DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 
 

 

 
MORAL USES OF 
 
 DARK THINGS 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL 
 
 LITERARY VARIETIES 
 Ui 
 
 Centenary Edition 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
 1910 
 

 
Div. S, 
 
 EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE 
 EDITION OF 1881 
 
 Or the three volumes by Dr. Bushnell now produced 
 under the general title of “Literary Varieties” two 
 have long been out of print and one is new. The lat- 
 ter, “Building Eras in Religion,” consists of various 
 articles and addresses which have been printed in some 
 fugitive form, and which Dr. Bushnell himself desig- 
 nated under the heading of Reliquie as the material 
 for a book to be published after his death. Grouping 
 these three books together now as a collection of his 
 miscellaneous writings, we would emphasize the dis- 
 tinction between these and his theological works, these 
 “the spontaneous overplus and literary by-play of a 
 laborious profession,” the latter the embodiment of that 
 profession itself. They so richly represent and, as it 
 were, personify the varied interests of his life as to form 
 in themselves, if rightly interpreted, a biography neces- 
 sary to the completeness of any which has been or could 
 be written. As an aid to such interpretation, a few facts 
 and thoughts may here be fitly presented. 
 
 The oration on Work and Play, often spoken of as 
 the supreme literary product of his life, followed closely 
 upon a profound private religious experience and was 
 
EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 
 
 written and delivered in that year of theologic tempest 
 which threatened to overwhelm him as a heretic. But 
 its atmosphere is serene, the high tenor of its literary 
 inspiration unbroken by a note of strife. His ideal of 
 a literary era painted in its closing pages seems to be 
 that it shall emerge from a period of struggle under 
 a religious impulse, as his own had done. The same 
 thought is conveyed with equal force and beauty in his 
 address on “Our Obligations to the Dead,” in the vol- 
 ume on “Building Eras in Religion,” wherein he de- 
 picts the future literary age for which the great strug- 
 gle of our war has, he thinks, furnished fit training and 
 noble subjects, religion being still “the only sufficient 
 fertilizer of genius as it is the only real emancipator of 
 man.” 
 
 In the first volume, Work and Play, we have the 
 “Age of Homespun,” which contains the scenery and 
 the dramatis persone of his childhood; “The Growth 
 of Law,” in which we find the impress of his law stud- 
 ies; “The Founders Great in their Unconsciousness,” 
 wherein the strength of his own hereditary Puritan 
 consciousness is revealed; “The Day of Roads,” the di- 
 rect product of his European journey; “City Plans,” 
 so closely connected with his work for Hartford and its 
 Park; and “Religious Music,” whose melodious thought 
 and rhythmical style seem to date back to that time 
 when, as a boy, he taught himself by a reverse process 
 from his mother’s song how to read music. One address 
 on “Agriculture at the East’ has been withdrawn, as 
 superseded by the progress of history, and in its place 
 
EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 
 
 we have now that on “Barbarism the First Danger,” 
 the first public address by which he became widely 
 known. Its truths were unpopular truths—needed, but 
 unwelcome to the sensitiveness of new communities. As 
 long as we have a frontier the article may be useful. 
 
 These articles, taken all together, evince a large 
 amount of reading and study. Apart from the refer- 
 ences to historical works, many of which were consulted 
 in preparation for certain subjects, we find everywhere 
 evidences that his mind was keenly alive to the inspira- 
 tions of the great thought-makers, from Plato and 
 Epictetus down to Bacon and Shakespeare. Books of 
 systematized thought were less attractive to him than 
 those in which thought is offered in free and fluent 
 forms, capable of transmutation. The works of scien- 
 tists and travelers, whose subject-matter is necessarily 
 in the concrete, had special value to his mind as offer- 
 ing food for thought. He read more than is commonly 
 believed, largely of books by the few master-minds, but 
 also freely of the best present writers,—very little of 
 metaphysical or philosophical books. 
 
