(il0rncll litineraitg ffixbtarg 
 
 3tl|ara, ^tm fork 
 
 Mi*««A.M,.I,..&-A.O, Moo-re 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4841.B87 
 
 Living truths; from the writings of Charl 
 
 3 1924 013 492 446 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013492446 
 
STAKE MINUTE SERIES. 
 
 LIVING TRUTHS 
 
 FROM THE WRITINGS OF CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 SELECTED BV 
 
 E. E. BROWN. 
 
 INTRODUCTION BV 
 
 W. D. HOWELLS ~ 
 
 BOSTON 
 LOTHROP AND COMPANY 
 
 32 FRANKLIN STREET 
 
Copyright, 1882. 
 D.LOTHROP & Company. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT is the fate of many thinkers to make their thoughts so common 
 to all the world that what they have to say seems nothing new to 
 the generations succeeding their own. None but their contempo- 
 raries can know them to have been prophets, with fresh truth to re- 
 veal. We to whom Hypatia, and Yeast, and Alton Locke were like 
 messages from on high, must not expect that newer men will open 
 Kingsley's books with the same sense of standing face to face with 
 a man of God. What he said has been said so often since by him- 
 self, as well as by others, that it no longer has the consecration that 
 it once had. 
 
 Yet it remains the truth, and, what is better, he remains true in 
 it : a most earnest, ardent, devout and striving soul, full of good- 
 will to men, and of reverent love to God. He had his limitations 
 on every side, intellectual, spiritual and moral ; and he made some 
 lamentable mistakes, both in thinking and doing ; but at the end 
 and to the end he continued a man of just aspirations and generous 
 hopes for mankind, and of a sturdy belief no less in earth than in 
 heaven. He came into the world at a time when Christianity 
 needed to be muscularized ; he preached a red-blooded goodness ; 
 and it is not his blame if the muscular Christianity which he in- 
 vented became a little brutal ; that is the danger of robust strength, 
 as it is also the danger of weakness. From the authorship of 
 Alton Locke to the championship of Governor Eyre is a long de- 
 scent ; but those who have followed Kingsley all the way to that 
 
^ Introduction. 
 
 disastrous error, carvnot believe that at any moment he ceased to 
 love the truth, though he ceased to see it. 
 
 His ideal was duty, and he never failed to preach it and to strive 
 for it. His life sometimes seems a long unrest, an anguish for 
 duty's sake ; yet it was righteousness as far as possible from ascet- 
 icism which he inculcated. Once his sympathy with helplessness 
 and suffering seemed to fail him ; but for the rest his career was 
 one of constant endeavor for humanity. He had a tender and 
 loving heart, as those may see who read the touching and beauti- 
 ful record of his life which his wife has left ; and if we could some- 
 times wish him a greater willingness to see the beauty and wisdom 
 of repose, we cannot deny our admiration to his valiant and phi- 
 lanthropic activity. 
 
 This little book seems to me singularly full in its representation 
 of the didactic side of his mind. It is fervent in appeal at every 
 page, strong in faith, and luminous and penetrating in exhortation. 
 One cannot read it without feeling the brotherhood of a soul that 
 has suffered and has learned through suffering that there is but one 
 great thing for men to do in this world, and that is to do right. 
 
 W. D. HOWBLLS. 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY was born at Holne, in 
 Devonshire county, England, on the 12th of June, 
 1819. His father, at that time vicar of Holne, was a 
 man of unusual culture, and was somewhat of an artist 
 as well as a fine linguist and keen sportsman. His 
 mother, a woman of remarkable ability, was a daughter 
 of Nathan Lucas, of Farley Hall, Barbadoes. 
 
 " Our talent, such as it is," writes Charles Kingsley 
 to Mr. Galton, " is altogether hereditary. My father was 
 a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said to 
 possess every talent except that of using his talents. 
 My mother, on the contrary, had a quite extraordinary 
 practical and administrative power, and she combined 
 with it my father's passion for knowledge." 
 
 While inheriting from his father's side his love of art 
 and his sporting tastes, Charles strongly resembled his 
 mother in his force and originality of character, as well 
 as in the romance of his nature. He was a delicate but 
 precocious child, and began to write both poems and 
 sermons at the mature age of four years ! His consci- 
 entiousness was a marked trait of character even at this 
 early age, and an old nurse of the family writes of 
 him as follows: "I have never forgotten one day when 
 he and his little brothers were playing together, and 
 had a difference, which seldom happened. His mother, 
 coming into the room, took the brothers' part, which he 
 
6 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 resented, and . he said he wished she was not his 
 mother. His grief afterwards was great, and he came 
 crying bitterly to the kitchen door to ask me to take 
 him up to his room. The housemaid inquired what was 
 the matter, and said his mamma would be sure to for- 
 give him. ' She has forgiven me,' he exclaimed, ' but don't 
 cant, Elizabeth — I saw you blush. It isn't mamma's 
 forgiveness I want now, but God's." 
 
 When Charles was about five years old his father was 
 offered the living of Barnack, which he held for six 
 years. The Fen scenery with its wide sweep of horizon 
 and gorgeous sunsets was associated in the boy's mind 
 with his earliest sporting recollections, and it was here 
 doubtless that the first seeds were sown of the story of 
 Hereward the Wake. In 1830 the family removed to 
 Clovelly, on the rocky Devonshire coast. Here Charles 
 and his brothers had their boat and their ponies, and 
 began with an enthusiasm shared by their parents the 
 practical study of natural history. The little parish at 
 Clovelly was largely composed of simple fisher folk, and 
 " When the herring fleet put to sea, whatever the weather 
 might be, the Rector, accompanied by his wife and boys, 
 would start off for the quay to give a short parting 
 service, at which ' men who worked ' and ' women 
 who wept ' would join in singing out of the old Prayer 
 Book version the one hundred and twenty-first Psalm as 
 only those can who have death and danger staring them 
 in the face.'' The song of The Three Fishers was a 
 tragedy of real life — not a mere poetical fancy. " Now 
 that you have seen Clovelly," said Charles Kingsley in 
 after years to his wife, " you know what was the in- 
 spiration of my life before I met you." After studying 
 at home with a private tutor, the Kingsley boys were 
 sent to Clifton to a preparatory school under the Rev. 
 John Knight, who speaks of Charles as " an affectionate 
 boy, gentle, and fond of quiet; capable of making re- 
 
Charles Kingsley. f 
 
 markable translations of Latin verse into English, and a 
 passionate lover of natural history." 
 
 Kingsley always regretted his parents' decision not to 
 send ' him to a public school. Nothing but that, he 
 thought, would have conquered his constitutional shyness 
 which was, of course, greatly increased by a certain hes- 
 itation in his speech. This hesitation was throughout 
 life a constant thorn in the flesh to him, and it is said 
 that he "seldom entered a room, or spoke in private or 
 public without a feeling, at moments amounting to terror, 
 when he could have wished the earth would open and 
 swallow him up there and then." 
 
 In 1836 the free, happy life of Clovelly was exchanged, 
 greatly to the grief of the Kingsley boys, for London 
 scenes, and the rectory of St. Luke's, Chelsea. For the 
 next two years Charles was hard at work at King's 
 College, "walking up there every day from Chelsea, 
 reading all the way, and walking home late to study all 
 the evening.'' 
 
 In the autumn of 1838 he left King's College for 
 Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he soon gained a 
 scholarship. The following summer his father, needing a 
 change of air, took charge of the parish of Checkenden 
 for a few months. It was here that the young student 
 met for the first time Miss Fanny Grenfell, his future 
 wife ; and although for the next four years and a half 
 they seldom saw one another, and corresponded only at 
 long inten'als, a new and refining impulse was henceforth 
 given to all of Kingsley 's hopes and dreams. 
 
 At the time he met Miss Grenfell he was passing through 
 a severe ordeal of doubt and despondency. 
 
 " I strive daily and hourly to be calm," he writes from 
 Cambridge. " Every few minutes I stop myself forcibly, and 
 recall my mind to a sense of where I am — where I am 
 going — and whither I ought to be tending. This is most 
 painful discipline, but wholesome, and much as I dread to 
 
S Charles Kingsley. 
 
 look inward, I force myself to it continually." From Sully, 
 June I2th, 1841, he writes: 
 
 " My birthnight. I have been for the last hour on the 
 sea-shore, not dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, 
 and forming determinations which are to affect my destiny 
 through time and through eternity. Before the sleeping 
 earth and the sleepless sea and stars I have devoted my- 
 self to God ; a vow never (if he gives me the faith I pray 
 for) to be recalled." 
 
 It was during the spring of this year that he decided to 
 study for the ministry. His name had been down as a law stu- 
 dent at Lincoln's Inn, but he now felt a higher call, and }nelded 
 at once to his convictions of duty. He graduated at Cam- 
 bridge in 1842 with high honors, as senior optime in math- 
 ematics, and first-class in classics. The following spring 
 he received the offer of two curacies, one at Kingsley, the 
 other at Eversley. He chose the latter, little thinking at 
 the time that the quiet parish with its pretty, fir-embowered 
 hamlets, was to be his home for more than thirty years. 
 
 In 1844 he was appointed rector of Eversley, and his 
 marriage to Miss Grenfell took place soon after. It was 
 during this summer that he made the acquaintance of the 
 Rev. F. D. Maurice, whose writings had already exerted 
 a powerful iufluence over him. A warm and lasting 
 friendship sprang up between them ; and in their identi- 
 fication with the Broad Church party and their deep, 
 active sympathy with every effort to elevate the work- 
 ing classes, the names of Maurice and Kingsley will 
 always be associated together. The Saints' Tragedy, a 
 dramatic poem founedd upon the history of Elizabeth 
 of Hungary, published in 1848, was destined to excite a 
 great deal of harsh criticism from the High Church 
 party. 
 
 The publication of Yeast, which came out later in the year 
 as a serial in Eraser's Magazine, occasioned still more bitter 
 enmity against the rector of Eversley ; and his participation 
 
Charles Kingsley. g 
 
 the next year in the Chartist movement was misinterpreted 
 even by his friends. 
 
 " I will not be a liar," he wrote to his wife ; " I will 
 speak in season and out of season. I will not shun to 
 declare the whole counsel of God. I will not take coun- 
 sel with flesh and blood, and flatter myself into the 
 dream that while every man on earth, from Maurice back 
 to Abel, who ever tried to testify against the world, has 
 been laughed at, misunderstood, slandered, and that, bit- 
 terest of all, by the very people he loved best, and un- 
 derstood best, I alone am to escape. My path is clear, 
 and I will follow in it." At one of the Monday even- 
 ing gatherings at Maurice's, he found himself in a minor- 
 ity of one, and playfully remarked that "he felt much 
 as Lot must have felt in the Cities of the Plain, when he 
 seemed as one that mocked to his sons-in-law." The 
 name " Parson Lot " was then and there suggested, and 
 it was under this nom de plume that most of his political 
 tracts and pamphlets were written. 
 
 In the autumn of this memorable year, his health broke 
 down completely, and he was obliged to give up his pa- 
 rochial work for a number of months. While wandering 
 on the sea-shore, however, in pursuit of health, his brain 
 was dreaming over The Autobiography of a Cockney 
 Poet, which finally developed into Alton Locke, Through- 
 out life his habit of writing was, first of all, to 
 thoroughly master his subject out in the open air. " He 
 would never put pen to paper till his ideas were clothed 
 in words, and these, except in the case of poetry, he sel- 
 dom altered. For a number of years the writing was all 
 done by his wife from dictation, as he walked restlessly up 
 and down the room." 
 
 Hypatia was begun as a serial in Eraser's Magazine, in 
 1851, and frequent contributions from Kingsley may also 
 be found in the Christian Socialist and other periodicals 
 of that year. The winter and spring of 1854 were spent 
 
lo Charles Kingsley. 
 
 in Torquay, a leave of absence from his parish having 
 been granted him on account of his wife's health. His 
 sea-shore studies here developed into Glaucus, which con- 
 tains not only sketches of natural history, but some of his 
 deepest and most interesting thoughts on the "transmu- 
 tation theory," and Vestiges of Creation. As his wife's 
 health forbade their returning to a colder climate, he set- 
 tled with his family at Bideford, and his surroundings here 
 for the next twelve months are graphically depicted in the 
 opening pages of Westward Ho! 
 
 In the summer of 1856 he took, with his friends Thomas 
 Hughes and Thomas Taylor, a trip to Snowden, which re- 
 sulted in the writing of Two Years Ago. In i860 he was 
 appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, and 
 during the winter of 1860-61 he gave private lectures to 
 the Prince of Wales, who had just left Oxford. In 1863, 
 his name was proposed by Sir Charles Bunbury and sec- 
 onded by Sir Charles Lyell, as a fellow of the Geological 
 Society. He undertook the editorship of Erasers Maga- 
 zine while Mr. Froude was in Spain, delivered several 
 courses of lectures and wrote a number of books for chil- 
 dren in addition to his other labors, but his health failing 
 him again, he was obliged to give up all work, and in the 
 winter of 1869 he embarked with his daughter for the 
 West Indies. 
 
 It was the dream of his life to see the rich tropical 
 land so vividly described to him in boyhood by his mother, 
 and in his delightful volume At Last, we have an interesting 
 record of the seven months he spent among these beautiful 
 islands. A few years before, he had entered upon his duties 
 as Canon of Chester, and in 1874 he was offered the Canonry 
 of Westminster. 
 
 His visit to the United States that same year was a much- 
 needed rest and relaxation to him. 
 
 " I never want medicine or tonic here," he writes from New 
 York, " but one cannot do as much here as at home. All say 
 
Charles Kingsley. ir 
 
 so, and I find it so. One can go faster for awhile, but gets ex- 
 hausted sooner. As for the people, they are quite charming. 
 . , . . Mr. Longfellow and others warn me not to let this 
 over-stimulating climate tempt me to over-work. One feels 
 ready to do any thing, and then suddenly very tired. But I 
 am at rest now." 
 
 On his return to England in the sultry August weather, he 
 found much sickness among his parishioners at Eversley ; and 
 in his ever-ready sympathy he over-taxed his own delicate 
 frame. The dangerous illness of his wife at this time was a 
 great shock to him, and when he was told there was no hope, 
 he said, " My own death-warrant is signed with those words." 
 On Advent Sunday he preached his last sermon in West- 
 minster Abbey, and closed with these words : 
 
 " Let us say in utter faith, ' Come as thou seest best. But 
 in whatsoever way thou comest — even so come Lord Jesus.' " 
 On the 28th of December he was seized with a severe at- 
 tack of pneumonia, from which he never rallied. 
 
 " It is all right," he would frequently repeat to himself, 
 " all under rule." 
 
 His last audible words were a portion of the beautiful 
 Burial Service ; and just before noon upon the 23d of January, 
 1875, he passed away without a struggle. The sad tidings of 
 his death cast a gloom over the whole country. Dean Stanley 
 immediately offered a place in Westminster Abbey " to the 
 Canon and the Poet ; " but, according to his own wishes, 
 Charles Kingsley was buried in the quiet little churchyard at 
 Eversley. 
 
 Above his grave his wife has placed a white marble cross, 
 and just under a spray of his favorite passion-flower are these 
 words, chosen by himself: 
 
 "Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimus." 
 
 E. E. B. 
 
LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 We are neither to regret the past nor rest satisfied 
 in the present ; but, like St. Paul, forgetting those 
 things that are behind us, and reaching onward to 
 those things that are before us, press forward, each 
 and all, to the prize of our high calling in Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 And, as with nations and empires, so with our 
 own private lives. It is not wise to ask why the 
 former times were better than these. It is natural, 
 pardonable, but not wise ; because we are so apt 
 to mistake the subject about which we ask, and when 
 we say, " Why were the old times better ? " merely 
 to mean "Why were the old times happier?" That 
 /is not the question. There is something higher 
 ' than happiness, says a wise man. There is blessed- 
 ness; the blessedness of being good and doing good, 
 of being right and doing right. That blessedness 
 we may have at all times. We may be blest even 
 
 13 
 
14 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 in anxiety and in sadness. We may be blest even 
 as the martyrs of old were blest, in agony and death. 
 /The times are to us whatsoever our character makes 
 ihem. And if we are better men than we were in 
 former times, then is the present better than the 
 past, even though it be less happy. And why 
 should it not be better? Surely the Spirit of God, 
 the spirit of progress and improvement, is working 
 in us, the children of God, as well as in the great 
 world around. Surely the years ought to have made 
 us better, more useful, more worthy. We may have 
 been disappoirtted in our lofty ideas of what ought 
 to be done ; but we may have gained more clear 
 and practical notions of what can be done. We 
 may have lost in enthusiasm, and yet gained in 
 earnestness. We may have lost in sensibility, yet 
 gained in charity, activity, and power. We may be 
 able to do far less, and yet what we do may be 
 far better done. 
 
 And our very griefs and disappointments — have 
 they been useless to us ? Surely not. We shall 
 have gained, instead of lost, by them, if the Spirit 
 of God be working in us. Our sorrows will have 
 wrought in us patience, our patience experience of God's 
 sustaining grace, who promises that, as our day our 
 strength shall be ; and of God's tender providence, 
 which tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and 
 lays on none a burden beyond what they are able 
 
TROGRESS. 1$ 
 
 to bear. And that experience will have worked in 
 us hope; hope that he who has led us thus far 
 will lead us farther still ; that he who brought us 
 through the trials of youth will bring us through 
 the trials of age ; that he who taught us 
 in former days precious lessons, will teach us in 
 the days to come fresh lessons by temptations which 
 we shall be more able to endure, and by joys 
 which, though unlike those of old times, are no 
 less sacred, no less sent as lessons to our souls, 
 by him from whom all good gifts come. 
 
 We will believe this. And instead of inquiring 
 why the former days were better than these, we 
 will trust that the coming days shall be better than 
 these, and those which are coming after them better 
 still again, because God is our Father, Christ our 
 Saviour, the Holy Ghost our Comforter and Guide. 
 We will toil onward, because we know we are toil- 
 ing upward. We will live in hope, not in regret ; 
 because hope is the only state of mind fit for a 
 race for whom God has condescended to stoop, and 
 suffer, and die, and rise again. We will believe 
 that we, and all we love, whether in earth or 
 Heaven, are destined — if we be only true to God's 
 Spirit — to rise, improve, progress forever: and so 
 we will claim our share, and keep our place, in 
 that vast ascending and improving scale of being, 
 which, as some dream — and surely not in vain — 
 
i6 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 goes onward and upward forever throughout the 
 universe of him who wills that none should perish. 
 
 II, 
 
 Let no man peering down 
 Through the dim, glittering mine of future years, 
 Say to himself, " Too much ! this cannot be ! " 
 To-day and custom wall up our horizon : 
 Before the hourly miracle of life 
 Blindfold we stand, and sigh, as though God were 
 
 not. 
 I have wandered in the mountains, mist-bewildered, 
 And now a breeze comes, and the veil is lifted. 
 And priceless flowers, o'er which I trod unheeding, 
 
 Gleam ready for my grasp. 
 
 III. 
 
 Science has taught men to admire where they 
 used to dread ; to rule where they used to obey ; 
 to employ for harmless uses what they were once 
 afraid to touch ; and where they once saw only 
 fiends, to see the orderly and beneficent laws of 
 the all-good and almighty God. Everywhere, as 
 the work of nature is unfolded to our eyes, we see 
 beauty, order, mutual use, the offspring of perfect 
 Love as well as perfect Wisdom. Everywhere we 
 
PROGRESS. 17 
 
 are finding means to employ the secret forces of 
 nature for our own benefit, or to ward off physical 
 evils which seemed to our forefathers as inevitable, 
 supernatural. And, even the pestilence, instead of 
 being, as was once fancied, the capricious and mirac- 
 ulous infliction of some demon — the pestilence itself 
 is found to be an orderly result of the same laws 
 by which the sun shines and the herb grows ; a 
 product of nature ; and therefore subject to man, 
 to be prevented and extirpated by him if he will. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Forward ! hark ! forward's the cry ! 
 One more fence and we're out on the open ! 
 So to us at once, if you want to live near us — 
 Follow them, hark to them, darlings ! as on they go. 
 Leaping and sweeping down into the vale below ! 
 Cowards and bunglers whose heart or whose eye 
 is slow 
 
 Find themselves staring alone. 
 
 So the great cause flashes by", 
 Nearer and clearer its purposes open, 
 While louder and louder the world-echoes cheer us: 
 Gentlemen, sportsmen, you ought to live up to us, 
 Lift us and lead us, and halloo our game to us — 
 We cannot take the hounds off, and no shame to us — 
 
 Don't be left staring alone. 
 
i8 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 V. 
 
 The life of our souls is in some respects like 
 the life of a plant. Why do you plant any thing, 
 but in order that it may grow, and become larger, 
 stronger, bear flower and fruit ? Be sure God has 
 planted us in his garden, Christ's Church, for no 
 other reason. Consider again : What is life but a 
 continual growing, or a continual decaying? If a 
 tree does not get larger and stronger year by year, 
 is not that a sure sign that it is unhealthy, and 
 that decay has begun in it; that it is unsound at 
 heart ? And what happens then ? It begins to be- 
 come weaker and smaller, and cankered and choked 
 with scurf and moss till it dies. If a tree is not 
 ; growing, it is sure in the long run to be dying; and 
 so are our souls. If they are not growing, they 
 are dying ; if they are not getting better, they are 
 getting worse. This is why the Bible compares our 
 j souls to trees; not out of a mere pretty fancy of 
 poetry, but for a great, awful, deep, world-wide 
 lesson, that every tree in the fields may be a pat- 
 /tern, a warning, to us thoughtless men, that as 
 /that tree is meant to grow, so our souls are meant 
 I to grow. As that tree dies unless it grows, so our 
 \ souls must die unless they grow. Consider that. 
 ' But how does a tree grow ? How are our souls 
 to grow ? Now, here again, we shall understand 
 
PROGRESS. 
 
 19 
 
 heavenly things best by taking and considering the 
 pattern from among earthly things which the Bible 
 gives us ; the tree, I mean. A tree grows in two 
 ways. Its roots take up food from the ground, its 
 leaves take up food from the air. Its roots are 
 its mouth, we may say, and its leaves are its 
 lungs. Thus the tree draws nourishment from the 
 earth beneath, and from the heaven above ; and 
 so must our souls. If they are to live and grow, 
 they must have food both from earth and from 
 heaven. 
 
 VI, 
 
 A floating, a floating 
 
 Across the sleeping sea. 
 
 All night I heard a singing bird 
 
 Upon the topmost tree. 
 
 "Oh came you from the isles of Greece 
 Or from the banks of Seine ; 
 Or off some tree in forests free, 
 Which fringe the western main ? " 
 
 "I came not off the Old World 
 Nor yet from off the New — 
 But I am one of the birds of God 
 Which sing the whole night through." 
 
20 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 "Oh sing and wake the dawning — 
 Oh whistle for the wind; 
 The night is long, the current strong, 
 My boat it lags behind." 
 
 "The current sweeps the Old World, 
 The current sweeps the New ; 
 The wind will blow, the dawn will glow, 
 Ere thou hast sailed them through." 
 
 VII. 
 
 Why has God given us senses, eyes and ears 
 and understanding ? That by them we may feed 
 our souls with things which we see and hear; 
 things which are going on in the world around us. 
 
 We must read, and we must listen, and we 
 must watch people and their sayings and doings, 
 and what becomes of them, and we must try and 
 act and practise what is right for ourselves: and 
 so by using our eyes and ears and understandings 
 we may feed our souls with earthly learning and 
 experience. But is this enough? No, surely. Con- 
 sider, again, God's example which he has given us 
 — a tree. If you keep stripping all the leaves off 
 a tree as fast as they grow, what becomes of it ? 
 It dies ; because without leaves it cannot get nour- 
 ishment from the air, and the rain, and the sun- 
 
PROGJiESS. 21 
 
 light. Again, if you shut up a tree where it can 
 neither have rain, air, nor light, what happens ? 
 The tree certainly dies, though it may be planted 
 in the very richest soil, and have the very strongest 
 roots. And why? Because it can get no food from 
 the sky above. So with our souls. If we get no 
 food from above, our souls will die, though we 
 have all the wit, and learning, and experience in 
 the world. We must be fed and strengthened and 
 satisfied with the grace of God from above ; 
 with the Spirit of God. Consider how the Bible 
 speaks of God's Spirit as the breath of God; for 
 the very word spirit means, originally, breath, or 
 air, or gas, or a breeze of wind, showing us that 
 as without the air of heaven the tree would become 
 stunted and cankered, so our souls will without the 
 fresh, purifying breath of God's Spirit. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I heard an eagle crying all alone 
 
 Above the vineyards through the summer night. 
 
 Among the skeletons of robber towers — 
 
 The iron homes of iron-hearted lords, 
 
 Now crumbling back to ruin year by year — 
 
 Because the ancient eyrie of his race 
 
 Is trenched and walled by busy-handed men, 
 
 And all his forest-chase and woodland wild, 
 
22 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Wherefrom he fed his young with hare and roe, 
 Are trim with grapes, which smell from hour to hour 
 And toss their golden tendrils to the sun 
 For joy at their own riches : — So I thought. 
 The great devourers of the earth shall sit, 
 Idle and impotent, they know not why, 
 Down-staring from their barren height of state 
 On nations grown too wise to slay and slave. 
 The puppets of the few, while peaceful love 
 And fellow-help make glad the heart of earth, 
 With wonders which: they fear and hate, as he 
 The eagle hates the vineyard slopes below. 
 
 IX. 
 
 In spite of all man's sin, the world does pros- 
 per marvellously, miraculously; in spite of all the 
 waste, destruction, idleness, ignorance, injustice, and 
 folly which goes on in the world, mankind increases 
 and replenishes the earth, and improves in comfort 
 and in happiness; in spite of all, God is stronger 
 than the devil, life stronger than death, wisdom 
 stronger than folly, order stronger than disorder, 
 fruitfulness stronger than destruction; and they will 
 be so more and more, till the last great day, when 
 Christ shall have put all enemies under his feet, 
 and death is swallowed up in victory, and all man- 
 kind is one fold, under one Shepherd, Jesus Christ, 
 the righteous King of all. 
 
J'HOGRESS. 23 
 
 X. 
 
 The Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand! 
 
 Its storms roll up the sky : 
 A nation sleeps, starving on heaps of gold; 
 
 All dreamers toss and sigh ; 
 The night is darkest before the dawn — 
 When the pain is sorest, the child is born, 
 
 And the Day of the Lord at hand. 
 
 Gather you, gather you, angels of God — 
 
 Freedom, and Mercy, and Truth ; 
 Come ! for the earth is grown coward and old — 
 
 Come down and renew us her youth. , 
 Wisdom, Self-sacrifice, Daring and Love, 
 Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above, 
 
 Lo! the Day of the Lord at hand. 
 
 Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell — 
 
 Famine, and Plague, and War; 
 Idleness, Bigotry, Cant and Misrule, 
 
 Gather, and fall in the snare! 
 Hirelings and Mammonites, Pedants and Knaves 
 Crawl to the battle-field — sneak to your graves 
 
 In the Day of the Lord at hand. 
 
 Wlio would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold, 
 While the Lord of all ages is here? 
 
24. LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God, 
 
 And those who can suffer, can dare. 
 Each old age of gold was an iron age, too, 
 And the meekest of saints may find stern work 
 to do, 
 In the Day of the Lord at hand. 
 
 XI. 
 
 If a man lives on in health, people say he lives 
 by the strength of his own constitution ; if he 
 drops down dead, they say he died by "the vis- 
 itation of God." If the corn-crops go on all right 
 and safe, they think that quite natural — the effect 
 of the soil, and the weather, and their own skill in 
 farming and gardening. But if there comes a hail- 
 storm or a blight, and spoils it all, and brings on 
 a famine, they call it at once "a visitation of God." 
 My friends ! do you think God " visits " the earth 
 or you only to harm you? I tell you that every 
 blade of grass grows by " the visitation of God. " 
 I tell you that every healthy breath you ever drew, 
 every cheerful hour you ever spent, every good crop 
 you ever housed safely, came to you by " the visit- 
 ation of God." I tell you that every sensible 
 • thought or plan that ever came into your heads, 
 every loving, honest, manly feeling that ever rose in 
 your hearts, God " visited " you to put it there. 
 
PROVIDENCE. 
 
 25 
 
 If God's Spirit had not given it you, you would 
 never have gotten it of yourselves. 
 
 XII. 
 
 We are too apt to say to ourselves, "Our earthly 
 comforts here have nothing to do with godliness or 
 God ; God must save our souls, but our bodies we 
 must save ourselves. God gives us spiritual bless- 
 ings ; but earthly blessings, the good things of this 
 life, for them we must scramble and drudge our- 
 selves, and get as much of them as we can withr 
 out offending God." As if God grudged us our 
 comforts ! as if godliness had not the promise of 
 this life as well as the life to come ! If we would 
 but believe that God knows our necessities before 
 we ask ; that he gives us daily more than we can 
 ever get by working for it ; if we would but seek 
 first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, 
 all other things would be added to us ; and we 
 should find that he who loses his life should save 
 it. And this way of looking at God's earth would 
 not make us idle ; it would not tempt us to sit 
 with folded hands for God's blessings to drop into 
 our mouths. No ! I believe it would make men far 
 more industrious than ever mere self-interest can 
 make them ; they would say, " God is our father ; 
 he gave his only Son ; he gives us all things freely ; 
 
26 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 we owe him not slavish service, but a boundless 
 debt of cheerful gratitude. Therefore we must ,do 
 his will, and we are sure his will is that we should 
 work, and therefore we must work. He has bidden 
 us labor on this earth ; he has bidden us dress it 
 and keep it, conquer it and fill it for him. We 
 are his stewards here on earth, and therefore it is 
 a glory and an honor to be allowed to work here 
 in God's own land ; in our loving Father's own 
 garden. 
 
 " They wait on Him," says David. The beasts, 
 and birds, and insects, the strange fish, and shells, 
 and the nameless corals, too, in the deep, deep 
 sea, who build and build below the water for 
 years and thousands of years, every little tiny creat- 
 ure bringing his atom of lime to add to the great 
 heap, till their heap stands out of the water and 
 becomes dry land ; and seeds float thither over the 
 wide, waste sea, and trees grow up, and birds are 
 driven thither by storms; and men come by acci- 
 dent in stray ships, and build, and sow, and multi- 
 ply, and raise churches and worship the God of 
 Heaven, and Christ the blessed One, on that new 
 land which the little coral-worms have built up from 
 the deep; Consider that. Who sent them there ? 
 Who contrived that those particular men should 
 light on that new island at that especial time? Who 
 guided thither those seeds, those birds? Who 
 
PROVIDENCE. 27 
 
 gave those insects that strange longing and power 
 to build and build on continually? Christ, by whom 
 all things are made, to whom all power is given in 
 heaven and earth ; he and his spirit, and none else. 
 It is when he opens his hand they are filled with 
 good. It is when he takes away their breath they 
 die, and turn again to their dust. He lets his breath, 
 his spirit go forth, and out of that dead dust grow 
 plants and herbs afresh for man and beast, and he 
 renews the face of the earth. For, says the wise 
 man : " All things are God's garments " — outward 
 and visible signs of his unseen and unapproachable 
 glory; and when they are worn out, he changes 
 them, says the Psalmist, as a garment, and they 
 shall be changed. 
 
 The old order changes, giving place to the new, 
 And God fulfils himself in many ways. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Be sure that God would not have made man, and 
 given him power, and sent him upon this earth, 
 unless this earth had been a right, good and fit 
 place for him. Be sure that if you obey the laws 
 of this earth where God has put you, you will 
 never need to be anxious or to fret; but you will 
 prosper right well, you and your children after you. 
 
28 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 For "Consider the fowls of the air, they neither 
 sow nor reap and gather into barns, and yet your 
 Heavenly Father feeds them ; and are ye not much 
 better than they ? " Surely you are, for you can 
 sow and reap and gather into barns. And if God 
 makes the earth work so well that it feeds the 
 fowls who cannot help themselves, how much more 
 will the earth feed you who can help yourselves, 
 because God has given you understanding and 
 prudence. 
 
 But as for anxiety, fretting, repining, complain- 
 ing to God, " Why hast Thou made me thus ? " 
 What use in that? "Which of you by taking 
 thought can add one cubit to his stature ? " Will 
 all the fretting and anxiety in the world make 
 you one foot or one inch taller than you are? 
 Will it make you stronger, wiser, more able to help 
 yourself ? You are what you are ; you can do what 
 God has given you power to do. Trust him that 
 he has made you strong enough and wise enough 
 to earn your daily bread, and to prosper right well, 
 if you will, upon this earth which he has made. 
 And why be anxious about clothing ? " Consider 
 the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil 
 not, neither do they spin ; and yet Solomon in all 
 his glory was not arrayed like one of these." 
 But man can toil, man can spin ; your Heavenly 
 Father has given to man the power of providing 
 
PROVIDENCEJ 29 
 
 clothes for himself, and not for himself only, but 
 for others; so that while the man who tills the 
 soil feeds the man who spins and weaves, the 
 man who spins and weaves shall clothe the man 
 who tills the soil ; and the town shall work for 
 the country, while the country feeds the town ; 
 and every man, if he does but labor where God 
 has put him, shall produce comforts for human 
 beings whom he never saw, who live, perhaps, in 
 foreign lands across the sea. For so the Heavenly 
 Father has knit together the great family of man 
 in one blessed bond of mutual need and mutual 
 usefulness all over the world. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Far among the lonely hills. 
 
 As I lay beside my sheep. 
 Rest came down upon my soul, 
 
 From the everlasting deep. 
 
 Changeless march the stars above. 
 Changeless morn succeeds to even ; 
 
 And the everlasting hills 
 
 Changeless watch the changeless heaven. 
 
 See the rivers, how they run, 
 Changeless to the changeless sea; 
 
30 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 All around is forethought sure, 
 Fixed will and stern decree. 
 
 Can the sailor move the main ? 
 
 Will the potter heed the clay ? 
 Mortal ! where the spirit drives, 
 
 Thither must the wheels obey. 
 
 Neither ask, nor fret, nor strive ; 
 
 Where thy path is thou shalt go ; 
 He who made the stream of time 
 
 Wafts thee down to weal or woe. 
 
 XV. 
 
 As you grow older, you will see more and more 
 the depth of human ignorance, the vanity of human 
 endeavors. You will feel more and more that the 
 world is going God's way, and not yours, or mine, 
 or any man's; and that if you have been allowed 
 to do good work on earth, that work is probably 
 as different from what you fancy it as the tree is 
 different from the seed whence it springs. You will 
 grow content, therefore, not to see the real fruit of 
 your labors ; because if you saw it you would 
 probably be frightened at it, and what is very good 
 in the eyes of God would not be very good in 
 yours ; content, also, to receive your discharge 
 
HAPPINESS. 31 
 
 and work and fight no more, sure that God is 
 working and fighting, whether you are in hospital 
 or in the field. And with this growing sense of 
 the pettiness of human struggles will grow on 
 you a respect for simple labors, a thankfulness 
 for simple pleasures, a sympathy with simple 
 people. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A beautiful October morning it was. One of those 
 in which Dame Nature, healthily tired with the 
 revelry of summer, is composing herself with a 
 quiet, satisfied smile for her winter's sleep. Sheets 
 of dappled cloud were sliding slowly from the west ; 
 long bars of hazy blue hung over the southern chalk- 
 downs, which gleamed pearly gray beneath the low 
 southeastern sun. In the vale below, soft white 
 flakes of mist still hung over the water-meadows, 
 and barred the dark trunks of the huge elms and 
 poplars, whose fast yellowing leaves came shower- 
 ing down at every rustle of the western breeze, 
 spotting the grass below. The river smiled along, 
 glassy no more, but dingy gray with autumn rains 
 and rotten leaves. All beyond the garden told of 
 autumn; bright and peaceful, even in decay. But 
 up the sunny slope of the garden itself, and to the 
 very window-sill, summer still lingered. The beds 
 
32 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 of red verbena and geranium were still brilliant, 
 though choked with fallen leaves of acacia and plane ; 
 the canary plant, still untouched by frost, twined 
 its delicate green leaves and more delicate yellow 
 blossoms, through the crimson lacework of the Vir- 
 ginia creeper; and the great yellow noisette swung 
 its long canes across the window, filling all the air 
 with fruity fragrance. 
 
 And the good doctor, lifting his eyes from his 
 microscope, looked out upon it all with a quiet sat- 
 isfaction, and, though his lips did not move, his 
 eyes seemed to be thanking God for it all; and 
 thanking him, too, perhaps, that he was still permit- 
 ted to gaze upon that fair world outside. For as 
 he gazed, he started as if with sudden pain, and 
 passed his hand across his eyes with something like 
 a sigh, and then looked at the microscope no more, 
 but sat, seemingly absorbed in thought, while upon 
 his delicate, toil-worn features, and high, bland, 
 unwrinkled forehead, and the few soft, gray locks 
 which not time — for he was scarcely fifty-five — 
 but long labor of brain had spared to him, there 
 lay a hopeful calm, as of a man who had nigh 
 done his work, and felt that he had not altogether 
 done it ill — an autumnal calm, resigned, yet full 
 of cheerfulness, which harmonized fitly with the 
 quiet beauty of the decaying landscape before 
 him. 
 
HAPPINESS. 33 
 
 xyii. 
 
 Make a rule, and pray to God to help you to keep 
 it, never, if possible, to lie down at night without 
 being able to say : " I have made one human being 
 at least a little wiser, or a little happier, or a little 
 better this day." You will find it easier than you 
 think, and pleasanter. Easier, because if you wish 
 to do God's work, God will surely find you work to 
 do ; and pleasanter, because in return for the little 
 trouble it may cost you, or the little choking of fool- 
 ish, vulgar pride it may cost you, you will have a 
 peace of mind, a quiet of temper, a cheerfulness 
 and hopefulness about yourself and all around you; 
 such as you never felt before; and over and, above 
 that, if you look for a reward in the life to come, 
 recollect this : What we have to hope for in the 
 life to come is to, enter into the joy of our Lord, 
 And how did he fulfil that joy, but by humbling 
 himself, and taking the form of a slave, and com- 
 ing, not to be ministered to, but to minister, 
 and to give his whole life, even to the death upon 
 the cross, a ransom for many. Be sure that unless 
 you take up his cross you will never share his crown ; 
 be sure that unless you follow in his footsteps you will 
 never reach the place where he is. If you wish to 
 enter into the joy of your Lord, be sure that his joy 
 is now, as it was in Judea of old, over every sinner 
 
34 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 that repenteth, every mourner that is comforted, 
 every hungry mouth that is fed, every poor soul, 
 sick or in prison, who is visited. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Did it ever strike you that goodness is not merely 
 a beautiful thing, but the beautiful thing; by far the 
 most beautiful thing in the world ; and that badness is 
 not merely an ugly thing, but the ugliest thing in the 
 world ? so that nothing is to be compared for value 
 with goodness ; that riches, honor, power, pleasure, 
 learning, the whole world and all in it, are not worth 
 having, in comparison with being good ; and the utterly 
 best thing for a man is to be good, even though he 
 were never to be rewarded for it ; and the utterly worst 
 thing for a man is to be bad, even though he were never 
 to be punished for it ; and, in a word, goodness is the 
 only thing worth loving, and badness the only thing 
 worth hating. 
 
 Did you ever feel this, my friends ? Happy are those 
 among you who have felt it ; for of you the Lord says, 
 " Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness; for they shall be filled." Ay, happy are 
 you who have felt it ; for it is the sign, the very and 
 true sign, that the Holy Spirit of God, who is the 
 Spirit of goodness, is working in your hearts with 
 power, revealing to you the exceeding beauty of 
 
GOODNESS. 35 
 
 holiness, and the exceeding sinfulness of sin. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Did it never strike you, again — as it has me — and 
 all the world has looked different to me since I found 
 it out — that there must be One in whom all goodness 
 is gathered together; One who must be perfectly 
 and absolutely good ? 
 
 And did it never strike you that all the goodness in 
 the world must, in some way or other, come from Him ? 
 I believe that our hearts and reasons, if we will listen 
 fairly to them, tell us that it must be so ; and I am 
 certain that the Bible tells us so, from beginning to end. 
 When we see the million raindrops of the shower, we 
 say, with reason, there must be one great sea, from 
 which all these drops have come. When we see the 
 couf^tless rays of light, we say with reason, there must 
 be one great central sun from which all these are shed 
 forth. And when we see, as it were, countless drops, 
 and countless rays of goodness scattered about in 
 the world, a little good in this man, and a little good 
 in that, shall we not say, there must be one great sea, 
 one central sun of goodness, from whence all human 
 goodness comes ? And where can that centre of good- 
 ness be, but in the very character of God himself .'' 
 
 Yes, my friends, if you would know what God is, 
 think of all the noble, beautiful, lovable actions, 
 
36 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 tempers, feelings, which you ever saw or heard of. 
 Think of all the good, and admirable, and lovable 
 people whom you ever met ; and fancy to yourselves 
 all that goodness, nobleness, admirableness, lovable- 
 ness, and millions of times more, gathered, together in 
 one, to make one perfectly good character — and then 
 /ou have some faint notion of God, some dim sight of 
 God, who is the eternal and perfect Goodness. 
 
 It is but a faint notion, no doubt, that the best man 
 can have of God's goodness, so dull has sin made our 
 hearts and brains : but let us comfort ourselves with 
 this thought : That the more we learn to love what is 
 good, the more we accustom ourselves to think of 
 good people and good things, and to ask ourselves why 
 and how this action and that is good, the more shall 
 we be able to see the goodness of God. And to see 
 that, even for a moment, is worth all sights in earth or 
 heaven. 
 
 XX. 
 
 As the rays come from the sun, and yet are 
 not the sun, even so our love and pity, though 
 they are not God, but merely a poor weak image 
 and reflection of him, yet from him alone they 
 come. If there is mercy in our hearts, it comes 
 from the fountain of mercy. If there is the light 
 of love in us, it is a ray from the full sun of love. 
 
DUTY. 37 
 
 XXI. 
 
 If a man in the struggle of life sees God aAd 
 Christ and duty all around him, that thought will 
 be a helmet for his head. It will keep his brain 
 and mind clear, quiet, prudent to perceive and 
 know what things he ought to do. It will give 
 him that Divine wisdom, of which Solomon says 
 in his proverbs, that the beginning of wisdom is 
 
 the fear of the Lord. 
 
 ■t 
 
 XXII. 
 
 It is nobler far to do the most commonplace 
 duty, in the household, or behind the counter, with a 
 single eye to duty, simply because it must be done; 
 nobler far, I say, than to go out of your way to 
 attempt a brilliant deed, with a double mind and say- 
 ing to yourself not only — "This will be a brilliant 
 deed," but also — "and it will pay me, or raise me, 
 or set me oil, into the bargain. Heroism knows 
 no "into the bargain." 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Our Father hears the man who cries to him, 
 however clumsily, for light and strength to do his 
 duty. So it is; so it has been always; so it will 
 
38 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 be to the end. And then, as the man's day, so 
 his strength will be. He may be utterly puzzled, 
 utterly down-hearted, utterly hopeless : but the day 
 comes to him in which he is baptized with the Holy 
 Ghost and with fire. He begins to have a right judg- 
 ment ; to see clearly what he ought to do, and 
 how to do it. He grows more shrewd, more 
 prompt, more steady than he ever has been before. 
 And there comes a fire into his heart, such as 
 there never was before ; a spirit and a determina- 
 tion which nothing can daunt or break, which 
 makes him bold, cheerful, earnest in the face of 
 the anxiety and danger which would have, at any 
 other time, broken his heart. The man is lifted 
 by it above himself, and carried on through his 
 work, he hardly knows how, till he succeeds nobly, 
 or, if he fails, fails nobly ; and be the end as it 
 may, he gets the work done which God has given 
 him to do. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 If thou art living a righteous and a useful life, 
 doing thy duty orderly and cheerfully where God 
 has put thee, then thou art making sweeter melody 
 in the ears of the Lord Jesus Christ, than if 
 thou hadst the throat of a nightingale ; for then 
 thou in thy humble place art humbly copying the 
 
DUTY. 39 
 
 everlasting harmony and melody which is in Heaven ; 
 the everlasting harmony and melody by which God 
 made the world and all that therein is, and behold 
 it was very good, in the day when the morning 
 stars sang together, and all the sons of God 
 shouted for joy over the new-created earth, which God 
 had made to be a pattern of his own perfection, 
 
 XXV. 
 
 The feeling that gives a man true courage is the 
 sense of duty. Let men, women or children once 
 feel that they have a duty to perform ; let them 
 once say to themselves, "I am bound to do this 
 thing; it is right for me to do this thing; I owe 
 it as a duty to my family; I owe it as a duty 
 to my country ; I owe it as a duty to God, 
 who called me into this station in life ; I owe 
 it as a duty to Jesus Christ, who bought me 
 with his blood, that I might do his will and 
 not my own pleasure." When a man has once 
 said that honestly to himself, when that glorious, 
 heavenly thought " It is my duty" has risen upon 
 his soul, like the sun upon the earth, warming 
 his heart and enlightening it, and making it bring 
 forth all good and noble fruits, then that man will 
 feel a strength come to him and a courage from 
 God above, which will conquer all his fears and 
 
40 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 his selfish love of ease and pleasure, and enable 
 him to bear insults, and pain, and poverty, and 
 death itself, provided he can but do what is right 
 and be found by God, whatever happens to him, 
 working God's will where God has put him. This 
 is fortitude ; this is true courage ; this is Christ's 
 likeness. As for doing fine things, I have learnt 
 to believe that I am not set to do fine things, simply 
 because I am not able to do them ; and as for 
 seeing fine things, I have learnt to see the sight 
 — as well as to try to do the duty — which lies 
 nearest me ; and to comfort myself with the fancy 
 that if I make good use of my eyes and brain 
 in this life, I shall see — if it be of any use to 
 me — all the fine things, or perhaps finer still, in 
 the life to come. But if not, what matter ? In 
 any life, in any state, however simple or humble, 
 there will be always sufficient to occupy a minute 
 philosopher; and if a man be busy, and busy 
 about his duty, what more does he require, for 
 time or for eternity? 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Nothing is more expensive than penuriousness ; 
 nothing more anxious than carelessness ; and every 
 duly which is bidden to wait, returns with seven 
 fresh duties at its back. 
 
