and instinctive judgments of the world
stand with the central principle of Christianity. The
world, no less than Christianity-the great human
heart, no less than the true religion-demands that
men shall be unselfish before they receive personal
affection and favor. Religion asks for more than unselfishness, because it lays its claims upon personal
character and personal devotion, but it starts at that,




The Secret of Popularity.         299
as the initial point. The world asks that a man shall
be generous from natural impulse, and not from any
special principle or policy. It is often that these impulsively generous men are impulsively vicious, yet
this does not always, nor often, repel even the good
from sympathy with them. We love some men in spite
of ourselves. Our judgment condemns them, our religious feelings are offended by them; yet the one element of good which they possess receives our admiration and our homage, and we return their cordial grip
and greeting impulsively, and protest only in secret
leisure.
All of us love to stand well with our fellows. We
thirst for popular esteem, and rejoice in popular goodwill. This desire for popularity is universal, though it
has its birth in widely various motives; but it is never
satisfied save when it is called forth by and to generous
natures. The whole world loves Florence Nightingale,
simply because she unselfishly sacrificed the ease and
comfort of a luxurious home, for the purpose of ministering to the wants of the sick and wounded soldiers.
Half of the world's admiration of Jenny Lind grows
out of her characteristic benevolence. The rough fireman who braves the dangers of a burning house, to
save the life of some helpless inmate, is regarded as a
hero, and we toss up our cap as he goes by us. The
man or the woman who, from a generous impulse, risks




300                Gold-Foil.
danger and death for others, or who, from a similar
impulse, becomes the subject of suffering or inconvenience that others may be benefited, compels the
homage of every cognizant heart.
If we love ourselves overmuch, nobody else will
love us at all. We cannot get the world's esteem
without paying for it in advance; and even then our
sacrifices will avail nothing unless they are made without reference to the object of gaining popularity. The
world has an insight into motives which easily detects
the calculating element in all beneficence and all generous doing. It is the native, impulsive, uncalculating
generosity of a deed that kindles our admiration-the
doing good without reference to consequences that inspires our love. We demand that a good deed, to be
the subject of our admiration, shall be the spontaneous
offspring of an unselfish, chivalrous heart. The meanest man in the world admires magnanimity —the stingiest, uncalculating generosity-although he may feel
himself incapable of their exercise-just as a man
physically weak admires a commanding personal prowess, and a coward a deed of daring. So the tribute to
generous, unselfish, gallant doing, is universal.
A thing which is so good and admirable in universal
human judgment is certainly something which demands
a careful consideration, especially as in it abides the
secret of this universally coveted good-will. The world




The Secret of Popularity.          301
declares that selfishness is mean, and unselfishness,
generosity, and magnanimity are noble and admirable.
This decision cannot be altered, and ought not to be.
A man whose plans have reference only to himself is a
contemptible man. We neither love him nor trust
him. The man who says " If I sleep, I sleep for myself; if I work, I know not for whom," is a man whom
all hearts despise-instinctively and inevitably despise.
It matters not how selfish a man may be, there is something in him which tells him that the selfishness he sees
in others is contemptible.
I say, then, that the universal judgment is right
upon this point, and that it indorses the Christian doctrine that selfishness is the central motive power of sin.
Now, there is not a soul in the world that admires a
selfish nature. So far, the human mind is unperverted;
and no healthy mind can conceive how God can admire such a nature. If I, with my low instincts and
perverted tastes, demand that a man shall be, or become unselfish, before I love him, how can I conceive
that God will love his unchanged character? I know
that He cannot, any more than I can, and I am prepared
to take His definition of the sum and substance of religion as the loving of God supremely, and the loving
of our neighbor as ourselves. Wrapped within this
word unselfishness, in its full and glorious meaning, lies
the central principle of Christianity, and from it always




302                 Gold-Foil.
unfolds the true Christian life. When God sits su.
premely on the throne of a human heart-I say supremely-then selfishness is obliterated, and the indi.
vidual becomes small and insignificant in the presence
of the great brotherhood.
I suppose it may be stated as a generally admitted
truth that mankind are not popular. In other words,
the race is not held in very high estimation by itself.
If this were not so, David's declaration that all men
were liars, was not so very hasty after all; for, if there
be a habit everywhere and in all times prevalent, it is
the habit of detraction. Mankind are pretty universally
unpopular, or universally malignant, for they have a
very bad reputation among themselves. I think there
is some cause for all this hard talk about men which
the most of us indulge in, and that though many uncharitable things may be said, the unjust things are
not so plenty. I think that this selfishness of which we
have been talking is very common-in fact, that very
few of us can lay claim to any great degree of freedom
from it. I think that one great reason why we do not
love our neighbors better, and why our neighbors do
not love us better, is that they and we are not altogether lovable. I think that the great bar to a quicker
and higher development of our social life is the contempt we feel for one another's selfishness. If all my
neighbors were free-hearted, generous, magnanimous,




The Secret of Popularity.         303
unselfish men, I should love them all as I may hap.
pen to love one of them who manifests the possession
of these qualities; and if I were the possessor of these
qualities which I most admire in others, I should be
sure that all my neighbors who know me would love me.
Christianity, starting in God's fatherhood, bids us
love our brotherhood. If we love Him, we shall love
His children, however widely straying and however un.
amiable, simply because they are members of the same
family with ourselves. We are nowhere commanded to
love the devil and his angels, because they do not belong to our family. But Christianity does not demand
that we shall admire an unlovely man, and choose him
as a companion, and be happy in his society. It does
not demand that I give him a good name, while I seek
to do him good, or conspire to hold him popular while
I strive to make him better. It does not bid me
smother my antipathies so far as to ignore his selfishness, or to accept him as a grateful object of my affections. I can love him so far as to wish him well, to labor for his welfare, and to rejoice in his improvement;
can love him in such a manner as to be grateful for all
the good he receives and achieves; but, so long as self.
ishness is dominant in his heart and life, I am not required to delight in him, and I could not if I were.
The heart leaps to receive a worthy love, and will not
be counselled.




304                 Gold-Foil.
The secret of the world's unloveliness abides in its
selfishness. This statement, true in the largest sense,
is equally true in its most limited application. The
reason why men are not popular with their fellows, is,
that their fellows fail to find in them generous, uncalculating impulses-open hearts, free hands, and demonstrative good-will. I have no doubt that this statement
will come to many minds either as a new and strange
revelation of truth, or as a proposition which their
overweening self-love will compel them to quarrel with.
I know there are men who are conscious of not being
generally loved, and yet, who, having strong desires to
be loved, are at a loss to account for their own unpopularity. If they accept this doctrine, they can find the
way to win what they desire. If they reject it, as a
thing which wounds their self-love and offends them,
they can have. the privilege of being despised while
they live.  God has made selfishness unlovable, and
shaped the universal human heart to despise it, and He
has made unselfishness so lovable that we cannot withhold from it our admiration.
Here comes in the power of Christianity as the transformer of character, and the agent of those changes in
the human heart and life, which make men not only
lovely to each other, but to God Himself. To my mind,
there is no stronger evidence of the truth and divine
authenticity of Christianity, than the direct blow with




The Secret of Popularity.         305
which it hits the nail of human selfishness on the head.
There is no other system  of religion which does this.
There is no curative scheme of human philosophy which
even attempts this transformation. No outside plan of
reformation, even when it has recognized selfishness as
the root of human evil,has been able to present motives
of sufficient power to work the necessary regeneration.
Under the influence of Christianity, I have seen selfish
men become large-hearted and generous, and have witnessed the outgoing of their lives into deeds of practical good-will. I have never seen this change wrought
by any other system of religion, nor by any form of human philosophy. All other systems and schemes fail to
supply the vital principle of a true life and an admirable character. They are systems and schemes of policy,
and plans of rewards and punishments, built upon what
is good in humanity. They never contemplate the subversion of the central principle of selfishness in the
heart, and the substitution of the principle of benevolence.
As a student of human nature, and an observer of
the forces brought to bear upon it, I am compelled-to
give this tribute to Christianity. There is either in it
a combination of powerful motives, rationally to be ap.
prehended and voluntarily to be adopted, or a new
principle of life, which, infused into the heart, diffuses
itself through every artery and vein, and changes that




306                Gold-Foil.
life's issues. It is not necessary fcr me to say which I
think it is. I only say that there has never been found
any transforming and reforming agency equal to it;
and that I believe it is the.only reliable agency in the
world's transformation. It is this which is to make the
world altogether lovely like its Founder, who gave His
whole life to us-gave it out of His overflowing love
and His unselfish nature. As "self-love is a mote in
every man's eye," there is no man who does-not need
to acquire this principle of the Christian life, to make
him more loving and lovely. The heart given to the
Father, the hand given to the brother, the life given to
both-truly this makes a man admirable! Can we resist loving him?
If the instinctive judgments of men coincide with
and uphold'the Christian standard of loveliness, so do
they go further, and reveal to us what the character of
that transformation must be which Christianity works
in the heart and life. It is not enough that a deed be
beneficent in its results, to secure my homage and admiration. I must see that the heart out of which it
came was a generous heart-that that heart was moved
by hearty sympathy and uncalculating benevolence. I
must see no selfish end consulted, no reluctant bending
to a sense of obligation, no hard yielding to a convic.
tion of duty. It must be spontaneous-an outburst of
noble, generous life. This, my judgment tells me, is ad.




