A Man's Value to Society (16 page)

Nor is the work of conscience very different in the moral and spiritual realm. Here is one man who is conscientious toward yesterday. Ten years ago, he says, "while kneeling in the field light broke through the clouds" and he obtained "a hope." And every Sunday since that day he has not failed to recall that scene. He is not conscientious about having a new, fresh, crisp, vital experience for to-day, but he is conscientiously faithful in recalling that old experience. It is all as foolish as if he should say that ten years ago he had a bath, or ten years ago he drank at the bubbling spring, or ten years ago he met a friend. What about to-day's purity, to-day's loaf and to-day's friendships? The heart should count no manna good that is not gathered fresh each morning. Others there are whose conscience works largely toward doctrine and intellectual statements. With them Christianity is a function of thought in the brain. These are they who want every sermon to consist of linked arguments. The good deacon sits in his pew and listens to the unfolding of proofs of election or foreordination. When the arguments have been piled up to sixteen or eighteen, the good man begins to chuckle with delight, saying, "Verily, this is a high day in Israel; my soul feasts on fat things." Other men want some flesh on their skeletons, but he is fed on the dry bones of logic.

Sometimes conscience affects only the feelings. Fifty years ago there was a type numbering hundreds of thousands of persons whose religion was largely emotional. In great camp-meetings filled with a warm atmosphere men showed at their best. The sunny spot of all the year was the month of revival meetings. Then they experienced the luxury of spiritual enjoyment. They lived on the top of some Mount of Transfiguration, while the world below was thundering with wickedness and tormented with passion. Men became drunk with emotions. Religion was an exquisite form of spiritual selfishness. Afterward came an era when men learned to transmute feelings into thoughts and fidelities toward friendships and business and duty. At other times conscience has had unique manifestations in fidelity toward creeds. Now one denomination and now another, forgetting to be conscientious in meeting together for days and weeks to plan in the interests of the pauper, the orphans, the tenement house or the foreign district in the great city, will through months of excitement exhibit conscience toward some doctrinal symbol. Witness the recent upheaval about inspiration. As water bubbling up through the spring was once rain that fell from the sky, so the truth coming through the lips of poet or prophet was first breathed into the heart by God. Recently a good professor thought more emphasis should be laid upon the human spring. But his opponents thought the emphasis should be placed upon the sky, from which the rain fell. In the broil about the nature of the water, the spring itself was soiled, much mud stirred up, until multitudes wholly forgot the spring, and many knew not whether there was any water of life.

But conscience in some, means fidelity to what man and God did--not what God is doing or will do. When the flowing sap under the stimulus of the sun causes the tree to grow and splits the bark, men rejoice that the bark is rent and that new and larger growths must be inserted. Sometimes a child, long feeble and sickly, enters upon a period of very rapid growth. Soon the boy's old clothes are too small, and so is his hat. But what if the parents should remember only that the clothes and hat came from some famous pattern? What if in their zeal to preserve the hat they should put an iron band about the boy's forehead and never permit it to increase so that the hat would not fit? What if they should put a strait-jacket about the chest to restrain the stature? This would show great zeal toward the hat and the coat, but meanwhile what is to become of the boy? Strange that men should be so conscientious toward an intellectual symbol, but forget to give liberty to other men's consciences who day and night seek to please God and be true to their beliefs. Thus in a thousand ways conscience is partial and fragmentary in its workings. Only one full-orbed man has ever trod our earth!

God's crowning gift to man is the gift of conscience. Reason is a noble and kingly faculty, turning reveries into orations and conversations into books. Imagination is a stately and divine gift, turning thoughts into poems and blocks of stone into statues. Great is the power of an eloquent tongue instructing men, restraining, inspiring, stimulating vast multitudes. Great are the joys of memory, that gallery stored with pictures of the past. But there is no genius of mind or heart comparable to a vigorous conscience, magisterial, clear-eyed, wide-looking. He who gave all-comprehending reason, all-judging reason, reserved his best gift to the last--then gave the gift of conscience.