DUTY. 41 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Thy duty is thy good^ the good out of which, 
 if thou doest it, all good things such as thou 
 canst not now conceive to thyself, must neces- 
 sarily spring up for thee forever; but which if 
 thou neglectest thou wilt be in danger of get- 
 ting no good things whatsoever, and of having all 
 evil things, mishap, shame, and misery such as 
 thou canst not now conceive of, spring up for thee 
 necessarily forever. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Duty, be it in a small matter or a great, is 
 duty still ; the command of Heaven, the eldest 
 voice of God. And it is only they who are faith- 
 ful in a few things who will be faithful over 
 many things; only they who do their duty in 
 every-day and trivial matters, who will fulfill them 
 on great occasions. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Keep God always before your eyes. Ask your- 
 self in every action, "What is right, what is my 
 duty, what would God have me do ? " And so 
 far from finding it unpleasant, you will find that 
 
42 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 you are saving yourself a thousand troubles, and 
 sorrows, and petty anxieties which now trouble 
 you ; you will find that in God's presence is life, the 
 only life worth having; and that at his right hand, 
 are pleasures for evermore. Oh be sure that in 
 real happiness you will not lose, but gain with- 
 out end. If to have a clear conscience and a 
 quiet mind; if to be free from anxiety and dis- 
 content, free from fear and shame ; if to be loved, 
 respected, looked up to by all whose good word 
 is worth having, and to know that God approves 
 of you, that all day long God is with you, and 
 you with God, that his loving and mighty arms 
 are under you, that he has promised to keep you 
 in all your ways, to prosper all you do, and 
 reward you for ever, if this be not happiness, 
 what is? 
 
 XXX. 
 
 I do not care for grace in man, woman, or 
 animal, which is obtained (as in the old German 
 painters) at the expense of honest flesh and blood. 
 It may be all very pure and unearthly and saintly, 
 and what not; but it is not healthy, and there- 
 fore it is not really High Art, let it call itself 
 such as much as it likes. The highest art must 
 be that in which the outward is the most perfect 
 
AJiT. 43 
 
 symbol of the inward ; and therefore a healthy 
 soul can be only expressed by a healthy body ; 
 and starved limbs and a hydrocephalus forehead 
 must be either taken as incorrect symbols of 
 spiritual excellence, or as what they were really 
 meant for — symbols of certain spiritual diseases 
 which were in the middle age considered as eccle- 
 siastical graces and virtues. Wherefore I like 
 pagan and naturalist art ; consider Titian and Cor- 
 reggio as unappreciated geniuses, whose excellences 
 the world will in some saner mood re-discover ; 
 hold, in direct opposition to Rio, that Raphael 
 improved steadily all his life through, and that his 
 noblest works are not his somewhat simpering 
 Madonnas and somewhat impish Bambinos (very 
 lovely though they are), but his great, coarse, 
 naturalist, Protestant cartoons, which (with Andrea 
 Mantegna's Heathen Triumph) Cromwell saved for 
 the British nation. Probably no one will agree with 
 all this for the next quarter of a century; but 
 after that I have hopes. The world will grow 
 tired of pretending to admire Manichaeus pictures 
 in an age of natural science ; and Art will let 
 the dead bury their dead, and beginning again 
 where Michael Angelo and Raphael left off, work 
 forward into a nobler, truer, freer, and more divine 
 school than the world has yet seen — at least, so 
 I hope. 
 
44 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 "You used to believe in Zeuxis and Parrhasius 
 in old times. " 
 
 " Yes, as long as I believed in Fuseli's Lectures ; 
 but when I saw at Pompeii the ancient paintings 
 which still remain to us, my faith in their powers 
 received its first shock ; and when I re-read in the 
 Lectures of Fuseli and his school all their extrava- 
 gant praises of the Greek painters, and separated 
 their few facts fairly out from among the floods of 
 cant on which they floated, I came to the conclu- 
 sion that the ancients knew as little of color or 
 chiaro-oscuro as they did of perspective; and as 
 little of spiritual expression as they did of land- 
 scape painting. What do I care for the birds peck- 
 ing at Zeuxis's grapes, or Zeuxis himself trying to 
 draw back Parrhasius's curtain? Imitative art is 
 the lowest trickery. There are twenty men now in 
 England capable of the same slight of hand; and 
 yet these are recorded as the very highest triumphs 
 of ancient art by the only men who have handed 
 down to us any record of it. " 
 
 " It may be so ; or again, it may not. But do 
 not fancy, Claude, that classic sculpture has fin- 
 ished its work on earth. You know that it has 
 taught you what Gothic art could never teach — the 
 ideal of physical health and strength. Believe that 
 
ART. 
 
 ^ 
 
 it exists and will exist to remind the puny town- 
 dweller of the existence of that ideal; to say to 
 the artisan, every time he looks upon a statue, 
 such God intended you to be ; such you may be ; 
 such your class will be in some future healthy state 
 of civilization, when sanitary reform and social 
 science shall be accepted and carried out as pri- 
 mary duties of a government toward the nation. " 
 
 " Surely, classic sculpture remains as a witness 
 of the primeval paradise ; a witness that man and 
 woman were created at first healthy, and strong, 
 and fair, and innocent; just as classic literature re- 
 mains for a witness that the heathen of old were 
 taught of God ; that we have something to learn of 
 them summed up in that now obsolete word "virtue" 
 — true and wholesome manhood, which we are 
 likely to , forget, and are forgetting daily, under the 
 enervating shadow of popular superstitions. And 
 till we have learned that, may Greek books still 
 form the basis of our liberal education, and may 
 Greek statues, or even English attempts to copy 
 them, fill public halls and private houses. This gen- 
 eration may not understand their divine and eter- 
 nal significance; but a future generation, doubt it 
 not, will spell it out right well." 
 
 " Nature is beautiful ; and therefore nature can- 
 not have been truly copied if the general effect of 
 a picture is not beauj;iful also. I never found out 
 
46 LIVING TRUTHS, 
 
 the fallacy till the other day when looking at a cer- 
 tain portrait. The woman for whom it was meant 
 was standing by my side, young and lovely; the 
 portrait hung there, neither young nor lovely, but a 
 wrinkled caricature twenty years older than the 
 model." 
 
 "I surely know the portrait you mean, Lady 
 
 "Yes; the artist had simply, under pretence of 
 following nature, caricatured her into a woman 
 twenty years older than she is. " 
 
 "But did you ever see a modern portrait which 
 more perfectly expressed character; which more 
 completely fulfilled certain requirements which you 
 yourself laid down a few evenings since ? " 
 
 "Never; and that makes me all the more cross 
 with the wilful mistake of it. He had painted every 
 wrinkle. " 
 
 " Why not, if they were there ? " 
 
 " Because he had painted a face not one-twentieth 
 of the size of life. What right had he to cram 
 into that small space all the marks which nature 
 had spread over a far larger one ? " 
 
 "Why not, again, if he diminished the marks in 
 proportion ? " 
 
 "Just what neither he nor any man could do, 
 without making them so small as to be invisible, 
 save under a microscope ; and the result was, that 
 
ART. 47 
 
 he had caricatured every wrinkle. Besides, I utterly 
 deny your assertion that one is bound to paint what 
 is there. On that very fallacy many artists are 
 making shipwreck." 
 
 " Not paint what is there ? And you are the man 
 who talks of art being highest when it copies nature." 
 
 "Exactly. And therefore you must paint, not 
 what is there, but what you see there. Some artists 
 seem to forget that human beings are men with two 
 eyes, and not daguerreotype lenses with one eye, 
 and so are contriving and striving to introduce into 
 their pictures the very defect of the daguerreotype 
 which the stereoscope is required to correct." 
 
 "I comprehend. They forget that the -double 
 vision of our two eyes gives a softness and indis- 
 tinctness and roiindness, to every outline." 
 
 " Exactly so ; and therefore, while for distant 
 landscapes, motionless, and already softened by 
 atmosphere, the daguerreotype is invaluable (I 
 shall do nothing else this summer but work at it), 
 yet for taking portraits, in any true sense, it will 
 be always useless, not only for the reason I just 
 gave, but for another one which the pre-Raphaelites 
 have forgotten." 
 
 " Because all the features cannot be in focus at 
 once ? " 
 
 " O no, I am not speaking of that. Art, for aught 
 I know, may overcome that; for it is a mere defect 
 
48 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 in the instrument. What I mean is this : It tries to 
 represent as still what never yet was still for the 
 thousandth part of a second ; that is a human face ; 
 and as seen by a spectator who is perfectly still, 
 which no man ever yet was. My dear fellow, don't 
 you see that what some painters call idealizing a 
 portrait is, if it be wisely, done, really painting for 
 you the face which you see, and know, and love ; her 
 ever shifting features, with expression varying more 
 rapidly than the gleam of the diamond on her 
 finger; features which you in your turn are looking 
 at with ever-shifting eyes ; while, perhaps, if it is a 
 face which you love and have lingered over, a dozen 
 other expressions equally belonging to it are hang- 
 ing in your memory, and blending themselves with 
 the actual picture on your retina; till every 
 little angle is somewhat rounded, every little shade 
 somewhat blended with the surrounding" light, so 
 that the sum total of what you see, and are intended 
 by Heaven to see, is something far softer, lovelier — 
 younger, perhaps, thank heaven ! — than it would 
 look if your head was screwed down in a vice, to 
 look with one eye at her head screwed down in a 
 vice also ; though even that, thanks to the muscles 
 of the eye, would not produce the' required ugli- 
 ness ; and the only possible method of fulfilling the 
 pre-Raphaelite ideal would be to set a petrified 
 Cyclops to paint his petrified brother." 
 
PRAYER. 49 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 The longer I live, the more certain I am that 
 the only reason for praying at all is because God 
 is our Father; the more certain I am that we 
 shall never have any heart to pray unless we be- 
 lieve that God is our Father. If we forget that, 
 we may utter to him selfish cries for bread ; or 
 when we look at his great power, we may become 
 terrified and utter selfish cries to him not to harm 
 us, without any real shame or sorrow for sin; biit 
 few of us will have any heart to persevere in those 
 cries. Pepple will say to themselves, "If God is 
 evil, he will not care to have mercy on me: and 
 if he is good, there is no use wearying him by 
 asking him what he has already intended to give 
 me: why should I pray at all?" 
 
 The only answer is, "Pray, because God is your 
 Father, and you his child." The only answer; 
 but the most complete answer. ■ I will engage 
 to say that if any one is ever troubled with 
 doubts about prayer, those two simple words, 
 " Our Father," if he can once really believe 
 them in their full richness and depth, will make 
 the doubts vanish in a moment, and prayer seem 
 the most natural and reasonable of all acts. It 
 is because we are God's children, not merely 
 his creatures, that he will have us pray. Because 
 
so LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 he is educating us to know him, to know him 
 not merely to be an Almighty Power, but a living, 
 loving person; not merely an irresistible Fate, but 
 a Father who delights in the love of his children, 
 who wishes to shape them into his own likeness, 
 and make them fellow-workers with him; therefore 
 it is that he will have us pray. Doubtless he 
 could give us every thing without our asking, for he 
 does already give us almost every thing without our 
 asking; but he wishes to educate us as his children 
 to make us trust in him, to make us love him, to 
 make us work for him, of our own free wills, in the 
 great battle which he is carrying on against evil; 
 and that he can only do by teaching us to pray 
 to him. I say it reverently, but firmly. As far 
 as we can see, God cannot educate us to know 
 him, the living, willing, loving Father, unless he 
 teaches us to open our hearts to him, and to ask 
 him freely for what we want, just because he 
 knows what we want already. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Should you like to have a child who never 
 spoke to you, never asked you for any thing? Of 
 course not. And why? " Because," you would say, 
 "one might as well have a dumb animal in one's 
 family instead of a child, if it is never to talk 
 
PRAYER. 51 
 
 and ask questions and advice; most true and most 
 reasonable; and as you would say concerning your 
 children, so says God of his. You feel that unless 
 you teach your children to ask you for all they 
 want, even though you know their necessities be- 
 fore they ask, and their ignorance in asking, you 
 will never call out their love and trust towards 
 you. You know that if you want really to have 
 your child to please and obey you, not as a mere 
 tame animal, but as a willing, reasonable, loving 
 child, you must make him know that you are 
 training him; and you must teach him to come to 
 you of his own accord to be trained, to be taught 
 his duty, and set right where he is wrong; and 
 even so does God with you. If you will only con- 
 sider the way in which any child must be educated 
 by its human parents, then you will at once see 
 why prayer to our Heavenly Father is a necessary 
 part of our education in the kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 If a man will let God make him a new creat- 
 ure in Jesus Christ, then he will be more than 
 happy; he will be blessed: then he will be a 
 blessing to himself, and a blessing to every one 
 whom he meets: then all vain longing, and selfish- 
 ness, and pride, and ambition, and covetousness, 
 
52 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 and peevishness, and disappointment, will vanish 
 out of his heart, and he will work manfully and 
 contentedly where God has placed him — cheerful 
 and open-hearted, civil and patient, always thinking 
 about others, and not about himself; trying to be 
 about his Master's business, which is doing good ; 
 and always finding, too, that his Master Christ sets 
 him some good work to do day by day, and gives 
 him strength to do it. And how can a man get 
 that blessed and noble state of mind ? By prayer 
 and practice. You must ask for strength from God: 
 but then you must believe that He answers your 
 prayer, and gives you that strength ; and therefore you 
 must try and use it. There is no more use in 
 praying without practicing than there is in practic- 
 ing without praying. You cannot learn to walk 
 without walking: no more can you learn to do 
 good without trying to do good. , 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Wearily stretches the sand to the surge, and the 
 
 surge to the cloudland ; 
 Wearily onward I ride, watching the wild wave 
 
 alone. 
 Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, xwSa' yajow 
 Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labor and 
 
 strife ; 
 
DISCIPLINE. S3 
 
 No more on magical steed borne free through the 
 
 regions of ether, 
 But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew 
 
 for gold. 
 Fruit-bearing autumn is gone ; let the sad quiet 
 
 winter hang o'er me — 
 What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow 
 
 and shame ? 
 Green leaves would fret me with beauty ; my heart 
 
 has no time to bepraise them ; 
 Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud — these wake no 
 
 yearning within ; 
 Sing not, thou sky-lark above, even angels pass 
 
 hushed by the weeper ! 
 Scream on, ye sea-fowl ! my heart echoes your des- 
 olate cry. 
 Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift 
 
 o'er the shell and the sea-weed ; 
 Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the 
 
 pitiless tide, 
 Just is the wave that uptore us; 'tis nature's own 
 
 law which condemns us; 
 Woe to the weak who in pride build on the faith 
 
 of the sand ! 
 Joy to the oak of the mountain, he trusts to the 
 
 might of the rock-clefts ; 
 Deeply he mines and in peace feeds on the wealth 
 
 of the stone. 
 
54 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 It would be a miserable world if all that the cler- 
 gyman or the friend might say by the sick-bed were, 
 "This is an inevitable evil, like hail and thunder. 
 You must bear it if you can : and if not, then not." 
 A miserable world if he could not say with full belief, 
 "'My son, despise not thou the chastening of the 
 Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. For 
 whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth 
 every son whom he receiveth.' Thou knowest not 
 now why thou art afflicted ; perhaps thou wilt never 
 know in this life. But a day will come when thou wilt 
 know, when thou wilt find that this sickness came to 
 thee at the exact right time, in the exact right way ; 
 when thou wilt find that God has been keeping thee in 
 the secret place of his presence from the provoking of 
 men, and hiding thee privately in his tabernacle from the 
 spite of tongues ; when thou wilt discover that thou hast 
 been learning precious lessons for thy immortal spirit, 
 while thou didst seem to thyself merely tossing with 
 clouded intellect on a bed of useless pain ; when thou 
 wilt find that God was nearest to thee at the very 
 moment when he seemed to have left thee most utterly." 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Happy, thrice happy are they who have walked 
 
DISCIFLINE. 55 
 
 through the valley of the shadow of death, and found 
 it the path which leads to everlasting life. Happy are 
 they who have writhed awhile in the fierce fire of God, 
 and have had burnt out of them the chaff and dross, 
 and all which offends and makes them vain, light, and 
 yet makes them dull, drags them down at the same 
 time ; till only the pure gold of God's righteousness is 
 left, seven times tried in the fire, incorruptible, and 
 precious in the sight of God and man. Such people 
 need not regret — they will not regret — all that they 
 have gone through. It has made them brave, made 
 them sober, made them patient. It has given them- 
 
 " The reason firm, the temperate will. 
 Endurance, foresight, strength and skill ; " 
 
 and so has shaped them into the likeness of Christ, 
 who was made perfect through suffering; and though 
 he were a Son, yet in the days of his flesh, made strong 
 supplication, and cryed with tears to his father, and 
 was heard in that he feared ; and so, though he died 
 on the cross and descended into hell, yet triumphed 
 over death and hell, by dying and by descending ; and 
 conquered them by submitting to them. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 To feel for all, and feel with all; to rejoice with 
 
S6 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep; 
 to understand people's trials, and make allowances 
 for their temptations ; to put one's self in their place, 
 till we see with their eyes, and feel with their hearts, 
 till we judge no man, and have hope for all ; to be 
 fair and patient and tender with every one we meet ; 
 to despise no one, to despair of none ; to look upon 
 every one we meet with love, almost with pity, as 
 people who either have been down into the deep of 
 horror, or may go down into it any day ; to see our 
 own sins in other people's sins, and know that we 
 might do what they do, and feel as they feel, any 
 moment, did God desert us ; to give and forgive, to 
 live and let live, even as Christ gives to us and 
 forgives us, and lives for us, and lets us live, in spite 
 of all our sins — this is the character we may get 
 "out of the depths." 
 
 xxxrx. 
 
 By suffering Christ was made perfect; and what 
 was the best path for Jesus Christ is surely good 
 enough for us, even though it be a rough and a thorny 
 one. Let us lie still beneath God's hand ; for though 
 his hand be heavy upon us, it is strong and safe 
 beneath us too; and none can pluck us out of his 
 hand, for in him we live and move and have our 
 being; and though we go down into the depths 
 
DISCIPLINE. S7 
 
 with David, witli David we shall find God there, 
 and find, with David, that " He will not leave our 
 souls in hell, or suffer his holy ones to see cor- 
 ruption." Yes ; have faith in God. Nothing in 
 thee which , he has made shall see corruption ; for 
 it is a thought of God's, and no thought of his 
 can perish. Nothing shall be purged out of thee 
 but thy disease; nothing shall be burnt out of 
 thee but thy dross ; and that in thee shall be 
 saved, and live to all eternity, of which God said 
 at the beginning, "Let us make man in our own 
 image." Yes; have faith in God; and say to 
 him once for all, "Though Thou slay me, yet 
 will I love Thee; for Thou lovedst me in Jesus 
 Christ before the foundation of the world." 
 
 XL. 
 
 Do not be astonished, do not be disheartened, 
 if, when a great sorrow comes to you, there comes 
 with it a struggle too deep for words; if you find 
 out that fine words and set prayers are nothing in 
 your hour of need, and that you will not be heard 
 for your much speaking. Ah ! the darkness of that 
 time which perhaps goes on for days, for months, 
 all alone between you and God himself. Clergymen 
 and good people may come in with kind words and 
 true words, but they give no comfort ; your heart 
 
S8 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 is still dark, still full of doubt; you want God him- 
 self to speak to your heart, and tell you that he 
 is love. And you have no words to pray with at 
 last ; you have used them all up ; and you can 
 only cling humbly to God, and hold fast. One 
 moment you feel like a poor slave clinging to his 
 stern master's arm, and entreating him not to kill 
 him outright. The next you feel like a child 
 clinging to his father, and entreating him to save 
 him from some horrible monster which is going to 
 devour it; but you have no words to pray with, only 
 sighs, and tears, and groans; you feel that you know 
 not what to pray for as you ought ; know not 
 what is good for you; dare ask for nothing, lest 
 it should be the wrong thing. And the longer 
 you struggle, the weaker you become, as Jacob 
 did, till your very bones seem out of joint, your 
 very heart broken within you, and life seems not 
 worth having, or death either. 
 
 Only hold fast by God. Only do not despair. 
 Only be sure that God cannot lie; be sure that he 
 who cared for you from your birth hour cares for 
 you still ; that he who loved you enough to give 
 his own Son for you hundreds of years before you 
 were born, cannot but love you still ; do not 
 despair, I say ; and at last, when you are fallen so 
 low that you can fall no lower, and so weak that 
 you are past struggling, you may hear through the 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 59 
 
 darkness of your heart the still small voice of God. 
 Only hold fast, and let him not go until he bless 
 you, and you shall find with Jacob of old, that as 
 a prince you have power with God and with man, 
 and have prevailed. 
 
 And so God will answer you as he answered 
 Elijah, at first out of the whirlwind and the blind- 
 ing storm; but at last, doubt it not, with the still 
 small voice which cannot be mistaken, which no 
 earthly ear can hear, but which is more precious 
 to the broken heart than all which this world gives, 
 the peace which passes understanding, and yet is the 
 surest and the only lasting peace. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 The Bible tells us " that God tempts no man ; that 
 he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children 
 of men." The Bible speaks at times as if these 
 dark troubles came from the devil himself, and as 
 if God turned them into good for us by making 
 them part of our training, part of our education; 
 and so making some devil's attempt to ruin us 
 only a great means of our improvement. I do not 
 know : but this I do know, the troubles are here, 
 and God is love. At least this is comfortable, that 
 God will let no man be tempted beyond what he is 
 able; but will with the temptation make a way for 
 
6o LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 us to escape, that we may be able to bear it. At 
 least this is comfortable, that our prayers are not 
 needed to change God's will, because his will is 
 already that we should be saved; because we are 
 Dn his side in the battle against the devil, or the 
 Sesh, or the world, or whatever it is which makes 
 poor souls and bodies miserable, and he on ours ; 
 md all we have to do in our prayers is to ask 
 advice and orders and strength and courage from 
 the great Captain of our salvation ; that we may 
 fight his battle and ours aright and to the end. 
 And if you be in trouble, if your heart be brought 
 low within you, remember, only remember, who the 
 Captain of our salvation is. Who but Jesus who 
 died on the cross — Jesus who was made perfect 
 hy sufferings, Jesus who cried out, "My God! my 
 God! why hast thou forsaken me?" 
 
 XLII. 
 
 No cloud across the sun 
 But passes at the last, and gives us back 
 The face of God once more. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 If Christ had to be made perfect by suilerings, 
 much more must we. If he needed to learn obedi- 
 
DISCIPLINE. 61 
 
 ence by sorrow, much more must we. If in the 
 days of his flesh, he needed to make supplication 
 to God his Father with strong crying and tears, 
 so do we. And if. he was heard in that he 
 feared, so, I trust, we shall be heard likewise. If 
 he needed to taste even the most horrible misery 
 of all ; to feel for a moment that God had forsaken 
 him; surely we must expect, if we are to be made 
 like him, to have to drink at least one drop out 
 of his cup. It is very wonderful: but yet it is 
 full of hope and comfort. Full of hope and com- 
 fort to be able, in our darkest and bitterest sorrow, 
 to look up to Heaven, and say, at least there is 
 one who has been thirough all this. As Christ was, 
 so are we in this world; and the disciple cannot 
 be above his master. Yes, we are in this world 
 as he was, and he was once in this world as we 
 are. He has been through all this, and more. 
 He knows all this and more. "We have a High 
 Priest above us who can be touched with the 
 feeling of our infirmities, because he has been 
 tempted in all things like as we are, yet without 
 sin." 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Are you tormented as Job was, over and above all 
 your sorrows, by mistaken kindness, and comforters in 
 
62 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 whom is no comfort; who break the bruised reed 
 and quench the smoking flax; who tell you that 
 you must be wicked, and God must be angry with 
 you, or all this would not have come upon 
 you? Job's comforters did so, and spoke very 
 righteous-sounding words, and took great pains to 
 justify God and to break poor Job's heart, and 
 made him say many wild and foolish words in an- 
 swer, for which he was sorry afterwards; but after 
 all, the Lord's answer was, " My wrath is kindled 
 against you three, for you have not spoken of me 
 the thing which was right, as my servant Job 
 hath. Therefore my servant Job shall pray for you, 
 for him will I accept;" as he will accept every 
 humble and contrite soul who clings, amid all its 
 doubts, and fears, and sorrows, to the faith that 
 God is just and not unjust, merciful and not cruel, 
 condescending and not proud — that his will is a 
 good will, and not a bad will — that he hateth 
 nothing that he hath made, and willeth the death 
 of no man ; and in that faith casts itself down 
 like Job, in dust and ashes before the majesty of 
 God, content not to understand his ways and 
 its own sorrows; but simply submitting itself 
 and resigning itself to the good will of that 
 God, who so loved the world that he spared 
 not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him 
 for us. 
 
DISCIPLINE. 63 
 
 XLV. 
 
 It chanced iTpon the merry, merry Christmas eve, 
 I went sighing past the church, across the moor- 
 land dreary ' — 
 " Oh ! never sin and want and woe this earth will leave, 
 And the bells but mock the wailing round they 
 sing so cheery. 
 How long, O Lord! how long before Thou come 
 again ? 
 Still in cellar, and in garret, and on moorland dreary. 
 The orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men 
 toil in vain. 
 Till the earth is sick of hope deferred, though 
 Christmas bells be cheery." 
 
 Then arose a joyous clamor from the wild fowl on 
 the mere, 
 Beneath the stars, across the snow, like clear 
 bells ringing. 
 And a voice within cried — " Listen ! — Christmas 
 carols even here! 
 Though thou be dumb, yet o'er their work the 
 stars and snows are singing. 
 Blind! I love, I love, I reign; and all the nations 
 through 
 With the thunder of my judgments even now are 
 ringing; 
 
64 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Do thou fulfil thy work, but as yon wild fowl do, 
 Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear 
 through it angels' singing." 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Well spoke the old monks, peaceful watching life's 
 turmoil, 
 " Eyes which look heavenward, weeping still we see : 
 God's love with keen flame purges, like the light- 
 ning flash. 
 Gold which is purest, purer still must be." 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Happy for eveiy man that the battle between the 
 spirit and the flesh should begin • in him again and 
 again, as long as his flesh is not subdued to his 
 spirit. If he be wrong, the greatest blessing which 
 can happen to him is, that he should find him- 
 self in the wrong. If he have been deceiving 
 himself, the greatest blessing is, that God should 
 anoint his eyes that he may see — see himself as 
 he is; see his own inbred corruption: see the sin 
 which doth so easily beset him, whatever it may 
 be. Whatever anguish of mind it may cost him, 
 it is a light price to pay for the inestimable 
 treasure which true repentance and amendment 
 brings ; the fine gold of solid self-knowledge, tried 
 
STN. 65 
 
 in the fire of bitter experience ; the white raiment 
 of a pure and simple hearty the eye-salve of hon- 
 est self-condemnation and noble shame. If he have 
 but these — and these God will give him, in 
 answer to prayer, the prayer of a broken and 
 contrite heart — then he will be able to carry on 
 the battle against the corrupt flesh, with its affec- 
 tions and lusts, in hope. In the assured hope of 
 final victory. " For greater is he that is with us 
 than he that is against us." He that is against 
 us is our self, our selfish self, our animal nature ; 
 and he that is with us is God ; God and none 
 other: and who can pluck us out of his hand? 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 How shall we conquer temptations to laziness, 
 selfishness, heartlessness ? By faith in God as the 
 eternal enemy of evil, the eternal helper of those 
 who try to overcome evil with good ; the eternal 
 avenger of all the wrong which is done on earth. 
 By faith in God, as not only our Father, our 
 Saviour, our Redeemer, our Protector, but the 
 Father, Saviour, Redeemer, Protector, and, if need 
 be. Avenger of every human being. By faith 
 in God, which believes that his infinite heart 
 yearns over every human soul, even the basest and 
 the worst; that He wills that not one little one 
 
66 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 should perish, but that all should be saved, and 
 come to the knowledge of the truth. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 If, in spite of many bad habits, we desire to get 
 rid of our bad habits ; if, in spite of many faults 
 we still desire to be faultless and perfect ; if, in 
 spite of many weaknesses we still desire to be 
 strong; if, in one word, we still hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness, and long to be good men, then 
 in due time the love of God will be shed abroad 
 in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 For that will happen to us which happens to all 
 those who have the pure, true, heroical love. If 
 we really love a person we shall first desire to 
 please them, and therefore the thought of disobey- 
 ing and paining them will seem more and more 
 grievous unto us. 
 
 But more. We shall soon rise a step higher. 
 The more we love them, and the more we see in 
 them, in their characters, things worthy to be loved, 
 the more we shall desire to be like them, to copy 
 those parts of their character which most delight 
 us ; and we shall copy them, though insensibly, 
 perhaps, and unawares. 
 
 For no one can look up for any length of time 
 with love and respect towards a person better. 
 
SIN. 67 
 
 wiser, greater than themselves, without becoming 
 more or less like that person in character and in 
 habit of thought and feeling , and so will it be 
 with us towards God. 
 
 If we really long to be good, it will grow more 
 and more easy to us to love God. The more pure 
 our hearts are, the more pleasant the thought of 
 God will be to us ; even as it is said, " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," — 
 in this life as well as in the life to come. We 
 shall not shrink from God, because we shall know 
 that we are not willfully offending him. 
 
 L. 
 
 I know it is sometimes said, "The greater the 
 sinner, the greater the saint." I do not believe that, 
 because I do not see it. I see, and I thank God 
 for it, that men who have been very wrong at one 
 time, come very right afterwards ; that having found 
 out in earnest that the wages of sin are death, they 
 do repent in earnest and receive the gift of eternal 
 life through Jesus Christ. But I see, too, that the 
 bad habits, bad passions, bad methods of thought, 
 which they have indulged in youth, remain more or 
 less, and make them worse men, sillier men, less 
 useful men, less happy men, sometimes to their 
 lives' ends, and they, if they be true Christians, 
 
68 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 know it and repent of their early sins, not once for 
 all only, but all their lives long, because they feel 
 that they have weakened and made themselves worse 
 thereby. 
 
 It stands to reason, my friends, that it should be 
 so. If a man losses his way and finds it again, he 
 is so much the less forward on his way, surely, by 
 all the time he has spent in getting back into the 
 road. 
 
 If a child has a violent illness it stops growing, 
 because the life and nourishment which ought to 
 have gone towards its growth, are spent in curing 
 its disease. And so, if a man has indulged in bad 
 habits in his youth, he is but too likely (let him do 
 what he will) to be a less good man for it to his life's 
 end, because the Spirit of God which ought to have 
 been making him grow in grace, freely and healthily, 
 to the stature of a perfect man, to the fullness of 
 the measure of Christ, is striving to conquer old 
 bad habits, and cure old diseases of character ; and 
 the man, even though he does enter into life, enters 
 into it halt and maimed, and the wages of his sin 
 have been, as they always will be, death to some 
 powers, some faculties of his soul. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Physicians who see children born diseased, born 
 
SIN. 69 
 
 stupid, or even idiotic, born thwart-natured, or pas- 
 sionate, or false, or dishonest, or brutal, they know 
 well whait original sin means, though they call it by 
 their own name of hereditary tendencies. And 
 they know, too, how the sins of a parent, or of a 
 grand parent, or even a great-grand parent, are 
 visited on the children to the third and fourth gen- 
 eration, and they say, " It is a law of nature ; " and 
 so it is. But the laws of nature are the laws of God 
 who made her; and his law is the same law by 
 which death reigns even over those who have not 
 sinned after the likeness of Adam ; the law by which 
 (even though if Christ be in us, the spirit is life, 
 because of righteousness) the body, nevertheless, is 
 dead because of sin. 
 
 LII. 
 
 Eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ. 
 Freely he forgives you all your past sins for the sake 
 of that precious blood which was shed on the cross 
 for the sins of the whole world. Freely he takes 
 you back as his child to your father's house. Freely 
 he gives you his holy spirit, the spirit of goodness, 
 the spirit of life, to put into your mind good desires, 
 and enable you to bring those desires to good 
 eiTect, that you may live the eternal life of grace 
 and goodness forever whether in earth or heaven. 
 
70 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Yes, it is the gift of God, which raises you from 
 the death of sin to the life of righteousness; and 
 if you have that gift, you will not murmur, surely 
 though you have to bear more or less, the just and 
 natural consequences of your former sins ; though 
 you be, through your own guilt, a sadder man to 
 your dying day. 
 
 Be content. You are forgiven. You are cleansed 
 from your sin. Is not that mercy enough? Why 
 are you to demand of God that he should over and 
 above cleanse you from the consequences of your 
 sin? He may leave them there to trouble and sad- 
 den you, just because he loves you and desires to 
 chasten you and keep you in mind of what you 
 were, and what you would be again, at any moment, 
 if his spirit left you to yourself. You may have 
 to enter into life halt and maimed, yet be content. 
 You have a thousand more things than you deserve, 
 for at least you enter into life. 
 
 A man may be proud of confessing his sins ; 
 may become self-righteous and conceited, accord- 
 ing to the number of sins which he confesses. 
 
 So deceitful is this human heart of ours, that I 
 have seen people quite proud of calling themselves 
 miserable sinners. I say, proud of it. For if they 
 had really felt themselves miserable sinniers, they 
 would have said less about their own feelings. If 
 a man really feels what sin is; if he feels what a 
 
miserable, pitiful, mean thing it is to be doing 
 wrong when one knows better, to be the slave of 
 one's own tempers, passions, appetites — oh, if 
 man or woman ever knew the exceeding sinful- 
 ness of sin he would hide his own shame in the 
 depths of his heart, and tell it to God alone, or at 
 most to none on earth save the holiest, the wisest, 
 the trustiest, the nearest and the dearest. 
 
 But when one hears a man always talking about 
 his own sinfulness, one suspects — and from experi- 
 ence one has only too much reason to suspect — 
 that he is simply saying in a civil way, "I am a 
 better man than you ; for I talk about my sinful- 
 ness, and you do not." 
 
 LIII. 
 
 For the sake of Jesus the lamb slain from the 
 foundation of the world, there is full, free and per- 
 fect forgiveness for every sin when, we give it up. 
 As soon as a man turns round, and, instead of doing 
 wrong, tries to do right, he need be under no man- 
 ner of fear or terror any more. He is taken 
 back into his father's house as freely and 
 graciously as the prodigal son in the parable 
 was. Whatsoever dark score there was against 
 him in God's books is wiped out there and 
 then, and he starts clear, a new man, with a fresh 
 
72 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 chance of life. And whoever tells him that the 
 score is not wiped out, lies, and contradicts flatly 
 God's holy word. But as long as a man does not 
 give up his sins the dark score does stand against 
 him in God's books; and no praying, or reading, 
 or devoutness of any kind will wipe it out ; and as 
 long as he sins he is still in his sins, and his sins 
 will be his ruins. Whosoever tells him that they 
 are wiped out, he too, lies, and contradicts flatly 
 God's holy word. 
 
 For God is just and true ; and therefore God 
 takes us for what we are, and will do so to all 
 eternity. In spite of all doctrines which men have 
 invented, and then pretended to find in the Bible, 
 to drug men's consciences, and confuse God's clear 
 light in their hearts, you will find, now and for 
 ever, that if you do right you will be happy 
 even in the midst of sorrow ; if you do wrong, you 
 will be miserable even in the midst of pleasure. Do 
 not rashly count on some sudden magical change 
 happening to you as soon as you die to make you 
 fit for heaven. There is not one word in the Bible 
 which gives us reason to suppose that we shall not 
 be in the next world the same persons which we 
 have made ourselves in this world. If we are 
 unjust here, we shall, for aught we know, or can 
 know, try to be unjust there ; if we are proud here, 
 we shall be so there; if we are selfish here, we 
 
S/JV. 73 
 
 shall be so there. What we sow here, we shall 
 reap there. And it is good for us to know this 
 and face this. Any thing is good for us, how- 
 ever unpleasant it may be, which drives us from the 
 only real misery which is sin and selfishness, to the 
 only true happiness which is the everlasting life 
 of Christ ; a pure, loving, just, generous, useful 
 life of goodness, which is the righteousness of 
 Christ, and the glory of Christ, and which will be 
 our righteousness and our glory also forever. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Sin is, to be at war with God, who is love and peace ; 
 and therefore to be in lovelessness, hatred, war, and 
 misery. Sin is, to act contrary to the constitution 
 which God gave man when he said, " Let us make man 
 in our image, after our likeness ; " and therefore sin is 
 a disease in human nature, and like all other diseases, 
 must, unless it is checked, go on everlastingly and per- 
 petually breeding weakness, pain and torment. And out 
 of that God is so desirous to raise you, that he spared 
 not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for you, 
 if by any means he might raise you out of that death 
 of sin to the life of righteousness — to a righteous life ; 
 to a life of duty — to a dutiful life like his Son Jesus 
 Christ's life ; for that must go on, if you go on in it, 
 producing in you everlastingly and perpetually all 
 
74 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 health and strength, usefulness and happiness in this 
 world and all worlds to come. 
 
 LV. 
 
 Love is of God, and every one that loveth is born 
 of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, 
 knoweth not God ; for God is love. Still less can he 
 who is not loving fulfil the law ; for the law of God is 
 the very pattern and picture of God's character ; and 
 if a man does not know what God is like, he will never 
 know what God's law is like ; and though he may read 
 his Bible all day long, he will learn no more from it 
 than a dumb animal will, unless his heart is full of love. 
 For love is the light by which we see God, by which 
 we understand his Bible ; by which we understand our 
 duty, and God's dealings in the world. Love is the 
 light by which we understand our own hearts, by which 
 we understand our neighbors' hearts. So it is. If you 
 hate any man, or have a spite against him, you will 
 never know what is in that man's heart ; never be able 
 to form a just opinion of his character. If you want 
 to understand human beings, of to do justice to their 
 feelings, you must begin by loving them heartily and 
 freely; and the more you like them the better you will 
 understand them ; and in general the better you will 
 find them to be at heart, the more worthy of your trust, 
 at least the more worthy of your compassion. 
 
LOVE. 75 
 
 LVI. 
 
 What does half the misery, and all the quarrelling in 
 the world come from, but from people's loving them- 
 selves better than their neighbors ? Would children 
 be disobedient, and neglectful to their parents, if they 
 did not love themselves better than their parents ? 
 Why does a man kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false 
 witness, covet his neighbor's goods, his neighbor's 
 custom, his neighbor's rights, but because he loves 
 his own pleasure or interest better than his neigh- 
 bor's ; loves himself better than the man whom he 
 wrongs ? Would a man take advantage of his 
 neighbor if he loved him as well as himself ? 
 Would he be hard on his neighbor, and say, " Pay 
 me to the uttermost farthing," if he loved him 
 as he loves himself ? Would he speak evil of his 
 neighbor behind his back, if he loved him as himself ? 
 Would he cross his neighbor's temper, just because he 
 will have his own way, right or wrong, if he loved him 
 as himself? Judge for yourselves. What would the 
 world become like this moment if every man loved his 
 neighbor as himself, thought of his neighbor as much 
 as he thinks of himself ? Would it not become heaven 
 on earth at once ? There would be no need then for 
 soldiers and policemen, lawyers, rates and taxes, 
 and all the expensive and heavy machinery which is 
 now needed to force people into keeping something of 
 
76 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 God's law. Ay, there would be no need of sermons, 
 preachers and prophets to tell men of God's law, and 
 warn them of the misery of breaking it. They would 
 keep the law of their own free-will by love. For love 
 is the fulfilling of the law ; and as St. Augustine says, 
 "Love your neighbor, and then do what you will — 
 because you will be sure to will what is right." So 
 truly did our Lord say, that on this one commandment 
 hung all the law and the prophets, 
 
 LVIL 
 
 I think every one learns to love his neighbor, 
 very much as Moses told the Jews they would 
 learn to love God; namely, by trusting them some- 
 what blindly at first. 
 
 Is it not so ? Is it not so always with young 
 people, when they begin to be fond of each other.' 
 They trust each other, they do not know why or 
 how. Before they are married, they have little or 
 no experience of each other; of each other's tem- 
 pers and characters ; and yet they trust each other, 
 and say in their hearts, "He can never be false 
 to me ! " and are ready to put their honor and 
 fortunes into each other's hands, to live together 
 for better for worse, (ill death them part. It is a 
 blind faith in each other, and those who v ill may 
 laugh at it, and call it the folly and rashness of 
 
LOVE. 
 
 77 
 
 youth, I do not believe that God laughs at it; 
 that God calls it folly and rashness. It surely comes 
 from God. 
 
 For there is something in each of them worth 
 trusting, worth loving. True, they may be disap- 
 pointed in each other ; but they need not be. If 
 they are true to themselves ; if they will listen to 
 the better voice within, and be true to their own 
 better feelings, all will be well, and they will find 
 after marriage that they did not do a rash and a 
 foolish thing when they gave up themselves to 
 each other, and cast in their lot together blindly 
 to live and die. 
 
 And then, after that first blind faith and love 
 in each other which they had before marriage, will 
 come, as the years roll by, a deeper, sounder faith 
 and love from experience. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 A young person setting out in life, has little 
 experience of God's love ; he has little to make 
 him sure that the way of life, and honor, and 
 peace, is to obey God's laws. But he is told so. 
 His Bible tells him so. Wiser and older people 
 than he tell him so, and God himself tells him so. 
 God himself wakes up in the young person's heart 
 a desire after goodness. 
 
78 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Then he takes it for granted blindly. He says 
 to himself, I can but try. They tell me to taste 
 and see whether the Lord is gracious. I will taste. 
 They tell me that the way of his commandments 
 is the way to make life worth living and to see 
 good days. I will try. And so the years go by. 
 The young person has grown middle-aged, old. 
 He or she has been through many trials, many 
 disappointments ; perhaps more than one bitter loss. 
 But if they have held fast by God; if they have 
 tried, however clumsily, to keep God's law and 
 walk in God's way, then there will have grown up 
 in them a trust in God, and a love for God 
 deeper and broader far than any which they had 
 in youth ; a love grounded on experience. They 
 can point back to so many blessings which the 
 Lord gave them unexpectedly ; to so many sorrows 
 which the Lord gave them strength to bear, though 
 they seemed at first sight past bearing; to so many 
 disappointments which seemed ill-luck at the time, 
 and yet which turned out good for them in the 
 end. And so comes a deep, reasonable love to their 
 Heavenly Father. Now they have tasted that the 
 Lord is gracious. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Not men, not saints, not angels, or archangels 
 
LOVE. 79 
 
 can comprehend the love of Christ. How can 
 they ? For Christ is God, and God is love ; the 
 root and fountain of all love which is in you and 
 me and angels and all created beings. And there- 
 fore his love is as much greater than ours, or than 
 the love of angels and archangels, as the whole sun 
 is greater than one ray of sun-light. Say, rather, 
 as much greater and more glorious as the sun is 
 greater and more glorious than the light which 
 sparkles in the dewdrop on the grass. The love 
 and goodness and holiness of a saint or an 
 angel is the light in that dewdrop, borrowed from 
 the sun. The love of God is the sun himself, 
 which shineth from one part of heaven to the 
 other, and there is nothing hid from the life-giving 
 heat and light thereof. When the dewdrop can 
 take in the sun, then can we take in the love of 
 God, which fills all heaven and earth. 
 
 LX. 
 
 There is a beautiful story told in the life of the 
 blessed apostle St. John. A young man at Ephesus 
 who had become a Christian, and of whom St. John 
 was very fond, got into trouble while St. John was 
 away, and had to flee for his life into the mount- 
 ains. There he joined a band of robbers, and was 
 so daring and desperate that they soon chose him 
 
8o LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 as their captain. St. John came back, and found 
 the poor lad had gone. St. John had stood at the 
 foot of the cross years before, and heard his Lord 
 pardon the penitent thief; and he knew how to 
 deal with such wild souls. And what did he do? 
 Give him up for lost? No! He set off, old as 
 he was, by himself, straight for the mountains, in 
 spite of the warnings of his friends that he would 
 be murdered, and that this young man was the 
 most desperate and bloodthirsty of all the robbers. 
 At last he found the young robber. And what did 
 the robber do? As soon as he saw St. John 
 coming — before St. John could speak a word to 
 him — he turned, and ran away for shame; and old 
 St. John followed him, never saying a harsh word 
 to him, but only crying after him, "My son, my 
 son, come back to your father!" and at last he 
 found him, where he was hidden, and held him by 
 his clothes, and embraced him, and pleaded with 
 him so, that the poor fellow burst into tears, and 
 let St. John lead him away; and so that blessed 
 St. John went down again to Ephesus in joy and 
 triumph, bringing his lost lamb with him. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 How Christ's death takes away thy sins, thou 
 wilt never know, on earth — perhaps not in heaven. 
 