The Secret of Popularity.         307
mirable, and only this. Now Christianity never works
its perfect work in the heart until the outgoings of that
heart are of this character. I am not bound to admire,
and I cannot admire,...a man who, professing to be
moved by Christian motives, manifests his life by deeds
of benevolence that start in a sense of Christian duty
and Christian obligation. The Christian life must be as
uncalculating and as spontaneous as the natural life, before its expression can touch my admiration by its
quality.
The true heart is just as unerring in its judgment
of what constitutes true Christianity as true humanity.
Before it will yield its tribute of admiration and affection to him who does a deed of good, it demands that,
in either case, there shall be no selfish consideration of
any kind. It demands that Christianity shall be as
spontaneous and chivalrous as humanity, and it knows
that when it is not, it is not the genuine article. Obligation implies the idea of justice. The fulfilment of it
is the payment of a debt. Duty is a thing rationally
apprehended and intellectually measured. Unselfish
benevolence-natural, or acquired by the possession of
the Christian life-blossoms with spontaneous beauty,
and it is that which we love and which God loves.
So the secret of being loved is in being lovely, and
the secret of being lovely is in being unselfish. No man
liveth to himself, and no man was made to live to him.




308                 Gold-Foil.
self. He was born with a desire for the good-will of
others, and with the fact (veiled, perhaps, in many in.
stances) looking him in the face, that it is impossible
to get it without the relinquishment of selfishness as
the ruling motive of his life. The truth is, that the
curse of selfishness is upon pretty much all our life. It
blackens and defiles every thing. We have not popular men enough to fill decently the offices of government. They are so few that they are not only the subjects of envy to many, but of' suspicion. The world is
so mean that, unless it happen to know an unselfish man
personally, it hears of his good deeds only to inquire
what and how much he expects to make by them. Is
not this unpopularity of the human race with itself
rather humiliating? Knowing the fact and the reason
of it, let us try to inaugurate a better condition of
things.




XXVII.
THE LORD'S BUSINESS.
"The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children
of light."
"Business is business."
" Money is wise; it knows its own way."
SUPPOSE my minister-the Rev. Theodore Dunn
-to be one of the very best in New England.
If there is any thing that I object to in him, it is his
uncomfortable faithfulness. But I have always taken
his pointed discourses and his still more pointed per.
sonal exhortations in good part, as I know him  to be
the best friend I have, and an honest and thoroughly
enthusiastic worker in his holy calling.  A few weeks
ago I received a note from him, requesting me to call
at his study for private conversation upon an important
topic. I was promptly at his door at the time ap




310                Gold-Foil.
pointed, and spent a very pleasant evening with him.
The special subject upon his mind was the importance
of conducting all blusiness enterprises upon Christian
principles. I think he must have heard something of
my connection with a fancy scheme which it is not
necessary for me to mention here; but he had good
breeding, and said nothing about it. I could do nothing,
of course, but accede to his excellent propositions, and
bow to his exhortations.  I may say, before going
further, that he was entirely in the right, and that I
hope his lesson has done me good.
After returning home, I thought the matter over.
This was the seventh time he had sent for me, for the
purpose of lecturing me. I had had some thoughts on
the subject of religion which I had never expressed to
him, and said to myself, "I will turn the tables; I will
send for the minister."  I gave no time for second
thoughts, and dispatched a note on the instant, requesting him to call at my office "for private conversation
on the subject of religion," on the following evening.
I was in my office at the time appointed, and my minister came insight as the clock struck seven. He greeted
me cordially, but was evidently a little puzzled. He
took the seat proffered him, threw open his overcoat,
and in certain commonplace inquiries, indicated his
wish that I should commence the conversation. I felt
a little awkwardly in the position into which I had




The Lord's Bufinefs.            311
voluntarily thrown myself; but, determined to make
the best of it, I assumed the censor and adviser, and
opened.
"Mr. Dunn," said I, " you invited me to your house
to talk to me, in your sacred capacity, of the importance of conducting business enterprises on Christian
principles. I have invited you here to-night to talk to
you on the importance of conducting the Christian enterprise on business principles."
Mr. Dunn smiled good-naturedly, and bade me
proceed.
" Well, sir," said I, "I am a business man, and have
had, in a somewhat active life, considerable knowledge
of great enterprises; but I consider the Christian enterprise as the largest operation ever undertaken by
human hands. It contemplates nothing less than the
peaceful subjugation of a rebellious world to the forsaken rule of heaven-the restoration of a degenerate
race to purity and happiness."
"But it is not man's enterprise," said Mr. Dunn.
"Hear me through, sir. Moral forces, of varied
nature and operation, and supernatural influences, as
the most of us believe, enter into the prosecution of
this enterprise; but beyond these I recognize an element of business-an element inherent in every thing
which can legitimately be called an enterprise. An
enterprise in any sense is a business enterprise in some




312                 Gold-Foil.
sense, because it involves management and machinery.
Christianity has its parish, its society, its officers and
organizations of various sorts, its missionary associations, and its educational institutions.  Is it not
so?"
Mr. Dunn simply bowed, and said, " Go on."
"To the management of the business department
of the Christian enterprise are called such men as have
the most practical business tact-men who add to gen.
eral intelligence, social position, piety, and zeal, that
acquaintance with the men of the world, and that
familiarity with the forms, details, and maxims of-the
world's business, which will enable them prudently and
efficiently to perform their duties. This is a thing of
men and money, and when money is short, and men
are scarce, you will admit that management becomes a
thing of great importance."
I saw that my visitor was becoming interested. He
laid off his overcoat entirely, and drew his chair nearer
to me.
" Now," said I, resuming," we must settle, at starting, exactly what the Christian enterprise is. Is it
building up our church?"
" 0 no! " replied Mr. Dunn, "certainly not."
" Is it building up our sect?"
"Not by any means."
" Well, suppose you tell me, in a few words, what




The Lord's Bufinefs.           313
it is," I suggested, for the purpose of leaving the burden with him, and getting my premises.
"I should say," replied my minister, " to be con.
cise, that the Christian enterprise is the enterprise of
converting the world to Christ."
"A  good answer," I responded. "I accept your
definition, for it is my own; and I knew you could give
no other. Now, I am not going into theology at all.
It is enough for me to know that eighteen hundred
years ago, a remarkable personage appeared, who was
allied alike or in a degree to divinity and humanity,
and who declared himself to be the Saviour of the
human race. I will not differ with you, or with anybody else, as to how his salvation was to be conferred.
I know that he possessed a supernal elevation of character, that he lived a spotless life, that he gave utterance
to the noblest precepts and principles, that he was
crucified by cruel men, and that he rose again. His
great mission, announced beneath the conscious pulses
of Judea's stars, was that of the bearer of good-will to
all mankind. The commission which he gave to his
disciples was,'Go ye into all the world and preach the
Gospel to every creature.' He began the enterprise,
and intrusted its completion to the hands of his disciples. This is the enterprise which they have undertaken; the enterprise which you, Mr. Dunn, have defined. As I look at it, it is a grand, overruling, all14