Man is a pilgrim and conscience is the guide, leading him safely through forests and thickets, restraining from the paths of wrong, pointing out the ways of right. Man is a voyager and conscience is his compass. The sails may be swept away, and the engines stopped, but the voyager yet may be saved if only the compass is kept. In time of danger man may be careless about his garments, but not about his hand or foot or eye. It is possible to sustain the loss of wealth, friends and outer honors, but no man can sustain the loss of conscience. It is the soul's eye. Afar off it sees the face of God. Instructed, guided, loved, and redeemed by Jesus Christ, he who while living is at peace with his Master and with his conscience will, when dying, find himself at peace with his God.

VISIONS THAT DISTURB CONTENTMENT

"Like other gently nurtured Boston boys, Wendell Phillips began the study of law. Doubtless the sirens sang to him, as to the noble youth of every country and time. Musing over Coke and Blackstone, perhaps he saw himself succeeding Ames and Otis and Webster, the idol of society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion of the elegant ease, and the cultivated conservatism of Massachusetts. * * * But one October day he saw an American citizen assailed by a furious mob in the city of James Otis for saying with James Otis that a man's right to liberty is inherent and inalienable. As the jail doors closed upon Garrison to save his life, Garrison and his cause had won their most powerful and renowned ally. With the setting of that October sun, vanished forever the career of prosperous ease, the gratification of ordinary ambition, which the genius and the accomplishments of Wendell Phillips had seemed to foretell. Yes, the long-awaited client had come at last. Scarred, scorned and forsaken, that cowering and friendless client was wronged and degraded humanity. The great soul saw and understood."--
Oration on Wendell Phillips by George Wm. Curtis.

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VISIONS THAT DISTURB CONTENTMENT

Every community holds a few happy and buoyant souls, that are so sustained by inner hope and outer prosperity as to seem the elect children of good fortune. These are they who are born only to the best things, for whom, as life goes on, the years do but increase happiness and success. For other men happiness is occasional, and life offers now and then a bright interval, even as an open glade is found here and there in the dark forest. Among these sunny souls, dwelling midst constant prosperity, let us hasten to include that youth to whom Christ made overtures of friendship. His was a frank and open nature, his a fresh and unsullied heart. He had also a certain grace and indescribable charm that clothed him with rare attraction. Wealth, too, was his, and all the advantages that go therewith. Yet ease had not enervated him, nor position made him proud. He had indeed passed through the fierce fires of temptation, but had come out with spotless garments.

Beholding him, Christ loved him; nor could it have been otherwise. Some men we force ourselves to like. For reasons of finance or social advantage, men ignore their faults, while cherishing a secret dislike. But others are so attractive, they compel our friendship by a certain sweet necessity. The eye must needs like the rich red rose, and the ear can not but enjoy the sweet song. And this youth stood forth clothed with such rare attraction that it is said Christ cast one long lingering look of affection upon him; then widening the circle of friendship, he offered the young ruler a place therein. It was an overture such as Socrates made to the boy Plato; it was a proffer such as Michael Angelo made to the poor young artist who knocked at his door. Recalling the day when he met Göethe, Schiller was accustomed to say his creative literary career began with Göethe's proffer of friendship.

Carlyle tells us that each new epoch in his life began with the acquaintance of some great man. For it is not given to books nor business, to landscapes nor clouds nor forests, to have full power over the living man. Only mind can quicken mind, only heart can quicken heart. What would the youth of genius not give for the friendship of some Bacon or Shakespeare? But when this youth won Christ's regard, it was as if all the children of genius had come together in Christ's single person, to proffer intimacy and companionship. His great soul overhung his friends as the harvests overarch the fields, "filling the flowers with heat by day, and cooling them with dews by night." His friendship is like a mother's, a lover's, a friend's, but larger than either, and deeper than all. The rising of a star, that glows and sparkles with ten thousand effects, can alone be compared to this Son of Man, who flamed forth upon his friends such majesty of beauty, such royalty of kindling influences.