SUCCESS. 8i 
 
 It is a mystery which thou must believe and adore. 
 But why he died, thou canst see at the first 
 glance — if thou hast a human heart, and wilt look 
 at what God means thee to look at — Christ upon 
 his cross. He died because he was love — love 
 itself — love boundless, unconquerable, unchangeable 
 — love which inhabits eternity, and therefore could 
 not be hardened or foiled by any sin or rebellion 
 of man, but must love men still; must go out to 
 seek and save them; must dare, suffer any misery, 
 shame, death itself, for their sake; just because it 
 is absolute and perfect love, which inhabits eternity. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 How easy it is to buy the love of men! Gold 
 will not do it; but there is a little angel, or may 
 be, in the corner of every man's eye, who is worth 
 more than gold, and can do it free of all charges; 
 unless a man drives him out, and " hates his brother." 
 
 Lxni. 
 
 Of all men, perhaps, who have lived in our 
 days, the most truly successful was the great Duke 
 of Wellington; and one thing, I believe, which 
 helped him most to become great, was that he 
 was so wonderfully free from vain fretting and 
 
82 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 complaining, free from useless regrets about the 
 past, from useless anxieties for the future. Though 
 he had for years on his shoulders a responsibility 
 which might have well broken the spirit of any 
 man ; though the lives of thousands of brave men, 
 and the welfare of great kingdoms — aye, humanly 
 speaking, the fate of all Europe — depended on 
 his using his wisdom in the right place, and one 
 mistake might have brought ruin and shame on 
 him and on tens of thousands ; yet no one ever 
 saw him anxious, confused, or terrified. Though 
 for many years he was much tried and hampered,, 
 and unjustly and foolishly kept from doing his 
 work as he knew it ought to be done, yet when 
 the time came for work his head was always clear, 
 his spirit was always ready ; and therefore he suc- 
 ceeded in the most marvellous way. Solomon says 
 "Better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that 
 taketh a city." Now the Great Duke had learnt 
 in most things to rule his spirit, and therefore he 
 was able not only to take cities but to do better 
 still, to deliver cities, aye, and whole countries, 
 out of the hand of armies often far stronger, 
 humanly speaking, than his own. 
 
 And for an example of what I mean, I will tell 
 you a story of him which I know to be true. 
 Some one once asked him what his secret was for 
 winning battles. And he said that he had no 
 
SUCCESS. 83 
 
 secret ; that he did not know how to win battles, 
 and that no man knew. For all, he said, that 
 man could do, was to look beforehand steadily at 
 all the chances, and lay all possible plans before- 
 hand : but from the moment the Ijattle began, he said, 
 no mortal prudence was of use, and no mortal man 
 could know what the end would be. A thousand 
 new accidents might spring up every hour, and scat- 
 ter all his plans to the winds ; and all that man 
 could do was to comfort himself with the thought 
 that he had done his best, and to trust in God. 
 
 LXIV, 
 
 Be not fretful and anxious about the morrow. 
 Face things like men ; but remember, like men, 
 that a fresh chance may any moment spoil all 
 your plans ; remember that there are a thousand 
 dangers round you from which your prudence can- 
 not save you. Do your best; and then comfort 
 yourselves with the thought that you have done your 
 best, and trust in God. Remember that God is 
 really and in very truth your Father, and that 
 without him not a sparrow falls to the ground ; 
 and "are ye not of more value than many spar- 
 rows, O ye of little faith ? " Remember that he 
 knows what you have need of before you ask him ; 
 that he gives you all day long of his own free 
 
84 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 generosity a thousand things for which you never 
 dream of asking him : and believe that in all the 
 chances and changes of this life, in bad luck as 
 well as in good, in failure as well as success, in 
 poverty as well as wealth, in sickness as well as 
 health, he is giving you and me and all mankind 
 good gifts which we in our ignorance, and our 
 natural dread of what is unpleasant, should never 
 dream of asking him for : but which are good for 
 us nevertheless. Like him from whom they come, 
 the Father of light, from whorri cometli every good 
 and perfect gift; who is neither neglectful, capri- 
 cious, or spiteful, for in him is neither variable- 
 ness nor shadow of turning, but who is alwa3s 
 loving unto every man, and his mercy is over all 
 his works. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Do to-day's duty; fight to-day's temptation; and 
 do not weaken and distract yourself by looking 
 forward to things which you cannot see, and could 
 not understand if you saw them. Enough for you 
 that your Saviour for whom you fight is just and 
 merciful, for he rewardeth every man according to 
 his work. Enough for you that he has said "He 
 that is faithful unto death, I will give him a 
 crown of life." Enough for you that if you be 
 
SUCCESS. 8s 
 
 faithful over a few things, he will make you ruler 
 over many things, and bring you into his joy for- 
 evermore. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Does fretting make us the least more prudent? 
 Does anxiety make us the least more industrious ? 
 On the contrary, I know nothing which cripples a 
 man more and hinders him working manfully, than 
 anxiety. Look at the worst case of all — at a man, 
 who is melancholy, and fancies that all is going 
 wrong with him, and that he must be ruined, and 
 has a mind full of all sorts of dark, hopeless 
 fancies. Does he work any the more, or try to 
 escape one of these dangers which he fancies are 
 hanging over him ? So far from it, he gives him^ 
 self up to them without a struggle ; he sets mop- 
 ing, helpless and useless, and says, " There is no 
 use in struggling. If it will come, it must come." 
 He has lost spirit for work, and lost the mind for 
 work too. His mind is so full of these dark fears 
 that he cannot turn it to laying any prudent plan 
 to escape from the very things he dreads. 
 
 And so, in a less degree, with people who fret 
 and are anxious. They may be in a great bustle, 
 but they do not get their work done. They run 
 hither and thither, trying this and that, but leaving 
 
86 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 every thing half done, to fly off to something else. 
 Or else they spend time unprofitably in dreaming, 
 and expecting, and complaining, which might be 
 spent profitably in working. And they are always 
 apt to lose their heads, and their tempers, just 
 when they need them most ; to do in their hurry 
 the very last thing which they ought to have done ; 
 to try so many roads that they choose the wrong road 
 after all, from mere confusion, and run with open eyes 
 into the very pit which Ihey have been afraid of 
 falling into. As we sometimes say, they will go 
 all through the wood to cut a straight stick, and 
 bring out a crooked one at last. Even in a mere 
 worldly wa)-, the men whom I have seen succeed 
 best in life have always been cheerful and hopeful 
 men, who went about their business with a smile 
 on their faces, and took the changes and chances 
 of this mortal life like men, facing rough and 
 smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth 
 of the old proverb, that "good~ times, and bad 
 times, and all times pass over." Nine-tenths of the 
 mistakes we make in life come from forgetting the 
 fear of God and the law of God, and saying not, 
 I will do what is right, but, I will do what will 
 profit me; I will do what I like. If we would 
 say to ourselves manfully all our lives through, I 
 will learn the will of God, and do it, whatever it 
 cost me, we should find in our old age that God's 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 87 
 
 Holy Spirit was indeed a guide and a comforter, 
 able and willing to lead us into all truth which was 
 needful for us. We should find St. Paul had spoken 
 truth, when he said that godliness has the promise 
 of this life, as well as that which is to come. 
 
 LXVIL 
 
 Does it not seem to you that the finest thing 
 in a man is magnaminity — what we call in plain 
 English, greatness of soul ? And if it does seem 
 to you to be so, what do you mean by greatness 
 of soul ? When you speak of a great soul, and of 
 a great man, what manner of man do' you mean ? 
 
 Do you mean a very clever man, a very far- 
 sighted man, a very determined man, a very power- 
 ful man, and therefore a very successful man ? A 
 man who can manage every thing, and every person 
 whom he comes across, and turn and use them 
 for his own ends, till he rises to be great and 
 glorious-^— a ruler, king, or what you will? 
 
 Well, he is a great man: but I know a greater, 
 and nobler, and more glorious stamp of man; and 
 you do also. Let us try again, and think if we 
 can find his likeness, and draw it for ourselves. 
 Would he not be somewhat like this pattern? A 
 man who was aware that he had vast power, and 
 yet used that power not for himself, but for others; 
 
88 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 not for ambition, but for doing good ? Surely the 
 man who used his power for other people would 
 be the greater-souled man, would he not? Let us 
 go on, then, to find out more of his likeness. 
 Would he be stern, or would he be tender? Would 
 he be patient, or would he be fretful ? Would he 
 be a man who stands fiercely on his own rights, 
 or would he be very careful of other men's rights, 
 and very ready to waive his own rights gracefully 
 and generously? Would he be extreme to mark 
 what was done amiss against him, or would he be 
 very patient when he was wronged himself, though 
 indignant enough if he saw others, wronged ? 
 Would he be one who easily lost his temper, and 
 lost his head, and could be thrown off his balance 
 by one foolish man ? Surely not. He would be a 
 man whom no fool, nor all fools together could 
 throw off his balance ; a man who could not lose 
 his temper, could not lose his self-respect; a man 
 who could bear with those who are peevish, make 
 allowances for those who are weak and ignorant, 
 forgive those who are insolent, and conquer those 
 who are ungrateful, not by punishment, but by 
 fresh kindness, overcoming their evil by his good. 
 A man, in short, whom no ill usage without, and 
 no ill temper within, could shake out of his even 
 patli of generosity and benevolence. Is not that 
 the truly magnanimous man; the great and royal 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 89 
 
 soul ? Is not that the stamp of man whom we 
 should admire, if we meet him on earth? Should 
 we not reverence that man; esteem it an honor 
 and a pleasure to work under that man, to take 
 him for our teacher, our leader, in hopes that, by 
 copying his example, our souls might become great 
 like his? 
 
 Is it so, my friends ? Then know this, that in 
 admiring that man, you admire the likeness of God. 
 In wishing to be like that man, you wish to be 
 like God. 
 
 For this is God's true greatness; this is God's 
 true glory; this is God's true royalty; the great- 
 ness, glory, and royalty of loving, forgiving, gener- 
 ous power, which pours itself out, untiring and 
 undisgusted, in help and mercy to all which he has 
 made; the glory of a Father who is perfect in 
 this, that he causeth his rain to fall on the evil 
 and on the good, and his sun to shine upon the 
 just and on the unjust, and is good to the un- 
 thankful and the evil ; a Father who has not dealt 
 with us after our sins, or rewarded us after our 
 iniquities: a Father who is not extreme to mark 
 what is done amiss, but whom it is worth while to 
 fear, for with him is mercy and plenteous redemp- 
 tion; all this and more; a Father who so loved 
 a world which had forgotten him, a world whose 
 sins must have been disgusting to him, that he 
 
90 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave 
 him for us, and will witli him freely give us all 
 things; a Father, in one word, whose name and 
 essence is love, even as it is the name and essence 
 of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 This, my friends, is the glory of God: but this 
 glory never shone out in its full splendor till it 
 shone upon the cross. 
 
 LXVIII, 
 
 To give up our lives for others is one of the 
 most beautiful, and noble, and glorious things on 
 earth. But to give up our lives willingly, joyfully 
 for men who misunderstand us, hate us, despise 
 us, is, if possible, a more glorious action still, and 
 the very perfection of perfect virtue. Then, look- 
 ing at Christ's cross, we see that, and even more 
 — ay, far more than that. The cross was the per- 
 fect token of the perfect goodness of God, and of 
 the perfect glory of God. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 The old meaning, the true meaning of a hero 
 or a heroine, is one who is a son or daughter of 
 God, and whom God informs and strengthens, and 
 sends out to do noble work, teaching them the 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 91 
 
 way wherein they should go. That was the 
 right meaning of a hero and heroine, even among 
 the old heathens. Let it mean the same among 
 us Christians, when we talk of a hero ; and let us 
 give God the glory, and say — There is a man 
 who has entered, even if it be but for one day's 
 danger and trial, into the power of God's Spirit; 
 and man whom God has informed and taught in 
 the way he should go, may that same God give 
 him grace to abide therein all the days of his life. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Oh ! 'tis easy 
 To beget great deeds ; but in the rearing of them — 
 
 The threading in cool blood each mean detail, 
 And furze brake of half-pertinent circumstance — 
 
 There lies the self-denial. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 One good man, — one man who does not put his 
 religion on once a week with his Sunday coat, but 
 wears it for his working dress, and lets the thought 
 of God grow into him, and through and through 
 him, till every thing he says and does becomes re- 
 ligious, that man is worth a thousand sermons — 
 he is a living gospel — he comes in the spirit and 
 
93 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 power of Elias; he is the image of God. And 
 men see his good works, and admire them in spite 
 of themselves, and see that they are godlike, and 
 that God's grace is no dream, but that the Holy 
 Spirit is still among men, and that all nobleness and 
 manliness is his gift, his stamp, his picture; and so 
 they get a glimpse of God again in his saints and 
 heroes, and glorify- their Father who is in heaven. 
 
 LXXir. 
 
 Have you not seen this — / have, thank God, full 
 many a time — that not many rich, not many 
 mighty, not many noble are called: but that God's 
 strength is rather made perfect in man's weakness 
 • — that in foul garrets, in lonely sick-beds, in dark 
 places of the earth, you find ignorant people, 
 sickly people, ugly people, stupid people, in spite 
 of, in defiance of, every opposing circumstance, 
 leading heroic lives — a blessing, a comfort, an ex- 
 ample, a very Fount of Life to all around them ; and 
 dying heroic deaths because they have Eternal Life ? 
 
 LXXIIL 
 
 Patience is the truest sign of courage. Ask old 
 soldiers, who have seen real war, and they will 
 tell you that the bravest men, the men who en- 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 93 
 
 dured best, not in mere fighting, but in standing 
 still for hours to be mowed down by cannon-shot; 
 who were most cheerful and patient in shipwreck, 
 and starvation, and defeat — all things ten times 
 worse than fighting — ask old soldiers, I say, and 
 they will tell you that the men who showed best 
 in such miseries were generally the stillest and 
 meekest men in the whole regiment: that is true 
 fortitude; that is Christ's image — the meekest of 
 men, and the bravest too. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 All the little that is great or noble in man or 
 woman is perfected in Christ: he only is perfectly 
 great, perfectly noble, brave, .meek. He who, to 
 save us sinful men, endured the cross, despising 
 the shame, till he sat down at the right hand of 
 the Majesty on high, perfectly brave he is, and 
 perfectly gentle, and will be so forever ; for even 
 at his second coming when he shall appear the 
 Conqueror of hell, with tens of thousands of angels, 
 to take vengeance on those who know not God, 
 and destroy the wicked with the breath of his 
 mouth, even then, in his fiercest anger, the scrip- 
 ture tells us his anger shall be "the anger of 
 the Lord." Almighty vengeance and just anger, 
 and yet perfect gentleness and love all the while. 
 
94 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 — Mystery of mysteries! — The wrath of the Lamb. 
 May God give us all to feel in that clay, not the 
 wrath, but the love, of the Lamb who was slain 
 for us! 
 
 LXXV, 
 
 Not a cloud which fleets across the sky, not a 
 clod of earth which crumbles under the frost, not 
 a blade of grass which breaks through the snow 
 in spring, not a dead leaf which falls to the 
 earth in autumn, but is doing God's work, and 
 showing forth God's glory. Not a tiny insect, too 
 small to be seen by human eyes without the help 
 of a microscope, but is as fearfully and wonder- 
 fully made as you and me, and has its proper 
 food, habitation, work, appointed for it, and not in 
 vain. Nothing is idle, nothing is wasted, nothing 
 goes wrong, in this wondrous world of God, The 
 very scum upon the standing pool, which seems 
 mere dirt and dust, is all alive, peopled by mil- 
 lions of creatures, each full of beauty, full of use, 
 obeying laws of God too deep for us to do aught 
 but dimly guess at them; and as men see deeper 
 and deeper into the mystery of God's creation, 
 they find in the commonest things about them 
 wonder and glory, such as eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of 
 
GOD IN NATURE. 95 
 
 man to conceive; and can only say with the 
 psahnist, "Oh Lord, thy ways are infinite, thy 
 thoughts are very deep:" and confess that the 
 grass beneath their feet, the clouds above their 
 heads — ay, every worm beneath the sod and bird 
 upon the bough, do, in very deed and truth bless 
 the Lord who made them, praise him, and magni- 
 fy him forever, not with words indeed, but with 
 works ; and say to man all day long, " Go thou 
 and do likewise." 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 We are not to disbelieve science, nor disregard 
 the laws of nature, or we shall loose by our folly. 
 But we are to believe that nature and science are 
 not our gods. They do not rule us ; our for- 
 tunes are not in their hands. Above nature and 
 above science sits the Lord of nature and the Lord of 
 science. Above all the counsels of princes, and the 
 struggles of nations, and the chances and changes of this 
 world of man, sits the Judge of princes and of peoples, 
 the Lord of all the nations upon earth. He by whom 
 all things were made, and who upholdeth all things 
 by the word of his power ; and he is man, most 
 human, and yet most divine ; full of justice and 
 truth, full of care and watchfulness, full of love and 
 pity, full of tenderness and understanding ; a 
 
96 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Friend, a Guide, a Counsellor, a Comforter, a Sa- 
 viour to all who trust in him. He is nearer to 
 us than nature and science, and he should be 
 dearer to us ; for they speak only to the under- 
 standing; but he speaks to our human hearts, to 
 our inmost spirits. Nature and science cannot take 
 away our sins, give peace to our hearts, right 
 judgment to our minds, strength to our wills, or 
 everlasting life to our souls and bodies. But there 
 sits One upon the throne who can. And if nature 
 were to vanish away, and science were to be 
 proved (however correct as far as it went) a mere 
 child's guess about this wonderful world, which 
 none can understand save he who made it — if all 
 the counsels of princes and of peoples, however 
 just and wise, were to be confounded and come to 
 nought, still, after all, and beyond all, and above 
 all, Christ would abide forever, with human ten- 
 derness yearning over human hearts ; with human 
 wisdom teaching human ignorance ; with human 
 sympathy sorrowing with human mourners; forever 
 saying, " Come unto me ye that are weary and 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Oh that I could make you see God in every 
 thing, and every thing in God ! Oh, that I could 
 
GOD IN NATURE. 97 
 
 make you look on this earth, not as a mere dull, 
 dreary prison and workhouse for your mortal bodies, 
 but as a living book to speak to you at every 
 time of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost ! Sure I am that that would be a heavenly 
 life for you ; sure I am that it would keep you 
 from many a sin, and stir you up to many a holy 
 thought and deed, if you could learn to find in 
 every thing around you, however small or mean, the 
 work of God's hand, the likeness of God's counte- 
 nance, the shadow of God's glory. 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 It was a "day of God." The earth lay like one 
 great emerald, ringed and roofed with sapphire ; blue 
 sea, blue mountain, blue sky overhead. There she lay, 
 not sleeping, but basking in her quiet Sabbath 
 joy, as though her two great sisters of the sea 
 and air had washed her weary limbs with holy 
 tears, and purged away the stains of last week's 
 sin and toil, and cooled her hot, worn forehead 
 with their pure incense-breath, and folded her within 
 their azure robes, and brooded over her with smiles 
 of pitying love, till she smiled back in answer, 
 and took heart and hope for next week's weary 
 work. 
 
 Heart and hope for next week's work. That was 
 
98 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 the sermon that it preached to Tom Thurwall, as 
 he stood there alone, a stranger and a wanderer, 
 like Ulysses of old; but like himself helpful, 
 cheerful, fate defiant. In one respect, indeed, he 
 knew less than Ulysses, and was more of a heathen 
 than he; for he knew not what Ulysses knew, 
 that a heavenly guide was with him in his wan- 
 derings ; still less what Ulysses knew not, that 
 what he called the malicious sport of fortune was, 
 in truth, the earnest education of a Father; but 
 who will blame him for getting strength and com- 
 fort from such merely natural founts, or say that 
 the impulse came from below, and not from above, 
 which made him say — 
 
 "Brave old world she is, after all, and right 
 well made; and looks right well to-day in her go- 
 to-meeting clothes ; and plenty of room and chance 
 in her for a brave man to earn his bread, if he 
 will but go right on about his business, instead of 
 peaking and pining over what people think of him. 
 Hark to that jolly old missel-thrush below ! He's 
 had his nest to build and his supper to earn, and 
 his young ones to feed, and all the crows and 
 kites in the wood to drive away, the sturdy John 
 Bull that he is ; and yet he can find time to sing 
 as merrily as an abbot, morning and evening, since 
 he sung the new year in last January. And why 
 should not I.'" 
 
GOD IN NATURE. 99 
 
 Let him be awhile ; there are sounds of deeper 
 meaning in the air, if his heart had ears to hear 
 them : far-off church bells chiming to even-song ; 
 hymn-tunes floating up the glen from the little 
 chapel in the vale. He may learn what they, too, 
 mean some day. Honor to him at least that he 
 has learnt what the missel-thrush below can tell. 
 If he accept cheerfully and manfully the things 
 which he does see, he will be all the more able 
 to enter hereafter into the deeper mystery of 
 things unseen. The road toward true faith and 
 reverence for God's kingdom of heaven does not 
 lie through Manichaean contempt and slander of 
 God's kingdom of earth. 
 
 Let him be, I say again. He might have better 
 Sunday thoughts ; perhaps he will some day. At 
 least he is a man, and a brave one ; and as the 
 greater contains the less, surely before a man can 
 be a good man he must be a brave one first, 
 much more a man at all. Cowards, old Odin held, 
 inevitably went to the very bottom of Hela-pool, 
 and by no possibility, unless, of course, they became 
 brave at last, could rise out of that bog, but sank 
 whining lower and lower like mired cattle to all 
 eternity in the unfathomable peat-slime. And if the 
 twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation, and 
 the eighth verse, is to be taken as it stands, their 
 doom has not altered since Odin's time, unless to 
 become still worse.. 
 
loo LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 One of the most learned scholars in England was 
 once a village carpenter, who used, when young, to 
 keep a book open before him on his bench while 
 he worked, and thus contrived to teach himself, 
 one after the other, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. So 
 much time may a man find who looks for time. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 How short the time seems since we were young! 
 How quickly it has gone ! How every year, as we 
 grow older, seems to go more and more quickly, and 
 there is less time to do what we want, to think 
 seriously, to improve ourselves. So soon, and it 
 will be over, and we shall have no time at all, for 
 we shall be in eternity. And what then ? What 
 then ? That depends on what now. On what we 
 are doing now. Are we letting our short span of 
 life slip away in sleep ; fancying ourselves all the 
 while wide awake — as we do in dreams — till we wake 
 really, and find that it is daylight, and that all our 
 best dreams were nothing but useless fancy? How 
 many dream away their lives ! Some upon gain, 
 some upon pleasure, some upon petty self-interest, 
 petty quarrels, petty ambitions, petty squabbles 
 and jealousies about this person and that, which are 
 
TIME. loi 
 
 no more worthy to take up a reasonable human 
 being's time and thoughts than so many dreams 
 would be. Some, too, dream away their lives in sin, 
 in works of darkness which they are forced for shame 
 ami safety to hide, lest they should come to the light 
 and be exposed. So people dream their lives away, 
 and go about their daily business as men, who walk 
 in their sleep, wandering about with their eyes open, 
 and yet seeing nothing of what is really about them. 
 Seeing nothing : though they think that they see 
 and know their own interest, and are shrewd enough 
 to find their way about this world. But they know 
 nothing — nothing of the very world with which 
 they pride themselves they are so thoroughly ac- 
 quainted. None know less of the world than those 
 who pride themselves on being men of the world. 
 For the true light, which shines all around them, 
 they do not see, and therefore they do not see the 
 truth of things by that light. If they did, then 
 they would see that of which now they do not 
 even dream. 
 
 They would see that God was around them, about 
 their path and about their bed, and spying out all 
 their ways ; and in the light of his presence, they 
 dare not be frivolous, dare not be ignorant, dare 
 not be mean, dare not be spiteful, dare not be 
 unclean. 
 
 They would see that Christ was around them. 
 
102 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 knocking at the door of their hearts that he may 
 enter in, and dwell there, and give them peace ; 
 crying to their restless, fretful, confused, unhappy 
 souls, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
 yoke upon you and learn of me ; for I am meek 
 and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto 
 your souls." 
 
 They would see that duty was around them. Duty 
 — the only thing really worth living for. The only 
 thing which will pay a man, either for this life or 
 the next. The only thing which will give a man 
 rest and peace, manly and quiet thoughts, a good 
 conscience, and a stout heart in the midst of hard 
 labor, anxiety, sorrow and disappointment ; because 
 he feels at least that he is doing his duty ; that he 
 is obeying God and Christ, that he is working with 
 them, and for them, and,^that therefore they are 
 working with him, and for him. God, Christ and 
 Duty, these, and more, will a man see if he will awake 
 out of sleep, and consider where he is, by the light 
 of God's Holy Spirit. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 ''All things begin in some wonder, and in some 
 wonder all things end," said St. Augustine, wisest 
 in his day of all mortal men ; and all that great 
 
TIME. 103 
 
 scholars have discovered since prove more and more 
 that St. Augustine's words were true, and that the 
 wisest are only, as a great philosopher once said, 
 and one, too, who discovered more of God's works 
 than any man for many a hundred years, even 
 Sir Isaac Newton himself : " The wisest of us is 
 but like a child picking up a few shells and peb- 
 bles on the shore of a boundless sea." 
 
 The shells and pebbles are the little scraps of 
 knowledge which God vouchsafes to us, his sinful 
 children ; knowledge of which at best St. Paul 
 says, that we know only in part, and prophesy in 
 part, and think as children; and that knowledge 
 shall vanish away, and tongues shall cease, and 
 prophecies shall fail. 
 
 And the boundless sea is the great ocean of 
 time — of God's created universe, above which his 
 spirit broods over, perfect in love and wisdom and 
 almighty power, as at the beginning, moving above 
 the face of the waters of time, giving life to all 
 things, forever blessing, and forever blest. 
 
 God grant us all to see the day when we shall 
 have passed safely across that sea of time, up to 
 the sure land of eternity; and shall no more think 
 as children, or know in part ; but shall see God 
 face to face, and know him even as we are known ; 
 and find him, the nearer we draw to him, more 
 wonderful, and more glorious, and more good than 
 ever. 
 
I04 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 Mankind is a diseased race ; and it must pay 
 the penalty of its sins for many an age to come, 
 and die, and suffer, and sorrow. But not forever. 
 For what mean such words as these -r- for some- 
 thing they must mean ? 
 
 "If a man keep my sayings, he shall never see 
 death." And again, " He that believeth in me, 
 though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he 
 that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 
 
 Do such words as these mean only that we shall 
 rise again in the resurrection at the last day? 
 Surely not. Our Lord spoke them in answer to 
 that very notion. 
 
 "Martha said to him, I know that my brother 
 shall rise again, in the resurrection at the last day. 
 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the 
 life ; " and then showed what he meant by bringr 
 ing back Lazarus to life, unchanged, and as he 
 had been before he died. 
 
 Surely if that miracle meant any thing, if these 
 words meant any thing, it meant this : that those 
 who die in the fear of God, and in the faith of 
 Christ, do not really taste death; that to them 
 there is no death, but only a change of place, a 
 change of state ; that they pass at once, and in- 
 stantly, into some new life, with all their powers, 
 
DEATH. I OS 
 
 all their feelings, unchanged, purified, doubtless, from 
 earthly stains, but still the same living, thinking, 
 active beings which they were here on earth. I 
 say active. The Bible says nothing about their 
 sleeping till the Day of Judgment, as some have 
 fancied. Rest they may; rest they will, if they 
 need rest. But what is the true rest ? Not idleness, 
 but peace of mind. To rest from sin, from sorrow, 
 from fear, from doubt, from care — this is the true 
 rest. Above all, to rest from the worst weariness 
 of all — knowing one's duty, and yet not being 
 able to do it. That is true rest; the rest of God, 
 who works forever, and yet is at rest forever; as 
 the stars over our heads move forever, thousands 
 of miles each day, and yet are at perfect rest, 
 because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling 
 the law which God has given them. Perfect rest, 
 in perfect work ; that surely is the rest of blessed 
 spirits, till the final consummation of all things, 
 when Christ shall have made up the number of 
 his elect. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 What comfort for us who have seen others die, 
 if death be but a new birth into some higher 
 life; if all that it changes in us is our body — 
 the mere shell and husk of us — such a chansre as 
 
io6 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 comes over the snake, when he casts his old skin, 
 and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawl- 
 ing caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads 
 its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly. Where is 
 the sting of death, then, if death can sting, and 
 poison, and corrupt nothing of us for which our 
 friends have loved us; nothing of us with which 
 we could do service to men or God? Where is 
 the victory of the grave, if, so far from the grave 
 holding us down, it frees us from the very thing 
 which holds us down — the mortal body? 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 Death is not death, if it kills no part of us save 
 that which hindered us from perfect life. Death is 
 not death, if it raises us in a moment from darkness 
 into light, from weakness into strength, from sinful- 
 ness into holiness. Death is not death, if it brings 
 us nearer to Christ, who is the fount of life. Death 
 is not death, if it perfects our faith by sight, and 
 lets us behold him in whom we have believed. 
 Death is not death, if it gives us to those whom we 
 have loved and lost, for whom we have lived, for 
 whom we long to live again. Death is not death, if 
 it joins the child to the mother who is gone before. 
 Death is not death, if it takes away from that mother 
 forever all a mother's anxieties, a mother's fears, 
 
DEATH. 107 
 
 and lets her see, in the gracious countenance of her 
 Saviour, a sure and certain pledge that those" whom 
 she has left behind are safe, safe with Christ and 
 in Christ, through all the chances and dangers of 
 this mortal life. Death is not death, if it rids us of 
 doubt and fear, of chance and change, of space and 
 time, and all which space and time bring forth, and 
 then destroy. Death is not death; for Christ has 
 conquered death for himself, and those who trust in 
 him. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 Is not this mortal life compared with the life to 
 come, as night compared with day ? I do not mean 
 to speak evil of it. God forbid that we should do 
 any thing but thank God for this life. God forbid 
 that we should say impiously to him : Why hast thou 
 made me thus ? No. God made this mortal life, 
 and therefore, like all things which he has made, 
 it is very good. But there are good nights, and 
 there are bad nights; and there are happy lives and 
 unhappy ones. But what are they at best? What 
 is the life of the happiest man without the Holy 
 Spirit of God? A night full of pleasant dreams. 
 What is the life of the wisest man ? A night of 
 darkness, through which he gropes his way by lan- 
 thorn-light, slowly, and with many mistakes and 
 
io8 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 stumbles. When we compare man's vast capabilities 
 with his small deeds ; when we think how much he 
 might know — how little he does know in this mor- 
 tal life — can we wonder that the highest spirits in 
 every age have looked on death as a deliverance 
 out of darkness and a dungeon ? And if this is life 
 at the best, what is life at the worst ? To how many 
 is life a night, not of peace and rest, but of tossing 
 and weariness, pain and sickness, anxiety and misery, 
 till they are ready to cry: When will it be over? 
 When will kind Death come and give me rest? 
 When will the night of this life be spent, and the 
 day of God arise ? " Out of the depths have I cried 
 unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. . . . My 
 soul doth wait for the Lord more than the sick 
 man who watches for the morning." 
 
 Yes, think — for it is good at times, however happy 
 one may be oneself, to think — of all the misery and 
 sorrow that there is on earth, and how many there 
 are who would be glad to hear that it was nearly 
 over ; glad to hear that the night was far spent, and 
 the day was at hand. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ; for 
 they rest from their labors, and their works do 
 follow them." They rest from their labors. All 
 
DEATH. 109 
 
 their struggles, disappointments, failures, backslidings, 
 which made them unhappy here, because they could 
 not perfectly do the will of God, are past and over 
 forever. Biit their works follow them. The good 
 which they did on earth — that is not past and over. 
 It cannot die. It lives and grows forever, follow- 
 ing on in their path long after they are dead, and 
 bearing fruit unto everlasting life, not only in them, 
 but in men whom tliey never saw, and in generations 
 yet unborn. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 We shall rise again, and we shall be the same we 
 are now, and yet not the same ; our bodies shall 
 be the same bodies, and yet nobler, purer, spirit- 
 ual bodies, which can know neither death, nor 
 pain, nor weariness. Then never care, though we 
 drop like ripe grain into the bosom of mother 
 earth, if we are to spring up again as seedling 
 plants, after death's long winter, on the resurrec- 
 tion morn. Truly says the poet, how — 
 
 "Mother earth, she gathers all 
 
 Into her bosom, great and small ; 
 
 Oh, could we look into her face 
 
 We should not shrink from her embrace." 
 
no LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 No, indeed ! for if we look steadily with the 
 wise, searching eye of faith into the face of mother 
 earth, we shall see how death is but the gate of life, 
 and the narrow churchyard but a blessed, quiet, seed- 
 filled God's-garden, in which our forefathers, after 
 their long life-labor, lay sown by God's friendly 
 hand, waiting peaceful, one and all, to spring up 
 into leaf and flower, and everlasting paradise-fruit 
 beneath the breath of God's spirit at the last 
 great day, when the Sun of Righteousness arises in 
 glory, and the summer begins which shall never 
 end. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 There was a heathen king once, named Philip 
 of Macedon, and a very wise king he was, though 
 he was a heathen, and one of the wisest of his 
 plans was this : He had a slave whom he ordered 
 to come in to him every morning of his life, what- 
 ever he was doing, and say to him in a loud 
 voice, "Philip, remember that thou must die." 
 
 He was a heathen, but a great many who call 
 themselves Christians are not half so wise as he, 
 for they take all possible care not to remember 
 that they must die, but to forget that they must 
 die ; and yet every living man has a servant who, 
 like King Philip's, puts him in mind, whether he 
 
DEATH. Ill 
 
 likes it or not, that his day will run out at last, 
 and his twelve hours of life be over, and then 
 die he must. And who is that servant ? A man's 
 own body. Happy for him, though, if his body is his 
 servant — not his master and his tyrant. But still, 
 be that as it may, every finger-ache that one's 
 body has, every cough and cold one's body catches, 
 ought to be to us a warning like King Philip's 
 servant, "Remember that thou must die." Every 
 little pain and illness is a warning, a kindly hint 
 from our Father in Heaven that we are doomed 
 to death; that we have but twelve hours in this 
 short day of life, and that the twelve must end; 
 and that we must get our work done, and our 
 accounts settled, and be ready for our long jour- 
 ney, to meet our Father and our King, before the 
 night comes wherein no man can work, but only 
 take his wages ; for them who have done good the 
 wages of life eternal, and for them who have done 
 evil — God help them! we know what is written — 
 "The wages of sin is death." 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 Wild, wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sigh- 
 ing? 
 Dark, dark night, wilt thou never wear away? 
 
112 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Cold, cold church, in thy death-sleep lying, 
 The Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not 
 thine Easter-day. 
 
 Peace, faint heart, though the night be dark and 
 sighing ; 
 Rest, fair corpse, where thy Lord himself hath 
 lain; 
 Weep, dear Lord, where thy bride is lying; 
 Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life 
 and health again. 
 
 XC. 
 
 What is life ? And what is the waters of life ? 
 
 What are they indeed, my friends ? You will find 
 many answers to that question in this, as in all ages : 
 but the one which Scripture gives is this : Life is 
 none other, according to the Scripture, than God 
 himself, Jesus Christ our Lord, who bestows on man 
 his own Spirit, to form in him "his own character', 
 which is the character of God. 
 
 He is the one Eternal Life ; and it has been mani- 
 fested in human form, that human beings might 
 copy it ; and behold, it was full of grace and truth. 
 
 The life of grace and truth ; that is the life of 
 Christ, and therefore the life of God, 
 
 The life of grace — of graciousness, love, pity, 
 
IMMORTALITY. 1 1 3 
 
 generosity, usefulness, self-sacrifice; the life of truth 
 — of faithfulness, fairness, justice, the desire to im- 
 part knowledge and to guide men into all truth. The 
 life, in one word, of charity, which is both grace and 
 truth, both love and justice, in one eternal essence. 
 That is the life which God lives for ever in heaven. 
 That is the one Eternal Life, which must be also the 
 life of God. For, as there is but one Eternal, even 
 God, so is there but one eternal life, which is the 
 life of God and his Christ. And the Spirit by 
 which it is inspired into the hearts of men is the 
 Spirit of God, who proceedeth alike from the Father 
 and from the Son. 
 
 Have you not seen men and women in whom these 
 words have been literally and palpably fulfilled ? 
 Have you not seen those who, though old in years, 
 were so young in heart, that they seem to have 
 drunk of the Fountain of perpetual youth — in whom, 
 though the outward body decayed, the soul was 
 renewed day by day; who kept fresh and pure the 
 noblest and holiest instincts of their childhood, and 
 went on adding to them the experience, the calm, the 
 charity of age ? Persons whose eye was still so 
 bright, whose smile was still so tender, that it seemed 
 that they could never die ? And when they died, or 
 seemed to die, you felt that they were not dead, but 
 only their husk and shell ; that they themselves, the 
 character which you had loved and reverenced, must 
 
114 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 endure on, beyond the grave, beyond the worlds, 
 in an literally everlasting life, independent of nature, 
 and of all the changes of the material universe. 
 
 XCI. 
 
 Our life's floor 
 Is laid upon eternity ; no crack in it 
 But shows the underlying heaven. 
 
 XCII. 
 
 It was credible enough in old times, when the 
 earth was held to be all but the whole universe, that 
 God should descend on earth, and take on him 
 human nature, to save human beings. Is it credible 
 now ? This little corner of the systems and the 
 galaxies ? This paltry race which we call man ? Are 
 they worthy of the interposition, of the death, of In- 
 carnate God — of the Maker of such a universe as 
 science has discovered ? 
 
 Yes. If we will keep in mind that one word 
 " Father." Then we dare say, yes, in full assurance 
 of faith. For then we have taken the question off 
 the mere material ground of size and power; to put it 
 once and forever on that spiritual ground of justice and 
 love which is implied in the one word — " Father." 
 
 If God be a perfect Father, then there must be a 
 
GOD, THE FATHER. 115 
 
 perpetual intercourse of some kind between him and 
 his children ; between him and that planet, how- 
 ever small, on which he has set his children, that they 
 may be educated into his likeness. If God be perfect 
 justice, the wrong, and consequent misery of the uni- 
 verse, however small, must be intolerable to him. If 
 God be perfect love, there is no sacrifice — remember 
 that great word — which he may not condescend 
 to make, in order to right that wrong, and alleviate 
 that misery. If God be the Father of our spirits, 
 the spiritual welfare of his children may be more 
 important to him than the whole brute matter of the 
 universe. Think not to frighten us with the idols 
 of size and height. God is a Spirit before whom 
 all material things are equally great and equally 
 small. Let us think of him as such, and not merely 
 as a Being of physical power and inventive craft. 
 Let us believe in our Father in heaven. For then 
 that higher intellect, — that pure reason, which dwells 
 not in the heads, but in the hearts of men, will tell 
 them that if they have a Father in heaven, he must 
 be exercising a special providence over the minutest 
 affairs of their lives, by which he is striving to educate 
 them into his likeness ; a special providence over the 
 fate of every atom in the universe, by which his laws 
 shall work together for the moral improvement of 
 every creature capable thereof; that not a sparrow 
 can fall to the ground without his knowledge ; and 
 
n6 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 that not a hair of their head can be touched, unless 
 suffering is needed for the education of their souls. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 Look out on the world around you. What wit- 
 ness does it bear concerning the God who made 
 it? Who made the sunshine, and the flowers, and 
 singing birds, and little children, and all that 
 causes the joy of this life? Let Christ himself 
 speak, and his apostles. No one can say that their 
 words are not true; that they were mistaken in 
 their view of this earth, or of God who gave it 
 to us that it might bear witness of him. What 
 said our Lord to the poor folk of Galilee, of whom 
 the Scribes and the Pharisees, in their pride said, 
 "This people, who knowelh not the law, is ac- 
 cursed." What said our Lord, very God of very 
 God? He told them to look on the world around, 
 and learn from it that they had in heaven not a 
 tyrant, not a destroyer, but a Father, a Father in 
 heaven who is perfect in this, that he causeth his 
 sun to shine upon them, and is good to the 
 unthankful and the evil. 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 Cling to all which can fill your mind with lofiy, 
 
GOD, THE FATHER. n;, 
 
 kindly, generous, loyal thoughts; and so, in God's 
 good time, you will enter into the meaning of those 
 great words — Abba, Father. The more you give up 
 your hearts to such good feelings, the more you will 
 understand of God; the more nobleness there is 
 in you, the more you will see God's nobleness, 
 God's justice, God's love, God's true glory. The 
 more you become like God's Son, the more you 
 will understand how God can stoop to call himself 
 your Father; and the more you will understand 
 what a Father, what a perfect Father God is. And 
 in the world to come, I trust, you will enter into 
 the glorious liberty of the sons of God — that 
 liberty which comes not from doing your own will, 
 but the will of God ; that glory which comes not 
 from having any thing of your own to pride 
 yourselves upon, but from being filled with the 
 Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, by which 
 you shall forever look up freely, and yet reverently, 
 to the Almighty God of heaven and earth, and say, 
 " Impossible as the honor seems for man, yet thou, 
 
 God, hast said it, and it is true. Thou, even 
 thoii, art my Father, and I thy son in Jesus Christ, 
 who became awhile the Son of man on earth, that 
 
 1 might become forever the son of God in heaven." 
 And so will come to us St. Paul's great words : 
 
 "If we be sons, then heirs of God, joint heirs 
 with Christ." 
 
ii8 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Heirs of God; but what is our inheritance? The 
 same as Christ's. 
 
 And what is Christ's inheritance? What but God 
 himself? The knowledge of our Father in heaven, 
 of his love to us, and of his eternal beauty and 
 glory, which fills all heavens and all worlds with 
 light and life. 
 
 XCV. 
 
 This is the secret of life — to believe that God 
 is your Father, schooling and training you from 
 your cradle to your grave; and then to please 
 him and obey him in all things, lifting up daily 
 your hands and thankful heart, entreating him to 
 purge the eyes of your soul, and give you the true 
 wisdom, which is to see all things as they really 
 are, and as God himself sees them. If you do 
 that, you may believe that God will teach you 
 more and more how to do in all the affairs of 
 life, that which is right in his sight and therefore 
 good for you. He will teach you more and more 
 to see in all which happens to you, all which goes 
 on around you, his fatherly love, his patient 
 mercy, his providential care for all his creatures. 
 He will reward you by making you more and more 
 partaker of his Holy Spirit and of truth, by which, 
 seeing every thing as it really is, you will at last 
 
GOD, THE FATHER. 119 
 
 — if not in this life, still in the life to come — 
 grow to see God himself, who has made all things 
 according to his own eternal mind, that they may 
 be a pattern of his unspeakable glory; and beyond 
 that, who needs to see? For to know God, and to 
 see God, is eternal life itself. 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 Not all the thinking in the world can ever make 
 us comprehend the majesty of our Heavenly Father; 
 but we do not remember enough what we do know 
 of God. We think of God, watching the world and 
 all things in it, and keeping them in order as a shep- 
 herd does his sheep, and so far so good ; but we 
 forget that God does more than this — we forget 
 that this earth, sun, and moon, and all the thousand, 
 thousand stars which cover the midnight sky — many 
 of them suns larger than the sun we see, and worlds 
 larger than the world on which we stand, that all 
 these stretching away millions of millions of miles 
 into boundless space — all are lying like one little 
 grain of dust, in the hollow of God's hand, and that 
 if he were to shut his hand upon them he could crush 
 them into nothing, and God would be alone in the 
 universe again as he was before heaven and earth 
 were made. Think of that! — that if God was but 
 to will it, we and this earth on which we stand, and 
 
I20 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 the heaven above us, and the sun that shines on us, 
 should vanish away, and be nowhere and nothing. 
 Think of the infinite power of God, and then think 
 how is it possible to live, except by faith in him, by 
 trusting to him utterly ? If you accustom yourselves 
 to think in the same way of the infinite wisdom of 
 God, and the infinite love of God, they will both 
 teach you the same lesson ; they will show you that 
 if you were the greatest, the wisest, the holiest man 
 that ever lived, you would still be such a speck by 
 the side of the Almighty and Everlasting God, that 
 it would be madness to depend upon yourselves for 
 any thing while you lived in God's world. For, after 
 all, what can we do without God ? In him we live, 
 and move, and have our being. He made us, he 
 gave us our bodies, he gave us our life; what we 
 do, he lets us do ; what we say, he lets us say ; we 
 all live on sufferance. 
 
