new; 
 
 j AND OLD 
 
 R.OBERT COLLYEF^ 
 
Strata, Hem ^otb 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 Or, L. Bu^TT. 
 
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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/cu31924031447307 
 
N.Y.Photooravure Co 
 
THINGS NEW AND OLD 
 
 ^ermon0 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT COLLYER 
 
 MINISTER OF THE CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH, NEW YORK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
 
 1893 
 S 
 
Copyright 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & Co. 
 
 1S93 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
 Astor Place, New York 
 
©e^icafton 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF THE DEAR WIFE AND MOTHER 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Overplus of Blossom 7 
 
 The Way where the Light dwelleth 23 
 
 Marthas and Marys 38 
 
 The Parable of the Reserves 53 
 
 Instantaneous Photographs 68 
 
 The Low-lying Lights 82 
 
 The City lieth Four-square 95 
 
 Antipas, my Faithful Martyr no 
 
 The Great Divine Sermon 127 
 
 Why Simon Peter went a-fishing 141 
 
 John the Beloved 154 
 
 Seeing God Afterward 167 
 
 The Joy in Harvest 181 
 
 The Rich and the Poor 195 
 
THE OVERPLUS OF BLOSSOM. 
 
 "I see men as trees." — Mark viii. 24. 
 
 We had a cherry-tree once, in our bit of garden out 
 West, which broke out into a wonderful splendor in the 
 spring, and sent its fragrance floating through my study- 
 window ; but, as I would watch it day by day, I had to 
 remember how it had done this before with no great 
 success in the way of cherries, and then I began to 
 muse over what one might call the overplus of blossom. 
 
 I had been away to the South, also, while as yet there 
 were but few signs of spring in the North, and had found 
 this glory haunting the woods and wild pastures and 
 crowning the farms with its beauty ; and from this time 
 I had thought of the blossoms sweeping slowly north- 
 ward until they came to my own window, and covering 
 the land as with a mantle woven of sweetness and light, 
 while, after they had passed our line, I could still see 
 them sweeping northward, and knew they would never 
 halt until they set one lonely bush afire a dear friend of 
 mine found blooming in the hither edges of the arctic 
 circle, as the bush bloomed for Moses in Midian. And 
 then, at last, I knew that, like a great tide, this blossom- 
 ing would toss its spray over into the lands of utter and 
 hopeless sterility, and touch the moss with specks of 
 blossom as beautiful to those who have the eye to see 
 
8 Tlie Overplus of Blossom 
 
 them as the crowned splendor of the peaches and the 
 apples in the rich, warm lands. 
 
 Then my musing blended with old memories, and I 
 found myself wondering whether hosts of children 
 would not fall into the trouble I struck in my own 
 childhood, about the one tree we had which broke out 
 every spring into these extravagant promises of the 
 fruit dear to boys, whose very notions of heaven seem 
 to abide as yet in this matchless liking for what they 
 seem to have liked best in Eden. I wondered whether 
 such boys would not get their first back-stroke, as I did, 
 through their appetite and expectation, and as a great 
 many children do of riper years. That luckless tree 
 never did keep the promise in the summer it had made 
 to me in the spring. 
 
 I remember one year especially, after an almost match- 
 less outburst of blossom, how there was the meanest 
 yield of fruit I could remember in my tiny tale of the 
 years ; and it was then I said, in some misty way com- 
 mon enough to children who are trying to true the 
 world about them to the world within : " God cannot 
 do as he will, then, or else he changes his mind. He 
 certainly set out to give us all the plums we wanted 
 this year. Now, what does he mean by sending the 
 blossoms and then keeping back the fruit .? Would it 
 not be better to do as I would do if I were in his place, 
 — make every blossom stand for a plum, and so save 
 himself and save us also all this trouble } " 
 
 After that haggard year I think it was never quite so 
 bad again. There was always a fair show of fruit ; and, 
 then, I was getting somewhat used to the frustration. 
 Still, I never could make September quite keep terms 
 
The Overplus of Blossom g 
 
 with May, — better and worse, but never up to the prom- 
 ises. And so, as I bore the .trouble of that tree toward 
 my manhood, and found I had to long for full and plenty 
 of other fruit I must not have, I began to wonder 
 whether it was not of the very exuberance of God's 
 blessing that this overplus of beauty and fragrance 
 comes to us, and whether on the Tree of Life also there 
 may not be a blooming which never comes to anything 
 but the bloom, and yet this in itself may be so good 
 and true that, when we touch the heart of the mystery, 
 we shall neither say, " God has broken his promise to 
 us," nor that we have lost our chance to make this 
 promise good. And as in the spring-time on the trees 
 all about us there are ten blossoms that will bloom 
 through their brief day and then just shower down in 
 the wind to one which will set and ripen into good fruit, 
 so on the tree of my life may there not be ten beautiful 
 aspirations to one good fruition .' and yet may not these 
 aspirations themselves be very sweet and good in their 
 own way and be counted as the blossoms are in the 
 glory of the year 1 
 
 Surely, it must be true that they come as the blos- 
 soms come out of the overplus of the divine grace and 
 of our own abounding life, not to dishearten us and lead 
 us to doubt, but rather to believe in this good Provi- 
 dence as insuring us a grand good margin ; to believe 
 that God feels toward us as we feel toward our children, 
 when we are good enough and wise enough to be con- 
 tent with such simple and scant fruition as they can 
 attain to, never reckoning with them over-sharply as to 
 what has become of their wealth of good intentions, but 
 listening still with a large and tender interest to the 
 
lO The Overplus of Blossom 
 
 endless story of what they mean to do, and glad to hear 
 about it all because the aspiration is very beautiful to 
 us and very good, even when we know all the time that 
 they will forget ten of these intentions where they will 
 carry one out clear to the end and make it bring forth 
 good fruit. 
 
 "Dear hearts," we say, as we listen to them, "it is 
 all right. The blossom itself is fruit in the long fair year 
 of God ; and what a wealth of it you have, to be sure. 
 Why, you can intend and aspire enough in ten minutes 
 to ruin you, root and branch, if you should try to make 
 all your intentions and aspirations ripen into good fruit 
 in the seventy years we have for our human span." 
 And so I think it is a good thing for us all, now and 
 then, to turn to this quieter and more restful thought 
 of what we can do within the lines of the truest life, 
 compared with what we can aspire to do, and intend to 
 do, and how we can no more expect or afford to turn 
 the whole wealth of these aspirations into equally noble 
 actions than the trees can afford to make the promise 
 of the spring good to the last blossom in the fruit they 
 will give us in the fall. 
 
 Margaret Fuller preserves a letter, written, as I 
 judge, by a woman, who says : " I went this morning 
 to hear Dr. Channing, and came away sadly tired listen- 
 ing to one of his great sermons. He set us up so high, 
 and e.\pected so much from us as the consequence of 
 his doctrine, that, when I got home, I was fain to take 
 my New Testament and read where Jesus says, ' Ye are 
 more than many sparrows ' ; and the blessed old Word 
 rested me and did me a sight of good, because it was 
 not so exalting and flattering." And I think I can 
 understand that feeling. 
 
The Overplus of Blossom 1 1 
 
 The soul cannot live forever in the white light of her 
 own dignity and glory, any more than the sweet wood- 
 violets can live forever in the sun. And so, while it is 
 all true about the dignity of our human nature, and 
 true, also, that no man can ever tell the whole worth of 
 what is waiting in the waiting heavens as the fruit of 
 God's sending and of our own human striving, still 
 that tender glance the woman got through the heart of 
 Christ is very restful and gracious, when we try to 
 measure the distance between the aspiration and the 
 attainment, — " Ye are more than many sparrows." 
 And so you must not be over-troubled, if, while you 
 are quite aware of the wider vision and stronger pin- 
 ions, you can neither soar so high nor fly so far as 
 your eager hearts would have you. Ye are the 
 branches, and I am the Vine. So bear what fruit you 
 can, then, this year, without damaging the stock for the 
 next. 
 
 So I say believe in the trees if you cannot quite 
 believe in yourselves, and note their happy lesson. 
 The blossoms in themselves are good. They mean ten 
 times more than they do ; but what beauty and fra- 
 grance still abide in their meaning ! How it floats 
 over the homes of men as a delicate aroma nothing 
 can slay except the ugly enormity of our overcrowded 
 tenements ! So we can thank God for the blossoming 
 in our nature of beautiful and good intentions, which 
 will be sure to fail, as we are taught to think of failing, 
 and for the good fruit, which will be sure to ripen 
 from some of them if we do the best we may. 
 
 I. Because this is the first thing to be sure about : 
 that there must be in us all this plus of the promise over 
 
12 The Overplus of Blossom 
 
 the fruition if there is to be any great worth in us be- 
 sides, and that, in our childhood especially, it may be 
 just this, and very little more, when we are left to live 
 our life as God would have us live it, and when those 
 who have the care of us and love us for ourselves are 
 wise to see how this is about all they can expect from 
 us, exactly as a good pomologist neither looks for nor 
 wishes for fruit from the mere sapling, because he 
 knows how this would fatally injure the tree. So he 
 is quite content, you notice, to see the small things 
 stand there and shake down their blossoms into the 
 grass time and again, and to wait for the fruit by and 
 by. 
 
 The strength, he will tell you, is gathering in the 
 roots and the stock, which will come in time to a noble 
 fruitage and repay him for all his waiting. And so it 
 is a sad sight to me to see fathers and mothers who 
 have no such wisdom for their children as these wise 
 men have for the saplings, and cannot be content to 
 let the child be a child, and nothing more, but must 
 still burden the tender plant with demands which 
 belong to the strong and able tree. 
 
 Fathers and mothers who are not content to keep 
 the saplings clean from the evil things which burrow 
 around the roots or stab the bole, and to see that the 
 soil is good from which they draw their strength and 
 nurture, keep them straight and true, and then let 
 the sun shine on them, and the sweet dews of their 
 childhood refresh them, — who cannot be content, I 
 say, with all this, and the blossoming into the bargain, 
 but must still be urging them on to fruitful action, 
 while as yet the choicest gift of God to them is this 
 simple aspiration. 
 
TJtc Overplus of Blossom 13 
 
 Nothing should be expected from these feeble folk 
 save what is perfectly natural (as I think, who have 
 had many children) and fitting for their childhood; 
 and to imagine that they can never begin too soon to 
 assume the cares and burdens of our life, if we can 
 prevent it, is a terrible mistake. The Scriptures say, 
 " It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth " ; 
 but I would make the yoke easy on the youth God 
 intrusts to me, while on the child it should lie light as 
 the white blossoms on the spray. The best fruitage 
 in children of a tender age is simply to bloom, and to 
 cherish their budding aspirations with the most royal 
 disregard as to what may become of them. 
 
 The heaven of our earliest life is white with these 
 blossoms, which are of no use except to sweeten and 
 make more beautiful the way on which we go dream- 
 ing in our youth. It is then that the giants are for- 
 ever slain as they are never slain : and the little hand 
 tingles and aches to get at the wolf, and the small slip- 
 per finds the fitting foot, and the cat is the best treas- 
 ure on the ship, what time the bells have been chiming 
 over Highgate Hill, and the children wander forever 
 through the woods so sweetly forlorn until the bird 
 whose breast became red trying to pluck the thorns 
 from the brow of the blessed Christ comes through the 
 green archways and covers them with leaves. 
 
 Leave them to their dreams, I say! Such things 
 are the child's Bible. Leave them to their dreams ! 
 These are the blossoms on a tree yielding fruit after 
 its kind, whose seed is in itself. God has made them 
 as they are, in his eternal goodness, as he makes the 
 sapling simply to bloom until the years bring forth 
 
14 1 he Overplus of Blossom 
 
 strength for bearing. Leave them their childhood 
 sweet and free. 
 
 " They mingle with our life's ethereal part, 
 Sweetening and gathering sweetness evermore, 
 By beauty's franchise disenthralled of time." 
 
 II. And, once more, when we grow to that estate in 
 which it is to be expected we shall attain to something 
 more than the tree which blossoms, but bears no fruit at 
 all, you may notice how there is still in many natures, 
 and very often in the finest, a splendid overplus of 
 aspiration and intention which can never be more than 
 as the overplus of blossom on the trees. I suppose, 
 indeed, that now, when the elder men among us have 
 learned some pregnant lessons on this matter, we can 
 still tell of mornings when we would wake up feeling 
 so full of life that we were able to lay out a day's work 
 ample enough to lead us to wonder, as the evening 
 shadows fell, how we could have done so little when 
 we meant to do so much, and were ready to cry with 
 the old Roman, " I have lost a day ! " 
 
 It is the eternal distinction nature draws between the 
 lusty blossoming and the moderate fruitage, set to the 
 simplest experience and brought within a morning and 
 an evening. But, then, it may be we can see, if we will, 
 now how the overplus of purpose had still this fine 
 quality in it, after all, that we should neither have done 
 so much, nor have done that much so well, had we not 
 risen and gone forth with this fine ambition to be doing 
 boiling in our blood ; and it was to the afternoon, when 
 we began to feel the pull of the hard day, what the 
 early rains are to the drought which lasts from mid- 
 
The Overplus of Blossom 1 5 
 
 June very often to September, filling all the springs, so 
 that every root gets its share, and the mills are turned 
 by the overplus in the woods and the mountains. 
 
 So I imagine it is very seldom possible for those of 
 a hopeful and aspiring nature to make the aspiration 
 and hope of their youth come even with the fruitage of 
 their manhood or womanhood, and least of all in those 
 things which seem quite essential to the fulfilling of 
 their life. Poor Haydon, the painter, I notice, breaks 
 out in his youth into one great cloud of blossoming, 
 when he dreamed he would storm the world by his 
 genius and usher in the new great day of art. But, 
 then, the trouble is this : that the dream of his youth 
 becomes the misery and blight of his age, simply be- 
 cause he never could, or never would, understand this 
 open secret of the overplus of blossom. He did bear 
 some good fruit; and, if he could have said, "Thank 
 God for that : it is the best I can do, and I am con- 
 tent," he might have been a far happier man than he 
 was, and waited for the angels to come and bear him 
 away instead of rushing out of life unbidden and be- 
 fore his time. 
 
 And so there are men and women everywhere who, 
 when the strong tide smites them, catch this crown of 
 splendid aspirations and wear it with a great, deep 
 joy. They will write books the world must read; they 
 will create things for which the world will go down on 
 its knees, almost, to thank them, or take a first place 
 in their profession and hold it against all odds, or make 
 themselves seen and heard from an eminence no man 
 may question, or make a fortune no disaster can pluck 
 out of their hands. It is all very good to dream such 
 
1 6 The Overplus of Blossom 
 
 dreams, — and they may be of a true worth in pushing us 
 on, — only this is the trouble: that I cannot take this 
 truth into my heart, it may be, of ten blossoms to one 
 good apple ; and so all my later life is touched with dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 For I certainly have known men whose lives were 
 made miserable by their failure to remember this lesson 
 of the trees. They began their life as if they were quite 
 sure that all they had to do was to just march on and 
 storm the world, — men whose lives blossomed in the 
 early days into the loveliest hopes and aspirations, but 
 who found, when their spring was over, that much of 
 this had come to naught ; and then they could not feel 
 that it was a divine thing at all that had befallen them. 
 They imagined a globe would set in every cup and 
 grow and ripen, and so the day came when the sweet- 
 ness and light of their life left them ; nor did they care 
 that even what fruit they had on the tree should find 
 the sun, and ripen the best it might, there seemed to 
 be so little of it, and it looked so mean against the 
 background of their early visions. And so a blight 
 came on their whole career, and that was sour which 
 might have been so sweet and good if they had but 
 known this secret of the overplus of blossom. 
 
 III. We may see once more how this lapse between 
 the blossom and the fruit may enter into the whole 
 range of our life, to help us if we will but consider its 
 law, or to hurt us beyond all measure if we will still 
 insist on a fruit for every blossom. 
 
 The young man leaves his home in the spring-tide 
 of his life, and feels sure that, if he does his best, he 
 will win a good place and do whatever he hungers and 
 
The Overplus of Blossom 17 
 
 thirsts to do, to find at the end of twenty or thirty 
 years that he is not at all the man he should have 
 been if the fruitage had been equal to the blossom ; and, 
 then, he is in danger of growing bitter and doubtful, 
 not about himself alone, but about the good providence 
 of God, which, as he thinks, should have helped him to 
 make his aspiration come true, or else have left him 
 more moderately endowed with aspirations. 
 
 Now I would like to get hold of that man, and ask 
 him to note what Nature has been doing in the woods 
 and orchards this year, and then tell him it was a 
 splendid thing to have the aspiration, and that was 
 good fruit, also, of its kind; for if he has been true at 
 all to the inner impulse which crowned his youth with 
 this fair crown, he has done far better than the man 
 who did not aspire and did not care. There is always 
 some good fruit, soon or late, from the blossoming in 
 everyone of us, — just as much as we could carry, per- 
 haps, if we could only fathom the whole secret. And 
 so we should no more doubt God's providence because 
 so much of the promise has fallen dead about us than 
 we doubt Nature's providence as she snows down her 
 overplus of blossom about the roots of the trees. 
 
 This is the secret, again, of a true content in the life 
 of the heart and the home. For not over many men 
 and women, I suppose, have found that their wedded 
 life answered completely to the dreams of their court- 
 ship ; but in all the world you will not find a gracious 
 and true-hearted man or woman who will not thank 
 God for that overplus of blossom which came with the 
 sweet, brave days, and was so divine while it lasted, or 
 who will now enter a complaint against Heaven be- 
 
1 8 The Overplus of Blossom 
 
 cause May does not quite match with October. That 
 fine glamour, if I may touch my figure again, is like 
 great early rains : if they treasure it in their hearts 
 for what it is worth and what it means, it may tide 
 them over many a dry and dusty day, and still keep 
 terms with them that a fair fruitage shall not be 
 wanting when they come to the ingathering of the 
 years. 
 
 If my experience is to be of any use, I think a 
 thunder-storm even can do no great harm to this blos- 
 soming if it wax not too savage and relentless. I have 
 known such storms clear the atmosphere under the 
 roof about as sweetly as they do above it ; and, when 
 I hear of people who have lived together a great 
 many years and never had the least difference, I won- 
 der whether they have not had rather too much indif- 
 ference for a true man and wife, and am ready to say 
 with Paley, when he heard of such a pair, "It may have 
 been verra bonny, but it must have been a little 
 stupid." God help those who cannot let the fair, sweet 
 bloom go for what it was worth, but must fret their life 
 out over the vanished glory, or poison each other's ex- 
 istence with mutual regret because they cannot live to 
 the end of their days in the sweetness and fragrance of 
 the spring. 
 
 It is the lesson we have to learn once more through 
 our saddest and most painful experiences. 
 
 Nothing can be more natural and beautiful than that 
 the longing we feel touching the fair blossoming of our 
 children should come to its full fruition, and yet for 
 the most of us this can never be. The bloom fades 
 and falls on which we have set our hearts, that one 
 
The Overplus of Blossom 19 
 
 peerless blossom, as it always seems, we loved best, 
 because it was so beautiful and caught the light so 
 winsomely. The trouble of its falling shakes the soul 
 to its centre, and we often sorrow more for those that 
 have gone than we rejoice for those that abide and 
 fulfil the promises of the spring. It is a long day 
 then, before we can thank God for their blooming that 
 have faded, and say, he did indeed give us the blos- 
 soms. They could not stay, but they did come, made 
 May for us in their coming, and left the fragrance 
 of May forever in our life. 
 
 Let the trees be my teachers, if I will be taught in 
 no diviner way, and Nature tell me of God's grace if I 
 will not hear the still, small voice. I stood one morn- 
 ing, long ago, by Niagara, in the latter spring, watching 
 the play of the great emerald on the heart of the greater 
 falls as the sun smote it here and there, and the rain- 
 bow bent over the eternal white mist. It was a still 
 morning ; and, as I stood there, alone, I was aware of 
 an exquisite fragrance stealing across the cataracts I 
 had never noticed in any visit before ; and, wondering 
 how this should be, I saw that over in Canada the trees 
 were still all abloom, apple-trees in the orchards and 
 blossoms on the wild bushes clinging to the cliffs, all 
 white and crimson and gleaming through the greenery, 
 and then I knew it was the brave overplus of blossom 
 which was sending its fragrance on the wings of the 
 soft June morning across the great chasm. 
 
 And so I have thought of these blossoms which 
 bloom and fall on the tree of our human life and float 
 their fragrance across the turmoil of the days, and 
 across the white mist, and through the bow of our 
 
20 The Overplus of Blossom 
 
 hope. Just a bloom, and no more, some of them, but 
 still a bloom which abides with us while we stay on 
 this side the great river, as that sweet vision abides 
 with me. Shall we not thank God, then, when we 
 come to our better mind, for the blossoms which fall 
 to so divine a purpose .'' or shall this human sorrow pre- 
 vent my sense of the divine glory, and my life-long 
 regret for their fading blind me to the divine love 
 which lay in their exquisite advent and grace.-' I would 
 fain grow great enough, some time, to bless God even 
 for this overplus of life in my home, and think of it as 
 the outpouring of his heart on me for love's sake. I 
 want to grasp a faith which will assure me he could not 
 find it in his heart to give me only children, but would 
 slip an angel, here and there, into my life, in this 
 sweet disguise. These I have with me might well an- 
 chor me too stoutly to the earth ; but those I had with 
 me may draw me wonderfully, if I will let them, 
 toward the heavens where they wait and watch until 
 I come. 
 
 IV. And, then, if I turn on myself and say, " What 
 is my hope of this blessed life to come, when my life 
 here is but little better than a broken trust, turn where 
 I will, ten resolutions broken where one is made good, 
 the wrecks of undone or half-done duties strewing 
 themselves over the roots of my life, the very hopes 
 and anticipations of the better life not what they 
 were at all in the brave outbreaking of my spring, 
 and my whole manhood or womanhood poor and scant 
 to weeping compared with what I once thought it 
 might be.?" 
 
 Well, if even this is my trouble, I will not be over- 
 
The Overplus of Blossom 21 
 
 troubled. The splendid hopes and aspirations of the 
 soul's life are all beautiful and all good, as the over- 
 plus of blossom, though there be but scant fruit from 
 them, after all, to my poor thinking. 
 
 I will tell my heart, then, how God knows better than 
 we know what we are able to bear on to the harvest, 
 what harsh winds also, from which there was no shelter, 
 may have blown on the tree, and what fatalities from 
 the old years before we came here to live our life may 
 have hidden themselves, God help us, in the setting 
 fruit, to smite it with withering. 
 
 I will rest me in the parable of the overplus of blos- 
 som. I will say, I am more than many trees. I will 
 stand within the law of their life, and they shall stand 
 within the law of mine. I will not be troubled or dis- 
 mayed overmuch because this poverty has come where 
 I looked for wealth. With these unattained desires and 
 these withered aspirations I will not be over-troubled. 
 I will not give way to despair. I will say to my soul, " If 
 that bush afire with the spring splendor could so storm 
 one poor, halting man in Midian that it seemed as if God 
 spake verily to him out of the bush, and the fruit of 
 that blossoming was for the deliverance of a nation and 
 the help of the world, then my fair hopes and aspira- 
 tions, which have come to such scant fruitage as I look 
 at them now, may have been fruit in their own time to 
 others who needed just such a pulse of inspiration and 
 aspiration to help them on their way as I had in my 
 nature when it was all radiant with the blossoming of 
 my spring." God knows beyond all my knowing, and 
 he alone can measure the lapse between the blossom 
 and the fruit. Let me stay sweet and trustful, then. 
 
22 The Overplus of Blossom 
 
 and do the best I may on to the fall of my year; and 
 then I will sing, — 
 
 " I know these blossoms clustering heavily, 
 The evening dew upon their faded leaves. 
 Can claim small value or utility, 
 Therefore shall fragrancy and beauty be 
 The glory of my sheaves." 
 
THE WAY WHERE THE LIGHT DWELLETH. 
 
 "Believe in the light." — John xii. 36. 
 
 I REMEMBER how I went oncc to a fine old city in 
 my mother-land to see many things of a deep interest, 
 and among them the choicest of all was a wonderful 
 cathedral. 
 
 It was a dismal morning when I got there, full of 
 mist and rain, through which I could see the church 
 looming up gray with age, but very grand ; and there 
 was one window especially which touched me, as I saw 
 it from no great distance, by its splendid outline and 
 the exquisite delicacy of its carven work in stone. I 
 could easily see also from where I stood that this win- 
 dow was filled with stained glass, but it was quite im- 
 possible to guess even at the artist's design from the 
 outside, because the background within the church lay 
 in a deep, dense shadow; nor was it meant to be seen 
 in all its fair glory from that side by those who had 
 done the work. It was as if you should look at the 
 wrong side of a piece of tapestry, rude and ragged and 
 all out of true, so there was no form nor comeliness in 
 it as I stood there, and no beauty that one should 
 desire it. 
 
 But then I went within the church, and in an instant 
 
24 The Way where the Light Divelleth 
 
 was aware of a noble transformation. The soft, misty 
 light came in, revealing the master's intention and 
 clothing all the figures in a dim, gray glory. Still, I 
 remember that even in this there was no great satis- 
 faction. The mist veiled the perfection of beauty, the 
 colors hidden in the glass needed a background of sun- 
 light and a clear sky to come forth in their full splen- 
 dor; and so I went away. 
 
 But about noon the mists rose and were swept away 
 toward the German Ocean, while the sky opened into 
 that tender blue you only seem to see in England in 
 its perfection, like blue eyes dim with tears, through 
 which the sun came out with a mild radiance ; and then 
 I went again to see the great window. On the street 
 it was still the same sight, all blurred and blotted, so 
 that the light which lay on it made the figures in the 
 glass seem more uncouth than they were before ; but, 
 when I went in again, I saw a great wonder. It was 
 transformed before : it was now transfigured. The whole 
 light of heaven was there for a background, and was 
 smiting the window through and through. There stood 
 the apostles and saints in a great cloud of glory, and 
 above and below them the angels, and all about them 
 the arms and heraldries of men who had given great 
 gifts when the church was built or who had done 
 grand deeds for the nation. Nothing seemed want- 
 ing now the heart could desire. The wonderful dyes 
 burned and flamed in the afternoon sun, and the pur- 
 pose of the master came to me in this fair light of 
 heaven. 
 
 And so, as I have thought of this window now and 
 then, among my choicer memories, it has touched me 
 
The Way where the Light Dwelleth 25 
 
 like a bright and cheerful parable of this world of ours, 
 and our life, and of the one true way to find their 
 meaning, so that we shall not doubt or fear finally, 
 whatever may be our fortune, or think of its order and 
 harmony, as I might have thought of that cathedral 
 window if I had still insisted on solving its mystery as 
 I stood outside on the street. Moreover, I have won- 
 dered whether the dimness and dismay which trouble 
 us all now and then may not come from our failure to 
 find this true background of the clear heavens and the 
 sun, through standing outside and looking in toward 
 the shadows instead of standing inside and looking out 
 toward the light ; and, then, whether we shall not find 
 this truth as the large result of all our seeking, — that 
 those who have found the finest fitness in this life and 
 the fairest hope touching the life to come have always 
 been the men and women who would still insist on 
 finding this fair background for the problems we have 
 to solve, and then on waiting and watching, at any cost, 
 until at last the sun came out to make the whole pur- 
 pose radiant to them, as my window was radiant in the 
 clear afternoon. 
 
 Because, if I may glance first at our common human 
 nature, I think this is what we are sure to find ; that 
 there is always a man looking in toward the shadows 
 and another looking out toward the light ; and that no 
 single truth we can ponder is more certain than this 
 of the diverse standpoint from which we shall try to 
 make out the mystery of our own life or the lives of 
 those about us. It may be in the nature of the man 
 or in his wilfulness, an inborn quality or one which has 
 grown on him through the years. One can draw no 
 
26 The Way where the Light Dwelleth 
 
 line here, propound no dogma and utter no condemna- 
 tion, because this human nature of ours is too vast and 
 variant for any private interpretation. And so all we 
 can say so far is this : that one man does insist on set- 
 ting the design between himself and the fair lights of 
 heaven, while another peers in forever toward the great 
 shadowy vault. And I notice Bunyan thinks there 
 must be a clear purpose to enter where the light 
 dwells, and so to see the truth and grace which will 
 keep you in heart through your pilgrimage ; and it may 
 be a certain stern insistence, also, ending in a fight. 
 And so, "Put my name down," he makes the man "of 
 a very stout countenance " say ; and then the man puts 
 on his helmet, cuts his way through the guards, presses 
 on toward the house Beautiful, and catches the vision 
 of the eternal day, while the grand old dreamer smiles, 
 and says, "Verily, I know the meaning of this." But, 
 then, he notices also how many give back and will not 
 face the struggle, as if they felt it was not worth their 
 while ; and this is the truth, I take it, of the stand- 
 point and the vision common to us all. We nourish 
 this or that spirit and temper, and turn toward where 
 the shadows dwell or the light ; and it is as when face 
 answers to face in a glass. 
 
 And once more, when we leave this truth as it lies 
 along the great lines of our common life, and notice its 
 special power to help or hinder among those who are 
 our ensample and inspiration, it is not hard to see what 
 worth there is to them in finding this fair light of 
 heaven. We can see how the grand presences which 
 touch us most potently in the Bible are apt to be men 
 of this spirit and temper, from Enoch who walked with 
 
The Way where the Light Dwelleth 27 
 
 God and Abraham, the friend of God, to that John 
 who stood on Patmos and saw the light which lights 
 the sun strike through the heavy shadows and make all 
 radiant at last down in the mines. It was trouble and 
 dismay and halting to every one of these when they 
 were looking in toward the shadows, but it was a joy 
 which grew into great psalms when they stood at last, 
 as they all do who are of most worth to us, looking out 
 toward the light. 
 
 David despairs when he stands, as he does so often, 
 with his back to the sun. Nature is haggard then to 
 him, and life a huge turmoil of selfishness and sin. 
 But he finds his way into some holy place for the soul, 
 and then the harmony masters the harsh discords ; and 
 he sings of fire and hail, snow and vapor, summer 
 softness and winter storm all blending together in 
 the great design, and of man so mean and yet made 
 higher than the angels, crowned with glory and 
 honor. 
 
 It is Paul's trouble also as he looks in toward the 
 shadows. There is no help then for the sin-smitten 
 race, so chapter after chapter bleeds with dishearten- 
 ment, woe and pain and utter condemnation. But 
 then he turns to where the light of God's eternal love 
 shines through the blurred and ugly outlines, so dark 
 and forbidding in the fog and mist ; and, lo ! the whole 
 design stands forth to his heart in a golden glory as he 
 sings," I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor 
 princedoms nor powers, nor things present nor things 
 to come, nor height nor depth, shall be able to sepa- 
 rate us from the love of God." 
 
 I take it to be the very genius of the Gospels, also. 
 
28 The Way ivhere the Light Divelleth 
 
 that Jesus never stands outside, so far as we are con- 
 cerned, for an instant. But from the day when he takes 
 the lilies and holds them up to the sun, and watches the 
 birds on the wing between himself and heaven, — from 
 that day to the day when he weeps over the doomed 
 city, but still whispers to those about him, " When the 
 worst comes to the worst, then look up," he is always 
 looking toward the light. And so his word still keeps 
 the world in heart, and helps us as no other word can 
 help us to solve the sorest problems of life. 
 
 Indeed, you will notice that, when he would touch 
 the one singular instance of this spirit which cannot be 
 content to peer in and ponder, but mlist always have 
 a background of heaven and the sun, he takes a little 
 child and sets him in the midst, and says, The kingdom 
 of heaven, the kingdom, is like that little child. See 
 how the small creature is always looking eagerly toward 
 where the light dwelleth, and so is able to find some- 
 thing of this kingdom in the poor and forlorn life which 
 has fallen to his lot ; never trying to spell out the se- 
 cret from the wrong side ; always finding the place where 
 the light will strike through all he can be aware of in 
 the design ; familiar with heaven in his simple heart, and 
 glad for it all as a lark in full song, catching the glory 
 and hiding it away for the days when the mists will fall 
 as he stands outside and the glory is only a memory. 
 The little child he will have us see solves the problem 
 of the standpoint for us all. " His angels do always 
 behold the face of my Father" ; while Schiller teaches 
 the same truth when he says, " My whole life has only 
 been the interpretation of the visions and oracles of my 
 childhood" ; and Wordsworth, when he sings, 
 
The Way where the Light Dwelleth. 29 
 
 " Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
 From God, who is our home." 
 
 Here is the truth we find in our Bible, then, the book 
 which helps us as no other book can help us, — the 
 word of God, — when we once find the key. The men 
 in there who help and inspire us to the best purpose 
 are those who cannot and will not be content to believe 
 in the shadows, but will have God's presence and his 
 divine providence — himself-, in a word — for a back- 
 ground to the design ; and for this they will struggle and 
 strive if they must, and wait for the mists to rise 
 and the heavens to grow clear, and then, in Psalm and 
 Prophecy, in Gospel and Epistle, they say and sing 
 these things we hold as the choicest treasure that ever 
 came forth from the human soul. 
 
 I notice how this is the truth, again touching those 
 who have done most nobly in helping to reveal the 
 beauty and fitness of the world we live in, and the 
 loftier meanings and outlooks of the life we have to live. 
 It was Newton's turn, who weighed the mountains in 
 the scales, and the hills in a balance. It was old Jacob 
 Boehme's way, who saw heaven as he sat cobbling shoes, 
 and put Newton, it is said, on the track of the infinite 
 order and harmony, and said to John Wesley, by- the 
 mouth of William Law, as the great apostle of Method- 
 ism, stood looking in toward the shadows : This is no 
 way to solve your problems. You must get heaven's 
 light for your background, and you will find your way 
 out of that dismay. So Wesley heard him, and obeyed, — 
 saw all the wonder of the great design possible to his 
 
30 The Way where the Light Dwelleth 
 
 day, and travelled 40,000 miles to tell what he had seen 
 to those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death. 
 It was their happy fortune ; and it was the very soul of 
 Agassiz, who saw heaven through a pebble. That devout 
 and beautiful spirit who, whenever I met him, seemed 
 to be standing with the whole sun in his face, went 
 with the young men to the island the merchant prince, 
 and more than prince, had given them for their summer 
 studies, to spell out the meaning of the shells and rocks, 
 the story of what God has been doing on this earth of 
 ours through a time that smites one like an eternity. 
 And, standing there for the first time, with these eager 
 young souls about him, he said. Let us begin by looking 
 up, each of us in his own spirit, to heaven ; while to the 
 end of his life nothing pleased him better than to tell 
 how he had found no trace of the fairer flowers or the 
 birds that make music until he came on the track of 
 man. And so it was to him as if God had said : This 
 child of mine shall look on no desolate and haggard 
 world. I will deck it with beauty and touch it with 
 harmony to meet and clasp the beauty and harmony I 
 have hidden in his heart, and the oriole and the rose 
 shall be to him for tokens of my love. 
 