314                Gold-Foil.
subordinating scheme. If its merits are equal to its
pretensions, there is not, under the whole heaven, any
great work which should not be subordinate to this."
I had grown a little warm with my talk, and my
minister smiled in his own pleasant way, and remarked
that he thought I had mistaken my profession. I bade
him wait until the conclusion before committing himself on that point. I then resumed.
"In examining the operations of the propagators of
Christianity, I find that money stands as the basis of
nearly all of them. Money builds the church, hires the
minister, sends the missionary, prints the Bible, drops
the tract, supports the colporteur, and furnishes the
life-blood of all the Christian charities. Without money
comparatively nothing can be done, and co-ordinately
essential are men; for without ministers, and missionaries, and colporteurs, and printers, money, devoted to
this enterprise, would be fruitless. The question is,
therefore, as to how this money and these men are
used?  Can you think of an instance, Mr. Dunn, in
which money has been misused? 
"I was just thinking,", he replied, "of the little
town of Montford, up here, which has four church edi.
fices and not a single minister."
"Yes," said I, "and there is Plum Orchard, just
beyond Montford, which contains three ambitiouslooking church edifices with a poor minister in each —




The Lord's Bufinefs.,315
very poor, I may say, in more than one sense. In
Montford, sectarian zeal has actually exhausted all of the
available means of Christian effort, and, so far as I can
learn, the town has not for years been the scene of the
slightest Christian progress. There are four flocks
there without a shepherd. Plum  Orchard contains
twelve hundred inhabitants. Half of these do not attend church at all, partly because they have become
disgusted with the sectarian strifes that have prevailed
among the churches, but mostly because the preachers
(poor men!) have no power over them. Of the remaining half; a moiety attend church in a thriving
manufacturing village two miles distant, and three
hundred are left to fight out the bootless battle, which
keeps three inefficient leaders in commission, and does
good to no one. Only the first case is an extreme one.
Similar cases are found everywhere. Now, Mr. Dunn,
do you blame an unbelieving business world for laughing and scoffing at a spectacle like this?"
"Very bad, very bad!" sighed my minister with a
sad face and a shake of the head.
" Now, sir," I resumed, " I am not going to say that
this is not right, for I pretend to hold nothing deeper
than a business view of it. I am not going to say that
it is not just as the Head of the church would have it;
but I must say, very decidedly, that, viewed in its
business aspect, it is the most foolish, theB most inexcu



316                 Go'd-Foil.
sable, the most preposterous profligacy. The whole
world cannot illustrate such another instance of the
squandering of precious means by organized bands of
sane business men. I say this in view of the fact which,
in courtesy, I am bound to admit, that it is all done
conscientiously, and for the simple purpose of pushing
forward, in the most efficient manner, the Christian
enterprise."
"We must have charity, sir," said Mr. Dunn, in a
wolinded- tone.
"Charity!" I responded, somewhat warmly, for I
saw that he had not fully comprehended my meaning;
" what has charity to do with it? I have impugned no
man's motives. I am simply criticising a business operation. Let me illustrate.  Suppose that I have a
business which extends throughout this State. I have
ani article to dispose of which should be in the hands of
every. man within its limits. I cannot visit every town
and every man myself; therefore I must avail myself
of a system of offices and agencies. Proper agents
being scarce, it becomes necessary for me to economize.
What, therefore, shall be my policy? Evidently so to
apportion my offices and agents as to bring the commodity I have to dispose of within the reach of all, if
possible-of the largest possible number, at least. I
hold my agents strictly responsible to me for the manner in which they do my work. I require of them all




The Lord's Bufinefs.            317
to hold up their hands and swear to do it faithfully and
well; not striving for precedence or monopoly, not
seeking their own aggrandizement, but laboring directly to forward my interests and advance my enterprise. This is a plain business operation; and, stripping the Christian enterprise of every thing foreign to
its business element, I place it by the side of that enterprise as a just standard by which to judge it. Jesus
Christ has something to dispose of to every individual
of the human race. In order to bring it to the knowledge of every individual, he has established a system of
offices-"andf agencies, and committed the work of extendihg them  over the woild to his people. He requires of every agent that he shall devote himself, with
a single purpose, to the forwarding of his great enterprise-the conversion of the world. But his agencies,
after the lapse of more than eighteen hundred years,
have been established only upon a small portion of the
territory, and difficulties seem to clog the path of their
further progress. We find his followers, all of whom
profess a supreme wish to forward his enterprise, disagreeing upon some of the minor and non-essential details of the business, dividing themselves, and using up
the money which he has committed to them in building
a multitude of splendid and.often rival offices, and retaining in each an agent, while a large portion of the
field is entirely unprovided for. Shut up within the




318                 Gold-Foil.
walls of a small partisanship, they seem to have lost
sight of the great enterprise to which they have committed themselves; or, if they sometimes think of it, it
is with a piteous lamentation over the hinderance of a
cause in the way of which they have placed every pos.
sible business obstruction."
"We must have charity," reiterated Mr. Dunn,
moving uneasily in his chair.
"Now, my good sir," I rejoined, " as you are determined to make-me a censor of motives, rather than
a critic of policy, I will not have the name without the
game-you know the old saying. So, when I say that
the business part of the Christian enterprise is badly
managed, I will say that, if a business of mine were
managed thus, I should come to the conclusion that
my agents care more for themselves than they do for
my business."
" I saw where you were coming," replied Mr. Dunn,
with his kind smile, for he was determined to make a
sort of enemy of me before he could be complacent.
"Well, sir, you brought me here," I replied
"Now let me go on. It is a confessed and patent fact
that money is short and men are scarce. The call is
uttered and echoed in every quarter of the world for
more money and more men; but is it too much to say
that enough of both have been squandered in the business management of the Christian enterprise to have
_______________________________, _______________ -




The Lords Bufinefs.            319
carried Christianity into every household? The money
expended in church edifices, and inefficient govern.
mental church establishments, and bootless and worse
than bootless controversies, and the upbuilding of rival
sects, would have crowned every hill upon God's foot.
stool with a church edifice, and placed a Bible in every
human hand. Farther than this: if the men now com.
missioned to preach the gospel were properly apportioned to the world's population, millions would
enjoy their ministrations who never heard the name
of Jesus Christ pronounced, and never will.  The
towns in  Christendom  which  feebly support, or
thoroughly starve, two, three, or four ministers, when
one is entirely adequate for them, are almost numberless."
" Yes," said Mr. Dunn, " I believe that statement
is true. I suppose I could preach to this whole town
in which we live, as well as to my limited congregation."
" Precisely, Mr. Dunn. Now do you suppose the
business world around us here can look on and see
how we manage, and not see the thriftlessness and inconsistency of the whole thing? And if this business
world should happen to conclude that men who profess what we do, and manage as we do, are not in
earnest, would it compromise its reason and its common sense by it  "




320                 Gold-Foil.
"But I thought you to be a lover of art, and always
glad to see fine church architecture," responded Mr.
Dunn, endeavoring to shift the burden.
"You are entirely correct-I wish the world were
full of it; but I am talking now as a business man. I
understand that a church is built with a supreme desire
for the service of Christianity-as something which is
to tell directly upon the Christian enterprise. It is a
simple question of dollars and cents. Do one hundred
thousand dollars, expended upon a church edifice, half
of which is devoted simply to ornamental art, exert
over fiftythousand dollars in power toward the conversion of the world?-for we must always come back
to this definition of the great enterprise. This is what
churches are built for, as I understand it; and I ask
whether, in this case, fifty thousand dollars are not absolutely lost to the Christian enterprise? Is there not
within the bounds of Christendom enough of bricks,
and mortar, and mouldy marble, and costly spires, and
flaming oriels, and gorgeous drapery, and luxurious
upholstery, and chiming bells, and deftly-chiselled stone,
all dedicated nominally to the service of Heaven, to
enrich the whole world with Christian light, were it
economically dispensed?"
"There is undoubtedly something in what you
have said," replied ihy minister, "but I think not
so much as you 2laim. And now, as you are so apt