 And it is the same with the life of our spirits ; in 
 it, too, we must live by faith. The life of our spirits 
 is a gift from God, the Father of spirits, and he has 
 chosen to declare that unless we trust to him for life, 
 and ask him for life, he will not bestow it upon us. 
 The life of our bodies he in his mercy keeps up, al- 
 though we forget him ; the life of our souls he will 
 not keep up ; therefore, for the sake of our spirits 
 even more than of our bodies, we must live by faith. 
 If we wish to be loving, pure, wise, manly, noble, we 
 
GOD, THE FATHER. 121 
 
 must ask those excellent gifts of God, who is himself 
 infinite love and purity, wisdom and nobleness. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 Our Father — whenever you think of your duty 
 to God or man, think but of those two words. Re- 
 member that all duty is duty to a Father — your 
 Father — and such a Father! Who gave his only 
 begotten Son to die for you, who showed what he 
 was in that Son — full of goodness, perfectly mer- 
 ciful, perfectly just ; and then you will not be inclined 
 to ask how little obedience, how little love, how little 
 service, he will allow you to pay him ; but how much 
 he will help you to pay him. Then you will feel 
 that his service is perfect freedom, because it is ser- 
 vice to a Father who loves you, and will help you 
 to do his will. Then you will feel that his com- 
 mandments are not grievous, because they are a 
 Father's commandments, because you are bound to 
 do them, not by dread and superstition, but by grati- 
 tude, honor, affection, respect, trust. Then you will 
 not be thinking of what punishment will come if you 
 disobey — no, nor of what reward will come if you 
 obey — but you will be thinking o! the commandment 
 itself, and how to carry it out most perfectly, and 
 let the consequences take care of themselves, because 
 you know that your Father takes care of them ; that 
 
122 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 he loves you, and therefore what he commands must 
 be good for you, utterly the best thing for you ; that 
 he only gives you a commandment because it is good 
 for you; that you are made in God's image, and 
 therefore God's will must be for you the path of life, 
 the only rule by which you can prosper now and 
 forever. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 When we are most calm, most humble, most free 
 from ill-temper and self-conceit, most busy about 
 our rightful work, then the feeling comes over us — 
 I have a Father in heaven. And that feeling gives 
 us a strength, a peace, a sure trust and hope which 
 no other thought can give. Yes, we are ready to say, 
 I may be miserable and unfortunate, but the great 
 God of heaven and earth is my Father; and what 
 can happen to me ? I may be borne down with the 
 remembrance of my great sins ; I may find it almost 
 too hard to fight against all my bad habits; but 
 the great God who made heaven and earth is my 
 Father and I am his son. He will forgive me for 
 the past; he will help me to conquer for the future. 
 If I do but remember that I am God's son, and claim 
 my Father's promises, neither the world, nor the 
 devil, nor my own sinful flesh can ever prevail against 
 me. 
 
GOD, THE SON. 123 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 Christ is the likeness of his Father's glory, and 
 the express image of his person ; perfect as his 
 Father is perfect; like his Father, he causeth his 
 rain to fall on the evil and the good ; and his sun to 
 shine on the just and on the unjust; and is good 
 to the unthankful and the evil — to you and me — 
 and knows us, though we know him not ; and cares 
 for us, though we care not for him ; and leads us 
 his way like a good shepherd, when we fancy in our 
 conceit that we are going in our own way. This is 
 our hope, that his love is greater than our stupidity ; 
 that he will not tire of us and our fancies, and our 
 self-will, and our laziness, in spite of all our peevish 
 tempers, and our mean and fruitless suspicions ot 
 his goodness. No ! He will not tire of us, but will 
 seek us and save us when we go astra}'. And some 
 day, somewhere, somehow, he will open our eyes, 
 and let us see him as he is, and thank him as he 
 deserves. Some day, when the veil is taken off our 
 eyes, we shall see like those disciples at Emmaus, 
 that Jesus has been walking with us, and breaking 
 our bread for us, and blessing us all our lives long; 
 and that when our hearts burned within us at noble 
 thoughts and stories of noble and righteous men 
 and women, and at the hope that some day good 
 would conquer evil, and heaven come down on earth. 
 
124 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 then — so we shall find — God had been dwelling 
 among men all along — even Jesus, who was dead 
 and is alive for evermore, and has the keys of death 
 and hell, and knows his sheep in this world and 
 in all worlds, past, present and to come, and leads 
 them, and will lead them forever, and none can 
 pluck them out of his hand. 
 
 Father and Son ! Let philosophers and divines 
 discover what they may about God, they will never 
 discover any thing so deep as the wonder which 
 lies in these two words, Father and Son. So deep, 
 and yet so simple! So simple, that the wayfaring 
 man, though poor, shall not err therein. "Who is 
 God ? What is God like ? Where shall we find him, 
 or his likeness?" So has mankind been crying in 
 all ages, and getting no answer, or making answers 
 for themselves in all sorts of superstitions, idola- 
 tries, false philosophies. And then the Gospel comes, 
 and answers to every man, to every poor and un- 
 learned laborer: Will you know the name of God? 
 It is a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit of love, 
 joy, peace; a spirit of perfect satisfaction of the 
 Father in the Son, and perfect satisfaction of the Son 
 with the Father, which proceeds from both the Father 
 and the Son. It needs no scholarship to understand 
 
GOD, THE SON. 125 
 
 that name; every one may understand it who is a 
 good father; every one may understand it who is a 
 good son, who looks up to and obeys his father with 
 that filial spirit of love, and obedience, and satis- 
 faction with his father's will, which is the likeness 
 of the Holy Spirit of God, and can only flourish in 
 any man by the help of the Holy Spirit, which pro- 
 ceeds from the Father and the Son. 
 
 Father and Son ! what more beautiful words are 
 there in the world? What more beautiful sight is 
 there in the world than a son who really loves his 
 father, really trusts his father, really does his duty 
 to his father, really looks up to and obeys his 
 father's will in all things? Who is ready to sacri- 
 fice his own credit, his own pleasure, his own success 
 in life, for the sake of his father's comfort and 
 honor? How much more fair and noble must be 
 the love and trust which is between God the Father 
 and God the Son! 
 
 CI. 
 
 Read how the Father loves the Son, and gives all 
 things into his ha,nd, and commits all judgment to 
 the Son, and gives him power to have life in him- 
 self, even as the Father has life in himself, and 
 shows him all things that himself doeth, that all 
 men may honor the Son even as they honor the 
 
126 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Father. Read how the Son came only to show forth 
 his Father's glory ; to be the brightness of his glory, 
 and the express image of his person; to establish his 
 Father's kingdom ; to declare the goodness of his 
 Father's name, which is the Father. How he does 
 nothing of himself, but only what he sees his Father 
 do; how he seeks not his own will, but the will of 
 the Father who sent him; how he sacrificed all, yea, 
 even his most precious body and soul upon the 
 cross, to finish the work which his Father gave him 
 to do. How, being in the form of God, and think- 
 ing it no robbery to be equal with God, he could 
 boldly say, "As the Father knoweth me, even so 
 know I the Father. I and my Father are one ; " 
 and still, in the fulness of his filial love and obedi- 
 ence, declared that he had no will, no wish, no 
 work, no glory, but his Father's; and in the hour 
 of his agony cried out, " Father, if it be possible, 
 let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, 
 but thine be done." 
 
 CII. 
 
 We'll talk of Christ; 
 We shall go mad with thinking of ourselves^ 
 We'll talk of him, and of that new-made star, 
 Which, as he stooped into the Virgin's side. 
 From off his finger, like a signet gem, 
 
GOD, THE SPIRIT. 127 
 
 He dropped in the empyrean for a sign. 
 But the first tear he shed at his birth-hour, 
 When he crept weeping forth to see our woe, 
 Fled up to Heaven in mist, and hid forever 
 Our sins, our works, and that same new-made star. 
 
 CHI. 
 
 When you hear of a noble action, is there nothing 
 in you which makes you approve and admire it ? Is 
 there nothing in your hearts which makes you pity 
 those who are in sorrow, and long to help them ? 
 Nothing which stirs your heart up when you hear 
 of a man's nobly doing his duty, and dying rather 
 than desert his post, or do a wrong or mean thing? 
 Surely there is, surely there is. 
 
 Then, when those feelings come into your hearts, 
 rejoice with trembling, as men to whom God has 
 given a great and precious gift. For they are none 
 other than the Spirit of the Son of God, striving 
 with your hearts that he may form Christ in you, 
 and raise up your hearts to cry with full faith to 
 God, " My Father which art in heaven ! " 
 
 CIV. 
 
 But where is the Holy Spirit? There is no 
 where for spirits. All that we can say is, that the 
 Holy Spirit is proceeding forever from the Father 
 
I2S LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 and the Son ; going forth forever, to bring light 
 and life, righteousness and love, to all worlds, and 
 to all hearts who will receive him. The lamps of 
 fire which St. John saw, the dove which came 
 down at Christ's baptism, the cloven tongues of fire 
 which sat on the apostles — these were signs and 
 tokens of the Spirit; but they were not the Spirit 
 itself. Of the Spirit it is written, "It bloweth 
 where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
 canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." 
 
 It is enough for us that it is the Holy Spirit, 
 the Spirit of the Holy Father, and of the Holy 
 Son ; like them eternal, like them' incomprehensible, 
 like them a'mighty, like them all-wise, all-just, all- 
 loving, merciful, faithful, and true forever. 
 
 CV. 
 
 If you have the divine thirst, it will be surely 
 satisfied. If you long to be better men and women, 
 you will surely be. Only be true to those higher 
 instincts ; only do not learn to despise and quench 
 that divine thirst ; only struggle on, in spite of 
 mistakes, of failures, even of sins — for every one 
 of which last your Heavenly Father will chastise 
 you, even while he forgives ; in spite of all falls, 
 struggle on. Blessed are you that hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled. 
 
GOD, THE SPIRIT. 
 
 129 
 
 To you — and not in vain — "The Spirit and the 
 Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. 
 And let him that is athirst come. And whoso- 
 ever will, let him drink of the water of life freely." 
 
 CVI. 
 
 • 
 
 If justice and honesty be God's likeness, who 
 
 made us like God in this — who put into us this 
 sense of justice which all have, though so few 
 obey it? Can man make himself like God? Can 
 a worm ape his maker? No. From God's Spirit, 
 the Spirit of Right, came this inborn feeling of 
 justice, this knowledge of right and wrong, to us 
 — part of the image of God in which he created 
 man — part of the breath or spirit of life which he 
 breathed into Adam. Do not mistake me. I do 
 not say that the sense, and honesty, and love in 
 us, are God's Spirit — they are the spirit of man% 
 but that they are like God's Spirit, and therefore 
 must be given us by God's Spirit, to be used as God's 
 Spirit himself uses them. How a man shall have 
 his share of God's Spirit, and live in and by 
 God's Spirit, is another question, and a higher and 
 more blessed one; but we must master this ques- 
 tion first — we must believe that our spirits come 
 from God, then, perhaps, we shall begin to see 
 that our spirits never can work well unless they are 
 
I30 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 joined to the Spirit of God, from whom they came. 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Through God's Spirit, Christ not only can, but 
 will, give you light. And that Spirit is near you, 
 with you. I will not say you do not know how 
 much good there is in you ; for in us dwells . no 
 good thing, and every good thought and feeling 
 comes only from the Spirit of God : but I will say 
 boldly to every one of you, you do not know how 
 much good 'there may be in you if you will listen 
 to those good thoughts of God's Spirit ; you do 
 hot know how wise, how right, how strong, how 
 happy, how useful you may become; you do ,not 
 know what a blessing each of you may become to 
 yourselves and to all around you. Only make up 
 your mind to live by God's law ; only make up 
 your mind in all things, small and great, to go 
 God's way, and not your own. Only make up 
 your mind to listen, not to your own flesh, temper, 
 and brain, which say this and that is pleasant, 
 but listen to God*s Spirit which says this is -right, 
 arid that is wrong: this is your duty, do it. 
 
 cviii. 
 
 He who goes to the Bible full of self-conceit 
 
THE BIBLE. 131 
 
 and selfishness, wanting the Bible to tell him only 
 just what he likes to hear, will only find it a 
 sealed book . to him, and will very likely wrest .the 
 Scriptures to his own destruction. Take up your 
 Bible humbly, praying to God to show you its 
 meaning, whether it be pleasant to you or not, 
 and then you will find' that God will show yoU a 
 blessed meaning in- it ; He will open your eyes^ 
 that you,, may understand the wondrous things of 
 His law' ; he will show you how to try the spirit 
 of all you are taught, and to find out whether it 
 comes from God. 
 
 CIX. 
 
 Oh, that men would use that treasure of the 
 Bible as it deserves ; ohj that they would believe 
 from their hearts, that whatever is said there is 
 truly saidj that whatever is said there '. is said to 
 them, that whatever names things are called there 
 are called, by their right names. Then men would 
 no longer call the vil6 person beatutiful, or call 
 pride and vanity honor, or covetousness respecta- 
 bility, or call sirt worldly wisdom ; but they would 
 call things as Christ calls them — they would try 
 to copy Christ's thoughts and Christ's teaching; 
 and instead -of looking for instruction and comfort 
 to lying opinions and false worldly cunning, they 
 
132 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 would find their only advice in the blessed teach- 
 ing, and their only comfort in the gracious prom- 
 ises, of the word of the Book of Life. 
 
 ex. 
 
 Do not fancy, as too many do, that thou canst 
 praise God by singing hymns to him in church 
 once a week, and disobeying him all the week 
 long, crying to him, " Lord, Lord ! " and then liv- 
 ing as if he were not thy Lord, but thou wast 
 thine own Lord, and hadst a right to do thine 
 own will and not his. If thou wilt really bless 
 God, then try to live his blessed life of goodness. 
 If thou wilt truly praise God, then behave as if 
 God was praiseworthy, good, and right in' what he 
 bids thee do. If thou wouldst really magnify God, 
 and declare his greatness, then behave as if he 
 were indeed the great God who ought to be 
 obeyed — ay, who must be obeyed ; for his com- 
 mandment is life, and it alone, to thee, as well 
 as to all which he has made. Dost thou fancy, as 
 the heathen do, that God needs to be flattered 
 with fine words ? or that thou wilt be heard for 
 thy much speaking, and thy vain repetitions ? He 
 asks of thee works as well as words ; and more, 
 he asks of thee works first, and words after. And 
 better it is to praise him truly by works without 
 
WORSHIP. 133 
 
 words, than falsely by words without works. 
 
 Cry, if thou wilt, " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God 
 of Hosts ; but show that thou believest him to 
 be holy by being holy thyself. Sing, if thou wilt, 
 of " The Father of an Infinite Majesty ; " but 
 show that thou believest his majesty to be infinite 
 by obeying his commandments, let them cost thee 
 what they may. Join, and join freely, in the songs 
 of the heavenly host; for God has given thee 
 reason and speech, after the likeness of his only 
 begotten Son, and thou mayest use them, as well 
 as every other gift, in the service of thy Father. 
 But take care lest, while thou art trying to copy 
 the angels, thou art not even as righteous as the 
 beasts of the field. For they bless and praise 
 God by obeying his laws ; and till thou dost that, 
 and obeyest God's laws likewise, thou art not as 
 good as the grass beneath thy feet. 
 
 For after all has been said and sung, my friends, 
 the sum and substance of true religion remains what 
 it was and what it will be forever; and lies in 
 this one word : " If ye love Me, keep my com- 
 mandments." 
 
 CXI. 
 
 If you believe in your " Heavenly Father," the good 
 God whom your Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to 
 
134 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 you; and if you will consider that; he is good, and 
 consider what that word good means, then you will 
 not have far to seek before you fin4, what worship 
 means, and how you can worship him in spirit and 
 in truth.. 
 
 For if God be good, worshipping him , must mean 
 praising and admiring him — adoring him, as we 
 call it — for being good. 
 
 And- nothing more ? Certainly much more. Also 
 to ask him to make us good. .That, too, must be a 
 part of worshipping a good God. For the very prop- 
 erty of goodness is, that it wishes to make others 
 good. And if God be good, he must wish to make 
 us good also. 
 
 To adore God, then, for his goodness, and to pray 
 to him to make us good, is the sum and substance 
 of all wholesome worship. And for that purpose a 
 man may come to church, and worship God in spirit 
 and in truth, though he be dissatisfied with himself, 
 and ashamed of himself, and knows that he is wrong 
 in many things ^ provided always that he wishes to 
 be set right, and made good. , , 
 
 CXII. 
 
 Human nature is made, so the Bible tells us, in 
 some mysterious way, after the likeness of God; 
 of Christ, the eternal son of man, who is in heaven ; 
 
HUMAN NATURE. 135 
 
 for the Bible speaks of the word or voice of God 
 as appearing to mah in something of a human voice; 
 reasoning with' him as man reasons with man ; and 
 feeling toward him human feelings. That is the 
 doctrine of the Bible, of David and the prophets, 
 just as much as of Genesis or of St. Paul. 
 
 That is a great mystery and a great glory ; but 
 that alone could not' make man good, could not 
 even Jteep him alive. 
 
 For God made man for something , more noble 
 and blessed than to follow even his own lofty human 
 nature. God made the animals to follow their natures 
 each after its, kind, and to do ,each_whaf it liked with- 
 out sin. But he made man to do more than, that, to 
 do more than what he likes, namely, to do what he 
 ought. God made man to , love him, to obey him; 
 to copy him, by doing God's will, and living God's 
 life, lovingly, joyfully, and of his own free will, as a 
 son follows the father whose will he delights to do. 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 Think of what you say when you say, " I am a 
 man." Remember that you are claiming for your: 
 selves the very highest honor — an honor too great 
 to make you proud ; an honor so great that, if you 
 understand it rightly, it must fill you with awe, and 
 trembling, and the spirit of godly fear, lest, when 
 
136 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 God has put you up so high, you should fall shame- 
 fully again. For the higher the place, the deeper the 
 fall ; and the greater the horror, the greater the shame 
 of losing it. 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 God made us, and if the Bible be true, there must 
 be good in us. When God said. Let that man be ; 
 when God first thought of us, if I may so speak, 
 before the foundation of the world — he thought of 
 us as good. He created each of us good in his 
 own mind, else he would not have created us at 
 all. But why were we not good when we came 
 on earth ? Why do we come into this world sin- 
 ful ? Why does God's thought of us, God's purpose 
 about us, seem to have failed ? We do not know, 
 and we need not know. St. Paul tells us that it 
 came by Adam's fall ; that by Adam's fall sin 
 entered into the world, and each man, as he came 
 into it, became sinful. How that was we can- 
 not understand — we need not understand. Let 
 us believe and be silent ; but let us believe this 
 also, that St, Paul speaks truth not in this only, 
 but in that blessed and glorious news with which 
 he follows up his sad and bad news. "As by the 
 offense of one, judgment came upon all men to 
 condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one. 
 
HUMAN NATURE. 137 
 
 the free gift came upon all men to justification of 
 life." 
 
 Yes; we may say boldly now, whatever has 
 been; whatever sin I inherited from Adam; how- 
 ever sinful I came into this world, God looks on 
 me now, not as I am in Adam, but as I am in 
 Christ. I am in Christ now, baptized into Christ, 
 a new creature in Christ; To Christ I belong, 
 and not to Adam at all; and God looks now, not 
 on the old corrupt nature which I inherited from 
 Adam, but on the new and good grace which God 
 meant for me from all eternity, which Christ has 
 given me now. It is that good and new grace in 
 me which God cares for; it is that good and 
 new grace which God is working on, to strengthen 
 and perfect it, that I may grow in grace, and in 
 the likeness of Christ, and become at last what 
 God intended me to be, when he thought of me 
 first before the foundation of all worlds, and said, 
 "Let us make man (not one man, but all men, 
 male and female) in our image, after our like- 
 ness." 
 
 CXV. 
 
 All which is good in you God has made, and 
 he will take care of what he has made, for he 
 loves it. All which is bad in you, God has not 
 
138 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 made, and therefore he will destroy.it, for he hates 
 all that he has' not made, and will not suffer it 
 in his world; and if you, your hej^rt,: your will, 
 are enlisted on the good sidfe, if you are wishing 
 and trying that the good nature in you should 
 conquer the bad, then you are on the side of God 
 himself, and God himself is on your side; and 
 " if God be for us, who shall be against, us ? " 
 
 Take courage, then. If thou dislikest thy sins, 
 so does God. If thou art .fighting against thy, worst 
 feelings, so is God. On thy side is God who made 
 all, and Christ who died for all, and the Holy 
 Spirit who alone givps wisdom, purity, nobleness. 
 How canst thou fail when he is on thy side ? On 
 thy side are all spirits of just men made perfect, 
 all wise and good souls and persons in 6arth and 
 heaven, all good and wholesome influences, whether 
 of nature or of grace, of matter or of mind. How 
 canst thou fail if they are on thy, side? God, I 
 say, and all that God has made, are working to- 
 gether to bring true of thee the word of God — 
 " And God saw all that he had made, and behold 
 it was very good." Believe, and endure to the 
 end, and thou shalt be found in Christ at the last 
 day; and being in Christ, have thy share at last in 
 the blessing which the Father pronounces everlastingly 
 on Christ, and on the members of Christ, " This 
 is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
 
HUMAN NATURE. 139 
 
 CXVI, 
 
 If we are selfish, ind take care only of purselyes, 
 the day will come wheii pur neighbors will leave us 
 alone in our selfishness to shift for ourselves. If we 
 set out determining thpough life to care about our- 
 selves rather than other people, then they will care 
 for themselves more than for us, and measure their 
 love to us by our measure of love to theni, But if 
 we care for others, tliey will learn to care for us ; 
 if we befriend others, they will befriend us. If we 
 show forth the spirit of God to them, in kindliness, 
 generosity, patience, self-sacrifice, the day will surely 
 come when we shall find that th? Spirit of .God is 
 in our neighbors as well as in ourselves ; that on 
 the whole they will be just to us, and pay us what 
 we have deserved and earned. .Blessed and com- 
 fortable thought, that no kind word, kind action, 
 not even the cup of cold water given in Christ's 
 name, can lose its reward. Blessed thought, that, 
 after all our neighbors are our brothers, and that if 
 we remember that steadily, and treat them as broth- 
 ers now, they will recollect it, too, some day, and 
 treat us as brothers in return. Blessed thought, 
 that there is in the heart of every man a spark of 
 God's light, a grain of God's justice, which may grow 
 lip in him hereafter, and bear good fruit to eternal 
 life. 
 
I40 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 With a closer knowledge of our fellow-creatures 
 comes toleration, pity, sympathy, and as that sympa- 
 thy has been freely obeyed, it has justified itself 
 more and more. The more we have tried to help 
 our fellow-men, the more easy we have found it to 
 help them. The more we have trusted them, the 
 more trustworthy we have found them. The more 
 we have treated them like human beings, the more 
 humanity we have found in them. 
 
 And thus man, in proportion as he becomes mani- 
 fest to man, is seen, in spite of all defects and 
 sins, to be hallowed with a light from God who 
 made him. 
 
 CXVIII. 
 
 Each has his gift — 
 Our souls are organ-pipes of diverse stop 
 And various pitch ; each with its proper notes 
 Thrilling beneath the self-same breath of God, 
 Though poor alone, yet joined they're harmony, 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 Every man has his gift, and the tools go to him 
 that can use them. 
 
SELFISHNESS. 141 
 
 CXX. 
 
 We live too slow — our gummy blood 
 Without fresh purging airs from heaven, would choke 
 Slower and slower, till it stopped and froze. 
 God 1 fight we not within a cursed world. 
 Whose very air teems thick with leagued fiends ? — 
 Each word we speak has infinite effects — 
 Each soul we pass must go to heaven or hell — 
 And this our one chance through eternity 
 To drop and die, like dead leaves in the brake, 
 Or like the meteor stone, though whelmed itself. 
 Kindle the dry moors into fruitful blaze. 
 Be earnest, earnest, earnest ! Mad, if thou wilt ; 
 Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven, 
 And that thy last deed ere the judgment day. 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 Oh, my friends, whenever we are tempted to be 
 selfish and grasping, be sure that we are opening a 
 door to the very devil of hell himself, though he 
 may look so smooth, and gentle, and respectable, 
 that perhaps we shall not know him when he comes 
 to us, and shall take his counsels for the counsel 
 of an angel of light. But be sure that if it is selfish- 
 ness which has opened the door of our heart, not 
 God, but the devil will come in, let him dis- 
 guise himself as cunningly as he will ; and our 
 
142 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 only hope is to flee to . him in whom there was no 
 selfishness, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came not to 
 do his own will, but his Father's; not to glorify 
 himself, but his Father; not to save his own life, 
 but to ..sacrifice, it freely, for us, -his selfish, weak, 
 greedy, wandering sheep. - 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 Nought lives for self. All, all, from crown to foot- 
 stool -r- 
 The Lamb, before the world's foundations slain ^ — 
 The angels, ministers to: God's elect — 
 The sun, who only shines to light a world — 
 The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers — 
 The fleeting streams, Who, in their ocean-graves, 
 Flee the decay of stagnant self-content — 
 The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe — 
 The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower — 
 The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms. 
 Bom, only to be prey for every bird — 
 All spend themselves for others : and shall man, 
 Earth's rosy blossom ^^ image of his God — 
 Whose twofold being is the mystic knot 
 Which couples earth and heaven — doubly bound 
 As being both worm and angel to that service 
 By which both worms and atigels hold their life; 
 Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt, 
 Refuse, -without some hope of further wage 
 
FAITH. 143 
 
 Which he calls Heaven, to be what God has' made 
 
 him ? - 
 Np! let. him show himself the creature's lord 
 By free-will gift of that self-sacrifice 
 Which they perforce by Nature's law must suffer. 
 
 CXXIII. 
 
 The desire to escape pains and penalties hereafter 
 by pains and penalties here ; the balance of present 
 loss against a future gain — what is this but selfish- 
 ness extended out of this world into eternity ? " Not 
 worldliness," indeed, as a, sa:tifist once said with bitter 
 truth, "but other-worldliness." 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 All that men ever did well, or nobly, or lovingly, 
 in this world, was done by faith- — by faith in God 
 of some sort or other; even in the man who 
 thinks least about religion, it is so. Every time .a 
 man means to do,' and really does a just or 
 generous action, he does it , because he believes 
 more or less clearly that there is a just and 
 loving God above him, and that justice' and love 
 are the right thing for a man — the law by which 
 God intended him to walk : so that this small, dim 
 faith still shows itself in practice ; and the more 
 
144 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 faith a man has in God and in God's laws, the more 
 it will show itself in every action of his daily life; 
 and the more this faith works in his life and 
 conduct, the better man he is; — the more he is 
 like God's image, in which man was originally 
 made; — and the more he is like Christ, the new 
 pattern of God's image, whom all men must copy. 
 
 CXXV. 
 
 When the Bible tells us that we can do nothing 
 of ourselves, but can only live by faith, the Bible 
 puts the highest honor upon us which any created 
 thing can have. What are the things which can- 
 not live by faith? The trees and plants, the beasts 
 and birds, which, though they live and grow by 
 God's providence, yet do not know it, do not thank 
 him, cannot ask him for more strength and life as 
 we can, are mere dead tools in God's hands, 
 instead of living reasonable beings as we are. It 
 is only reasonable beings, like men and angels, 
 with immortal spirits in them, who can live by 
 faith, and it is the greatest glory and honor to us, 
 I say again, that we can do so — that the glorious, 
 infinite God, maker of heaven and earth, should 
 condescend to ask us to be loyal to him, to love 
 him, should encourage us to pray to him boldly, 
 and then should condescend to hear our prayers, 
 
FAITH. 14.5 
 
 we, who in comparison of him, are smaller than 
 the gnats in the sunbeam in comparison of 
 men J 
 
 CXXVL 
 
 Instead of being ashamed of being able to 
 do nothing for ourselves, we ought to rejoice at 
 having God for our Father and our friend, to 
 enable us to " do all things through him who 
 strengtheneth us," to do whatever is nqble, and 
 loving, and worthy of true men. Instead, then, of 
 dreaming conceitedly that God will accept us for 
 our ownsakes, let us just be content to be ^iccepted 
 for the sake of Jesus Christ our King, Instead of 
 trying to vjfalk through this world without God's 
 help, let us ask God to help ,and guide us in 
 every action of our lives, and then go manfully 
 forward, doing with all our might whatsoever our 
 hands or our hearts see right (o do, trusting to 
 God to put us in the right path, and to fill our 
 heads w^ith jright thotights., and our hearts with 
 right feeling; and so our faith will show itself in 
 our works, and we shall be justified at the last 
 day, as all good men have ever been, by trust- 
 ing to our Heavenly Father, and to the Lord 
 Jesus , Christ, and the guidance of his .Holy 
 Spirit. 1 
 
146 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 CXXVII. 
 
 Oh ! my friends, when people are talking about 
 faith and works, and trying to reconcile St. Paul 
 and St. James, as they call it, because St. Paul 
 says, Abraham was justified by faith, and St. James 
 says, Abraham was justified by works, if they 
 would but pray for the simple, childlike heart, and 
 the head of common sense, and look at their own 
 children, who, every time they go on a message 
 for them, settle without knowing it, this mighty 
 difference of man's making between faith and 
 works. You tell a little child daily to do many 
 things the meaning and use of which it cannot 
 understand; and the child has faith in what you 
 tell it; and therefore it does what you tell it; 
 and so it shows its faith in you by obedience in 
 working for you. 
 
 CXXVIII. 
 
 The church-bells were ringing, the devil sat singing 
 
 On the stump of a rotting old tree; 
 
 "Oh faith, it grows cold, and the creeds they grow 
 
 old, 
 And the world is nigh ready for me." 
 The bells went on ringing, a spirit came singing, 
 And smiled as he crumbled the tree; 
 
FAITH. 147 
 
 "Yon wood does but perish new seedlings to cherish, 
 And the world is too live yet for thee." 
 
 CXXIX. 
 
 We must not expect to buy God's favor by obey- 
 ing him — we must not expect that the more we 
 do for God, the more God will be bound to do 
 for us, as the Papists do. No ; God has done for 
 us all that he will do. He has promised all that 
 he will promise. He has provided us as he pro- 
 vided Abraham, a lamb for the burnt-offering, the 
 Lamb without blemish and without spot, which taketh 
 away the sins of the world. We are his redeemed 
 people — we have a share in his promises — he bids 
 us believe that, and show that we believe it by living 
 as redeemed men, not our own, but bought with a 
 price, and created anew in Christ Jesus to do good 
 works ; not that we may buy forgiveness by them, 
 but that we may show by them that we believe that 
 God has forgiven us already, and that when we have 
 done all that is commanded us, we are still un- 
 profitable servants; for though we should give up 
 at God's bidding our children, our wives, and our 
 limbs and lives, and show as utter faith in God, 
 and complete obedience to God, as Abraham did, 
 we should only have done just what it was already 
 our duty to do. 
 
148 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 CXXX. 
 
 One word of warning spoken to keep a little 
 child out of sin, one crust of bread given to a 
 beggar man because he is your brother, for whom 
 ■Christ died, one angry word checked, when it is 
 on your lips, for the sake of him who was meek 
 and lowly of heart; in short, any, the smallest 
 endeavor of this kind to lessen the quantity. of evil 
 which is in yourselves, and in those, around you, 
 is worth all the speculations, and raptures, and 
 visions, and frapies, and feelings, in the world; for 
 those are the good fruits of faith, whereby alone 
 the tree shall be known whether it be good or 
 evil. 
 
 CXXXI. 
 
 I had built myself 
 A Babel-tower, whose; top should reach to heaven. 
 Of poor men's praise and prayers, and subtile 
 pride 
 At mine own alms. 'Tis crumbled into dust! 
 Oh! I have leant upon an arm of flesh — 
 And here's its strength! I'll walk by faith — by 
 faith! 
 And rest my weary heart on Christ alone— 
 On him, the all-sufficient! 
 
HOPE. 149 
 
 CXXXII. 
 
 As I read nature's parable, I find nothing in it biit 
 hope. What if there be darkness; the sun will rise 
 to-morrow. What if there seems a chaos ; the great 
 organic world is still living, and growing, and feeding, 
 unseen by us, all the black night through; and 
 every phosphoric atom is a sign' that even in the 
 darkest night there is still the powei: of light, 
 ready to flash out, wherever and however it is 
 stirred. Does the -age seem to you dark? Do you 
 feel the awful sadness of that text, "The time 
 shall come when ye shall desire to see one of the 
 days of the Lord, and shall not see it?" Then 
 remember that 
 
 " The night is never so long 
 But at last lit ringeth for matin song." 
 
 And' even so it is in the world i of men. The night 
 is peopled not merely with phantoms and wizards, 
 superstitions and spirits of evil, but under its 
 shadow all sciences, methods, social energies, are 
 taking rest, and growing, and feeding, unknown to 
 themselves, that they may awake into a new life, 
 and intermarry, and ■ beget children nobler than 
 themselves when "the day-spring from on high comes 
 down." Even now, see! the dawn is gilding the 
 
ISO LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 highest souls, and we are in the night only because 
 we crawl below. What if we be unconscious of all 
 the living energies which are fermenting round us? 
 Is not every moorland pool, every drop of the 
 summer sea, alive with beautiful organizations, 
 multiplying as fast as the thoughts of man? Is 
 not every leaf breathing, every sap vein drinking, 
 though we may not see them ? " Even so is the 
 kingdom of God; like seed sown in the ground; 
 and men rise, and lie down and sleep; and it 
 groweth up they know not how. 
 
 CXXXIII. 
 
 Is it absolutely demanded that no poet shall say 
 anything whatsoever that any other poet has said? 
 How is the student to learn except by copying 
 his master's models? Is the young painter or 
 sculptor a plagiarist because he spends the first, 
 often the best, yea^s of his life in copying Greek 
 statues; or the school-boy for toiling at the re- 
 production of Latin metres and images, in what 
 are honestly and fittingly called " copies " of verses ? 
 And what if the young artist shall choose to put 
 a few drawings into the exhibition, or to carve and 
 sell a few statuettes ? What if the schoolboy grown 
 into a gownsman, shall contribute his share to a 
 set oi Arundines Cami ox Prolusiones Etoniensesl Will 
 
POETRY. 151 
 
 any one who really knows what art or education 
 mean, complain of them for having imitated their 
 models however servilely ? Will he not rather hail 
 such an imitation as a fair proof, first of the stu- 
 dent's reverence for authority — a more important 
 element of " genius " than most young folks fancy 
 — and next, of his possessing any artistic power 
 whatsoever? For surely, if the greater contains the 
 less the power of creating must contain that of 
 imitating. A young author's power of accurate imi- 
 tation is, after all, the primary and indispensable 
 test of his having even the capability of becoming 
 a poet. He who cannot write in a style which he 
 does know, will certainly not be able to invent a 
 new style for himself. The first and simplest form 
 in which any metrical ear, or fancy, or imagination 
 can show itself, must needs be in imitating exist- 
 ing models. Innate good taste — that is, true poetic 
 genius — will, of course, choose the best models in 
 the long run. But not necessarily at first. What 
 shall be the student's earliest ideal, must needs be 
 determined for him by circumstances, by the books 
 to which he has access, by the public opinion 
 which he hears expressed. Enough if he chooses 
 the best models which he knows, and tries to ex- 
 haust them, and learn all he can from them, ready 
 to quit them hereafter, when he comes across bet- 
 ter ones, yet without throwing away what he has 
 
IS2 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 learned. "Be faithful in a few things, and thou 
 shalt become ruler over many things," is one of 
 those eternal moral laws which, like many others, 
 holds as true of art as it does of virttie. 
 
 CXXXIV. 
 
 Man is a poetry-writing animal. Perhaps he was 
 meant to be one. At all events, he can no more 
 be kept from it than from eating. It is better, 
 with Mr. Carlyle's leave, to believe that the exist- 
 ence of poetry indicates some universal human 
 hunger, whether after "the beautiful," or after 
 "fame," or after the means of paying' butchers' 
 bills ; and accepting it as a necessary evil which 
 must be committed, to see that it be committed 
 as well, or at least as little ill as possible. In 
 excuse of which, we may quote Mr. Carlyle against 
 himself, reminding him of a saying of Goethe's once 
 bepraised by him in print : " We must take care 
 of the beautiful, for the useful will take care of 
 itselL" 
 
 CXXXV. 
 
 Human nature, human temptations, human prob- 
 lems, are radically the same in every age, by what- 
 soever outward difference of words they may seem 
 
POETRY. 153 
 
 distinguished. Where is deeper philosophic thought, 
 true or false, expressed in verse, than in Dante, 
 or in Spencer's two cantos of Mutabilities ? Yet, 
 if they are difficult to understand, their darkness 
 is that of the dark, blue sea. Vague they never 
 are ; obscure they never are ; because they see 
 cleariy what they want to say, and how to say it. 
 There is always a sound and coherent meaning in 
 theim, to be found if it be searched for. 
 
 The real cause of modern vagueness is to be 
 found- in shallow and unsound culture, and in that 
 inability, or carelessness a;bout Seeing any object 
 clearly, which besets our ' poets just now ; as the 
 cause of antique clearness lies in the nobler and 
 healthier manhood, in the severer and more methodic 
 habits of thought, the sounder philosophic and criti- 
 cal training, which enabled Spencer and Milton to 
 draw up a state paper or to discourse deep meta- 
 physics, with the same manful possession of their 
 subject which gives grace and completeness to the 
 Penseroso or the Epithalamion ; and if our poets 
 have their doubts, they should remember that those 
 to whom doubt and inquiry are real and stern, 
 are not inclined to sing about them till they can 
 sing poems of triumph over them. There has no 
 temptation taken our modern poets, save that which 
 is common to man — the temptation of wishing to 
 make the laws of the universe and of art fit them, 
 
154 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 as they do not feel inclined to make themselves 
 tit the laws, or care to find them out. 
 
 CXJfXVI. 
 
 The " subjective " poet — in plain words the 
 egotist — is always comparing himself with every 
 man he meets, and therefore momentarily tempted 
 to steal bits of their finery wherewith to patch his 
 own rents, while the man who is content to be simply 
 what God has made him, goes on from strength 
 to strength, developing almost unconsciously under 
 a divine education, by which his real personality 
 and salient points by which he is distinguished 
 from his fellows, become apparent with more and 
 more distinctness of form, and brilliance of light 
 and shadow, as those well know who have watched 
 human character attain its clearest and grandest as 
 well as its loveliest outlines, not among hankerers 
 after fame and power, but on lonely sick-beds, and 
 during long unknown martyrdom of humble self- 
 sacrifice and loving drudgery. 
 
 CXXXVII. 
 
 What man wants, what art wants, perhaps what 
 the maker of them both wants, is a poet who 
 shall begin by confessing that he is as other men 
 
POETRY. 15s 
 
 are, and sing about things which concern all men, 
 in language which all men can understand. This 
 is the only road to that gift of prophecy which 
 most young poets are nowadays in such a hurry 
 to arrogate to themselves. We can only tell what 
 man will be by fair induction, by knowing what 
 he is, what he has been. 
 
 And it is most, noteworthy that in this age, in 
 which there is more knowledge than there ever 
 was of what man has been, and more knowledge, 
 through innumerable novelists, and those most sub- 
 tile and finished ones, of what man is, that poetry 
 should so carefully avoid drawing from this fresh 
 stock of information in her so-confident horoscopes 
 of what man will be. 
 
 There is, just now, as wide a divorce between 
 poetry and the common sense of all time, as there 
 is between poetry and modern knowledge. Our 
 poets are not merely vague and confused, they 
 are altogether fragmentary — disjectamembra fioetarum. 
 They need some uniting idea ; and what idea ? 
 
 Our answer will probably be greeted with a 
 laugh. Nevertheless we answer simply : What our 
 poets want is faith. 
 
 There is little or no faith nowadays, and with- 
 out faith there can be no real art ; for art is the 
 outward expression of firm coherent belief. And a 
 poetry of doubt, even a skeptical poetry, in its 
 
156 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 true sense, can never possess clear and sound 
 form, even organic form at all. How can you put' 
 into form that thoilght which is by its very nature, 
 formless ? How can you group words round a cen- 
 tral idea, when you do not possess a central idea? 
 Shakespeare, in liis one skeptic tragedy, has to de- 
 sert the pure tragic form, and " Hamlet " remains 
 the beau-ideal of " the poeitry of -doubt." But what 
 would a tragedy be in which the actors were all 
 Hamlets, or rather scraps of Hamlets ? A drama of 
 Hamlet is only possible because the one skeptic is 
 surrounded by characters who have some positive 
 faith, who do their work for good or evil undoubt- 
 ingly, while he is speculating about his. And both 
 Ophelia and Laertes, Fortinbras, the king, yea, the 
 very grave-digger, know well enough what they want, 
 whether Hamlet does or not. The whole play i?, 
 in fact, Shakespeare's subtile reductio ad absurdum of 
 that very diseased type of mind which has been, 
 for the last forty years, identified with "genius" 
 — with one difference, namely, that Shakespeare, 
 with his usual clearness of conception, exhibits the 
 said intellectual type pure and simple, while mod- 
 ern poets degrade and confuse it, and degrade and 
 confuse also, all the questions dependent on it, by 
 mixing it up, and unnecessarily, too, with all 
 manner of moral weakness, and very often moral 
 crimes. 
 
POETRY. IS7 
 
 CXXXVIII. 
 
 Loose concerts, fancies of the private judgment, 
 were excusable enough in the Elizabethan poets. 
 In their day, nature was still unconquered by sci- 
 ence ; mediasval superstitions still lingered in the 
 minds of men; and the magical notions of nature 
 which they had inherited from the Middle Age re- 
 ceived a corroboration from those Neo Platonist 
 dreamers, whom they confounded with the true 
 Greek philosophers. But, now that Bacon has 
 spoken, and that Europe has obeyed him, surely, 
 among the most practical, common-sense and scien- 
 tific nation of the earth, severely scientific imagery, 
 imagery drawn from the inner laws of nature, is 
 necessary to touch the hearts of men. They know 
 that the universe is not such as poets paint it ; 
 they know that these pretty thoughts are only pretty 
 thoughts, springing from the caprice, the vanity, 
 very often from the indigestion of the gentlemen 
 who take the trouble to sing to them ; and they 
 listen, as they would to a band of street musicians, 
 and give them sixpence for their time, and go on 
 with their work. 
 
 The time outside has nothing to do with the 
 work inside. It will . not help them to be wiser, 
 abler, more valiant — ^certainly not more cheerful and 
 hopeful men, and therefore they care no more for 
 
iS8 LIVING -TRUTHS. 
 
 it than they do for an opera or a pantomine, if 
 as much. Whereupon the poets get disgusted with 
 this same hard-hearted, prosaic world — which is try- 
 ing to get its living like an industrious animal as 
 it is — and demand homage — for what? For mak- 
 ing a noise, pleasant or otherwise? For not being 
 as other men are? For pleading "the eccentricities 
 of genius " as an excuse for sitting like naughty 
 children in the middle of the schoolroom floor, in 
 everybody's way, shouting and playing on penny 
 trumpets, and when begged to be quiet that other 
 people may learn their lessons, considering them- 
 selves insulted, and pleading "genius?" Genius! 
 — hapless by-word, which, like charity, covers nowa- 
 days the multitude of sins, all the seven deadly ones 
 included ! Is there any form of human folly which 
 one has not heard excused by " he is a genius, 
 you know — one must not judge him by common 
 rules." Poor genius — to have come to this 1 
 
 CXXXIX. 
 
 While young gentlemen are talking about gov- 
 erning heaven and earth by verse, Wellingtons and 
 Peels, Arkwrights and Stephensons, Frys and Chis- 
 holms, are doing it by plain, practical prose ; and 
 even of those who have moved and led the hearts 
 of men by verse, every one, as far as we know, 
 
POETRY. 159 
 
 has produced his magical effects by poetry of the 
 very opposite form to that which is now in fashion. 
 What poet ever had more influence than Homer ? 
 What poet is more utterly antipodal to our modern 
 schools ? There are certain Hebrew psalms, too, 
 which will be confessed, even by those who differ 
 most from them, to have exercised some slight in- 
 fluence on human thought and action, and to be 
 likely to exercise the same for some time to come. 
 Are they any more like our modern poetic forms 
 than they are like our modern poetic matter? Ay, 
 even in our own time, what has been the form, 
 what the temper, of all poetrj', from Korner and 
 Heine, which 'has made the German heart leap up, 
 but simplicity, manhood, clearness, finished melody, 
 the very opposite, in a word, of our new school ? 
 And to look at home, what is the modern poetry 
 which lives on the lips and in the hearts of Eng- 
 lishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen. It is not only simple 
 in form and language, but much of it fitted, by a 
 severe exercise of artistic patience, to times already 
 existing. Who does not remember how the Mar- 
 seillaise was born, or how Burn's Scots, wha ha'e 
 wi Wallace bled, or the story of Moore's taking 
 the old Red Fox March and giving it new im- 
 mortality, as Let Erin remember the days of old, 
 while poor Emmet sprang up and cried, " Oh, that 
 I had twenty thousand Irishmen marching to that 
 
i6o LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 tune 1 " So it is, even to this day, and let those 
 who hanker after poetic fame take note of it; net 
 a poem which is now really living, but has gained 
 its immortality by virtue of simplicity and positive 
 faith. 
 
 CXL. 
 
 • 
 
 Let the poets of the new school consider care- 
 fully Wolfe's Sir John Moore, Campbell's Hohen- 
 linden. Mariners of England, and Rule, Britannia^ 
 Hood's Song of the Shirt and Bridge of Sighs, and 
 then ask themselves, as men who would be poets, 
 were it not better to have written any one of 
 those glorious lyrics than all which John Keats 
 has left behind him ; and let them be sure that 
 howsoever they may answer the question to them- 
 selves, the sound heart of the English people has 
 already made its choice; and that when that 
 beautiful Hero and Leander in which Hood has 
 outrivalled the conceit-mongers at their own weapons 
 by virtue of that very terseness, clearness, and 
 manliness, which they neglect, has been gathered 
 to the limbo of the Crashawes and Marinos ; his 
 Song of the Shirt and his Bridge of Sighs will be 
 esteemed by great new English nations, far beyond 
 the seas, for what they are — two of the most 
 noble lyric poems ever written by an English pen. 
 
POETRY. i6i 
 
 CXLI. 
 
 The poet, I suppose, must be a seer as long 
 as he is a worker, and a seer only. He has no 
 time to philosophize — to "think about thinking," 
 as Goethe, I have somewhere read, says that he 
 never could do. It is too often only in sickness, 
 and prostration, and sheer despair, that the fierce 
 voracity and swift digestion of his soul can cease, 
 and give him time to know himself and God's 
 dealings with him ; and for that reason it is good 
 for him, too, to have been afflicted. 
 
 CXLII. 
 