 But Byron said, " I am a torment to myself and to all 
 who come near me " ; and it is not hard to see how this 
 should be so apart from the vices that smote his life 
 as with leprosy. Byron, with all his genius, as it seems 
 to me, was forever looking in toward the shadows. 
 And De Quincey says, " I noticed the gloom in John 
 Foster's eye travelling over all things with dismay." 
 Well, this was Foster's trouble : that with all his great- 
 ness as a thinker, and his purity and goodness and love 
 
The Way where the Light Dwelleth 31 
 
 for all things good and true, he was always peering in 
 toward the shadows, — human depravity, decrees of 
 doom, hell-fires, ruthless judgments of God, the woful 
 over-weight of sin in the human scales, and other things 
 in the Scriptures no man should dare to take for God's 
 truth as they are commonly interpreted, — peering and 
 pondering as Cowper did so often, and Robert Hall, 
 sometimes dwelling on what Bacon calls the problems 
 dedicated to despair, and preaching, — 
 
 " Like those dark birds that sweep with heavy wing, 
 Cheering the flock with melancholy cries.'' 
 
 They are found to be of no use, now, these ponderings 
 and peerings from the wrong side, and only the glances 
 they did compass now and then of the wholeness and 
 beauty of the design, are what we talie to our hearts. 
 
 So you will notice it is, on the other hand, with the 
 words that win the heart and sweeten and ennoble the 
 life of man. We read the books or hear the, discourse of 
 those who are forever looking in toward the shadows, — 
 but there is no rest in them, or help in trouble, or light 
 or joy. We seek bread, and find a stone ; break the egg, 
 and it holds a scorpion. We do not take such things 
 to our sick that they may be healed, or pick the kernel 
 out of them for our children. We know where to find 
 the helpful things in the words of those who have seen 
 the light strike through the mystery, and take these 
 for the need we all strike soon or late. The men 
 and women who stand in the front rank of our religious 
 teachers and thinkers — not to sects alone, but to the 
 nations — are those always who look out toward the 
 light and hold it in their hearts. Emerson, Bryant, 
 
32 The Way where the Light Dwelleth 
 
 Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Channing, Parker, Bel- 
 lows, Beecher, Clarke, and a host besides, to speak only 
 of the noble dead, — it is one golden chain from Alpha 
 to Omega. The words which bring their own benedic- 
 tion come home to us from those who have stood in 
 the holy place and seen the light strike through, to 
 find this as the last great word : God is light, and in 
 him is no darkness at all ; and God is love. Such is 
 the truth, as it comes to me, of fronting the light ; and 
 now these are some of the lessons we may gather from 
 it to help and hearten us. 
 
 Does my life, as I must live it, trouble me } and my 
 fortune ? Are these all a muddle, as poor Stephen says 
 in the story .? Then I must lay this truth well to my 
 heart : that the men who win are very seldom those who 
 are always peering and pondering on the dark side. 
 They are those who get heaven and the sun for the 
 background to their own best striving ; and then the 
 fairest fortune possible to us comes through that win- 
 some light. To lose this is to lose my strongest ally, 
 and I put a cheerful courage on when I stand with my 
 face to the sun. The successful men in the long fight 
 with fortune are the cheerful men, or those, certainly, 
 who find this fair background of faith and hope. Co- 
 lumbus but for this had never found our New World, or 
 men like Sam Adams struck the bell for the Revolution 
 in the great old days. 
 
 Is there trouble again with that which lies deeper? 
 Are my health and strength in peril .' Well, I think 
 there can be little doubt of this : that those who are 
 forever looking on the dark side of their illnesses and 
 ailments, peering in toward the shadows when they 
 
The Way where the Light Dwelleth 33 
 
 should face the light, toss away the finest chances left 
 them to get well again ; while those who strive for a 
 cheerful background of faith and hope either win health 
 or, if this is not to be, win some high blessing which 
 may come by sickness. 
 
 There is an excellent satire under the cap and bells 
 when the doleful doctor comes to see his patient, and 
 says sadly to the poor man, There is not one chance 
 in a thousand that you will get well, but I commend 
 you to be cheerful. I want no such Jeremias when 
 my turn comes to be sick, but men who will bring me 
 all the good cheer in the world in their eyes and the 
 tones of their voice and the touch of their hand, and will 
 say to me. While there's life, there's hope, my friend; 
 and I propose to help you get well. A dear friend of 
 mine used to say of a fine old doctor in Philadelphia 
 that his simple presence did his patients more good 
 than his medicine, and was easier to take beyond all 
 comparison. This was forty years ago. Well, such a 
 presence is always a noble medicine in itself. The 
 contagion of a cheerful soul helps us always to look 
 toward the light, sets the tides of life flowing again, 
 and cubes all our chances of getting well. It was a 
 very common grievance among the surgeons who had 
 this good cheer in them, when we used to leap out to 
 nurse our men after the great battles, that well-mean- 
 ing but woful-looking men of the old school — in theol- 
 ogy, I mean — would invade the hospitals and rob the 
 brave fellows of what courage was left in them by the 
 dolor of their words and the sadness of their pres- 
 ence, when the delicate balances between life and death 
 drew about even, and not seldom would turn the scale 
 
34 The Way where the Light Dwelleth 
 
 for death. I want no such curate for mind or body, no 
 such doctor or nurse or priest. They must come as 
 the good Christ came, — for healing, and not for affright. 
 ' Tis life of which my nerves are scant then ; and, if they 
 have no ministry of life unto life, I can wait until some 
 cheerful soul comes to give me a hand. 
 
 Has that trouble smitten me for which I think there 
 is no healing t Are those who were the very light of 
 my life taken while I am left, — the lambs in the flock, 
 the youth in its fair bloom, the manhood or woman- 
 hood in its perfect prime.' It is a great and sore 
 trouble. God forbid that I should say otherwise. How 
 can I .' and, if I could, Jesus would rebuke me, weeping 
 beside a grave. But may not the trouble within the 
 trouble for the most of us be this : that we look in 
 toward the shadows so ruthlessly, stand with our back 
 to the sun, peer into the vault, nurse our vast and 
 awful sorrow, and let this make havoc of us beyond all 
 measure, instead of trying to find the place where the 
 sunlight of the immortal life will smite through the 
 trouble, and stir us to a new hope and expectation.'' 
 The one true way, I will tell my heart then, is to set 
 our graves even against this background of heaven 
 and the great and sure hope of man. Good Bishop 
 Home says. Wormwood eaten with bread is not bitter. 
 Well, let me eat my wormwood, then, with the bread 
 of life. here have been and are those who find the 
 place where the light strikes through the grave, — yes, 
 the very grave, — and then the whole haggard and 
 hopeless sorrow suffers a change. So we must try to find 
 that place, too, who sit in darkness and the shadows of 
 death. There may be many things we cannot make 
 
The Way where the Light Dwelleth 35 
 
 out after all, as there was to me that afternoon in the 
 great window ; but the light is there, burning through 
 and this is the grand matter. Death has no dominion 
 when we once find the place where a sure faith and a 
 great hope in God can smite through these vast, sad 
 shadows of death and the grave. 
 
 So, if the truth stands good, finally that some will be 
 forever looking toward the shadows, while others will 
 never be content until they find where the light dwell- 
 eth, let us, please God, be of these last. Those great 
 souls of the old days and the new who help and inspire 
 us to the finest purpose and the most divine have caught 
 the secret of the true standpoint for you and me. Let 
 me stand where they stood, fronting the light. Then it 
 shall smite through sickness for me, and pain, and the 
 dark glass of hard fortune, and make a nobler faith 
 my own in life and death. Let me try to do as they 
 did. Be wilful about this grand matter, — be cowed by 
 no rebuff, tired out by no waiting, and beaten in no 
 fight. 
 
 " Here is the rock," they said to me, when I was up 
 among the miners, " and here is the gold, and we pursue 
 it through thirty-six processes ; but there it is, you see, 
 at last. Heft that bar, sir." So wilful would I be for 
 this clear shining of God's resplendent sun, for this fine 
 gold of his truth, — waiting, watching, and searching 
 for it as those who search for hid treasure. I think 
 the main trouble with my doubt and dimness is this : 
 that I do nothing about it, but let them have their way, 
 it may be, who tell us there can be no light on these 
 misty mysteries. I may have been all too ready to fall 
 in with such a conclusion and to stay outside. Let me 
 
36 The Way where the Light Dwelleth 
 
 go into the holy place, and hear Him who said so 
 grandly, " I am the light of the world," and has proved 
 his word to be so grandly true in all these ages, then I 
 shall not abide in the darkness, but shall have the light 
 of life. 
 
 Do I find this mist troubles me as I stand at the 
 portals of life, and wonder how I shall win through. 
 I will front the light. Do I find dimness in age, let me 
 explore old Bunyan again, and have him tell me how 
 those that fared on toward the end of their pilgrimage, 
 faithful and true, came at last to where the sun shineth 
 alway. Nay, is my faith itself in the shadow, — not 
 lost, but in the mist, — then let me sing with the fine 
 old Wesleyan heart in me I caught from her- nurturing, 
 " In hope against all human hope, self-desperate, I be- 
 lieve," — sing until the sun comes out as I watch and 
 wait, and hasten his shining by my singing. Nothing 
 shall withstand my hungry wilfulness to front the light. 
 I also will say, "Put my name down, sir: I mean to go 
 in there, and face the glorious appearing " ; and the old 
 dreamer shall say of me, also, as he watches me from his 
 hard-won eminence, "Verily I know the meaning of 
 that." For 
 
 " Two powers, since first the world began, 
 Have ruled our life, and rule it still. 
 Twin forces in the life of man 
 Are Faith and Will. 
 
 " The pole-star and the helm of life, 
 That sets the head, this gives the force, 
 Through seas of peace, or stress and strife, 
 To shape our course. 
 
The Way where the Light Dwelleth 37 
 
 " These powers which stand in God's own strength, 
 In dark and light, in joy and doom, — 
 Unshaken are the powers at length 
 That bring us home. 
 
 " But where is home ? That faith can tell. 
 But what is faith ? That will can prove 
 In striving bravely, working well, 
 And fronting God's eternal love." 
 
MARTHAS AND MARYS. 
 
 " Mary sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word, but Martha was cum- 
 bered about much serving." — Luke x. 39, 40. 
 
 It was in Bethany these good women lived, as we 
 learn from the Gospel by John, — an obscure place not 
 far from Jerusalem, on the eastern slope of the Mount 
 of Olives, where the road to Jericho dips suddenly 
 toward the Jordan. And it is a pretty spot, those 
 say who have been there, in a hollow of the slope, 
 planted thick with fruit-trees, but otherwise of no ac- 
 count ; for it is peopled by some twenty families as 
 thriftless and shiftless as you will easily find, who live, 
 as so many seem to do in the Holy Land, by the lies 
 they tell about the so-called sacred places. Nor can 
 the place have ever been of much account ; for it is not 
 once mentioned in the Old Testament, and there are 
 no signs that the hamlet ever overflowed the small cup 
 in which it stands. 
 
 This, again, was no formal visit Jesus made there, 
 that the scene might be painted in the panorama of his 
 three years' pilgrimage, so that the small place in the 
 hollow of Olivet should be lifted into the light forever, 
 like Bethlehem spoken of by the prophets and ordained 
 to shine. He was on his way to Jerusalem. These were 
 his friends, the sisters and the brother; and he must 
 
Marthas and Marys 39 
 
 stay with them, as their guest, it may be, for the night, 
 — a guest greatly honored and most welcome as we 
 can see, to whom they will give the best they have, and 
 to the friends who have come with him. And this must 
 be done by the two sisters ; for the brother is not men- 
 tioned here, and may have been away from home. 
 And one of them loses no time, it is clear, touching 
 the hospitable purpose which stirs her heart. She is, 
 indeed, the owner of the place, and so it rests with her 
 to see to it that the best is set on the board she has 
 in the house ; while I think of her as one of those 
 clever and capable women who can never be taken at 
 a disadvantage in such a case as this, but can surprise 
 those who have known her longest and best by the way 
 in which she will call out her reserves. It is her pur- 
 pose to do this now. You can see her rise to the rare 
 occasion, think it over to herself for a moment or two, 
 and then brighten up as she gets out her keys and moves 
 swiftly about the house. It is a lovely little picture, 
 and human, as we watch the good woman, and good 
 housekeeper to the last line. They shall remember 
 their visit as one of the events of a year or a lifetime, 
 and shall fare well before they say farewell to go on 
 their way. 
 
 But just here she falls on a trouble. Mary, her sis- 
 ter, and no doubt as good as gold in such a case usu- 
 ally, fails the good Martha now, when she needs her 
 most. It was the most natural thing in the world that 
 she should be as busy as her sister was. So you would 
 have felt in Martha's place,-:— the Marthas in my congre- 
 gation. The good name of the house was to be main- 
 tained, and due honor done to the guests by good and 
 
40 Marthas and Marys 
 
 loving service. But, while she also is busy, as we may 
 presume, helping Martha, Jesus begins to speak of the 
 things which always lay so deep in his heart, — how 
 the kingdom of God is as leaven, it may be, when they 
 began to make the bread, and as old and new wine, 
 touching these homely things for divine lessons. We 
 do not know what he said, only that Mary sat at his 
 feet and listened, while poor Martha had everything to 
 do, first to make ready and then to serve. 
 
 Nor can we easily believe that the good Martha 
 gave up without giving Mary what we should call a 
 piece of her mind in frowns and whispers before she 
 was driven to the last extremity, and would have to 
 shame her before the whole company ; for this would 
 be as natural as all the rest. She was sharp, to be 
 sure, for this they say is implied in her name, and 
 could be a little more than sharp, as our Marthas are 
 apt to be before time mellows them and makes them 
 sweet, — time and the grace of Heaven. But, if this 
 was so, it was all no use. Mary sits still and listens, 
 and is lost to all that is going on about her; and then 
 the much tried woman makes her appeal to the guest 
 and friend : " Dost thou not care that my sister hath 
 left me to serve alone .' Bid her, therefore, that she 
 help me." While it is the surmise of a rare scholar 
 and seer I love to follow that there is a touch of des- 
 peration in this swift and keen appeal of kin to that of 
 the disciples in the great storm, — " Carest thou not 
 that we perish .' " In any case, she will be patient no 
 longer, or keep her impatience to herself. She must 
 speak out. 
 
 Nor is the surmise poor or thin that Jesus had not 
 
Marthas and Marys 41 
 
 noticed the sister's trouble at all down to this moment, 
 or thought it strange that Mary should not be busy 
 with her sister, or been aware, indeed, of what was 
 there before his eyes. It was one of those high mo- 
 ments when his meat and drink was to reveal the truth 
 which had come to him instantly from on high, as it 
 was when he sat talking to the woman by the well; 
 and then, when they brought him bread, he said, "I 
 have bread to eat ye know not of." 
 
 In the great and moving moments in our own lives 
 we can all tell how we were lost to the things about 
 us, — lost in the vision, so that we forgot the needs 
 of the body and the passing of time. So it may have 
 been, and so I think must have been with him that 
 day. But now here was Martha with her cutting ques- 
 tion, "Dost thou not care that my sister hath left me 
 to serve alone } Bid her, therefore, that she help me." 
 And then, in an instant, he would see where the trou- 
 ble lay and how to meet it, but not as she would think 
 he would meet it, — the good and loyal friend of over- 
 burdened men and women, who made their trouble his 
 own. This trouble was of quite another tenor from 
 those that always moved his heart to pity and swift 
 succor. This good friend, with the best of all good 
 will in her kindly and hospitable heart, had got herself 
 snared in a net of her own netting : she was careful 
 and troubled about many things. Very good things, 
 and needful there and then as she thought, but quite 
 at the other pole of our human life and duty as the 
 question touched him that day, and as it may touch us 
 now. Many things, — social duties, hospitable aspira- 
 tions, kindly endeavors, and the best she had for the 
 
42 Marthas and Marys 
 
 best she knew. These friends who were living very 
 much as the birds live were to be ministered unto by 
 one good meal. They were men friends, and therefore 
 in the more need of her ministry, — men friends and 
 ministers of the word of life, and therefore to be cared 
 for, so she had been taught from her childhood, no 
 doubt, with all the more care and pains. It is a sweet 
 human picture, as I said, when you wipe the dust of the 
 ages away, and restore the lost lines ; and who shall 
 blame the good Martha for her touch of temper and her 
 half-command, " Bid her, therefore, that she help me".' 
 He does not blame her, but, as I listen, there is a tender, 
 lingering, loving kindness in the repetition of her name 
 even, as he says, " Martha, Martha, thou art troubled 
 about many things ; but one thing is needful." He 
 would not rebuke : he would only help her to see where 
 the truest hospitality lay, — and do this not as the 
 Master and Lord, but the good friend and guest. And 
 so I think we do him dishonor when we give his words 
 another and harsher meaning. 
 
 Nor should we lose track of the simple and quite 
 human purpose which prompts the divine lesson he 
 would suggest to his over-troubled hostess and good 
 friend. We all know how it would touch him when 
 he saw what her trouble was, who have gone to the 
 home of some friend in very much the same way, — 
 not, it may be, expected, but right welcome all the 
 same. When we have had to notice how full of care the 
 house-mother was about our handsome and fitting en- 
 tertainment, we wanted to say : Do sit down, and take 
 no thought of what we shall eat or what we shall drink. 
 We have come to see you all, and here are so many 
 
Marthas and Marys 43 
 
 things we all want to say, — books to mention, events 
 to discuss, memories to brighten, hopes to touch, deep 
 things and high to wonder over, — and it may be now or 
 never. And so what can a feast of fat things and wine 
 on the lees well refined be to such a communion of the 
 spirit and the life ? Bring out the loaf and the cup, as 
 if you had no guests at all, and do not be cumbered by 
 much serving. We will serve ourselves. So it must 
 have been that day. He was no anchorite, as we know, 
 but would go to a feast on occasion, and had no rebuke 
 for the good woman's feast now. But there sat the 
 sister she had scored with her sharp tongue, listening 
 to the word borne into his heart that instant from on 
 high, — the bread of life and the water of life, — the 
 word made flesh and dwelling among them from sun- 
 set to gray dawn, and the word which was to lie within 
 the heart of a new gospel ; not his word, but the word 
 of the Father which sent him, and he was speak- 
 ing to him then. So Mary must be vindicated, 
 and the sting drawn from the good sister's rebuke. 
 She was true to her own soul and the soul of the truth 
 and the time. This was the event of a lifetime, and, 
 while she did not know it, the lifting of the home in 
 the hollow into a light that never lay on land or sea ; 
 and so, he said, Mary hath chosen that good part which 
 shall not be taken from her. 
 
 So the story of an evening opens to my mind as they 
 sit there forever now, the Master and his friends ; while 
 the one sister hurries about the house so intent on serv- 
 ing, and the other sits still listening to his words who 
 spake as never man spake, and as one having authority, 
 not as the scribes. In a paper I took up the other day 
 
44 Marthas and Marys 
 
 a rustic tells how he would be busy about his farm or 
 hurrying on an errand, when one of the last age who 
 was also filled with the Holy Spirit would walk along 
 the green lane by the Lake in Westmoreland, unaware 
 of any other presence, saying words fresh from the foun- 
 tain of the divine inspiration that hold so many of us 
 now by their sweet, strong spell. But all the listener 
 could do was to wonder how a man so able otherwise 
 could spend his time talking in that way all to himself, 
 and to a far poorer purpose than if he had been re- 
 peating the multiplication table, or in any sense so fit- 
 ting as what the parson said on Sunday in the queer old 
 church. One has to wonder whether our good Martha 
 had not some such feeling about the high discourse 
 that fell on her ear, as the rain falls on the water fowl, 
 while she went about the house with the chicken and 
 omelet and the fine wheaten cakes and the milk and 
 honey on her mind, glancing at her sister and glowering, 
 as we used to say in the north, until she can no more 
 help that sharp word than our good friend Mrs. Peyser 
 can in the story, — the perfect Martha of her day and 
 generation. It was Martha's opportunity, also, to hear 
 the word, and we hear in a casual way from other 
 quarters that she was a good, sound churchwoman 
 and much given to listening to the holy men in the 
 synagogue on Sunday and to good works ; and we may 
 be sure of the good works even more than of the listen- 
 ing, especially if there were signs that one of the hives 
 would swarm before the holy day was over or the thun- 
 derous weather turn the milk. 
 
 But this was a week-day, and here were the guests, 
 these good men and the Master, who so seldom had a 
 
Marthas and Marys 45 
 
 good meal set before them ; and what discourse ever 
 was so momentous to Martha as this social and, to her 
 mind, most sacred obligation ? So they are own sisters, 
 and no doubt true and loving sisters, but with this di- 
 verse temper of the heart and mind when we catch this 
 swift glimpse of them in the hollow of Olivet : The one 
 quiet as a Quaker and content to sit still this one even- 
 ing, whatever she may do to-morrow, and sun her soul 
 in the light fresh from heaven ; the other busy as a 
 whole swarm of bees, and ready to " bizz out wi' angry 
 pyke," while the words fall from his lips she would 
 give the world, no doubt, to hear, when so many years 
 after she is an exile in the South of France, so say the 
 traditions, for love of him. She loved him in her own 
 way when she turned on him and said, " Dost thou 
 not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone ? 
 Bid her that she help me." And the same Martha in the 
 Legends again as she is in the Gospels ; for she slays 
 a dragon, — a thing Mary never would have done, — a 
 noisome and ugly thing which was devouring the chil- 
 dren in Marseilles, — an evil marsh, I take it, or the 
 mother of all bad drains, — with diphtheria and the scar- 
 let fever ; for it takes Martha to do that, after all. 
 
 Shall I say once more, then, that it is no wonder the 
 Fourth Gospel, and the last in the divine series, tells us 
 how Jesus loved Martha and Mary, and mentions the 
 good and true woman after her type first, as if the Holy 
 Spirit had held the pen this instant, as indeed it does in 
 many instants now, and would make her this amends 
 for the half-bitter word she said this day, and the in- 
 jury done to herself for so good a reason as her temper 
 and disposition ran toward all generous and hospitable 
 
46 Marthas and Marys 
 
 ends ? And shall we not say, as we leave her wonder- 
 ing over the Master's words, and half inclined to cry, — 
 for the tears are very near the eyes with the Marthas, — 
 that we must not wonder the divine heart in him who 
 knew what was in man and woman should still go out 
 to this capital and much cumbered woman, so anxious 
 about the duty and grace of hospitality and of good 
 \iOVL%&-keeping ; the crown and glory of her life and 
 of her ancient Scriptures, and say also for her vindica- 
 tion, as we note her worth, What would the world be 
 without our Marthas, who cumber themselves so sore, 
 and very much as she did, by much serving ? Who are 
 so noble, indeed, and capable to take care of themselves 
 in our modern life that they need no advocate ; but the 
 Marys rather need one, as she did who sat at the 
 Master's feet in the old time, and was lost in his word. 
 In this modern life and the life in this fervid centre, es- 
 pecially, where not to be a Martha, when the demand is 
 on you to see well to your home and your social duties, 
 is to be next of kin to nobody among the good women 
 of our city, and of Boston, let us say with a slightly 
 deeper emphasis, this is the canon of our woman- 
 hood, — to stand by Martha; while of our manhood it 
 may be, — for I would walk delicately here, the less 
 I say, the better. Still, is it not true that we all 
 want these Marthas to look after us rather than the 
 Marys, — to see, as the older Scripture says, that we 
 are honored among the elders in the gate if the years 
 have told on us, or, if we have to make our way up the 
 ladder, to be our help-meet and lend a hand as we 
 climb, and so make good the axiom that the man must 
 ask his wife how far up he shall go t We love to 
 
Marthas and Marys 47 
 
 see the home crisp and bright as a new-minted dollar, 
 and to see the house-mother rise to the level of the 
 swiftest demand when the guests come in, or we bring 
 them in, even at the cost of that sharp word now and 
 then, which is not for the sister or the guests, and, if 
 we are not mere clowns, and no gentlemen, enjoy it per- 
 haps, as we enjoy the blowing of the west winds these 
 spring days, but take care not to say so, while it well 
 contents us, take us in the mass, to hear how the Marys, 
 who have only this fine grace for their gift, — to be still 
 now and then, and listen, and, it may be, speak or write, 
 — how they cannot hold a candle to the Marthas in the 
 social or the housekeeping life, and are of quite no ac- 
 count so far in the town or the country side. 
 
 The Marthas, then, need no advocate in the life we 
 are living, with its crowded hospitalities and thick-sown 
 social duties ; but, then, we have to ask the question I 
 have answered in part already, — whether this is true 
 of the Marys, of whom it was said they have chosen the 
 good part which shall not be taken from them. Is this 
 the better part on which so many of us, men and women 
 alike, have come to set such store in these times, or in 
 any time .? Have they struck the great key-note of life 
 in France, let us say, for an instance, where they are 
 so proud of the capacity and quality of the woman in 
 the home, in society, and in business, — the matchless 
 Marthas, so clever and capable that the men folk, as 
 you used to call them in New England, are content to 
 be ciphers very often to their unit, and only to plume 
 themselves on their Panama canals and copper trusts, 
 in which they waste what the Marthas have made.' If 
 I have learned the mere alphabet of a true and noble 
 
48 Marthas and Marys 
 
 life, I say No to such a conclusion now and forever, and 
 stand by His word who said, Mary hath chosen the 
 good part, when she had caught the great and high 
 moment on the wing and sat at his feet, content to 
 drink in the divine word fresh from heaven, and let all 
 else wait or be blown down the wind, if it must be so, 
 for that great golden opportunity to see far into heaven. 
 In the old time, when the highest things came to us 
 on the bee-line, as they come still to our children, the 
 holiest and highest came not through the man, but 
 the woman ; and this was especially true of the Greek 
 and Roman and the race to which we belong. It is the 
 bud to the blossom. It is the fruit to the vine. It is 
 the alphabet to the Bible in this truth I want to touch, 
 — the truth that not the priest, but the priestess, is the 
 gland factor in the diviner life of man now ; and the 
 Marys, not the Marthas, that we must look to for the 
 highest and the best, — of whom we have to ask the ques- 
 tion, How high shall we go .-" I allow the claim gladly 
 of her sister's energy and faculty, and all noble quali- 
 ties beside that belong to her nature ; but all the same 
 I say of Mary, She hath chosen that good part which 
 shall not be taken from her. The home, the church, 
 the city, and the republic, and the world all around 
 wait finally for the. Marys rather than the Marthas, so 
 far as the woman has her portion and lot in its highest 
 and truest life, — the woman and womanhood of the 
 deeper heart and vision whose life is hid with Christ's 
 in God. 
 
 It came to me to think and speak of this again 
 through the sudden hush, over which I never cease to 
 wonder, which falls on the Marthas when Lent * comes 
 
 * Lent, i8go. 
 
Marthas and Marys 49 
 
 round among those who stand within the lines of the 
 Roman and Episcopal Churches especially, and in one 
 way or another touches us all. There has been no 
 such devouring hospitality since I came to live in New 
 York as I have noticed this winter, or such dissipation 
 of life, — I use the word in no evil sense, — in which 
 they have had to bear the main burden ; and not sel- 
 dom I have heard the longing expressed that Lent 
 might come, and then they would be free from this 
 cumber of much serving as hostess or guest. It is a 
 wise and gracious provision of these great old churches 
 for the Marthas of their fold. No more of that, they 
 say. For forty days you must sit down, also, with the 
 Marys now, and listen to the word from on high. The 
 channels of your life must be deepened and cleared of 
 the sand, so that the waters may run sweet and clear. 
 Hear the Church. It is our habit to smile at this, and 
 congratulate ourselves that we are under no such bond- 
 age ; but may we not ask, as we do this, whether it is 
 not freedom to great hosts of Marthas who have been 
 wearing their lives out and their souls away in what 
 they call their social duties, — this first, and then, what 
 is better still, if they are true to the primitive intention 
 of the holy time, the sitting down with Mary and let- 
 ting the heavy care go by of so much serving, while 
 they open their heart to higher and better things, and 
 have some crumbs of the good part which shall not be 
 taken from them, so that their life shall not be like the 
 river I saw in the Far West, — a long drift through 
 the dry desert, — to be lost finally in the sands and 
 create only a marsh, — the Humboldt sink they call it. 
 The thought of the sisters touches me also to this 
 
50 Marthas and Marys 
 
 closer purpose, that those who hear me shall mind this 
 truth from the Master's lips. It is the natural instinct 
 of our finer womanhood to range with Martha, and be 
 like her, as it is the drift of the time. To be clever and 
 hospitable and able, not seldom to hold your own in the 
 world's business as well as a man, or to surpass many 
 nicii, — in this I have taken pains to mark my admira- 
 tion of Martha ; But, as I think of the ever-growing ten- 
 dency to be cumbered about many things, as she was, 
 and note the multitudes of women so cumbered, I won- 
 der where the Marys are, and how many of them are 
 left of this nobler mind and purpose, — maidens who 
 will not give all their time to the world's ways and fash- 
 ions, or to light and frivolous reading and the charm of 
 light conversation, or to running hither and yonder on 
 vain and empty errands, or even to more serious things 
 that still go only to the making of Marthas, but will 
 have their time for listening to the diviner voice, the 
 still, small voice, the whisper of the Holy Spirit of God. 
 And women in the heart of the world's life who find 
 they must nourish the deeper heart of Mary while their 
 lot lies greatly with Martha, — and it may be their 
 temper and disposition also, — that they may not only 
 save their own souls alive, but be help-meets, indeed, to 
 those of us who are as the life of their life, and who, it 
 may be, can only climb the ladder which reaches toward 
 heaven as they stand on the step above us and hold out 
 their hand, and who will say to the children what He 
 said who took them in his arms and blessed them, and 
 then make it all come true, — of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven,^ how many are there .' Many, many, many, 
 or our life in this New World holds no great hope for 
 
Marthas and Marys 5 1 
 
 man. Clever as they are and good as gold, these good 
 Marthas, the saving salt of the noblest and best, the 
 deeper heart and devout and reverent is not in them as 
 it was in the primitive mothers of the nation ; and we 
 must have women like these and like Mary always. 
 
 Many such women there are, as my faith runs ; and my 
 sight now and then confirms my faith. Lucretia Mott 
 was one of them, — as good a Martha as the world held 
 in her time, but then, also, as good a Mary. The home 
 kept perfectly, the children trained beautifully, and all 
 living their own lives well, the social duties which 
 must be observed all kept up to the line, everything of 
 that sort well done ; but, then, this also, the quiet in- 
 ward life kept sweet and free to hear the word, deep 
 thoughts of the heart coming and going in communion 
 with the highest, the few choice books, heart books, 
 read and read again, and a glance of the eye toward 
 all the great and hopeful movements in the world's 
 great life. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaskell, also, the busy pastor's wife in Man- 
 chester, with a great parish on her hands and wide- 
 reaching social and home duties of every sort, — a per- 
 fect Martha, as I found her once, — yet also, if we may 
 judge, a perfect Mary, sitting at the Master's feet and 
 listening, and writing " Ruth " and " Mary Barton." 
 Martha could not write them, only Mary. And so it is, 
 and has been always. 
 
 It is what I plead for in this Lenten sermon ; for 
 why should we not also hear Lenten sermons ? I would 
 begin at the beginning, and this is with the Marthas 
 and Marys. Shall we ask what the next age will be, 
 we must not ask the men of this age, or the ministers, 
 
52 Marthas and Marys 
 
 or the schools even, and colleges. We must ask the 
 maidens and wives and mothers, and the womanhood 
 all round, the Marthas and Marys apart or in one. 
 They hold the casting vote for goodness and righteous- 
 ness and truth ; and you who hear me are among them, to 
 whom Paul also said, " Be not conformed to this world, 
 but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that 
 ye may know what is the good and acceptable and per- 
 fect will of God." 
 
THE PARABLE OF THE RESERVES. 
 
 " But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." — Matt. 
 XXV. 5. 
 
 The parable of the ten virgins is, on the whole, a 
 sad story. You do not care for the one-half of them 
 the instant after they enter the door, — ■ or before they 
 enter, for that matter, — when once you find them out, 
 and take note of what seems to be their utter selfish- 
 ness. Your heart stays outside with the five who are 
 peering in through the windows, listening to the 
 music and weeping while the others are dancing. 
 You say. It is too bad, and would fain open the door 
 and let them in also ; while you wonder why the bride- 
 groom is not of your mind, and begin to make excuses, 
 and to find reasons for a fairer conclusion than this 
 which is written. There was no harm in them, you 
 say. They were only thoughtless, and even this 
 might come in such a case through their eager haste 
 to be on hand. This would be in itself a fine trait. 
 Or their lamps may have gone out through the 
 boundless generosity of their burning, while those 
 of the other five were kept alive by parsimony in the 
 use of the oil, as well as the forethought which pro- 
 
54 The Parable of the Reserves 
 
 vided a reserve. At any rate, you would like to 
 know the rights of all this before you make up your 
 mind to leave these poor damsels to their distraction. 
 And, even if you were sure it was a just judgment, 
 you would still owe those insiders a grudge for not 
 squeezing out a few drops at least to help their sisters 
 up to the door, at some risk to their own lamps, so 
 that they might all go in or stay out together. Or, 
 what would be well worth the trying, trust that on 
 his wedding day, at any rate, the master of the feast 
 would be of a generous mind, and say, Come in, every 
 one of you, when they all came in the dimness to the 
 door, and told him how it was no use thinking of 
 leaving the one-half there on the street to take their 
 chance at the closed doors, so their lamps had all gone 
 out through a motive they were sure he would admire 
 above all things in his own wife. 
 
 Neither are you satisfied with the way in which the 
 parable is commonly made to open toward our life and 
 its outlooks hereafter. In the German there is a story 
 of Frederick, Margrave of Misnia, who in 1322 went 
 to see one of the old Mystery Plays drawn from the 
 parable, in which the five wise virgins were the 
 noblest women the playwright could imagine. But 
 they had grown hard and stern as fate to their hapless 
 comrades, and left them easily outside weeping and 
 wailing, which, when the prince saw, he was so 
 amazed that he fell into a grievous sickness, crying. 
 What is our Christian faith, then, and love? died on 
 the fourth day after, and was buried at Eisenach. 
 And we are very much of the Margrave's mind. If 
 
The Parable of the Reserves 55 
 
 our faith means anything, we say, worth the name, it 
 means that we shall help each other when the pinch 
 comes, at any cost, and grow rich by giving rather 
 than by hoarding; while about the meanest thing a 
 man or woman can do is to nourish the idea of crowd- 
 ing into whatever bliss may be awaiting, no matter 
 who may have to stand outside, and having your fill of 
 joy while your old comrades are in despair. 
 
 It is a fair objection, born of all that is most gen- 
 erous and noble in our human nature, and by conse- 
 quence most divine. It seems as if such a selfish 
 spirit would make heaven itself anything but welcome 
 to those of wider sympathies and a deeper pulse of 
 grace, when they found themselves in such company. 
 And so these interpretations are rejected as unworthy 
 the grand and generous soul of the gospel of the Son 
 of God. But I think the truth is that we fall into 
 this trouble and many more of this kind through our 
 misconceptions, and say one thing when our great 
 Teacher means another. So it is of the life to come 
 he is speaking here, the commentators say ; yet, when 
 you read what precedes and follows the parable, you 
 find it is not the life to come which is in his mind 
 then, and least of all our notions of that life, but the 
 life right there they had to live in those days and we 
 have to live now, with its outlooks and inlooks, and 
 the kingdom of heaven is no far-away world among the 
 lights and shadows of eternity, but the life of God in 
 human souls on this earth, while even then it is not 
 that life as we insist on it in our sermons and sys- 
 tems, but the widest and deepest relation of man to 
 
56 The Parable of the Resei'ves 
 
 God we can imagine, meeting us at every turn and 
 keeping the record of all we do. 
 