The Lord's Bufinefs.            321
at tearing down, suppose you tryyour hand at building up."
"I do not see that this is needful, for the remedy
is indicated by the disease; but if you wish it, I will
do it willingly. As a business man, it will be impossi.
ble for me to judge of the relative importance of maintaining a certain truth or tenet, acknowledged to be
non-essential, and the saving of a human soul. That is
for you to do. I only take the enterprise in gross;
and I say to you, as one of the managers of the Christian enterprise, that if you are supremely devoted to
that enterprise, if the great and only end you seek be
to compass the salvation of the world, then you will
spend your money and apportion your means in such a
way that the enterprise shall feel their whole power.
Here, for instance, in this town, we have four religious
societies. These happen to be Episcopal, Congregational, Methodist, and Baptist. All these people expect to meet each other in heaven. They call themselves'Evangelical Christians,' thus acknowledging
that non-essential differences of belief keep them from
thorough fraternization. These men are made a com.
mon Christian brotherhood by the common reception
of what they deem to be the essential truths of Christianity. One large church and one good pastor, like
you, Mr. Dunn, would be sufficient for all these sects.
Now, as they can agree upon the essential truths of
14*




322                 Gold-Foil.
Christianity, why may they not lo so formally, and
leave to every man that Christian liberty of opinion
upon the non-essentials which belongs to him,' and
which by right of public charter or private choice he
will exercise under all circumstances. From my knowledge of human nature I might go further, and say that
such an exhibition of united devotion to a great cause
as this would be, and such a demonstration as it would
furnish of the real, fraternal spirit of Christianity, would
accomplish more for the Christian enterprise than the
separate labors of the four sects could hope to accomplish in a quarter of a century."
"My dear sir," said my minister, warmly, and with
tears brimming his eyes, " this is a beautiful dream of
yours. I say it from my heart, I would gladly see it
realized; but there are so many -prejudices to overcome-there are such different modes of thought and
worship-I do not see how we could come harmoniously together.'
Ah! but, Mr. Dunn, I have only spoken on the
supposition that all prejudices had been subordinated
-all partisan feelings and non-essential opinions-to
the Christian enterprise. I have only suggested such
a management of the Lord's business as I should insist
upon if it were mine; and I repeat what I have said,
in effect, before, that if, in the enterprise, which I had
supposed my own, I should find three or four offices in




The Lord's Bufinefs.           323
opposition to each other, in any form, carried on by as
many agents, each claiming the preference, with no essential reason for difference, I should conclude that
they cared more for themselves and their opinions
than they did for my business. In the method of reform which I have suggested, I would liberate and
render available a vast amount of idle capital, and I
should find upon my hands a large corps of agents to
be sent into such portions of the field as might be un
supplied. I would also divert the large annual outlay
which it has cost to support these superfluous institu.
tions into the maintenance of the new efforts incident
to their transplantation."
"This looks rational, however impracticable it may
be," responded Mr. Dunn, half doubtfully. "But is
this your whole plan?"
"Hardly the shell of it, Mr. Dunn.  Are you
weary?"
"Bless you, no! " replied my minister, pressing my
hand. "I was only going to remark, that there would
still be men wanting."
" Very well," I replied. "I thank you for leading
me to this point. Every year the religious press breathes
out the stereotyped lamentation.that only a few young
men, comparatively with the wants of the world, are
graduated at the theological seminaries. While young
men by tens of thousands throng every avenue of trade.




324                 Gold-Foil.
and press into every alley that leads to an avenue, and
while the professions of law and medicine are crowded
with the ambitious and the talented, few adopt the no.
blest calling of all, and the Christian enterprise lags for
lack of public laborers. Now I have yet to see the
first branch of business in this country, or in any country, that cannot command as many men as it will pay
for. I tell you that for money I can obtain men for
any service under heaven-any service that I would
engage in-good, Christian men, too.  Money will
send men into the eternal ice of the poles, under the
fires of the equator, across snow-crowned mountains,
and among savage beasts and savage men. What, by
the way, is the amount of your salary, Mr. Dunn?"
"Eight hundred dollars a year."
"That is more than any other minister in this town
enjoys, and it is just half the sum I pay my head-clerk.
Now, be kind enough to tell me what is expected of a
minister."
I had touched the right chord, and my minister
rose to his feet, and gave it to me, "with an unction."
" It is required of a minister," said he, "that he
shall possess a first-class mind; that he shall spend ten
of the best years of his life in that crucifixion of the
flesh which efficient study necessitates; that, if poor,
he shall carry into his field of labor a load of debt




The Lord's Bufinefs.             325
which will gall his shoulders for years; that he shall
withhold himself from all other callings and all side
schemes and sources of profit; that he shall write from
two to three sermons each week, and preach them;
that between Sabbath and Sabbath he shall attend two
or three evening meetings; that he shall visit every
family in his parish once in six months; that he shall
take the laboring oar in all public charities; that he
shall call upon the sick, and look after strangers, and
officiate at funerals, and serve as a member of the
school committee, and deliver one or two lectures before the village lyceum every season, and visit the sewing-circle, through the winter-and —"
"And all," I continued, rising also to my feet, for
a sense of injustice was getting the better of me, " and
all for a sum  at which a modern railroad conductor
would snap his fingers in contempt."
But Mr. Dunn was at home in this matter, and I was
very glad to let him talk for me.
"I will not amend your conclusion of my sentence,"
said my minister, smiling, " though it is not exactly in
my style. I will say, however, that a minister's salary
is usually adjusted to the lowest current cost of living.
In this way, he is allowed to lay up nothing for paying
off his debts, furnishing his house, stocking and replenishing his library, educating his children, and surrounding himself with the convenient and graceful externals




326                 Gold-Foil.
of cultivated life. The pastor, enfeebled as he is by
care and the preparatory studies through which he has
passed, is required to be the hardest drudge in his
parish. He is accepted as a laborer in the most important calling that honors our poor humanity, he is
loaded with responsibilities which call for more than
human strength for their support, yet his scanty stipend
is doled out to him more as if he were a dirty beggar,
than a messenger from heaven, and the almoner of its
choicest gifts."
Thus having honestly poured out his heart and his
convictions, my minister sat down. I resumed my seat
also, and, as I did so, I said, "Mr. Dunn, is it to be
wondered at that so few men can be found who are
willing to enter upon a life like this? 
" But, my dear sir, there are higher considerations,"
said he, hastily recalling himself. "I declare it to be
the highest evidence I have known of th-e benignly constraining power of Christianity, that so many men can
be found who are willing to leave the brilliant pathsopen to all-of honor, wealth, and fame-to leave them
with the dew of youth upon their brows, and their
hearts bounding with the strong pulses of young manhood, and take this dusty road, parched with penury,
thick strewn with the thorns of ingratitude, and
thronged with humiliations, from the valley where it
diverges from the world's great track, to the heaven.




The Lord's Bufinefs.            327
touched hill where the weary feet strike upon the
grateful, golden pavement."
"You are right, entirely right," I responded; " and
now I wish to say to you that I consider the Church,
in its business capacity, an unjust and grinding master
towards those whom it has called into its service. Its
noble colporteurs are not paid as well as hod-carriers,
and you have told me feelingly how well its pastors are
paid. And I say that, in a business point of view, the
lamentation over the small supply of pastors in preparation is childish and contemptible, so long as the commonest business principles are disregarded in the endeavor to secure a larger supply. You speak of higher
considerations. I grant that there are such considera.
tions, for I have evidence of them in the fact that there
are any ministers at all. But what. have a church and
religious society to do with those considerations in hiring a minister? If they Jind their candidate an.educated, sound, spirited, honest, and devoted man, they
accept him, and enter into a business relation with him.
They are a laboring, producing, trading congregation,
with all the avenues of wealth opened to them. They
have no right to ask him to give them one cent. In the
salary they give him, it is their duty to yield him a full
share in their prosperity. Any thing less than this makes
him a menial, and does him injustice. Now it may be
that ministers do not care about money, but I have no.