 Why is it that the latest poet has generally the 
 greatest influence over the minds of the young? 
 Surely not for the mere charm of novelty? 
 
 The reason is that the poet himself, living amid 
 the same hopes, the same temptations, the same 
 sphere of observation as they, gives utterance 
 and outward form to the very questions which, 
 vague and wordless, have been exercising their 
 hearts. 
 
 CXLIIL 
 
 All great poets are by their office democrats; 
 
i62 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 seers of man only as man; singers of the jo3's, ihe 
 sorrows, the aspirations common to all humanity ; but 
 in Alfred Tennyson there is an element especially 
 democratic, truly levelling ; not his political opinions, 
 about which I know nothing and caie less, but 
 his handling of the trivial every-day sights and 
 sounds of nature. Brought up, as I understand, 
 in a part of England which possesses not much 
 of the picturesque, and nothing of that which the 
 vulgar call sublime, he has learnt to see that in 
 all nature, in the hedgerow and the sandbank, as 
 well as in tlie Alp peak and the ocean waste, is 
 a world of true sublimity — a minute infinite — an 
 ever-fertile garden of poetic images, the roots of 
 which are in the unfathomable and the eternal, as 
 truly as any plienomenon which astonishes and 
 awes the eye. The descriptions of the desolate pools 
 and creeks where the dying swan floated, the tint of 
 the silvery marsh morasses by Mariana's moat, came 
 to me like revelations. I always knew there was 
 something beautiful, wonderful, sublime, in those 
 flowery dykes of Battersea fields; in the long, 
 gravelly sweeps of that lone tidal shore ; and here 
 was a man who put them into words for me. 
 And surely all the age is tending in that direction ; 
 in Landseer and his dogs, in Fielding and his 
 downs, with a host of noble fellow-artists — and in 
 all authors who have really seized the nation's mind. 
 
POETRY. 163 
 
 from Crabbe and Burns and Wordsworth, to Hood 
 and Dickens, the great tide sets ever onward, out- 
 ward, towards that which is common to the many, 
 not that which is exclusive to the few — towards the 
 likeness of Him who causes his rain to fall on 
 the just and the unjust, and his sun to shine on 
 the evil and the good; who knoweth the cattle upon 
 a thousand hills, and all the beasts of the field are 
 in his sight. 
 
 CXLIV. 
 
 " Ech ! " said Sandy Mackaye, " owre young to 
 marry, is owre young to write ; but it's the way 
 o' these puir distractit times. Nae chick can find 
 a grain o' corn, but oot he rins cackling wi' the 
 shell on his head, to tell it to a' the warld, as if 
 there was never barley grown on the face o' the 
 earth before. I wonder whether Isaiah began to 
 write before his beard was grown, or Dawvid 
 either. He had mony a long year o' shepherding, 
 an' moss-trooping, an' rugging, an' riving i' the 
 wilderness, I'll warrant, afore he got thae gran' 
 lyrics o' his oot o' him. Ye might tak example 
 too, gin ye were minded, by Moses, the man o' 
 God, that was joost forty years at the learning 
 o' the Egyptians, afore he thocht gude to come 
 forward into public life, an' then fun' to his gran' 
 
1 64 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 surprise, I warrant, that he'd begun forty years too 
 sune — an' then had forty years mair, after that, 
 o' marching, an' law-giving, an' bearing the burdens 
 o' the people, before he turned poet." 
 
 "Poet, sir!" exclaimed Alton Locke, "I never 
 saw Moses in that light before." 
 
 " Then ye'll just read the ninetieth Psalm — ' The 
 prayer o' Moses, the man o' God ' — the grandest 
 piece o' lyric, to my taste, that I ever heard o' 
 on the face o' God's earth, an' see what a man 
 can write that'll have the patience to wait a 
 century or twa before he rins to the publishers. 
 I gie ye up fra' this moment; the letting out o' 
 ink is like the letting out o' waters, or the 
 eating o' opium, or the getting up at public 
 meetings — when a man begins he canna stop. 
 There's nae mair enslaving lust o' the flesh under 
 the heaven than that same furor scrihendi, as the 
 Latins hae it." 
 
 CXLV. 
 
 Perhaps the only way to write songs is to let 
 some air get possession of one's whole soul, and 
 gradually inspire the words for itself. Just as 
 the old Hebrew prophets had music played be- 
 fore them to wake up the true prophetic spirit within 
 them. 
 
POETRY. 165 
 
 CXLVI. 
 
 A poet, especially one who wishes to be not 
 merely a describer of pretty things, but a "Vater" 
 and seer of new truth, must often say things which 
 other people do not like to say, and do things 
 which others do not like to do. And, moreover, he 
 will be generally gifted, for the very purpose of enab- 
 ling him to say and do these strange things, with 
 a sensibility more delicate than common, often pain- 
 ful enough to himself. How easy for such a man 
 to think that he has a right not to be as other 
 men are; to despise little conventionalities, courte- 
 sies, even decencies ; to offend boldly and care- 
 lessly, conscious that he has something right and 
 valuable within himself, which not only atones for 
 such defects, but allows him to indulge in them, 
 as badges of his own superiority ? 
 
 This has been the notion of artistic genius which 
 has spread among us of late years, just in propor- 
 tion as the real amount of artistic genius has dimin- 
 ished ; till we see men, on the mere ground of being 
 literary men, too refined to keep accounts or pay 
 their butchers' bills ; affecting the pettiest absurdi- 
 ties in dress, in manner, in food ; giving themselves 
 credit for being unable to bear a noise, keep their 
 temper, educate their own children, associate with 
 their fellow-men ; and a thousand other paltry weak- 
 
i66 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 nesses, morosenesses, self-indulgences, fastidiousnesses, 
 vulgarities — for all this is essentially vulgar, and 
 demands not honor and sympathy, but a chapter 
 in Mr. Thackeray's Book of Snobs. Non sic itur ad 
 astia. Self-indulgence and exclusiveness can only be 
 a proof of weakness. It may accompany talent, but 
 it proves that talent to be partial and defective. 
 The brain may be large, but the manhood, the 
 " virtus " is small, where such things are allowed, 
 much more where they are gloried in. A poet such 
 a man may be, but a world-poet never. 
 
 CXLVII. 
 
 If a poet has to offend the prejudices of the 
 world in important things, that is all the more rea- 
 son for his bowing to those prejudices in little 
 things, and being content to be like his neighbors 
 in outward matters in order that he may make 
 them like himself in inward ones. Shall such a 
 man dare to hinder his own message, to drive away 
 the very hearers to whom he believes himself to be 
 sent, for the sake of his own nerves, laziness, an- 
 tipathies, much more of his own vanity and pride ? 
 If he does so, he is unfaithful to that very genius 
 on which he prides himself. He denies its divinity 
 by treating it as his own possession, to be displayed 
 or hidden as he chooses, for his own enjoyment. 
 
POETRY. 167 
 
 his own self-glorification. Well for such a man if 
 a day comes to him in which he will look back 
 with shame and self-reproach, not merely on every 
 scandal which he may have caused by breaking the 
 moral and social laws of humanity ; by neglecting 
 to restrain his appetites, pay his bills, and keep his 
 engagements; but also on every conceited word and 
 look, every gaucherie and rudeness, every self- 
 indulgent moroseness and fastidiousness, as sins 
 against the sacred charge which has been committed 
 to him ; and determines, with that Jew of old, who, 
 to judge from his letter to Philemon, was one of 
 the most perfect gentlemen of God's making who 
 ever walked this earth, to become "all things to all 
 men. If by any means he may save some." 
 
 CXLVIII. 
 
 " You a poet ! " said Sandy to Alton ; " true poetry, 
 like true charity, my laddie, begins at hame. If 
 ye'll be a poet at a', ye maun be a cockney poet ; 
 and while the cockneys be what they be, ye maun 
 wrile, like Jeremiah of old, o' lamentation, and mourn- 
 ing, and woe, for the sins o' your people. Gin ye 
 want to learn the spirit o' a people's poet, down 
 wi' your Bible and read thae auld Hebrew prophets : 
 gin ye wad learn the style, read your Burns frae 
 morni ij till night ; and gin ye'd learn the matter. 
 
1 68 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 just gang after your nose, and keep your eyes 
 open, and ye'U no miss it." 
 
 " But all this is so — so unpoetical." 
 " Hech ! Is there no' the heeven above them 
 there, and the hell beneath them ? and God frown- 
 ing, and the deevil grinning ? No poetry there. Is 
 no' the verra idea of the classic tragedy defined to 
 be man conquered by circumstance? Canna ye see 
 it there ? And the verra idea of the modern trag- 
 edy, man conquering circumstance? — and I'll show 
 ye that, too — in mony a garret where no eye but 
 the gude God's enters, to see the patience, and the 
 self-sacrifice, and the love stronger than death, that's 
 shining in thae dark places o' the earth. Come wi' 
 me, and see." 
 
 CXLIX. 
 
 Why is it that so few of our modern songs are 
 truly songful, and fit to be set to music ? Is it 
 not that the writers of them — persons often of 
 much taste and poetic imagination — have gone for 
 their inspiration to the intellect, rather than to the 
 ear? That (as Shelley does by the skylark, and 
 Wordsworth by the cuckoo), instead of trying to 
 sing like the birds, they only think and talk about 
 the birds, and therefore, however beautiful and true 
 the thoughts and words may be, they are not song? 
 
EDUCATION. 169 
 
 Surely they have not, like the mediaeval songsters, 
 studied the speech of the birds, the primeval teachers 
 of melody; nor even melodies already extant, round 
 which, as round a framework of pure music, their 
 thoughts and images might crystallize themselves, 
 certain thereby of becoming musical likewise. The 
 best modern song writers, Burns and Moore, were 
 inspired by their old national airs; and' followed 
 them, Moore at least, with a reverent fidelity which 
 has had its full reward. They wrote words to 
 music; and not as modern poets are wont, wrote 
 the words first, and left others to set music to the 
 words. They were right; and we are wrong. As 
 long as song is to be the expression of pure emo- 
 tion, so long it must take its key from music — 
 which is already pure emotion, untranslated into the 
 grosser medium of thought and speech — often (as 
 in the case of Mendelssohn's songs without words) 
 not to be translated into it at all. 
 
 And so it may be, that in some simpler age, 
 poets may go back, like the old Minnesingers, to 
 the birds of the forest, and learn of them to sing. 
 
 CL. 
 
 It is by pictures and music, by art, and song, 
 and symbollic representations, that all nations have 
 been educated in their adolescence ; and as the 
 
I70 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 youth of the individual is exactly analogous to the 
 youth of the collective race, we should employ the 
 same means of instruction with our children which 
 succeeded in the early ages with the whole world. 
 
 CLI. 
 
 "And pray, Mr. Smith," said Lord Vieuxbois, 
 "may I ask what limit you would put to educa- 
 tion ? " 
 
 " The capacities of each man," said Lancelot. 
 " If a man living in civilized society has one right 
 which he can demand, it is this : that the State 
 which exists by his labor shall enable him to de- 
 velop, or, at least,, not hinder developing his whole 
 faculties to their very utmost, however lofty that 
 may be. While a man who might be an author, 
 remains a spade-drudge, or a journeyman, while he 
 has capacities for a master ; while any man able 
 to rise in life remains by social circumstances lower 
 than he is willing to place himself, that man has 
 a right to complain of the State's injustice and 
 neglect." 
 
 CLII. 
 
 Art, poetry, music, science, — ay, even those 
 athletic and graceful exercises on which we all pride 
 
EDUCATION. 171 
 
 ourselves, which we consider necessary to soften artd 
 refine ourselves, — has God given us a monopoly of 
 them? What is good for the rich man is good for 
 the poor. Over-education? And what of that? 
 What if the poor be raised above "their station?" 
 What right have we to keep them down? How 
 long have they been our born thralls in soul as 
 well as in body ! What right have we to say that 
 they shall know no higher recreation than the hogs, 
 because, forsooth, if we raised them, they might 
 refuse to work for us ? Are we to fix how far their 
 minds may be developed ? Has not God fixed it 
 for us when he gave them the same passions, 
 talents, tastes, as our own? 
 
 CLIII. 
 
 Argemone was beginning to find out that when 
 people are really in earnest, it may be better, 
 sometimes, to leave God's methods of educating 
 them alone, instead of calling the poor, honest 
 seekers hard names, which the speakers themselves 
 don't . understand. 
 
 CLIV. 
 
 Here and there a Thomas Cooper, sitting in 
 Stafford gaol, after a youth spent in cobbling shoes, 
 
172 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 vents his treasures of classic and historic learning 
 in a Purgatory of Suicides, or a Prince becomes 
 the poet of the poor, no less for having fed his 
 boyish fancy with the Arabian Nights, and the Pil- 
 grim's Progress. But, with the most of us, seden- 
 tary and monotonous occupations, as has long been 
 known, create of themselves a morbidly meditative 
 and fantastic turn of mind. And what else, in 
 Heaven's name, ye fine gentlemen, what else can 
 a working man do with his imagination, but dream ? 
 What else will you let him do with it, oh, ye 
 education-pedants, who fancy that you can teach 
 the masses as you would drill soldiers, every soul 
 alike, though you will not bestir yourselves to do 
 even that? Are there no differences of rank — 
 God's rank, not man's — among them? You have 
 discovered, since your schoolboy days, the fallacy 
 of the old nomenclature, which civilly classed them 
 all together as " the snobs," " the blackguards," 
 which even — so strong is habit — tempted Burke 
 himself to talk of them as "the swinish multitude." 
 You are finding yourself wrong there. A few more 
 years' experience, not in mis-educating the. poor, 
 but in watching the poor really educate themselves, 
 may teach you that they are not all, by nature, 
 dolts and idiots; that there are differences of brain 
 among them, just as great as there is between you ; 
 that there are those among them whose education 
 
EDUCATION. 173 
 
 ought not to end, and will nofend, with the putting off 
 of the parish cap and breeches ; whom it is cruelty as 
 well as folly to toss back into the hell of mere manual 
 drudgery as soon as you have — if indeed you have 
 been even so bountiful as that — excited in them 
 a new thirst of the intellect and imagination. If 
 you provide that craving with no wholesome food, 
 you at least have no right to blame it if it shall 
 gorge itself with poison. 
 
 CLV. 
 
 Imagination is a valuable thing. And, even if it 
 were not, it is a thing, a real thing, a faculty which 
 every one has, and with which you must do some- 
 thing. You cannot ignore it. It will assert its own 
 existence. You will be wise not to neglect it in 
 young children ; for if you do not provide whole- 
 some food for it, it will find unwholesome food 
 for itself. I know that many, especially men of 
 business, are inclined to sneer at it, and ask what 
 is the use of it ? The simple answer is : God has 
 made it ; and he has made nothing in vain. But 
 you will find that in practice, in action, in business, 
 imagination is a most useful faculty, and is so much 
 mental capital, whensoever it is properly trained. 
 Consider but this one thing, that without imagination 
 no man can possibly invent even the pettiest object ; 
 
174 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 that it is one of the faculties which essentially raises 
 man above the brutes by enabling him to create 
 for himself; that the first savage who ever made 
 a hatchet must have imagined that hatchet to him- 
 self ere he began it; that every new article of 
 commerce, every new opening for trade, must be 
 arrived at by acts of imagination ; by the very same 
 faculty which the poet or the painter employs, only 
 on a different class of objects. Remember that this 
 faculty is present in some strength in every mind of 
 any power; in every mind which can do more than. 
 follow helplessly in the beaten track and do nothing 
 but what it has seen others do already. And then 
 see whether it be not worth while to give the young 
 some study which is fitted to keep this important and 
 universal faculty in health. Now, from fifty to five-and- 
 twenty years ago, under the influence of the Franklin 
 and Edgeworth school of education, imagination was 
 at a discount. That school was a good school enough ; 
 but here was one of its faults. It taught peoj.le 
 to look on imagination as quite a useless, dangerous, 
 impractical, bad thing ; a sort of mental disease. 
 And now, as is usual after an unfair depreciation of any 
 thing, has come a revolution ; and an equally unfair 
 glorifying of the imagination. The present generation 
 have found out suddenly that the despised faculty is 
 worth something, and therefore are ready to believe 
 it worth every thing ; so that nowadays to judge 
 
EDUCATION. 17s 
 
 from the praise heaped on some poets, the mere 
 possession of imagination, however ill-regulated, will 
 atone for every error of false taste, bad English, 
 carelessness for truth, and even for coarseness, blas- 
 phemy, and want of common morality; and it is 
 no longer charity, but fancy, which is to cover the 
 multitude of sins. 
 
 The fact is, that youth will always be the period 
 of imagination ; and the business of a good educa- 
 tion will always be to prevent that imagination from 
 being thrown inward, and producing a mental fever, 
 diseasing itself and the whole character, by feeding 
 on its own fancies, its own day-dreams, its own 
 morbid feelings, its likes and dislikes ; even if it 
 do take at last to viler food, to French novels, and 
 lawless thoughts which are but too common, alas ! 
 though we will not speak of them here. 
 
 To turn the imagination not inwards, but out- 
 wards ; to give it a class of objects which may 
 excite wonder, reverence, the love of novelty, and 
 of discovering, without heating the brain or exciting 
 the passions — this is one of the great problems of 
 education ; and I believe from experience that the study 
 of natural history supplies in great part what we want. 
 
 CLVI. 
 
 " I thought," said Alton, " that the clergy of Eng- 
 
175 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 land were doing much to educate the poor. At least, 
 I hear all the dissenting ministers grumbling at their 
 continual interference." 
 
 " Ay ! " answered Crossthwaite, " educating them 
 to make them slaves and bigots. They don't teach 
 them what they teach their own sons. Look at the 
 miserable smattering of general information — just 
 enough to serve as sauce for their great first and 
 last lesson of, ' Obey the powers that be ' — what- 
 ever they be ; leave us alone in our comforts ; do, 
 like good boys, for it is God's will. And then, 
 if a boy does show talent in school, do they help 
 him up in life ? Not they ; when he has just learnt 
 enough to whet his appetite for more, they turn him 
 adrift again, to sink and drudge, — to do his duty, 
 as they call it, in that state of life to which society 
 and the devil have called him." 
 
 "But there are innumerable stories of great Eng- 
 lishmen who have risen from the lowest ranks." 
 
 " Ay ; but where are the stories of those who have 
 not risen — of all the noble geniuses who have 
 ended in desperation, drunkenness, starvation, sui- 
 cide, because no one would take the trouble of 
 lifting them up, and enabling them to walk in the 
 path which nature had marked out for ihem ? 'Dead 
 men tell no talcs ; and this old whited sepulchre 
 society ain't going to turn informer against itself." 
 
 " I trust and hope," said Alton sadly, " that if 
 
EDUCATION. 177 
 
 God intends me to rise he will open the way for 
 me ; perhaps the very struggles and sorrows of a 
 poor genius may teach him more than ever wealth 
 and prosperity could." 
 
 " True, Alton, my boy ! and that's my only com- 
 fort. It does make men of us, this bitter battle of 
 life. We working men, when we do come out of 
 the furnace, come out, not tinsel and papier-mach^, 
 like those fops of red-tape statesmen, but steel and 
 granite, Alton, my boy — that has been seven times 
 tried in the fire ; and woe to the papier-mach^ gen- 
 tleman that runs against us ! But," he went on 
 sadly, "for one who comes safe through the fur- 
 nace there are a hundred who crack in the burning. 
 You are a young bear, my lad, with all your sor- 
 rows before you ; and you'll find that a working- 
 man's training is like the Red Indian children's. 
 The few who are strong enough to stand it grow 
 up warriors ; but all those who are not fire-and- 
 water-proof by nature — just die, Alton, my lad, and 
 the tribe thinks itself well rid of them," 
 
 CLVII. 
 
 "Desultory reading," said old Sandy Mackaye, 
 "is the bane o' lads. Ye maun begin with self- 
 restraint and method, my man, gin ye intend to 
 gie yoursel' a liberal education. So I'll just mak' 
 
178 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 you a present of an auld Latin grammar, and ye 
 maun begin where your betters ha' begun before you." 
 
 "But who will teach me Latin?" asked Alton. 
 
 " Hoot ! man ! who'll teach a man any thing 
 except himsel'? It's only gentlefolks and puir 
 aristocrat bodies that go to be spoilt wi' tutors 
 and pedagogues, cramming and loading them wi' 
 knowledge, as ye'd load a gun, to shoot it all 
 out again, just it went down, in a college exami- 
 nation, and forget all aboot it after." 
 
 " Ah ! " sighed Alton, " Could I have gone to college ! " 
 
 " What for, then ? My father was a Hieland 
 farmer, and yet he was a weel-learned man; and 
 ' Sandy, my lad,' he used to say, ' a man kens 
 just as much as he's taught himsel', and na raair. 
 So get wisdom ; and wi' all your getting, get under- 
 standing.' And so I did. And mony's the Greek 
 exercise I've written in the cowbyres, and mony's 
 the page o' Virgil, too, I've turned into good 
 Dawrie Scotch to ane that's dead and gane, poor 
 hizzie, sitting under the same plaid, with the 
 sheep feeding round us, up among the hills, look- 
 ing out ower the broad blue sea, and the wee 
 haven wi' the fishing-cobles." 
 
 CLVIIi; 
 
 Young men of the upper classes, to whom 
 
EDUCATION. 179 
 
 study — pursue it as intensely as you will — is 
 but tiie business of the day, and every spare 
 moment relaxation ; little you guess the frightful 
 drudgery undergone by a man of the people who 
 has vowed to educate himself — to live at once 
 two lives, each as severe as the whole of yours — 
 to bring to the self-imposed toil of intellectual 
 improvement, a body and brain already worn out 
 by a day of toilsome manual labor. 
 
 CLIX. 
 
 It does sour and madden a working-man to be 
 called presumptuous and ambitious, for the very 
 same aspirations which are lauded up to the skies 
 in the sons of the rich — unless, indeed, he will 
 do one little thing, and so make his peace with 
 society. If he will desert his own class ; if he 
 will try to become a sham gentleman, a parasite, 
 and, if he can, a mammonite, the world will 
 compliment him on his noble desire to rise in life. 
 He will have won his spurs, and be admitted 
 into that exclusive pale of knighthood, beyond 
 which it is- a sin to carry arms even in self 
 defence. But if the working- genius dares to be 
 true to his own class — to stay among them — to 
 regenerate them — to defend them — to devote his 
 talents to those among whom God placed him and 
 
i8o LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 brought him up — then he is the demagogue, the 
 incendiary, the fanatic, the dreamer. So you would 
 have the monopoly of talent, too, exclusive world- 
 lings? And yet you pretend to believe in the 
 miracle of Pentecost, and the religion that was 
 taught by the carpenter's son, and preached across 
 the world by fishermen! 
 
 CLX. 
 
 If gentlemen's sons are willing to make them- 
 selves, as they easily can, the best educated, the 
 most trustworthy, the most virtuous, the most truly 
 liberal-minded class of the commonwealth ; if ihcy 
 will set themselves to study the duties of rank and 
 property, as of a profession to which they are 
 called by God, and the requirements of which 
 they must fulfil; if they will acquire, as they can 
 easily, a sound knowledge both of political economy, 
 and of the social questions of the day; if they 
 will be foremost with their personal influence in 
 all good works; if they will set themselves to 
 compete on equal terms with the classes below 
 them, and as they may, outrival them : then they 
 will find that those classes will receive them not 
 altogether on equal terms ; that they will accede to 
 them a superiority, undefined, perhaps, but real and 
 practical enough to conserve their class and their 
 
RICH AND POOR. i8i 
 
 rank, in every article for wliich a just and pru- 
 dent man would wish. 
 
 CLXI. 
 
 So long as the great mass of the poor of any 
 city know nothing of the great mass of the rich of 
 that city, save as folk who roll past them in their 
 carriages, seemingly easy while they are struggling, 
 seemingly happy while they are wretched, so long will 
 the rich of that city be supposed, however falsely, 
 to be what the French workman used to call 
 mangerus d'hommes — exploiteurs d'hommes — to get 
 their wealth by means of the poverty, their comfort 
 by means of the misery of their fellowmen ; and 
 so long will they be exposed to that mere envy 
 and hatred which pursues always the more prosper- 
 ous, till, in some national crisis, when the rich 
 and poor meet together, both parties will be but too 
 apt to behave, through mutual fear and hate, as if 
 not God, but the devil, was the maker of them all. 
 
 CLXII. 
 
 Weep, weep, weep and weep, 
 For pauper, dolt, and slave ! 
 Hark ! from wasted moor and fen, 
 Feverous alley, workhouse den, 
 
i82 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Swells the wail of Saxon men — 
 Work ! or the grave ! 
 
 Down, down, down and down 
 With idler, knave, and tyrant! 
 Why, for sluggards, cark and moil? 
 He that will not live by toil 
 Has no right on English soil! 
 God's word our warrant! 
 
 Up, up, up and up! 
 Face your game and play it ! 
 The night is past, behold the sun ! 
 The idols fall, the lie is done — 
 The Judge is set, the doom begun! 
 Who shall stay it? 
 
 CLxni. 
 
 " My business," said the artist to Lancelot, 
 "is to represent the beautiful, and therefore to 
 accept it wherever I find it. Yours is to be a 
 philosopher, and find the true." 
 
 "But the beautiful must be truly beautiful to be 
 worth any thing; and you must search for the 
 true." 
 
 "Yes ; truth of form, color, chiar-oscuro. They 
 are worthy to occupy me a life; for they are 
 
BEAUTY. 183 
 
 eternal — or at least that which they express — and 
 if I am to get at the symbolized unseen, it must 
 be through the beauty of the symbolizing phe- 
 nomenon." 
 
 CLXIV. 
 
 Do not despise your love for the beautiful : 
 cherish it, develop it to the last; steep your 
 whole soul in beauty; watch it in its most vast 
 and complex harmonies, and not less in its most 
 faint and fragmentary traces. Learn to compre- 
 hend, to master, to embody it; to show it forth to 
 men as the sacrament of heaven, the finger-mark 
 of God. 
 
 CLXV. 
 
 You see a flower growing, not in a garden, but 
 wild in a field or wood. You admire its beautiful 
 colors, or, if it is fragrant, its sweet scent. Now, 
 why was that flower put there? You may answer, 
 " to please me." My dear friends, I should be 
 the last person to deny that. I can never see 
 a child picking a nosegay, much less a little 
 London child, born and bred and shut up among 
 bricks and mortar, when it gets for the first time 
 into a green field, and throws itself instinctively 
 upon the buttercups and daisies, as if they were 
 
1 84 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 precious jewels and gold ; — I never can see that 
 sight, I say, without feeling that there are such 
 things as final causes — I mean that the great 
 Father in heaven put those flowers into that field 
 on purpose to give pleasure to his human children. 
 But then comes the question : Of all the flowers in 
 a single field, is one in ten thousand ever looked 
 at by child or by men ? And yet they are just 
 as beautiful as the rest; and God has, so to speak, 
 taken just as much pains with the many beautiful 
 things which men will never see, as with the few, 
 very few, which men may see. And when one 
 thinks further about this — when one thinks of the 
 vast forests in other lands, which the foot of man 
 has seldom or never trod, and which, when they are 
 entered, are found to be full of trees, flowers, birds, 
 butterflies, so beautiful and glorious, that any thing 
 which we see in England is poor and plain in 
 comparison with them ; and when we remember that 
 these beautiful creatures have been going on gen- 
 eration after generation, age after age, unseen and 
 unenjoyed by any human eyes, one must ask : 
 Why has God been creating all that beauty ? 
 simply to let it all, as it were, run to waste, till 
 after thousands of years one traveller comes, and 
 has a hasty glimpse of it? Impossible! Or, again — 
 and this is an example still more strange, and yet 
 it is true. We used to think till within a very 
 
BEAUTY. i8s 
 
 few years past, that at the bottom of the deep sea 
 there were no living things — that miles below the 
 surface of the ocean, in total darkness, and under 
 such a weight of water as would crush us to a 
 jelly, there could be nothing, except stones, and 
 sand, and niud. But now it is found out that the 
 bottom of the deepest seas, and the utter dark- 
 ness into which no ray of light can ever pierce, 
 are alive and swarming with millions of creatures, 
 as cunningly and exquisitely formed, as those which 
 live in the sunlight along the shallow shores. 
 
 Surely, beautiful things were made to be seen by 
 some one, else why were they made beautiful? 
 Common sense tells us that. But who has seen 
 those countless tribes, which have been living down in 
 utter darkness, since the making of the world ? Com- 
 mon sense, I think, can give but one answer — God! 
 
 But more — God has not only made things beauti- 
 ful ; he has made things happy ; whatever misery 
 there may be in the world, there is no denying 
 that. However sorrow may have come into the 
 world, there is a great deal more happiness than 
 misery in it. Misery is the exception ; happiness 
 is the rule. No rational man ever heard a bird 
 sing, without feeling that the bird was happy; and, 
 if so, his common sense ought to tell him that if 
 God made that bird, he made it to be happy ; 
 he intended it to be happy, and he takes pleasure 
 
iSfi LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 in its happiness, though no human ear should 
 ever hear its song, no human heart should ever 
 share in its joy. Yes, the world was not made for 
 man ; but man, like all the world, was made for 
 God. Not for man's pleasure, merely, not for man's 
 use, but for God's pleasure all things are, and for 
 God's pleasure they were created. 
 
 CLXVI. 
 
 It has been said, and truly, I believe, that 
 children cannot be brought up among beautiful 
 pictures — I believe even among any beautiful sights 
 and sounds, without the very expression of their 
 faces becoming more beautiful, purer, gentler, nobler; 
 so that in them are fulfilled the words of the 
 great and holy poet concerning the maiden, brought 
 up according to God and the laws of God — 
 
 " And she shall bend her ear 
 
 In many a secret place. 
 Where rivulets danced their wayward round, 
 And beauty, born of murmuring sound, 
 
 Shall pass into her face." 
 
 CLXVII, 
 Consider, you who have had experience of life, 
 
EXAMPLE. 187 
 
 the harm you have known One bad man do, the 
 sorrow he will cause, even to people who never 
 saw him ; and the good which you have seen 
 one good man, not merely do with his own hands, 
 but put into other people's hearts by his example. 
 Is not both the good and the harm which is done 
 on earth like the ripple of a stone dropped into 
 water, which spreads and spreads for a vast 
 distance round, however small the stone may be ? 
 Indeed, bold as it may seem to say it, I believe 
 that if we could behold all hearts as the Lord 
 Jesus does, we should find that there never was a 
 good man but that the whole of Christendom, 
 perhaps all mankind, was sooner or later, more or 
 less, the better for him; and that there never was 
 a bad man but that all Christendom, perhaps all 
 mankind, was the worse for him. So fully and 
 really true it is in every-day practice, that we are 
 members one of another. 
 
 CLXVIII. 
 
 Do we not all know how apt we are to 
 become like those whom we see, with whom we 
 spend our hours — and above all, like those whom 
 we admire and honor? For good and for evil, 
 alas ! For evil — for those who associate with evil 
 or frivolous persons are too apt to catch not only 
 
1 88 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 their low tone, but their very manner, their very 
 expression of face, speaking, and thinking, and 
 acting. Not on]y do they become scornful, if they 
 live with scorners ; false, if they live with liars ; 
 mean, if they live with covetous men ; but they 
 will actually catch the very look of their faces. 
 The companions of affected, frivolous people, men 
 or women, grow to look affected and frivolous. 
 Indulging in the same passions, they mould their 
 own countenances and their very walk, also the 
 very tones of their voice as well as their dress, 
 into the likeness of those with whom they associate, 
 nay, of those whose fashions (as they are called) 
 they know merely by books and pictures. 
 
 But thank God, who has put into the hearts 
 of Christian people the tendency towards God — just 
 in the same way does good company tend to make 
 men good ; high-minded company to make them 
 high-minded; kindly company to make them kindly; 
 modest company to make them modest; honorable 
 company to make them honorable ; and pure com- 
 pany to make them pure. If the young man or 
 woman live with such, look up to such as their 
 ideal, that is, the pattern which they ought to 
 emulate — then as a fact, the Spirit of God work- 
 ing in them does mould them into something 
 of the likeness of those whom they admire and 
 love. 
 
CIVILIZATION. 189 
 
 CLXIX. 
 
 The vices of incivilization are far worse, and 
 far more destructive of human life than the vices 
 of civilization ; and it is just because they are so, 
 that rude tribes deteriorate physically less than 
 polished nations. In the savage struggle for life 
 none but the strongest, healthiest, cunningest, have 
 a chance of living, prospering, and propagating their 
 race. In the civilized state, on the contrary, the 
 weakliest, and the silliest, protected by law, religion, 
 and humanity, have their chance likewise, and 
 transmit to their offspring their own weakliness 
 or silliness. In the British Islands, for instance, at 
 the time of the Norman Conquest, the average of 
 man was doubtless superior, both in body and 
 mind, to the average of man now, simply because 
 the weaklings could not have lived at all; and 
 the rich and delicate beauty in which the women 
 of the eastern counties still surpass all other races 
 in these isles, was doubtless far more common in 
 proportion to the numbers of the population. 
 
 One reason why Lowland heroes carent vaie sacro, 
 is that the Lowlands, and those who live in them, 
 are wanting in the poetic and romantic elements. 
 There is in the Lowlands none of that background 
 of the unknown, fantastic, magical, terrible, per- 
 petually feeding curiosity and wonder, which still 
 
I go LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 remains in the Scottish Highlands; and which, 
 when it disappears from thence, will remain forever 
 embalmed in the pages of Walter Scott. Against 
 that half-magical background his heroes stand out 
 in vivid relief; and justly so. It was not put there 
 by him for stage purposes ; it was there as a 
 fact ; and the men of whom he wrote were con- 
 scious of it, were moulded by it, were not ashamed 
 of its influence. For Nature among the mountains 
 is too fierce, too strong for man. He cannot 
 conquer her, and she awes him. He cannot dig 
 down the cliffs, or chain the storm blasts; and 
 his fear of them takes bodily shape ; he begins to 
 people the weird places of the earth with weird 
 beings, and sees nixes in the dark linns as he 
 fishes by night, dwarfs in the caves where he 
 digs, half-trembling, morsels of iron and copper for 
 his weapons, witches and demons on the snow- 
 blast which overwhelms his herd and his hut, 
 and in the dark clouds which brood on the 
 untrodden mountain peak. He lives in fear; and 
 yet, if he be a valiant-hearted man, his fears do 
 him little harm. They may break out, at times, 
 in witch manias, with all their horrible suspicions, 
 and thus breed cruelty, which is the child of 
 fear; but on the whole they rather produce in 
 man thoughtfulness, reverence, a sense, confused 
 yet precious, of the boundless importance of the 
 
CIVILIZATION. 191 
 
 unseen world. His superstitions develop his imag- 
 ination ; the moving accidents of a wild life call 
 out in him sympathy and pathos; and the moun- 
 taineer becomes instinctively a poet. 
 
 The Lowlander, on the other hand, has his own 
 strength, his own "virtues," or manfulnesses, in 
 the good old sense of the word; but they are not 
 for the most part picturesque, or even poetical. 
 
 He finds out soon enough for his weal and his 
 bane, that he is stronger than Nature; and tyran- 
 nously and irreverently he lords it over her, clear- 
 ing, delving, dyking, building, without fear or shame. 
 He knows of no natural force greater than himself, 
 save an occasional thunder-storm ; and against that, 
 as he grows more cunning, he insures his crops. 
 Why should he reverence nature ? Let him use 
 her, and live by her. One cannot blame him. 
 
 Man was sent into the world (so says Scripture) 
 to fill and subdue the earth. But he was sent into 
 the world for other purposes also, which the Low- 
 lander is but too apt to forget. With the awe of 
 Nature, the awe of the unseen dies out in him. 
 Meeting with no visible superior, he is apt to 
 become not merely unpoetical and irreverent, but 
 somewhat of a sensualist and an atheist. The 
 sense of the beautiful dies out in him more and 
 more. He has little or nothing around him to 
 refine or lift up his soiil; and unless he meet 
 
192 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 with a religion, and with a civilization, which can 
 deliver him, he may sink into that dull brutality 
 which is too common among the lowest classes of 
 the English Lowlands, and remain for generations 
 gifted with the strength and industry of the ox, 
 and with the courage of the lion; but, alas! with 
 the intellect of the former, and the self-restraint 
 of the latter. 
 
 CLXX. 
 
 The traveller on the dusty highway fancies that 
 he has seen the country. So he has; the outside 
 of it, at least ; but the angler only sees the 
 inside. The angler only is brought face to face 
 with the flower, and bird, and insect life of the 
 rich river banks, the only part of the landscape 
 where the hand of man has never interfered, and 
 the only part in general which never feels the 
 drought of summer, "the trees planted by the 
 water-side, whose leaf shall not wither." 
 
 Pleasant are those hidden water-ways; but yet 
 are they the more pleasant because the hand of 
 man has not interfered with them 1 ■ 
 
 It is a question, and one which the older one 
 grows, the less one is inclined to answer in the 
 affirmative. The older one grows the more there 
 grows on one the sense of waste and incompleteness 
 
KNOWLEDGE. 193 
 
 in all scenery where man has not fulfilled the 
 commission of Eden "to dress it and to keep 
 it;" and with that, a sense of loneliness which 
 makes one long for home, and cultivation, and the 
 speech of fellowmen. 
 
 CLXXI. 
 
 The mind of man is not so infinite in the 
 vulgar sense of that word, as people fancy ; and 
 however greedy the appetite for wonder may be, 
 while it remains unsatisfied in every day European 
 life, it is as easily satiated as any other appetite, 
 and then leaves the senses of its possessor as dull 
 as those of a city gourmand after a Lord Mayor's 
 feast. Only the highest minds — our Humboldts, and 
 Bonplards, and Schomburgks (and they only when 
 quickened to an almost unhealthy activity by civili- 
 zation), can go • on long appreciating where Nature 
 is insatiable, imperious, maddening, in her demands 
 on our admiration. The very power of observing 
 wears out under the rush of ever new objects ; 
 and the dizzy spectator is fain at last to shut the 
 eyes of his soul, and take » refuge (as West Indian 
 Spaniards do) in tobacco and stupidity. The man, 
 too, who has not only eyes, but utterance — what 
 shall he do where all words fail him ? Superlatives 
 are but inarticulate, after all, and give no pictures, 
 
194 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 even of size, any more than do numbers of feet 
 and yards ; and yet, what else can we do, but 
 heap superlative on superlative, and ciy, " Wonder- 
 ful, wonderful I and after that wonden'ul, past all 
 whooping?" 
 
 What Humboldt's self cannot paint, we will not 
 try to daub. The voyagers were in a South American 
 forest, readers. Fill up the meaning of those words, 
 each as your knowledge enables you, for I cannot 
 do it for you. Certainly these adventurers could 
 not. The absence of any attempt at word-painting, 
 even of admiration at the glorious things which 
 they saw, is most remarkable in all early yoyagers, 
 both Spanish and English. The only two exceptions 
 which I recollect are Columbus (but then all was 
 new, and he was bound to tell what he had seen) 
 and Raleigh ; the two most gifted men, perhaps, 
 with the exception of Humboldt, who ever set foot 
 in tropical America; but even they dare nothing 
 but a few feeble hints in passing. Their souls 
 had been dazzled and stunned by a great glory. 
 Coming out of Iheir European Nature into that 
 tropic one, they had felt like Plato's men, bred 
 in the twilight cavern, and then suddenly turned 
 round to the broad blaze of day; they had seen 
 things awful and unspeakable ; why talk of them, 
 except to say with the Turks, " God is great ! " 
 
 So it was with these men. Among the higher- 
 
KNOWLEDGE. 195 
 
 hearted of them, the grandeur and the glory 
 around had attuned their spirits to itself, and 
 kept up in them a lofty, heroical, reverent frame 
 of mind ; but they knew as little about the trees 
 and animals in an "artistic," or "critical," point 
 of view, as in a scientific one. This tree the 
 Indians called one unpronounceable name, and it 
 made good bows; that, some other name, and it 
 made good canoes ; of that, you could eat the fruit ; 
 that produced the caoutchouc gum, useful for a 
 hundred matters ; that, was what the Indians (and 
 they likewise) used to poison their arrows with; 
 from the ashes of those palm-nuts you could make 
 good salt; that tree, again, was full of good milk, 
 if you bored the stem ; they drank it, and gave 
 God thanks, and were not astonished. God was 
 great; but that they had discovered long before thpy 
 came into the tropics. Noble old child-hearted 
 heroes, with just romance and superstition enough 
 about them to keep them from that prurient 
 hysterical wonder and enthusiasm, which is simply, 
 one often fears, a product of our scepticism ! We 
 do not trust enough in God; we do not really 
 believe his power enough, to be ready, as they 
 were, as every one ought to be on a God-made 
 earth, for any thing and every thing being possible; 
 and then, when a wonder is discovered, we go into 
 ecstasies and shrieks over it, and take to ourselves 
 
1 96 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 credit for being susceptible of so lofty a feeling, 
 true index, forsooth, of a refined and cultivated 
 mind. 
 
 CLXXII. 
 
 A friend of mine, and one whom I am proud 
 to call my friend, succeeding to an estate, thought 
 good to cultivate it himself. And being a man 
 of common sense, he thought good to know some- 
 thing of what he was doing. And he said to 
 himself, The soil, and the rain, and the air, are 
 my raw materials. I ought surely, then, to find 
 out what soil, and rain, and air are ; so I must 
 become a geologist, and a meteorologist. Vege- 
 table substances are what I am to make. And I 
 ought surely to know what it is that I am 
 making; so I must become a botanist. The raw 
 material does somehow or other become manu- 
 factured into the produce ; the soil into the vegetable. 
 I ought surely to know a little about the processes 
 of my own manufacture ; so I must learn chemistry. 
 Chance and blind custom are not enough for me. 
 At best they can but leave me where they found 
 me, at their mercy. Science I need; and science 
 I will acquire. What was the result ? After many 
 a mistake and disappointment, he succeeded in dis- 
 covering on his own estate a mine of unsuspected 
 
KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 197 
 
 wealth, — not of gold indeed, but of gold's worth, — 
 the elements of human food. He discovered why 
 some parts of his estate were fertile, while others 
 were barren ; and by applying the knowledge thus 
 gained, he converted some of his most barren fields 
 into his most fertile ones ; he preserved again and 
 again his crops from blight, while those of others 
 perished all around him ; he won for himself wealth 
 and the respect and honor of men of science; while 
 those around him, slowly opening their eyes to his 
 improvements, followed his lessons second-hand, till 
 the whole agriculture of an important district has 
 become gradually but permanently improved under 
 the auspices of one patient and brave man, who knew 
 that knowledge was power, and that only by obeying 
 nature can man conquer her. 
 
 CLXXIII. 
 
 Is monotony in itself an evil? Which is better, 
 to know many places ill, or to know one place 
 well ? Certainly — if a scientific habit of mind be 
 a gain — it is only by exhausting as far as possible 
 the significance of an individual phenomenon (is not 
 that sentence a true scientific one in its magnilo- 
 quence ?) that you can discover any glimpse of the 
 significance of the universal. Even men of bound- 
 less knowledge, like Humboldt, must have had once 
 
igS LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 their specialty, their pet subject, or they would have, 
 strictly speaking, no knowledge at all. The volca- 
 noes of Mexico, patiently and laboriously investi- 
 gated in his youth, were to Humboldt, possibly, the 
 key of the whole Cosmos. I learn more, studying 
 over and over again the same Bagshot sand and 
 gravel heaps, than I should by roaming all Europe 
 in search of new geological wonders. 
 
 CLXXIV. 
 
 "How do ye expect," said Sandy, "ever to be 
 happy, or strong, or a man at a', as long as ye 
 go on looking to enjoy yersel — yersel .' Mony was 
 the year I looked for nought but my ain pleasure, 
 and got it too, when it was a' 
 
 " Sandy Mackaye, bonny Sandy Mackaye, 
 
 There he sits singing the lang simmer day; 
 
 Lassies gae to him, 
 
 And kiss him, and woo him, 
 
 Na bird is so merry as Sandy Mackaye." 
 
 An' muckle good cam' o't. Ye may fancy I'm 
 talking like a sour, disappointed auld carle. But I 
 tell ye nay. I've got that's worth living for, though 
 I am down-hearted at times, and fancy a' is wrong, 
 and there's na hope for us on earth, we be a' sic 
 
SELF-SA CRJFICE. 
 
 199 
 
 liars — a' liars, 1 think; 'a universal liars-roek sub- 
 strawtum,' as Mr. Carlyle says. I'm a great liar 
 myself, specially when I'm praying. Do ye think 
 I'd live on here in this meeserable crankit auld bane- 
 barrel o' a body, if it was not for the cause, and for 
 the puir young fellows that come in to me whiles 
 to get some book-learning about the gran' auld 
 Roman times, when folks didna care for themselves, 
 but for the nation, and a man counted wife and 
 bairns and money as dross and dung, in comparison 
 wi' the great Roman city, that was the mither o' 
 them a', and wad last on, free and glorious, after 
 they and their bairns were a' dead thegither? 
 Hoot, man ! If I had na the cause to care for 
 and to work for whether I ever see it triumphant 
 on earth or no — I'd just tak' the cauld-water-cure 
 off Waterloo-bridge, and mak' mysel a case for the 
 Humane Society." 
 
 " And what is the cause ? " asked Alton. 
 