 This is the way, therefore, the parable I want to 
 touch opens to my mind. There was trouble in the 
 air as Jesus was speaking. He saw it through his 
 divine insight; while those about him still felt safe 
 and sure of their lives and fortunes, and would not be 
 disturbed of their rest. It is coming, he tells them 
 once and again, as a thief in the night; and no ele- 
 ment in it, as he foresees, will be more terrible than 
 its surprise. It will be like a thunderbolt out of a 
 clear sky, like the swift agony of fire in a sleeping 
 city, like the spring of a wild thing as you walk with- 
 out a fe3.r through the quiet glades of a forest, like all 
 great trials now and forever, when you least expect 
 them. 
 
 Then he foresees how there will be a division among 
 those who spring out of the slumber to meet the de- 
 mand of the day and night, — how some will have re- 
 serves of light and life and the power to hold their 
 own, while others who have no such reserves will have 
 to give up and lose their place, submit to the loss, 
 and stand outside; while this must all come to pass 
 through a law of life against which there is no appeal 
 and for which there is no help save through seeing to 
 the reserves of oil in good time, and so being pre- 
 pared for the demand when it comes suddenly on all 
 alike There may be the best desire in the world on 
 the part of those who are ready to help the rest who 
 must fall back; but there is no margin, and so no way. 
 The reserves must be there ready to meet the demand, 
 
The Parable of the Reserves 57 
 
 then the end of it all will be glory and honor; but not 
 there, it is too late to create them, and the end is 
 disgrace and shame. It is not a question of sentiment, 
 therefore, but of life in its solemn ordeals, and not so 
 much of the way we shall win into heaven as the way 
 we shall live, first of all, to the truest purpose on the 
 earth. 
 
 So, when we set the parable in this light, it is not 
 hard to see how it enters into our own life and time, 
 and brings the truth home no man can afford to neg- 
 lect, — the truth that we must also have the reserves 
 to fall back upon when the demand comes, or we can 
 never spring forward to any great purpose, — Reserves 
 of life or light, of courage or character, of insight or 
 endurance, or of whatever the demand may be; for, 
 failing here, it is as when the wells fail in a dry time 
 because they have no deepness or power to reach the 
 perennial springs. 
 
 In our common life we may do as well as those 
 about us, or seem to be doing better, even, if we are 
 reckless about the reserves, while others are carefully 
 storing them away. But the truth is, such times are 
 no test of the man and manhood any more than the 
 piping times of peace, when they flame out in scarlet 
 and gold in London, are a test of the queen's guards, 
 or than our own men were tested when they marched 
 southward through our streets with their music and 
 banners. It is Waterloo and the Crimea, Chancel- 
 lorsvilleand Ball's Bluff, and such grim backgrounds 
 as these, against which they must stand before the 
 matchless manhood can come into high relief and 
 
58 The Parable of the Reserves 
 
 reveal the truth of the reserves. And so we can all 
 go easily enough through our own easy-going times, 
 make good headway, as we imagine, and hold our own 
 with the best, while such times hold no virtue in 
 them to bring out the reserved power. 
 
 They are like the main part of a voyage I made 
 once across the Atlantic, in which the weather was so 
 pleasant and all things ran so smoothly that I suspect 
 the most of us felt we were about a match for the 
 captain, and concluded it was no great thing, after all, 
 to run a steamer, when you once got the lines. But a 
 great storm struck us as we were nearing Cape Race, 
 and all night long the good ship shuddered and panted 
 through the mighty billows or over them ; and when 
 next morning, peering deckward, we saw our captain 
 standing by the main mast, his arms twisted about the 
 ropes, swinging in the tempest and watching it with 
 steady eyes, alert and cheerful, though they told us 
 he had been on deck all night, — turning his vessel 
 round in the thick of the tempest and the trough of 
 the sea, so that she might escape the awful strain and 
 the avalanche of waters which were filling many with 
 dismay, — then we knew our captain. The reserves 
 were shining out. Here was a man no storm could 
 daunt, and who, if the worst had come, would no 
 doubt have been the last to leave the ship. That man 
 had light in him and life equal to the demand, — oil 
 in the vessel with his lamp; and so he brought us to 
 the desired haven. 
 
 I. Now this demand, when we bring it home, 
 touches, first of all, our life itself. For your wise doc- 
 
The Parable of tJie Reserves 59 
 
 tor will tell you that about the best thing you can do is 
 to keep as fine a reserve of vitality as you can possibly 
 store away, if you mean to give him a chance when 
 some day he has to help you pull through in the sore 
 conflict between life and death to which we are open, 
 exactly, perhaps, when we least expect it. And how 
 many times we have all heard that same sad story! 
 Nothing could be done for him, because there was 
 nothing to fall back upon. He had no reserve of 
 power to fight through: he used up all his life as he 
 went along. And that most cheering story, on the 
 other hand : He was about as sick as a man can be to 
 live; but he had a splendid constitution and great 
 reserves of power, and so he pulled through. Here, 
 then, is the first meaning of oil in my vessel with my 
 lamp, as it lies in my very life. I can be wary and 
 foreseeing about this blessing on which all other 
 things I can be and do down here must rest; and then, 
 when the last stern test comes, it is as if so many 
 more strands were cabled about the one slender thread. 
 So many a life has ended all too soon through what 
 we call a mystery of providence, when the most heed- 
 less and reckless improvidence has really used up the 
 reserves; and so we should be careful how we use 
 such a term or go after a mystery while the simple 
 truth waits right under our eyes. We use up these 
 reserves, and are smitten by a sickness which would 
 draw on all our powers if we had kept them stored 
 away, but they are wasted; and then I speak as a man 
 when I say that the Eternal God is as powerless to 
 pull us through as the good doctors are, while, if it 
 
6o The Parable of the Reserves 
 
 were otherwise, we can imagine no greater misfortune, 
 for we should all turn spendthrifts in the assurance of 
 getting a renewal. There is no such subtle tempta- 
 tion to improvidence as that which lies in the feeling 
 that the high powers will suspend the law if we do 
 but cry loud and long enough. 
 
 And still another truth waits to be touched before 
 we pass this first line; this, namely, that these re- 
 serves of life mean more than mere living. They 
 mean what the Master hinted at, — an enduring bright- 
 ness breaking into joy, because the man who has the 
 most life, and still knows how to use and store it, has 
 usually the most worth of life. The grace and glamour 
 of existence come of the overplus of oil. Show me 
 a man who is running forever on a close margin, and 
 I will show you a man who has more than his share 
 of dark, grim days, one to whom the beauty of the 
 spring, the glory of the summer, the ripeness of the 
 fall, and the white splendor of winter often come on 
 bootless errands. The reserves mean not mere liv- 
 ing, then, but what gives life worth in this simple 
 and natural sense; and we may all cry, who have 
 these empty lamps, to our sorrow, — 
 
 " 'Tis life of which our nerves are scant, 
 Life, and not death, for which we pant, 
 More life, and fuller still, we v.'2.nt.'' 
 
 II. These reserves mean, in the second place, 
 character; for we can store up character, as we store 
 up life, if we take care and become so rich and strong 
 that, when these sudden and searching emergencies 
 
The Parable of the Reserves 6 1 
 
 try us as by fire, we suffer no loss, but come out per- 
 fect and entire, lacking nothing. For you can all 
 name men of whose stout and sterling manhood you 
 feel so sure that, if one should come to you in the 
 guise of an angel of light, and accuse them of 
 knavery, you would look for the cloven foot on that 
 accuser, — men to whom you could trust your life and 
 fortune and sacred honor, and go to sleep without 
 the least tremor of fear after all the revelations of 
 weakness and wantonness touching great trusts that 
 are enough to wither the heart. They are the men 
 who store up these reserves of character, treasures of 
 insight and foresight, of fortitude and courage, and 
 never lose their head, no matter how the solid earth 
 seems to rock in panic and convulsion, but are strong 
 and quiet, and keep their lamps shining full and clear 
 through the darkness. The trial of their manhood 
 may come, then, when it will, whispering tongues 
 may poison truth, the fearful and unbelieving may 
 desert them, and those even who believe in them 
 most thoroughly may be troubled; but their reserves 
 will not fail. The clear shining from their lamp 
 will not end in a smoke and a stench. They will 
 stand in the evil day; and, when they have done all, 
 stand. The man who has just conduct and character 
 enough to run along in easy times, but lays up no 
 reserves on which he can draw when the cry strikes 
 the midnight of disaster, can have no great peace or 
 joy; but he has both who stores up the reserves on 
 which he can draw when the challenge comes to hold 
 up the light strong and clear. 
 
62 The Parable of the Reserves 
 
 III. Or these reserves may mean, in the third 
 place, achievement, the power to do the grandest 
 thing possible to our manhood when the demand 
 comes for this reserve, and cube our power out of 
 the latent stores ; to do well always, but the best in 
 the crisis on which all things turn; to stand the 
 strain of the long fight with fate or fortune, and still 
 to find we have something left which will meet the 
 uttermost demand. 
 
 In our lifetime we shall see no grander instance of 
 this reserve which shines forth in achievement than 
 that Stanley reveals in his story of "Darkest Africa." 
 "In perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils 
 of Ids own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in 
 perils in the wilderness, in perils among false breth- 
 ren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, 
 in hunger and thirst, in fastings often," to the very 
 clutch of death to cast another black shadow then 
 across the dark continent, the brave heart could not 
 break, the steadfast eyes looked right on, the mighty 
 spirit dominated the weak and failing flesh, the re- 
 serves tell the story, the grandest story of these last 
 times. 
 
 And so it may be with your life and mine in the 
 things we have to do. We can store up life and light 
 for this crisis of all well-doing when it comes, — an 
 inward and spiritual substance of manhood like that 
 which was found in the great conflict, when delicate, 
 town-bred men would tire down the young giants of 
 the backwoods and prairies, outfight them, and outlive 
 them ; and the fine reserves of the Harvard men cov- 
 ered them with glory, while the shallow and brutal 
 
The Parable of the Reserves 63 
 
 might of "Billy Wilson's Regiment" ended in dis- 
 grace and shame. An inward and spiritual substance 
 of manhood, I say, nothing can exhaust, which brings 
 us at last to the front with the light burning high and 
 clear from the oil in the vessels with the lamps. 
 
 And I have dwelt so long on these more outward 
 truths of the doctrine of the reserves, because they 
 appear to me to be of the utmost worth in this light 
 to those who would come worthily through these tests 
 of our manhood in life, in character, and in the work 
 we have to do; and then, again, because they point 
 inward to deeper and diviner verities we have to mind. 
 
 For, as we can store up these virtues against the 
 trial of our. outward life, so we can store up other 
 against the trial of our inward life. Faith, hope, 
 and love, and whatever makes the most noble and god- 
 like man as these I have dwelt on, reveal the even 
 man and manhood. 
 
 Because, to speak first of our faith in God and his 
 eternal providence and love, we need not merely 
 enough to live through the common experiences of 
 our life, but stores of faith to fall back upon, oil in 
 the vessel with the lamp, when woe and disaster 
 cover our life as with a pall of death. When we wake 
 up suddenly some day to wonder whether God can be 
 in his heaven and we so forlorn on the earth, and if 
 his Christ was not mistaken in his abiding confi- 
 dence, and the apostles mistaken, and the holy saints, 
 — to wake up with this fear shaking the heart in us, 
 and then to wonder what better we can do than just 
 to grit our teeth and take it as it comes, waiting for 
 the long sleep of death. 
 
64 The Parable of the Reserves 
 
 Millions of poor, forlorn souls have come to this 
 pass, this via mala in the last sore trial of their faith, 
 — the light gone out and no oil in the vessel with the 
 lamp. And I have found in my long ministry many a 
 time that it was of no use trying to give them of my 
 faith, and so try to tide them through, so that they 
 should finish their course with joy. The oil could 
 not pass from man to man, — there seemed to be no 
 channel ; and in them there was no reserve. But how 
 many I have found who had struck the same sore 
 troubles, and who were able to rise out of them 
 through the reserves into the very life and light of 
 God! No disaster could overcome them. No trial 
 of their faith could break them quite down. It 
 was no matter that the heavens so neighborly to 
 them of old were black as a starless midnight, save 
 for the pain of it, and the woe, or that "from out 
 waste nature came a cry, and murmurs from the dying 
 sun." The reserves were there. They could say, I 
 know in whom I have believed. So they drew on the 
 oil in the vessel with the lamp, and entered into the 
 joy of the Lord. 
 
 Poor creatures some of them were, who could give 
 no reason why they should hold on so and stay strong 
 in God, any more than the fountain can give a reason 
 for its flowing, or the plant you find in the desert for 
 the store of cool water in its heart. They also had 
 been sending down roots deep and far, tapping the 
 springs of the reserves, storing up the oil; and then, 
 when the evil day came, nothing could exhaust them of 
 their faith. The old Bible had been drawn on for the 
 
The Parable of the Reserves 65 
 
 reserves, and many another fountain, and, above all, 
 the inward and ever-flowing fountain of God's own 
 life; and, when we do this, there is no peril of the 
 oil giving out. It burns clear and strong unto the 
 eternal life beyond the veil. 
 
 Or the still sadder doom may come of shattered 
 hope and a heart like a stone. No haunting any 
 more of the light of a new dawn. No warm pulse 
 toward earth or heaven. Cold ashes only where the 
 fire was, and no more fuel. Dead already, while I 
 still have a name to live. Paralysis in the centres 
 of the soul, — the saddest sight in all the world. The 
 surmise that things can be no worse, and I don't care, 
 just dead hopes, heedless of anything life can give me 
 beyond the dead line. This may come to me when 
 there is no oil in the vessel with the lamp, hopes 
 which rest only on the things which perish in the 
 using, and a love which has never penetrated beyond 
 the senses. 
 
 There are no reserves in a life like this to meet the 
 demand. I must still be able to fall back on what is 
 unseen and eternal, or here and now I cannot enter 
 into the light and joy. The men and women you find 
 in this sore strait and stress are of those to whom 
 what we call a good time is the great purpose of their 
 life. But the cry comes, we must all answer. The 
 oil is not forthcoming; and here on the earth is the- 
 end. They wist not that these cannot be the final 
 conditions of our faith and hope and love, that there 
 is a soul within the senses to which we must cleave. 
 No reserves are laid up in these shallow, hand-to- 
 
66 The Parable of the Reserves 
 
 mouth ways; and so at last it is as if we heard 
 Azrael, the angel, cry, "Put out the light, and then 
 — put out the light." But the men and women 
 whose faith and hope send down roots into the 
 unseen and eternal, and whose love, while it fills 
 the eyes with light and the ear with music, still 
 loves the vision more than the sight, — and the soul 
 time cannot alter save to make more beautiful, or 
 death touch except to glorify, — these do not turn 
 hard and cold, and say, I will hope and love no more. 
 There is oil in the vessel with the lamp; and heaven 
 and earth may pass away, but the reserves shall not 
 pass away. 
 
 But there is still another word. We think of those 
 poor damsels turning away from the closed doors, but 
 still saying, as they go home: We have learned our 
 lesson. We will never be caught again. We will 
 see to the reserves henceforth, and enter with the 
 rest into the light and joy. It is but the suggestion 
 of the way the infinite tender pity and love must open 
 toward hapless human souls left down here in the 
 dark, — the faith we love to cherish who dare, that 
 life is a school in which we learn by failing as well 
 as by succeeding; the faith that no man need sit 
 down in despair even here, and say. That was my last 
 chance, or have those who care for him say. What he 
 was down here he will be forever. I can tolerate no 
 such conception of the love of God. Only this can 
 be true, I say, that our extremity is the divine oppor- 
 tunity, no matter where we are; and, when one door 
 shuts, another opens, is as good an axiom heaven- 
 
The Parable of the Reserves 6/ 
 
 ward as it ever can be earthward. We must submit 
 to the sorrow and loss ; but we shall learn the lesson, 
 and enter at last into the joy. 
 
 The battle-cry of the regiment when they must 
 again face the foe was the name of a fight which had 
 covered them with shame and confusion of face; and, 
 when this new day closed, they had burned out the dis- 
 grace, set the smoke of the old shame itself ablaze by 
 their valor, came home with the light burning high and 
 clear, and were met with great sobs of joy by men 
 who thought they had forgotten the secret of tears. 
 And we can all do this, by God's help and blessing, so 
 that no man need despair here; while this is the 
 grander and diviner truth, — that no man will be per- 
 mitted to despair hereafter, when he has well learned 
 the lesson of the oil in the vessel with the lamp. 
 
INSTANTANEOUS PHOTOGRAPHS. 
 
 "As the appearance of a flash of lightning." — Ezekiel i. 14. 
 
 I WENT on an evening, some time ago, to see a 
 great wonder in one of our public halls. It was a 
 collection of photographs taken on the turn of an in- 
 stant, when we gathered in our city for a centennial 
 celebration. They were flashed for us here against 
 a great white curtain, as you know ; and there was a 
 pleasant comment touching each of them in its turn by 
 one of our artists whose words on such themes I always 
 love to hear. 
 
 And the object and subject that evening were both 
 well fitted to draw such an audience, if that was all we 
 cared for, to match the pictures on the curtain with 
 those which had caught our eye that day, have them 
 bring all things to our remembrance, and then to won- 
 der whether this flash through which the thing was 
 done can make the shadows abide, so that, when an- 
 other hundred years have come and gone, those who 
 are living then will be able to gather as we did and 
 see once more the great panorama on land and water 
 which vanished for us in the watching. 
 
 To do this, and then to think of the words they will 
 still be reading then, "The fashion of this world passeth 
 
Instantaneous Photogi'aphs 69 
 
 away," but still to say, The heavens abide, and the earth 
 and man ; to smile at some things they will see, and, 
 it may be, weep at some ; to see here and there a face 
 they seem to know, as my old friend saw one in his 
 audience, when he was preaching away out on the prai- 
 ries in the West, — a face which haunted him through 
 all the sermon as that of a familiar friend who had long 
 ago gone to her rest ; to come down when the sermon 
 was over, and say to the woman. If I did not know Mary 
 had been in heaven so many years, I should be ready 
 to believe she was here to-day, and she answered, I 
 am Mary of the third generation, — • this was my 
 thought as I sat in the hall that evening, watching the 
 lights and shadows those deft and cunning hands had 
 caught and held for us ; but still the greater wonder lay 
 within the passing show. What can be so fleeting as 
 these on the water and in the sky on that April day ? 
 They were caught and held in these pictures, never 
 abiding and never returning, just as they were that mo- 
 ment, to endure for a time we have not yet measured. 
 So "who knoweth the way of a ship on the sea.'" 
 the ancient wisdom asks ; and here was one answer. 
 These ships were caught and held for us, with their 
 flags flying in the wind, with the smoke pouring from 
 their guns, with the sailors on the cross-trees and the 
 citizens on deck. And on the land as on the water 
 here was the same wonder : we were caught and held, 
 as the clouds were in the sky, and the curl on the 
 waves and the spray. The look in your eyes was there, 
 and the turn of your hand on its errand to your com- 
 rade, or friend. The remark was on your lips, and the 
 smile on your face, or the frown : only I saw no frown 
 
yo Instantaneous Photographs 
 
 that I remember in the whole succession of the pict- 
 ures. The foot was arrested tiptoe in the military step 
 where five hundred marched as one. The banners 
 were flying in the wind again, and the shadows chased 
 the lights. The music was in the air : you could 
 almost feel the reverberation, as the deaf do. There it 
 was ; and we were there caught and held, to appear on 
 the white curtain while these things endure : — 
 
 " The passing show, the fair spring morn, 
 The streets, the trees, the blossomed thorn, — 
 These, and far greater things, but caught 
 Like these, and to the curtain brought 
 The outward semblance made to give 
 Enduring life to those that live. 
 And, choosing each his moment well. 
 Shadow and light their story tell." 
 
 Done in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, there 
 we were, — in our royal youth, in our white age, in our 
 habit as we lived that day, and with the life on our lips 
 and in our eyes. The passing of an instant, and all 
 unawares the picture of a century taken " as the ap- 
 pearance of a flash of lightning." 
 
 But I have said the greater wonder to me lay within 
 the passing show, as it opened then and since then, 
 and asked this question, May there not be a good and 
 true lesson for us all in this which was and is now no 
 more save as it is cast against the curtain.? — an inti- 
 mation of the way our lives may be caught in a picture 
 or in a gallery of them, our fellows will bend over in a 
 tender pride or in a sore dismay long after we have 
 done with it all and gone our ways. We walk through 
 
Instantaneous Photographs "ji 
 
 this world and life, or stand and gaze, with no more 
 thought of this befalling us than we had that day ; take 
 our place in the great procession of life and time each 
 one, and then in a moment the delicate silvered glass is 
 made ready for us in some human spirit, the light flashes 
 on it, the slide goes home, and there we stand. There 
 we stand with the leer in our eyes, or the look in 
 them God's angels love to see ; and, with the ban or 
 the benediction on our lips, the very essence of what 
 we are is caught and hidden away, and the work is 
 done. We should make up a face and fall into a post- 
 ure if we could but be aware of what was coming ; but 
 this can never be. This watcher wants the man or 
 woman within all the masks. So he bides his time, takes 
 the picture and hides it away ; and then the time may 
 come when it will be cast against the great white cur- 
 tain, so that all who care to look shall see the real man 
 or woman. 
 
 Nor can I think this is some mere freak of my own 
 imagination, when I explore the treasure-trove of such 
 pictures taken through all time, and notice how one 
 swift flash, " as the appearance of a flash of lightning," 
 is about all we have of great numbers ; but the flash 
 reveals the man or woman in their habit, as they lived 
 and moved and had their being. 
 
 In our Bible — the one book in all the world to me 
 which is honest as the day — it is all we have of Enoch, 
 who walked with God. He has no word to say to us, 
 and does nothing save this ; but I seem to want no 
 more. The quiet, simple presence rises before me with 
 that light in the eyes and on the face we have all seen 
 in those who walk with God ; and so I do not wonder, 
 
72 Instantaneous Photographs 
 
 when the end comes, that it should be no end at all, but 
 the beginning rather, as when sunset meets sunrise on 
 the far North Cape on the midsummer night. 
 
 So it is again with Lot's wife. She has no word to 
 say to us, and we do not even know her name, while all 
 she does is done in that supreme moment when she 
 grows hard, poor soul, and bitter as the bitumen, what 
 time she cannot tear herself away from her burning 
 home, cannot hear the cries of her children or the 
 imploring of her husband, but must linger by the wreck 
 and ruin ; and there in the fatal moment the picture is 
 taken, and there she stands forever with the agony in 
 her eyes, and becomes to the Eastern imagination a 
 pillar of salt. 
 
 So the watcher with the glass waits for the prophet 
 again, who beats the dumb beast while it turns its 
 speaking eyes on him in pain and wonder to plead 
 against the cruel strokes. Those eyes speak forever 
 now, and the man sits there forever to point a truth we 
 may all take to our hearts : that even an ass in the right 
 is nobler than a prophet in the wrong, and that is not 
 an easy lesson for the most of us to learn, if I may make 
 the guess. 
 
 So the light flashes on Job again as he sits on the 
 ashes of his harried home, and moans out his marvellous 
 monologues of "providence, foreknowledge, will, and 
 fate." There he is forever with the pained and per- 
 plexed soul in him laid bare, and somehow we do not 
 care much for him in the years that come before or 
 after: this is the accepted time for the picture. It 
 flashes on Miriam as she stands with her hands lifted, 
 striking the timbrels and singing her grand song of 
 
Instantaneous Photographs 73 
 
 deliverance from the hosts and the sea ; and on Deb- 
 orah, sitting under the palm-tree judging Israel and 
 imparting courage to the captain to deliver the tribes ; 
 while Jonah flees from duty to doom, returning from 
 doom to duty to sit under the withered gourd, and be 
 taught of God the great lesson of his loving-kindness 
 and tender mercy to those that know not their right 
 hand from their left. 
 
 It flashes frequently on David, who was so many 
 men in one, and so sends down many portraits, — of 
 the shepherd boy on the hills, singing his forever 
 lovely psalm ; the young soldier, armed for battle with 
 a stone and a sling ; the hapless young husband, 
 robbed of his wife ; the king in the presence of the 
 prophet after the great transgression ; the heart-broken 
 father mourning for his sons. Many a picture is taken 
 by a flash of David, the shepherd, psalmist, soldier, 
 statesman, sinner, and saint, — the man who 'could 
 swear like a trooper and praise like a seraph, take ven- 
 geance out of the Lord's hands into his own, to see how 
 his curses came down on his own head and his sins 
 turned to serpents by his own hearthstone, to find 
 nothing of any worth at last but penitence for his sin, 
 the infinite pity and love of God, and a manful striving 
 after a better life. Turn where we will in the Bible, 
 we are sure to find our sun pictures gleaming and burn- 
 ing with the life they must reveal. Beautiful or base, 
 it makes no matter to the honest old book and the 
 sensitive silvered glass, while time only brings out into 
 sharper relief the divine or infernal lights and shadows 
 his tooth can do nothing to destroy or mar. 
 
 And in the life which draws us nearer home, when 
 
74 Instantaneous Pliotographs 
 
 we turn from that little nook of the world, in parable or 
 story, we still find these pictures which reveal the man 
 or woman whole and, as we say, "all there." The light 
 flashes on the matchless old Greek in his prison, rub- 
 bing the poor limb from which the fetter has been 
 shorn away, what time he holds high converse with his 
 friends, while the cup he must drink presently to his 
 death stands there on the table, — he sits in the light 
 forever. And on the good Alfred, the Saxon, by his 
 mother's knee, bending in wonder over the beautiful 
 Gospels ; in the herdsman's hut, musing over his woe- 
 stricken kingdom while the cakes burn he should have 
 minded, and the good housewife gives him a piece of 
 her mind, — not true, you say : then, I answer, it ought 
 to be, and so it is, — Alfred stealing into the camp of 
 the heathen, where those that had desolated his people 
 required of him a song; stealing out again to call his 
 England to arms, restoring peace to the kingdom, 
 establishing the churches, enriching the schools, mak- 
 ing his land and ours shine with law and order, with 
 devoutness and scholarship, and then going to his rest. 
 We have many pictures of Alfred : they reveal the 
 manifold man. He wist not it would be so ; but the 
 lights were flashing here and yonder that the pictures 
 might be done for all the ages to see, and he did not 
 care. Why should he .■" Alfred was safe. 
 
 And on Bruce, the king, rising from his couch of 
 straw in the barn, when the spider succeeds at the four- 
 teenth trial, to go forth to try again and make his Scot- 
 land free at Bannockburn. On John Knox in the 
 presence of the queen and her minions, hurling at them 
 the thunderbolts of his righteous wrath. On Cromwell 
 
Instantaneous Photographs 75 
 
 at Dunbar and Marston Moor, and in the presence of 
 the derelict commons growling, Take that bauble away. 
 On Luther, standing to his answer at Worms, and cry- 
 ing, I cannot do otherwise, so help me God ! On 
 Wesley, standing on his father's gravestone to ring out 
 the glad tidings when they had barred the doors of the 
 church. And on Channing, hastening to the Court 
 House in Boston to sit down beside the man they had 
 dragged through the streets of the great free city — the 
 mother city of our freedom — because he would break 
 the yoke of the slave. And on John Brown, staying 
 to kiss the little child as he marches to the gallows 
 with his heart as high as on the day he went to his 
 wedding. 
 
 On Mary Ware, the lovely sister of our faith, at Dar- 
 lington, in Durham, not caring for her errand to see the 
 great motherland, but staying her feet that she might 
 nurse the poor creatures in their fever-stricken homes. 
 And Florence Nightingale, standing before those doors 
 in the Crimea bolted fast with red tape, while the men 
 were dying for food and medicine, and saying quietly, 
 "Bring the axes, and cut down those doors." And on 
 Mother Bickerdyke, we knew so well, in the West, 
 kindling her fires in the roar of the battle to make soup 
 and coffee for "her boys'' ; and, when one in command 
 said, "Who ordered you to make those fires.?" an- 
 swered, "God Almighty, sir," and went on with her 
 work for the boys, blessing and blest. 
 
 There they stand in the wider world and life we 
 know of, never suspecting again the presence of the 
 wonderful silvered glass. Then the slide moves, the 
 light flashes, the thing is done ; and the man or woman 
 
76 Instantaneous Photographs 
 
 is taken to stand against the great white curtain of 
 time. Taken for a few years, it may be, or a century, 
 or a millennium, we cannot tell, only that, as in this 
 prophet's vision, the living creatures ran and returned 
 as a flash of lightning ; and the rings of the wheels 
 were full of eyes. 
 
 And so the truth stands for us, all I would love to 
 tell this morning. These lives of ours, also, are not 
 so much a chronicle, when we reach the heart of the 
 mystery, as a picture or a succession of pictures taken 
 in " a term as brief as the wave's poise before it breaks 
 in foam," and then hidden away in some human heart 
 or memory, so that I shall never suspect this was done 
 to me for honor or shame. 
 
 Unaware of it as the lark was Shelley heard singing 
 far up in the heavens; but he sings forever now. He 
 can never be silent until the great and beautiful genius 
 which caught him on the wing has passed away into 
 nothingness and night. Unaware of it as the good 
 parson of a town was, or the poor " wydowe in a poor 
 cottage," standing in a dale, in Chaucer's matchless 
 gallery, there they stand, fresh and fair, after five hun- 
 dred years have come and gone. 
 
 So, indeed, it is true, as the Master says, there is 
 nothing secret which shall not be revealed or hidden 
 which shall not be made known ; while these pictures 
 taken of us, as I said, have nothing to do with my 
 posturing or contriving about the way I shall look 
 when I am cast against the white curtain. The living 
 creatures which come and go and flash the lightning 
 take the man unmasked. I may be destined to live in 
 some obscure corner and die there ; but, as surely as I 
 
Instantaneous Photographs 77 
 
 live and die, I liave stood for my picture, — my picture, 
 whicli will be noble or base as I am myself, or be 
 blended of both as I am myself, or as he was who sang 
 the great psalms of the ages, so that those who possess 
 the likeness will say, as Father Taylor said of Webster 
 when he was dead, " He was hardly good enough to 
 keep, but too good to throw away." Neither for good 
 nor evil can I live my life and escape the sensitive sil- 
 vered glass, or, as we hear men say sometimes, cover 
 my tracks. These, in the solemn issues of my life and 
 yours, are like those footprints of the birds caught in 
 the soft mud, it may be, a hundred thousand years ago. 
 The slime hardened into rock, the rock sank and rose 
 again ; and now the master restores the bird, they tell 
 me, from the footprint in the rock. 
 
 But, in touching this truth, I must not forget another 
 I saw in those pictures that night, as they were cast 
 against the great white curtain. I saw no evil look on 
 any face, so far as I now remember, or " hateful smirk 
 of boundless self-conceit, which seems to take posses- 
 sion of the world, and make of God our tame confed- 
 erate, purveyor of our appetites." Many of them were 
 anything but comely, and some were ploughed and 
 scarred ; but they were at their best and not at their 
 worst, and so I caught the truth on the wing that, while 
 I cannot cheat these watchers, they cannot cheat me 
 and make me seem worse than I am, if I seem no bet- 
 ter. So, if there is a real grain of good in me, this is 
 what they have to wait for and watch for, as the mother 
 watches her wayward son, or the wife her husband, or 
 the friend his friend. They wait for the moment when 
 the good overmasters the evil, when the soul of good- 
 
78 Instantaneous Photographs 
 
 ness in things evil comes up to breathe : then the light 
 flashes on us as the appearance of a flash of lightning, 
 and we go our ways, unaware of what was done ; but 
 the picture is there in their heart, all right. It is the 
 loyalty of heaven and the angels of the burning wheels 
 to the poor grains of worth in the dust and chaff, and I 
 may be winnowed down to that; but there is the tiny 
 store of the good seed of the kingdom, there the bit of 
 real gold within the dross. 
 
 It was about all there was in Peter once on a time, 
 and in the woman who wept at His feet who was so 
 good to her and gracious ; but the great divine heart in 
 him saw the gold within the dross, and what he saw 
 God sees. So I must not be disheartened or over-fear- 
 ful that, in the bitter battle between what the apostle 
 calls the law in my members and the law in my mind, 
 I shall have to stand as the evil one, if there is any 
 heart in me of real striving for the divine image and 
 likeness, or that these watchers with the silvered glass 
 are waiting round a corner somewhere to take me at 
 my worst, to flash the light on me then alone, and say. 
 This is the man, or this the woman. In all the world 
 and all time you shall find this to be true, and we can 
 almost say this only : that in our human life, as in other 
 treasures, we love best to find the gold in the dross and 
 shard ; and so on this ground also we may gladly be- 
 lieve that the dogma of our total human depravity is a 
 grosser affront to Heaven than it can be to you and me. 
 I would not tamper with the evil things, the sins and 
 shames, God knows, or call black white in their in- 
 terest. We must hate sin in all its incarnations, and 
 be sure that only fools make a mock at sin. But here 
 
Instantaneous Photographs 79 
 
 is the truth we should always remember : that in God's 
 great garden, which lies outside all the fences we have 
 to make and maintain, that the fairest and best may 
 bloom and ripen, there is not one worthless weed, — not 
 one. And so I was glad to hear the low, sweet note of 
 the gospel of nature, shall I say, in the word of a very 
 noble woman, one day, who said she loved to watch the 
 exquisite color, when the spring comes, of what we 
 call a skunk cabbage. There was beauty and grace 
 for her in a thing like that. But all the more is this 
 truth to be taken to heart when we give our heart to 
 all goodness and truth. We may feel sad, then, and 
 weary, and say : What is the use ? it is as when wheat 
 is sown on the granite. It is not true the picture 
 is taken strong and clear on the hearts prepared to 
 receive it, and cast in God's good time against the 
 white curtain. We are " children of the light and the 
 day." 
 
 Are you standing true to your trust, then, for the 
 nobler picture, — you men and women, you merchants 
 and men of affairs, artists, artisans, teachers, learners, 
 lone men, lone women, mothers in the home, and fathers .' 
 Believe me, it is all right. There are galleries of you 
 in the good human heart, taken at your best and all 
 unawares ; and what others have you have. It is the 
 holy law of life and of God. Yes, and there may be no 
 word to hearten and inspire you. I cannot be sure 
 about that. Or you may tread the wine-press alone, 
 and another may drink the wine. I do not know about 
 that. But your faith in life, in the truth, in goodness, 
 in God, waits for the true moment; and then, all un- 
 awares to us, the glass is ready, the slide shifts silently. 
 