 The volume on the “Moral Uses of Dark Things” 
 is not, as might be supposed, a logical treatise designed 
 to solve the enigmas of life, but a series of observations 
 made in a curious and inquiring spirit upon some of 
 the strange and mysterious provisions of creation. It 
 was as early as the year 1846 that Dr. Bushnell first 
 had his attention called to some of these morally unac- 
 countable aspects of human life and nature, and he then 
 preached sermons on the uses of deformity and of phys- 
 
 ATIBC4O 
 
EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 
 
 ical danger. From time to time he observed new phases 
 of the same riddle, and tore the disguise of a curse from 
 many a blessing. At last he consolidated the fruit of his 
 observations in our second volume, a subtle and curious 
 contribution to the thought of the time, but one so un- 
 pretending of system as to be properly classified with 
 his “Literary Varieties.” 
 
 In the fact that the material of the third volume, 
 entitled “Building Eras in Religion,” was selected by 
 Dr. Bushnell himself as that which he was willing to 
 have stand when he was gone, we have his indorsement 
 of it as being not inconsistent with his ripest thought. 
 Notwithstanding this the articles were some of them 
 among his earliest, as the date given with each will 
 show. 
 
 It is through these three volumes that he will be best 
 known to the world in his personality asa man. They 
 are both flower and fruit, and not only illustrate but are 
 the growth, the ceaseless activity, the ever-varying form 
 of life in one of the most living of men. 
 
 Eniror. 
 
 1881. 
 
 Since the above was written another book, “The Spirit 
 in Man,” has been published (1903), a book which also 
 contains much of miscellaneous material. 
 
 Epiror. 
 1908. 
 
AUTHOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 It would have been easy to construct a treatise on 
 the general subject. presented in these~ essays, and 
 there was a considerable temptation to do it, in the 
 fact that our treatises of Natural Theology are so com- 
 monly at fault, in tracing what they call their “ argu- 
 ment from design ”—assuming that Physical Uses are 
 the decisive tests, or objects, of all the contrivance to 
 be looked for in God’s works. Whereas they are re- 
 solvable, in far the greater part, by no such tests, but 
 only by their Moral Uses, which are, in fact, the last 
 ends of God in every thing, including even his Physi- 
 cal Uses themselves. Still the defect here specified 
 will as easily be corrected by these essays, on so many 
 promiscuous topics, as by a regular treatise, and they 
 have the advantage of being each a subject by itself. 
 And, tosecure this advantage, they are thrown together 
 in a manner as neglectful of system as possible. They 
 
~ AUTHOR’S PREFACE, 
 
 do not make a book to be read in course, but a book to 
 be taken up as the moods of the mind, and the rising 
 of this or that question, may prepare an affinity for 
 them. For there is scarcely a year that passes with 
 out somehow recalling every one of these topics, or 
 topics closely related, in a manner that prepares to new 
 interest, or awakens fresh curiosity. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PaGE 
 L—Of Night and Sleep..... paraiso MU ajavarelaiefoie ater sista) wleleta steven le: 
 II.—Of Want and Waste......... siemeataleiatciai ialsiapeels mieeeiaieie 29 
 IIL —Of Bad Government.............20-- Stainishatsleleia siesta siOe 
 IV.—Of Oblivion, or Dead History....... sielemieterceporetnsy siete at %3 
 V.—Of Physical Pain............. FCO FOSS aC ORG cocci 95 
 WiE—OFf Physical Danger. ; . ./.(...<<clacweiase sisuoe's saae senets 120 
 VII.—Of the Conditions of Solidarity................00005 142 
 VIII.—Of Non-Intercourse between Worlds.................. 165 
 XE — OD WInkE? 5.0 oa ec ciniwsles ciels wis aJglerere Giateinicier aa aiaval eiatote 188 
 X.—Of Things Unsightly and Disgustful.................. 210 
 XI.—Of Plague and Pestilence. .........cesccecccccacceece 232 
 XII.— Of Insanity .......... a teisietaioial d/ajelsiaiaiatelaisiovalsistelsialcta .. 249 
 XIII.—Of the Animal Infestations...... Si nieiajstele etalelaiciereien stare 274 
 XIV.—Of Distinctions of Color....... aeiavdiaioare\win celehsie ms erenpoe - 296 
 XV.—Of the Mutabilities of Life............ aR bMeddar eae ard) 
 