 " Wud I tell ye .' We want no ready-made freens 
 o' the cause. I dinna hauld wi' thae French indoc- 
 trinating pedants that took to stick free opinions 
 into a man as ye'd stick pins into a pincushion, to 
 fa' out again the first shake. Na — the cause must 
 find a man, and tak hauld o' him, willy-nilly, and 
 grow up in him like an inspiration, till he can 
 see nocht but in the light o't. Puir bairn ! " he 
 went on, looking with a half-sad, half-comic face at 
 
20Q ■ LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Alton — "puir bairn — like a young bear, wi' a' your 
 sorrows before ye ! This time seven years ye'll ha' 
 no need to come speering and questioning what the 
 cause is, and the gran' cause, and the only cause 
 worth working for on the earth o' God. And noo 
 gang your gate, and male' fine feathers for foul 
 birds. I'm gaun whar ye'll be ganging too, 
 belong." 
 
 Alton went sadly out of the shop, but Sandy 
 called him back. 
 
 " Stay a wee, bairn ; there's the Roman History 
 for ye. There ye'll read what the cause is, and 
 how they that seek their ain are no worthy 
 thereof." 
 
 Alton took the book, and found in the legends 
 of Brutus, and Codes, and Scaevola, and the 
 retreat to the Mons Sacer, and the Gladiator's war, 
 what the cause was, and forgot awhile in those 
 tales of antique heroism and patriotic self-sacrifice 
 his own longings. 
 
 CLXXV. 
 
 " Deep in the warm vale the village is sleeping, 
 Sleeping the firs on the bleak rock above; 
 
 Nought wakes, save grateful hearts, silently creeping 
 Up to their Lord in the might of their love. 
 
SELF-SACRIFTCE. . 201 
 
 "What thou hast given me, Lord, here I bring thee, 
 Odor, and light, and the magic of gold ; 
 
 Feet which must follow thee, lips which must sing thee. 
 Limbs which must ache for thee ere they grow old." 
 
 CLXXVL 
 
 To be good and to do good, even to long to be 
 good and to long to do good, to hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness, is the best and highest sacrifice 
 which any human being can offer to his Father in 
 heaven. For so he honors his Father most truly ; 
 for he longs and strives to be like that Father; to 
 be good as God is good, holy as God is holy, 
 beneficent and useful, even as God is infinitely 
 beneficent and useful ; being, in one word, perfect, 
 as his Father in heaven is perfect. This is the 
 best and highest act of worship, the truest devo- 
 tion. 
 
 CLXXVIL 
 
 Every time we perform an act of kindness to 
 any human being, aye, even to a dumb animal ; 
 every time we conquer our worldliness, love of 
 pleasure, ease, praise, ambition, money, for the sake 
 of doing what our conscience tells us to be our 
 duty, we are indeed worshipping God the Father in 
 
^o2 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Spirit and in truth, and offering him a sacri- 
 fice which he will surely accept, for the sake of 
 his beloved son, by whose spirit all good deeds 
 and thoughts are inspired. 
 
 CLXXVIII. 
 
 You desire to be glorified with Christ. Remem- 
 ber that true glory can only be attained in earth 
 or heaven through self-sacrifice. Whosoever will 
 save his life shall lose it ; whosoever will lose his 
 life shall save it. If that eternal moral law held 
 good enough for the sinless Christ, who, though 
 he were a son, yet learned obedience by the 
 things which he suffered, how much more must it 
 hold good of you and me and all moral and 
 rational beings — yea! for the very angels in 
 heaven. They have not sinned. That we know ; and 
 we do not know, and I presume cannot know, that 
 they have ever suffered. But this at least we know, 
 that they have submitted. They have obeyed and 
 have given up their wills to be the ministers of 
 God's will. In them is neither self-will nor sel- 
 fishness ; and therefore by faith, that is, by trust 
 and loyalty, they stand. And so, by consenting to 
 lose their individual life of selfishness, they have 
 saved their eternal life in God, the life of bless- 
 edness and holiness; just as all evil spirits have 
 
LIFE. 203 
 
 lost their eternal life by trying to save their selfish 
 life, and be something in themselves without re- 
 spect to God. 
 
 CLXXIX. 
 
 Without self-sacrifice there can be no blessedness, 
 neither in earth nor in heaven. He that loveth 
 his life will lose it. He that hateth his life in 
 this paltry, selfish, luxurious, hypocritical world, shall 
 keep it to life eternal. 
 
 CLXXX. 
 
 What is life that we should make such ado 
 about it, and hug it so closely, and look to it to 
 fill our hearts ? What is all earthly life with all 
 its bad and good luck, its riches and i"s poverty, 
 but a vapor that parses away? — noise and smoke 
 overclouding the enduring light of heaven. A man 
 may be very happy and blest in this life; yet he 
 may feel that, however pleasant it is, at root it is 
 no reality, but only a shadow of realities which 
 are eternal and infinite in the bosom of God, — a 
 piece-meal pattern of the Light Kingdom, — the 
 city not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
 For all this time-world, as a wise man says, is but 
 like an image, beautifully and fearfully emblematic, 
 
204 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 but still only an emblem, like an air image, which 
 plays and flickers in the grand, still mirror of 
 " eternity. Out of nothing, into time and space we 
 all came into noisy day ; and out of time and 
 space into the silent night shall we all return into 
 the spirit world — the everlasting twofold mystery — 
 into the light-world of God's love, or the fire-world 
 of his anger, every like unto its like, and every 
 man to his own place. 
 
 CLXXXI. 
 
 The man who will get most work done, and 
 done with the least trouble whether for himself, 
 for his family, or in the calling and duty to which 
 God has called him, will be the man who takes 
 our Lord's advice. Who takes no thought for the 
 morrow, and leaves the morrow to take thought for 
 itself. That man will believe that this world is a 
 well-ordered world, as it needs must be, seeing 
 that God made it, God redeemed it, God governs 
 it ; and that God is merciful in this — that he 
 rewardeth every man according to his works. That 
 man will take thought for to-day, earnestly and 
 diligently, even at times anxiously and in fear and 
 trembling; but he will not distract, and divide, 
 and weaken his mind by taking thought for to-mor- 
 row also. Each' day he will set about the duty 
 
LIFE. 205 
 
 which lies nearest him, with a whole heart and 
 with a single eye, giving himself to it for the 
 time as if there was nothing else to be done in 
 the world. As for what he is to do next he will 
 think little of that. Little, even, will he think of 
 whether his work will succeed or not. That must 
 be as God shall will. All that he is bound to do 
 is to do his best ; and his best he can only do 
 by throwing his whole soul into his work. As his 
 day, he trusts his strength will be; and he must 
 not waste the strength which God has given him 
 for to-day on vain fears or vain dreams about to- 
 morrow. To-day is quite full enough of anxiety, of 
 care, of toil, of ignorance ; sufficient for the day 
 is the evil thereof. Yes ; and sufficient for the day 
 is the good thereof likewise. To-day, and to-mor- 
 row, too, may end very differently from what he 
 hoped. Yes; but they may end, too, very differ- 
 ently from what he feared. Let him throw- his 
 whole soul into the thing which he is about, and 
 leave the rest to God. 
 
 For so only will he come to the day's end in 
 that wholesome and manful temper, contented, if not 
 cheerful, satisfied with the work he has had to do, 
 if not satisfied with the way in which he has 
 done it, which will leave his mind free to remem- 
 ber all his comforts, all his blessings, even to 
 those commonest of all blessings, which we are 
 
2o6 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 all too apt to forget, just because they are as 
 necessary as the air we breathe ; which will show 
 him how much light there is, even on the darkest 
 day. 
 
 He has not got this or that fine thing, it may 
 be, for which he longed; but he has at least his 
 life, at least his reason, at least his conscience, at 
 least his God. Are not they enough to possess? 
 Are not they enough wherewith to lie down at 
 night in peace, and rise to-morrow to take what 
 comes to-morrow even as he took what came to-day. 
 And will he not be most fit to take what comes 
 to-morrow like a Christian man, whether it be good 
 or evil, with his spirit braced and yet chastened, 
 by honest and patient labor, instead of being 
 weakened and irritated by idling over to-day, while 
 he dreamed and fretted about to-morrow? 
 
 CLXXXII. 
 
 Be good, sweet maid, let those who will be clever; 
 
 Do noble things, not dream them all day long ; 
 And so make life, death, and the vast forever 
 
 One grand, sweet song. 
 
 CLXXXIII. 
 Fret not — lest you lose temper, and be moved 
 
LIFE. 207 
 
 to do evil. Plot not^ — lest you lose faith in God, 
 and be moved to be dishonest. Look not too far 
 ahead — so far only, as to keep yourselves out of 
 open and certain danger — lest you see what is 
 coming before you are ready for the sight. If we 
 foresaw the troubles which may be coming, perhaps 
 it would break our hearts ; and if we foresaw the 
 happiness which is coming, perhaps it would turn 
 our heads. Let us not meddle with the future, and 
 matters which are too high for us, but refrain our 
 souls, and keep them low, like little children, con- 
 tent with the day's food, and the day's schooling, 
 and the day's play-hours, sure that the Divine 
 Master knows that all is right, and knows how 
 to train us, and whither to lead us, though we 
 know not, and need not know, save this — that the 
 path by which he is leading each of us — if we 
 will but obey and follow, step by step — leads up 
 to Everlasting Life. 
 
 CLXXXIV. 
 
 There is but one true, real, and right life for 
 rational beings; one only life worth living, and 
 worth living in this . world, or in any other life, 
 past, present, or to come. And that is < the eternal 
 life which was before all worlds, and will be after 
 all are passed away — and that is neither more nor 
 
2o8 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 less than a good life ; a life of good feelings, good 
 thoughts, good words, good deeds, — the life of Christ 
 and of God. 
 
 CLXXXV. 
 
 Every man, it would seem, brings into the world 
 with him a certain capacity, a certain amount of 
 vital force, in body and in soul; and when that is 
 used up, the man must sink down into some sort 
 of second childhood, and end very much where he 
 began; unless the grace of God shall lift him above 
 the capacity of the mere flesh, into a life literally 
 new, ever-renewing, ever-expanding, and eternal. 
 
 CLXXXVI. 
 
 If you wish to prosper on the earth, let God 
 be in all your thoughts. Remember that the Lord 
 is on your right hand ; and then, and then alone 
 will you not be moved, either to terror or to sin, 
 by any of the chances and changes of this mortal 
 life. "Fret not thyself," says the Psalmist, "else 
 shalt thou be moved to do evil." And the only 
 way not to fret yourselves is to remember that God 
 is your refuge and strength, a very present help in 
 trouble. "He that believeth," saith the Prophet, 
 " shall not make haste " — not hurry himself into 
 
LIFE. 209 
 
 folly and disappointment and shame. Why should 
 you hurry, if you remember that you are in the 
 kingdom of Christ and of God? You cannot hurry 
 God's Providence, if you would; you ought not, if 
 you could. God must know best. God's laws must 
 work at the right pace, and fulfil his will in the 
 right way, and at the right time. 
 
 CLXXXVII. 
 
 People do not see the strange things which pass 
 them every day. " The romance of real life " is 
 only one to the romantic spirit. And then they set 
 up for critics, instead of pupils; as if the artist's 
 business was not just to see what they cannot 
 see — to open their eyes to the harmonies and the 
 discords, the miracles and the absurdities, which 
 seem to them one uniform gray fog of common- 
 places. 
 
 CLXXXVIII. 
 
 Three fishers went sailing out into the west, 
 Out into the west as the sun went down ; 
 
 Each thought of the woman who loved him best, 
 And the children stood watching them out of the 
 town. 
 
 For men must work, and women must weep, 
 
2IO LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 And there's little to earn, and many to keep, 
 Though the harbor bar be moaning 
 
 Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower. 
 
 And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went 
 down ; 
 They looked at the squall, and they looked at the 
 shower, 
 And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and 
 brown. 
 But men must work, and women must weep, 
 Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, 
 And the harbor bar be moaning. 
 
 Three corpses lay out on the shining sands 
 
 In the morning gleam as the tide went down, 
 And the women are weeping and wringing their 
 hands 
 For those who will never come back to the town 
 For men must work, and women must weep. 
 And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep — 
 And good-by to the bar and its moaning. 
 
 CLXXXIX. 
 
 Life is hard work — any life at least which is 
 worth being called life, which is not the life of a 
 swine, who thinks of nothing but feeding himself, 
 
LIFE. 211 
 
 or of a butterfly which thinks of nothing but enjoy- 
 ing itself. Those are easy lives enough ; but the 
 end thereof is death. The swine goes to the 
 slaughter. The butterfly dies of the frost — and 
 there is an end of them. But the manly life, the 
 life of good deeds and noble thoughts, and useful- 
 ness and purity, the life which is discontented with 
 itself, and which, the better it is, longs the more 
 to be better still ; the life which will endure through 
 this world into the world to come, and on and 
 upward forever and forever. That life is not an 
 easy life to live ; it is very often not a pleasant 
 life ; very often a sad life — so sad that that is 
 true of it which the great poet says : 
 
 " Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, 
 Who never in the midnight hours 
 
 Sat weeping on his lonely bed, 
 He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers." 
 
 You may say this is bad news. I do not believe 
 it is. I believe it is good news, and the very best 
 of news ; but if it is bad news, I cannot help it. 
 I did not make it so. God made it so. And God 
 must know best. God is love. And we are his 
 children, and he loves us. And therefore his ways 
 with us must be good and loving ways, and any 
 news about them must be good news, and a 
 
212 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 gospel, though we cannot see it so at first. 
 
 CXC. 
 
 Truly our way to eternal joy is to labor and to 
 suffer here with Christ. It is true, and you will 
 find it true, when years hence you look back 
 on the events of your own lives, — you will find, I 
 say, that the very events in your lives which seemed 
 at the time most trying, most vexing, most disas- 
 trous, have been those which were most necessary 
 for you to call out what was good in you, and to 
 purge out what was bad ; that by those very 
 troubles your Lord, who knows the value of suffer- 
 ing, because he has suffered himself, was making 
 true men and true women of you ; hardening your 
 heads while he softened your hearts; teaching you 
 to obey him, while he taught you not to obey 
 your own fancies and your own passions ; refining 
 and tempering your characters in the furnace of 
 trial, as the smith refines soft iron into trusty steel; 
 teaching you, as the great poet says : 
 
 "That life is not as idle ore, 
 But heated hot with burning fears, 
 And bathed in baths of hissing tears, 
 
 And battered with the strokes of doom, 
 To shape and use." 
 
COURAGE. 213 
 
 CXCI. 
 
 True courage comes by faith. There is a cour- 
 age which does not come by faith. There is a 
 brute courage, which comes from hardness of heart, 
 from stupidity, obstinacy, or anger, which does not 
 see danger, or does not feel pain. That is the 
 courage of the brute. One does not blame it, or 
 call it wrong. It is good in its place, as all 
 natural things are, which God has made. It is good 
 enough for the brutes, but it is not good enough for 
 man. You cannot trust it in man. And the more 
 a man is what a man should be, the less he can 
 trust it. The more mind and understanding a man 
 has, so as to be able to foresee danger, and 
 measure it, the more chance there is of his brute 
 courage giving way. The more feeling a man 
 has, the more keenly he feels pain of body, or 
 pain of mind, such as shame, loneliness, the dis- 
 like, ridicule, and contempt of his fellowmen ; in 
 a word, the more of a man he is, and the less of 
 a mere brute, the more chance there is of his 
 brute courage breaking down, just when he wants 
 it most to keep him up, by leaving him to play 
 the coward and come to shame. Yes, to go through 
 with a difficult and dangerous undertaking, a man 
 wants more than brute courage. He wants spiritual 
 courage — the courage which comes by faith. He 
 
214 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 needs to have faith in what he is doing; to be 
 certain that he is doing his duty, to be certain 
 that he is in the right. Certain that right will 
 conquer, certain that God will make it conquer, by 
 him or by some one else ; certain that he will 
 either conquer honorably, or fail honorably, for God 
 is with him. In a word, to have true courage, 
 man needs faith in God. 
 
 CXCII. 
 
 1'here is but one thing which you have to fear 
 in earth or heaven — being untrue to your better 
 selves, and therefore untrue to God. If you will 
 not do the thing you know to be right, and say 
 the thing you know to be true, then indeed you 
 are weak. You are a coward, and sin against God 
 and suffer the penalty of your cowardice. You 
 desert God, and therefore you cannot expect him 
 to stand by you. 
 
 But if you will do the thing you know to be 
 right, and say the thing you know to be true, 
 then what can harm you ? " Who will harm you," asks 
 St. Peter, " if you be followers of that which is good ? " 
 
 CXCIII. 
 
 There are too many people in the world, who 
 
COURAGE, 
 
 215 
 
 are not what they ought to be, and what they 
 really wish to be, because they are weak. They 
 see what is right and admire it ; but they have 
 not courage or determination to do it. Most sad 
 and pitiable it is to see how much weakness of 
 heart there is in the world — how little true moral 
 courage. I suppose that the reason is that there 
 is so little faith ; that people do not believe 
 heartily and deeply enough in God to trust him to 
 defend and reward them, if they will be but true to 
 him, and to themselves. And therefore they have no 
 moral courage. They are weak. They are kind, 
 perhaps, and easy; easily led right; but, alas! 
 just as easily led wrong. Their good resolutions 
 are not carried out; their right doctrines not acted 
 up to ; and they live pitiful, confused, useless, incon- 
 sistent lives ; talking about religion, and yet deny- 
 ing the power of religion in their daily lives ; playing 
 with holy and noble thoughts and feelings, without 
 giving themselves up to them in earnest, to be led 
 by the Spirit of God, to do all the good works 
 which God has prepared for them to walk in. 
 Pray, all of you, then, for the spirit of faith, to 
 believe really in God ; and for the spirit of ghostly 
 strength, to obey God honestly. No man ever 
 asked earnestly for that spirit but what he gained 
 it at last. 
 
2i6 LIVING riiUTHS. 
 
 CXCIV. 
 
 Look at the class of men who, in all England, 
 undergo the most fearful dangers; who know not 
 at what hour of any night they may not be. called 
 up to the most serious labor and responsibility, 
 with the chance of a horrible and torturing death. 
 I mean the firemen of our great cities, than whom 
 there are no steadier, braver, nobler-hearted men. 
 Not a week passes without one or more of these 
 firemen, in trying to save life and property, doing 
 things which are altogether heroic. What do you 
 fancy keeps them up to their work? High pay? 
 The amusement and excitement of fires? The 
 vanity of being praised for their courage ? My 
 friends, those would be but paltry, weak motives, 
 which would not keep a man's heart calm, and 
 his head clear, under such responsibility and danger 
 as theirs. No. It is the sense of duty — the 
 knowledge that they are doing a good and a noble 
 work in saving the lives of human beings, and the 
 wealth of the nation — the knowledge that they are 
 in God's hands, and that no real evil can happen 
 to him who is doing right — that to him even death 
 at his post is not a loss, but a gain. In short, faith 
 in God,' more or less clear, is what gives those men 
 their strong, and quiet courage. 
 
COURAGE. 217 
 
 CXCV. 
 
 "Whether it be right," said Peter and John to 
 the great men and judges of the Jews, "to hearken 
 to God more than to you, judge ye. We cannot 
 but speak the things which we have seen and 
 heard." We cannot but speak what we know to be 
 true. 
 
 It was that courage which enabled our fore- 
 fathers — and not the great men among them, not 
 the rich, not even the learned, save a few valiant 
 bishops and clergy, but for the most part poor, 
 unlearned laboring men and women — to throw off 
 the yoke of Popery, and say) " Reason and Scripture 
 tell us that it is absurd and wrong to worship images 
 and pray to saints — tell us that your doctrines are 
 not true. And we will say so in spite of the Pope 
 and all his power — in spite of torture and a fiery 
 death. We cannot palter ; we cannot dissemble ; 
 we cannot shelter ourselves under half-truths, and 
 make a covenant with lies. 'Whether it be right 
 in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than 
 to God, judge ye. We cannot but speak the things 
 which we know to be true.' " 
 
 So it has been in all ages, and so it will be 
 for ever. Faith, the certainty that a man is right, 
 will give him a courage which will enable him to 
 resist if need be, the rich ones, the strong ones. 
 
2i8 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 the learned ones of the earth. It has made poor, 
 unlearned men heroes and deliverers of their 
 countrymen from slavery and ignorance. It has 
 made weak women martyrs and saints. It has en- 
 abled men who made great discoveries to face 
 unbelief, ridicule, neglect, poverty ; knowing that 
 their worth would be acknowledged at last, their 
 names honored at last as benefactors by the very 
 men who laughed at them and reviled them. 
 
 CtCVI. 
 
 Whatsoever thoughts or feelings tempt us to pride 
 and self-conceit, are of the devil, not of God. The 
 devil is specially the spirit of pride ; and there- 
 fore, whatever tempts you to fancy yourself some- 
 thing different from your fellowmen, superior to 
 your fellowmen, safer than they, more favored by 
 God than they, that is a temptation of the spirit 
 of pride. Whatever tempts you to think that you 
 can do without God's help and God's providence ; 
 whatever tempts you to do any thing extraordinary, 
 and show yourself off, that you may make a fig- 
 ure in the world ; and above all, whatever tempts 
 you to antinomianism, that is, to fancy that God 
 will overlook sins in you which he will not over- 
 look in other men — all these are temptations from 
 the spirit of pride. They are temptations like our 
 
PRIDE. 219 
 
 Lord's temptations. These temptations came on 
 our Lord more terribly than they ever can on you 
 and me, just because he was the Son of Man, the 
 perfect man, and, therefore, had more real reason 
 for being proud (if such a thing could be) than 
 any man, or than all men put together. But he 
 conquered the temptations because he was perfect 
 man, led by the Spirit of God ; and therefore, he 
 knew that the only way to be a perfect man 
 was not to be proud, however powerful, wise, and 
 glorious he might be ; but to submit himself 
 humbly and utterly, as every man should do, to 
 the will of his Father in heaven, from whom alone 
 his greatness came. 
 
 CXCVII. 
 
 What proverb more true than that after pride 
 comes a fall ? Do we not know (if we do not, 
 we shall sooner or later) that the surest way to 
 fail in any undertaking is to set about it in self- 
 will and self-conceit ; that the surest way to do 
 a foolish thing, is to fancy that we are going to 
 do a very wise one ; that the surest way to make 
 ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of our fellowmen, 
 is to assume airs, and boast, show ourselves off, 
 and end by showing off only our own folly. 
 
 Why is it so ? Why has God so ordered the 
 
220 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 world and human nature, that pride punishes itself ? 
 Because, I presume, pride is begotten and born of 
 a lie, and God hates a lie, because all lies lead 
 to ruin, and this lie of pride above all. It is, as 
 it were, the root lie of all lies. The very lie by 
 which as old tales tell, Satan fell from heaven, 
 and when he tried to become a god in his own 
 right, found himself, — to his surprise and disappoint- 
 ment — only a devil. For pride and self-conceit 
 contradict the original constitution of man and the 
 universe, which is this — that of God are all 
 things, and in God are all things, and for God 
 are all things. 
 
 CXCVIII. 
 
 Man depends on God. Self tells him that he 
 depends on himself. Man has nothing but what 
 he receives from God. Self tells him that what he 
 has is his own, and that he has a right to do with 
 it what he likes. Man knows nothing but what 
 God teaches him. Self tells him that he has. found 
 out every thing for himself, and can say what he 
 thinks fit without fear of God or man. Therefore, 
 the proud, self-willed, self-conceited man must come 
 to harm, like Malvolio in the famous play, merely 
 because he is in the blackest night of ignorance. 
 He has mistaken who he is, what he is, where he 
 
PRIDE. 221 
 
 is. He is fancying himself, as many mad men do, 
 the centre of the universe ; while God is the centre 
 of the universe. He is just as certain to come to 
 harm as a man would be on board a ship, who 
 should fancy that he himself, and not the ship, was 
 keeping him afloat, and step overboard to walk 
 upon the sea. We all know what would happen to 
 that man. Let us thank God, our Father, that he 
 not only knows what would happen to such men, 
 but desires to save them from the consequences of 
 their own folly, by letting them feel the conse- 
 quences of their own folly. 
 
 Oh, my friends, let us search our hearts, and 
 pray to our Father in heaven, to take out of 
 them by whatever painful means, the poisonous 
 root of pride, self-conceit, self-will. So only shall 
 we be truly strong — truly wise. So shall we see 
 what and where we are. 
 
 CXCIX. 
 
 Do we pride ourselves on being something? 
 Shall we pride ourselves on health and strength ? 
 A tile falling off the roof, a little powder . and 
 lead in the hands of a careless child, can blast 
 us out of this world in a moment — whither, who 
 can tell ? What is our cleverness — our strength of 
 mind ? A tiny blood vessel, bursting on the brain, 
 
222 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 will make us in one tnoment paralytic, helpless, 
 babblers, and idiots. What is our knowledge of 
 the world ? That of a man who is forcing his 
 way alone through a thick and pathless wood, 
 where he has never been before, to a place which 
 he has never seen. Our true knowledge is to know 
 our own ignorance. Our true strength is to know 
 our own weakness. 
 
 CC. 
 
 The knave who serves unto another's needs 
 Knows himself abler than the man who needs him; 
 And she who stoops will not forget that stooping 
 Implies a height to stoop from. 
 
 CCI. 
 
 My business is to do the little, simple, every- 
 day duties which lie nearest me, and be faithful 
 in a few things; and then, if Christ will, he may 
 make me some day ruler over many things, and I 
 shall enter into the joy of my Lord, which is the 
 joy of doing good to my fellowmen. But I shall 
 never enter into that by thrusting myself into Christ's 
 way, with grand schemes and hasty projects, as if 
 I knew better than he how to make his kingdom 
 come. If I do, my pride will have a fall. Because 
 
SELF DECEPTION. 223 
 
 I would not be faithful over a few things, I shall 
 be tempted to be unfaithful over many things; and 
 instead of entering into the joy of my Lord, I shall 
 be in danger of the awful judgment pronounced on 
 those who do evil that good may come. 
 
 ecu. 
 
 Most weird and fantastic are visits by night 
 to the West Indian harbors. Above, the black 
 mountain depths, with their canopy of cloud bright 
 white against the purple night, hung with keen 
 stars. The moon — it may be on her back in the 
 west — sinking like a golden goblet behind some 
 rock-fort, half shrouded in black trees. Below, a 
 line of bright mist over a swamp with the cocoa- 
 palms standing up through it, dark, and yet glisten- 
 ing in the moon. A light here and there in a 
 house ; another here and there in a vessel, unseen 
 in the dark. The echo of the gun from hill to hill. 
 Wild voices from shore and sea. The snorting of 
 the steamer, the rattling of the chain through the 
 hawse-hole ; and, on deck, and under the quarter, 
 strange gleams of red light amid pitchy darkness, 
 from engines, galley fires, lanterns; and black folk 
 and white folk flitting restlessly across them. 
 
 The strangest show — " like a thing in a plav," 
 says every one when they see it for the first time. 
 
224 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 And when at the gun-fire one tumbles out of one's 
 berth and up on deck to see the new island, one 
 has need to rub one's eyes, and pinch one's self — 
 as I was minded to do again and again during 
 the next few weeks — to make sure that it is not 
 all a dream. It is always worth the trouble, mean- 
 while, to tumble up on deck, not merely for the 
 show, but for the episodes of West Indian life 
 and manners, which, quaint enough by day, are 
 sure to be even more quaint at night, in (he con- 
 fusion and bustle of the darkness. One such I 
 witnessed in the harbor of Grenada not easily to be 
 forgotten. 
 
 A tall and very handsome middle-aged brown 
 woman, in a limp print gown, and a gorgeous turban, 
 stood at the gangway in a glare of light, which 
 made her look like some splendid witch by a 
 Walburgis night-fire. 
 
 "Tell your boatman to go round to the other 
 side," quoth the officer in charge. 
 
 " Fanqua ! (Fran(ois) you go round oder side of 
 de ship." 
 
 Fanqua, who seemed to be her son, being sleepy, 
 tipsy, stupid, or lazy, did not stir. 
 
 "Fanqua! you hear what de officer say? You 
 go round." 
 
 No move. 
 
 " Fanqua ! you not ashamed of yourself ? Yoi 
 
SELF-DECEPTION. 225 
 
 not hear de officer say he turn steampipe over 
 you?" 
 
 No move. 
 
 " Fanqua ! " {authoritative^ 
 
 "FanquaJ" [indignant^ 
 
 " Fanqua ! " {argumentative^ 
 
 " Fanqua ! " {astomsked.) 
 
 " Fanqua ! " {majestic^ 
 
 "Fanqua!" {confidentially alluring^ 
 
 " Fanqua ! " {regretful^ 
 And so on through every conceivable tone of ex- 
 pression. But Fanqua did not move, and the 
 officer and bystanders laughed. 
 
 She summoned all her talents, and uttered one 
 last "Fanqua!" which was a triumph of art. 
 
 Shame and surprise were blended in her voice 
 with tenderness and pity, and they again with 
 meek despair. To have been betrayed, disgraced, 
 and so unexpectedly, by one whom she loved, and 
 must love still, in spite of this, his fearful fall — 
 it was more than heart could bear. Breathing his 
 name but that once more, she stood a moment, 
 like a queen of tragedy, one long arm drawing her 
 garments round her, the other outstretched as if 
 to cast off — had she the heart to do it — the 
 rebel, and then stalked away into the darkness of 
 the paddle-boxes — forever and a day to brood over 
 her great sorrow? Not in the least. To begin 
 
226 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 chattering away to her acquaintances as if no Fanqi 
 existed in the world. 
 
 It was a piece of admirable play-acting, and \v; 
 meant to be. She had been conscious all the whi 
 that she was an object of attention — possibly 
 admiration — to a group of men, and she kr.c 
 what was right to be done and said under tl 
 circumstances, and did it perfectly, even to tl 
 smallest change of voice. She was, doubtles 
 quite sincere the whole time, and felt every thii 
 which her voice expressed ; but she felt it becau 
 it was proper to feel it, and deceived hers< 
 probably more than she deceived any one about h( 
 
 A curious phase of human nature is that san 
 play-acting, effect-studying temperament, which enc 
 if indulged in too much, in hopeless self-deceptio 
 and "the hypocrisy which," as Mr. Carlyle sa) 
 " is honestly indignant that you should think it hyp 
 critical." It is common enough among negresse 
 and among colored people too ; but is it so ve 
 uncommon among whites ? Is it not the bane 
 too many Irish ? of too many modern French ? 
 certain English, for that matter, whom I have knov 
 who probably had no drop of French or Irish bloi 
 in their veins ? But it is all the more baneful i. 
 higher the organization is, because the more bi 
 liant the intellect, the more noble the instincts, i 
 more able its victim is to say, " See ; I feel wh 
 
SORROW. 227 
 
 I ought; I say what I ought; I do what I ought; 
 and what more would you have ? Why do you 
 Philistines persist in regarding me with distrust and 
 ridicule ? What is this common honesty, and what 
 is this ' single eye ' which you suspect me of not 
 possessing ? " 
 
 CCIII. 
 
 You know that afflictions do come — terrible be- 
 reavements, sorrows sad and strange. But from 
 whom do they come ? Who is Lord of life and 
 death ? Who is Lord of joy and sorrow ? Is not 
 that the question of all questions ? And is not the 
 answer the most essential of all answers ? It is 
 the Holy Spirit of God ; the Spirit who proceedeth 
 from the Father and the Son ; the Spirit of the 
 Father who so loved the world that he gave his 
 only begotten Son; the Spirit of the Son who so 
 loved the world that he stooped to die for it upon 
 the cross ; the Spirit who is promised to lead you 
 into all truth, that you may know God, and in the 
 knowledge of him find everlasting life; the Spirit 
 who is the Comforter and says "I have seen thy 
 ways and will heal thee, I will lead' thee also, and 
 restore comforts to thee and to thy mourners. I 
 speak peace to him that is near, and to him that 
 is far off, saith the Lord ; and I will heal ' him." 
 
228 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Is it not the most blessed news, that he who takes 
 away is the very same as he who gives? That he 
 who afflicts is the very same as he who comforts? 
 
 CCIV. 
 
 The comfort which poor human beings want in 
 such a world as this is not the comfort of ease, 
 but the comfort of strength. The comforter whom 
 we need is not one who will merely say kind 
 things, but give help — help to the weary and heavy- 
 laden heart which has no time to rest. We need 
 not the sunny and smiling face, but the strong and 
 helping arm. For we may be in that state that 
 smiles are shocking to us and mere kindness — 
 though we may be grateful for it — of no more 
 comfort to us than sweet music to a drowning 
 man. We may be rniserable and unable to help 
 being miserable, and unwilling to help it too. We 
 do not wish to flee from our sorrow ; we do not 
 wish to forget our sorrow. We dare not; it is so 
 awful, so heartrending, so plain-spoken, that God, 
 the master and tutor of our hearts, must wish us 
 to face it and endure it. Our Father has given 
 us the cup — shall we not drink it? But who will 
 help us to drink the bitter cup ? Who will be the 
 comforter and give us, not mere kind words, but 
 strength ? 
 
SORROW. 229 
 
 God answers : — That Comforter am I, the God 
 of heaven and earth. There are comforters on 
 earth who can help thee with wise words and noble 
 counsel, can be strong as man and tender as woman. 
 But God can be more strong than man, and more 
 tender than woman likewise. And when the strong 
 arm of man supports thee no longer, yet under 
 thee are the everlasting arms of God, 
 
 ccv. 
 
 If our Lord's triumph had had no suffering be- 
 fore it — if he had conquered as the Hindoos rep- 
 resent their gods as conquering their enemies with- 
 out effort, without pain, destroying them with care- 
 less ease by lightning hurled by a hundred hands 
 and aided by innumerable armies of spirits, what 
 would such a triumph have been to us? What com- 
 fort, what example to us here struggling, often sin- 
 ning, in this piece-meal world ? 'W'e want — and 
 blessed be God, we have — a Captain of our salva- 
 tion, who has been made perfect by sufferings. 
 We want — and blessed be God we have — an High 
 Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our 
 infirmities because he has been tempted in all 
 things like as we are yet without sin. We want — 
 and blessed be God we have — a King who was 
 glorified by suffering, that, if we are ever called on 
 
230 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 to sacrifice ourselves, we may hope, by suffering, 
 to share his glory. 
 
 CCVI. 
 
 The merry, merry lark was up and singing, 
 And the hare was out and feeding on the lea. 
 And the merry, merry bells below were ringing. 
 When my child's laugh rang through me. 
 
 Now the hare is snared and dead beside the snow- 
 yard. 
 And the lark beside the dreary winter sea. 
 And my baby in his cradle in the churchyard 
 Waiteth there until the bells bring me. 
 
 CCVII. 
 
 Whenever you think of our Lord's resurrection and 
 ascension, remember always that the background to 
 his triumph is — a tomb. Remember that it is the 
 triumph over suffering; a triumph of One who still 
 bears the prints of the nails in his hands and in 
 his feet, and the wound of the spear in his side ; 
 like many a poor soul who has followed him tri- 
 umphant at last, and yet scarred, and only not 
 maimed in the hard battle of life. Remember forever 
 the adorable wounds of Christ. Remember forever 
 
WOMAN. 231 
 
 that St. John saw in the midst of th^ throne of 
 God the likeness of a lamb, as it had been slain. 
 For so alone you will learn what our Lord's resur- 
 rection .and ascension are to all who have to suffer 
 and to toil on earth. 
 
 , CCVIII. 
 
 Torfrida was a brave maiden ; and what was 
 more, she loved Hereward, the Wake, with all her 
 heart. Else why endure bitter words for his sake ? 
 And she set herself to teach and train the wild 
 outlaw into her ideal of a very perfect knight. 
 
 She talked to him of modesty and humility, the 
 root of all virtues; of chivalry and self-sacrifice; 
 of respect to the weak, and mercy to the fallen ; 
 of devotion to God, and awe of his commandments. 
 She set before him the example of -ancient heroes 
 and philosophers, of saints and martyrs; and as 
 much awed him by her learning, as by the new 
 world of higher and purer morality, which was 
 opened for the first time to the wandering Viking. 
 
 He, for his part, drank it all in. Taught by a 
 woman who loved him, he could listen to humiliat- 
 ing truths, which he would have sneered at, had 
 they come from the lips of a hermit or a priest. 
 Often he rebelled; often he broke loose, and made 
 her angry, and himself ashamed; but the spell 
 
232 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 was upon him — a far surer, as well as purer 
 spell than any love-potion of which Torfrida had 
 ever dreamed — the only spell which can really 
 civilize man — that of woman's tact and woman's 
 purity. 
 
 CCIX. 
 
 I have heard it said that a woman's intellect is 
 not fit for business ; that when a woman takes to 
 business, she is apt to do it ill, and unpleasantly 
 likewise; to be more suspicious, more irritable, 
 more grasping, more unreasonable, than regular 
 men of business would be ; that, as I have heard 
 it put, "A woman does not fight fair." The 
 answer is simple : that a woman's intellect is 
 eminently fitted for business is proved by the 
 enormous amount of business she gets through 
 without any special training for it: but those faults 
 in a woman of which some men complain are 
 simply the results of her not having had a special 
 training. She does not know the laws of business. 
 She does not know the rules of the game she is 
 playing; and therefore she is playing it in the dark, 
 in fear and suspicion, apt to judge of questions 
 on personal grounds, often those with whom she 
 has to do, and oftener still making herself miser- 
 able over matters of law or of business, on which 
 
WOMAN. 233 
 
 a little sound knowledge would set head and heart 
 at rest. 
 
 When I have seen widows having the care of 
 children, of a great household, of a great estate, 
 of a great business, struggling heroically, and yet 
 often mistakenly; blamed severely for selfishness 
 and ambition, while they were really sacrificing 
 themselves with the divine instinct of a mother for 
 their children's interests, I have stood by with 
 mingled admiration and pity, and said to myself, 
 " How nobly she is doing the work without teach- 
 ing ! How much more nobly would she have done 
 it had she been taught ! She is now doing the 
 work at the most enormous waste of energy. Had 
 she had knowledge, thrift would have followed it ; 
 she would have done more work with far less 
 trouble. She will probably kill herself if she goes 
 on. Sound knowledge would have saved her health, 
 saved her heart, saved her friends, and helped the 
 very loved ones for whom she labors, not always 
 with success." 
 
 ccx. 
 
 Fresh from the marbles of the British Museum, 
 I went my way through London streets. My brain 
 was still full of fair and grand forms; the forms 
 of men and women whose every limb and attitude 
 
234 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 betokened perfect health, and grace, and power, 
 and a self-possession and self-restraint so habitual and 
 complete that it had become unconscious, and 
 undistinguishable from the native freedom of the 
 savage. For I had been up and down the corri- 
 dors of those Greek sculptures, which remain as a 
 perpetual sermon to rich and poor, amid our arti- 
 ficial, unwholesome, and it may be decaying pseudo- 
 civilization ; saying with looks more expressive than 
 all words, such men and women can be; for such 
 they have been ; and such you may be yet, if 
 you will use that science of which you too often 
 only boast. Above all, I had been pondering over 
 the awful and yet tender beauty of the maiden 
 figures from the Parthenon and its kindred temples. 
 And these, or such as these, I thought to myself, 
 were the sisters of the men who fought at Mara- 
 thon and Salamis ; the mothers of many a man 
 among the ten thousand whom Xenophon led back 
 from Babylon to the Black Sea shore ; the ances- 
 tresses of many a man who conquered the East 
 in Alexander's host, and fought with Porus in the 
 far Punjab. And were these women mere dolls ? 
 These men mere gladiators ? Were they not the 
 parents of philosophy, science, poetry, the plastic 
 arts t We talk of education now. Are we more 
 educated than were the ancient Greeks ? Do we 
 know any thing about education, physical, intellect- 
 
WOMAN. 23S 
 
 ual, or assthetic, and I may say moral likewise — 
 religious education, of course,- in our sense of the 
 word, they had none — but do we know any thing 
 about education of which they have not taught 
 us, at least the rudiments ? Are there not some 
 branches of education which they perfected, once 
 and forever, leaving us northern barbarians to 
 follow, or else not to follow, their example ? To 
 produce health, that is, harmony and sympathy, 
 proportion and grace, in every faculty of mind and 
 body — that was their notion of education. To 
 produce that, the text-book of their childhood was 
 the poetry of Homer, and not of — but I am 
 treading on dangerous ground. It was for this that 
 the seafaring Greek lad was taught to find his 
 ideal in Ulysses ; while his sister at home found 
 hers, it may be, in Nausicaa. It was for this, 
 that when perhaps the most complete and exquis- 
 ite of all the Greeks, Sophocles the good, beloved 
 by gods and men, represented on the Athenian 
 stage his drama of Nausicaa, and, as usual, could 
 not — for he had no voice — himself take a speak- 
 ing part, he was content to do one thing in which 
 he specially excelled; and dressed and masked as 
 a girl, to play at ball amid the chorus of Nau- 
 sicaa's maidens. 
 
 That drama of Nausicaa is lost ; and if I dare 
 say so of any play of Sophocles', I scarce regret 
 
236 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 it. It is well, pe"rhaps, that we have no second 
 conception of the scene, to interfere with the sim- 
 plicity, so grand, and yet so tender, of Homer's 
 idyllic episode. 
 
 CCXI. 
 
 Fair Nausicaa must have been — some will say 
 — surely a mere child of nature, and an unculti- 
 vated person. 
 
 So far from it, that her whole demeanor and 
 speech show culture of the very highest sort full 
 of "sweetness and light." Intelligent and' fearless, 
 quick to perceive the character of Ulysses, quick 
 to answer his lofty and refined pleading, by words 
 as lofty and refined, and pious withal, for it is 
 she who speaks to her handmaids the once so 
 famous words : 
 
 " Strangers and poor men all are sent from 
 
 Zeus ; 
 And alms though small, are sweet." 
 
 Clear of intellect, prompt of action, modest of 
 demeanor, shrinking from the slightest breath of 
 scandal ; while she is not ashamed, when Ulysses, 
 bathed and dressed, looks himself again, to whis- 
 per to her maidens her wish that the gods might 
 
WOMAN. 
 
 237 
 
 send her such a spouse. This is Nausicaa as 
 Homer draws her; and as many a scholar and 
 poet since Homer has accepted her for the ideal of 
 noble maidenhood. I ask my readers to study for 
 themselves her interview with Ulysses, in Mr. 
 Worsley's translation, or rather in the grand sim- 
 plicity of the original Greek (Odyssey, Book 
 VI. pp. 127-315; vol. I. pp. 143-150 of Mr. 
 Worsley's translation), and judge whether Nausicaa 
 is not as perfect a lady as the poet who imagined 
 her — or it may be,, drew her from life — must 
 have been a perfect gentleman — both complete in 
 those " manners " which, says the old proverb, 
 " make the man ; " but which are the woman her- 
 self ; because with her — who acts more by emo- 
 tion than by calculation — manners are the out- 
 ward and visible tokens of her inward and spiritual 
 grace or disgrace ; and flow instinctively, whether 
 good or bad, from the instincts of her inner nature. 
 True, Nausicaa could neither read nor write. 
 No more, most probably, could the author of the 
 Odyssey. No more, for that matter, could Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob, though they were plainly, 
 both in mind and manners, most highly cultivated 
 men. Reading and writing, of course, have now 
 become necessaries of humanity; and are to be 
 given to every human being, that he may start 
 fair in the race of life. But I am not aware that 
 
238 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Greek women imjfroved much, either in manners, 
 
 morals, or happiness, by acquiring them in after 
 
 centuries. A wise man would sooner see his 
 
 daughter a Nausicaa than a Sappho, an Aspasia, 
 a Cleopatra, or even an Hypatia. 
 
 CCXII. 
 
 There was once a science called physiognomy. 
 The Greeks, from what I can learn, knew more 
 of it than any people since.; though the Italian 
 painters and sculptors must have known much ; far 
 more than we. In a more scientific civilization 
 there will be such a science once more : but its 
 laws though still in the empiric stage, are not 
 altogether forgotten by some. Little children have 
 often a fine and clear instinct of them likewise. 
 And some such would tell us that there is intellect 
 in plenty in the modern Nausicaa : but not of the 
 quality which they desire for their country's future 
 good. Self-consciousness, eagerness, volubility, petu- 
 lance, in countenance, in gesture, and in voice — 
 which last is too often most harsh and artificial, 
 the breath being sent forth through the closed 
 teeth, and almost entirely at the corners of the 
 mouth — aftd, with all this, a weariness often about 
 the wrinkling forehead and the drooping lids ; — all 
 these, which are growing too common, not among 
 
WOMAN. 239 
 
 the Demos only, nor only in the towns, are signs, 
 they think, of the unrest, of unhealth, physical, 
 intellectual, spiritual. At least they are as different 
 as two types of physiognomy in the same race can 
 be from the expression both of face and gesture, 
 in those old Greek sculptures, ■ and in the old 
 Italian painters ; and, it must be said, in the 
 portraits of Reynolds and Gainsborough, Copley, 
 and Romney. Not such, one thinks, must have 
 been the mothers of Britain during the latter half 
 of the last century and the beginning of the 
 present ; when their sons, at times, were holding 
 half the world at bay. 
 
 And if Nausicaa has become such in town, what 
 is she when she goes to the seaside, not to wash 
 the clothes in fresh water, but herself in salt — 
 the very salt water, laden with decaying organisms, 
 from which though not polluted further by a dozen 
 sewers, Ulysses had to cleanse himself, anointing, 
 too, with oil, ere he was fit to appear in the 
 company of Nausicaa of Greece. She cannot 
 cleanse herself with the filthy salt water; and 
 probably chills and tires herself by walking thither 
 and back and staying in too long; and then 
 flaunts on the pier, bedizened in garments which, 
 for monstrosity, of form and disharmony of colors, 
 would have set that Greek Nausicaa's teeth on 
 edge, or those of any average Hindoo woman now. 
 