328                Gold-Foil.
ticed that our few well-paid pulpits never go begging
for ministers. They are all undoubtedly exercised by
other considerations, but as the Christian enterprise is
a common one, the Church has no more right to require
them to devote to it their life for higher considerations
than money, than they have to demand money for
higher considerations than their services. It is an even
thing."
"  recognize the intrinsic justice of your position,"
responded my minister, after a pause, " but I am afraid
money enough could not be found to conduct the
Christian enterprise in this manner."
*'But money enough is found to manage it badly,"
I replied, "and I believe there is money enough to
manage it well. I have yet to find the first worldly enterprise that promised safety for investments that did
not command all the money necessary for its consummation. Wherever the angels of promise and progress
lead, money follows and does their bidding. It builds
magnificent cities, and bridges rivers, and excavates
canals, and constructs railroads, and levels mountains,
and equips navies, and furnishes countless hosts with
the enginery of war. In its ready and prolific power,
it often furnishes facilities for business before business
demands them. The Christian world is flooded with
wealth. There is money enough and to spare, and I
very decidedly declare, that if, in the subordinate en



The Lord's Bufinefs.             329
terprises of Christian life, there is no lack of money,
there can be none in the Christian enterprise itself
provided, of course, that Christians are sincere in
their expressions of supreme devotion to that enterprise."
"A  new test of piety," interpolated my min.
ister.
"Perhaps so, but I cannot help it; because, as a
business man, I know perfectly well that any enterprise
in which large bodies of men feel a great and absorbing
interest, can command all the money which it requires.
And now, when the business world sees the Christian
world begging for money with which to forward its
great enterprise, and counting its receipts by slowly accumulating thousands, what must be the impression of
that business world in regard to the honesty and earnestness of that Christian.world?  Can it resist the
quick conclusions of its acutely.educated judgment?
When it sees a body of men lauding a scheme or enterprise in which they will make no deeper investment
than they feel obliged to make for decency's sake, it
calls it contemptuously'a bogus scheme.'"
"You have a grain of truth in a bundle of sophistry, here," replied Mr. Dunn. "It is true, and it is
not true. The comparison which you institute between
investments in human enterprises and the Christian en.
terprise is an illegitimate one."




330                Gold-Foil.
"I see where the trouble is," I rejoined. "The
result of the comparison is the wholesale conviction of
the Church of the sin of hypocrisy; but I will relieve
that of its point by the charitable admission that these
men are laboring under a hallucination. I believe they
have entire consciousness of sincerity. Still, from my
point of view, I can only decide as I have decided. As
a business man, I know that the Christian world can
command any amount of money it may be desirable to
command for the prosecution of the Christian enter.
prise; and I can only conclude that, if it fail to do it,
it is because it has little confidence or little interest in
it."
" But do you comprehend the severity of this judgment? " inquired Mr. Dunn, solemnly.
" I do, sir, but I am not Tesponsible for it. I cannot
help it. You come to business men for money. Why
should we help you to a penny, when you will not invest in your schemes yourselves? Yo,, remember how
it was when our bank was chartered. We opened the
subscription-books, and the stock was all taken in two
hours. We believed in our own scheme; but you profess to regard religion as something better than money;
you even admit that pastors should labor for higher
considerations than money; and yet, when a subscrip.
tion-book is opened for the advancement of some special
interest of the Christian enterprise, Christians almost




The Lord's Bufinefs.           331
universally play shy of it, and oblige it to go painfully
and pitifully begging for months."
As I concluded, my minister heaved a deep sigh. I
feared he was becoming tired of the interview, and expressed the fear to him. He begged me to go on, however, and declared that his interest in my conversation
had deepened from the first, although he felt sick and
sad with the reflections awakened in the latter part of
the discussion.
" We will leave the home field, then," I resumed,
" and change the current. I find that, independent of
carrying on the Christian enterprise within Christen.
dom, there is a missionary work-a work of aggression
upon the domains of heathenism. In this work the
business department assumes an importance which it
holds in no other section of the scheme of Christian
propagandism. The organizations are larger and more
powerful, heavier amounts of money are entrusted to
them, and a more complicated system of machinery is
called into operation. Their operations are two-fold,
comprising acquisition arid diffusion, and rendering
necessary a double set of machinery-one to collect
funds, and another to disburse and consume them.
These organizations cannot be sustained without a considerable outlay of money, and the amount of money
contributed for direct use in forwarding the Christian
enterprise must be reduced by the amount necessary for




332                 Gold-Foil.
carrying on the machinery of these organizations. This,
in itself, is right, as every branch of business should be
made to pay for itself. I find, on examining this missionary field, that it is occupied by a large number ol
organizations, all professedly laboring for the same
object."
" A blessed object it is, and may they all be prospered in it! " interrupted my minister.
"Amen! say I; and I will say more than this.
From the nature of the case, the grand end of Christian effort is kept more prominently in view in missionary operations than in any other. Selfishness and partizanship are more thoroughly subordinated. The work
is one of measurably pure Christian benevolence. Not
so much anxiety is felt for the propagation of sectarian
views as in the home department of Christian labor.
Accordingly, in some instances, we have a union of
various organizations for the purpose of saving the expense of operating multiplied sets of machinery."
"You like this, I suppose," said Mr. Dunn.
"Entirely; and simply because it is the business
way of doing things. You remember that a short time
ago a traveller, in passing over the New York Central
Railroad, from Albany to Buffalo, was obliged to purchase a long string of tickets, which represented six or
seven-more or less-railroad corporations. Each had
its board of officers, its independent set of machinery




The Lord's Bufinefs.            333
its separate engines, cars and men. The business of
these lines was to help the passenger on from Albany
to Buffalo. Their interest was identical. So business
men became aware that there was a great waste in the
management. They therefore agreed to a grand scheme
of consolidation, by which the whole track should come
into the ownership of one corporation, and be placed
under one board of management. This was the work
of business men. Now these missionary corporations
are the managers of roads that lead from earth to
heaven; and, unlike the old railroad corporations, they
keep up (to speak it reverently) entire routes of transit
from  one extreme to the other. In this thing, all
Christians feel that it is of more importance that a heathen should come to a practical knowledge of the
Christian life, than that that life should be accompanied by any special sectarian views. What I wish to
say, as a business man, is, that not a cent of money
should be wasted in superfluous organizations and machinery, and that all these men who are carrying on
this superfluous machinery should be put directly into
the aggressive field of operations, where men are so
much wanted."
"I agree with you in the lnain, my friend," said
Mr. Dunn, drawing a long breath.
"Yet I only advise in the home field the policy which
you approve in the foreign.'




334                Gold-Foil
"I know," replied my minister,  but you do not
comprehend all the difficulties."
"Who made the difficulties?'"
"Let us not go back to that," said Mr. Dunn,
smiling.
"Very well, I will go on. We have, scattered here
and there, over the land, petty societies, established
for the accomplishment of some minor, special ends.
There are some of these which must use nearly or quite
all the funds they receive in sustaining themselves.
Their agents occupyour pulpits, they haunt our houses;
and as we do not know them, or the organizations
which they represent, we regard it as a hardship to bestow our charities upon them. Speaking in a business
way, a hat is a hat, and a human soul is a human soul,
wherever found. If I have money to give for the benefit of a human soul, I choose to give it where it will tell
directly upon that soul, and not to a man who will keep
half of the sum to pay himself for getting it out of me.
In other words, I would support that man as a missionary, and thus give the heathen the benefit of his time
and my money, rather than deprive the heathen entirely of the one and half of the other."
"Then you would kill all these societies, would
you?"
"I would do this: I would place the best business
men at the head of our leading charities, and then, if




The Lord's Bufinefs.            335
they should fail to find these minor fields of sufficient
promise to warrant an outlay in their behalf, I should
advise that they remain uncultivated"
"But I do not see," said my minister, "how you
will avoid the necessity of keeping up a full corps of
collectors. Every church must be approached with
explanations and solicitations."
"Yes, but not necessarily by professional collectors.
If Christians really feel the interest which they profess
to feel in missionary operations, they will need no explanations-no annual posting up in missionary matters.
A business man needs no such annual posting up in
financial affairs. He reads the foreign news, the pricecurrent, the daily condition of the money-market, and
every thing which directly or indirectly bears upon his
business. The Christian world has its "Missionary
Herald," and other publications, in which all the facts
are stated weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Any man
really interested in this enterprise, as every Christian
professes to be, would of course read these publications
with anxious avidity. The pastor does, at least; and
I should greatly prefer, Mr. Dunn, to hear a missionary
sermon from  you, than the tedious harangue of a
stranger. At any rate, if the church is really interested
in the missionary work, it will gladly assume the task
of collecting its own funds, and thus.turn into the di.
iect channel of Christian effort the money now ex