8o Instantaneous Photographs 
 
 and the picture is taken for blessing, when we, as we 
 say so blindly, "are no more." Every true man and 
 woman is so caught and held for the world's diviner 
 life. No such endeavor is only as the shadows which 
 were passing over the waters and the land on that day 
 of the great celebration. Some true word you say, 
 some right, good thing you do, the essence of your 
 very self at your best, is arrested and held as the bright 
 waters were then, and the flying banners, and the sun- 
 light on the presence of the great multitudes. It flashes 
 the true fatherhood and motherhood on the hearts of 
 the children who cannot keep a chronicle, but can only 
 take impressions and pictures ; and then, in long years 
 after they are done, they come out and shine on the 
 white curtain in the light that never lay on land or sea, 
 and so never you fear that the picture will be false if 
 the life and love be true. And so may we all believe. 
 The reformer who stands on the first line in the forlorn 
 hope of some truth which will win the world to its 
 banner ; the forlorn martyr who cannot die, and yet 
 dies daily ; the faithful and true witness whose church 
 counts just one member, and, as he dreams, will die 
 when he dies, — these, and more than I can name in all 
 the world and in all the ages, they stand against the 
 white curtain, not having received the promise, but 
 seeing it afar off. And in all the world and all the ages' 
 there they stand also, the watchers with the good silvered 
 glass. The slide is shifted, the light flashes, the pict- 
 ure is taken ; and the world and all our life grow more 
 divine and good as we look on them cast against the 
 great white curtain of time. He in whom we live and 
 
Instantaneous Photographs 8i 
 
 move and have our being has not left us to wonder 
 how the thing will come out ; for 
 
 " All things once, are things forever. 
 Soul once living lives forever. 
 Blame net what is only once, 
 When that once endures forever. 
 Love once felt, though soon forgot, 
 Moulds the heart to good forever." 
 
THE LOW-LYING LIGHTS. 
 
 " Let your light so shire before men that they may see your good 
 works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." — Matt. v. i6. 
 
 I. We may easily see — when we read this Sermon 
 we think of as the sum of all true preaching — that the 
 preacher has no word to say about the church we shall 
 join, the system of doctrine we shall embrace, or the 
 things we shall do that we may think of as essential 
 in ordinance and observance before this light he speaks 
 of can shine forth in and from our life. 
 
 And this was by no means because they were all 
 of one mind in old Jewry any more than we are now 
 about such things; for we need not stray outside the 
 Gospels to learn that they had their diverse sects also. 
 There were not so many of them, to be sure, — four 
 perhaps, all told, or five with the Samaritans. Yet he 
 takes no notice here of any sect, but only of the light 
 which may shine from within them, no matter where 
 they may belong. 
 
 And, because there were sects among them, these 
 had their systems of belief and of ordinance and usage 
 on which they rested and turned. They were ortho- 
 dox and liberal, high church and low, conservative and 
 come-outer, with no more aptitude to blend and be one 
 than we have now ; but he has no word to say about 
 
The Low-lying Lights 83 
 
 the need there is to accept this system or that before 
 this light can shine he thinks of as the essential thing 
 to mind. It can shine through them all, if they are 
 sincere and true to the light as the light is to them, 
 or apart from them all, if the light which is in them 
 be darkness. 
 
 They had their famous preachers also, and teachers, 
 then as we have now, — the men who had split a prism 
 from the great white shaft of the eternal truth of God, 
 and inserted it for a glass in their souls' windows, 
 through which the light that was in them must shine, 
 dark and lurid or sweet and fair; but he does not say. 
 You shall go to them, and light your lamp there, 
 because it is within them lighted already, in a glim- 
 mer or a glory, and what they have to do is to let it 
 shine. 
 
 They were very simple folk, also, he had about him, 
 in the main, — poor men, of a very limited education 
 and attainment ; and, if he had asked them what they 
 believed and why, they would most likely have stam- 
 mered and blundered, and got the statement twisted all 
 out of true on their uncouth and rustic tongues the 
 moment they strayed beyond the things they had 
 learned by rote in the school and synagogue. 
 
 Yes ; and very likely would have mixed up the Bible 
 truth with some of the common currency, just as such a 
 man quoted the words from the Bible to me a good 
 many years ago, " God tempers the wind to the shorn 
 lamb," and, when I said. That is not in the Bible, rumi- 
 nated for a while, and then answered, " Well, if it isn't, 
 it ought to be," and to that I said. Amen. 
 
 It is well worth our while to notice also that this 
 
84 The Loiv-lying Lights 
 
 gracious monition was given to men, and no doubt 
 
 to women, too, who would be so full of care about their 
 
 day's work of some sort, and their daily bread, that 
 
 beyond the simple faith which would lie within the life 
 
 they were living, and the work they were doing on the 
 
 land and water and in their homes, there would be no 
 
 light in them save this, perhaps: that they must do as 
 
 they would be done by, and fall back, for the rest, on 
 
 some such heart of grace as that we find in good Dolly 
 
 Winthrop in the story, — "Ah! there's a deal o' trouble 
 
 in this world. Master Marner, and things we can never 
 
 make out the rights on ; and all we can do, then, is to 
 
 trust, — to do the right thing so far as we know, and to 
 
 trust. For, if us as knows so little can see a bit o' 
 
 good and right, we may be sure there's a good and a 
 
 bigger rights nor what we can know. And it's the will 
 
 o' Them above as many things should be dark to us; 
 
 but there's some things as I've never felt i' the dark 
 
 about, and they're mostly what comes i' the day's work." 
 
 So they must think of what they had to do in this 
 
 world, and put their life into that day by day and all 
 
 the year round, or they could not keep the home 
 
 together, and pay their way like honest men and good 
 
 women. 
 
 And, in doing this, who should know better than he 
 did who was talking with them, and had lived in a home 
 like theirs all his life, what a hard struggle it would be 
 not seldom to make ends meet, and drive the wolf from 
 the door in those evil and desperate times 1 How the 
 light which was in them would be darkened by clouds of 
 fear, when the harvest was scant and poor, and the 
 lord of the land ruthless for his rent, when sickness 
 
The Low-lying Lights 85 
 
 invaded the home, and it grew dark in the shadows of 
 death, when the fishing was naught on the Sea of Gali- 
 lee, or the boat lay a wreck on the beach with the father 
 and sons down within the wild waters, while the widow 
 and children that were left wept for the sore desolation ! 
 This he knew because he knew what was in man and a 
 man's life, and because he had lived in the heart of it 
 for thirty years, and had seen the pathetic sight he 
 touches in a parable, where the poor house-mother finds 
 her sixpence lost in the mud floor, and rushes out, cry- 
 ing to the neighbors and friends, " Rejoice with mc, for 
 I have found the piece which was lost." All this he 
 knew, — the preacher with the divine heart and the light 
 in it which has grown to be the glory of the world. 
 Yet he said to them, 'L.zX.your light so shine before men 
 that they may glorify your Father which is in heaven. 
 And so this light, if we have caught his meaning, 
 is not of a sect or system or a say-so of any sort. It is 
 there by the ordination of God, striving to shine forth 
 through the thick encrustations that overlay the soul's 
 windows, or shining strong and clear from clean and 
 strong souls ; but, whatever may be the estate of the 
 glass, there is the light, and they must let it shine. 
 
 II. And so it is once more that when, for my soul's 
 sake, I read this word of the Master as it stands, clear 
 from the conditions we make for the shining now, — 
 that we shall believe this or that, as it is set forth in 
 the diverse books, and do this or that we are bidden to 
 do, or the light which is in us will be not light, but 
 darkness, — I still hear the voice of Him who spake as 
 never man spake beside, saying : Let not your heart be 
 troubled about these contentions, over "This is the 
 
86 The Low-lying Lights 
 
 false" and "That is the true," which vexed the world 
 in my time as it vexes the world in yours. There is 
 the light within you which was within me, — the light 
 which cometh down from heaven. Now let it shine. 
 It may be hard for you to keep the glass clear always, 
 — mine was not clear always, — but mind the light. 
 And there may be those who will say of you what 
 they said of me, — that your light is not from heaven, 
 but from the pit. Let them say what they will, let it 
 shine. This is what you are here for, — to reveal the 
 light which is in you ; and you may think it is of no 
 use and no one cares, while there are always those 
 who love the darkness rather than the light, and they 
 may hate you for the shining as they hated me. But 
 you must be true to the shining all the same. 
 
 The argument which goes right home to the heart 
 where all words fail is the argument of the light shining 
 clear through the windows of sincere and true souls, — 
 yours or mine, — when we keep the glass sweet and fair. 
 Then, as I listen again, I see that gracious look my 
 holy preacher casts on those who hear him, and still 
 note the emphasis he hides in the words " let j/^;/;' light 
 shine " ; and then it is as if he had said to them what 
 he would say to us also. You will go home from hear- 
 ing this word of mine to your fishing and farming, your 
 vines and olives, and flocks of sheep, or your business 
 in the town over yonder; and for the most of you this 
 is all you can do, or ever will do, while you live on the 
 earth. And now the truth I would tell you is this : 
 that you can let your light so shine there on the land 
 or the water, in your homes and in the business you 
 have to mind, that you may live and pay your way, like 
 
Tlie Low-lying Lights 87 
 
 honest men and true, and good women and true, — so 
 shine that there shall be a divine worth in it for the 
 world you live in and for all time to come ; and then 
 the word shall be said to you when your work is done : 
 "Well done, thou good and faithful servant! enter 
 thou into the joy of thy Lord." Very little you may 
 be able to do, as you think of it, beyond what you must 
 take hold of to-morrow, and the kindly and neighborly 
 service, also, which comes with the day by day. But 
 this world and your life, these are in our Father's 
 hands as surely as the innermost and the uttermost 
 heavens are ; and you serve him then as surely as the 
 angels of the presence which stand about the throne. 
 Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do unto you, do ye even so unto them. This 
 is the law and the prophets. And if ye, being evil, 
 know how to give good gifts unto your children, how 
 much more shall your Father in heaven give good 
 things to them that ask him! — this is your faith. 
 And behold the fowls of the air, who sow not, nor 
 reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father 
 feedeth them ; while not a sparrow falleth to the 
 ground without his will, and ye are more than many 
 sparrows, — this is your trust. And blessed are the 
 lowly of heart, and blessed those that mourn, and 
 blessed the meek, and blessed the merciful, and blessed 
 the pure in heart, for they shall see God, — these are 
 your beatitudes. And a good tree cannot bear evil 
 fruit, — this is your evidence. And now go home, and 
 let your light so shine before men. 
 
 III. So I have lingered over this great and most 
 pregnant monition of the Master, as I said, because it 
 
88 The Loiu-lying Lights 
 
 stands good for all time and comes home to us all. 
 Down on the coast, this summer, I was watching a 
 light from my window, when, as the word runs in my 
 mother land, it was blowing great guns. It was not a 
 great light, like the Minot on that coast and that on 
 Sandy Hook our way, but a hand fed the lamp we 
 never see and always see, — the hand of the republic 
 and the day's man of the republic was within the small, 
 sturdy tower. And, as the sun went down, the light 
 flashed out ; and at midnight, as I turned away from 
 the window, there was the light shining clear over the 
 dark waters. Then I said. This is not something for 
 the man in the tower there to talk about, but something 
 to do, — to stand true to the light ; while to let it go out 
 or burn down dim, when the order is to keep it burning 
 strong and clear, would be to lose his rank, and number 
 as one who had proven unfaithful to his trust. 
 
 And so I got a parable out of it all, touching this 
 gracious monition in the Master's sermon, and how we 
 must all mind the light, not in another's way, but in 
 our own, as the day's men of God ; while it will be a 
 good day for the world, a quaint old divine says, when 
 we once come to the conclusion that God cares a great 
 deal more for the clear shining than he cares for what 
 we say about ours being the finest and the best. And 
 then is it only a low light we have to mind, not a splen- 
 did glory like those we have all seen. So was that in 
 the sturdy little tower on the coast; but the man who 
 had to mind it was as true to his calling and election as 
 the day's man of the republic, as those are in the high 
 places, and as they were on Cape Race, whose light 
 on a black midnight, twenty years ago, warned us away 
 
The Low-lying Lights 89 
 
 from the fatal shore. Indeed, I find that the men and 
 women who are dearest to me, as the years grow from 
 the few to the many, are not those who challenge the 
 world to admire and praise them, but rather those who 
 have stood faithful to the low-lying light, as the man 
 whose lamp I was watching is to those who live about 
 the Bay which lay beyond my window, and who have to 
 look to him for help and direction when the need 
 grows sore. 
 
 And so, as I think of these faithful in a very little, 
 one comes out from the mist and silence of the years 
 who has moved on these many years to the land where 
 there is no more night and no more sea. He was in 
 my old mother church, and always said one prayer, and 
 told one very simple story, with very much endeavor 
 to get it out, about what lay in his heart, while we all 
 knew it word for word before he began. And, then, no 
 matter who was the preacher, he would go quietly to 
 sleep, as a child will, the moment we gave out our text, 
 and sleep right through the sermon ; while even in the 
 prayer-meetings, when the rest were very wide-awake 
 indeed, he would go to sleep, and wake up now and 
 then to say Amen. But, if in all the world he could 
 have found an enemy, — a thing you could not imagine, 
 — he could not have got one other man to believe that 
 old George was not sincere and true as the saints of 
 God are ; while he was the one man everybody ran to 
 in their troubles, and would be likely, as they ran, to 
 meet him half-way, coming to look them up and help 
 them. He was not a rich man ; but his hand and heart 
 were always open, and his time seemed to belong to all 
 the folk within hail of his home. Managing small 
 
90 The Low-lying Lights 
 
 estates for widows and orphans ; the president of the 
 temperance cause in the valley, where in the meeting 
 the speech he never did quite make touched you more 
 potently, when you knew the man, than the choicest 
 eloquence of other men ; and the wildest fellows in the 
 shops would be ready to sign any pledge when he would 
 look at them out of his soft brown eyes, and plead with 
 them that they should quit drinking with such a tender 
 pathos that they would break into tears and swear 
 mighty oaths they would drink no more, and then ask 
 him to forgive the swearing. And George had a pony 
 he had raised himself and trained, so resolute to have 
 his own way, and stop when it pleased him., that the 
 president of the society down the street would have 
 told him, I think, to try the whip. Ah ! but the light 
 shone so clear in the good old heart and life, and 
 he stood by it so loyally through the eighty years, 
 hearing and heeding the monition to keep the glass 
 clear, and mind the light in the low-standing tower. 
 In his work on the farm and his worship in the old 
 meeting-house, his visitings of the fatherless and the 
 widows in their afHiction, his oversight of whatsoever 
 things were true and lovely and of a good report, and 
 his good hospitable heart, and merciful and tender, this 
 was how the light shone for us all, and made good the 
 divine monition. 
 
 IV. So, as I read the words again and think of the 
 light I saw in the summer athwart the Bay, I can see 
 how the truth opens we may all take to our hearts about 
 the low-lying light. 
 
 It may shine, first of all, on the work we have to do 
 in this world, where we are all coworkers together with 
 
The Low-lying Lights 91 
 
 God on this work ; and when from it, when we create and 
 do not destroy true wealth and worth, as workmen who 
 need not to be ashamed. In the bonnie greenlands I 
 love to find where I may, far from this busy city, there 
 is not the least need, I notice, for me to sit down with 
 the husbandmen, and ask them what light they can 
 shed on fair and true farming : the light lies on the 
 farms, or the shadows, wherever I go. On the grass in 
 the meadows, and the growing corn ; on the trees in 
 the orchards and the flowers in the door-yard the mother 
 and daughters tend, and on the sweet and simple home- 
 steads, — on these the light tells the story, and on those 
 where the light is darkness, and must struggle through 
 the glass encrusted by sloth or worse, set forth in the 
 squalor and neglect. It is the simplest truth we can 
 take to our hearts when we begin where the Master 
 began for proof and evidence in the low-lying light. It 
 shines on the farm and the workshop, and on all we 
 have to do, no matter how near it may lie to the base 
 line of our life, and no matter how high it may reach 
 toward the stars ; and here men may see our good 
 works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven. So 
 is it hand work ? Very well. Or work the world calls 
 noble } Very well. Or humble "> Very well. The day's 
 work of the carpenter's son, Cyprian reports, at ox 
 yokes and ploughs ">. Very well. Or this Sermon on the 
 Mount } Still very well. Here is the law and the testi- 
 mony he made good in his own life, that we shall mind 
 the light where our. life lies and our work in this world. 
 And, again, we shall do this for our own sakes, be- 
 cause, as the hand we never see and always see clasps 
 the oil, the glass, and the flame the man must mind in 
 
92 Tlie Low-lying Lights 
 
 that low-lying light-house on the coast, or he loses his 
 rank and number, so we must let our light shine, 
 God's hand clasps lest we lose ours. And, as the man 
 ordained by the Republic to mind the light can never 
 quite tell what worth lies in the clear shining, no more 
 can we, save by faith in his faithful endeavor and as we 
 stand true to this trust. 
 
 If my dear old friend could have dreamed that forty 
 years and more from the time we first met I should 
 pay my poor tribute to the low-lying light which shone 
 for us to the end of the years, he would have said : What 
 am I doing worth a moment's mention or memory ? 
 I cannot help it, there is no merit in it: I am only 
 doing that which it is my duty to do. But I must have 
 answered, Old friend, you are seeing to the lamp and 
 keeping the glass clean and fair, you are standing true 
 to the light ; and it is not for you to know what worth 
 lies in your steadfastness and truth. 
 
 " Lives of great men all remind us 
 We can make our lives sublime." 
 
 It is not for us a question of greatness, but of faith- 
 fulness to the Master's word. 
 
 So I have read of one who was left alone in some 
 tower with a flashing light where the machinery broke 
 down, and the darkness came on, and the storm. Then 
 he saw what he must do: he must contrive some rude 
 purchase which would still flash the light. And there 
 he stood all night, turning the thing at such cost that, 
 when the relief came in the morning, he had fallen 
 down, done almost to death with the terrible strain. 
 But, when they asked him how he could do it, — this 
 
TJie Low-lying Lights 93 
 
 work which would be heavy for two strong men, — he 
 answered, " I thought of them out there in the storm 
 and darkness looking toward my light, and how they 
 would need it to save them ; and then I knew I must 
 mind the light, live or die. So I cried, ' God help me 
 to help them out yonder,' and stood to it until the day 
 broke and the sun came up out of the sea." And so I 
 stand here to tell you the best I know ; but it is only 
 as when one playeth upon an instrument some 
 pleasant or sad tune, if I have to say, with a poor 
 old man I heard of. Mind the light, and let the lantern 
 go, when the lantern and the light are each essential, 
 — the man and the word. Are you in the store, then, or 
 the workshop, the market or on the farm, in the home, 
 in the study, in the studio, in the school .■" Is it a poem 
 through which the light will shine, a picture, a book, a 
 lesson, an invention, a ledger, a wagon-wheel, a horse 
 well shod, a stone wall, a business that touches both 
 the poles, everything, anything which creates and does 
 not waste and destroy .' Labor is prayer. The light 
 shines in and from what we do, when the loyal heart is 
 in it, and the faithful hand ; and the Lord and Master 
 only set his seal on the divine sermon as it stands 
 in the Gospels for all men to read, because he made 
 the truth he tells, and the light that shines in and 
 through it all on the noblest and best we can be and 
 do, real to us, and true as the way, the truth, and the 
 life. Or do we say, finally, I am of this sect or the other, 
 a follower of Fox, the apostle of this inward light, or 
 Wesley or Channing } Well enough, I answer ; but, if 
 that is all, you are only a reflector of another man's 
 light, and, good as this may be, it is not the best. 
 
94 The Low-lying Lights 
 
 The best for you is yours, the best for me is mine, 
 if I look to the lamp, and keep clean and fair the 
 glass. This light which shone so strong and clear 
 from the Master's heart as he sat on the hillside, and 
 still shines so strong and clear, came to him from the 
 fountain of light, the Father of lights, the primal source, 
 the sun which lights the suns and tips the glow-worm 
 with its lambent lamp, and thence comes our light, or 
 should come ; and we only follow him truly herein when 
 we follow him to the fountain, the Father, the eternal, 
 immortal, and invisible, who is light, and in him is no 
 darkness at all. Amen. 
 
THE CITY LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 
 
 " The city lieth four-square, and the length is as large as the breadth. 
 The length and the breadth and the height are equal." — Rev. xxi. i6. 
 
 It was the holy city the seer saw coming down out 
 of heaven from God, where the noble should dwell, 
 and gentle, the clean and true; and these should 
 come from the east and west, the north and south, 
 and enter within the gates, which stand open always 
 for their welcome. And the city had no need of 
 the sun, for the glory of God did lighten it; and 
 standeth four-square, and her gates open every way, 
 and he foretells how the nations shall walk in the 
 light of it, and the kings of the earth shall bring 
 their glory and honor into it. It is a vision of the 
 commonwealth of God he sees through the lurid 
 smoke and flame, where we may all dwell who are of 
 this heart and mind, no matter whence we come, 
 what may be our name, or from what direction we may 
 come, — east or west, north or south. If this is what 
 we bring with us, — nobleness and gentleness, sincer- 
 ity and truth of the heart and purpose, — we can enter, 
 then, and sit down together in the heavenly place, and 
 be citizens of the commonwealth of God. 
 
 But, as I muse over the vision so large and fair and 
 
96 The City lietli Four-square 
 
 all-enfolding, I have to wonder how many of us dwell 
 there now, or are near indeed to the ever-open gates, as 
 I notice how we still stand aloof, and call each other 
 names not seldom that sting and burn, because those 
 who cannot think as we do have come from some 
 other direction toward the holy city, and are not one 
 with us in opinion or usage. It makes no great mat- 
 ter, then, how true they may be, and sincere. They 
 are still of one brand, while we are of another; and 
 so it is hard for us even to imagine that their claim 
 can be as good as ours to be fellow-citizens with the 
 saints. They must come on the same line as this we 
 take, and be able to give about the same account of 
 their journey, or else they must be counted of a poorer 
 quality, as in the markets they grade their wheat as 
 one, two, and three; so those of us who count our- 
 selves number one feel we must not be mixed up with 
 two and three, or the wbole worth of what we stand for 
 will come into peril. We must keep up the standard; 
 and we mean by this the beliefs and usages which are 
 most nearly like our own, with only a slight regard 
 for the large and fair lines of this noble vision. Not 
 to be of our "domination," as a good woman in Kansas 
 called her sect once, when we talked of these things, 
 is to take a lower place in these questions of the out- 
 look and insight of the soul touching the holy 
 city; and none of us are free from this feeling, 
 or, it may be, can be free. You can find it among 
 the Baptists, where my dear mother belonged, and 
 the Methodists, where I belonged long ago, among 
 the Unitarians, and in the High Church and the Low; 
 
The City lieth Four-square 97 
 
 while your Quaker nourishes the feeling as surely 
 as your Catholic that the true way is this we take 
 toward the city of God, and the true side is this on 
 which we enter. 
 
 But now is not this true, finest of all, that, when we 
 turn from the faith we hold under many names to the 
 life we share as citizens of the republic, we manage to 
 do a good deal better than this by those who come here 
 to seek their fortunes and make their home? These 
 come to us from far and wide, and about all we care 
 for is that they shall be good men and good citizens. 
 They may come from the east, then, with its history, 
 or from the west, with its prophecy, from the hard- 
 headed north or the warm-hearted south; but, if they 
 will only take hold of the work which is waiting to be 
 done in a good and manful way, we are quite content 
 to give them a good welcome. You who are of the 
 old strain may be a little clannish, to be' sure, and I 
 think you are; but you do not let this bar the way 
 finally to the wider and more gracious outflow of your 
 life, and you may count us who are new-comers back 
 to our race and nation, while as yet you know very 
 little else about us, because this is one way, and on 
 the whole a very good way, to find the lines at once 
 of our worth and our limitations. Still, this is swept 
 aside handsomely and well when you are once sure of 
 your man, an'^ find, as we say, that he is all there, and 
 means to be. He may come from any direction; but 
 you count this of no great moment in the exact meas- 
 ure of the deepness and worth of your insight, and 
 think it is a shame to discount his claim by saying. 
 
98 The City lieth Foii7'-square 
 
 Ah! but he is an Englishman, or an Irishman, or a 
 German. If he is a good sterling man, one who 
 weighs well in the scales of honesty, usefulness, and 
 virtue, you are quite content to count him in; and, 
 then, I notice that those who are of the old stock are 
 ready to make ample amends for any touch of hesita- 
 tion they may have felt in giving such a one the 
 right hand of fellowship while as yet he was an un- 
 known and untried man.* 
 
 You may notice once more that, when we strike 
 still wider lines than these, we are able to see where 
 the worth lies of this greater and fairer judgment, and 
 in a still finer light. This was one of the lessons, I 
 remember, which came to me in our great centennial 
 year, and also when I went to the Exposition in Paris 
 two years after, in 1878. There, in each instance, 
 were the noblest arts and inventions of the nations, 
 east, west, north, and south, set forth in their best 
 estate; and they all had this worth in them of the 
 manhood which looks backward or forward, of the 
 warm and fluent nature, or of that which works to 
 severe and hard lines. 
 
 So in the best work of the old eastern lands you 
 could easily trace the worth of tradition and reilection 
 and the spirit which goes backward, while in the best 
 work of the western there were enterprise and antici- 
 pation and the spirit which looks forward. And 
 strong and stern work came from the north; while 
 from the south came the most wonderful exuberance 
 in form and color and a plastic softness, touched here 
 
 * A'ways except when he is a Chinaman, and this is to our shame. 
 
The City lietk Four-square 99 
 
 and there with a half-savage energy or a seductive 
 underplay of fancy, which was just the reflex of the 
 manhood which gave us the treasure. It was to be 
 seen in all the fabrics and pictures that were genuine 
 transcripts of each land and race. Turn where you 
 would, this was the waiting truth; and, then, it was 
 not hard to see how a completeness of beauty and 
 worth lay within the whole treasure you would have 
 looked for in vain, had any been left out. Take away 
 reflection or anticipation, austerity or emotion, and 
 you could have had no such wonders of worth and 
 beauty either in the finer or the homelier arts. East, 
 west, north, and south were all needed for this reve- 
 lation which came to us of the best the nations can 
 do; and so the city of God in the arts, I said, as I 
 saw the wonder, lieth four-square, and her gates open 
 every way. 
 
 It is the truth again touching the treasure we find 
 in noble books and in all the tracks of the spirit they 
 reveal. Measure these by large and fair lines, and 
 you find we still have to go eastward for the past and 
 westward for the future, northward for cool reason and 
 southward for fervid emotion; that science belongs to 
 our western lands, — the promise of the future, — and 
 the old sacred books to the eastern, — the treasures of 
 the past, — while poetry and music were born of the 
 southern heart, and pure reason and logic of the north. 
 
 It is true, to be sure, that these qualities may mix 
 and mingle in the greatest books, as indeed they do, 
 so that there seems to be a confusion in them, like 
 that we notice in the isothermal lines, and the winds 
 
lOO The City lieth Four-square 
 
 which blow where they list to chill you to the bone in 
 Florida when we are fainting with the heat in New 
 York, or to give you a calm in the very temple of 
 the v/inds and a cyclone in the heart of all stillness. 
 The spirit which is hidden in great books, or shall we 
 say in the greatest, cannot be bound as it may be in 
 other ways. So your supreme books are hard and 
 stern or soft and fluent, and dip backward or forward 
 on grand, free lines of their own. Still, we have only 
 to imagine a world full of books in which there was 
 only one of these treasures to the exclusion of all the 
 rest, no sacred treasures from the past or splendid 
 hopes for the future, no cool reason or glowing emo- 
 tion, to see how poor we should be where we are now 
 so rich. They are all needed for the revelation of 
 human genius in this spiritual body we call a book. 
 The treasures of the past and the future must be in 
 them, and words that kindle and words that cool. So 
 the city of God in the human heart and intellect also 
 lieth four-square, and her gates open every way. And 
 as it is with the book, so it is with the man who 
 speaks to us by this holy spirit, this whole spirit; for, 
 wherever you find such a man, you find the incarna- 
 tion of these diverse powers and gifts and this grace. 
 So Isaiah and all the greater prophets find their full 
 expression not in prophecy alone, but in reflection 
 also; while they lay stout bolts of reason in the 
 moulds into which they pour the molten gold of their 
 fervid emotion. So Milton must have a "Paradise 
 Lost " before he can afford us a "Paradise Regained," 
 and argue of "providence, foreknowledge, will, and 
 
The City lieth Four-square loi 
 
 fate " between the lovely interludes of the garden and 
 the first human pair. 
 
 This is the secret also of your true orator on the 
 platform or at the bar, in the Senate or the pulpit; 
 and we are all at fault as we lack the power to look 
 backward or forward, to bind our work well together 
 with reason and logic, and to penetrate it through 
 and through, when the demand is there, with the fires 
 of a fervent emotion. Prophecies and Psalms, ser- 
 mons on Mars' Hill or on Murray Hill, orations that 
 mark an era, or lyceum talks of a man like Tyndall, — 
 scan them all, and you will find these treasures in 
 them in the precise measure of their perfection, — 
 wealthy in anticipation as in reflection, bound well 
 together by reason and logic, and threaded through 
 and through with quick emotion; for this city also 
 lieth four-square, and the length and the breadth and 
 the height of it are equal. 
 
 And now would it not be of all things strange to find 
 that this law was of no great moment in the things 
 which touch the soul's life, in religion, which is of 
 such high worth in our whole life besides, or that the 
 main worth in religion should lie in one of these, to 
 the dwarfing and starving of all the rest? Because it is 
 not hard to see how this is no mere notion of mine, but 
 a revelation rather of the way the Most High takes 
 with us to bring out all our powers, each holding its 
 own secret of worth for us, and taking its own place 
 in the perfection I would try to find. And is it not 
 fair, therefore, that we should take this to be the truth 
 about the religious life also, and so venture on the pre- 
 
I02 The City lieth Four-square 
 
 sumption, if we can do no more just now, that, as we 
 can count each of these treasures at their true worth, 
 making none of them supreme over all the rest, but of 
 an equal and beautiful worth all round, we shall find 
 the conditions here of the truest faith and life, — a 
 faith and life in which the priceless treasures of the 
 past will be as dear to us as the most splendid prom- 
 ise of the future, and what holy men of old have said 
 as what holy men say now or will say while the world 
 stands right from the fountains of the divine inspira- 
 tion, while the processes of reason and logic by which 
 we come to the truth of God shall by no means over- 
 ride the swift intuition which catches a truth on the 
 wing? And may not this revelation of the fourfold 
 treasure help us to the stout and steadfast denial of 
 the claims we are all so ready to make that some one 
 of these treasures is really supreme in its worth, or, if 
 not quite supreme, still of a worth which overshadows 
 all the rest? For myself, I think it is a limitation no 
 church or sect or man need be proud of, any more 
 than we are proud of a limited vision or of color- 
 blindness ; and so, when we say that the church which 
 cleaves only to the past, to the sacred books and the 
 traditions and usages which have grown sacred with 
 time, is the only true church, and we want no more 
 and will seek no farther, it seems to me that the only 
 answer to such a claim must be. This is all very good 
 as far as it goes, but it only goes eastward, after all. 
 
 Or I may say, I will believe in nothing I cannot 
 reason out to the last word and accent. Well, I can 
 find a very noble treasure of truth in this way also, 
 
The City lieth Foursquare 103 
 
 and feel sure of my ground, as far as it goes; but, 
 then, I may be in peril of the rebuke Dr. Parr made to 
 one who said to him, " Sir, I will believe nothing I 
 cannot understand." "Then, sir," the old man an- 
 swered, when he had heard him out, "your creed will 
 be about the briefest I ever heard of in all my life." 
 Or there may be no danger of such a rebuke, and no 
 reason for it. Yet, in this wonder and mystery of our 
 human life, by cleaving to my reason and logic, and 
 this alone, I may become the man Wordsworth had in 
 his mind as 
 
 " One to whose smooth, rubbed soul can cling 
 No form or feeling, great or small, 
 A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, 
 An intellectual all in all." 
 
 And I do not come, then, toward the city of God. I 
 wander away toward the polar wastes of the soul's 
 divinest life. Or, again, I may give myself over to an 
 intense and overmastering emotion, in which reason 
 has no place, and make the past and future of no 
 account save as food for my fever. Well, this fervid 
 emotion has also a grand story to tell of our human 
 life and history. It has set the world afire time and 
 again, and burned up the dead brakes and timbers to 
 make clear spaces for the new springtime of God. 
 Still, emotion is only of the southward, at the best; 
 and, when I have this, and nothing more, the chances 
 are that I may burn myself up in my burning. And 
 then the pity of it is that in the most of us there 
 is not timber enough to make much of a fire. 
 
 Do I dream again over the untold promise of the 
 
I04 The City Heth Four-square 
 
 future? God forbid that I should cry this down, this 
 vision of new heavens and a new earth; but vrhat is 
 it, after all, but the westward outlook of the city of 
 God? Very good, I know, and quite essential in the 
 wholeness of the treasure, — but that, and no more. 
 For we have all known those who could find no good 
 eastward or north or south of the city, who derided the 
 old sacred treasures, who could not or would not rea- 
 son, and kept themselves far away from the moving 
 emotions which make the soul's life so fluent and 
 full of grace; but they were rather apt to be of all 
 men wanting, when you needed men to stand by the 
 things which must be done here and now, or their 
 own dream of the future, grand and great as it may 
 be, can never come true. Such men hold true treas- 
 ure for us all ; but, when they care for the westward 
 outlook alone, to the slaying of the rest, they may 
 only be like the outermost pioneers we hear of, who 
 want always to push farther on when the smoke of an- 
 other chimney shoots a blue thread against the far 
 horizon. They can unite with no society in this com- 
 monwealth of God : they can only be content with the 
 wilderness; while, if they could but touch this com- 
 pleteness of the city which lieth four-square, they 
 might still nourish the westward look, and leave the 
 world their debtor. 
 
 It must be true, then, and no mere notion of mine, 
 that no one of these grand factors in religion can ever 
 be so true and good for us as the whole. The past 
 holds its high worth with the future: reason is as the 
 iron bolt, and emotion as the fluent life which flows 
 
The City lieth Four-square 105 
 
 and flames all about it ; and, when we take this truth to 
 our hearts, we can see how, in this commonwealth of 
 the religious life, the tendency to take sides and pre- 
 fer this that or the other is all right so long as we 
 hold ourselves modestly, — as so many do, thank God, 
 after all, — and find in it the motive power of the love 
 which never faileth. Make this law as true in the 
 commonwealth the seer saw as it is in the world's 
 great commonwealth, and then it is not hard to see 
 how the past holds its treasure for us all on one side, 
 and the future opens its promise on another, how rea- 
 son here may reign supreme in us, and there a holy 
 and fervid emotion. So, while we trust we may grow 
 evermore alike, we can be glad and proud, then, for 
 the worth which flows from our unlikeness. And still, 
 allowing that this is the best we can do for ourselves 
 or, with our nature, the holy spirit of truth can do for 
 us, — I speak as a man, — we can challenge each other 
 to bring forth the iinest fruit of our diverse endow- 
 ments, and then match them in no narrow or selfish 
 fashion, but that the Father may be glorified in all 
 his sons and daughters. While we who may call our- 
 selves liberal Christians can only be worthy the name 
 as we are able to understand this diversity among 
 sincere men and women of every name in the church 
 of the living God we accept in nations and races and 
 in the commonwealth of the arts and the intellect. 
 So, while we may have to allow that three in the four 
 sides may not be of our make or mind, yet in the city 
 of God they all face true. 
 