=4o LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Or, even sadder still, she sits on chairs and benches 
 all the weary afternoon, her head dropped on her 
 chest, over some novel from the " Library," and 
 then returns to tea and shrimps, and lodgings of 
 which the fragrance is not unsuggestive, sometimes 
 not unproductive of typhoid fever. Ah, poor 
 Nausicaa of England ! That is a sad sight to 
 some who think about the present, and have read 
 about the past. 
 
 It is not a sad sight to see your old father — 
 tradesman, or clerk, or what not — who has done 
 good work in his day, and hopes to do some 
 more, sitting by your old mother who has done 
 good work in her day — honest, kindly, cheerful 
 folk enough, and not inefficient in their own calling ; 
 though an average Northumbrian, or Highlander, or 
 Irish Easterling, beside carrying a brain of five 
 times the intellectual force, could drive five such 
 men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not 
 a sad sight, I say, to see them sitting about upon 
 those seaside benches, looking out listlessly at the 
 water, and the ships, and the sunlight, and enjoy- 
 ing, like so many flies upon a wall, the novel act 
 of doing nothing. It is not the old for whom wise 
 men are sad : but for you. Where is your vitality ? 
 Where is your " Lebensgliickseligkeit," your enjoy- 
 ment of superfluous life and power? Why can you 
 not even dance and sing, till now and then, at 
 
WOMAN. 241 
 
 night, perhaps, when you ought to be safe in bed, 
 but when the weak brain, after receiving the day's 
 nourishment, has roused itself a second time into 
 a false excitement of gaslight pleasure ? What 
 there is left of it is all going into some foolish 
 novel, which the womanly element in you, still 
 healthy and alive, delights in ; because it places 
 you in fancy in situations in which you will never 
 stand, and inspires you with emotions, some of 
 which, it may be, you had better never feel. 
 Poor Nausicaa — old, some men think, before you 
 have been ever young. 
 
 And now they are going to " develop " you ; and 
 let you have your share in " the higher education 
 of women," by making you read more books, and 
 do more sums, and pass examinations, and stoop 
 over desks at night after stooping over some other 
 employment all day ; and to teach you Latin, and 
 even Greek. 
 
 Well, we will gladly teach you Greek, if you 
 learn thereby to read the history of Nausicaa of 
 old, and what manner of maiden she was, and 
 what was her education. You will admire her, 
 doubtless. But do not let your admiration limit 
 itself to drawing a meagre, half-medisevalized de- 
 sign of her — as she never looked. Copy in your 
 own person ; and even if you do not descend as 
 low — or rise as higli — as washing the household 
 
242 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 clothes, at least learn to play at ball; and sing 
 in the open air and sunshine, not in theatres and 
 concert-rooms by gas-light ; and take decent care of 
 your own health ; and dress, not like a " Parisienne " 
 
 — nor, of course, like Nausicaa of old, for that is 
 to ask too much ; — but somewhat more like an 
 average Highland lassie ; and try to ' look like her 
 and be like her, of whom Wordsworth sang. 
 
 CCXIII. 
 
 I verily believe that any young lady who would 
 employ some of her leisure time in collecting wild 
 flowers, carefully examining them, verifying them, 
 and arranging them ; or who would in her sum- 
 mer trip to the sea-coast do the same by the com- 
 mon objects of the shore, instead of wasting htr 
 holiday, as one sees hundreds doing, in lounging 
 on benches and criticising dresses — that such a 
 young lady, I say, would not only open her own 
 mind to a world of wonder, beauty, and wisdom, 
 which, if it did not make her a more reverent 
 and pious soul, she cannot be the woman which I 
 take for granted she is; but would save herself 
 from the habit — I had almost said the necessity 
 
 — of gossip; because she would have things to 
 think of and not merely persons ; facts instead of 
 fancies; while she would acquire something of ac- 
 
WOMAN. 243 
 
 curacy, of patience, of methodical observation and 
 judgment, which would stand her in good stead in 
 the events of daily life, and increase her power of 
 bridling her tongue and her imagination. " God is 
 in heaven, and thou upon earth ; therefore let thy 
 words be few," is the lesson which those are learn- 
 ing all day long who study the works of God 
 with reverent accuracy, lest by misrepresenting them 
 they should be tempted to say that God has done 
 that which he has not ; and in that wholesome 
 discipline I long that women as well as men 
 should share. 
 
 CCXIV. 
 
 Let me ask women to educate themselves, not 
 for their own sakes, merely, but for the sake of 
 others. For, whether they will or not, they must 
 educate others. I do not speak merely of those 
 who may be engaged in the work of direct teach- 
 ing ; that they ought to be well taught themselves, 
 who can doubt? I speak of those — and in so doing 
 I speak of every woman, young and old — who ex- 
 ercises as wife, as mother, as aunt, as sister, or as 
 friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and uncon- 
 scious, but still potent and practical, on the minds 
 and characters of those about them, especially of 
 men. How potent and practical that influence is. 
 
244 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 those know best who know most of the world and 
 most of human nature. There are those who con- 
 sider — and I agree with them — that the educa- 
 tion of boys under the age of twelve years, ought 
 to be entrusted as much as possible to women. 
 Let me ask, of what period of youth and of 
 manhood does not the same hold true ? I pity 
 the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies 
 that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated 
 women. I should have thought that the very mis- 
 sion of woman was to be in the highest sense the 
 educator of man from infancy to old age; that 
 that was the work towards which all the God- 
 given capacities of women pointed; for which they 
 were to be educated to the highest pitch. I should 
 have thought that it was the glory of woman that 
 she was sent into the world to live for others, 
 rather than for herself; and therefore I should say, 
 Let her smallest rights be respected, her smallest 
 wrongs redressed ; but let her never be persuaded 
 to forget that she is sent into the world to teach 
 man — what, I believe, she has been teaching him 
 all along, even in the savage state — namely, that 
 there is something more necessary than the claim- 
 ing of rights, and that is, the performing of duties; 
 to teach him specially, in these so-called intellec- 
 tual days, that there is something more than intel- 
 lect, and that is -^purity and virtue. Let her 
 
WOMAN. 245 
 
 never be persuaded to forget that her , calling is 
 not the lower ■ and more earthly one of self-asser- 
 tion, but the higher and the diviner calling of self- 
 sacrifice ; and let her never desert that higher life 
 which lives in others and , for others, like her 
 Redeemer and her Lord. 
 
 And if any should answer that this doctrine 
 would keep woman a dependent and a slave, I 
 rejoin — not so : it would keep her what she should 
 be, the mistress of all around her, because the mis- 
 tress of herself. And more, I should express a 
 fear that those who made that answer had not yet 
 seen into the mystery. , of true greatness and true 
 strength ; that they did not yet understand the 
 true magnanimity, the true royalty of that spirit 
 by which the Son of Man came, not to be minis- 
 tered unto, but to minister, and to give his life 
 a ransom for many. 
 
 ccxv. 
 
 Surely woman's calling is to teach man; and to 
 teach him what .'' to teach him, after all, that his 
 calling is the same as hers, if he will but see the 
 things which belong to his peace. To temper his 
 fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the 
 contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To 
 make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not 
 
246 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is 
 good and lasting work to be done on earth; but 
 by wise self-distrust, by silent labor, by lofty self- 
 control, by that charity which hopeth all things, 
 believeth all things, endureth all things; by such 
 an example, in short, as women now in tens of 
 thousands set to those around them ; such as they 
 will show more and more, the more their whole 
 womanhood is educated to employ its powers 
 without waste, and without haste in harmonious 
 unity. 
 
 CCXVI. 
 
 Is not the highest heroism that which is free 
 even from the approbation of the best and wisest? 
 The heroism which is known only to our Father, 
 who seeth in secret ? The God-like deeds alone in 
 the lonely chamber? The God-like lives lived in 
 obscurity ? — a heroism rare among us men, who live 
 perforce in the glare and noise of the outer 
 world ; more common among women ; women of 
 whom the world never hears; who, if the world 
 discovered them, would only draw the veil more 
 closely over their faces and their hearts, and entreat 
 to be left alone with God. True, they cannot always 
 hide. They must not always hide, or their fellow- 
 creatures would lose the golden lesson. But, never- 
 
WOMAN. 247 
 
 theless, it is of the essence of the perfect and 
 womanly heroism in which, as in all spiritual 
 forces, woman transcends the man, that it would 
 hide if it could. 
 
 And it was a pleasant thought to me, when I 
 glanced at the golden deeds of woman in Miss 
 Yonge's book — it was a pleasant thought to me, 
 that I could say to myself — Ah ! yes. These 
 heroines are known, and their fame flies through 
 the mouths of men. But if so, how many thousands 
 of heroines there must have been, how many 
 thousands there may be now, of whom we shall 
 never know. But still they are there. They sow 
 in secret the seed of which we pluck the flower, 
 and eat the fruit, and know not that we pass the 
 sower daily in the street; perhaps some humble, 
 ill-dressed woman, earning painfully her own small 
 sustenance. She who nurses a bed-ridden mother 
 instead of sending her to the workhouse. She 
 who spends her heart and her money on a drunken 
 father, a reckless brother, on the orphans of a 
 kinsman or a friend. She who — but why go on 
 with the long list of great little heroisms, with 
 which a clergyman at least comes in contact 
 daily — and it is one of the most ennobling privi- 
 leges of- a clergyman's high calling that he does 
 come in contact with them — why go on, I 
 say, save to commemmorate one more form of 
 
248 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 heroism — the commonest, and yet the least remem- 
 bered of all — namely, the heroism of the average 
 mother? Ah! when,! think of that last broad 
 fact, I gather hope again for poor humanity; and 
 this dark world looks bright, this diseased world 
 looks wholesome to me once more — because, what- 
 ever else it is or is not full of, it is at least full 
 of mothers. 
 
 CCXVII. 
 
 " But what do you believe, Tregarva ? " said 
 Lancelot 
 
 " I believe this, sir, and your cousin will believe 
 the same, if he will only give up, as I am sore 
 afraid he will need to some day, sticking to ar- 
 guments and doctrines about the Lord, and love 
 and trust the Lord himself. I believe, sir, that the 
 Judge of all the earth will do right — and what's 
 right can't be wrong, nor cruel eitherj else it would 
 not be like him who loved us to the death. 
 That's all I know; and that's enough for me. 
 To whom little is given, of him little is required. 
 He that didn't know his Master's will, will be 
 beaten with few stripes, and he that did know it, 
 as I do, will be beaten with many, if he neglects 
 it — and - that latter, not the former, is my con- 
 cern." 
 
BELIEF. 249 
 
 CCXVIII. 
 
 "Thou knowest," said Pambo, with a smile, to 
 Arsenius, " that, like many holy men of old, I am 
 no scholar, and knew not even the Greek tdngue, 
 till thou, out of thy brotherly kindness, taughtest 
 it to me. But hast thou never heard what An- 
 thony said to a certain Pagan who reproached him 
 with his ignorance of books? 'Which is first,' he 
 asked, ' spirit or letter ? — Spirit, sayest thou ? 
 Then know the healthy spirit needs no letters. 
 My book is the whole creation, lying open before 
 me, wherein I can read, whensoever I please, the 
 word of God.'" 
 
 "Dost thou not undervalue learning, my friend?" 
 
 " I am old among monks, and have seen much 
 
 of their ways ; and among them my simplicity 
 
 seems to have seen this — many a man wearing 
 
 himself with study, and tormenting his soul as to 
 
 whether he believed rightly this doctrine and that, 
 
 while he knew not with Solomon that in much 
 
 learning is much sorrow, and that while he was 
 
 puzzling at the letter of God's message, the spirit 
 
 of it was going fast and faster out of him." 
 
 "And how didst thou know that of such a man?" 
 
 " By seeing him, become a more and more learned 
 
 theologian, and more and more zealous for the 
 
 letter of orthodoxy; and yet less and less loving 
 
2SO LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 and merciful — less and less full of trust in God, 
 and of hopeful thoughts for himself and for his 
 brethren, till he seemed to have darkened his whole 
 soul with disputations, which breed only strife, and 
 10 have forgotten utterly the message which is 
 written in that book wherewith the blessed Anthony 
 was contetit." 
 
 " Of what message dost thou speak ? " 
 " Look," said the old abbot, stretching his hand 
 toward the eastern desert, " and judge, like a wise 
 man, for thyself ! " 
 
 As he spoke, a long arrow of level light flashed 
 down the gorge from crag to crag, awakening every 
 crack and slab to vividness and life. The great 
 crimson sun rose swiftly through the dim night- 
 mist of the desert, and as he poured his glory 
 down the glen, the haze rose in threads and plumes 
 and vanished, leaving the stream to sparkle round 
 the rocks, like the living, twinkling eye of the 
 whole scene. Swallows flashed by hundreds out of 
 the cliiT, and began their air-dance for the day; 
 the jerboa hopped stealthily homeward on his stilts 
 from his stolen meal in the monastery garden ; the 
 brown sand-lizards underneath the stones opened 
 one eyelid each, and having satisfied themselves 
 that it was day, dragged their bjoated bodies and 
 whip-like tails out into the most burning patch of 
 gravel which they could find, and nestling together 
 
BELIEF. 251 
 
 as a further protection against cold, fell fast asleep 
 again ; the buzzard, who considered himself lord of 
 the valley, awoke with a long querulous bark, and 
 rising aloft in two or three vast rings, to stretch 
 himself after his night's sleep, hung, motionless, 
 watching every lark which chirruped on the cliffs; 
 while from the far-off Nile below, the awakening 
 croak of pelicans, the clang of geese, the whistle 
 of the godwit and curlew, came ringing up the 
 windings of the glen ; and last of all the voices 
 of the monks rose chanting a morning hymn to 
 some wild Eastern air; and a new day had 
 begun in Scetis, like those which went before, and 
 those which were to follow after, week after week, 
 year after year, of toil and prayer as quiet as its 
 sleep. 
 
 " What does that teach thee, Aufugus my 
 friend ? " 
 
 Arsenius was silent. 
 
 " To me it teaches this : that God is light, and 
 in him is no darkness at all. That in his presence 
 is life and fullness of joy for evermore. That he 
 is the giver, who delights in his own bounty; the 
 lover, whose mercy is over all his works — and 
 why not over thee, too, O thou of little faith ? 
 Look at those thousand birds — and without our 
 Father not one of them shall fall to the ground : 
 and art thou not of more value than many sparrows, 
 
252 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 thou for whom God sent his Son to die ? ... . 
 Ah, my friend, we must look out and around to 
 see what God is like. It is when we persist in 
 turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over 
 our own irpperfections, that we learn to make a 
 God after our own image, and fancy that our own 
 darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of 
 his light and love." 
 
 "Thou speakest rather as a philosopher than as 
 a penitent Catholic. For me, I feel that I want 
 to look more, and not less, inward. Deeper self- 
 examination, completer abstraction, than I can 
 attain even here, are what I crave for. I long— - 
 forgive me, my friend — but I long more and more, 
 daily, for the solitary life. This earth is atcursed 
 by man's sin : the less we see of it, it seems to 
 me, the better." 
 
 " I may speak as a philosopher, or as a heathen, 
 for aught I know : yet it seems to me that, as 
 they say, the half Iraf is better than none; that 
 the wise man will make the best of what he has, 
 and throw away no lesson because the book is 
 somewhat torn and soiled. The earth teaches me 
 thus far already. Shall I shut my eyes to those 
 invisible things of God which are clearly mani- 
 fested by the things which are made, because some 
 day they will be more clearly manifested than 
 now ? " 
 
BELIEF. 253 
 
 CCXIX. 
 
 "Well, friend!" said Pambo, "and what if thou 
 art troubled at times by anxieties and schemes for 
 this brother and for that ? Better to be anxious for 
 others than only for thyself. Better to have some- 
 thing to love — even something to weep over — 
 than to become in some lonely cavern, thine own 
 world, — perhaps, as more than one whom I have 
 known, thine own God." 
 
 " Do you know what you are saying ? " asked 
 Arsenius, in a startled tone. 
 
 " I say, that by fleeing into solitude a man cuts 
 himself off from all which makes a Christian 
 man; from law, obedience, fellow-help, self-sacrifice 
 — from the communion of saints itself." 
 "How then?" 
 
 " How canst thou hold communion with those 
 toward whom thou canst show no love ? And how 
 canst thou show thy love but by works of love ? " 
 " I can, at least, pray day and night for all 
 mankind. Has that no place — or rather, has it 
 liot the mightiest place — in the communion of 
 saints ? " 
 
 " He who cannot pray for his brothers whom he 
 does see, and whose sins and temptations he 
 knows, will pray but dully, my friend Aufugus, for 
 his brothers whom he does not see, or for any 
 
254 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 thing else. And he who will not labor for his 
 broihers, the^ same will soon cease to pray for 
 them, or love them either. And then, what is 
 written ? ' If a man love not his brother whom he 
 hath seen, how will he love God whom he hath 
 not seen .' ' " 
 
 "Again, I say, do you know whither your argu- 
 ment leads ? " 
 
 "I am a plain man, and know nothing about 
 arguments. If a thing be true, let it lead where 
 it will, for it leads where God wills." 
 
 ccxx. 
 
 " Each man," said Arsenius, " has surely his voca- 
 tion, and for each some peculiar method of life is 
 more edifying than another. In my case, the hab- 
 its of mind which I acquired in the world will 
 cling to me in spite of myself even here. I can- 
 not help watching the doings of others, studying 
 their characters, planning and plotting for them, 
 trying to prognosticate their future fate." 
 
 "And do you fancy that the anchorite in his cell 
 has fewer distractions ? " 
 
 "What can he have but the supply of the mere 
 necessary wants of life ? And them, even, he may 
 abridge to the gathering of a few roots and herbs. 
 Men have lived like the beasts already, that they 
 
BELIEF. 2SS 
 
 might at the same titne live like the angels — and 
 why should not I also ? " 
 
 "And thou art the wise man of the world — the, 
 student of the hearts of others — the anatomizer of 
 thine own? Hast thou not found out that, besides 
 a craving stomach, man carries with him a corrupt 
 heart ? Many a man I have seen who, in his haste 
 to fly from the fiends without him, has forgotten 
 to close the door of his heart against worse fiends 
 who were ready to harbor within him. Many a 
 monk, friend, changes his place, but not the anguish 
 of his soul. I have known those who, driven to 
 feed on their own thoughts in solitude, have des- 
 perately cast themselves from cliffs, or ripped up 
 their own bodies, in the longing to escape from 
 thoughts, from which one companion, one kindly 
 voice, might have delivered them. I have known 
 those, too, who have been so puffed up by those 
 very penances which were meant to humble them, 
 that they have despised all means of grace, as 
 though they were already perfect, and refusing 
 even the Holy Eucharist, have lived in self- 
 glorying dreams and visions suggested by the evil 
 spirits. 
 
 CCXXI. 
 
 "Tell me," said the Prefect, to Raphael the Jew, 
 
2s6 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 " what it was about which I heard you just novi 
 soliloquizing, as so hopeful a view of some matter 
 or other ? " 
 
 " Honestly — if you will neither betray me to your 
 son and daughter, nor consider me as having in 
 any wise committed myself — it was Paul of Tarsus' 
 notion of the history and destinies of our stiff- 
 necked nation. See what your daughter has per- 
 suaded me into reading ! " And he held up a 
 manuscript of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 
 "It is execrable Greek. But it is sound phil- 
 osophy, I cannot deny. He knows Plato better 
 than all the ladies and gentlemen in Alexandria 
 put together, if my opinion on the point be worth 
 having." 
 
 "I am a plain soldier, and no judge on that 
 point, sir. He may or may not know Plato, but 
 I am right sure that he knows God. 
 
 " Not too fast," said Raphael, with a smile. 
 " You do not know, perhaps, that I have spent 
 the last ten years of my life among men who 
 professed the same knowledge ? " 
 
 " Augustine, too, spent the best ten years of his 
 life among such ; and yet he is now combating the 
 very errors which he once taught." 
 
 " Having found, he fancies, something better ? " 
 
 " Having found it, most truly. But you must 
 talk to him yourself, and argue the matter over, 
 
BELIEF. 257 
 
 with one who can argue. To me such questions 
 are an unknown land." 
 
 "Well .... Perhaps I may be tempted to do 
 even that. At least a thoroughly converted phil- 
 osopher — for poor dear Synesius is half heathen 
 still, I often fancy, and hankers after the wisdom 
 of the Egyptian — will be a curious sight; and to 
 talk with so famous and so learned a man would 
 always be a pleasure ; but to argue with him, or 
 any other human being, none whatsoever." 
 
 "Why, then?" 
 
 "My dear sir, I am sick of syllogisms, and 
 probabilities, and pros and contras. What do 
 I care if, on weighing both sides, the nineteen 
 pounds' weight of questionable arguments against, 
 are overbalanced by the twenty pounds' weight 
 of equally questionable arguments for? Do you 
 not see that my belief of the victorious propo- 
 sition will be proportioned to the one over-balancing 
 pound only, while the whole other nineteen will go 
 for nothing ? " 
 
 "I really do not." 
 
 "Happy are you, then. I do, from many a 
 sad experience. No, my worthy sir. I want a 
 faith past arguments; one which, whether I can 
 prove it or not to the satisfaction of the lawyers, 
 I believe to my own satisfaction, and act on it 
 as undoubtingly and unreasoningly as I do upon 
 
258 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 my own newly rediscovered personal identit}'. I 
 don't want to possess a faith. I want a faith 
 which will possess me. And if I ever arrived 
 at such a one, believe me, it would be by some 
 such practical demonstration as this very tent has 
 given me." / 
 
 "This tent?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, this tent; within which I have seen 
 you and your children lead a life of deeds as 
 new to me the Jew, as they would be to Hypatia 
 the Gentile. I have watched you for many a 
 day, and not in vain. When I saw you an 
 experienced officer, encumber your flight , with 
 wounded men, I was only surprised. But since I 
 have seen you and your daughter, and, strangest 
 of all, your gay young Alcibiades of a son, starvt 
 ing yourselves to feed those poor ruffians — per- 
 forming for them, day and night, the offices of 
 menial slaves — comforting them, as no man ever 
 comforted me — ' blaming no one but yourselves, 
 caring for every one but yourselves, sacrificing 
 nothing but yourselves, and all this without hope 
 of fame or reward, or dream of appeasing the 
 wrath of any god or goddess, but simply because 
 
 you thought it right When I saw that, sir, 
 
 and more which I have seen ; and when, reading 
 in this book here, I found most unexpectedly those 
 very grand moral rules which you were practicing. 
 
BELIEF. 259 
 
 seeming to spring unponsciously, as natural results, 
 from the great thoughts, true or false, which had 
 preceded them ; then, sir, I began to suspect that 
 the creed whicli could produce such deeds as I 
 have watched within the last few days, might 
 have on its side not merely a , slight preponder- 
 ance of probabilities, but what we Jews used once 
 to call, when we believed in it — or in any thing — 
 the mighty power of God." 
 
 And as he spoke, he looked into the Prefect's 
 face with the look of a man wrestling in some 
 deadly struggle ; so intense and terrible was the 
 earnestness of his eye, that even the old soldier 
 shrank before it. 
 
 " And therefore," he went on, " therefore, sir, 
 beware of your own actions, and of your children's, 
 If, by any folly or baseness, such as I have seen 
 in every human being whom I ever met as 
 yet upon this accursed stage of; fools, you shall 
 crush my new-budding hope that there is some- 
 thing somewhere which will make me what I 
 know that I ought to be, and . can l(e ^- if you 
 shall crush that, I say, by any misdoing of 
 yours, you had better have been the murderer of 
 my first-born; with such a hate — a hate which 
 Jews alone can feel — -will I hate you and yours." 
 " God help us and strengthen us ! " said the old 
 warrior, in a tone of noble humility. 
 
26o LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 CCXXII. 
 
 Before Philammon could force his way into the 
 church, Cyril's sermon had begun. 
 
 — "What went ye out for to see? A man clothed 
 in soft raiment? Nay, such are in king's palaces, 
 and in the palaces of prefects who would needs be 
 emperors, and cast away the Lord's bonds from 
 them, — of whom it is written, that he that sitteth 
 in the heavens laugheth them to scorn, and taketh 
 the wicked in their own snare, and maketh the de- 
 vices of princes of none effect. Ay, in king's pala- 
 ces, and in theatres too, where the rich of this world, 
 poor in faith, deny their covenant, and defile their 
 baptismal robes that they may do honor to the de- 
 vourers of the earth. Woe to them who think that 
 they may partake of the cup of the Lord and the 
 cup of devils. Woe to them who will praise with 
 the same mouth Aphrodite the fiend, and her of 
 whom it is written that he was born of a pure Vir- 
 gin. Let such be excommunicate from the cup of 
 the Lord, and from the congregation of the Lord, 
 till they have purged away their sins by penance 
 and by almsgiving. But for you, ye poor of this 
 world, rich in faith, you whom the rich despise, hale 
 before the judgment seats, and blaspheme that holy 
 name whereby ye are called — what went ye out into 
 
BELIEF. 261 
 
 the wilderness to see ? A prophet ? — Ay, and more 
 than a prophet — a martyr ! More than a prophet, 
 more than a king, more than a prefect ; whose thea- 
 tre was the sands of the desert, whose throne was 
 the cross, whose crown was bestowed, not by heathen 
 philosophers and daughters of Satan, deceiving men 
 with the works of their fathers, but by angels and 
 archangels ; a crown of glory, the victor's laurel, 
 which grows forever in the paradise of the highest 
 heaven. Call him no more Ammonius, call him 
 Thaumasius, wonderful! Wonderful in his poverty, 
 wonderful in his zeal, wonderful in his faith, won- 
 derful in his fortitude, wonderful in his death, most 
 wonderful in the manner of that death. Oh, thrice 
 blessed, who has merited the honor of the cross 
 itself 1 What can follow but that one so honored 
 in the flesh, should also be honored in the life 
 which he now lives, and that from the virtue of 
 these thrice holy limbs the leper should be cleansed, 
 the dumb should speak, the very dead be raised ? 
 Yes; it were impiety to doubt it. Consecrated by 
 the cross, this flesh shall not only rest in hope but 
 work in power. Approach, and be healed 1 Approach, 
 and see the glory of the saints,' the glory of the 
 poor. Approach, and learn that that which man 
 despises, God hath highly esteemed ; that that which 
 man repels, God accepts ; that that which man 
 punishes, God rewards. Approach, and see how 
 
2 62 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 God hath chosen the foolish things of this world to 
 confound the wise, and the weak things of this 
 world to confound the strong. Man abhors the 
 cross: The Son of God condescended to endure 
 it! Man tramples on the poor. The Son of God 
 hath not where to lay his head. Man passes by 
 the sick as useless : The Son of God chooses them 
 to be partakers of his sufferings, that the glory of 
 God may be made manifest in them. Man curses 
 the publican, while he employs him to fill his coffers 
 with the plunder of the pobr. The Son of God 
 calls him from the receipt of custom to be an apostle, 
 higher than the kings of the earth. Man casts away 
 the harlot like a faded flower, when he has tempted 
 her to become the slave of sin for a season, and 
 the Son of God calls her, the defiled, the despised, 
 the forsaken, to himself, accepts her tears, blesses 
 her offering, and declares that her sins are forgiven, 
 for she hath loved much while to whom little is for- 
 given the same loveth little." .... 
 
 Philammon heard no more. With the passionate 
 and impulsive nature of a Greek fanatic, he burst 
 forward through the crowd, towards the steps which 
 led to the choir, and above which, in front of the 
 altar, stood the corpse of Ammonius, inclosed in a 
 coffin of glass, beneath a gorgeous canopy ; and 
 never stopping till he found himself in front of 
 Cyril's pulpit, he threw himself upon his face upon 
 
BELIEF. 263 
 
 the pavement, spread out his arms in the form of a 
 cross, and lay silent and motionless before the feet 
 of the multitude. 
 
 There was a sudden whisper and rustle in the congre- 
 gation ; but Cyril, after a moment's pause, went on — 
 
 " Man, in his pride and self-sufficiency, despises 
 humiliation, and penance, and the broken and the 
 contrite heart; and tells thee that only so long as 
 thou doest well unto thyself will he speak well 
 of thee : the Son of God says that he that hum- 
 bleth himself, even as this our penitent .brother, 
 he it is who shall be exalted. He it is of whom 
 it is written that his father saw him afar off, and 
 ran to meet him, and bade put the best robe on 
 him, and a ring on his hand, and shoes on his 
 feet, and make merry and be glad with the choir 
 of angels who rejoice over one sinner that repent- 
 eth. Arise, my son, whosoever thou art; and go 
 in peace for this night, remembering that he who 
 said 'My belly cleaveth unto the pavement,' hath 
 also said, ' Rejoice not against me, Satan, mine 
 enemy, for when I fall I shall arise ! " 
 
 A thunderclap of applause, surely, as pardonable 
 as any an Alexandrian church ever heard, followed 
 this dexterous, and yet most righteous, turn of the 
 patriarch's oratory ; but Philammon raised himself 
 slowly and fearfully to his knees, and blushing 
 scarlet, endured the gaze of ten thousand eyes. 
 
264 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 Suddenly, from beside the pulpit, an old man 
 sprang forward, and clasped him round the neck. 
 It was Arsenius. 
 
 " My son ! my son ! " sobbed he, almost aloud. 
 
 " Slave, as well as son, if you will ! " whispered 
 Philammon. " One boon from the patriarch ; and 
 then home to the Laura forever ! " 
 
 "Oh, twice-blessed night," rolled on above the 
 deep rich voice of Cyril, "which beholds at once 
 the coronation of a martyr, and the conversion of 
 a sinner ; which increases at the same time the 
 ranks of the Church triumphant and of the Church 
 militant ; and pierces celestial essences with a two- 
 fold rapture of thanksgiving, as they welcome on high 
 a victorious, and on earth a repentant, brother ! " 
 
 And at a sign from Cyril, Peter the Reader, 
 stepped forward, and led away, gently enough, the 
 two weepers, who were welcomed as they passed 
 by the blessings, and prayers, and tears even of 
 those fierce fanatics of Nitria. Nay, Peter himself, 
 as he turned to leave them together in the sac- 
 risty, held out his hand to Philammon. 
 
 " I ask your forgiveness," said the poor boy 
 who plunged eagerly and with a sort of delight 
 into any and every self abasement. 
 
 "And I accord it," quoth Peter; and returned 
 to the church, looking, and probably feeling, in a 
 far more pleasant mood than usual. 
 
BELIEF. 265 
 
 CCXXIII. 
 
 Hypatia was a Greek, and a woman — and for 
 that matter, so were the men of her school. To 
 her the relations and duties of common humanity 
 shone with none of the awful and divine meaning 
 which they did in the eyes of the converted Jew, 
 awakened for the first time in his life to know the 
 meaning of his own Scriptures, and become an 
 Israelite indeed. And Raphael's dialectic, too, 
 though it might silence her, could not convince 
 her. Her creed, like those of her fellow-philosophers, 
 was one of the fancy and the religious sentiment, 
 rather than of the reason and the moral sense. 
 All the brilliant cloud-world in which she had rev- 
 elled for years, — cosmogonies, emanations, affinities, 
 symbolisms, hierarchies, abysses, eternities, and the 
 rest of it — though she could not rest in them, 
 not even believe in them — though they had van- 
 ished into thin air at her most utter need — yet 
 they were too pretty to be lost sight of forever ; 
 and, struggling against the growing conviction of 
 her reason, she answered at last, — 
 
 " And you would have me give up, as you seem 
 to have done, the sublime, the beautiful, the heavenly, 
 for a dry and barren chain of dialectic — in which, 
 for aught I know — for after all, Raphael, I cannot 
 cope with you — I am a woman — a weak woman ! " 
 
266 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 And she covered her face with her hands. 
 "For aught you know, what?" asked Raphael 
 gently. 
 
 "You may have made the worse appear the bet- 
 ter reason." 
 
 So said Aristophanes of Socrates, But hear me 
 once more, beloved Hypatia. You refuse to give 
 up the beautiful, the sublime, the heavenly.' What 
 if Raphael Aben-Ezra, at least, had never found 
 them till now? Recollect what I said just now — 
 what if our old Beautiful, and Sublime, and Heavenly 
 had been the sheerest materialism, notions spun by 
 our own brains out of the impressions of pleasant 
 things, and high things, and low things, and awful 
 things, which we had seen with our bodily eyes ? 
 what if I had discovered that the spiritual is not 
 the intellectual, but the moral; and that the spir- 
 itual world is not, as we used to make it, a world 
 of our own intellectual abstractions, or of our 
 own physical emotions, religious or other, but a 
 world of righteous or unrighteous persons ? What if 
 I had discovered that one law of the spiritual 
 world, in which others were contained, was right- 
 eousness ; and that disharmony with that law, 
 which we called unspirituality, was not being vulgar 
 or clumsy, or ill-taught, or unimaginative, or dull, 
 but simply being unrighteous ? What if I had dis- 
 covered that righteousness, and it alone was the 
 
BELIEF. 267 
 
 beautiful, righteousness the sublime, the heavenly, 
 the God-like — ay, God himself? And, what if it 
 had dawned on me, as by a great sunrise, what 
 that righteousness was like? What if I had seen a 
 human being, a woman, too, a young weak girl, 
 showing forth the glory and the beauty of God ? 
 Showing me that the beautiful was to mingle un- 
 shrinking, for duty's sake, with all that is most foul 
 and loathsome ; that the sublime was to stoop to 
 the most menial offices, the most outwardly-degrad- 
 ing self-denials ; that to be heavenly, was to know 
 that the commonest relations, the most vulgar duties 
 of earth, were God's commands, and only to be 
 performed aright by the help of the same spirit by 
 which he rules the Universe ; that righteousness 
 was to love, to help to suffer for — if need be, to 
 die for — those who, in themselves, seem fitted to 
 arouse no feelings except indignation and disgust? 
 What if, for the first time, I trust not for the last 
 time, in my life, I saw this vision ; and at the 
 sight of it my eyes were opened, and I knew it 
 for the likeness and the glory of God? What if 
 I, a Platonist, like John of Galilee, and Paul of 
 Tarsus, yet, like them, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, 
 had confessed to myself — If the creature can love 
 thus, how much more its archetype ? If weak 
 woman can endure thus, how much more a Son of 
 God ? If, for the good of others, man has strength 
 
268 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 to sacrifice himself in part, God will have strength 
 to sacrifice himself utterly. If he has not done it, 
 he will do it; or he will be less beautiful, less 
 sublime, less heavenly, less righteous than my poor 
 conception of him, ay, than this weak, playful 
 girl ! Why should I not believe those who tell me 
 that he has done it already ? What if their evi- 
 dence be, after all, only probability? I do not 
 want mathematical demonstration to prove to me 
 that when a child was in danger its father saved 
 him — neither do I here. My reason, my heart, 
 every faculty, of me, except this stupid, sensuous 
 experience, which I find deceiving you every mo- 
 ment, which cannot even prove to me my own ex- 
 istence, accepts that story of Calvary as the most 
 natural, most probable, most necessary of earthly 
 events, assuming only that God is a righteous 
 Person, and not some dream of an all-pervading 
 necessary spirit — nonsense which in its very terms, 
 confesses its own materialism. 
 
 CCXXIV. 
 
 We must, in the great majority of cases, have 
 the corpus sanem if we want the mentem sanem; 
 and healthy bodies are the only trustworthy organs 
 for healthy minds. Which is cause, and which is 
 effect, I shall not stay to debate here. But wher- 
 
HEALTH. 269 
 
 ever we find a population generally weakly, stunted, 
 scrofulous, we find in them a corresponding type 
 of brain, which cannot be trusted to do good 
 work; which is capable more or less of madness, 
 whether solitary or epidemic. It may be very active. 
 It may be very quick at catching at new and 
 grand ideas — all the more quick, perhaps, on ac- 
 count of its own secret malaise and self-discontent ; 
 but it will be irritable, spasmodic, hysterical. It 
 will be apt to mistake capacity of talk for capacity 
 of action, excitement for earnestness, virulence for 
 force, and, too often, cruelty for justice. It will 
 lose manful independence, individuality, originality; 
 and when men act, they will act from the conscious- 
 ness of personal weakness, like sheep rushing over 
 a hedge, leaning against each other, exhorting each 
 other to be brave, and swaying about in mobs and 
 masses. These were the intellectual weaknesses 
 which, as I read history, followed on physical deg- 
 radation in Imperial Rome, in Alexandria, in By- 
 zantium. 
 
 ccxxv. 
 
 Why should not people be taught something about 
 the tissues of the body, their structure and uses, 
 the circulation of the blood, respiration, chemical 
 changes in the air respired, amount breathed, diges- 
 
270 LIVING TRUTHS. . 
 
 tion, nature of food, absorption, secretion, structure 
 of the nervous system — in fact, be taught some- 
 thing of how their own bodies are made and how 
 they work. Teaching of this kind ouglit to, and 
 will, in some more 'Civilized age and country, be 
 held as necessary as reading, writing, and arith- 
 metic; for it is after all the most necessary branch 
 of that " technical education " of which we hear 
 so much just now, namely, the technic, or art, of 
 keeping one's self alive and well. 
 
 CCXXVL 
 
 Without well-filled lungs, robust health is impos- 
 sible. And if any one shall answer, "We do not 
 want robust health so much as intellectual attain- 
 ment. The mortal body, being the lower organ, 
 must take its chance, and be even sacrificed, if 
 need be, to the higher organ — the immortal mind." 
 To such I reply, you cannot do it. The laws of 
 nature, which are the express will of God, laugh 
 such attempts to scorn. Every organ of the body 
 is formed out of the blood ; and if the blood be 
 vitiated, every organ suffers in proportion to its 
 delicacy. And the brain, being the most delicate 
 and highly specialized of all organs, suffers most 
 of all and soonest of all, as every one knows 
 who has tried to work his brain when his digest 
 
HEALTH. 27 1 
 
 tion was the least out of order. Nay, the very 
 morals will suffer. From ill-filled lungs, which sig- 
 nify ill-repaired blood, arise year by year, an amount 
 not merely oi disease, but of folly, temper, laziness, 
 intemperance, madness, and, let me tell you fairly, 
 crime — the sum of which will never be known till 
 that great day when men shall be called to account 
 for all deeds done in the body, whether they be 
 good or evil. 
 
 CCXXVII, 
 
 As in that which is above nature, so in nature 
 itself. He that breaks one physical law is guilty of 
 all; The whole universe, as it were, takes up arms 
 against him ; and all nature, with her numberless 
 and unseen powers, is ready to avenge herself on 
 him, and on his children after him, he knows not 
 when or where. He, on the other hand, who obeys 
 the laws of nature with his whole heart and mind, 
 will find all things working together to him for 
 good. He is at peace witla the physical universe. 
 He is helped and befriended alike by the sun 
 above his head, and the dust beneath his feet, 
 because he is obeying the will and mind of him 
 who made sun, and dust, and all things, and 
 who has given them a law which cannot be 
 broken. 
 
272 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 CCXXVIII. 
 
 Ah, the waste of health and strength in the 
 young ; the waste, too, of anxiety and misery in 
 those who love and tend them. How much of it 
 might be saved by a little rational education in 
 those laws of nature which are the will of God 
 about the welfare of our bodies, and which, there- 
 fore, we are as much bound to know and to obey, 
 as we are bound to know and obey the spiritual 
 laws whereon depends the welfare of our souls. 
 
 CCXXIX. 
 
 Andrew Combe tells a story of a large charity 
 school, in which the young girls were, for the sake 
 of their health, shut up in the hall and school- 
 room during play-hours, from November till March, 
 and no romping or noise allowed. The natural 
 consequences were, the great majority of them fell 
 ill; and I am afraid that a great deal of illness has 
 been from time to time contracted in certain school- 
 rooms, simply through this one cause of enforced 
 silence. Some cause or other there must be for the 
 amount of ill-health and weakliness which prevails 
 especially among girls of the middle classes in 
 towns, who have not, poor things, the opportuni- 
 ties which richer girls have, of keeping themselves 
 
HEALTH. 273 
 
 in strong health by riding, skating, archery — that 
 last quite an admirable exercise for the chest and 
 lungs, and far preferable to croquet, which involves 
 too much unwholesome stooping. Even playing at 
 ball, if milliners and shop-girls had room to indulge 
 in a game after their sedentary work, might bring 
 fresh spirits to many a heart, and fresh color to 
 many a cheek. 
 
 ccxxx. 
 
 If the craving for stimulants and narcotics is a 
 token of deficient vitality, then the deadliest foe 
 of ±at craving, and all its miserable results, is surely 
 the Sanitary Reformer; the man who preaches, and 
 — as far as ignorance and vested interests will 
 allow him — procures for the masses, pure air, pure 
 sunlight, pure water, pure dwelling-houses, pure food. 
 Not merely every fresh drinking-fountain, but every 
 fresh public bath and wash-house, every fresh open 
 space, every fresh growing tree, every fresh open 
 window — each of these is so much as the old Per- 
 sians would have said, conquered for Ormuzd, the 
 god of light and life, out of the dominion of Ahriman, 
 the king of darkness and of death ; so much 
 taken from the causes of drunkenness and dis- 
 ease, and added to the causes of sobriety and 
 health. 
 
2 74 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 CCXXXI. 
 
 It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the edu- 
 cation of girls more and more to that of boys. 
 If that means that girls are merely to learn more 
 lessons, and to study what their brothers are taught 
 in addition to what their mothers were taught, then 
 it is to be hoped, at least by physiologists and 
 patriots, that the scheme will sink into that limbo 
 whither, in a free and tolerably rational country, all 
 imperfect and ill-considered schemes are sure to 
 gravitate. But if the proposal be a bona fide one, 
 then it must be borne in mind that in the public 
 schools of England, and in all private schools, I 
 presume, which take their tone from them, cricket 
 and football are more or less compulsory, being 
 considered integral parts of an Englishman's educa- 
 tion ; and that they are likely to remain so, in spite 
 of reclamations : because masters and boys alike 
 know that games do not, in the long run, interfere 
 with a boy's work; that the same boy will very 
 often excel in both; that the games keep him in 
 health for his work; that the spirit with which he 
 takes to his games when in the lower school is a 
 fair test of the spirit with which he will take to 
 his work when he rises into the higher school; 
 and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall 
 into a loafing, tuck-shop-haunting set, who neither 
 
HEALTH. 275 
 
 play hard nor work hard, and are usually extrava- 
 gant and often vicious. Moreover, they know well 
 that games conduce, not merely to physical, but to 
 moral health ; that in the playing-field boys ac- 
 quire virtues which no books can give them ; not 
 merely daring and endurance, but, better still, tem- 
 per, self-restraint, fairness, honor, unenvious appro- 
 bation of another's success, and all that " give and 
 take " of life which stand a man in such good 
 stead when he goes forth into the world, and with- 
 out which, indeed, his success is always maimed 
 and partial. 
 
 Now, if the promoters of higher education for 
 women will compel girls to any training analogous 
 to our public school games; if, for instance, they 
 will insist on singing, to expand the lungs and 
 regulate the breath; and on some games — ball or 
 what not — which will ensure that raised chest, and 
 upright carriage, and general strength of the upper 
 torso, without which full oxygenation of the blood, 
 and therefore, general health is impossible; if they 
 will sternly forbid tight stays, high heels, and all 
 which interferes with free growth and free motion; 
 if they will consider carefully all which has been 
 written on the "half time system" by Mr. Chad- 
 wick and others ; and accept the certain physical 
 law that in order to renovate the brain day by 
 day, the growing creature must have plenty of 
 
276 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 fresh air and play, and that the child who learns 
 for four hours and. plays for four hours, will learn 
 more, and learn it more easily,, than the child who 
 learns for the whole )eight hours; if, in short, they 
 will teach girls not merely to understand the Greek 
 tongue, but to copy somewhat of the Greek physi- 
 cal training, of that "music and gymnastic" which 
 helped to make the cleverest race of the old world 
 the ablest race likewise; tlien they will earn the grati- 
 tude of the patriot and the physiologist, by doing their 
 best to stay the downward tendencies of the physique, 
 and therefore ultimately of the morale in the coming 
 generation of English women. 
 
 CCXXXII. 
 
 We all live too fast, and work too hard. "All 
 things are full of labor, man cannot utter it." 
 In the heavy struggle for existence which goes on 
 all around us, each man is tasked more and more — 
 if he be really worth buying and using — to the 
 utmost of his powers all day long. The weak 
 have to compete on equal terms with the strong; 
 and crave in consequence, for, artificial strength. 
 How we shall stop that I know not, while every 
 man is "making haste to be rich; and piercing 
 himself through with many sorrows, and falling into 
 foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in de- 
 
HEALTH. 277 
 
 struction and perdition." How we shall stop that, 
 I say, I know not. The old prophet may have 
 been right when he said, " Surely it is not of the 
 Lord that the people shall labor in the very fire, 
 and weary themselves for very vanity;" and in 
 some juster, wiser, more sober system of society — 
 somewhat more like the Kingdom of the Father 
 come on earth — it may be that poor human beings 
 will not need to toil so hard, and to keep them- 
 selves up to their work by stimulants, but will 
 have time to sit down, and look around them, and 
 think of God, and of God's quiet universe, with 
 something of quiet in themselves ; something of 
 rational leisure, and of manful sobriety of mind, 
 as well as of body. 
 
 CCXXXIII. 
 