 VOL GHG SA ioc cic w alate dic uw bniaielaiciclelealwicieuielsisuisiaeieinied'elee 844 
 

 
 OAL PR 
 
 4 
 
MORAL USES 
 
 or 
 
 PA ee ee IN Ce 
 
 I. 
 OF NIGHT AND SLEEP, 
 
 In proposing a series of articles on the moral uses of 
 things, particularly the dark things of the world, I 
 assume the reality of final causes without argument. 
 Our pantheistic literature, and many of our late 
 philosophers, it is well known, disallow final causes 
 altogether, treating them in fact with disrespect, as 
 being only feeble and fond conceits that have amused 
 the fancy of religious people heretofore, but are now to 
 be dismissed. I do not write for such. But what we 
 all see with our eyes I think I have some right to as- 
 sume, namely, that this whole frame of being is. bedded 
 in Mind. Matter itself is not more evident than the 
 mind that shapes it, fills it, and holds it in training for 
 its uses. Philosophy itself, call it positive or by any 
 other name, is possible only in the fact, that the world is 
 cognate with mind and cast in the molds of intelligence. 
 And then, as it belongs inherently to mind that it 
 
8 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 must have its ends, the All-Present mind must have 
 reference to ends, and the whole system of causes must 
 at bottom be, exactly as we see it to be, a system 
 of final causes. That the philosophers discard them 
 ought, accordingly, to cost us no concern, for they havea 
 wondrously copious ability to assert themselves ; which 
 they have kept on doing and will, rolling in their tidal 
 sweep of conviction from every point of time, and all 
 structural things, and organic workings of the creation. 
 Speculation can as well keep out the sea. 
 
 The dark things of which I am to speak are such, in 
 general, as have some relation more or less perceptible 
 to, or connection with, Moral Evil, which is, in fact, the 
 the night-side of the creation. All the enigmas and 
 lowering difficulties we meet are shadows from this; — 
 for it is to meet the conditions and prepare the discipline 
 of this, that so many rough, unseemly kinds of furni- 
 ture are required. Pursuing the logical method, I 
 ought, therefore, to begin with an introductory chapter 
 on moral evil itself, or, at least, on the uses of that pro- 
 bational training of liberty that involves so great peril, 
 and the certainty of such unspeakable disaster. But 
 I prefer, on the whole, not to observe the logical 
 method, lest, by seeming to be engaged in the heavy 
 work of a treatise, I make all the subjects heavy and 
 dry in proportion. They have each an interest more 
 fresh and peculiar when taken by itself. I propose 
 to call them up, therefore, in a perfectly miscella- 
 neous way, taking the lighter and less troublesome, 
 and the darker and more difficult—those which lie in 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 9 
 
 nature and its appointments, those which lie in the 
 fortunes of individual and social experience, and those 
 which relate to the scheme of Providence—without re- 
 gard to order, and as mere convenience may direct. In 
 this way I propose, for the present article, a subject 
 not generally felt to be at all dark or difficult, and only 
 just over the line, when it is more closely and thought- 
 fully considered, namely, Wight and Sleep. 
 