For centuries scholars have spoken of this interview between Christ and the young ruler as "the great refusal." Dante, wandering with Virgil through the Inferno, thought he saw this young ruler searching for his lost opportunity. For this ruler was the Hamlet of the New Testament. Like the Prince of Denmark, he stood midway between his conscience and his task, and indecision slew him. It has been said that Hamlet could have been happy had he remained in ignorance of his duty, or had he boldly obeyed the vision which called him to action. It was because he knew more than he had the courage to do that a discord arose, which destroyed the symmetry and sanity of his mind. His madness grew out of the breach between his enlarged and haunting sense of right and his faltering ability to face and fulfill it. Thus also the tragedy of this young ruler's life grew out of the fact that the new aspiration made his old contentment impossible, and compelled him either to go on with boldness to better things, or to go back to emptiness and misery. Beholding him, Christ loved him for what he was, and pointed out what he might become. He knew that the better was a great enemy of the best. For Christ had the double vision of the sculptor.

Before him was the mass of marble, rude and shapeless. But the outer shapelessness concealed the inner symmetry. Only the flying chips could let loose the form of glowing beauty hidden within. And before that youth he lifted up a vision of still better things. He set the youth midway between the man he was and the man he might become. He had achieved so much that Christ would fain lead him on to perfection itself. When the husbandman beholds his vines entering into leafage and blossom, he nurtures them on into fruitage. When Arnold finds some young Stanley ready to graduate, he whispers: "One thing thou lackest; let all thy life become one eager pursuit of knowledge." And to this youth who had climbed so high came the vision of something fairer and better still.

Going on before, Christ lured him forward, even as of old the goddess lured the Grecian boy forward by rolling rosy apples along the path. But the interview ended with the "great refusal." And the youth went away, not angry nor rebellious, but sad and deeply grieved at himself. For now he knew how far his aspiration outran performance. Like Hamlet, indecision palsied action. Contentment perished, for the vision of perfection ever haunted him. At first Christ's words and look of earnest affection filled his heart with a tumult of joy: but having fallen back into the old sordid self, the very memory of his master's face became a curse and torture. And so the vision blighted that should have blessed.

Now, the lives of great men tell us that God has always used visions for disturbing contentment, destroying ease, and securing progress. Witness the life of that young patrician, Wendell Phillips. His college mates love to describe him as they first saw him in the halls of Cambridge. His elegant person, his accomplished manners, his refined scholarship, made him the idol of the Harvard boys. Even in his youthful days he excelled as an orator, and was the easy master of the platform. But to him came the sirens singing of leisure, of opulence, and ambition. Full oft he looked forward to the day when he would be the champion of "elegant repose and cultivated conservatism" of the patrician element in his patrician state. But suddenly the Christ, in the person of one of his little ones, crossed the young scholar's path. One golden October afternoon, while Wendell Phillips was sitting in his office, he heard the noise of a strange disturbance in the street. Looking out he saw the mob maltreating Garrison, as, with blows and kicks, they dragged him toward the jail. All that night young Phillips lay tossing on his couch, thinking ever of this man who had been mobbed in the city where Otis had said "Liberty of speech is inalienable."

All that night the vision of the slave, scarred and scorned and forsaken, stood before his mind, while ever he heard a voice whispering: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." In that vision hour perished forever all his dreams of opulence and ease. He decided to turn his back upon all preferment and ambition, all comfort and leisure, and follow his vision whithersoever it led. Soon the vision led him to the platform of Faneuil Hall, where an official was justifying the murderers of Lovejoy. "Mr. Chairman," he said, "when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which placed the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead." And that vision lent his words such burning eloquence that Wendell Phillips' speech in Faneuil Hall ranks with Patrick Henry's at Williamsburg and Abraham Lincoln's at Gettysburg--and there is no fourth. His vision led him unto obloquy also. What revilings were his! What bitter hatred! What insults and scoffs! At last the vision led him unto fame. The very city that would have slain him builded his monument, and men who once would not defile their lips with his name taught their children the pathway to his tomb. It was that vision splendid that saved Phillips from sodden contentment. Had Christ never crossed his path, his imagination would have lost its brightest picture, his life its noblest impulses, its most energetic forces.