 What we all want is inward rest ; rest of heart 
 and bfaiii ; the calm, strong, self-contained, self- 
 denying character, which needs no stimulants, for it 
 has no fits of depression; which needs no nar- 
 cotics, for it has no fits- of excitement,- which needs 
 no ascetic restraints, for it is strong enough to use 
 God's gifts without abusing them; the character, in 
 a word, which is truly temperate, not in drink or 
 food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions; 
 freed from the wild lusts and ambitions to which 
 
278 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 that old Adam yielded, and, seeking for light and 
 life by means forbidden, found thereby disease and 
 death. Yes; I know that. And yet, in such a 
 world as this, governed by a Being who has made 
 sunshine and flowers, and green grass, and the song 
 of birds, and happy human smiles; and who would 
 educate by them — if we would let him — his 
 human children from the cradle to the grave; in 
 such a world as this, will you grudge any particle 
 of that education, even any harmless substitute for 
 it, to those spirits in prison, whose surroundings 
 too often tempt them, from the cradle to the grave, 
 to fancy that the world is composed of bricks and 
 iron, and governed by inspectors and policemen? 
 Preach to those spirits in prison, but let them have 
 besides some glimpses of the splendid fact, that 
 outside their prison-house is a world which God, 
 not man, has made, wherein grows everywhere that 
 tree of knowledge which is likewise the tree of 
 life; and that they have a right to some small 
 share of its beauty, and its wonder, and its rest, 
 for their own health of soul and body, and for the 
 health of their children after them. 
 
 CCXXXIV, 
 
 Can truth and fact harm any human being? I 
 shall not believe so, as long as I have a Bible 
 
HEALTH. 279 
 
 wherein to believe. For my part, I should like to 
 make every man, woman, and child whom I meet 
 discontented with themselves, even as I am discon- 
 tented with myself. I should like to awaken in 
 them, about their physical, their intellectual, their 
 moral condition, that divine discontent which is 
 parent, first of upward aspiration and then of self- 
 control, thought, effort to fulfil that aspiration even 
 in part. For to be discontented with the divine 
 discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble 
 shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all 
 virtue. Men begin at first, as boys begin when 
 they grumble at their school and their school-mas- 
 ters, to lay the blame on others; to be discontented 
 with their circumstances — the things which stand 
 around them ; and to crj', " Oh that I had this ! " 
 " Oh that I had that ! " But that way no deliver- 
 ance lies. That discontent only ends in revolt and 
 rebellion, social or political ; and that again, still in 
 the same worship of circumstances — but this time 
 desperate — which ends, let it disguise itself under 
 what fine names it will, in what the old Greeks 
 called a tyranny ; in which — as in the Spanish 
 republics of America, and in France more than 
 once — all have become the voluntary slaves of one 
 man, because each man fancies that the one man 
 can improve his circumstances for him. 
 
 But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the 
 
28o LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 heroic slave, the slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's 
 minion — and in what baser and uglier circumstances 
 could human being find himself ? — to find out the 
 secret of being truly free ; namely, to be discon- 
 tented with no man and thing save himself. To 
 say not — "Oh that I had this and that!" but "Oh 
 that I were this and that ! " Then, by God's help 
 — and that heroic slave, heathen though he was, 
 believed and trusted in God's help — "I will make 
 myself that which God has shown me that I ought 
 to be and can be." ^ 
 
 CCXXXV, 
 
 If a man comes up to Nature, as to a parrot 
 or a monkey, with this prevailing thought in his 
 head — Will it bite me?— will he not be pretty 
 certain to make up his mind that it may bite him, 
 and had therefore best be left alone? 
 
 It is only the man of courage — few and far 
 between — who will stand the chance of a first bite, 
 in the hope of teaching the parrot to talk, or the 
 monkey to fire off a gun. And it is only the man 
 of courage — few and far between — who will stand 
 the chance of a first bite from Nature, which may 
 kill him for aught he knows — for her teeth, though 
 rlumsy, are very strong — in order that he may tame 
 her, and break her into his use by the very same 
 
SCIENCE. 281 
 
 method by which that admirable, inductive philos- 
 .apher, Mr. Rarey, used to break his horses; first, 
 by not being afraid of them ; and next, by trying 
 to find out what they were thinking of. But after 
 all, as with animals, so with Nature; cowardice is 
 dangerous. The surest method of getting bitten 
 by an animal is to be afraid of it; and the 
 surest method of being injured by Nature is to be 
 afraid of it. Only as far as we understand Nature 
 are we safe from it; and those who in any age 
 counsel mankind not to pry into the secrets of the 
 universe, counsel them not to provide for their 
 own life and well-being, or for their children after 
 them. 
 
 But how few there have b^n- in any age who 
 have not been afraid of Nature. How few have 
 set themselves, like Rarey, to tame her by finding 
 out what she is thinking, of. The mass are glad 
 to have the results of science, as they are to buy 
 Mr. Rarey's horses after they are tamed ; but for 
 want of courage or of wit, they had rather leave 
 the taming process to some one, else. And, there- 
 fore, we may say that what knowledge of Nature 
 we have — and we have very little — we owe to the 
 courage of those men — and they have been very 
 few — who have been inspired , to face Nature 
 boldly; and say — or, what is better, act as if they 
 were saying, "I find something in me which I do 
 
282 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 not find in you ; which gives me the hope that I 
 can grow to understand you, though you may not 
 understand me; that I may become your master, 
 and not as now, you mine. And if not, I will 
 know ; or die in the search." 
 
 It is to those men, the few and far between, in 
 a very few ages, and very few countries, who 
 have thus risen in rebellion against Nature, and 
 look it in the face with an unquailing glance, that 
 we owe what we call Physical Science. 
 
 CCXXXVI. 
 
 The founders of inductive, physical science were 
 not the Jews ; but first the Chaldeans, next the 
 Greeks, next their pupils, the Romans — or rather 
 a few sages among each race. But what success 
 had they ? The Chaldean astronomers made a few 
 discoveries concerning the motions of heavenly bodies, 
 which, rudimentary as they were, still prove them 
 to have been men of rare intellect. For a great 
 and patient genius must he have been who first 
 distinguished the planets from the fixed stars, or 
 worked out the earliest astronomical calculation. 
 But they seem to have been crushed, as it were, 
 by their own discoveries. They stopped short. 
 They gave way again to the primeval fear of 
 Nature. They sank into planet worship. They in- 
 
SCIENCE. 283 
 
 vented, it would seem, that fantastic pseudo-science 
 of astrology, which lay for ages after as an incu- 
 bus on the human intellect and conscience. They 
 became the magicians and quacks of the old world; 
 and mankind owed them thenceforth nothing but 
 evil. 
 
 Among the Greeks and Romans, again, those 
 sages who dared face nature like reasonable men, 
 were accused by the superstitious mob as irrever- 
 ent, impious atheists. The wisest of them all, 
 Socrates, was actually put to death on that charge ; 
 and finally they failed. School after school in 
 Greece and Rome, struggled to discover and to 
 get a hearing for some theory of the universe 
 which was founded on something like experience, 
 reason, common-sense. They were not allowed to 
 prosecute their attempt. The mud-ocean of igno- 
 rance and fear in which they struggled so manfully, 
 was too strong for them ; the mud-waves closed 
 over their heads finally, as the age of the Anto- 
 nines expired, and the last effort of Grseco-Roman 
 thought to explain the universe was Neoplatonism — 
 the muddiest of the muddy — an attempt to apolo- 
 gise for, and organize into a system, all the 
 nature-dreading superstitions of the Roman world. 
 Porphyry, Plotinus, Proclus, poor Hypatia herself, 
 and all her school — they may have had themselves 
 no bodily fear of Nature; for they were noble 
 
284 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 souls. Yet they spent their time in justifying those 
 who had ; in apologizing for the superstitions of 
 the very mob which they despised; just as — it 
 sometimes seems to me — some folks in these 
 days are like to end in doing; begging that the 
 masses might be allowed to believe in any thing, 
 however false, lest they should believe in nothing 
 at all : as if believing in lies could do any thing 
 but harm to any human being. And so died the 
 science of the old world, in a true second child- 
 hood, just where it began. 
 
 The Jewish sages, I hold, taught that science 
 was probable ; the Greeks and Romans proved that 
 it was possible. It remained for our race, under 
 the teaching of both, to bring science into act 
 and fact. 
 
 ccxxxvn. 
 
 The word science defines itself. It means simply 
 knowledge; that is, of course, right knowledge, or 
 such an approximation as can be obtained ; knowl- 
 edge of any natural object, its classification, its 
 causes, its effects ; or, in plain English, what it is, 
 how it came where it is, and what can be done 
 with it. 
 
 And scientific method, likewise, needs no defini- 
 tion ; for it is simply the exercise of common-sense. 
 
SCIENCE. 28s 
 
 It is not a peculiar, unique, professional, or myste- 
 rious process of the understanding; but the same 
 which all men employ, from the cradle to the 
 grave, in forming correct conclusions. 
 
 Every one who knows the philosophic writings 
 of Mr. John Stuart Mill, will be familiar with this 
 opinion. But to those who have no leisure to 
 study him, I should recommend the reading of 
 Professor Huxley's third lecture on the origin of 
 species. 
 
 In that he shows, with great logical skill, as 
 well as with some humor, how the man who, on 
 rising in the morning finds his parlor window open, 
 the spoons and teapot gone, the mark of a dirty 
 hand on the window-sill, and that of a hob-nailed 
 boot outside, and comes to the conclusion that 
 some one has broken open the window and stolen 
 the plate, arrives at that hypothesis — for it is 
 nothing more — by a long and complex train of 
 inductions and deductions, of just the same kind as 
 those which, according to the Baconian philosophy, 
 are to be used for investigating the deepest secrets 
 of Nature. 
 
 CCXXXVIII.^ 
 
 From blind fear . o£ the unknown, science does 
 c&rtainly deliver man. She does by man as he 
 
286 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 does by an unbroken colt. The colt sees by the 
 roadside some quite new object — a cast-away boot, 
 an old kettle, or what-not. What a fearful mon- 
 ster! What unknown, terrific powers may it not 
 possess ! And the colt shies across the road, runs 
 up the bank, rears on end, putting itself thereby, 
 as many a man does, in real danger. What cure 
 is there ? But one, experience. So science takes 
 us, as we should take the colt, gently by the hal- 
 ter, and makes us simply smell at the new monster, 
 till after a few trembling sniffs, we discover like the 
 colt, that it is not a monster, but a kettle. Yet 
 I think if we -sum up the loss and gain we shall 
 find the colt's character has gained rather than lost 
 by being thus disabused. He learns to substitute 
 a very rational reverence for the man who is break- 
 ing him in, for a totally irrational reverence for the 
 kettle; and becomes thereby a much wiser and 
 more useful member of society, as does the man 
 when disabused of his superstitions. 
 
 CCXXXIX. 
 
 If science proposes — as she does — to make men 
 brave, wise, and independent, she must needs excite 
 unpleasant feelings in all who desire to keep men 
 cowardly, ignorant, and slavish. And that too many 
 such persons have existed in all ages is but too 
 
SCIENCE. 287 
 
 notorious. There have been from all time, goetai, 
 quacks, pow-wow men, rain-makers, and necromanc- 
 ers of various sorts, who having for their own pur- 
 poses set forth partial, ill-grounded, fantastic, and 
 frightful interpretations of nature, have no love for 
 those who search after a true, exact, brave, and 
 hopeful one. And therefore it is to be feared, 
 or hoped, science and superstition will to the 
 world's end remain irreconcilable and internecine 
 foes. 
 
 Conceive the feelings of an old Lapland witch, 
 who has had for the last fifty years all the winds 
 in a seal-skin bag, and has been selling fair breezes 
 to northern skippers at so much a puff, asserting 
 her powers so often, poor old soul, that she has 
 got to half-believe them herself — conceive, I say, 
 her feelings at seeing her customers watch the 
 admiralty storm-signals, and con the weather reports 
 in the Times. Conceive the feelings of Sir Samuel 
 Baker's African friend, Katchiba, the rain-making 
 chief, who possessed a whole houseful of thunder 
 and lightning — though he did not, he confessed, 
 keep it in a bottle as they do in England — if Sir 
 Samuel had had the means, and the will of giving 
 to Katchiba's negroes a course of lectures on 
 electricity, with appropriate experiments, and a 
 real bottle full of real lightning among the fore- 
 most. 
 
288 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 CCXL. 
 
 Science, as yet, has withstood both terrors and 
 blandishments. In old times, she endured being 
 imprisoned and slain. She came to life again. 
 Perhaps it -was the will of Him in whom all things 
 live, that she should live. Perhaps it was his spirit 
 which gave her life. 
 
 She can endure, too, being starved. Her vota- 
 ries have not as yet cared much for purple and 
 fine linen, and sumptuous fare. There are a very 
 few among them, who, joining brilliant talents to 
 solid learning, have risen to deserved popularity, to 
 titles, and to wealth. But even their labors, it 
 seems to me, are never rewarded in any proportion 
 to the time and the intellect spent on them, nor to 
 the benefits which they bring to mankind ; while 
 the great majority, unpaid and unknown, toil on, 
 and have to find in science her own reward. Bet- 
 ter, perhaps, that it should be so. Better for 
 science that she should be free, in holy poverty to 
 go where she will and say what s-he knows, than 
 that she should be hired but at so much a year to 
 say things pleasing to the many, and to those who 
 guide the many. And so, I verily believe, the 
 majority of scientific men think. There are those 
 among them who have obeyed very faithfully St. 
 Paul's precept, " No man that warrcth entangleth 
 
SCIENCE. 289 
 
 himself with the affairs of this h"fe." For they have 
 discovered that they are engaged in a war — a veri- 
 table war — against the rulers of darkness, against 
 ignorance and its twin children fear and cruelty. 
 Of that war they see neither the end nor even the 
 plan. But they are ready to go on ; ready, with 
 Socrates, " To follow reason whithersoever it 
 leads ; " and content, meanwhile, like good soldiers 
 in a campaign, if they can keep tolerably in 'line, 
 and use their weapons, and see a few yards ahead 
 of them through the smoke and the woods. They 
 will come out somewhere at last; they know not 
 where nor when : but they will come out at last 
 into the daylight and the open field; and be told 
 then — perhaps to their own astonishment — as many 
 a gallant soldier has been told, that by simply 
 walking straight on and doing the duty which lay 
 nearest them, they have helped to win a great 
 battle, and slay great giants, earning the thanks of 
 their country and of mankind. 
 
 CCXLI. 
 
 Science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own 
 exceeding reward. I can conceive few human states 
 more enviable than that of the man to whom 
 panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for 
 his life under tropic forest, Isis shall for a moment 
 
290 LIVING TRUTHS. 
 
 lift her sacred veil, and show him, once and for- 
 ever, the thing he dreamed not of; some law, or 
 even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact; but 
 explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them 
 all with each other, and with the mighty whole, till 
 order and meaning shoots through some old chaos 
 of scattered observations. 
 
 Is not that a joy, a prize, which wealth cannot 
 give, nor poverty take away. What it may lead to, 
 he knows not. Of what use it may become, he 
 knows not. But this he knows, that somewhere it 
 must lead; of some use it will be. For it is a 
 truth; and having found a truth, he has exercised 
 one more of the ghosts which haunt humanity. 
 He has left one object less for man to fear; one 
 object more for man to use. Yes, the scientific man 
 may have this comfort, that whatever he has done, 
 he has done good ; that he is following a mistress 
 who has never yet conferred aught but benefits on 
 the human race. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 Art XXX -XXXI 
 
 Beauty CLXi - CLXVi 
 
 Belief ccxvii - ccxxiii 
 
 Bible, The cvm-cix 
 
 Civilization CLXix-CLXX 
 
 Courage cxci-cxcv 
 
 Death Lxxxii - Lxxxix 
 
 Discipline xxxv-XLVii 
 
 Duty xxi-xxix 
 
 Education CL-CLX 
 
 Example clxvii-clxviii 
 
 Faith cxxiv-cxxxi 
 
 Greatness, True lxvii-lxciv 
 
 God the Father xcii-xcviii 
 
 God the Son xcix-cil 
 
 God the Spirit .' • cm -evil 
 
 God in Nature lxxv-lxxviii 
 
 Goodness xviir-xx 
 
 Happiness • ■ xvi-xvii 
 
 Health • • ccxxiv - ccxxxiv 
 
 Hope cxxxii 
 
 Human Nature cxil-cxx 
 
 Immortality xc-xci 
 
 Knowledge clxxi-clxxiii 
 
 Life CLXXix-cxc 
 
292 Index. 
 
 Love LV-Lxii 
 
 Poetry cxxxiii-cxLix 
 
 Prayer xxxii-xxxiv 
 
 Pri'ie cxcvi-cci 
 
 Progress i-s. 
 
 Providence xi-xv 
 
 Rich and Poor clxi-clxii 
 
 Science ccxxxv-ccxLi 
 
 Self-deception ecu 
 
 Selfishness cxx-cxxm 
 
 Self-sacrifice clxxiv-clxxviii 
 
 Sin XLViir-Liv 
 
 Sorrow cciii-ccvii 
 
 Success LXiii-LXVi 
 
 Time lxxix-lxxxi 
 
 Woman ccviii-ccxvi 
 
 Worship. . ex -CXI 
 
"PANSY" BOOKS. 
 
 Probably no living iiiithor has exerted an influence upon the 
 American people at large, at all comparable with Pansy's. Thou- 
 sands upon thousands of families read her books every week, and 
 the effect in the direction of right feeling, right thinking, and 
 right living is incalculable. 
 
 Each volume 12mo. Cloth. Price, 11.50. 
 "Four Gikls at Chautauqua. Modekn Prophets. 
 Chautauqua Girls at Home. Echoixg and Ee-echoing. 
 Ruth Erskine's Crosses. Those Boys. 
 Ester Ried. The Rakdolphs. 
 
 Julia Ried. Tip Lewis. 
 
 King's Daughter. Sidney Martin's Christmas. 
 
 Wise and Otherwise. Divers Women. 
 
 Ester Ried "Yet Speaking." A New Graft. 
 Links in Rebecca's Life. The Pocket Measure. 
 From Different Stand- Mrs. Solojion Smith. 
 
 Three People. [points. The Hall in the Grove. 
 
 Household Puzzles. Man of the House. 
 
 An Endless Chain. 
 
 Each volume 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25. 
 Cunning Workmen. Miss Priscilla Hunter and 
 
 Grandpa's Darling. My Daughter Susan. 
 
 Mrs. Dean's Way. What She Said and 
 
 Dr. Dean's Way. People who Haven't Time 
 
 Each volume 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 
 Next Things. Mrs. Hvrry Harper's 
 
 Pansy Scrap Book. Awakening. 
 
 Five Friends. New Year's Tangles. 
 
 Some Young Heroines. 
 
 Each volume 16mo. Cloth. Price, $.75. 
 Getting Ahead. Jessie Wells. 
 
 Two Boys. Docia's Journal. 
 
 Six Little Girls. Helen Lester. 
 
 Pansies. Bernie's White Chicken. 
 
 That Boy Bob. Mary Burton Abroad. 
 
 Side by Side. Price, $.60. 
 
 The Little Pansy Series, 10 vols. Boards, $;i.O0. Cloth, $4.00. 
 
 Mother's Boys and Girls' Library, 12 vols. Quarto Boards, $.1.00 
 
 Pansy Primary Library, 30 vol. Cloth. Price, $7.50. 
 
 Half Hour Library. Octavo, 8 vols. Price, $.3.20. 
 
EEOENT AND OHOIOE BOOKS POE S. S. LIBEAEIES. 
 
 By E. A. Band. 
 
 Pushing Ahead, , . . $i 25 
 
 Roy's Dory, . , , i 25 
 
 Little Brown-Top, , . i 25 
 
 After the Freshet, . . 1 25 
 
 By Margaret Siduey. 
 
 The Pettlbone Name, . . $1 
 
 So as by Fire, ... 1 
 
 Half Year at Bronckton, . i 
 
 By Pansy. 
 
 An Endless Chain, _. . $1 
 
 Ester Ried Yet Speaking, . i 
 
 New Year's Tangles, . . 1 
 Side by Side, 
 
 By Carrie A. Cooke. 
 
 To-days and Yesterdays, . ;^i 25 
 
 From June to June, . 1 25 
 
 By IHarie Olirer. 
 
 Seba's Discipline, ■ . . $1 50 
 
 Old and New Friends, . . i 50 
 
 Ruby Hamilton, . . . 1 50 
 
 By Mrs. S. B. «. Clark. 
 
 Our Street, . . . . $1 50 
 Yensie Walton, . . . 1 50 
 
 Yensie Walton's Womanhood, 1 50 
 
 By IHrs. J. J. Colter. 
 One Quiet Life, . . . i 25 
 
 Robbie Meredith, . . 1 25 
 
 Soldier and Servant, by Ella M. Baker, ...... 125 
 
 Keenie's To-morrow, Jennie M. Drinkwater Conklin, . . i 25 
 
 Hill Rest, by Susan M. Moulton, . 1 25 
 
 Echoes fi-om Ho.spital and White House. Experiences of Mrs. Re- 
 becca R. Pomroy during the War, by Anna L. Boyden, i 25 
 Not of Man but of God, by Jacol) M. Manning, . i 25 
 Cambridge Sermons, by Alexander McKenzie, . ... i 50 
 Self-Givmg. A Story of Christian Missions, by W. F. Bainbridge, i 50 
 Right to the Point. From the Wrilir.gs of Theodore I,. Cuyler, i 00 
 Living Truths. From Charles Kingsley, . ... i 00 
 
 For Mack's Sake,-by S. J. Burke i 25 
 
 Little Mother and her Christmas, by Phcebe McKeen, ... i 00 
 
 My Girls, by Lida M. Churchill . i 25 
 
 Grandmother Normandy, by the author of " Andy Luttrell," . i 25 
 
 The Snow Family, by M. B. Lyman, . . ... i 00 
 
 The Baptism of Fire, by Charles Edward Smith, . . . 125 
 
 Around the Randi, by Belle KeVoggTownc, . . . 125 
 
 Through Struggle to Victory, by A. B. Meservy, .... 80 
 
 Three of Us, by Heckla i 00 
 
 Breakfast for Two, by Joanna Matthews, . . ... 125 
 
 Onward to the Heights of Life, . . ... i 25 
 
 Tom and Mended, by W M. F. Round i 00 
 
 That Boy of Newkirks, by L. Bates, . . . . i 25 
 
 The Class of '70, by H. V. Morrison, ... . . i 25 
 
 Uncle Mark's Amaranths, by Annie G. Hale i 50 
 
 Six Months at Mrs. Prior's, by Emily Adams, . ... 125 
 
 A Fortunate Failure, by C. B. LeRow, i 25 
 
 Carrie Ellsworth, by M. D. Johnsor;, i 25 
 
 The Pansy Primary Library, 30 vols., . . ... 750 
 
 *,* LOTHROP'S SELECT S. S. LIBRARIES. The choicest, fresh- 
 est books at very low prices 
 
 ADMIRABLE TEMPERANCE BOOKS. 
 The Only Way Out, by J. F. Willing, .... 
 
 John Bremm, by A. A. Hopkins, 
 
 Sinner and Saint, " *' 
 
 The Tempter Behind, by John Saunders, ... 
 
 Good Work, by Mary D. Chellis, . 
 
 Mystery of the Lodge, by Mary D. Chellis, .... 
 Finished or Not, ... 
 
 <*K*IUeaBr8. V. liOthrop &: Co., Boston, also publish the celebrated 
 Pansv anu Prize Books. Full Catalogue sent on application. 
 
 $' 50 
 I 25 
 I 25 
 I 25 
 I 50 
 I 50 
 50 
 
MARGARET SIDNEY'S BOOKS. 
 
 Margaret Sidney may be safely set down as one of the best writers of 
 juvenile literature in the country. — Boston Transcript. 
 
 Margaret Sidney's books are happily described as ''strong and pure 
 from cover to cover, . . bright and piquant as the mountain breezes, or 
 a dash on pony back of a June morning." The same writer speaks of her 
 as "An American authoress who wilf hold her own in the competitive 
 good work executed by the many bright writing women of to-day.*' 
 
 There are few better story writers than Margaret Sidney. — Herald 
 and Presbyter. 
 
 Comments of the i^eeular and Religious PrcHa. 
 
 FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AND HOW THEY GREW. 
 
 A charming work. . . The home scenes in which these little Pep- 
 pers are engaged are capitally described. . . Will find prominent place 
 among the higher class of juvenile presentation books. — Religiotts Herald. 
 
 One of the best told tales given to the children for some time. . , 
 The perfect reproduction of child-life in its minutest phases, catches one's 
 attention at once. — Christian A dvocate. ' 
 
 A good book, to place in the hands of every boy or girl. — Chicago 
 Inter-Ocean. 
 SO AS BY FIRE. 
 
 Will be hailed with eager delight, and found well worth reading. — 
 Christian Observer. 
 
 An admirable Sunday-school book — Arkansas Evangel, 
 
 We have followed with intense interest the story of David Folsom. . 
 
 . A man poor, friendless, and addicted to drink; . . the iniluence 
 of little Cricket; . , the faithful care of aunt Phebe; all steps by 
 which he climbed to higher manhood. — Woman at Work. 
 THE PETTIBONB NAME. 
 
 It is one of the finest pieces of American fiction that has been pub- 
 lished for some time. — Newsdealers^ Bulletin, New York. 
 
 It ouqht to attract wide attention from the simplicity of its style, and 
 the vigor and originality of its treatment. — Chicago Herald. 
 
 This is a capital story illustrating New England life. — Inter-Ocean^ 
 Chicago. 
 
 The characters of the story seem all to be studies from life. — Boston 
 Post. 
 
 It is a New England tale, and its characters are true to the original'' 
 type, and show careful study and no little skill in portraiture. — Christian 
 at Work, New Yoi-k. 
 
 To be commended to readers for excellent delineations, sparkling style, 
 bright incident and genuine interest — The Watchman. 
 
 A capital story ; bright with excellent sketches of character.^ Conveys 
 good moral and spiritual lessons. . . In short, the book is in every 
 way well done. - Illustrated Christian Weekly. 
 HALF YEAR AT BRONCKTON. 
 
 A live boy writes : " This is about the best book that ever was written 
 or ever can be." 
 
 ** This bright and earnest story ought to go into the hands of every boy 
 who is old enough to be subjected to the temptations of school life." 
 
 D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers, Boston. 
 
The Yensie Walton Books. 
 
 These books, from the pen of Mrs. S. R. Graham Clark, are possessed 
 of such conspicuous merits, as to secure for them the unqualified com- 
 mendation of eminent religious journals such as the Central Christian 
 A dvocate. The Journal and Messenger ^ The Netv Orleans Christian 
 Advocate^ TJie Lutheran Observer^ Christiajt at Work, The Dover 
 Morning Star^ The Gospel Bamter, Philadelphia Methodist^ Herald 
 and Presbyter. 
 
 YENSIE WALTON. OUR STREET. 
 
 YENSIE WALTON'S WOMAMHOOD. 
 
 THE TRIPLE E. , ACHOR. 
 
 z2mo, cloth, illustrated, uniform binding, $i. 50 each. 
 
 YENSIE WALTON. 
 
 " Yensie Walton," by Mrs. S. R. Graham Clark. Boston: D. Loth, 
 rop & Co, Full of striking incident and scenes of great pathos, with 
 occasional gleams of humor and fun by way of relief to the more tragic 
 parts of the narrative. The characters are strongly drawn, and, in gen- 
 eral, are thoroughly human, not gifted with impossible perfections, but 
 having those infirmities of the flesh which make us all akin. It will take 
 rank among the best and most popular Sunday-school books. — Episcopal 
 Register. 
 
 A pure sweet story of girl life, quiet, and yet of sufficient interest to hold 
 the attention of the most careless reader. — ZiotCs Advocate, 
 YENSIE WALTON'S WOMANHOOD. 
 
 The many readers who have made the acquaintance of " Yensie Wal- 
 ton" in one of the best Sunday-school books ever published, will be de- 
 lighted to renew that acquaintance, and to keep their former companion 
 still further company through life. There is a strong religious tone to the 
 whole story, and its teachings of morality and religion are pure and 
 healthful and full of sweetness and beauty. The story is a worthy suc- 
 cessor to Mrs. Clark's previous work — Boston Post. 
 
 The heroine is an excellent character for imitation, and the entire atmos- 
 phere of the book is health! j1 and purifying. — Pittsburg Christian Advo^ 
 cate. 
 OUR STREET, 
 
 By the same author, is a capital story of every day life which deals with 
 genuine character in a most interesting manner. 
 
 THE TRIPLE E. 
 
 Just published, is a book whose provoking title will be at once acknowl- 
 edged by the reader as an appropriate one. It fully sustains the author's 
 reputation. 
 ACHOR, a new book . 
 
 D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers, Boston. 
 
THE HOMESPUN SERIES. 
 
 BY 
 SOPHIA HOMESPUN. 
 
 RUTHIE Shaw : Or, The Good Girl. i6mo. Cloth. 
 
 Illustrated. Price, $i.oo. 
 Much Fruit. i6mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price 
 
 jSi.oo. 
 Blue Eyed Jimmy: Or, The Good Boy. i6nio. 
 
 Cloth. Illustrated. Price, jSi.oo. 
 Johnny Jones: Or, The Bad Boy. i6mo. Cloth, 
 
 Illustrated. Price, JjSi.oo. 
 Nattie Nesmith: Or, The Bad Girl. i6mo. 
 
 Cloth. Illustrated. Price, jSi.oo. 
 
 Either or all of the above sent by mail, post-paid; 
 on receipt of price. 
 
 D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY. 
 
 30 & 32 Franklin St., 'Boston 
 May be obtained of Booksellers. 
 
Works of Julia A. Eastman. 
 
 STRIKING FOR THE RIGHT, [$1,000 premium 
 
 stoiy] Illustrated. 12mo 11.75 
 
 SCHOOL DAYS OF BEULAH ROMNEY. D- 
 
 lustrated. 12mo 1.50 
 
 SHORT COMINGS AND LONG GOINGS. [|500 
 
 prize storj'] Illustrated. 12mo. . . . 1.25 
 THE ROMNE YS OF RID GEMONT. Illustrated. 
 
 12mo 1.50 
 
 KITTY KENT. Illustrated. 12mo . . . 1.50 
 YOUNG RICK. Illustrated. 12mo . . . 1.50 
 
 The above set of six volumes will be furnished at $7.50. 
 
 As a writer of juvenile literature, particularly of school life, 
 Miss Eastman has no superior. Her style is characterized by 
 quick movement, sparkling expression, and incisive knowl- 
 edge of human nature. 
 
 *»* For sale hy all Booksellers. Sent by mail postpaid. 
 
 D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY, 
 32 Franklin St., Boston. 
 
BOOKS BY POPULAR AUTHORS. 
 
 Ella Farman, a graceful writer as well as the accomplished and success- 
 ful editor of Wide Awake ; Julia A. Eastman, whose school life stories 
 are full of sparkling expression and incisive knowledE;e of human nature ; 
 Rev. J. L. Pratt, who wntes with rare appreciation of the needs of 
 youne people who are beginning to examine for themselves into religious 
 belief and opinions ; Mrs. A. E. Porter, whose stories are well calciuated 
 to make truthfulness, steadfastness and right living the subjects of youth- 
 ful admiration ; the author of Andy Luttrell, whose books, dealing with 
 knotty problems, and positive in religious teachings, are perennial favor" 
 ites ; Mrs. E. D. Kendajl, whose writings, excellent for boys, are marked 
 by an earnestness of purpose well calculated to impress life lessons; 
 Mary J. Capron, whose healthful and stimulating stories point to right 
 ideas on the fundamental truths of Christian religion ; Rev. Z. A. 
 Mudge, a favorite Sunday-school writer; these are among the popular 
 authors whose works can be unhesitatingly accepted as worthy oi admit- 
 tance to Sunday-school or family libraries. 
 
 ELLA FARMAN'S BOOKS. 
 
 qvo^,, L2tno, illusi.y $10.00. 
 
 Annie Maylie. Grandma Crosby*s Household. 
 
 A Little Woman. Good-for-Nothing Polly. 
 
 A Girl*s Money. How Two Girls Tried Farming. 
 
 A White Hand. Cooking Club of Tu-Whit Hollow. 
 
 Mrs. Hurd's Niece. 
 
 JULIA A. EASTMAN'S BOOKS. 
 
 6 vols.y i2tno, iUustj $7.50. ' 
 
 Kitty Kent. Romneys of Ridgemont (The). 
 
 Young Rick. Schooldays of Beulah Romney. 
 
 Striking for the Right. Short Comings and Long Goings. 
 
 REV. J. L. PRATT'S BOOKS. 
 
 4 vols,^ i2mo, illust., $6.00. 
 
 Evening Rest. Branches of Palm. Bonnie jErie. Broken Fetters. 
 MRS. A. B. PORTER'S BOOKS. 
 
 5 vols-t izmOf illtest.j i56.2S. 
 
 This One Thing I do. Sunset Mountain. 
 
 Millie Lee. My Hero. Glencoe Parsonage. 
 
 BY AUTHOR OP ANDY LUTTRELL. 
 
 6 vols.f izmot illust. f $7.50. 
 
 Andy Luttrell. Strawberry Hill. Barbara, 
 
 Silent Tom. Talbury Girls. Hidden Treasart. 
 
 MRS. E. D. KENDALL'S BOOKS. 
 3 vols. J i2mo, illust. t $3;7S. 
 Judge's Sons. Master and Pupil. 
 
 The Stanifords of Staniford's Folly. 
 
 MARY J. OAPRON'S BOOKS. 
 
 4 vols.t i2fnff,, illust., $5.00. 
 Plus and Minus. Maybee's Stepping Stones- 
 
 Gold and Gilt. Mrs. Thome's Guests. 
 
 * REV. Z. A. MUDGE'S BOOKS. 
 3 vols., \2mOf illust., 53'75- 
 Shell Cove. Luck of Alden Farm. Boat Builders. 
 
 W. H. G. KINGSTON'S BOOKS. 
 8 vols., izmo, illust., $8.00. 
 * Voyage of the Steadfast. Young_ Whaler. Charley Laurel. 
 
 Fisher Boy. - Virginia. Peter the Ship Boy 
 
 Little Ben Hadden. Ralph and Dick. 
 
 D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers, Boston. 
 
MARIE OLIVER'S STORIES. 
 
 3 vols, i2mo cloth, illustrated, $1.50 each; the set $4.50. 
 
 BUBT HAMILTON. OLD AND NEW FRIENDS 
 
 SEBA'S DISCIPLINE. 
 
 Extracts from comments of ivell-knouni journals, 
 
 RUBY HAMILTON. 
 
 This is a very excellent Sunday-school book, which can be 
 honestly commended for youthful readers.— r/4f Watchman. 
 
 It is a well-told story, conveys a pure, healthful lesson, and 
 IS one of the best books of its c\zsa.— Philadelphia Enquirer.' 
 
 This is one of the best Sunday-school books in Lothiop's 
 long and admirable list. The story is a sweet one, and 
 charmingly X.Q\di..— Church Mirror. 
 
 The spirit throughout is healthy and devout. ... Al- 
 together it is a charming and instructive book. — The Church- 
 man. 
 
 OLD AND NEW FRIENDS. 
 
 A very excellent specimen of the class of fiction designed 
 for young folk who have ceased to be children without 
 having become mature men and women. — N. Y. Evening 
 Post. ^ 
 
 Many readers will remember " Ruby Hamilton," a volume 
 which created quite a sensation at the time of its publication. 
 . This volume, a continuation of this story, ought to 
 become as popular as its predecessor. — Christian Mirror. 
 
 Contains some charming pictures of home-life. . . . 
 Cannot but help and strengthen the boy whose impulses 
 are for good. — Herald and Presbyter. 
 
 Like all that comes from this author's pen, this volume 
 has merits of both substance and style. — Western Christian 
 Advocate. 
 
 Adds another to the list of really goo-" story books. — 
 Cincinnati yournal and Messenger. 
 
 SEBA'S DISCIPLINE. 
 
 A good book to teach the uses of trouble in building up char- 
 acter. — Western Recorder. 
 
 Has a varied and absorbing interest from its beginning to its 
 close. . . . Sometimes sad and wonderfully pathetic ; some- 
 times bright and cheerful, it is impressive always. In every 
 respect it is the best religious story we have seen for many a 
 day, and one . . . that can scarcely fail to benefit any 
 reader whom God leads along rough paths. — The Interior. 
 
 Should be in every Sunday-school library. — The Standard. 
 
 D. LOTHROP & CO.. Publishers, Boston. 
 
Books of the Celebrated Prize 
 Series. 
 
 The preparation of this famous series was a happy inspiration. No books 
 £or the young worthy of circulation have ever met so warm a welcome or 
 had a wider sale. The fact that each of them has passed the criticism of 
 a committee of clergymen of different denominations, men of high scholar- 
 ship, excellent literary taste, wide observation, and rare good judgment, 
 is a commendation in itself sufficient to secure for these books the widest 
 welcome. The fact that they are found, in every instance, to be fully 
 worthy of such high commendation, accounts for their continued and in- 
 creasing popularity. 
 
 The $1000 prize Books. A fresh edition in new style of 
 binding. 
 i6 vols, i2mo ^24.50 
 
 The New $500 Prize Series. A fresh edition in new style of 
 binding. 
 13 vols. i2mo $i6-75 
 
 The Origrinal $500 Prize Series. A fresh edition in new 
 style of binding. 
 S vols. i2mo -• $12.00 
 
 The Original $500 Prize Stories. 
 
 Andy Luttrell. Ji.so. Sabrina Hackett. $1.50. 
 
 Shining Hours. $1.50. Aunt Matty. $1.50. 
 
 Master and Pupil. |l. 50. Light from the Cross. $1.50. 
 
 May Bell. Ji.so. Contradictions. $1.50. 
 
 New $500 Prize Series. 
 
 Short-Comings and Long-Goings. The Flower by the Prison. $1.25. 
 
 $1.25. Trifles. $1.25. 
 
 Lute Falconer. $1.50. The Judge's Sons. $1.50. 
 
 Hester's Happy Summer. $1.25. Daisy Seymour. $1.25. 
 
 One Year o£ My Life. Si-25. Olive Loring's Mission. $1.25. 
 
 Building-Stones. $1.25. The Torch-Bearers. $1.25. 
 
 Susy's Spectacles. J1.25. The Trapper's Niece. Jr. 25. 
 
 The $1000 Prize Series. 
 
 Striking for the Right. $1.75. Coming to the Light. $1.50. 
 
 Walter Macdonald. $1.50. Ralph's Possession. $1.50. 
 
 The Wadsworth Boys. $i.So. Sunset Mountain. J1.50. 
 
 Silent Tom. $1.75. The Old Stone House. $1.50. 
 
 TJie Blount Family. J1.50. Golden Lines. J150. 
 
 The Marble Preacher. $1.50. Luck of Alden Farm. ¥1.50. 
 
 Evening Rest. $1.50. Glimpses Through. »r.5o. 
 Margaret Worthington. J1.50. , Grace Avery's Influence. ¥1.50. 
 
 D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers, Boston. 
 
New Publications. 
 
 A FoKTUNATB FAILURE. By Caroline B. LeEow. Bos- 
 con: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.25. The author of this 
 charming book is widely known as a successful writer of 
 magazine stories, and any thing from her pen is sure of a 
 multitude of readers. Her style is clear and flowing, and 
 she is peculiarly happy in the invention of incidents. In 
 the present volume her powers are shown at their best. The 
 principal character of the story is Emily Sheridan, the 
 bright, ambitious daughter of a New Hampshire farmer, 
 whose pride and comfort she is. Taken from her quiet sur- 
 roundings by a rich aunt and placed at a distant boarding- 
 school, she meets new friends, and new paths are opened to 
 her in life. It is the author's plan to trace her development 
 under the changed and varying influences which surround 
 her, and to show how she is affected in heart and mind by 
 them. Nothing can change the natu.al sweetness of her 
 character, however, her experiences serving only to ripen 
 and bring out the finer and higher qualities of her nature. 
 In one of her companions, Laura Fletcher, the author draws 
 the type of a certain class of girls to be found everywhere — 
 bright, warm-hearted, full of life, and tinctured with tomboy- 
 ism and a, love of slang. Maxwell King is another well-de- 
 lineated character bearing an important part in the story. 
 We do not propose to sketch the plot in detail; that would 
 spoil it for most readers, and we do not wish to deprive 
 them of the pleasure they will find in reading the story foj 
 themselves. 
 
 Maet Burton Abroad. By Pansy. 111. Boston: D. 
 liOthrop & Co. Price 75 cents. This pleasant book is made 
 up of a series of letters supposed to have been written from 
 some of the gi-eat cities of Europe, principally Edinburgh 
 and London. They contain information about objects of 
 'nterest in these places, descriptive and historical, and are 
 Written in that gossipy, unconventional style which is pleas' 
 Ing to children. 
 
NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Next Thinss. By Pansy. A Story for Little Fo'.ks. 
 Fully illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00, 
 This is a bright little story with two heroes, and the lesson 
 it tries to teach young readers is to do the work that 
 lies nearest to them first; In other words, "What to do 
 next. No one can do the second thing; he can do the first" 
 Bound up in the same cover is a capital story called 
 "Dorrie's Day," in which are related the adventures of a 
 little girl who went to sleep in the cars and got carried out 
 of her way. The history of what she did, and how she got 
 home, will interest the children. 
 
 Mss. Harby Hakpeb's Awakening. A Missionary 
 story by Pansy. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. 
 This is one of Pansy's " lesson books," in which, under the 
 guise of a story, she drives home a truth so thoroughly that 
 the dullest and most unimpressible reader cannot help seeing 
 and feeling it. Mrs. Harry Harper was a young wife in a 
 strange city, without acquaintances, and with nothing to do 
 during the long hours of the day while her husband was ab- 
 sent at his business. One day in walking aimlessly along 
 the street she follows a crowd of ladies into what she sup- 
 poses is a bazar, but what she soon discovers to be a mis- 
 sionary meeting. Her attention is excited by what she sees 
 and hears ; her sympathies and religious feelings are 
 awakened, and she enters into practical Christian work with 
 all her heart and soul. The book is one of serious purpose 
 and falling into the hands of people like Mrs. Harper will be 
 a means of undoubted good. 
 
 PizABBO ; or. The Discovery and Conquest of Peru. Il- 
 lustrated. Edited by Fred H. Allen. Boston: D. Lothrop 
 <fe Co. Price jSl.OO. This is the third volume in Mr. Allen's 
 valuable little series, and is a concise and interesting history 
 of a country which at this very moment is undergoing a 
 conquest as bloody and exhaustive as that which occurred 
 .350 years ago, when the Spanish ancestors of the present 
 race of Peruvians carried fire and slaughter into the homes 
 of the native inhabitants. The story is tnld with spirit, 
 and with enough detail to enable the reader to get a clear 
 and connected idea of the different campaigns of Pizarro in 
 South America from the time of his landing on its shores in 
 1509 until his assassination by his own countrymen in his 
 kouse in Lima in 1541. 
 
NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Doctor Dick : A sequel to " Six Little Rebels. By 
 Kate.Tannatt Woods. Boston : D. Lothrop & Co. Price, 
 $1.50. Ever since the publication of that charming story, 
 Six Little Rebels, there has been a constant demand from all 
 quarters for a continuation of the adventures of the bright 
 young Southerners and their Northern friends. The hand- 
 some, well-illustrated volume before us is the result. The 
 story begins with Dick and Reginald at Harvard, with Miss 
 Lucinda as their housekeeper, and a number of old friends 
 as fellow-boarders. Dolly and Cora are not forgotten, and 
 hold conspicuous places in the narrative, which is enlivened 
 by bright dialogue and genuine fun. What they all do in 
 their respective places — the boys at college, Cora at Vassar, 
 Dolly with her father, Mrs. Miller at Washington, and the 
 others at their posts of duty or necessity, is entertainingly 
 described. The story of the fall of Richmond and the assas- 
 sination of Lincoln are vividly told. One of the most 
 interesting chapters of the book is that which describes the 
 visit, after the fall of the Confederacy, of Reginald's father, 
 General Gresham, to Cambridge, and the rejoicings which 
 followed. The whole book is full of life and incident, and 
 will be thoroughly enjoyed by young readers. 
 
 Young Folks' History of Russia. By Nathan Haskell 
 Dole, editor and translator of " Eambaud's Popular History 
 of Russia." Fully illustrated. 12mo, cloth, $1.50; half 
 Russia, $2.00. Mr. Dole has for several years made a care- 
 ful and special study of Russian history, and the volume 
 before us bears testimony to the critical thoroughness of 
 the knowledge thus gained. Russia has no certain history 
 before the ninth century, although there is no lack of 
 legend and tradition. Some attention is given to these, but 
 the real record of events begins just after the time Vladimir 
 became Prince of Kief, about the beginning of the tenth 
 century. The contents are divided into two books, the first 
 being sub-divided into " Heroic Russia," " Russia of the 
 Princes " "The Enslavement of Russia," and "The Russia 
 of Moscow." The second book deals with Russia after its 
 establishment as an empire, and its sub-divisions have for 
 their special subjects, "Ivan the Tyrant," "The aimeof 
 the Troubles," "The House of the Romanoffs," and 
 "Modern Russia." It would have been in place had Mr. 
 Dole given the reader a chapter on modern Russian politics, 
 a thing which could easily have been done, and which is 
 absolutely necessary to enable the reader to understand 
 current events and prospective movements in the empire. 
 The volume is profusely illustrated, and contains two double- 
 page colored maps.