 Has my brother, then, the faith which looks east- 
 
io6 The City lieth Four-square 
 
 ward, is the past of supreme worth to him, the sacred 
 books, the saintly lives, the great traditions, the old 
 and deep roots of the life of God in man? Let me be 
 proud of him, then, and glad for him; for he may find 
 treasure there I fail to find, and sit down with the 
 patriarchs and the prophets in their kingdom. Does 
 he look with those gleaming eyes only toward the fut- 
 ure trying to see the things not seen as yet, and does 
 he hide his manhood in his peering, does he live for 
 the future, and try to make his vision good here and 
 now? I say, in this way also, he is a citizen of the 
 commonwealth of God; and the men of the westward 
 heart and outlook find all the new worlds. Is he 
 the man who will only reason and draw the truth in 
 this way from the ever-flowing fountains of the life 
 of God? Then woe is me again, if I fail to believe 
 he dwelleth in God, and God in him. He is a worker 
 in the iron of this kingdom. You will find his forge 
 close by the northern gates ; and, indeed, we need his 
 bolts and bars always, and never more than now. 
 
 Does he dwell by the southern gates of the city, as 
 a man who could not reason if he would, and would 
 not if he could, but counts his fervid emotions of more 
 worth than all besides? Well, I want to know if his 
 emotions are set on fire of heaven, as Melville said of 
 his good comrade, John Knox. Do they burn with a 
 clear flame to all divine ends and issues? We need 
 such men always, and women to match them, in the 
 city of God. They hold the secret in their hearts of 
 the grand and true revivals which wait always for 
 their advent, and preach sermons and pour out prayers 
 
77^1? City lieth Four-square 107 
 
 over which we wonder after they are dead and gone, 
 and say, Where lay the secret of their power to do such 
 things? They seem now to be so dead; but we might 
 as well wonder over the white ashes of good sound 
 hickory. The substance was burned in their burning, 
 but the world was melted in the fervent fires. 
 
 So the truth stands of the solidarity — shall we say? 
 — of the city which standeth four-square, in which 
 
 " All are needed by each one ; 
 Nothing is fair or good alone." 
 
 It is the truth about the commonwealth of God and 
 the city. In that wonder I mentioned, I met a good 
 old man I had known many years, and a Methodist 
 when I was one, who never went to sleep under my 
 preaching; and so I loved him. But, when I left my 
 old mother church, a film came down between our lives 
 and long-enduring love, so that we could see no longer 
 eye to eye. Seventeen years had passed, and here I 
 found him where, for the first time since we parted, 
 he greeted me like a brother. Would I let him 
 show me the treasures in the great halls, and would I 
 eat bread with him? The old life began to beat 
 again, and we went wandering through the wonder- 
 world like two brothers. He was glad and proud for 
 the whole wealth which had come from everywhere,- — 
 east, west, north, and south, — and saw how each was 
 unique, and yet part and parcel of the splendid com- 
 pleteness. Then we had a talk about the old times; 
 and I found the good old heart in him had grown 
 
io8 The City lieth Four-square 
 
 greater and more gracious, and he had learned some- 
 thing of the truth the Master touches in his saying, 
 "The children of this generation are wiser than the 
 children of light." Here was a gospel for the com- 
 monwealth of God from the commonwealth of man. 
 He was prepared to see what we may do in the divine 
 life in his joy over what had been done in the human, 
 when the suggestion was made that in this, also, we 
 should match the best with the best all round, and be 
 glad for it all, and proud of it all, no matter what 
 may be the brand or whence it may come, — glad for 
 all truth-seekers and all truth-tellers, all the sincere, 
 the noble, the gentle, and the faithful, and the treas- 
 ures of the old and the hope of the new; and so, when 
 we parted, we were closer together than we had ever 
 been before in one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. 
 And so it may be, and must be, finally. We h°ir the 
 cry going forth far and wide that not creed, but char- 
 acter, is the standard by which men must be weighed 
 and measured in the good time coming; and then, if 
 we must have our diverse modes of faith and worship, 
 the question for all the churches to answer will be. 
 What sort of men do you raise in there, and women, 
 — noble or mean, sweet or bitter, full of charity or 
 stricken with bigotry, Christ-like and God-like, and 
 loving the light or of those who hug the darkness, 
 and have no part or lot in the city which standeth 
 four-square; and so, in a word, if you ask me, 
 
 " What is religion ? I will tell you what 
 I thinlc it is, — not blindly to disdain 
 Thy reason, or to lay thee flat 
 
The City lieth Four-square 109 
 
 Before a something terrible, unknown, 
 Not bound with bristling fence of man-made creeds 
 To thunder banns from thy presumptuous throne, 
 Or bring God down and make his will thine own. 
 But in his face with reverent love to look, 
 Here where it shines in sky and land and sea. 
 And, where a prophet speaks in holy book, 
 To hear his word, and take that truth to thee, 
 And hold it fast, and tread earth's lowly sod 
 With open heart, as one who walks with God." 
 
ANTIPAS, MY FAITHFUL MARTYR. 
 
 " Antipas, my faithful martyr." — Rev. ii. 13. 
 
 This is only one brief line about this man, but it 
 stands for a life and a death. We do not know who 
 the man was, only what he was, a martyr for God and 
 his truth. And there is no word to tell us whether he 
 was a young man or an old man, or had a wife and 
 children or lived his own lone life, or loved this fair 
 world with the love of the morning tide or had got a 
 little tired of it all and was ready to go, or whether 
 he went brave and defiant to his death or shrank back 
 when the great moment came, while the flesh cried 
 "Recant " and the spirit spurred him on. 
 
 "Antipas, my faithful martyr," is all they tell us 
 about him ; and even this seems to float over to us 
 from the heart of the great Divine Mystery. "I was 
 in the spirit on the Lord's Day," the seer says, "and 
 fell on a vision and heard a voice, and saw, as it 
 were, the Son of Man, and was bidden to write this 
 word, Antipas, my faithful martyr." So this is the 
 way the light flashes for us across the darkness. A 
 person of no account, so far as anybody knows, puts 
 his life in pawn for this faith which had made him a 
 
Antipas, my Faithful Martyr in 
 
 new man; but they will not hurt him, I presume, if 
 he will hold his tongue about it even now, and go 
 with the crowd to the temple, toss a few grains of in- 
 cense on the fire, and crook his knee. But, if he 
 persists in this fooling, they will have his life; for 
 they have made up their minds to stamp this thing 
 out, and then there is no way open to Antipas but 
 to die. 
 
 He had, no doubt, dreamed also, as they all did 
 then, that he might see the heavens open and the 
 hosts of angels sweep down through the azure vault 
 with a great shout, and the dead rise from their 
 graves, and the grand new day of God begin. But 
 there is no hope now that he will ever live to see the 
 day; and so he dies and they have seen the end of 
 Antipas. If they beheaded him, some pious souls 
 might see to the funeral, weeping the while, collect 
 the handful of ashes, and hide them somewhere in a 
 little urn, and then, it may be, scratch a dove or a 
 cross on the cover; and, if they threw him to the wild 
 beasts, there would be a speedier end. "There is an 
 end, anyhow," they said who saw him vanish on that 
 dim forgotten day. "No more trouble about Antipas: 
 he is blotted out." "Yes, out of your books," the 
 Spirit says, "but not out of mine. I have not done 
 with Antipas, my faithful martyr. I will touch his 
 name with one gleam of immortal glory, and make it 
 shine like a star when your names are forgotten. I 
 want this man for a type : he shall stand for the in- 
 stance of those who die for me and mine, and seem to 
 be forgotten. It is not an end they have made, but a 
 
112 Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 
 
 beginning, and not the night which has touched 
 them, but the great morning of God." 
 
 Such is the meaning, as it seems to me, of this line 
 which stands for a life and a death; and the truth it 
 tells us is this : that those who stand steady and true 
 to what they believe to be God's clear truth in this 
 world and their own clear duty, and die for it as they 
 have lived, and prompt us to say as we watch them 
 vanish, "How soon we are forgotten ! " are never for- 
 gotten. There may not be this one line even to tell 
 us how they fought and fell, but this makes no mat- 
 ter. They have passed through a divine alchemy 
 which has transformed the carbon into a gem. 
 
 Still, no greater mistake can be made than that we 
 make so often of thinking that your martyrs are only 
 those who live and die for their doctrines and dogmas, 
 though these be never so noble and true. Nor is it 
 unfair to say that a good many of those who, in any 
 age, stand ready to die in such quarrels, would still be 
 no true martyrs if you should put them to death. 
 Some are simply bigots, who, in the days that are 
 gone, would just as easily put those to death who did 
 not agree with them as they would die themselves, 
 and always did this when they had the power. So 
 these could not be martyrs in the high, sweet spirit of 
 Antipas ; while others again have stood ready to die, 
 or have died, through a superb egotism or a devouring 
 vanity rather than a quiet and sacred conviction of 
 truth and duty, and gone posturing out of life, feeling 
 that this was the way to immortal glory, and cheap at 
 the price. 
 
Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 1 1 3 
 
 Nor can we doubt that, while there is still a true 
 doctrine men may well die for, such doctrines did not 
 mean to men like Antipas what they may easily mean 
 to you and me. They were not an end, then, but a 
 means, and did not settle these questions of the Eter- 
 nal Life, but started them, rather, and were not so 
 much a specific for the cure of souls as a light on the 
 way towards such a cure, faith that it could be done, 
 courage to denounce the shams and quackeries all 
 about them, and heroism to fight them to the death. 
 So, in the work Antipas was called to do, the death he 
 must die was but the close of the great heroic chapter; 
 and a man like Paul would have been a martyr all the 
 same if he had died in his bed. 
 
 We have to notice, also, that the spirit of the age 
 will not allow a man to be put to death for his opinions 
 any more unless he tries to drive them home with lead 
 and steel, so that even old John Brown was not a mar- 
 tyr so much as the last of the Ironsides, who fought 
 on the stricken field, and then, when the battle went 
 against him, slipped out of the body to God. And so 
 it is not only true that a man may die for what he calls 
 his faith, yet be no martyr after all, but this is true, 
 also, that the old paths to the martyr's death by cross 
 and stake are closed ; and so it would be no use look- 
 ing for men to match Antipas if this was the one way 
 to martyrdom. But we know this is not the one way, 
 nor are all the martyrs dead, while the terms on 
 which they live and die are stern as ever, only they 
 take other forms and work to other issues, while that 
 which makes them and the stuff out of which they are 
 
114 Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 
 
 made is here; and martyrs die every day, unnoted, 
 easily forgotten, steady as Milton's angels, true as 
 the old saints, — martyrs to truth and duty still and to 
 God and his Christ. 
 
 Shall I note some of these? Here is a man who is 
 haunted all his life by some great invention or some 
 supreme discovery in science or the arts a hundred 
 years before the world is ready for it or it can be born 
 from the womb of time; and so he works for this, 
 starves for it, and is a fool over it in the world's com- 
 mon judgment, while still the thing fills him with its 
 bitter-sweet torment. And so he has to die, not hav- 
 ing received the promise, but seeing it afar off; and 
 then, when he is dead, if he has any friends left, they 
 draw a long breath, and brighten up a little as they 
 return from his funeral, and say: "Poor fellow, he 
 might have done something very good in the world but 
 for that maggot in his brain. He had splendid 
 powers. What a pity he should throw them all away 
 over such a delusion as that which haunted him so 
 long!" 
 
 One such man I knew. He was haunted all his life 
 by the idea of a grander and fairer social order, a new 
 harmony among men, in which the sore conflict be- 
 tween class and class would come to an end, and we 
 would all be brothers. He used to come to see me 
 now and then, and talk it over, — -a man with a grand, 
 craggy head and far-looking, deep gray eyes, the eyes 
 of a jDrophet of the Lord, while it was wonderful, 
 when he once struck his theme, to see the lights play 
 about him as from the better world he was nursing in 
 
Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 115 
 
 his faithful old heart. But I used to say : " Old man, 
 it is not practical. The world we live in is not 
 ready for it. We shall have to wait until we get 
 nearer the millennium. The time is not yet." Well, 
 he had a small fortune he had got together as a work- 
 ing man and an inventor, for he was both; and, do 
 what I would, I could not save him from investing the 
 last dollar of it in his plan, just to make the demon- 
 stration, if he could do no more. It broke down. 
 There was no help for this. Then he died of a broken 
 heart, and went up to take his place by Antipas, the 
 faithful martyr, and cry, "How long, O Lord, how 
 long?" 
 
 Or it may be a man with a heavy burden and a 
 weak back, a failing heart or brain and a sore battle, 
 health for half a man and work for two men, tired 
 when he wakes with a hard day before him, but quiet 
 through it all, and with no thought of giving in, only 
 of dying at his post; and he dies of the battle and the 
 burden, faithful unto death. 
 
 Or your martyr, again, may be a woman, delicate 
 and pure as they are in heaven, aspiring always and 
 always driven back, earnest as Charlotte Bronte, self- 
 forgetful as Mary Ware, brave as Lucretia Mott, yet 
 hoioeless in her fortune as Pucelle, the pure, white 
 maiden of France. 
 
 Or she may be a wife and mother, borne down with 
 heavy burdens, but bare of all sympathy or succor from 
 the man who has brought them on her, and should 
 clasp his arms about her now far more tenderly and 
 surely than when he first won her love, her husband 
 
Ii6 Antipas, my Faitliful Martyr 
 
 and the father of her children. For what in the name 
 of all that is most sacred in our life is the man good 
 for who will load a woman down with the cares of a 
 home and a family, and then let her fight the battle 
 alone, while he is grumbling, as we used to say in 
 Yorkshire, "like a bear with a sore head," shutting 
 his heart, but not man enough to shut his mouth, and 
 watching her die daily before his eyes, a poor, sad, 
 home-made martyr, and then marrying again before a 
 twelvemonth, let us hope, to a vixen, who will pay 
 him back in his own coin, and serve him right? 
 
 Antipas, my faithful martyr, is here in the world, 
 then, to-day, doing his work and dying when his time 
 comes, with the light in his eyes, — yes, or with a cloud 
 in his eyes, as it may please God, — but faithful all 
 the same unto death ; bearing the cross, but sure of the 
 crown, or, what seems greater and grander still to me, 
 bearing the cross, but 7iot sure of the crown, and with 
 never a thought that he is a martyr at all, yet entirely 
 true to the last, and with no assurance of the waiting 
 paradise in his poor, tired heart, only faithful imto 
 death and to duty. 
 
 For this is where we touch the deeper pathos 
 of these unknown and unnoted martyrs that they 
 are so very often of such small account in their own 
 thought of themselves and of what they can do. 
 The youth who would not bend before the great golden 
 God, it may be, in this very town, but went into the 
 fire, all the same, and did burn; the Noah whose 
 name has not floated across the wreck of a nameless 
 deluge, but who had a boat, and, when the waters 
 
Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 117 
 
 were out, filled her so full that she sank with all 
 aboard, while he himself went down into the seething 
 floods with them, and with as calm a heart as he ever 
 had who floated safely to the crest of Ararat ; the man 
 who lay all his life by the pool of healing, but was 
 never helped in and never made whole, yet who was 
 just as patient and hopeful on the last day as the first ; 
 the Paul who was not sure he had fought a good fight, 
 but died fighting; and the John who was also on Pat- 
 mos, some sort of lone Patmos somewhere in this 
 world, for the faith that was in him, yet never saw the 
 open heavens and the city of God. 
 
 Antipas, — I knew him half a century ago; and he 
 had it in him, my Antipas, to sing Psalms as sweet as 
 "The Lord is my Shepherd," and to slay giants as big 
 as Goliath of Gath. But he died almost before he 
 could begin, yet never for a moment lamenting his 
 early doom; and I closed his eyes, and wept by his 
 grave. Antipas, — he was a minister who went West 
 into Illinois about 1831 as a missionary, and was true 
 as Daniel; but he had no visions to keep him in heart 
 that he could tell you of, so he grew old in his wan- 
 dering, and the people did not care to hear him then, 
 but still the burden lay on him to preach the Word 
 in season and out of season. And then one night, as 
 he wandered over the vast, lone prairies in the winter, 
 the wolves came howling after him; and he was no 
 more seen of men. 
 
 Antipas, — long ago he used to come into the West- 
 ern settlements of Pennsylvania in cider time, and 
 load himself with apple pips, and then start westward 
 
Ii8 Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 
 
 again, no man knew where or on what errand. But, 
 when the tides of emigration swept over the Ohio 
 westward towards the great green lands, they found 
 sunny spots by brooks and springs where there were 
 little orchards of seedling apples fighting the wilder- 
 ness; and a quarter of a century ago you could still 
 find mossy patriarchs of that old man's planting, — 
 who was a crank to the white man and a medicine man 
 to the Indians, God's angel of the covenant, clad in 
 skins. He saw the trend and the drift of the coming 
 age and manhood and the new homes, and gave his 
 life for these; but no man knows where or when he 
 died, or how he went to see what they had to say 
 about it who keep the accounts when his work on the 
 earth was done, the beautiful, holy work. 
 
 Antipas, — Antipas was a woman who had an in- 
 firmity fifty years, and spent all she had also, on the 
 doctors, and then died of her disease, after raising 
 two small children who were no more to her, save for 
 her loving and yearning old heart, than they were to 
 you or me. They were born in sin, and then the 
 mother died; and then my Antipas, the dear saint, 
 mothered them, that was all, and maintained them by 
 working at a mangle. I mind how I rushed into her 
 cellar one day when I went over to see my mother, for 
 we had worked together in the factory some years be- 
 fore, so I always went to see her in her cellar; and 
 there she was kneeling with those little children, 
 saying her grace before meat, while her "meat" was 
 some dry bread and something you would call tea if 
 you should make believe very much indeed, and that 
 
Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 119 
 
 was all. But, when she was through, she rose, and 
 whispered : " I was only saying my grace with the 
 bairns, my lad. They will have a hard time when I 
 leave them; and I shall have to go soon, and I want 
 to teach them to be thankful, poor things, and my- 
 self, too, for I have a deal to thank God for, thou 
 knows." 
 
 Antipas, — he was a rough in an English regiment 
 when they took him prisoner, the heathen, and told 
 him he might live if he would kotow before their 
 chief. But he said, "Naay," — the long-drawn Saxon 
 naay, — "I'se an Englishman. I weeant do nowt 
 like that, and shame my sooart. I can die, but I 
 cannot do that." And so he died. 
 
 " Fair Kentish hop-fields round him seemed, 
 
 Like dreams, to come and go. 
 Bright leagues of cherry blossom seemed 
 
 One living sheet of snow. 
 The smoke above his father's door 
 
 In low, soft eddyings hung. 
 And must he watch it rise no more, 
 
 Doomed by himself, so young? " 
 
 There was but one way out of the trouble. He 
 must not shame them there in the small cottage thou- 
 sands of miles away : he must be a man, this poor fel- 
 low, who never knew he was Antipas. 
 
 Now, some lives pay their way close and clean to 
 the end. Mine does, I know. So that if the High 
 Powers should say, "We have nothing else for you 
 here or hereafter," I think I should answer:"! make 
 no claim. I would love to see those I have lost once 
 
I20 Antipas, my Faitlifiil Martyr 
 
 more who are in the blessed heavens; but, if it is not 
 to be so, I am still debtor for the untold blessing of 
 my many years." So must many of us feel who have 
 had such an even and happy lot as mine has been. 
 We are no martyrs, or, indeed, we may not be of the 
 stuff of which martyrs are made ; and so it may be the 
 dear God, Father of us all, chooses his men as a wise 
 smith chooses his steel, mindful of the instrument he 
 wants to make and use. I do not try to guess the 
 divine reason for giving me the sunny side of the way. 
 I only know it is so, and that he who rules in heaven 
 has so far made no martyr of me, or put it in my way 
 to be one, or, it may be, in yours ; but what hosts 
 there are who have never had our health or strength, 
 or any gift at all except this of Antipas in the old 
 days, — a steady courage to be faithful unto slaying, 
 martyrs for God ! And these, again, I think of most 
 tenderly look for no reward in the blessed world to 
 come. As I said, they are only eager to be true to 
 their trust down here. They may see others of whom 
 they are ready to say, as we say of them, "There must 
 be an eternal love which will find these out finally, 
 and give them their reward." It is never of them- 
 selves they think; and yet that loving instinct which 
 would insist on a blessed outlook for these others, 
 which would make the odds even, is not this the in- 
 stinct pointing towards a divine life, in which they 
 will all be partakers of this great glory, which flashes 
 for a single moment and in a single line out of 
 heaven, ^as it were, and shows us Antipas among the 
 shining ones, disappearing here, but appearing there, 
 
Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 121 
 
 forgotten on this side, but immortal on that, here a 
 handful of dust, there the very instance of that which 
 can never die, departing with a moan, but springing 
 into life again with a Psalm? 
 
 And what I love better still to believe is this: that 
 the dear God, our Father, will not let such men and 
 women wait for the life to come after all before they 
 know, in some dim, sweet fashion, what a glory rests 
 on their unknown and unnoted life. Many a happy 
 moment Antipas must have had before he went to the 
 arena or the block, because this is what they all tell 
 us whose experience is one with these obscure martyrs 
 of every age. The great hope of the seeker, who 
 never finds his great treasure in science or the arts, 
 the great hope through which he trembles in ex- 
 pectation like a bird burdened with a carol ; the eu- 
 thanasia which steals over the poor martyr to duty at 
 shy moments, and lights the pale face with a shining 
 which is not of the sun. The near touch of heaven I 
 felt in the presence of that poor old woman kneeling 
 beside her mangle and asking a blessing on the 
 crust and the thin ghost of the tea, — this is what 
 my Antipas has for his bounty as he goes marching 
 or stumbling to his unrecorded death, the great 
 deep sea bearing up the poor little craft which is 
 driving through the storm to the eternal rest and 
 peace. 
 
 The story can never be told of these gleams, but 
 this is what they mean. They tell the discoverer, 
 who still cannot quite discover, how surely the thing 
 is there all the time, waiting to be revealed ; and he 
 
122 Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 
 
 knows it is all right, though he may never get at the 
 rights of it the longest day he lives. They touch 
 fainting men and women in their weakness and pain, 
 as the angel touched the prophet, and give them the 
 heaven-baken bread, on the strength of which they go, 
 also, their forty days in the wilderness. They are 
 the proof before letters of the coming of the Lord, 
 while the waiting heavens seem but a waste and "a 
 space thick sown with alienated stars." 
 
 I treasure a little wood-cut by Millais of a woman 
 standing within the clutch of the incoming tide. 
 She is bound there, and the waters are rising about 
 her. There is no hope for her: she is doomed, and 
 must die. But her face is turned upward by just a 
 thought, as we should say, and her eyes shine with a 
 great sweet light. It does not occur to you as you 
 look at her that she feels the waters creeping up about 
 her, because her heart is in heaven; and under the 
 picture you read these lines: — 
 
 •' Murdered for owning Christ supreme 
 Head of His Cliurcli, and no more crime; 
 But, for not owning prelacy 
 And not abjuring Presbytery, 
 Witliin tlie sea, tied to a stake, 
 She suffered for Christ Jesus' sake." 
 
 That picture tells me the story I want to learn and 
 need to learn about Antipas, my faithful martyr. 
 The flames do not gather upon them or the waters de- 
 vour them, after all, because God sees to it by a divine 
 masterhood ; and death is lost in victory. 
 
 So my thought points towards a few simple lessons, 
 
Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 123 
 
 and this is the first: We are not to think these 
 martyrdoms came to an end when the world we live 
 in came to the conclusion that 
 
 " If a man's belief be bad, 
 It will not be improved by burning.'' 
 
 Men and women die martyrs now as they died in the 
 old bad days. It is not in the old brutal way, but it 
 is just as painful ; and martyrdom goes on in obscure 
 corners still, — where a great truth or a great reform 
 which will win the world to a better life in the long 
 day of God finds my Antipas ; where great discoveries, 
 that hold in their hearts a vast benediction to man, 
 haunt those who cannot but work at them until they 
 drop in their tracks; in homes the law cannot touch, 
 also, and in cellars and garrets where forlorn men and 
 women would any day welcome death as a grand and 
 blessed boon, but keep up their hearts and face their 
 duty cheerfully. Some of them are as sure of heaven as 
 if they were there; and some are rough, homespun men, 
 of no vision and of the earth, earthy, until the great 
 moment comes, and then they jam the wheel and run 
 the boat ashore to save the passengers, dropping, 
 when that is done, a burnt ember; keep their hand 
 on the lever and mind the train, but are crushed in 
 the deed out of all semblance ofa man; leap into the 
 furnace of a burning home after a woman or a little 
 child, and come out no more. All martyrs, and all 
 martyrs for God in duty and in a simple manhood, 
 gathering their whole power into one spring for this 
 and landing in the everlasting life, while they leave 
 
124 Antipas, my Faithful Martyr 
 
 us to our disputes about who shall be saved, and 
 becoming themselves the supreme instance in such 
 supreme self-sacrifice, heedless of what we may say 
 about their doom, leaving all this to take care of 
 itself, but then doing more to enlarge and sweeten 
 our ideas of God's saving grace in such noble saving, 
 perhaps, than all our preaching. 
 
 And this is the second : that those of us who have 
 some chance at helping or may have, by reason of our 
 better fortune and lot, shall do what we can for these 
 obscure and unnamed martyrs. It may not be much 
 we can do ; but we can do something, if it is only to 
 say to them: "This is my fight, too; and I am with 
 you in your forlorn hope, in your sad lot, in your 
 pioneering. You have my sympathy. I am your 
 friend." There can never be more than a handful in 
 such a case, never more than the twelve; but, then, 
 what a grand thing it is to count for one in the twelve, 
 even if it be but the doubting Thomas, the least of 
 them all! We can help those, it may be, who would 
 fain hide some noble thought in the world's life, but 
 cannot find the way to do it, or those who bear heavy 
 burdens on weak backs, or those who, within the husk 
 of a rough and, it may be, an evil life, still hold this 
 kernel of nobility, while we may sing our Psalms and 
 say our prayers, be proud of our churches and think 
 our ministers are the very flower of the flock; but, if 
 we do not keep our hearts open and warm towards 
 these obscure martyrs, we are not of His heart by 
 whose name we are called. 
 
 Do I speak to those, finally, who, as life opens and 
 
Aiitipas, my Faithful Martyr 125 
 
 duty begins to grow clear, will find it is hard and try- 
 ing work to stand and fight for the outcast truth, for 
 the unpopular reform, for anything that comes within 
 the scope of my thought? Take heart, and go right 
 on when that time comes. You may be troubled, 
 do not be distressed; perplexed, you must not de- 
 spair; persecuted, do not even imagine you are for- 
 saken; cast down, you cannot be destroyed. 
 
 In the old monastic gardens which have lain to the 
 wilderness these three hundred years, when they dig 
 down deep and turn up the soil, flowers spring and 
 bloom again which have been buried ever since the 
 harrying of the monks; and so shall your sowing be. 
 You will think no man cares, — well, then, God cares. 
 That you can do no one thing worth a moment's mem- 
 ory; so, it may be, thought Antipas, my faithful 
 martyr; so thought my poor old friend, kneeling in 
 her cellar; but I told that story many years after to a 
 great congregation in a church in her own town, and 
 a little host of them flocked about me after the ser- 
 vice, and said, "Yes, we mind old Nelly, too, and her 
 wonderful gentle heart." And I found, as we talked 
 of her, that she was preaching better sermons after 
 she was dead all those years than most of us preach 
 who are living. 
 
 And you may think this may end it all. You were 
 never more mistaken. The great, full tides will bear 
 up your bark, never fear; or the tempter may tell you 
 how you will have twice as good a time if you will 
 only give up half your manhood. The tempter lies. 
 "It's dogged as does it," the poor day-laborer says to 
 
126 Antipas, my Faitliful Martyr 
 
 the parson in the story, when he finds him quite broken 
 down; and, it may be, this will be all you can do, and 
 all Antipas could do that day. Well, then, I will 
 pray: "O God, make me as noble in my doing as some 
 dogs I know of are in theirs; and I will win the day 
 by sheer doggedness, but I will win the day." 
 
THE GREAT DIVINE SERMON. 
 
 " He opened his mouth, and taught them. And, when he had ended 
 these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine." — Matt. v. 2. 
 vii. 28. 
 
 When we find our way to the heart of the Sermon 
 on the Mount, we love to believe that a divine in- 
 spiration has given to it the place it holds as the key- 
 note of the Gospels. 
 
 It is so full of good cheer that, when we take it 
 to our own hearts, we find our life is shorn of very 
 many of the troubles we go half-way to meet, and 
 so full of the divine truth and grace that it comes 
 home to the sincere soul in some such way as a sum 
 well done comes home to a man with a good head 
 for figures; while, if we believed and accepted the 
 truth it tells us, there would be no more trouble or 
 dismay, either about the way of life or its consumma- 
 tion, and no painful surmise about the doctrines and 
 dogmas which lie outside its sunny boundaries, be- 
 cause the inward life and light we may find there 
 would make the whole earth luminous to the hearer as 
 it was to the preacher, and as much of heaven as we 
 need to see through the veil. 
 
 Fending and proving would seem to be poor work 
 when we held conference with ourselves about its holy 
 
128 The Great Divine Sermon 
 
 verities, as when the master put Euclid before New- 
 ton, and he said, "Yes, this is true, of course," and 
 then went on to explore the deeper mysteries of which 
 that was to him the alphabet, until he had weighed 
 the mountains in scales also, and the hills in a bal- 
 ance, and taken up the isles as a very little thing. 
 
 It would be as natural for us to take the truth it holds 
 into our hearts as it is for a healthy man to breathe 
 the fresh air or eat good bread or drink pure water; 
 while we should seek this or that holy word we may 
 find here for the soul's sickness, as the creatures 
 that live close to nature seek herbs for their hurts. 
 
 So I do not make light of the Scriptures when I say 
 that, if the whole divine wealth of them besides could 
 be lost, we should still have a Bible in this sermon, 
 and should only be the poorer as those are poor who 
 have no silver, let us say, but have still enough of 
 gold to answer all their needs, or as those are poor 
 who have no food to answer all their desires, but have 
 still full and plenty of the bread and milk and of meat 
 and fruit on which men grow strong for the work they 
 have to do. 
 
 Thomas Hughes says preachers should calculate 
 their sermons, as the astronomer makes his almanacs, 
 to the meridian of the people and the place they are 
 intended for; but the Sermon on the Mount, to my 
 own mind, is true to all the meridians, because its 
 noon and night find their parallel always on the lines 
 where the Lord God is the sun. And so it is as true 
 to my soul's windows as to any, and as true to any as 
 to mine, running through all the latitudes and longi- 
 
7721? Great Divine Sermon 129 
 
 tudes Paul thinks of when he says God, who made the 
 world and all things therein, is not far from every 
 one of us, seeing that in him we live and move and 
 have our being. 
 
 And reasons are the pillars of your sermon, Thomas 
 Fuller says, while similitudes are the windows that 
 let in the light; and we all know this who have had 
 much to do with preaching or hearing. Well, the 
 reasons in this sermon stand deep and true to me as 
 the pillars of heaven, while the similitudes that adorn 
 it are as the windows of sapphire and crystal that 
 glass the way to the suns and stars. 
 
 You must not tire your hearers with long ser- 
 mons, Luther said; while, when George Fox heard 
 one early in his life which lasted four hours, it was 
 borne in on him by the spirit that preaching should 
 be abolished. And yet it is hard for us to draw the 
 line here, when one sermon of a hundred and twenty 
 minutes shall seem shorter to your hearers than an- 
 other of half an hour. 
 
 I still remember how a man with a grand craggy 
 head and wonderful gray eyes would come down from 
 the hills and preach to us in my youth, who would 
 seldom let us off under the hour or the hour and a 
 half; but I also remember how his sermons would 
 often end for me in a great hunger to hear more and 
 more, while with some of the brethren, who were apt 
 to be brief, it was just the other way, for the time 
 comes when you cannot catch even young birds with 
 chaff. 
 
 But the Sermon on the Mount never torments 
 
130 Tlie Great Divine Sermon 
 
 me, and never tires, because it is like the city 
 the seer saw in his vision, of which he says the 
 length and the breadth and the height of it are 
 equal; while a great and venerable man told me once 
 that, when you heard Dr. Channing read from it, you 
 seemed to hear the sum of all true preaching. Its 
 closing words, as he read them, touched you as if you 
 were in the tornado. You saw the house built on the 
 sand shudder down to its doom. It was the echo in 
 our century of the wonder which astonished those who 
 heard the matchless discourse which had come to the 
 preacher instantly from God. 
 
 We are all aware also that a great many sermons, 
 and some of ours no doubt among them, are like a 
 glass of Missouri water. You must let them settle in 
 some quiet place before you can see through them, 
 and then there is a gritty and earthy substance you 
 are bound to reject. But the Sermon on the Mount 
 runs as clear as the springs that percolate and pour 
 through the granite among the hills of New Hamp- 
 shire. 
 
 Or you seldom hear a sermon in which you are 
 not aware of a crevice in the preacher's mail 
 through which you could lance him easily if you were 
 at all so ruthless in your fence as he is in the charge, 
 and especially when you are at odds about the doc- 
 trine. Or you can see by one swift glance that the 
 whole structure of the sermon is poor and mean, and 
 stands against the background of the truth he is there 
 to tell, as the hut of the Arab stands against the 
 grand outlines of Baalbec or Palmyra; but here is no 
 
The Great Divine Sermon 131 
 
 earthy and gritty substance you are bound to reject, 
 no crevice in the shining armor of proof, and no mean 
 conclusion in the sermon which his voice 
 
 " Hath here delivered words of heartfelt truth, 
 Tending to patience when affliction strikes, 
 To hope and love and confident repose 
 In God, and reverence for the life of man." 
 
 But is it not true again that we all shrink in some 
 moods from reading the searching sentences, because 
 they are God's very truth, and because they smite us 
 in a fashion against which we have no defence? 
 We would fain tamper with them, or, if it were possi- 
 ble, blow them down the wind, or say they are true 
 up to a certain point, and then file a bill of excep- 
 tions; or else we would creep into the shell of human 
 inability, and wait for easier terms, as if we should ask 
 the Most High to ordain new standards to meet our 
 short weights and measures, or let the sun stand still 
 for our backward planting and the rain hold up for our 
 easy-going harvesting. 
 
 We balk at the Beatitudes, when this heart is in us. 
 They challenge us too greatly, and mean too much 
 until we mean more. "Blessed are the poor in spirit." 
 Such poverty does not please us. We want all the 
 treasures of the kingdom, if we could have them down 
 on the nail. "Blessed are they that mourn." We do 
 not think so. Mourning is not to our mind. We 
 would wear our rue with a difference of exemption. 
 " Blessed are the meek." We believe in striking back. 
 No man shall push us to the wall. Your meek man 
 
132 The Great Divine Sermon 
 
 is apt to be a milk-sop. And so it is with the whole 
 blessed word. We have our own ideas about these 
 things, and may say the sermon is divinely true, and 
 then break down at the exordium. 
 