336                 Gold-Foil.
pendedain supporting collectors, and, with it, the col.
lectors themselves."
Here Mr. Dunn took out his watch.
"Mr. Dunn, I accept the hint. I have bored you."
"Not at all, sir," replied the good-natured man.
" I assure you that the act was involuntary. Go on."
" I think," said I, resuming, " that there are but two
points more which I care about touching to-night. We
business men think a great deal-of business honor. In
the business world, a man who refuses to pay his just
debts is accounted no better than a swindler. All confidence is withdrawn from him, and all business accommodations are refused to him wherever he is known.
It was only last Sabbath that you gave out a hymn
which had in it this noble stanza:-'Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.'
I noticed several eyes around me grow moist with its
effect. I have no doubt that the whole church looked
upon it as an eloquent expression of their indebtedness
to their great Master. They mentally credited Heaven
with an infinite benefit, and debited themselves with
their entire spiritual, vital, and worldly estate. Now
I, as a business man, see that the Christian acknowledges the receipt of this benefit, and in his covenant, or




The Lord's Bufinefs.            337
-contract, agrees to make the utmost payment in his
power. Mr. Dunn, you know I mean no irreverence
when I say that the church has not treated Jesus Christ
with any thing like the business punctilio which it exercises towards and exacts of its neighbors, and that,
if Jesus Christ were the manager of a bank, every
obligation the members have given would have passed
to protest long ago. I do not pretend to canvass
moral obligations, and I will only add, that when the
Christian enterprise shall receive all the men and all the
money pledged to it by contract, when Christians shall
discharge their plain business obligations, voluntarily
assumed, and long over-due, there will be no lack of
agents or of means for carrying the Christian enterprise
to the grand consummation which awaits it."
"This is a new view," said my minister, with enthusiasm, "and should be urged from the pulpit. It
must be effective."
"You are welcome to it," I replied.
"And is my lesson concluded?"
" Not quite. I wish to add that business men, in
their steady look-out for the main chance, are always
on the alert for any incidental or side schemes of profit
or advantage that may present themselves. In the
Christian enterprise, or among its results, there is such
a thing recognized as Christian brotherhood. It ought
to be the best and purest relation which can exist be.
15




338                 Gold-Foil.
tween man and man, and, if fully realized, certain material benefits would be sure to result from it."
What, for instance?"
"Well, you know that, for the purpose of securing
benefits that would naturally flow  from  a genuine
Christian brotherhood, various special organizations
have been established, such as the Free Mlasons and
the Odd Fellows. Suppose I were in New Orleans, or
London, and should fall sick.  Suppose, also, that I
were a member of your church, and also a Mason.
Should I call upon a member of the church first, in
order to secure care and aid? "
My minister blushed, and did not reply.
"You know I should not. Now I say that there
is a very large class of minds which judge of the soundness of a principle by the character of the action it
inspires. To such a class as this, which organizationthe church or the lodge-would seem to possess within
it the most powerful principle of practical fraternity?"
" But, my dear sir,' said MIr. Dunn, warmly, " these
societies have nothing good in them that they did not
take from Christianity."
"That is it exactly. They have stolen your capital. As a business man, I say that Christianity cannot
afford to render necessary or desirable a set of organizations which tend to throw it into disrepute, by doing
the work which it is the duty of the church to do.




The Lord's Bufinefs.             339
Were I to undertake a large business, and attempt to
manage it in all its details, and so far fail in one of them
that another should spring up, and take it out of my
hands, and execute it better than I had ever executer.
it, I should not only feel personally humiliated, but ]
should feel that my whole business had been wounded;
I say, then, that the prosecutors of the Christian enter
prise cannot afford to be surpassed by any other organization in the practical results which flow from the
brotherhood it establishes. And now, if you will allow
me to finish at a breath, I will add that this same
business view of brotherhoods applies with equal force
to all the organizations formed to do the work which
the church neglects to do. Various societies of reform that have sprung up in the past have found their
birth in the quick sensibilities of men who have had no
connection with the church, and who, in carrying them
forward, have met with so much immobility in, or absolute opposition from, the church, that they have be.
come impatient and disgusted, so far, in some instances,
as to become open enemies of the church, and even of
the Bible itself. I say that the Christian enterprise
cannot afford this. Every good principle or purpose
which is involved in these side-schemes is taken from
Christianity; but Christianity, while furnishing capital
for these schemes, loses not only the capital, but the
credit of using it, and often -has the misfortune to see




340                 Gold-Foil.
its thankless beneficiaries turning against it. I say
such management as this is ruinous."
"Management, management, management!" ex.
claimed Mr. Dunn, rising to his feet, and taking his hat
from the table-" nothing but management."
"My good sir, what do you mean? "
"I mean this, that your constant association of'
management with the Christian enterprise is repugnant
to my ideas of the nature of that enterprise. The
Christian enterprise is heaven-born. It has inherent,
irresistible strength, and God is with it! It must win
its way, if its facts andits principles be proclaimed; and
because that in it are the wisdom and the power of
God, it does not need the aid of such small manage.
ment as we apply to our business affairs-still less the
aid of that power which the cunning tactician employs
in other and less worthy fields of operation."
"I honor the sensitiveness and sensibility in which
your words originate," I replied; " but I join issue with
you. There is nothing more dangerous to any enterprise than an overweening confidence in its strength.
Now, my good sir, against a good cause, interest, lust,
and malice manage, and when they crush it, as they
have crushed many good causes, they crush it by management. They cannot oppose it on its own merits,
and they therefore avoid its issues. But all the power
which a good cause possesses within itself resides in its




The Lords Bufinefs.             341
issues. If its opponents be not brought to meet these,
it is powerless. Here is where management becores
necessary to meet management, and the nature of the
cause and the nature of the opposition will determine
the nature of the management,"
"But this has nothing to do with business-we,ere talking of business management."
"I am coming to that. The strictly business management stands upon a different basis.  No matter how
good or how strong a cause maybe, the scheme of its
propagation necessarily has its business department,
which, being independent of the cause itself, in the fact
that it is incident to all organized human action, must
be conducted on business principles. I therefore say
that there is nothing more dangerous to a cause than
that degree of confidence in its strength which makes
it responsible for more power than resides in its issues,
and leads to the abandonment of departments of labor
essential to its success-departments only legitimately
to be operated by human sagacity and human pru.
dence."
As I closed my last sentence, the clock struck nine.
I felt ashamed for having detained my good friend so
long, and apologized, not only for this but for the al.
most disrespectful act of calling him to me. Ile said
that no apology was needed, that I had given him food
for thought for many days, and that I must not be sur.




342                 Gold-Foil.
prised to see a portion of my thoughts reproduced in
the pulpit, with such modifications as reflection might
suggest. I helped him on with his cver-coat, and he
left the door in a brown study.
About three weeks afterwards he called upon me,
and desired me to remain at home on the approaching
Sabbath morning, as he should use so many of my
thoughts in his discourse that it would embarrass him
to have me present. I acceded to the request, on the
condition that he would give me his sermon to peruse
after its delivery. This he agreed to, and the arrangement was fulfilled in all its parts.
The sacred text upon which he founded his discourse was this: " For the children of this world are
wiser in their generation than the children of light."
It was an eloquent performance. All my views had
been modified somewhat, by passing through the medium of a more spiritual mind: but they had not been
shorn of their power.  The closing paragraphs impressed me as powerful and eloquent, and I trust that
their author will take no offence at my purloining them
and publishing them here.
"I see the Christian enterprise only feebly aggressive, pushing on laboriously here and there, and count.
ing its gains slowly, while the great worldly enterprises
among which it floats dash proudly before the wind
with sails all set, until they ride, staunch and trim, in




