A Man's Value to Society (14 page)

Journeying afar, the traveler at length stayed his steps in a distant village. Then in toil he sought to forget. Rising a great while before day, he wrought with the activity of a spinning insect; and while men slept, his loom hummed far into the night. When fifteen years had passed, he had much gold and was a miser. Under the brick floor he secreted his treasure. Each night he locked the door, shuttered his windows, and poured upon the table his gold and silver. He bathed his hands in the yellow river. He piled his guineas up in heaps. Sometimes he slept with arms around his precious money-bags. One evening he lifted the bricks of the floor, to find that the hole was empty. Benumbed with terror, he went everywhither seeking his treasure. He kneaded his bed, swept his oven, peered into each crack and crevice. When the full truth fell upon the miser, he sent forth a wild, ringing scream--the soul's cry of desolation. Then in his grief he rushed into the rain and the wild night, and wandered on and on, stupefied with pain. Not until morning came did he stagger in out of the storm. Entering, he saw the glint of yellow by his hearth. With a wild cry he sprang forward and clutched it. But it was not gold; it was something better--it was the yellow locks of a sleeping child. Broken-hearted, with nothing else to live for, Silas Marner took the deserted babe into his bosom. As the weeks went on, the little creature nestled into his heart. For the child's sake he turned again to his loom; love taught him thrift and industry. For the child's sake he bought books and hived knowledge; love made a scholar of him. For the child's sake he planted vines, roses and all sweet flowers; love made him an artist. For the child's sake he bought carpets for the bare floors and pictures for the wall; love had made him generous. For the child's sake he knelt one night and recited her prayer; love would fain make him a Christian. But he hated men, and could not forget their ingratitude. One day a rich man's carriage stopped before his cottage. The lord of the mansion told a strange story--how this beautiful girl of eighteen was his daughter. In that hour the girl, tall and beautiful, turned away from palace, lands, position, and, for the love she bore him, put her arms around Silas Marner and refused to leave him. Then something in him gave way, and Silas Marner wept. Then confidence in man and God was his again. Love had destroyed avarice and purged away his sin. For love is a civilizer; it makes saints out of savages. As an armor of ice melts before the sun, so all vice and iniquity disappear in the presence of an overmastering affection.

It remains for us to consider that the absence of an enthusiastic devotion to integrity and the law of God explains the moral disasters and shipwrecks that have increased the tears and sorrows of mankind. Recently the people of this land opened their morning papers only to be deeply shocked by a rehearsal of grievous disasters, not all of which were physical. It seems that an awful cyclone had swept through a Western community, twisting the orchards, destroying houses and barns, and leaving behind a swath wide and black with destruction. In addition, the foreign news told of a volcano whose crater had suddenly poured forth a river of lurid lava, which, sweeping down the mountain side, consumed the homes of the flying multitude. But the saddest disaster was reserved to the last. It told of the shame and sorrow, from which there is no recovery, that had befallen the parents and friends of three young men, hitherto held in high honor. It seems that for many years these men had been honored by their friends, and trusted by the banks in which they were employed. But in a dark hour they determined to cease to be gentlemen, preferring, rather, to join the ranks of thieves. Despising every principle of honor, the gold which employers committed to their care was taken, not to the safety vault, but distributed among gamblers and evil persons. And our heavy sorrow is increased when we read in our commercial reports that last year 625 men went astray as embezzlers, robbing the people in forty-five states of $25,234,112. The time seems to have come for this nation to sit down in sackcloth and ashes.

To all good men comes the reflection that either this immorality must cease its ravages, or this nation will be irretrievably disgraced. Were it possible to search out these unhappy men, some of them wearing the convict's garb, and some wandering as fugitives in foreign lands, henceforth to be men "without a country," and question each for the cause of his deep disgrace, from all would come this shameful confession: "I loved evil and hated the law of God." Not one could confess to passionate, enthusiastic devotion to the divine laws. But every tree not rooted goes down before the storm, and every ship unanchored midst the rocks will go to pieces when the wind rises. Would that we could to-day cause the laws of God to stand forth as sharply defined as mountain peaks before the eyes of all young men; would that we could also kindle in each a passionate love and loyal affection for these holy laws. If the youth of to-day are to be the leaders of to-morrow, and are ever to have power to stir their fellows, to correct abuses, revolutionize society, or organize history, they must, with the enthusiasm of love, ally themselves with God and His law, clothing that law with flesh until it becomes visible, clothing it with voice until it becomes eloquent, thrilling it with power until it becomes triumphant. Only love fulfills law!

Most of all does man need the enthusiasm of love toward his God and Saviour. In the olden time Plato expressed a wish to have the moral law become a living personage, that beholding, mankind might stand amazed and entranced at her beauty. The philosopher felt that abstractions were too cold to kindle the soul's enthusiasm. As planets are removed from the sun, their light and heat lessen; their flowers fade; their fruits lack luster; their summers shorten. Thus Neptune stands in the midst of perpetual ice and winter, without tree or bird or human voice. But as our earth approaches the direct rays of the sun, its beauty increases, its harvests grow heavy.

As if to fulfill Plato's desire, Jesus Christ drew near to our world, not to chill man's heart, but to strengthen his affection, refine his reason, enlarge his horizon. How admirable Christ's words, how illustrious His work, how divine His character! The philosopher describes man, but Jesus Christ loves man, weeps for man, dies for man. Dante inspires, but Jesus Christ gives life. Shakespeare shines, but Jesus Christ uplifts. History causes the heroes of yesterday to pass before the mind, surrounded by applauding multitudes. When Napoleon entered Paris the people ran together with one accord, and the tides of enthusiasm rose like a mountain freshet. When Garibaldi entered Florence, when Kossuth passed up Broadway in New York, when Grant, returning homeward, entered our own city, the streets were filled solidly with multitudes who forgot hunger and exhaustion, exalted by hero-worship.