 We come to the divine Preacher in our need, and 
 ask him to help us solve the painful problems of this 
 human life, and help us on our way. Why have we 
 to drink so deep betimes of these virells of Marah? 
 How is it that we are subjected to this strain, in 
 which one force drags us down, while the other draws 
 us upward? and why are we so full of unrest about 
 those things that are half within and half without, or 
 are only seen as through a glass darkly? and ask 
 whether the mark of rank in nature is the capacity for 
 pain? What is the holy truth of God? Where is the 
 perfect trust, and how shall we find the rest that re- 
 mains? We come to him with these problems, and 
 here in his sermon he offers us the master key; but we 
 do not want to enter in through the door, after all. 
 The demand on us is too severe; and we fall back on 
 the thought that the true thing to do is not to fight, but 
 to find a substitute, or wrench the holy word to our 
 own purpose, and then bury the text in the com- 
 mentary. 
 
 We cannot meet the monition, " Let thy garments 
 be always white," and so we welcome the teaching 
 that we can exchange our filthy rags, as we call them, 
 in an instant for the white robes of the saints; or 
 this, "Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is 
 perfect," and so we seek this perfection not in our- 
 selves, but in another. 
 
The Great Divine Sermon 133 
 
 Nor must we wonder at this once more when the 
 truth that comes home to us in the divine sermon 
 takes the meaning of an instant demand to be met at 
 once by this perfection on our part, or we shall stand 
 as convicts in the courts of the Most High. This is 
 where the temptation comes in on the one side to find 
 an imputed righteousness and on the other to be con- 
 tent with some lower standard of life and chiracter, 
 because we may think this is too high even to strive 
 after. 
 
 And so it is as if your painter, standing face 
 to face with one of the noblest pictures in the world, 
 should say: "This will never do for me. I must 
 choose one in which the lines are not quite so true or 
 the form and color so perfect " ; or as if a man, setting 
 out to make a chronometer which shall be a glory to him 
 and a praise, should reject one of those for his ideal 
 you can carry round the world through frost and fire, 
 to find it has not lost a moment, and take one for his 
 pattern you have to guess at. 
 
 Now, to my own heart and mind, the Sermon on the 
 Mount is the holy and perfect truth touching my life I 
 am to strive after always and with all my heart. It is 
 to be the inspiration and the standard for my striving, 
 but never the despair when its words seem to challenge 
 me to meet their august demand at once and forever, 
 or I shall go to the wall. I know that this is of no 
 more use than if I was learning to become an archi- 
 tect, and Angelo should rise from the dead, and say to 
 me, "Now go to work at once, and build a cathedral 
 equal to mine yonder in Rome, or quit this business." 
 
134 Iff-^ Great Divine Sermon 
 
 Tell me I must attain to this perfection in life and 
 life's worth the first time I try, and then I cannot 
 even try, poor creature as I am, any more than I 
 would try to lift the great Krupp gun; but tell me 
 this is the standard to which I may attain, that I find 
 in my sermon the challenge, the inspiration, and the 
 incentive, the mark and prize of my high calling I 
 shall hold in my heart, and never dare to say this is 
 good enough so long as I fall short of its light and 
 leading, and that this is not to be done by my own 
 lone self, but that all heaven is on my side, and is 
 bound to see me win soon or late. Then I shall 
 begin to find the true meaning and purpose of the 
 Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 The divine worth of it for me will lie then in my 
 steadfast purpose to be so perfect, and in the way I set 
 my face and step out; for let this be settled once for 
 all, and then there may be better men than I am in 
 this attainment, yet they shall not be so good, because 
 I may be pushing forward while they are falling back. 
 
 This is the trouble I find in the later pictures of one 
 great master, because even with my poor insight I can 
 see how he has lost track in them of the old striving 
 after the perfection which makes his earlier work so 
 wonderful to me, and so welcome, I see how there was 
 a time when it was his meat and drink to do the will of 
 God, and is painting his matchless pictures moved by 
 the holy spirit of sincerity and truth ; but, then, you can 
 see how the time came when he would gain the whole 
 world, and lose his own soul. But another whose 
 work is a perpetual delight to me was striving onward, 
 
The Great Divine Sermon 135 
 
 while he was falling backward; and so, while for 
 some space there was no comparison between the old 
 master and the new, there was this deep distinction, — 
 that the one was pressing onward toward the mark and 
 the prize of his high calling, while the other was 
 backsliding, and did not care. 
 
 Now, this is the divine secret to me of the sermon 
 as the standard and incentive for your life and mine. 
 We may know very well that we have not attained or 
 are already perfect to the line of its demand; but the 
 question is. Do we want to be and mean to be, and are 
 we trying now to touch even the hem of this pure 
 white robe? 
 
 When one said to the old master, " I cannot see in 
 nature the glory you have hidden in that picture," he 
 answered, " Do you not wish you could, then ? " Now 
 this may be my trouble as I hear the Master say, 
 "See those lilies, watch those birds, and see how your 
 Father which is in heaven cares for them " ? When I 
 look up, and cannot see what he saw, is there any hun- 
 ger in my heart to be one with him in the vision ? or 
 is there a chasm between us I do not care and do not 
 try to pass, as he sits there still and speaks to me, 
 and would have me be one with him, as he was one 
 with the Father? The Sermon on the Mount is not 
 the despair, I repeat, but the inspiration, for your 
 life and mine. Had it not been possible for us to 
 reach upward toward its holy bidding and meet its 
 holy claims, it would never have been preached. The 
 preacher never wastes his words as we do. Very 
 often they may mean more than he could pack into that 
 
136 The Great Divine Sermon 
 
 poor folk speech he had to use, but they never mean 
 less. He is sincere with us as the day. 
 
 And so there is something very sweet and true to 
 me in the loyalty of good and sincere men, who are 
 troubled in watching the drift of the times, to the 
 great divine sermon. They want what we all want, 
 stand where we will and believe as we will, — a sure 
 word from Heaven, a "Thus saith the Lord, " now that 
 the Scriptures have been called into court and ques- 
 tioned as to their absolute or their essential truth. 
 
 There is no sure refuge any more in the claim of 
 their verbal infallibility. The proof is in and accepted 
 that they are not wholly divine, but that many things 
 in them are only human, and some fall short of that; 
 while we must find what is divine in the whole sum 
 of them, as we find the gold in the earth and dross. 
 
 Human souls are floating out on the waste waters of 
 negation, and the age is asking, " What is truth ? " with 
 a new accent ; and the answer comes from men with 
 this heart in them, and insight, "Here is truth beyond 
 all question, with the dew of heaven on it and the 
 untouched bloom," and they say, "We will hold on 
 right here until we have taken our bearings to the di- 
 vine sermon and the truth it reveals," and so it be- 
 comes in some sort their catechism and creed. 
 
 This was the stand made by the fathers of our own 
 faith, and the standard about which they gathered. 
 They must find the truth from God which would com- 
 mand their deepest reverence and purest loyalty. 
 They found it in this sermon and in other Scriptures 
 as true to its lofty harmony as the notes in your perfect 
 
The Great Divine Sermon 137 
 
 octave; and then they said, "Exhaust such truths as 
 these or get beyond them in your quest for the truth of 
 God." You can exhaust the ocean sooner or get be- 
 yond the stars. Despise them, look down on them! 
 You can despise geometry sooner, when you want to 
 catch the secret of the constellations or neglect them. 
 You can neglect sooner the sowing of fine wheat and 
 the baking of good bread. 
 
 So we may think we have gone far beyond the 
 fathers of our faith now that light has come into the 
 world touching a great many questions they did not 
 dream of fifty years ago. And this may be true; but 
 is not this true also, — that we have none of us risen so 
 high that we can look down on these blessed teachings 
 for our faith and life? Some things are always and 
 eternally true, — just as true before they are revealed 
 as they ever can be afterwards ; and the truth I find 
 here holds this worth to me in its heart, and when 
 I fall back on it, if I will answer to its inspira- 
 tion and life that may be, as when in the contest a 
 young athlete falls back that he may strive forward to 
 a finer purpose. 
 
 But the years have taught me for one that we can 
 make no graver mistake than this we may make when 
 we cleave to the letter rather than the spirit, so that 
 the sermon shall become not a living word to us and 
 whole, but a collection of dogmas and instances, in 
 which we miss the whole beating life which lies 
 within its heart. It must be to us all as it is with 
 my true artist, if I may bring him up again, who will 
 not dwell with the grandest picture in all the world 
 
138 Tlie Great Divine Sermon 
 
 to his mind that he may learn to copy merely, because 
 there is a noble ambition in his soul to create. He 
 wants to find the spirit and life there in its whole- 
 ness; and, while he may never hope to surpass the 
 master, if there is a true heart in him and ambi- 
 tion, the time is sure to come when he will be a mere 
 copyist no longer, but one who will do his own work 
 in his own way, calling no man master. 
 
 And so it must be with our reverence and loyalty 
 even to the great divine sermon. It must be fluent and 
 plastic to each man and woman, and have no power or 
 purpose of crowding us down or of cutting and clip- 
 ping away at us, as if we were so many plants in an 
 old Dutch garden, because there is no true growth in 
 grace for us then. It is a grand, free outline, inviting 
 and inspiring my own growth toward the perfection of 
 the Father on the lines of my own nature; and, to be 
 worthy its demand, I must stand true to this free spirit 
 and imperial word, and I must bring to it or find in it 
 an imperial soul. 
 
 It is no machine like those that turn out the 
 watches. It is as the seed and tilth, the sunshine 
 and shadow, the insight and oversight, and the sea- 
 sons which bring forth the harvest home. So let 
 me be sure of this; and then, when I want to find 
 some sure word of God to help and inspire me, when 
 my life is fall of trouble and dismay, and heart and 
 flesh fail, I will sun my soul in the Beatitudes, or if I 
 would touch the very nerve of cleanness or of gentle- 
 ness or of the love which never faileth. If I want to 
 give so that it shall be like God's own giving, or would 
 
The Great Divine Sermon 139 
 
 pray so that the answer shall abide within the asking, 
 or to trust in the eternal love which clasps my life all 
 about and the eternal providence which holds me fast, 
 let me take the sermon to my heart; and it shall be 
 with me as when Luther saw the small birds swinging 
 on the spray in the gloaming, and flying forth in the 
 morning, singing their song, and quite sure of their 
 provision for the day, because they were sure of them- 
 selves. 
 
 Or, when I would find what worth abides in this 
 system of faith or that, in this Church or another, 
 High Church or Low, narrow or broad, this claim 
 founded on the divine authority or that on the divine 
 reason, the true inward light, here I shall be sure to 
 find the true answer to my question in the sermon which 
 has outlasted the pride and glory they were carving in 
 marble and moulding in bronze when the words came 
 floating on the breath of a summer's day from his 
 heart who spake as never man spake. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount has come unscathed 
 through the fires of time, clothing itself in purer 
 meanings and winning nobler intepretations. Our 
 little systems have grown and ripened, and left their 
 seed to be sown again for finer harvests; but this 
 abides as it was gathered from those who had treas- 
 ured it in good and honest hearts, sincere and sweet, 
 forevermore, as the bread which cometh down from 
 heaven. 
 
 Men also and churches have deformed it by false 
 interpretations, twisted it into uncouth meanings, and 
 degraded it, as when you cast pearls before swine ; but 
 
140 The Great Divine Sermon 
 
 the jewels have taken no taint, because the sermon 
 holds within itself the light of heaven as the great 
 rose diamond does, and with the light the freshness 
 and sweetness as of the spring. And so I love this 
 loyalty of the deeper heart in our time to the sermon, 
 and would share it. I find in it a constitution within 
 which I can be God's free man, and a creed, if I need 
 one, so large and inclusive that I need feel no fear 
 about being left out of the number of those who want 
 to witness a good confession touching their faith in 
 God and his Christ. It affords for me a rule of life 
 which must be true and good in any world to come 
 and of faith which will stand all weathers in 
 
 "This age that blots out life with question-marks, 
 This nineteenth century with its knife and glass, 
 That makes truth physical, and thrusts far off 
 The heavens so neighborly to man of old 
 To space sparse sown with alienated stars." 
 
WHY SIMON PETER WENT A-FISHING. 
 
 " Simon Peter said to them, I go a-fishing." — John xxi. 3. 
 
 Simon Peter was a fisherman when the Master 
 found him, and called him to be an apostle; while not 
 long ago he was dreaming of a day near at hand when 
 the Messiah would drop his disguise once for all, 
 reveal his divine mission and authority, drive the 
 powers then in possession of his holy land to the 
 wall, and establish a kingdom in which he who had 
 been a mere fisherman on the lakes would be a prince 
 in Israel and hold the wealth of the world at his 
 command. 
 
 How his family fared in those times we do not 
 know, but may still imagine it would be rather hard 
 now and then to make ends meet, as it is so often 
 still, if the bread-winner is a dreamer when he should 
 be a worker, and by all means hold the home well 
 together, though it be at the cost of the kingdom 
 which is seething in his heart and brain like new 
 wine in the vat. But the dream has come now to a 
 rude and woful waking. The kingdom is not of this 
 world. So much is clear at last. This is all he can 
 be sure about. The rest is hidden in a mist. 
 
142 Why Simon Peter went a-fishing 
 
 There was some money also before the fearful sor- 
 row struck them which ended on the cross; but this 
 vanished with Judas, who had the bag. So it is clear 
 again that something must be done, and done quickly, 
 for bare bread, or they will starve; and, as all the 
 ways are closed except the one which leads down 
 toward the beach and the boat, he was fain to say, 
 "I go a-fishing." 
 
 And I think he must have made up his mind to 
 return to the old craft and calling also through the 
 conviction, which would grow strong in him, that this 
 was all he was good for now. 
 
 There was a time not long ago when the Master 
 had said, "Thou art Cephas, and on this rock I will 
 build my church, and the gates of hell shall not pre- 
 vail against it." But he had made fearful work of his 
 faith and life since that day in denying the best and 
 dearest friend he had in all the world, when he should 
 have stood to his colors like a brave and true man, 
 and defied the mob to do its worst. 
 
 Indeed, it was only the other- day that he had said 
 he would die with him and for his sake, but had 
 broken the promise shamefully. Yet, as there was 
 still the making of a very grand man in him, as we 
 know, he was smarting for it now, and calling himself 
 by all sorts of evil names. But now in the very 
 crisis of his shame and self-abasement there came to 
 him one little gleam of light, if I have caught the 
 true thread of his story. He must have said to him- 
 self : " There is still one thing you can do to hold your 
 ov/n like a man among men. You can go back to 
 
W^j/ Simon Peter went a-fishing 143 
 
 your old craft and calling on the water. The thrones 
 and dominions may have all been a delusion and a 
 snare, but there is no delusion in the old boat and the 
 nets. 
 
 You thought you were a man who could win in 
 every battle. You were a mere poltroon in a fight 
 like that you had to face the other day; and now, if 
 God wants men to do his work in this world, you can 
 be sure he will not want you. The Master said, 
 ' Thou art rock,' while you see you are a mere heap of 
 shifting sand; but you do know all about storms and 
 how to handle a boat in the worst that ever came 
 sweeping down from the hills, while, if you are 
 beaten in the last and worst, please God, you will 
 know now how to die a man's death, though you have 
 failed to live a man's life. So you can take to your 
 old calling again, to win, it may be, some new grain of 
 the self-respect in it you have lost, and prove yourself 
 a man after all." And so he said, "I go a-fishing." 
 
 Nor can I doubt that this was the very best and 
 wisest thing he could do that day, — to fall back into 
 the old grooves of the home again and the good day's 
 work, because rest would be found in the work, help 
 in the home, and the healing he could hope to find no- 
 where else in the world just then. 
 
 We may well believe his wife could have no great 
 sympathy with his dreams of thrones and kingdoms, 
 while, it may be, it was so hard for her to keep the 
 home together and find milk and bread for the chil- 
 dren; still, when he came home after that woful night 
 in the judgment hall, with the pain and shame of it 
 
144 Why Simon Peter went a-fishing 
 
 in his heart and eyes, the good wife and mother then 
 would rise to the great and royal demand. 
 
 The whole world might cry shame on him now, 
 but not this one woman. She knows what she has 
 to do in this sore crisis. She has to come close 
 to his side, to stand by him like a true comrade, 
 and help him the best she knows. Have we not 
 all known such good women, standing in the forlorn 
 hope shoulder to shoulder with such men, when to 
 our thinking it was against all reason? and we say, 
 "The man deserves his doom," while our hearts beat 
 with a proud and tender sympathy for the woman, and 
 we said, " Gabriel, the great angel, could fight no such 
 battle." 
 
 So I wish I could paint you a picture of that going 
 home, and recall the sweet, low tones that would run 
 through her words of welcome and the gentle light 
 that shone in her eyes, the steadfast loyalty revealed 
 in many ways with that eager welcome, yet not over- 
 eager, lest his pride take fire, with never a hint of "I 
 told you so," or "This is what your dream of the 
 thrones and kingdoms has come to " from those loyal 
 and loving lips. 
 
 And so to take to the boat again and the fishing 
 was to take to the home in this one true way, as 
 men must do who know what is best for them, 
 when hope burns low, when pride is broken, when joy 
 is slain, and they imagine they have not one friend 
 left on the earth or in heaven. 
 
 They have one friend left. We have all one friend 
 left then, who are so blessed as I shall not doubt 
 
Why Simon Peter went a-fishing 145 
 
 this man was, — the woman who will help us when 
 we seem to have no strength and courage left to 
 help ourselves. Yet I am not sure that he thought 
 of this indeed, only of taking right hold, first of all, 
 where he had left off, and taking home his load of 
 fish for a token of what lay in his heart; and, when 
 this was done, the rest would be done by indeed the 
 better half. 
 
 It was a wise and good thing again for him to say, 
 "I go a-fishing," as I think, when I try to find the 
 man's heart through my own. Because this would not 
 only solve the question of the daily bread, reveal what 
 real manhood was still in him, and bring him home to 
 his own fireside, where he would find gentle hands to 
 heal his hurt and the presence of the wife and chil- 
 dren to lure him out of the pain, but it would take 
 him back to Nature, the good mother and helper of 
 us all. 
 
 So he would go out on the water with his trouble; 
 and the mother would rock him on the waves, would 
 soothe him with cool winds, and shine down gently 
 on him in the night from her stars, whispering such 
 peace as could come to him then from her heart help- 
 ing him to forget his trouble for a while perhaps, and 
 so tone to-morrow half a note higher than to-day. 
 
 It was a wise and good thing for him to do also, 
 when we think of the wonder which had stormed the 
 very citadel of his life since Easter morning. Here 
 was the risen spirit of the dear Friend and Master in 
 this world again, stealing out from within the veil, 
 burning through the shadows of death, touching them 
 
146 W/ty Sivton Peter went a-fishing 
 
 in the living presence, and winning them to the con- 
 viction they lived henceforth and died to maintain, 
 that death had no dominion and the grave no victory 
 over his living soul. That the man should be bewil- 
 dered by the wonder when it touched him, and feel as 
 if the use and wont of life was no longer to be trusted 
 on the land, would be quite natural ; and so he would 
 take to the water, because your true sailor always 
 draws a deep line between his own familiar element 
 and ours, and expects to get his bearings on the water 
 he may have lost on the land. 
 
 There could be no mistake about the fishing, and 
 no mystery about the honest old craft. She would 
 answer to the tiller and go before the wind; while the 
 winds and waters and the night would be all about 
 him and familiar to his shaken heart, and real. So 
 he must have said: "Let me do this, and I shall 
 know where I am and what I am about. Then, if 
 the dear Friend and Master should come to me there, 
 and find me hard at work, as I was when he called me 
 in the old days to follow him, it will be the best 
 proof I can give him now of what manhood remains 
 in me after my shameful treason in the hall, when 
 I went out weeping bitterly." And so he said, "I 
 go a-fishing." 
 
 These, then, are among the reasons that come home 
 to me, as I try to find the man's heart through my 
 own, why he should take to the boat and the day's — 
 or shall we say the night's? — work; and now, if this 
 was the last word we were ever to hear about him, 
 should we not all be ready to say: " Poor troubled 
 
W/ij Simon Peter went a-fishing 147 
 
 brother, you made bad work of it that night in the 
 hall, but there can be no mistake about this you mean 
 to do now. 
 
 It is far better for you to be out in the boat, the 
 bread-winner, as things stand with you now, than to 
 be shut up in your chamber on your knees, because 
 all the prayers you can say from this to sunrise will 
 not bring a pound of meal or a bowl of milk for those 
 you have to fend for there in the home. 
 
 Better by far be grasping the tiller, minding the 
 sail, and hauling at the nets than folding your hands 
 or beating them on your breast in despair. This 
 labor is prayer in the pass to which you have come, 
 this lake your kingdom, and this boat your throne. 
 Better be fishing than reading your Bible, even if 
 you own one, because what a man brings to his Bible 
 is of quite as deep a moment very often as what 
 he finds in it. You might take to those rose-colored 
 glasses again for the reading, as so many do in your 
 case, and go to hunting up all the passages in your 
 prophets about the thrones and kingdoms, which 
 would lead you to imagine you were right, after 
 all, about the dream, and all you had to do was to wait 
 where you have now made up your mind to work. 
 
 You can give no better proof that a new life is stir- 
 ring in your heart which will make you a prince of a 
 grander type than all your dreams, no better proof 
 than this you give in taking hold again down at the 
 base line of your life and fortune. You have got 
 your lever all right now, and may yet do your noble 
 stroke at lifting the world; for the one thing for a 
 
148 Why Simon Peter went a-fishing 
 
 man to do, first of all, is to be true to the duty of the 
 day, and that means for you the care of his home and 
 family." 
 
 So runs my thought of some reasons why Simon 
 Peter said, " I go a-fishing " ; and now shall we try to 
 see what he might have said and done, trying still to 
 find the clew to his life through our own, and what we 
 might be tempted to do in some such case? 
 
 The man had been nursing a faith in God, as he 
 thought, which but a few days ago seemed to be as 
 firm as the earth he stood on and as true as the arches 
 of the heavens. It seems that he had pawned his 
 home on it and all he had in the world in the assur- 
 ance that he should be amply and gloriously re- 
 warded, only to find he was utterly mistaken, when his 
 dream had burst like a shining bubble, and the 
 thrones and kingdoms were a mirage which had gone 
 down with the sun. 
 
 His hopes had soared as on the wings of eagles, 
 centring all in Simon Peter and his kith and kin. 
 They were shot through the heart by these awful 
 arrows of disaster, and lay dead about his feet. Yes ; 
 and his love was so deep just now that he had stood 
 ready to die for the proof of it, so he said, but the 
 one brief hour had proven it was self-love, very mean 
 also and poor at that, and so the love had gone to 
 wreck with the faith and hope. 
 
 Now we may have all known those, or may be of 
 them, who, when this befell, would not feel after a 
 surer faith, a diviner hope, and the love which never 
 faileth, which is only another name for the love of 
 
JV/tj/ Simon Peter went a-fishmg 149 
 
 God, but would take a more dogged grip on what we 
 call realities, and make these the great aim and end 
 of life; and Simon could have done this when he 
 said, "I go a-fishing." 
 
 He could have said, " I have come to grief and sore 
 loss through my dream, and am as poor as poverty; 
 but minted gold is good and lands and houses. So I 
 will make money now, and have those, because they 
 are real things; while I notice that nowadays men 
 are usually esteemed and exalted r.ot so much for 
 their worthiness as for what they are said to be 
 worth." 
 
 So he could have lived his life and done his work, 
 worshipping the golden calf the while, — an easy thing 
 for one of his race to do, you say; but I answer, "Not 
 one mite easier for one of his race than for one of 
 ours." Still, he could have done this; and then a 
 day could have come when they would have called in 
 the priest, the doctor, and the lawyer, — for this was 
 the end of all his labor under the sun, — -and the 
 mourners would go about the streets, and the people 
 say: "He made a blessed end. Lo, this money left 
 to the synagogues and the temple, a clear tenth of 
 all he was worth ! " This he could have done for a 
 nine days' wonder, but there would be no more trace 
 of him to-day than there is of his dust. 
 
 But let us see now what the drift and trend was 
 from sundown that day when he said, "I go a-fishing," 
 to the day when he saw the sun set for the last time 
 on this earth. 
 
 He went back to such realities as were left for 
 
150 Why Simon Peter went a-fishing 
 
 him when his life had suffered that sad wreck, and 
 would try to make a living, because this was all 
 he could do just then. He would anchor the boat 
 to his doorstep, take her out, earn his bread, and 
 try to find his bearings; but this was not all he 
 would do. He carried with him an eager and wistful 
 heart, which was opening toward a new and nobler 
 life even then; and it was right there among the reali- 
 ties he could still trust that the deeper and diviner 
 realities began to take his soul captive. 
 
 He went back to his day's work, and thereby found 
 his way to his throne and princedom; back to nature, 
 and found God and his risen Christ ; back to the low- 
 est place, and was bidden to the highest; back to the 
 fisher's cottage, and there the way lay to the many 
 mansions; back to the inland lake, and its outflow was 
 that river the streams whereof make glad the city of 
 God. 
 
 He found through his treason that Simon Peter was 
 a very poor stick for the pilgrimage, when it was all 
 and only Simon Peter, bent on being the greatest after 
 the king in the new kingdom of God on the earth. 
 
 But the old pride in Peter had passed away, I take 
 it; and he had no ambition then beyond a simple and 
 manful life. And a weary way it was from that 
 turning! but it lay straight and true for him from 
 there to the eternal home, — -a lonely way, yet it was 
 peopled for him with the dear divine presence and the 
 celestial companions; and a sad way often, but then 
 the joy was so much more than the sorrow; and a way 
 terrible to the flesh as walking through fire. Yet, 
 
W/iy Simon Peter went a-fishing 151 
 
 they say, he begged for the boon of a deeper misery 
 when he must die, which would set the seal for all 
 time and to all men touching the perfect sincerity of 
 his sorrow for the great treason in the hall so long 
 ago, for which the dear divine Friend had long ago 
 forgiven him, but for which he had never forgiven 
 himself; and then all heaven came into his heart, and 
 shone from his eyes. 
 
 Faith was perfected, hope soared far above the 
 boundaries of earth and time, and love was one with 
 faith and hope, and their glory and crown, and all 
 harking back, if we will but think of it, to that time 
 when the poor tried man said, "I go a-fishing." 
 
 Many years ago, in a great historic city, I went to 
 see a picture painted by Rubens for the church where 
 he was baptized. It was the altar-piece, and I must 
 pay a fee to see it. I had been paying money right 
 and left all day to see things until I was as cross as 
 a bear and sick of the whole business. Still, I must 
 see it on their terms, so they turned it to the light 
 of the setting sun. And I remember how I stood there 
 in the silence for a few moments to find I was sobbing 
 and trying to force back my tears. It is the picture of 
 Peter's death on the cross, as he had prayed he might 
 die, and, as you look, the pain smites you as with a 
 solid stroke; but. this was not the reason for the tears. 
 I saw only those eyes presently in which the master has 
 hidden such deeps on deeps of victory, mastering the 
 agony, that you stand there in amaze. 
 
 The wonderful clear gray eyes are looking from the 
 tree right into the heart of heaven, and the light in 
 
152 Why Simon Peter went a-fishing 
 
 them is more than the shining of the sun. It is the 
 light which lights the sun, the light of God. 
 
 He knows nothing of the pain. Death has no do- 
 minion there. The curtains of time are falling. 
 The eternal life fills the fainting and failing heart. 
 He is absent already from the body and present with 
 the Lord. You feel this is no mere fancy of the mas- 
 ter, it is the living truth about the man, caught by 
 the hand of genius to touch all hearts; and then you 
 think of the lines touching the first martyr, how 
 
 " Looking upward, full of grace, 
 He prayed, and from a happy place 
 God's glory smote him on the face.'' 
 
 And now there are many lessons to be drawn from 
 this whole matter for which I have scant time; while 
 to me the best of them is this I have tried to open, and 
 which rests and turns on the good resolve of the man, 
 "I go a-fishing," — that my own true day's duty is the 
 most blessed thing for me in all the world. Have I 
 been dreaming to my loss and theirs who look to me, 
 and done treason through my dreams to God and his 
 Christ and to my own soul? Here are the first condi- 
 tions of a truer manhood waiting in my sorrow and 
 shame in my day's nearest duty. 
 
 Am I in trouble, feeling that all the stanchions and 
 safeguards on earth and in heaven have given way? 
 The first stroke I can make for a new and nobler 
 reality lies for me also in the day's instant and im- 
 perative duty. Do the great mysteries touch me 
 with their pain of life and death and the life to come? 
 
IVky Simon Peter went a-fishing 153 
 
 I must not go running hither and yonder to have 
 them solved. They will open to me while I stand by 
 my duty week-day or Sunday and my day's work for 
 God and man. 
 
 Is there some grander destiny waiting for me, as 
 there was for this man? I can win out of my very 
 sin and shame and by rugged ways, and hard as they 
 were for him. The princedom, the throne, and the 
 crown, rest still and forever on the simple and true 
 day's duty and the good day's work, though it be no 
 more there and then than this Simon Peter held in 
 his heart when he said, " I go a-fishing " ; for still 
 
 " The path of duty is the way to glory." 
 
JOHN THE BELOVED. 
 
 "Lord, what shall this man do?" — John xxi. 21. 
 
 It was for John the beloved that Peter felt this 
 loving concern ; while we may well believe the reason 
 for this distinction "the beloved" would begin to draw 
 them together very early in their life, as they were first 
 cousins on the mother's side, Mary and Salome being 
 sisters, if we are right in our surmises. 
 
 Their love has come to its perfection in the time 
 since Jesus found John and his brother busy with their 
 boat, and asked them to join him. They went with 
 him, as it seems, asking no questions; while from this 
 time we can trace the truth that they were nearer to 
 each other, and dearer, than all the world beside. 
 
 John was with him in the transfiguration on the 
 mount, leaned on his breast at the last supper, and was 
 one of the three nearest to him in the garden ; while 
 he was the one man among them all who had fronted 
 the danger when the first blind terror was spent and 
 he came to himself. He had stood close to the cross 
 then, with the hapless women, and had taken his dear 
 friend's last will and testament to his heart, that he 
 should look after the poor mother who stood beside 
 him, heart-broken, and then, when all was over, had 
 taken her home to his own house, to love her and care 
 for her to the end of her life. 
 
John the Beloved 155 
 
 So we may see how the matter stands, and how nat- 
 ural it would be the good comrade should ask his ques- 
 tion, What shall this man do ? The life they have 
 lived together through these years has been so blended 
 into one life by their love that Peter finds it hard to 
 imagine even how the one can be in heaven and the 
 other abide so forlorn on the earth. 
 
 How shall he be able now to stand alone, much 
 less go on alone, through the years that remain ? and 
 so what shall he do ? The time was when he would 
 have been able to bear the burden as well as the 
 rest of them, or, it may be, better; for he was so 
 strong and vital they had called him the Son of 
 Thunder, while it was no small thing three years ago 
 to give up his living, as Peter had done also, at the 
 Master's bidding. But this is giving up his life, as 
 it lay in this which was taken while he was left ; and 
 so what shall he do .'' 
 
 John Paul says, when one he loved better than a 
 brother was dead, " I did not ask why I had lost him, 
 but how it was that I should ever have found him " ; 
 and then he could only be grateful and glad through 
 his pain. But no such thought as yet touches the good 
 comrade. He has not begun as yet to realize what he 
 might still be to them all who had passed through the 
 gates of death into the immortal life. He only sees the 
 poor friend standing there, as I think of him, a broken 
 man, not yet in his full prime ; and, if he should live 
 through many years yet, what shall he do.? He has 
 lost the personal human presence nearest him in all the 
 world, — lost the nobler and better half of himself, 
 shall we say, lost what makes his life worth living, 
 
156 John the Beloved 
 
 and now the light of the days will never be again 
 what it has been, or the joy. He may live, and must; 
 but in all he does henceforth they will miss the 
 splendid stroke of the Son of Thunder. His strength 
 will fail at the spring of its inspiration ; and so what 
 shall he do .? 
 
 So I think we should read the truth, as it lies between 
 the lines of the question and the answer, who may have 
 struck some such sorrow and loss — and then we may see 
 how the truth is as old as life — and the severing of these 
 close and warm and most loving human ties. 
 
 And as the question, What shall this man do .' was 
 not singular and separate from our life, no more, as I 
 think of it, is the answer. This may be as full of all 
 heartening to us now, and as true as it was to John the 
 beloved, when we fall on this sorrow, though as yet we 
 may be no more able to understand or take it home to 
 our hearts than he was that day. If I will that he tarry 
 till I come, — this is the answer; and then the curtain 
 falls on the troubled man who will have to face his 
 life, as the good comrade thinks of him, shorn of the 
 strength and joy which gave life its choicest worth. 
 
 The curtain falls, but it is lifted again, and often, in 
 John's long lifetime; and then we can see by glimpses 
 and glances what this tarrying means to him, and what 
 it may mean to you and me. 
 
 He must wait for his own sake, first of all, as the 
 grapes that ripen late must stay on the vines, and the 
 fruits long a-mellowing must stay on the tree. For, 
 when we follow him in the Gospels down to this day, 
 we may see quite easily he is by no means the 
 man we think of as John the beloved, because he was 
 
John the Beloved 157 
 
 the gentlest and most loving among them all, the man 
 who wins his way to their hearts and ours because he 
 holds this beautiful gift in present possession through 
 a nature which is as the vine clinging and climbing 
 sunward by tender tendrils of love which must so hold 
 and cling. The dear divine Friend who loves him so 
 calls him a Son of Thunder ; and such a name can 
 hardly have been given to the man we have always in 
 our mind. 
 
 The truth is he was a bigot at times of the old, 
 stern type, as we may see when we read our Gospels. 
 He would have the Master call down fire from heaven 
 once, to burn up a town where the folk did not give 
 them good welcome, because they were of another 
 church and denomination, and had to take the rebuke 
 with the rest of them, " Ye know not of what spirit I 
 am : I have not come to destroy, but to save." And 
 again, when he finds one healing the sick who is not 
 one of the little band, he will have him hindered ; but 
 again the Master rebukes him by the word : " He that is 
 not against us is for us. Let the man alone." 
 
 This is the John who must tarry, as he stands in 
 the Gospels, with his whole love, such as it was, 
 centred in the dear Friend and Master alone ; and, 
 when we trace him in the early traditions through 
 many years of his tarrying, he is still about the same 
 man. 
 
 He goes to Ephesus, and falls out sadly, with the 
 little church which has been gathered there, on some 
 points of doctrine, and falls into something very near 
 of kin to a rage. We hear rumors again about his 
 helping a mob to destroy one of the heathen temples, 
 
158 John the Beloved 
 
 and of his doing some other things which help us to 
 see how long the fruit must tarry on the tree of his 
 life before it will be ready for the gathering, large, 
 ripe, and mellow and sweet to the core, the true graft- 
 ing on the true vine. 
 
 But, then, we follow him again, to find quite another 
 man, when the time and tarrying have done their per- 
 fect work, gentle and loving to our full desire, and 
 sweet of heart to the core. 
 
 One of these traditions I love best to read and take 
 to my heart. The brigands were out, and were harry- 
 ing the farms and homesteads under the leadership of 
 a man who had been very dear to him many years be- 
 fore, and one of his flock. John the beloved is very 
 old and feeble then, they say; but he insists on going 
 alone to find this man, and win him back to God and 
 holy ways, if loving can do it, and all gentleness. So 
 he finds him at last; but he is no more the Son of 
 Thunder : he has found the first secret of his tarrying, 
 though he shall never find another, that, 
 
 " Except we are growing gentle and good. 
 There can be no good in our growing old." 
 