The Lord's Bufinefs.            343
the harbors for which their owners destined them.
Think you that in a world of business like this any
enterprise can succeed that is not managed in a busi.
ness manner? Why should the children of this world
be wiser in their generation than the children of light?
Why will the latter vainly call upon God to work miracles in their behalf, while refusing to apply to the Christian enterprise those simple, common-sense rules of
policy and action, without which (they well know)
their own business would fall into irretrievable ruin?
What sight more pitiable can there be, than a band of
mistaken Christians, praying Heaven for help in favor
of a cause the laws of whose progress they utterly ignore or positively transgress?
" Incidentally our discussion has touched something
deeper than this. Heaven has chosen the weak things
of this world to confound the things which are mighty;
and the business test which we have applied to the
Christian enterprise, and its managers and manage.
ment, low and subordinate as it is, has reached down
into the great Christian heart, and tried its sincerity.
It has shown plainly, if it has shown any thing, that the
real nature of the claims of Christianity is but feebly
realized by its professors. It has shown that Christians
are repudiators of their acknowledged debts, and that
behind all this business delinquency and dishonor there
must be a torpor of moral sensibility and a lack of




344                 Gold-Foil.
moral honesty, sufficient, but for the upholding arm of
a pitying Heaven, to crush the Christian enterprise into
the dust.
"As I look out upon the field of Christian labor 1
see nothing harder to accomplish than what has been
accomplished already. There is not a difficulty there
which, in the progress of the enterprise, has not been
many times surmounted. The entire practicability of
the Christian enterprise has been demonstrated by the
work already done. The Christianization of mind is
not a more difficult process now, than it has been in
the past. If, therefore, the great difficulties in the
path of the Christian enterprise do not exist in the field
through which it passes, where do they exist, where
can they exist, save among those who are carrying
it on?
" I feel oppressed and humiliated by the secondary
position which the great enterprise to which I have devoted myself is allowed to occupy among the teeming
enterprises of the world. I am ashamed that there is
no more practical sagacity manifested in its management, and that even the readiness and freeness of the
grace of God are called in question to account for a
barren adversity of results, for which the Christian
world is alone responsible.
"Every interest of man calls for the efficient prose
cution of this enterprise and its speediest completion.




The Lord's Bufinefs.            345
The moral and intellectual health and the redemption
of a race are involved in it. Whatever of blessing
there may be in wealth, whatever of honor and purity
there may be in politics, whatever of sweetness ther
may be in family and social relations, whatever of worth
there may be in manhood and womanhood, whatever
of dignity and true joy there may be in worldly pursuits, whatever of glory there may'be in the wide
range of human action, depends upon results which
this enterprise shall achieve for mankind. It should be
broad, instinct with action, heaven-reflecting, and worldembracing like the sea. Upon its billowy bosom the
navies of all lands should ride. The keel of every human enterprise should be sunk deep in its waters, and
every sail should be filled fully and steadily by the benign breezes that sweep over its surface. It should
only break against great continents of Christian life or
islands of human happiness, kissing their feet in the
tidal throb of its heaven-born impulse, tempering the
fervors of Prosperity's summer, meliorating the rigors
of Adversity's winter, and binding the nations in peaceful communion through the medium of its flexible and
universal element. The world cannot live without this
enterprise. Wherever upon its surface a true civilization has lifted its head above the dead level of barbarism, there you may trace the footsteps of the Christian enterprise. Wherever the divine man has con15*




846                 Gold-Foil.
quered the brute, there has stood the messenger ot
heavenly truth.
"What is true in the past will prove true in the
future. Thus, then, the world's destiny and the world's
hope are in the Christian enterprise. And how is that
enterprise managed? What progress is it making?
In this view, how pitiful and contemptible, nay, how
sinful and damnable, become the strifes of words, the
wars of sects, the dumb formalities, the droning imbecilities, the treasure-sacrificing ostentations, and the
niggardly meannesses of the great mass.of those who
have in charge this heavenly enterprise! May the day
soon dawn, when the great object of Christian laborthe conversion of the world-shall reconcile all differ.
ences, unite all hearts and hands, and lead on victoriously to the consummation of a scheme which had its
birth in the bosom of God's great benevolence, and
shall find its issue in universal joy!'
x.




XXVIII.
THE GREAT MYSTERY.
"Consider well and oft why thou camest into the world, and how soon thou
must go out of it."
"Careless men let their end steal upon them unawares and unprovided."
"Our birth made us mortal; our death will make us immortal."
" He that fears not the future may enjoy the present."'WTHY was I-why were you-called forth from
nothingness into a world of danger and pain,
and sin and death?  That is a question that has blistered the lips of a million wretches, and we who are
happier, though still the subjects of evil1 may well ask
it, and consider it.
The earth has been the subject of two grand experiments, and in the results of these we are to find the
answer, if anywhere. Six thousand years ago two persons-a man and a woman-were born into the world,
and awoke to the consciousness of existence.  They
were pure and good, and so pure and so good that they




348                Gold-Foil.
were open to free intercourse with God and with spir
itual intelligences. Their tent was the blue sky, the
floor of their dwelling was carpeted with Eden's grass
and flowers, and fruits, heaven-provided, hung on every
hand. They knew no danger, they felt no pain, they
were free from guilt, and had no fear of death. They
were adapted to drink in happiness from the things
around them, and the things around them were adapted
to supply their desires. A pair of perfect bodies, a
pair of pure spirits, they found themselves in what
seemed to be, and was to them, a perfect world. They
were made in the image of God, and were therefore
free. This freedom was essential to their perfection,
their dignity, and that development to which their
Maker looked as the crowning excellence and glory of
those whom He would call his children.
But there could be no such thing as right without
its opposite-wrong; and no good without its opposite
-evil. They were free, and could obey the laws placed
upon them, and thus perpetuate their happy estate, or
they could do wrong, and blast it. They yielded to
the first temptation to do wrong, and found themselves
and the world transformed. This first experiment contemplated the development of humanity into its highest form and noblest quality without the ministry of
evil. It was a failure, and God, who instituted the
experiment that we might answer the great question




rhe Great Myftery.             349
we are considering, knew it would be. It was brief,
terrible, and decisive. The parents and representatives
of the race were driven out of the garden, and they
and all their posterity have been subjected to a new
experiment-a better and a safer one. It was better
that Adam and Eve should fail then and there, than a
thousand years afterward. The experiment was tried
under the most favorable circumstances, and did not
succeed. That was enough for the world. There had
been experiments before-how many we know notbut we know that there were great beings who had
failed to keep their first estate, and had done immeasurable mischief in the spiritual universe.  The
Bible tells of these.
The new experiment-that of which all of us are
the subjects-contemplates the introduction of the race
into its highest estate through the vestibule of evil.
We are to take evil at this end, and not at the other.
We are to become familiar with sin and its effects, to
overpower temptation, to become "perfect through
suffering." We are to win strength by struggle, and
to have our love of that which is good developed side
by side with our hatred of that which is bad. Our
spiritual natures are to be knit into firmness by toil, to
be hardened into power by conflict, to be softened into
humility by the experience of their weakness, to be
rendered tractable by affliction, and thus fitted for a




350                Gold-Foil.
safe eternity. What do you say of this experiment?
Is it not a grand one? Is it not a benevolent one?
Tell me not of the millions who fail of this! I leave
them in the hands of that benevolence that has devised
such great things for you and for me. That this is the
exact motive of the experiment now in progress in this
world, I have no doubt; and I do not believe, considering the length of time it has been persevered in, and
the nature of the agencies that have been introduced,
that it will prove to be a failure. If I did, I should
lose all faith in God. I believe that the world, as it is
-considering the nature and duration of our existence
and the nature of ourselves and the service and society
for which we are designed-is the best and safest world
we could be placed in. There I leave it.
Well, is this existence, which I have entered upon
by no act of my own, on the whole a blessing? Do
you feel it to be so to you, or not? How would you
like to be annihilated-to be wiped out as a conscious
existence, and plunged into the dark nothingness from
whence you came? You shrink from the thought, and
so do I. Why? Because, and only because, we be.
lieve, with all healthy souls, that existence is a blessing.
We love life, here and now, in this world of sickness,
sorrow, and death. If, then, existence be a blessing,
little or large, to us, and we were born into a world of
suffering and of sin for the purpose of fitting us to live