 I put the two together because they are so closely 
 related, one being a fact of external nature, provided 
 for in the astronomic appointments of nature, the other 
 being a corresponding appointment of our psychologi- 
 eal system itself, only somewhat more absolute than 
 the other. For, within the polar circles, the astronom- 
 ic night is continuous for six long months, while the 
 psychological necessities of sleep maintain their period 
 unchanged, and the human populations are obliged to 
 seize a night about once in twenty-four hours, when no 
 such night is provided by the diurnal revolutions. In 
 which we see that our human body and mind have a 
 night appointment in them, more unvarying and fixed 
 than the planetary night itself So that if we raise 
 the question whether our psychologic nature is timed 
 by the planetary order, or the planetary order timed 
 to fit our psychologic nature, we are thrown upon the 
 latter supposition, by the fact that our sleep has reasons 
 more absolute and more inherent than the reasons even 
 of the astronomic order itself. Still the night we have 
 without, and the night we inherently want, are really 
 coincident, in all the more habitable parts of the earth 
 
 1* 
 
10 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 But if the question be, why it is, either that any 
 such institution of night is appointed, or any such 
 want as sleep prescribed, we encounter some difficulty. 
 As regards the former, it is no sufficient answer to say 
 that the revolution of the earth, turning it away just 
 half the time from the sun, creates a night by astro- 
 nomic necessity; for the astronomic system might, 
 perhaps, have been differently organized, or so as to 
 maintain a perpetual day; every habitable orb, for 
 example, having for its sun a vast concave orb shining 
 perpetually round it, and creating neither night, nor 
 shadow, nor region of polar cold. As regards the latter, 
 too, the want of rest and sleep, it does not appear that 
 our body and mind might not both have been so 
 organized as to be capable of perpetual action, without 
 either exhaustion or weariness. And since we are put 
 here, not for rest, but for action, by that only winning 
 the required character, and becoming what is given 
 us to be, why are we not made capable of sleepless 
 activity? If our errand here is the trial and training 
 of our liberty, we are neither being tried nor trained, 
 when our very liberty itself is sunk in a state of un- 
 consciousness. Such a state wants relativity, we might 
 say, to the errand on whicl. we are sent, and the time 
 thus occupied is lost time. And when the creation 
 puts out its lights and commands us away into a state 
 of oblivion, what is that oblivion but a state in which 
 we are to drop, and even forget, oar errand ¢ 
 
 Besides, there will appear to many to be something 
 fearful and forbidding in the expression of darkness. 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 11 
 
 Children are commonly afraid of the dark, and even 
 Holy Scripture makes the state of “outer darkness” 
 an image of all that is most terrible in God’s retribu 
 tions. And what shall we say of that mental and 
 bodily state in which the senses are shut up,and reason 
 itself gone out, and nothing left of a nature so high in 
 dignity but a mere palpitating clod? What do we 
 say of one who habitually drowns his higher nature in 
 a similar condition of stupefaction by the excesses of 
 intemperance? And if this be a crime, as it is by the 
 general consent of mankind, is it not remarkable that 
 half the world’s population is, all the while, laid pros- 
 trate and senseless, by a soporific planned for, in the 
 economy both of heaven and of their own bodies ? 
 
 Besides, night is itself the opportunity of crime, and 
 we even speak of crimes in a general way as being 
 deeds of darkness, 
 
 “Oh treacherous night! 
 Thou lendest thy ready vail to every treason, 
 And teeming mischiefs thrive beneath thy shade.” 
 
 Incendiaries, thieves, robbers, assassins, go to their 
 deeds under shelter of the night, and even prefer a 
 specially dark night. Adulteries are stolen pleasures 
 of the night. It is in the night that great conspiracies 
 are hatched. Where crimes are committed by day, 
 the absconding is commonly by night. And there is 
 still another reason for this crowding of crime into the 
 dark hours, in the fact that the world is then asleep, 
 and the particular victims selected will then be locket 
 
12 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 in a state of unconsciousness—inobservant as in death 
 itself, and passive to whatever wrong will make them 
 its prey. Since the world, then, is made, as we know 
 it to be, for the trial of creatures who will be in wrong, 
 why is it made to cover wrong-doing a full half of the 
 time, and furnish it an opportunity so convenient? 
 Or, if we must be creatures of sleep, why is it that 
 the law of sleep is not made absolute upon all, so that 
 the bad shall be taken into custody by it, as the inno- 
 cent and good are made defenseless by it? for then the 
 nights could settle down upon the world as times of 
 truce for all wrong-doing. When, too, we create a 
 special police for the night, what is the implication, but 
 that we impeach the care of Providence by proposing 
 to supply one of its considerable defects ourselves? 
 As if it belonged to us to assume the defense of inno- 
 cence, now that Providence has taken away its shield! 
 