 He talks to the brigand, who flees from him at first 
 while still he follows, just as the dear Friend would have 
 talked to him in the old time. He will not smite the 
 iceberg with the thunderbolt of a divine wrath, but 
 will melt it, please God, with the love of Christ, which 
 is one now with his own ; and so the man breaks down, 
 kneels at the old saint's feet, begging to be restored, 
 and then returns with him to his home and to a new 
 life. 
 
John the Beloved 159 
 
 Then we watch him through the glass of the tradi. 
 tions, a wonder of old age, sitting in the sunshine, with 
 a bird on his shoulder which flutters down to feed out 
 of his hand ; and the people about him wonder how so 
 great a man should love so small a creature. And, 
 when the long tarrying is almost over and done with, 
 we hear how he will have them carry him to the church 
 once more, because he cannot walk now, he is so old 
 and feeble. So they take him there, and set him, like 
 a child, in the midst ; while all he can say to them is, 
 " Little children, love one another," with a sweet and 
 beautiful repetition which is perfectly fitting and true 
 to him, when you think of the man he was. " Little 
 children, love one another." This holds all the law 
 and the gospel for him now in the ripeness of the hun- 
 dred years ; and then we see him no more. He closes 
 his dim eyes on this world of ours forever, and goes his 
 way to find the dear divine Friend again, who left him 
 so long ago. 
 
 So this was what came of the tarrying. The Son of 
 Thunder turned into sunbeams of loving kindness and 
 tender mercy ; and this was the answer made good to 
 the comrade who had thought of him as the one man 
 among them all for whom life could hold no more of 
 worth, when he said so pathetically, "What shall this 
 man do ? " 
 
 He shall do this, is the answer : he shall grow gentle 
 in all gentleness and lovely in all loving, so that the 
 old, harsh fires and thunders will be quite forgotten or 
 not minded through all time to come, and then leave 
 the treasure he has won in a Gospel which shall enrich 
 our life forevermore ; for, while we may not be able to 
 
i6o JoJm the Beloved 
 
 prove to all comers he wrote the Gospel as we have it 
 now, we cannot doubt that his heart beats through it, 
 and the wealth of his loving memories. 
 
 So I have been moved to touch the question, and 
 answer this Easter morning, because the truth they 
 hold comes home to so many of us who fall on this 
 sore trouble of a severed and broken life, in which we 
 seem to have nothing to live for now; while those who 
 think of us, and pity us, may be saying, " What shall this 
 man do, or this woman, left like a bird in the net, while 
 its mate is soaring and singing in the heavens so far 
 away ? " If the dog cannot live away from his master, 
 he can lie down on the grave and die ; and the bird, if 
 he takes his loss to heart over-much, you find him dead 
 some morning in his cage. They begin again, and 
 their life is presently made good to them as ever ; or, if 
 they cannot do that, they die. But there is no such 
 way out of the trouble for us, save as Heaven makes 
 one ; and so what shall we do, this is the question, while 
 the answer may come to us in many ways, but they all 
 centre, first of all, right here about the old blessed 
 word. What if they tarry till I come .' 
 
 For does it seem to be indeed a broken life I am 
 watching, or possess shorn of the choicest treasure .' 
 Then the many years have been teaching me this truth : 
 how the time may come to us, if we can wait for it 
 patiently, when we do not take hold of life again in the 
 old strong fashion, but life takes hold of us in some 
 diviner fashion, as it took hold of this John the be- 
 loved. 
 
 It is as when you come to the bar and have to wait 
 for the tide, which waits for the power from on high. 
 
John the Beloved i6i 
 
 that lends the lift of another world, and, lo ! you are 
 in deep water. It is as when we sail away toward the 
 old home of the race, and you see some day a faint line 
 far away you know is not a cloud ; and then, as the 
 night comes on, a light shines, and that means the ful- 
 filling of the promise. It is like the grain sown in the 
 fall of the year, which sprang into life and the fair 
 promise of the harvest home ; but the sun retreated, 
 the mists came down, the frosts followed, and the great 
 snows lay white on the land. The storm swept over 
 all, the growth was stayed, and the hope that is seen 
 lay under the hard and bitter winter. 
 
 But the wheat has been waiting in those poor blue 
 blades, hidden down under the drifts, while the roots 
 have been growing stronger for the tarrying. And 
 now here is the sun returning. While the drifts have 
 melted, the blades are taking on their tender green 
 again, and shooting forth afresh toward the heavens ; 
 and on a day we can well foresee the choice word will 
 be said down there in the market, '• This is winter wheat, 
 and the best we handle." The most noble secret of its 
 worth lies in the tarrying until the sun returns to draw 
 it forth, and the warm rains fall on it : then the ears 
 unfold their golden banners in the summer tide, and 
 all is well. Yes, and all is well through waiting. 
 
 So, "What shall this man do, or this woman ?" we 
 may say, with the pathetic concern of the old saint 
 in the making. Their life is arrested, their joy is slain, 
 their hope has gone out or burns very low and dim, their 
 sun has retreated in the heaven of their life, the clouds 
 are down on them, and the mists, the frosts, are on 
 them, and the snows of winter. What shall they do ? 
 
1 62 Jolin the Beloved 
 
 Well, it is written for us all what we shall do. What if 
 we shall tarry till he come again, the sun of our hope 
 an d j oy ? 
 
 Nature has her blessed parable ready for our read- 
 ing of the holy worth of waiting. So is it true that 
 all things come to those who can wait : then here, of 
 all the times that can come to us, it is true, here may 
 be the finest wealth won by waiting. " I will have 
 none of this," the arrested blade may say. "Let me 
 die, and have done with it. I am buried under the 
 drift. What is there for me but the end of all hope 
 and joy .'' " " But no," the brave germ answers in the 
 heart of all, — not here alone in the highest life and 
 divinest, but on all the lines, — "I am not here to die, 
 but to wait, and then to live to some finer purpose." 
 
 This is where the painter finds his iinest pictures, 
 the inventor his insight, the preacher his choicest 
 word, the true king his power to rule with Alfred in 
 the name of the Lord, the President his strength to 
 lead the people : these all answer to the parable of the 
 brave, enduring grain. 
 
 "No, no," the brave heart, and hopeful, answers, ''I 
 must bear all this, and wait. There is something for 
 me beyond these clouds and mists that lie so heavy, 
 these storms and drifts which strike like the stroke of 
 doom, yes, and the retreating sun, — something beyond 
 and above them all. Ay, and something in them of 
 God's treasure, and so I will wait." And then the time 
 of fruition comes, and we find as the goad old man did 
 the worth of the tiny word if he tarry. For the king- 
 dom of heaven is as when a man casteth seed into the 
 ground, and it springeth and groweth, he knoweth not 
 
John the Beloved 163 
 
 how, first the blade, then the ear, and after that the full 
 corn in the ear. 
 
 Let me take this Easter lesson to my heart, then, as 
 it rests first in the question. What shall this man do ? 
 What he did was to tarry, and nourish his heart on the 
 faith that the dear and divine Friend would be with him 
 always, even unto the end of the world, and then go 
 forth in the faith to live his life, to do his work, and to 
 learn his lesson, how to become sweet of heart, and gen- 
 tle, who had been so often harsh and masterful, how to 
 melt where he would once have burned with fire, and how 
 to persuade where aforetime he would have hurled the 
 thunderbolt to slay. 
 
 It all came to him, stealing in like the light and 
 warmth of the early sun, the life which was hid with 
 Christ in God, and won him at last, and held him to all 
 gentleness and love. He could have said : " What is 
 the use waiting 1 I am no good, bare of his presence 
 and the clasp of his hand. His breait to lean on, and 
 the loving glance from his eyes as we went on our way, 
 nay, his very voice in rebuke was more to me than any 
 other voice ever was in praise. And so what shall I do 
 or what can I do but go lamed and out of heart through 
 the years that remain, and then die.'" 
 
 But he held up his head and his heart to face life 
 again, and waited ; and then he found life was waiting 
 for him, and the work to which he had been called and 
 elected. 
 
 He had been a follower. He had done with this, 
 and must be a leader in the holy way of life and of 
 God. An inquisitor he must be, a man with a heart in 
 him, great, generous, and hospitable toward all good- 
 
164 John the Beloved 
 
 ness and truth ; for this lay in the sealed orders, "If\i& 
 tarry till I come," He had been a bitter partisan in 
 spots : he must grow catholic as God's sunshine. He 
 was always strong : he must learn now to be gentle. 
 He must be to the waiting world in his stead who 
 came to show us the Father, and then all the beatitudes 
 fell like the gentle rains upon his good white head. 
 
 And, then, if I may touch one more tradition, a day 
 came when they gathered from far and wide to where 
 his home was, and said to him : " You are the last man 
 on the earth who saw the Master, and were nearest to 
 him of all the disciples. But these reports we have 
 of him as he lived and spoke do not seem to tell the 
 great divine story in all its fulness. They-are very good, 
 as far as they go ; but something is left out. We have 
 heard you tell how he washed your feet once, just before 
 he was taken away ; and there were many wonderful and 
 comfortable words he said in those last days we have 
 heard you repeat these many years, for you seem to forget 
 nothing which belongs to the far-away time. Now may 
 we not write it all down from your own lips before you 
 leave us to find him who has risen and is with God .' " 
 Well it was so they tell us who handed down the tradi- 
 tions, and so we have this Gospel of the loving heart 
 which finds its spring-head in the heart of John the 
 beloved. 
 
 And now, to us all who will, this may be the tenor, 
 the treasure, and the blessedness of our waiting when 
 the human tie is broken, — that, through our patience 
 and faith, it may become divine. 
 
 We can live so nobly, not in despite of the great sor- 
 rows and bereavements, but because of them, that our 
 
John the Beloved 165 
 
 life shall be a gospel, though we can never write or 
 frame one with our lips. 
 
 Some do not grow larger of heart and life, and sweeter, 
 but sterner and more bitter; and then, alas! for the 
 tarrying. But others grow, as this man did, gentle and 
 fair and full of all charity, pouring out their pent-up 
 love on the many they had given to one who is no more ; 
 and then that is their answer to the question, What 
 shall this man do, or that woman .'' They are in their 
 way as he was in our sister city, who, when his one 
 daughter died in her early beautiful womanhood, poured 
 out his wealth and what remained of his life, to help 
 and bless unnumbered women through all time. 
 
 They are as she was, the lady of the far-away ages, 
 who had one son, the darling of her heart, but he died 
 in a sudden disaster ; and when the shepherd, who had 
 seen the disaster from afar, came into her presence 
 and said, "Lady, what is good for a bootless bene?" 
 she answered, " Endless sorrow." For she saw in his 
 eyes what he had not the heart to tell her, that her 
 darling was dead ; and then she said, " Many a poor 
 man's son shall be rich through my loss and glad 
 through my sorrow." So it was, and this was the 
 fruitage of her tarrying ; and so we may see how we 
 may go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, to return 
 again rejoicing, bringing our sheaves with us, — the 
 sheaves of the winter wheat, — when, 
 
 " Beneath the dark November sky. 
 With the cold rain falling drearily, 
 The seed on the land is cast ; 
 And in the furrows the grain doth lie 
 Till the wintry months be past. 
 
1 66 John the Beloved 
 
 Sown in the cold, dark, desolate days. 
 Reaped in the sunshine's mellow haze : 
 Thus in the deep and wond'rous ways 
 Of God are the lives of men, — 
 Sorrow and loss, defeats and delays, 
 Like the storms that nurture the grain. 
 That which was sown in wintry air 
 Shall blossom and ripen when skies are fair, 
 Though thine shall be many an anxious care 
 Ere the harvest be gathered in. 
 So be strong to do, and patient to bear, 
 For the heart that is true shall win." 
 
SEEING GOD AFTERWARD. 
 
 " Thou shalt see me afterward, but my face shall not be seen." 
 Exodus xxxiii. 23. 
 
 When the man Moses uttered this prayer, he was 
 passing through a great and sore crisis in his life. He 
 had been forty days alone, as we read, in the fastnesses 
 of Horeb, brooding over the things which took shape 
 finally in the ten commandments; and, as he communed 
 with God in the solitude, a divine inspiration touched 
 him, as he believed, and as I believe, to cast them into 
 this form and set on them the seal of the divine 
 sanction. 
 
 That such a stroke of work should have cost him 
 very dear and lifted him high is no wonder ; and so we 
 are told that, when he came down from the mountain, 
 his face shone with the light which is not of the sun. 
 But he came down only to find that the tribes he had 
 fought for so bravely and loved so well had fallen back 
 into the gross idolatry from which he had done all in 
 his power to deliver them. 
 
 This was a fearful blow to him, no doubt ; and we 
 must not wonder that the spirit in him, strung to its 
 utmost tension and worn out with the long fasting, 
 should break out into a mighty rage, in which he burned 
 
1 68 Seeing God Afterward 
 
 up their golden calf, ground the cinders to powder, 
 defiled the wells with it, made the leaders in the revolt 
 drink the bitter waters, and served them right. But, 
 when all this was done, a reaction set in ; and he went 
 up into the mountains again, quite broken down, as it 
 seems, and in sore doubt whether it was of any use 
 trying to do any more for his people. 
 
 And this is the time touched in my text. The 
 assurances which had made his heart so strong afore- 
 time were like music which has lost its melody. The 
 great deliverance had been wrought to no true purpose, 
 while he was waiting again for the voice which had 
 inspired and directed him from the days of the burning 
 bush ; but as yet there was no voice for him, and no 
 vision, only clouds and a darkness which seemed to 
 hide God away, as if a web was woven across the sky. 
 
 I think it was very much like our own case on some 
 sad November day, when the vault which bends over 
 the spirit seems for the time to be as bleak as that 
 which bends over the world, and our hopes and striv- 
 ings are like the leaves we are beating into the mire 
 under our feet; and so it was that he wanted what we 
 all want, when we are in this sore stress of the soul, 
 and life grows dark in the shadows touched with de- 
 spair. He wanted the very present sense and sight of 
 God, which would burn through the darkness and dis- 
 may once for all, and set his soul singing of her confi- 
 dence, as a lark sings far up in the heavens on a fair 
 June morning. Then he could go back to his life and 
 his work again down there in the desert as law-giver 
 and leader, no matter what might befall. And so he 
 cries, " I beseech thee, shew me thy glory." 
 
Seeing God Afterward 169 
 
 But there is no worth to me, as I watch him stand- 
 ing there, in the thought that Jehovah cares no more 
 for this cry than the great sphinx cared for those who 
 would bend and pray before her stone-dead presence 
 on the Nile. I love to believe that the heart of Him 
 who pitieth his children yearned over the sorrow- 
 stricken man, and the Father said in his heaven : " I 
 would love to do this for you if it was the best, but this 
 cannot be. I must put you, for your own sake, in the 
 cleft of the rock, cover you with my hand, and narrow 
 down all your seeing to the place where you stand 
 when I pass by ; but, then, you shall know this : that it is 
 my hand which has placed you there, and covers you in. 
 And then, when it is dark all about and above you, I will 
 still be near, and nearest when it is darkest ; and you 
 shall see me afterward." 
 
 This is to me the true interpretation of the passage 
 between the man and the Most High, the child and 
 the Father, in the dim old days ; while, once more, 
 to me there is nothing literal in the report as it stands, 
 or objective, as we say, beyond this of the man stand- 
 ing there, and crying out to God in his great and sore 
 trouble. 
 
 I have heard how they pretend to show you still 
 the very cleft in which he was hidden ; but to me 
 the only reality about it all is very much that you 
 would find if you went to look for Bunyan's Slough of 
 Despond near the dungeon by Bedford Bridge. 
 
 It is a report sent down to us touching one of the 
 grandest and most pregnant truths we can ever take to 
 our own hearts in our own personal experience, and 
 then, not in this alone; for we may find the same 
 
170 Seeing God Afterward 
 
 truth in the highest and broadest revelations of his 
 eternal providence, that we see him afterward rather 
 than there and then, in the processes of nature 
 and the life of the race and the nations, as well as in 
 our own. 
 
 And in our own life, when this befalls us, we may 
 feel as this man Moses did that we should be able to 
 go right on with a high heart, and strong, if He, the 
 Holy One, would reveal his presence to us beyond all 
 doubt or question, while we must break down and give 
 up if we cannot behold this glory. Yet all he will or 
 can do for us there and then will be to put us in the 
 cleft of the rock, and cover us with his hand while he 
 passeth by ; but, then, the day comes for us, also, when 
 we can see how the darkness has nurtured a faith 
 which that we desire might have slain, as the darkness 
 in which they must be hidden nurtures the roots and 
 seeds of all things, and causes them to bloom forth 
 into the fair glory of the summer. 
 
 In the processes of nature, I said, this truth may be 
 found first of all, and the creation of the world, in 
 which the invisible things of him, as Paul says, are 
 clearly seen, being set forth by the things which are 
 made. 
 
 For, when we feel our way through the measui^eless 
 eras which reach inward and downward toward the 
 central fires, we can be well aware, at every step we 
 take, how poor and dim our sense of the divine pres- 
 ence and providence must have been if we could have 
 seen what was done while the Creator was bending 
 over those retorts and furnaces, storing up the rocks 
 and minerals, brooding over the savannahs and seas, and 
 
Seeing God Afterward 171 
 
 calling forth the swarms of living creatures which were 
 all to take life and life's worth from his hand, and then 
 to pass away. 
 
 What does it mean, we should have said, — this 
 life which is forever drifting down to death ? Why do 
 these forests stand in the sun, to be torn up by the 
 tornadoes and buried by the convulsions which are 
 forever shaking the world ? Why do these fires burn 
 and these waters swirl ? and why are the swarms of liv- 
 ing creatures sent, shuddering, back to the dust ? What 
 does it all mean ? Who can watch these things that 
 are made, and believe God is also watching, and holding 
 such a world in the hollow of his hand ? This would 
 have been the fruitage of our seeing ; but now the time 
 has come, — the great and wonderful afterward. 
 
 Man comes forth in the full time to make this world 
 his home ; and then, slowly, but surely, the truth begins 
 to grow clear touching the creation. These forests 
 stood in the sun, through the untold ages, that they 
 might store up his fires, while the tornadoes and con- 
 vulsions hid them away until the time came to reveal 
 them ; and untold precious things came forth from the 
 retorts and furnaces, also to bide their time. Nothing 
 lay outside the boundaries of his kingdom in the crea- 
 tion, 
 
 " Not a worm was cloven in vain. 
 And not a moth witli vain desire 
 Was shrivelled in a fruitless fire, 
 Or but subserved another's gain." 
 
 Now we can see what hand shaped and moulded the 
 foundations of the world. The pebble at our feet tells 
 the story, the coal in our fires, the treasures in our 
 
172 Seeing God Afterward 
 
 mines, the marble gleaming in the palaces, the very 
 whitewash on our cottage walls. He has taken his 
 hand away from the cleft in the rock, and we see him 
 afterward. 
 
 Or shall we notice, again, how this great and noble 
 verity may come home to us in the advent of our 
 human race 1 
 
 The elders who hear me can well remember the 
 storm brewed and blown from our pulpits and presses 
 when geology came into our courts, and began to 
 question, with bated breath, the interpretations that 
 had been given, time out of mind, touching the crea- 
 tion of the world in six proper days, — say some six 
 thousand years ago. "They were rank infidelity," they 
 cried, "these oppositions of science, falsely so called, to 
 the holy truth : they were the spawn of the pit." Well, 
 that storm has long since blown itself out, and we are 
 rapidly forgetting that there ever was one. 
 
 And now, in these later years, here is another blowing 
 from the same quarter over the advent of man. Gleams 
 of light growing from dim toward the dawn are coming 
 to us, from which we begin to be aware of this, — that 
 the race also has been in the cleft of the rock, with 
 the darkness all about and above, and these truths we 
 are to find, which touch the ascent of man, are in the 
 divine order which built up the planet from the fires 
 and fogs of the most primitive eras to the glory we wit- 
 ness in the summer tide, from the old red granite to 
 the June roses, and from the monsters of the early 
 world to the orioles and the thrushes brooding and 
 singing over their, nests. 
 
 So, while we may still say, " It doth not yet appear 
 
Seeing God Afterward 173 
 
 what we have been, any more than it appears what we 
 shall be, as we wait for the afterward here and yonder," 
 to me these glimpses and glances toward the truth of 
 the advent of the human race seem like the music in 
 the grand oratorio of the " Creation," which begins 
 with a clash and clang of discords, reaching upward 
 toward the enthralling melodies of heaven. 
 
 We must not fear, therefore, what the students in 
 this science may have to tell us for the truth on this 
 question, or the cry of heresy and infidelity from the 
 old quarter, which is growing fainter with every year; 
 for, if they have caught the true thread of the maze 
 and mystery, the truth they still have to tell us will 
 not be alone a revelation of the past, but a glorious 
 prophecy of the future of man. Because, if we were 
 by no means set in the dim and far beginning on the 
 summit of 
 
 " The great world's altar-stairs 
 That slope through darkness up to God," 
 
 but began at the lowest base to climb, step by step, 
 from where we were then to where we are now, we 
 may well believe we are still climbing, and shall keep 
 on until we reach the throne. 
 
 We must harbor no fear about this man-child of God, 
 whose whole record so far is strewn with the broidery 
 of the golden word "success." And I feel free to 
 confess that it is the far more welcome truth to me 
 to believe that I sprang from a monad, — whatever 
 that may be, — which held its own down there in the 
 cleft, and struck for something better because a divine 
 pang touched it, — struck for something better, and 
 
174 Seeing God Afterward 
 
 kept on striking, — than it is to believe in him we hear 
 of, who was set in the beginning on the summit, and 
 thence came down headlong, dragging untold myriads 
 in his fall down to "darkness, death, and long despair." 
 Between a man like that and a monad, give me the 
 monad. 
 
 So it is not retrospect alone, but prophecy, also, we 
 touch through these intimations of the race in the 
 cleft of the rock. We may well believe we are but a 
 few steps on our way up the ladder which reaches from 
 earth to heaven ; but we are climbing age by age, — for 
 this is our doom and our glory, — and so well the great 
 apostle says, "The whole creation groaneth and travail- 
 eth in pain together until now." And not only they but 
 ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the spirit, 
 — even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting 
 for our adoption, — to wit, the redemption of our body; 
 for we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not 
 hope ; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? 
 But, if we hope for that we see not, then do we with 
 patience wait for it, in the hope that the creation itself 
 also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption 
 into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
 
 I would notice how this is the truth, once more, touch- 
 ing the nations and the times when they are in the 
 cleft of the rock. Napoleon tears Germany limb from 
 limb in the early years of our century, crushes Berlin 
 under his heel, and covers Prussia as with a pall. The 
 genius of the great German manhood is in the cleft of 
 the rock, where she can see no face of God ; but out of 
 that cleft the strong manhood comes forth to do its des- 
 tined work. Bismarck was born there, the greatest 
 
Seeing God Afterward 175 
 
 statesman since Cromwell and Von Moltke and the 
 good William, the Emperor. 
 
 The German manhood grew great and masterful in 
 the darkness, as she must, or her great day was a 
 thing of the past. She had sunk so low that she was 
 worshipping not one golden calf, but a host of them ; 
 and then the new manhood which was to grind these 
 to powder came out of the darkness and the cleft. 
 
 I mind how I grew curious once about "The Watch 
 on the Rhine," and wanted to catch its secret of power 
 over the German heart all about us. So I said one day 
 to a master in music, " Play for me, please, your 
 national melody on the great organ, and shake the 
 church with it, if you can." We were alone in the 
 church ; and I noticed how his face flushed and his 
 eyes shone as he answered, " I will try," and then 
 how for a few moments he seemed to be dreaming 
 while he touched the keys ; and then how the mighty 
 chords began to fill and flood the place, so that, at last, 
 it seemed as if Miriam was singing the song of Moses 
 for the deliverance of Israel from the thrall. It was 
 the music of the new manhood led out of the cleft and 
 reaming with the new life. There was no face of God 
 for Germany when those dark days were on her, but 
 she saw him afterward. 
 
 And as it was with Germany, so it was with France 
 in her turn, when liberty turned to libertinism under the 
 usurper, and she fell down and worshipped the golden 
 calf. And what a calf that was, to be sure ! It was 
 the time for her true manhood to abide in the cleft. 
 There was no hope for France wallowing in the slough 
 of the Second Empire. But now we begin to see that 
 
176 Seeing God Afterward 
 
 the divine hand was over and about her in the dark 
 days when her beautiful capital was invested all about ; 
 and she is coming forth now to reveal a nobler life than 
 she has ever known since she was a nation, because 
 France also holds a treasure in her heart of a priceless 
 worth to the world, — a genius unique as it is beautiful 
 at its best among the nations of the earth. 
 
 So it was again when we went after a cotton calf, 
 and had to swallow the bitter burnt ashes of our na- 
 tion's idol. We were in the cleft, then, with our 
 father Abraham, with the darkness about and above 
 him ; while he must wonder in his good, patient heart 
 when the darkness would pass away. 
 
 The light came for us when he made his great Proc- 
 lamation and the flag was unfurled for freedom and the 
 integrity of the whole nation, the image of God in 
 ebony as in ivory. Then the waters of our Jordan 
 began to part for us this way and that, and we came to 
 our rest. Not more surely did God put the man Moses 
 into the cleft than he put the man Abraham Lincoln 
 there ; and not more surely was he with his son in the 
 old time, when he said, "Get thee up into the moun- 
 tain," and showed him the promised land he must not 
 enter, standing in the sunlight of the new and better 
 time, than he was with our great leader when his work 
 was done and he was swept away suddenly to his rest, 
 when the arm of the assassin was transformed into the 
 chariot of fire. 
 
 And so, I think, we come through glimpses and 
 glances such as these to bring this truth of the cleft 
 home, and see what lessons we can learn from it when 
 the darkness is above us, and the walls about us, and 
 we cry also, " I beseech thee, shew me thy glory." 
 
Seeing God Afterward 177 
 
 Nor can we do better, as my thought runs, than to 
 cleave still to the Sacred Book for our first lesson of 
 help and heartening, and notice how it came to be the 
 proudest boast of Israel, " We have Abraham to our 
 father " ; while such light as shines on his life for us 
 now reveals a man often in the cleft of the rock, — a 
 man who must be content to catch glimpses of God's 
 presence through the crevices and crannies of a dream, 
 and in watching the signs of the sacrifice, because 
 there is no sure word for him and no open vision, and 
 who came wandering from afar in the faith that the 
 land of promise lay at the end of his quest. 
 
 For had not the assurance come right from the 
 mouth of God that he should possess the land, and his 
 children should be as the sands on the seashore and 
 as the stars for multitude, to find that the whole worth 
 of the promises had dwindled down at last to a son, 
 getting well on in years, who had not the pluck in him, 
 and courage, to break away from the tents and the 
 mother's apron-string to find the maiden who was to be 
 his wife ? 
 
 And here, again, is the divinest life the world has 
 ever held, which shines from the eyes and beats in the 
 heart of Jesus Christ. But, if that light had shone on 
 our world then as it shines now, think you that Peter 
 would have blasphemed and told the lie when the dam- 
 sel said, "This man also was with him," or Judas be- 
 trayed him with a kiss, or Pilate have condemned him, 
 for all their clamor ? I tell you nay. They would 
 have borne him on their hearts as the most blessed 
 revelation of God's face that had ever come to men. 
 No diadem would have been too rich wherewith to 
 
1/8 Seeing God Afterward 
 
 crown him, and no purple too royal for his robe. They 
 would have knelt to do him homage as he walked about 
 the streets ; while the high-priest would have met him 
 at the temple gates, and prayed him to enter the most 
 holy place, that the lights on the golden candlesticks 
 might burn forever with a clearer lustre, and the glory 
 on the wings of the cherubim be like that of the angels 
 of the presence nearest the throne. 
 
 And this light which shines now from his Gospels, is 
 it not wide as the world and high as heaven .' Yet he 
 also was in the cleft, as he hung there on the cross and 
 cried, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
 me .'' " And yet unto him also came the divine worth 
 of the darkness, when he never imagines for an instant 
 that he can forsake God. 
 
 And so I might go on to tell you how this is the 
 truth touching the most royal souls who have come to 
 help and hearten us in all time. There was not a man 
 or a woman of them all who had not to stand in the 
 cleft of the rock, longing to see God's face, to catch 
 some glimpse, if no more, of the grand, luminous, 
 infinite truth, that they might go right on with never 
 a doubt or fear. What they wanted through the light 
 came to them by the darkness, when all they had to 
 hold them was their faith in the unseen. Yet this was 
 to them as when the sun touches a seed far down in a 
 crevice in the massive walls of some temple of the old 
 idolatries, where the seed grows and burgeons and be- 
 comes a thing so mighty that the walls split and 
 shudder down, and the idols follow the idolatries into 
 the dust. 
 
 So in our own life the time comes to us all who are 
 
Seeing God Afterward 179 
 
 alive unto God when we must stand in the cleft, with 
 the walls of hindrance all about, and the darkness 
 above and before. Yet these may be among the very- 
 choicest days in all our life, the -days when we make 
 a nobler faith our own. 
 
 " And He is with us in the night 
 Who makes the darkness and the light, 
 And dwells not in the light alone." 
 
 So, if I have touched the truth, what better can befall 
 us than that we should also be set in the cleft, and be 
 brave there and patient, .that we may learn the holy 
 lesson the noblest and best have had to learn .■" 
 
 We also may long and cry then to see God's face, and 
 say to ourselves : " One moment of such clear vision 
 would carry us also through the wilderness, singing, to 
 our rest. But it is all so dim we would have so clear," 
 we say; "and what shall we do.?" Dim, dim! Well, 
 so it was with the planet, with the race, with the na- 
 tions, and the seers and saints. They all had to wait 
 for the great and sure Afterward in so many ways. 
 Why, then, should not we wait as those that wait for 
 the morning, and nourish through all doubt and dismay 
 our faith in his presence and in the blessedness of the 
 overshadowing hand .■' 
 
 And take the truth of it all to our hearts, finally, for 
 the work God has given us to do as his witnesses and 
 apostles of the broad and sunny faith we love. It is 
 the old cry of the apostle here that we have not al- 
 ready attained, and the brand we have borne, that 
 there is nothing clear and well defined in our beliefs 
 as there is in those of other churches, no creed worth 
 
i8o Seeing God Afterward 
 
 the name which embodies them, and I know not what 
 besides, and do not care to ask. Well, let it be 
 true that we are in the cleft of the rock until now. 
 Then, if we are faithful, we shall come forth as a church 
 of the living God, strong to do his work in this world, 
 and help bring in his kingdom. We cannot see his 
 face, but we shall see him afterward. We are in the 
 clasp of the holy law. 
 
THE JOY IN HARVEST. 
 
 " The joy in harvest." — Isaiah ix. 3. 
 
 There is no time in the year more welcome to some 
 of us than the fall. We find our sense of its charm 
 grows deeper as the years steal on toward our own 
 November, and the setting in of winter in our human . 
 life, because our love for this fair world changes as we 
 change, and stands true to all the seasons. 
 
 And so my very earliest memories are those of a 
 child's delight in the early spring, when we went out to 
 find the first snowdrops and the willow blooms that 
 glorify Palm Sunday, and after these the primrose and 
 cowslip, in the old mother land, with the hawthorn, the 
 apple-blossom, the golden gorse, and the early wild rose. 
 The spring-time struck the first note of joy; and then, 
 as my own youth passed away, the summer tides ran 
 through my heart, deep answering unto deep, as they 
 do in us all when our mother Nature has her way 
 with us and we live close to her heart. 
 
 And, then, it was the fall ; but here I found dismay, — 
 not as yet in the season, for I was not there only in the 
 anticipation. 
 
 I had fallen in with the thought that Nature grows 
 sick in the fall, and the pillars of fire she lifts in the 
 woods are the hectic flush which warns us that the 
 
1 82 The Joy in Harvest 
 
 end is near. So I had imagined until on one rare 
 day I fell in with a saint and seer a good deal older 
 than I was then. It was a day when this flush and 
 flame pervaded the woods and wild uplands ; and so 
 I began to talk in the old sad fashion about this sight, 
 and cited proof from the Scriptures touching the life of 
 man, as, " We all do fade as a leaf." But the old seer 
 was in the fall himself then, while I was still in the 
 summer, and opened another argument drawn from his 
 own experience. " I used to think very much as you 
 do," he said, "when it was the summer-time with me; 
 but now I love to believe that this season is the ripe 
 splendor and glory of the year, and not the dissolution, 
 but the consummation, of all things, when we look well 
 into the heart of Nature through the glass of the good 
 providence of God." 
 
 It was a lesson for a lifetime. As these autumn 
 days come with their message to us all, when the time 
 is ripe for the flaming banners to flash out and all 
 things have come to their fine and full perfection that 
 are true to the time, we may say, also, " These are 
 not the signs of dissolution, but of consummation, 
 and not a threnody of death, but a psalm of life, 
 when the mornings are silvered by the breath of the 
 early frosts, and the flowers in our gardens seem like 
 cups of fire which hold all the glory of the spring and 
 the summer in their heart, and the air holds a golden 
 mist and fragrance exhaled from the flowers, the fruits, 
 and the harvest store. 
 
 In the spring the world all about us wakes up, and 
 rises to welcome the new day ; but the winter dies hard 
 on our zone, and we often ask each other whether this 
 
The Joy in Harvest 183 
 
 year there will be any spring worth the name. And 
 through the summer the green things growing have to 
 fight stern battles for their life. It is too dry, and they 
 will wither on the stem. It is too wet, and they will rot 
 in the furrows. The blight is on the berry, and the sting 
 is in the plum. The apples are shaken down in the 
 strong winds, and the roots in the gardens are in peril 
 from the evil things that burrow in . the dark, mildew 
 and rust is in the air ; and the good man on the farm 
 fears for his wheat, or wonders how the corn will fare 
 in the early frosts, or is aware how the soft rains may 
 turn to bullets of ice in the very heart of August, cr 
 the canker-worm may eat what the locust has left. 
 
 But now the fall comes when the long fight is over, 
 and we know once more there is seed for the sower and 
 bread for the eater. The grapes are full of new wine, 
 and the barns bulge with the fruits of the harvest. The 
 word of the Lord has come true : " I will fill thee with 
 the fine wheat." He has watered the hills from his 
 chambers, and the earth is satisfied with the fruit of 
 his hands. He has caused the grass to grow for the 
 cattle, and the herb for the service of man. We are at 
 one with the wise old husbandman they told me about 
 over the water, who farmed much land and never found 
 fault with the seasons, but would tell you how he had 
 noticed in his many years that what we call a bad 
 season for one thing was good for another. 
 
 So we say, if the true heart is in us when the fall 
 comes round : " The divine Husbandman has been help- 
 ing us, and working with us, stroke for stroke. This 
 small planet of ours has been swinging through her orbit 
 on no mild adventure. The wind, blowing where it list- 
 
1 84 The Joy in Harvest 
 
 eth, has still been as the breath of the Most High ; and 
 his hand hath opened the chambers of heaven, and dis- 
 tilled the rains. 
 