But the divine man never stood forth in full proportion until Jesus Christ stepped upon this planet. What strength! What gentleness! Behold His exquisite sympathy! Behold the instinct of confidence, that drew little children to His arms! How did men, defiled within and without, throng round Him, while His presence wrought the miracle of miracles in cleansing them! Then for the first time in history did disheveled ones so feel the beauty of goodness that an irresistible enthusiasm drew them about Him to kiss the very hem of His garment. All the excellencies of life, and more, unite in Him; the orator's persuasive speech; the artist's love of beauty; the scholar's passion for truth; the patriot's love of country. His also is more than the love of mother, lover, friend, for his is the love of Saviour. To-day He rises over each soul in such majesty of excellence as to include the excellencies of everything in heaven and everything on earth. As the clouds sometimes, after hanging for days and nights in the atmosphere, at length come together and pour down their refreshing showers, so let all that is deepest and richest and sweetest in man's thought and affection pour itself out before Him who is worthy of the world's anthem. For His mind will guide, His mercy forgive, His love redeem, His hand lead--not into the abyss of death, but unto the heavenly heights. He who with Dante looks upward to-day may behold the Saviour's divine chariot "sweeping along the confines of heaven, a sweet light above it, its wheels almost blocked with flowers."

CONSCIENCE AND CHARACTER

"There is a higher law than the constitution."--
Seward.

"Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod, Man's conscience is the oracle of God." --
Byron.

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."--
Washington.

"Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything."--
Sterne.

"If you can find a place between the throne of God and the dust to which man's body crumbles, where the fatal responsibilities of law do not weigh upon him, I will find a vacuum in nature. They press upon him from God out of eternity and from the earth out of nature, and from every department of life, as constant and all-surrounding as the pressure of the air."--
Beecher.

IX

CONSCIENCE AND CHARACTER

Von Humboldt said that every man, however good, has a yet better man within him. When the outer man is unfaithful to his deeper convictions, the hidden man whispers a protest. The name of this whisper in the soul is conscience. And never had monarch aspect so magisterial as when conscience terrified King Herod into confession. The cruel, crafty despot had slain John the Baptist to gratify the revenge of the beautiful Jezebel, his wife, reproved of John for her outrageous sins. But soon passed from memory that hateful night when the blood of a good man mingled with the red wine of the feast. Luxury by day and revelry by night caused the hateful incident to be forgotten. Soon a full year had passed over the palace with its silken seclusion. One day, when the dead prophet had long been forgotten, a courtier at the king's table told the story of a strange carpenter, whose name and fame were ringing through the land.

Who is He? asked the feasters, pausing over their spiced wine. Who is He? asked the women, gossiping over the new sensation. Suddenly, conscience touched an old memory in Herod's heart. In terror the despot rose from the banquet. As in the legend, when the murderer's finger touched the gaping wound the blood began again to flow--a silent witness against the unsuspected but guilty friend, so Herod's conscience opened up again his guilty secret. Memory, thrusting a hooked pole into "the ocean of oblivion, brought up the pale and drowned deed." The long-forgotten sin was revealed in all its ghastly atrocity. It availed nothing that Herod was a Sadducee--the agnostic of antiquity. For, when conscience spake, all his doubts fell away. Immortality and responsibility were clear as noonday. Holding a thousand swords in her hand, conscience attacked the guilty king. Then were fulfilled Plato's words: "If we could examine the heart of a king, we would find it full of scars and black wounds." For no slave was ever marked by his master's scourge as Herod's heart was lashed by his conscience.

Socrates told his disciples that the facts of conscience must be reckoned with as certainly as the facts of fire or wood or water. None may deny the condemnation that weighed upon the soul of Herod or Judas, or the approval of conscience that transfigured the face of the martyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only through peace with one's self, one's record, and one's God. All the great, from Æschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasized man's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Here is the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty to sentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before the astounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dock beside the prisoner. He stated that, thirty years before, in a distant province, he had taken the life and property of his master, and thereby gained his present position and influence. Though he had never been suspected of crime, he now begged his fellow Judges to condemn him to the death unto which his conscience had long urged him. Here is the student of man and things, Dr. Samuel Johnson: In his old and honored age he goes back to Litchfield to stand with uncovered head from morning till night in the market-place on the spot where fifteen years before he had refused to keep his father's book-stall. Despite the grotesque figure he made, midst the sneers and the rain, conscience bade him expiate his breach of filial piety. And here is Channing, the scholar and seer: A child of six years, he lifted his stick to strike the tortoise, as he had seen older boys do. But in that moment an inner voice whispered loud and clear: "It is wrong." In his fright the boy hastened home to fling himself into his mother's arms. "What was the voice?" he asked. To which his mother answered: "Men call the voice conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice of God. And always your happiness will depend upon obedience to that little voice."

Here also is the great Persian Sadi. One day he found a good man in the jungle, who had been attacked by a tiger and horribly mutilated. Despite his dreadful agony, the dying man's features were calm and serene. "Great God," said he, "I thank thee that I am only suffering from the fangs of the tiger and not of remorse." And here is Professor Webster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning he sent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "At midnight," he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the wall and whisper, 'Thou art a murderer.'" Now there were no prisoners in the next cell. The whispers were the echoes of a guilty conscience.

Daniel Webster also testifies: Once he was asked what was the greatest thought that had ever occupied his mind. "Who are here?" "Only your friends." Then this colossal man answered: "There is no evil we can not face or flee from but the consequences of duty disregarded. A sense of obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We can not escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther on we shall find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty--to pain us forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as God has given us grace to perform it." Weighed against conscience the world itself is but a bubble. For God himself is in conscience lending it authority.