The Great Myftery.              351
safely and securely through all the coming ages of our
existence, certainly it becomes us to take it contentedly, to front our destiny boldly and trustfully, and see
what we can make of it. We are to consider not only
why we came into existence in such a world as this, but
how soon we must go out of it, and how brief, at
longest, the period of this momentous experiment
will be.
If this world be not a place for education of some
sort, it has little meaning. The idea that a man should
be placed in the circumstances that surround us, and
subjected to this great experiment without reference to
another existence-that he should die as soon as he has
leained to live-is simply absurd. Admitting, then,
that we are the subjects of education, how does it become us to see that the end of its period do not steal
upon us unawares and unprovided. How does it become us, as rational men and women, to make the most
of our life, and to see that in our case, at least, the experiment be successful. The man who receives life as a
blessing, to be cherished and loved, and enjoyed and
preserved, is a coward if he be afraid to consider its
intention and its end, and  a guilty spendthrift if
he let it pass by, month after month and year after
year, without securing the education it was meant to
convey.
This wise providence of time and opportunity be



352                Gold Foil.
comes the more desirable when it is remembered that
it is only when we are fearless of the future that we
may enjoy the present. The lamb doomed to slaughter
on the morrow, gambols and rejoices in freedom to-day,
because it is fearless of the future. The bird sings, the
insect hums with the joy that is in it, the kitten frisks
upon the carpet, not because they are not subjects of pain
and death, but because, knowing nothing of them, they
have no fear of them. A fearlessness of the future
identical with this cannot be ours, and the fact is proof
of our higher, destiny; but a fearlessness of the future,
which will render our life far happier than theirs, may
be acquired, by preparation to meet the future. Life
is only an inestimable blessing to him who, prepared to
meet the future, and who, comprehending his position
and the meaning of it, is not afraid of the future.
The shadowy future-ah! how many shudder when
they think of it! How many shrink from even the
thought of it! How it poisons every present delight,
and embitters every pleasure, and haunts every hour of
hollow mirth! I declare this to be utterly unnecessary-even inexcusable. We are content to live here
in this world of sorrow and pain, and shrink from a
world in which it shall be done away with, if we are
only manly enough to get ready for it! Accepting our
life as an experiment-a period of education-entering
into the plan by which we are to be fitted for everlast.




The Great Myiitery.             353
ing happiness and safety, and subjecting ourselves to
the necessary discipline-we lift the great shadow from
us; the phantom of the future retires, and, calm in our
trust, we live in the present a life of enjoyment. No
man can enjoy life in its full, blessed measure, until this
tormenting fear be cast out; and it can never be cast
out by a rational man until the future looks safe to him.
The moment the future is taken care of, present trials
seem small, and present joys are lifted to our lips, their
divine aroma unalloyed.
The tendency of religious instruction and of philosophical speculation has been to mystify us all upon
this problem of evil in the world. Our preachers have
talked solemnly upon the subject of " reconciling " the
existence of evil with the infinite love and goodness of
God, as if the belief in this goodness and the recogni.
tion of this evil in the ordained system of things, were
to be regarded separately, with an unbridged gulf of
darkness between them.  Threading that darkness,
fathoms below sight, there is supposed to be a chain of
golden links, holding one to the other, to be appre.
hended only by an irrational faith. Such teaching and
such speculation are full of miserable infidelity. I, for
one, believe in the infinite love and goodness of God.
I plant myself on them, and I believe that I could not
be shaken from my foothold without the wish that I
might plunge into annihilation. On this firm rock I




354                Gcld-Foil.
take my stand, and, without seeking to reconcile the
evil which enters into my experience and comes within
my observation with God's love and goodness, I seek
rationally to account for the evil as an appointed means
of the infinite love and goodness. I know God is good,
or He is no God; and I believe, as a natural consequence, that I am to be raised into assimilation with
the specific quality of His goodness by rational knowledge of, and experimental acquaintance with, evil. I
call that infidelity, and not faith, which makes of the
existence of evil a blind mystery, to be mournfully ac
cepted, and sacredly kept from the hand and eye of
reason. It makes no difference what events and what
destinies hinge upon the existence of evil here; it matters nothing what sufferings, what woes, what sorrows
assail us; the moment we swing loose, by the smallest
remove, from perfect trust in the infinite love and goodness, and a belief in the benign ministry of evil as a
department of their means, we lose our hold upon the
meaning of our life.
Believing in God's goodness and His infinite and
everlasting love, I believe in evil, as a part of the divinely appointed means by which my soul is to be
educated and disciplined for its highest possible destiny-as a means rendered necessary by my nature and
by my destiny. I believe that if now, in my soul's infancy, I make my acquaintance with evil, and grow up




The Great Myftery.              355
through it into my soul's manhood-learning its rela.
tions to divine law and to my own personal, godlike
freedom-that I shall be safe through the infinite ages
that stretch-before me. I shall not be like the angels
who lost their first estate, and plunged, full-fledged,
from heights of heavenly power into an infamous per.
dition. God might as well have given me my infancy
in heaven as here, if evil had no ministry of good for
me. I might as well have been ushered at once into
the spiritual life, as to have been the tenant of a
death-doomed body, if there had been nothing to
be gained by probationary subjection to the power of
evil.
So I take my life as I find it, as a life full of grand
advantages that are linked indissolubly to my noblest
happiness and my everlasting safety. I believe that infinite love ordained it, and that, if I bow willingly,
tractably, and gladly to its discipline, my Father will
take care of it. I say nothing here of the Christian
scheme, because I choose to discuss this single question
by itself.
Now, what I wish to say, is this: that a man who
decides that God is infinitely good, that he was born
into a world of evil because it was, on the whole best
for him to be born into such a world, that evil has a
ministry for him essential in the nature of things to his
highest destiny and his completest safety, and, with




356                 Gold-Foil.
faith and confidence, accepts his lot and makes the most
of it, has nothing to fear in the future, and nothing to
hinder his enjoyment of the present.  From  such a
man the incubus of a dark future is lifted. The future
maybe undefined and, perhaps, in some sense, awful,
but it will not be terrible; for infinite love will take
care of it. The terror inspired by things to come
thus taken out of the way, the ban on present happiness is removed, and soul and sense may drink in unreproved, whatever good that crowds to them for acceptance.
If we, finite creatures, encumbered with flesh, and
harassed by its appetites and gross proclivities, conquer the temptations that assail us, and find ourselves
growing stronger and better as we grow older; if, in
this world of evil, and in a measure through its ministry, we become elevated and ennobled, how safe and
glorious must that future be which shall find us free
from the appetites that chafe us, and released from all
pain and sorrow! Now, is it not worth something to
make that future so secure that we can approach it
with fearlessness? Ah yes! The life which is, no less
than the life which is to come, is ours, if we will take it.
With this lion in our way removed, how sweetly will
taste the pleasures of life! How precious will become
the loves that our hearts drink so greedily, and often so
fearfully, when we know that we may drink them for



The Great Myftery.             357
ever! How charming will become the songs of birds,
and how fragrant the perfume of flowers, to him who
believes that he will only lose them to listen to angelic
music, and breathe the breath of flowers that never
decay!
Much of the mystery that hangs over the world, as
a world of evil, grows out of a misconception of the
highest life. If the highest good of the short years
that are allotted to us on the earth be happiness, then
is the existence of evil indeed a mystery; but it is not,
and cannot be. Happiness is a legitimate object of
life, and I am even now endeavoring to show how more
of it may be secured; but it is an object to be held
subordinate to the education necessary for service in
another realm, and the permanent enjoyment of another
estate. I believe that the truest happiness of the world
is to be found in heartily accepting and entering into
the scheme by which evil is made a powerful agency
in the development and eternal security of the soul.
Accepting this ministry, and trusting in the good.
ness-profound and eternal-in which it was conceived, what a flood of light and love is let in upon the
soul! No! there is something better for us in this
world than happiness, whatever there may be beyond.
We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly
and gratefully. We will add a thousand-fold to the
happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the fua




358                  Gold-Foil.
ture which it brings, but we will not place happiness
first, and thus cloud our heads with doubt and fill
our hearts with discontent. In the blackest soils grow
the richest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees
spring heavenward among the rocks.
Ill in>D.