 Let the year fall on sleep now : she has wrought 
 nobly, and deserves her rest. This is the consumma- 
 tion : the trees aflame with gold and crimson, and the 
 flowers, are the tokens to us that there is no more 
 death, but a change from glory to glory, as by the 
 spirit of the Lord." And so I love the fall now, when 
 I am in it, for the message of the consummation we 
 find in its heart, which holds the promise of another 
 spring, when 
 
 " Earth is full of heaven, 
 And every common bush afire with God." 
 
 It deepens and widens our joy, once more, to believe 
 how much greater the harvest of God is, who satisfieth 
 the desires of every living thing, than this we reckon 
 on and weigh and measure for our own. " It will be a 
 hard winter," ancient men say, who live on the land : " see 
 what a wealth of things are ripening for the birds and 
 the squirrels." The foretelling does not always come 
 true ; but I like to hear them say so, because it reveals 
 a certain faith in the heart which dwells with these 
 things, which looks toward the promise, "As thy day 
 is, so shall thy strength be," and which reaches away 
 down to the sparrow, and makes him our commentator 
 for the divine lesson in the Sermon on the Mount, — 
 that every bird has his own provision and the harvests 
 of heaven reach from pole to pole. 
 
 In the early days in Virginia they offered a bounty 
 for killing the crows, because they ate up the new- 
 
The Joy in Hai'vest 185 
 
 sown seed. So the creatures fled into the wilderness 
 for dear life, and waited on God's hand ; and then in no 
 long time the Assembly offered a bounty to get them 
 back again, because it had become a question of no 
 crow, no corn. They were watchmen, when the whole 
 truth came out, and must have their wages. 
 
 And John Burroughs says, " The lark I was looking 
 at the other day has a brain one-third larger by pro- 
 portion with his body than Shakspere or Webster." 
 It is the pledge that the great mother will see to her 
 nurslings by fitting them forth so handsomely to see 
 after themselves. 
 
 "We do not suspect," Darwin says, again, "how 
 ignorant we are of the conditions of existence among 
 the creatures on which we are in the habit of looking' 
 down " ; but we may all learn something, as we see how 
 he the old saga calls the First Provider gives them all 
 their meat in due season, and think how the harvest on 
 which they rely has ripened day by day with ours. It 
 ripens for them from the Iceland moss to the palm-trees 
 on the equator. 
 
 The boys race with the squirrels for the nuts, and 
 the birds for the berries. There is plenty for them 
 all, and to spare. The King's messengers are among 
 the highways and hedges, bidding the poorest and 
 most forlorn to the feast ; and all living things are 
 bound up in the bundle of life with him, while man has 
 only the pre-eminence and distinction of keeping order 
 within the boundaries of his own commonwealth, and 
 then the holy Providence sees to the rest by nature's 
 ample laws. 
 
 So nothing is made in vain, I say, when I touch 
 
1 86 The Joy in Harvest 
 
 the truth of the noble consummation; and nothing is 
 made in vain. The Canada thistle is as beautiful and 
 good in its own proper place as the rose of Sharon. 
 And what a loathsome creature is your crocodile ! 
 What an uproar there would be if one was found in any 
 of the great reservoirs, whence the water flows into the 
 homes of our cities ! They tell me they care for them 
 as constantly in the reservoirs in Ceylon as our fine 
 ladies care for those deplorable lap-dogs, because the 
 water, under their fervid sun, would slay them but for 
 the crocodile. 
 
 It is a hint, and no more, of the great harvest of 
 God, which rounds and ripens through all the world, 
 and holds within its zones a touch of his own infinity. 
 There are creatures which need a forest for food and 
 house-room. There are hosts I cannot see living 
 within the cup of a lily or a violet. " These all wait 
 on him, and he giveth them their meat in due sea- 
 son " ; and all's right with the world when we are 
 right in it. Why should we grow sad, then, when the 
 golden glow falls about us in these autumn days, like a 
 garment woven in celestial looms 1 
 
 It may well deepen and widen our joy, again, to think 
 what a wealth of difference and distinction comes with 
 this matchless bounty, and how it all answers to a need 
 or ministers to a delight. 
 
 I had a dear friend once who would have nothing 
 to do with the strawberries which came to us in the 
 winter, because, he held, they must ripen within a 
 degree of his own garden, and in the sun, while they 
 were only at their best when you can pluck them 
 from your own vines. And, wandering with him once 
 
The Joy in Harvest 187 
 
 in the Old World, I noticed he would only eat what 
 wholesome people were eating, where we went, and 
 drink, as a rule, what they were drinking. "We 
 drop in on a visit," he would say, " but they have been 
 here time out of mind, learning what was good for them 
 from the good mother Nature, and taking it from her 
 hand." It was his way of touching the difference and 
 distinction which lies along all the latitudes and longi- 
 tudes, his conception of the trees of life, the seer saw, 
 which yield their fruit every month, and whose leaves 
 are for the healing of the nations. 
 
 They tell us the apple has never been found within 
 the tropics of its own free will, or the orange where you 
 can cut ice, and each is the match for the man who lives 
 here or yonder. " What do you miss in your fruit .?" I 
 said once to a friend who lives far away to the south- 
 ward. " The snap and tang of the winter," he an- 
 swered. He was raised in Massachusetts ; but the na- 
 tive man down there would never have made that 
 answer. 
 
 We fight stern battles for our harvest stores, and win 
 a wealth of sturdy manhood with them, which is making 
 us the rulers of the world ; but the children of the soft 
 and sunny climes fight no such battles, and even the 
 ants, where the sun is most fervid, turn their backs on 
 Solomon. They will do nothing in the glare of the day, 
 or lay up stores for the winter which never comes. The 
 bread fruit, the palm, and the banana grow almost with- 
 out a thought or care. The thinking is of close kin to 
 the demand. The great domed brain of a man like 
 Webster is never nourished forth on the bread fruit and 
 the palm. The salmon will only haunt cold waters : he 
 is the match and marrow of cold weather. 
 
1 88 The Joy in Harvest 
 
 We can exchange what we have for what they have, 
 and so enlarge the boundaries of vi^orth and enjoyment, 
 but the main truth is this : that each zone reveals the 
 wonder of bread enough, and then of the bread the 
 man needs who dwells there, or he could not stay ; and 
 the saying of the prophet comes forever true_: " I will 
 hear the heavens," saith the Lord, "and the heavens 
 shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn 
 and wine and oil, and they shall hear Jezreel," — the 
 sown of God. 
 
 It is the next great joy, then, — this of the differ- 
 ence and distinction in which all his gifts are as the 
 bread which cometh down from heaven ; and how well 
 our children answer to this law, who rebel against a 
 gray monotony even of good things, when in our foolish 
 wisdom we would shut them up in some theory or 
 dogma we have stolen from a book perchance, done 
 by a man who has quite forgotten his own childhood, 
 or had none worth the name ! 
 
 The joy of harvest should grow deep and radiant in 
 all our hearts, again, when we think of the bounty and 
 blessing it brings to the nations as well as to our own 
 home land. 
 
 - The sun shines on no home within the American 
 republic where there may not be bread enough, and 
 to spare, if the bread-winner will see to it, and quit 
 himself like a man ; nor is there any home where the 
 bread-winner is disabled or dead in which there will 
 not be bread enough, when the need is once made 
 known ; while in the Old World there is hardly a 
 poor man's platter on which you shall not find what is 
 to him a new plenty, because of the ploughman and 
 
The Joy in Harvest i8g 
 
 herdsman of these States. And so the ploughman and 
 herdsman, as good Jeremy Taylor says, are also minis- 
 ters of God. 
 
 The long sad cry of the poor for bread is stayed now, 
 as it never was before, especially in our own mother 
 lands; and we are God's bread-winners and bread- 
 breakers for the nations. But woe to us if we do not 
 find some way to meet and master the shameful things 
 which are done so often, through which every poor 
 man's loaf is made lighter and our fair commerce 
 shamed ! 
 
 In the lawless ages they followed 
 
 " The good old rule, the simple plan. 
 That he sliall take who has the power. 
 And he shall keep who can." 
 
 They would swoop down from their strongholds then 
 and take toll of the merchants as they went on their way 
 to the markets ; and they must submit, because might 
 made right. We call the strongholds a "corner" now 
 or a syndicate or a trust ; but the things they do are 
 often no better, and I wish I could believe not seldom 
 they are no worse. 
 
 Still, the truth abides that our land is flooded with 
 plenty. There is seed for the sower, and bread for 
 the eater. He who ruleth in the heavens hears the cry 
 of all the creatures of his hand ; and to all he not only 
 giveth meat in due season, but the due meat. We can 
 help the world, while still we help ourselves ; and, if we 
 stand true to the holy law of neighbor to neighbor and 
 man to man, we can make the whole world brighter by 
 our bounty, and cause it to rejoice in our joy. 
 
I go The Joy in Harvest 
 
 And, then, we may well ask once more what truth 
 these things, which are seen and temporal, can bring 
 home to us all, touching the things which are unseen 
 and eternal, and find this among the first we have 
 glanced at for an instant already, — that this world of 
 ours swings on in no blind fashion, but is held to its 
 course by the hand of the Most High. 
 
 A fearful thing it is, indeed, to think of this home of 
 ours threading its way among the constellations, balanc- 
 ing itself between the sun and the infinite dark void, 
 and of the imprisoned elements, and what would befall 
 if they broke loose utterly ; for where would these 
 autumn glories be then, with the harvests and homes, 
 and with them this marvellous human creature, man, 
 He has made a little higher than the angels, and 
 crowned with glory and honor? 
 
 It is only fearful, and food for any sad foreboding, 
 when we leave out of the reckoning His divine pres- 
 ence and providence who cares not for the worlds 
 alone, but for the lily and the sparrow, and touched me 
 with a pang of delight long ago, when I saw the blue- 
 bells on the crest of the Rhigi balancing themselves 
 against the whole solar system, swinging free in the 
 fresh wind of the morning, wet with the rain and 
 resplendent in the sun. 
 
 This earth of ours is true to her seasons because God 
 is true and steadfast to his divine purpose and plan, 
 from whom all things spring, as the fountain springs 
 from the great deeps, and has made no mistake in his 
 making or lost any thread in the guiding. Let us be 
 sure of that, as we rejoice before him in the joy of har- 
 vest. It has never been a lost world, but found rather 
 
The Joy in Harvest 19 1 
 
 to a diviner purpose always, and was never so radiant 
 with his presence as it is this morning. 
 
 We may lay this truth also to our hearts as we 
 grow glad for the harvest home: that, while my joy and 
 yours rests in him, it rests also in its own due meas- 
 ure with us, as all joy must. We have to win by good, 
 honest striving. All the harvest homes worth the 
 name are the fruit of such striving, as well as of the 
 help of God. I know about where to look for the poor, 
 scant harvests a thousand miles from where I stand, 
 and I know the reason, which must still be guarded by 
 Paul's tender caution, who made thee to differ, why 
 there is an abounding grace there, and yonder only dis- 
 grace ; and this truth lies within the whole sum and 
 substance of our life. 
 
 All the harvests are ours for the striving; and do 
 not you forget that, especially, who are in the spring- 
 time of what you may be and do. We may have a poor 
 lot to work on : it need not stay poor, if we add to our 
 faith virtue. We may think we are poor sticks. So 
 the poor stick of a willow might have said, my friend 
 left on the edge of a marsh and thought no more 
 about it. But the wetness touched the dry thing, and 
 the sun and the rain fell on it, so tiny spikelets shot 
 forth when the spring came ; and, when he took me to 
 see it after many years, there was a grand bole, and 
 waving banners of green, and the birds were nesting 
 and singing far aloft for joy of the tree. 
 
 I love to think of another truth these golden days 
 bring home to us all, — the truth that some fruits ripen 
 early and some late ; and some flowers shed their white 
 glory in the spring, while some endure right on to the 
 
192 The Joy in Harvest 
 
 frosts of winter, for this is the law of their diverse life. 
 Yet how rich the year is through the whole wealth of 
 them, the bounty, the beauty, and the fragrance ! And 
 so shall we not think of the ingathering of the harvest 
 of heaven and the angels "All too soon," we moaned, 
 " all too soon ! Why must they be taken ? " But the 
 blessed truth remains that we had them once, and have 
 them still. They are our treasures laid up in heaven. 
 They did come to bless us, — the fair fruits and flowers 
 of the spring-time and the summer ; and we can sing 
 with the great singer, then, — 
 
 " This truth came borne with bier and pall, 
 I felt it when I sorrowed most, 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all." 
 
 And one last word for the charity that never fail- 
 eth. How forbidding some of the good fruits of the 
 harvest are on the surface ! How sweet and good in 
 the heart ! And how evil a thing it would be to judge 
 them only by what we see, or to judge them before their 
 time ! 
 
 The fall days come, the frost mellows them, or you 
 get at the heart of your hard shell ; and then how 
 sweet and good they are, to be sure ! It is of men like 
 Milton they remind us, and Johnson or Stephen 
 Girard, and hosts of men besides we may have known, 
 who needed all the sun there was, and a touch of the 
 frost, too. And, then, that time should shred away the 
 shell, the sweetness lay not on the surface : it was deep 
 in the heart, guarded by the knots or the spikes. I 
 say we have all known such men, hard and angular or 
 
The Joy in Harvest 193 
 
 sharp to our touch as a chestnut-burr ; and there would 
 have been no great worth, perhaps, if we had broken 
 through the shell before the time. 
 
 I made one of these some amends when he was dead, 
 but still repent me of my harsh judgment while he was 
 alive. No man more honest, but he seemed to be all 
 hard shell ; and then men came to me and told me of 
 things he had done in the later years, and done in 
 secret, the angels of God might envy. Then I said in 
 my heart, "If I am worthy to meet that man in heaven, 
 when I get through down here, I will beg his pardon " ; 
 and I still mean to do it. It was the hard shell or the 
 chestnut-burr I was scolding and fretting about, and 
 wist not of the sweet and shining heart. 
 
 Yes, and let these days teach us some good lessons of 
 faith and hope for those that seem to our poor seeing to 
 hold no worth in them at all. Long ago I would be 
 busy in my overtime among the flowers, and got some 
 seed one spring of a rare and unique sort to sow and 
 raise a wealth of beauty and fragrance from my seeds. 
 But the soil was not good, and the sun came late on that 
 side the house, so the promise did not come true. Still, 
 a cup or so did flash forth into beauty and grace ; while, 
 when the frosts came, I found a seed or two in the 
 wreck of my hope, and said : " I will save these for 
 another summer, and try again. These seeds are the 
 proof there will be another summer, if we had no other 
 proof." So the spring came, when, having learned 
 something by my failure, I set them in a richer tilth 
 that lay fairer to the sun ; and, lo ! my flowers were the 
 glory of my garden. 
 
 It is the everlasting gospel of the grace of God 
 
1 94 The Joy in Harvest 
 
 which touches our whole life. Not a plant or flower in 
 his garden just like another, and no best without a bet- 
 ter hanging in the heavens we must capture and bring 
 down. 
 
 Yes, and the soil, how harsh and poor it is for some ! 
 and the sun, how late he shines for some ! and the things 
 that stab and sting, how cruel they are to root and stalk 
 in some ! And then we say, " What a wreck ! " But this 
 is God's husbandry as well as ours. "All souls are 
 mine," saith the Lord ; and if we will but turn to him, 
 as my poor flower turned to what sun there was, and 
 make the best of the harsh and poor soil in which our 
 life may be set to grow, then there shall be a seed saved 
 and sown again for the 
 
 " Immortal life in never failing worlds, 
 For mortal creatures conquered and secure." 
 
THE RICH AND THE POOR. 
 
 " The rich and the poor meet together. The Lord is the maker of 
 them all."— Proverbs xxii. 2. 
 
 I TAKE it to be beyond all question true that there 
 has been no time when the richer man and woman hood 
 in this land has been so eager as it is now to make this 
 true, that, because the Lord is the Maker of us all, those 
 who are rich in fortune or endowment must do what 
 lies in their power to lift their poorer brothers and sis- 
 ters toward some better eminence than that on which 
 they stand in the republic. 
 
 A wise and good man, who rose to great eminence 
 at the English bar, said, when he was far on in life, 
 " Every year I live shows me more clearly that we 
 give far too poor a meaning to the word 'brother,' 
 and so fail in our true sympathy for the multitudes 
 we call our fellow-citizens." And this is still true, 
 no doubt, here and in my mother land. Many do not 
 care to nourish such a sympathy, or look down on 
 the poor with dislike and disdain ; while many more, 
 who are eager to do what they can to bridge the chasm 
 are at a loss how to begin. Still, much is done now, as 
 it was never done before, for proof and prophecy. 
 
 For as one of my small grandsons, just a mite of a boy, 
 would draw himself up now and then to far more than 
 
196 The Rich and the Poor 
 
 his full stature by the measure of the man that lay 
 within him, — and invite me to feel the bulge on his 
 arm, the proof to his fond old grandsire of his desire 
 to loom up as large as the pattern he saw in the mount, 
 so, when we see this striving in the nobler manhood 
 and womanhood of our land to grow up into Him who 
 is our living head in this sympathy, that they may in- 
 form and inspire their poorer brothers and sisters, and 
 help them in all wise and gracious ways to come up 
 higher, this is the proof and prophecy that we shall 
 also grow up to "the measure of the man," as the seer 
 has it, — " that is, of the angei." 
 
 This is the more welcome and good, again, to hear of 
 and see, when we notice what a wide and true interpre- 
 tation we are giving to this term " the poor," and what 
 wise and true ways we are devising by which we may 
 slip something of the wealth the well-endowed or the 
 well-to-do possess into their life, so that they may rise 
 to the fairer eminence in life and fortune. 
 
 The time was with us, as it was with the world all 
 about us, when we did not meet together, as the waters 
 meet and blend to fill some great river, — the rich and the 
 poor, — but were as the streams which flow onward, each 
 in its own proper channel, and seek no alliance. Or 
 the rich and the poor might be thrown together, as they 
 must be, but it was very much as the icebergs are 
 thrown together, when they drift down to the south- 
 ward. 
 
 They might be touched here and there in the kindly 
 sun of this human sympathy, so that some cube from 
 each would meet and blend ; but the solid substance 
 of the bergs would abide as they were until they 
 
The Rich and the Poor 197 
 
 vanished in the sea of the eternal life. The poor in 
 fortune, or in moral and mental endowment, so that 
 they could not breast the tides like strong swimmers, 
 but must drift back and forth like logs, to be thrown on 
 the sand and rot or be burned, — as the stern old dogma 
 ran, — this was the station in our life unto which they 
 were called, — these poor; and with that they must be 
 content, because it was the will of God concerning 
 them, and was made good by the words of the Master 
 and Lord : "The poor ye have always with you." 
 
 And so, when the sifted and right good seed began to 
 grow down there to the eastward, and the great and 
 holy truth the Master tells in his parable of the sower 
 began to take shape and form in human lives, and some 
 seed fell in the good ground to bring forth the forty, 
 sixty, and a hundred fold, — some on the poor ledge, 
 where there was no deepness ; some on the gross and 
 unclean spaces, where the thorns sprang up and choked 
 it; and some by the wayside, where it was presently de- 
 voured, — great-hearted as many of them were in spots, 
 the heart in them was not great enough to take home 
 this truth,— that one hand lay behind all the sowing, 
 the hand of the Lord and Maker of them all. 
 
 And so there were God's poor among them, and then 
 their own. Those who had no hope in their life, be- 
 cause they were not men, but the frustrations of men, 
 or men who did come to some poor and poverty-stricken 
 earing of fivefold, shall we say, against the hundred in 
 the rich, deep loam, — these were God's poor, or their 
 own. 
 
 But below these there was the low-down sowing, 
 which had come up among the thorns and briars in the 
 
igS The Rich and the Poor 
 
 sour haulms of our human life ; and these, as we can 
 easily see, were to them the devil's poor, for which they 
 found it hard to say even the prayer of the good Scotch 
 Calvinist of a later day : " Lord, let them hang ower 
 hell, but dinna let them fall in." They let them fall 
 in, whatever He might do whose mercy endureth for- 
 ever, and said their end was to be burned. 
 
 This was the way we began with these poor down 
 there where the main tap-root of our nation lies. The 
 rich and the poor met together; but they did not meet 
 and blend in a pure and true sympathy. The little 
 band which landed on the rock was poor to the bare 
 bone almost when it began to plant and build ; while 
 there were few rich who came westward ten years 
 later, and so far, I suppose, it was one stream of ten- 
 dency along the whole line of their life. Still, when 
 the sowing began to grow together, toward the harvest, 
 we begin to see the ever-growing distinction between 
 the rich and the poor in the ordering of their life, and 
 then between their own poor and those I have named 
 once for all. 
 
 They were instinctive democrats, or the most of 
 them, in thought and purpose ; but the well-to-do were 
 social and religious aristocrats, I think in quite an equal 
 measure, from the merchants and selectmen, and the 
 rest of a good degree, to the deacons and elders, and 
 above them all the minister, in his towering pulpit, his 
 wide-flowing wig, with the Geneva gown and bands. 
 
 These were the symbols of this separation between 
 the rich and the poor down there, — the hundred-fold 
 ears, the growth on the hungry ledge, and that among 
 the thorns and briars. And so did some hapless man 
 
The Rich and the Poor 1 99 
 
 go all wrong, or some woman, like Hester in "The 
 Scarlet Letter," that matchless study of the old grim 
 life, they burned the brand on them where it would 
 stay through all time. 
 
 They said every day, on their knees before the God 
 and Father of us all, " Forgive us our trespasses, as we 
 forgive them that trespass against us " ; but all the 
 same they felt they must keep a record of those things 
 they could not and would not forgive, though they 
 might well spring from some sore and sad poverty 
 of the moral nature, or some strong passion born of 
 the evil we can so seldom trace in the heavy over- 
 growth of the thorns and briars. 
 
 It did not and, it is but fair to say, could not occur 
 to this splendid manhood and womanhood to add to 
 their virtue knowledge, and so ask whether the low, 
 receding forehead, the weak and slack-twisted mouth 
 and chin, the dangling hands, the shuffling feet, or the 
 sensual mask might not stand for poverty where it may 
 be most ruthless or hopeless, and say : " Now let us bear 
 with these poor, and slip some worth into their life out 
 of the wealth He has given us in mind or moral worth 
 or fortune, not because they are beggars, but brothers 
 before the Lord and Maker of us all. Let us try to 
 put ourselves in their place, and begin by getting 
 down, in our sympathy for them, close to where they 
 stand, that we may the better understand them, as 
 He did who said, ' He that will be greatest among you, 
 let him be the servant of all.'" 
 
 They had noble and generous impulses, — these old 
 Puritans who started the nation ; but we do not find 
 this among them, — to seek and to save that which was 
 
200 The Rich and the Poor 
 
 lost by reason of the bare, rugged ledge, the sour and 
 weedy space where the drip was, or where there was 
 nothing to get hold of worth the name by reason of 
 the wayside scattering of the seed. 
 
 They did maintain their churches nobly and well for 
 those times, and got a schoolmaster there by the rock 
 before they got a regular minister from across the sea, 
 while the poor must not cry for bread with none to hear 
 and help them. This is all true. 
 
 But the picture of a later day is drawn from the life 
 by the hand of genius, in which, as you will remember, 
 the good and most capable house mother takes poor, 
 shiftless Sam Lawson, the village blacksmith, to task, 
 and gives him a good sound scolding ; while the sham- 
 bling fellow bears it the best he may, as he sees the 
 Thanksgiving turkey bulge out in brave relief under 
 her apron. 
 
 Sam had to be about the man he was, one of God's 
 poor; and once, when I met the peerless woman who 
 has drawn his portrait with so many touches of tender 
 relenting, I thanked her heartily for blending so deftly 
 a ne'er-do-weel with the germ of the saint which may 
 still be born in the line of the swarming household 
 when every winter turns to spring for the poor ears up 
 there on the ledge. 
 
 He bears the good scolding the best he may, poor 
 fellow ; but there is no humble heart in the good house- 
 wife with the question, "Who made me and mine to 
 differ, or how is it that we have the turkey to give, 
 while he must take it with that blush, half of pleasure 
 for the wife's sake and the children, and half of 
 shame for his own?" 
 
The Rich and the Poor 201 
 
 Not this question, and no irivitation that they shall 
 all come over and spend the day under the radiant roof- 
 tree, so that, sitting down on equal terms as near as 
 may be, Sam may perhaps win some touch of a proper 
 pride, and say, " Why, they treat us like their equals, 
 and not as the rich toward the poor ; and so now I will 
 try to do better, and, then, who knows whether some 
 day they may not come \o eat at our house in return." 
 It was not to be done in this way or thought of, — the 
 chasm was too wide. 
 
 They were of the breed from which a true and clean 
 democracy springs ; but they were aristocrats in the 
 social order all the same, and could not help it. 
 
 And the Majesty of England sent over men of rank 
 and title to live with them and on their substance, but 
 these were never a part of their more intimate life. 
 That life lay with the people, and the people alone ; but 
 it was this I would try to touch of the rich and the 
 poor, whose life ran each in its own channel, and so 
 you must be rich in land and beeves, in merchandise 
 and money, or in talent or learning, before you could 
 blend with the finer life, while, if you were of no ac- 
 count, you must stay where you belonged. 
 
 Now, I said, we have these still, and it may be in a 
 larger average, to which the manhood of this finer and 
 more gracious turn are only as yet what Matthew 
 Arnold calls the remnant, men and women, who would 
 not lower by a line the middle wall of partition between 
 the rich and the poor, but would make it still higher 
 and stronger, who can never begin to understand 
 these poor, as we should all try to understand them, 
 until they realize how much less of merit there is in 
 
202 The Rich and the Poor 
 
 their finer fortune or endowment than they imagine, 
 and how much less of demerit there may be in those 
 on whom they look down from their proud pre-emi- 
 nence, or realize that what they have done for them- 
 selves, who stand highest and have done best, is but 
 the token of what He has done for them, who is the 
 Lord and the Maker of us all, through generations of 
 striving it may be, which are lost in the mists of time, 
 while, if they could but scan the whole story as it 
 stands, they might say by grace we are saved from 
 being now among these poorest, and it is not of our- 
 selves, — it is the gift of God. 
 
 Are such men as I glance at among the organizers 
 and employers of labor ? The head does not say to the 
 hands in this good fashion of sympathy, " I need you 
 just as surely as you need me " ; and so, when the bell 
 taps for each and all to go home, they move as far apart 
 in this sympathy as Chippewa is from China. 
 
 Or do we establish churches, who are of this type 
 and temper, in his name who is the Maker of us all, and 
 in his name who sat at meat with all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men in the frankest and sweetest fashion.? 
 What are these very often but clubs for the finer and 
 selecter sort, while for the rest there are kitchen 
 churches, shall I say, where we send the broken meats 
 of the ministry, and expect them to be content and 
 thrive "i 
 
 Do these speak to the poor, their voice is a note or 
 two higher than the tones they use to each other, or 
 half an octave perhaps, than the scale they use for their 
 equals ; and so it is with the whole finer life as it 
 touches the poorer, who are not rated at what they are 
 
The Rich and the Poor 203 
 
 worth to God then, but at their worth to us, if there be 
 any, as the greatest man we can name in his time set 
 store on the simple old farmer, and loved now and 
 then to be with him, but, as I make out, it was as 
 when you open your heart to the saltness of the sea on 
 a fair summer's day, or to the aromatic snap of the up- 
 lands thick with wild roses and sweet fern. 
 
 This is the old life come to its flowering; but, if this 
 was all, we might well be alarmed, but it is not all. The 
 better and nobler sympathy we find springing forth 
 now is what I thank God for, which is bound to find 
 great and gracious meanings in the words I have read. 
 
 The real and true concern in so many whose fortune 
 lies in wealth or endowment is to make their wealth a 
 leaven which will lighten and sweeten the life below 
 them. And I notice this now in my motherland as I 
 never did before. 
 
 There the employers who are wise in this wisdom of 
 pure sympathy build sweet and fair homes for what they 
 call their "hands" and libraries and reading-rooms. 
 They will go with them also, if they may now and then, 
 on a day's holiday or have them come to the mansion 
 or the park, and sit down with them at meat. 
 
 They are touched by the beautiful contagion, and are 
 trying to even things up a little more all the time, and 
 be more nearly at one with their poorer brothers and 
 sisters. Yet there is no man who sets more store on 
 wealth and station than your Englishman; and old 
 Pepys does but speak for his order, when he writes in 
 his diary, "This day I rode for the first time in my own 
 carriage, at which I lifted my heart to God, and prayed 
 him to continue it." 
 
204 ^^^'■^ Rich and the Poor 
 
 Now you who came here first have done some grand 
 things for those among us who must come after. You 
 have thrown this goodly land open to the whole world, — 
 excepting China, to our common shame, — so that the 
 poorest man who comes here, if he can and will work, 
 may begin at once to live better than he ever dreamed 
 of living before, and win a good sure future for himself 
 and his family. And with this you have given us all 
 the rights of citizenship far ahead often of our power 
 to use them well, making us all as rich in this endow- 
 ment as the manhood is which has shed its blood on 
 the battle-fields of two hundred and seventy years. 
 
 So you have also created our common school system, 
 built churches, hospitals, and asylums for the sick, the 
 insane, the feeble, the aged, and the poor who have 
 none to help them, and made no distinction worth nam- 
 ing between the new-comer and the home-born man ; 
 while these grand universities and libraries are spring- 
 ing far and wide, to which we are all made welcome. 
 
 I cannot tell the story, and need not, because we all 
 know it, and know also that this grand lifting of our 
 life from the lower toward the higher planes among 
 those I think of is not done by the derrick, but from 
 the breast. So we may well ask what we can do more 
 than has been and is now being done, that the rich 
 and the poor may meet together in a purer sympathy, 
 because the Lord is the Maker of us all. 
 
 I have but one answer to the question ; and it springs 
 from the seed of God's grace in us all, if we will mind 
 it, through which we shall all try to enter into the life 
 and fortune of the poor who have no fortune, we can 
 reckon in mind, body, or estate, as we have, and lend 
 
The Rich and the Poor 205 
 
 them a hand in which there is the pulse of a good 
 human heart, see where we can meet them on the 
 ground of our common human brotherhood ; and that's 
 all. 
 
 Am I rich in fortune or in some finer wealth of birth 
 and culture, I shall not be afraid, then, that my costly 
 vase will suffer harm or loss by neighboring with the 
 earthen pipkin. I shall remember that in all great 
 houses there be divers vessels ; and the pan, brown or 
 black, which will stand the fire and cook the dinner, 
 shall be in no wise counted for dishonor, — no, not 
 even against the vase which might adorn the palace of 
 a king. 
 
 I love to muse over the untold worth of a race, and 
 am mighty proud of yours and mine. The yellow- 
 haired, blue-eyed, great-limbed fellow who came storm- 
 ing in from the northward once on a time, and took 
 possession of about all he saw, he is of the manhood 
 to which we belong, which has carried all before it so 
 far in the long, stern fight for the first place among the 
 nations. 
 
 The eager desire to be as far up as we are was ream- 
 ing in the blood ; and this whole upward march in two 
 worlds has been on the line of our ambition and de- 
 light. It was the gift of God ; and we must dree our 
 splendid doom wherever we are, in England, Germany, 
 in these States, and underneath the planet, in Australia. 
 
 That is the law which lies within your life and mine. 
 We are rich, while other races I could name are poor, 
 who are blended with our life. But, if He who came to 
 preach the gospel to the poor taught us one truth above 
 another we must never forget, it was this of a real 
 
206 The Rich and the Poor 
 
 human brotherhood, founded on the holy truth that the 
 Lord is not only the Maker, he is also the Father of us 
 all. 
 
 And this truth sank so deep into the hearts of those 
 who were one with him in mind and purpose that it 
 brought the infant Church and the cause it stood for into 
 instant peril, when every man began to strip himself of 
 the fruit of his endeavor, casting everything he possessed 
 into the common treasury, and so opened for the most 
 shiftless and worthless to share, and share alike, if they 
 would only make up a poor and pious face, — which was 
 all a mistake then as it is now, and far from His mind 
 and purpose who said, "Ye have come for the loaves 
 and fishes." 
 
 This was what he did who came to seek and to save 
 tJiai which was lost. He came closest to those who 
 were poorest, and most utterly lost, — the devil's poor, 
 if you will ; and I may say that bad word again, — that 
 he might pour into their forlorn natures some treasure 
 from his own divine life, and so call out what was still 
 divine in theirs. 
 
 The devout Persian prays, " O God, do something for 
 the bad : thou hast done everything for the good in 
 making them so good." He was here in God's stead, 
 the dear Son of the All-Father, to minister to these 
 poor with human hands, to reach them through this 
 human sympathy which then became divine, to talk 
 with them humanly and tenderly as man to man and 
 man to woman, and to pour scorn and the wrath of the 
 Lamb on those who stood so high above them, and were 
 as hard in this human touch and sympathy for them as 
 nails, counting the very alms they gave an investment 
 which would return to their own proper profit. 
 
The Rich and the Poor zcj 
 
 It is the beginning of the gospel of God to the poor 
 in him who came to give sight to the blind, to restore 
 the withered hand, to brace up the hapless will, to bid 
 the lame walk, to command the evil spirit to come 
 out, and to set at liberty them that were bound. Not 
 to leave them in their isolation, but to make them feel 
 there was one in this world who could not and would 
 not let them go stumbling on in the dark, to bruise 
 themselves on the flints which lie on the way of life 
 for us all, but would by all means help them. "There- 
 fore, he who was rich for our sakes became poor, that 
 we through his poverty might be made rich." 
 
 So I will end where I began, with a note of joy over 
 the signs and tokens of this sympathy of the rich 
 toward the poor in the line of the holy Gospels, what- 
 soever form it may take. It is proof and prophecy of 
 the good time coming to me, — 
 
 " When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, 
 But smit with freer light shall slowly melt 
 In many streams to fatten lower lands. 
 And light shall spread, and man be liker man 
 Through all the seasons of the golden year." 
 
 They told me once, when I went to Niagara, that, when 
 they would bridge the great chasm, they sent a kite 
 over first, and that drew a string. And the string drew 
 a cable which held up a man, who got things started 
 for the superb Suspension Bridge, which helps to clasp 
 the continent together, and holds us all who see it in 
 the spell of its beauty. And so, from these fine threads 
 of human sympathy, these unwindings of the heart- 
 strings and the purse-strings, these wings of a true and 
 
2o8 The Rich and the Poor 
 
 tender concern which take us across the chasm be- 
 tween the rich and the poor, we can reach those who 
 by nature or fortune have yet to be where they belong, 
 and win them to believe that any true gospel to them 
 stands, first of all, for the good human brotherhood ; 
 and then this must follow, as the spring follows the 
 winter. That those we can reach in this way will 
 be touched by the truth that there is not only a 
 better and nobler life waiting their striving and win- 
 ning on the earth and in the heavens, but right friendly 
 hearts to feel this sweet concern for them, with hands 
 to clasp theirs and to hide holy meanings they could 
 not dream of in those words as true as they are imper- 
 ative, — 
 
 " The rich and the poor meet together : 
 The Lord is the Maker of them all."