 Is there not, also, another deed of darkness, not com- 
 monly so named, but thought of with eminent respect, 
 and which, partly for that reason, is, morally speaking, 
 more harmful? I refer to the untimely shows and 
 bewildering dissipations of what is called fashionable 
 society. It is very true that we do not want the whole 
 twelve hours for sleep. And the evening, after the great 
 works of the day are finished, is a time favorable above 
 all others to the genuine pleasures of society. But this 
 is not the way of those who rule the mode and claim 
 the chief honors of society. It is not the faces and 
 voices of friends, or the lively cheer of intellectual and 
 social play, that meets their idea; they are commonly 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 13 
 
 incapable of any so fine sort of pleasure. They do not 
 so much care to be freshened, as to be in figure. Natu- 
 valness they despise, and the more artificially got up 
 every thing may be for the desired show, the better. 
 Their time must be taken against nature; for society. 
 they think, would be a tame affair, submitted to the 
 appointments of astronomy. And what so fit time, or 
 time so finely exclusive, is there, as when the common 
 world is stilled in sleep? By the brilliancy of their 
 lights, and by figures floating in dress and glittering in 
 gems, can they not make a show more dazzling than 
 day? Entertainment is the same thing as expense, and 
 a crowd they call society. Their time begins just 
 where the evening ends, and the throng disperses for 
 sleep, when sleep might better end. The young men 
 and women of sixty—for, in this high tier of fashion, it 
 is not permissible te be old—are too bitterly fagged and 
 jaded to sleep, and the really young have their heads 
 too full of excitement. Sleep, at least, is long in com- 
 ing, and comes more as a fever than as a refreshment. 
 At length, when the dew is dried up and every bird is 
 wearied with its song, the young frivolity, be it man or 
 woman, rises to begin another day. The brain is sore; 
 the day is dull or only enlivened by fretfulness. There 
 is no relish for either business or study, and no capaci- 
 ty for it; and where the dissipation is frequent, no 
 habit of order and right industry can survive. Life 
 will become as trivial as it is artificial. 
 
 What substitute would have been sougif, if no such 
 opportunity of night had been given, we can not pre- 
 
‘14 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 tend to say; but this we sufficiently know, that no kind 
 of substitute could produce a more wide-spread, practi- 
 cally immense demoralization, in the same high -ireles 
 of life. It changes, in fact, the general cast of society. 
 
 ' There is, besides, no mode of character so heartless and 
 
 false and cruel, as that of high fashion, or so totally 
 | opposite to all the noblest, best ends of living. 
 
 Going on from this point, now, to speak of the moral 
 uses of night and sleep, we have it, first of all, to say, 
 as regards the bad opportunities they give, that such 
 opportunities are not bad, but are only made so by the 
 abuses of wrong; for what best thing is there which 
 wrong may not abuse? The very system of moral lib- 
 erty supposes that wrong is going to have, or at least, 
 make, its opportunities. And since we are all in wrong 
 as being under evil, how shall we be made to under- 
 stand more impressively what is in all wrong, than 
 when we and society are its victims? We are put in 
 moral society, in fact, to act and be acted upon as in 
 terms of duty—existing alone, no terms of duty would 
 be given—and a great part of the benefit is to be, that 
 we get revelations of wrong, and become so revolted by 
 it as to be turned away from it. And what revelations 
 can be more effective than to see it stealing upon inno- 
 cence in deeds of midnight robbery and murder, show- 
 ing how cruel and cowardly and detestably mean it is; 
 or to see it crowding society out of heaven’s times, and 
 turning it into a pageant of the night, as remote as 
 possible from the sobrieties of reason, and the sweet 
 simplicity of virtue? 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 15 
 
 Consider, next, how differently tempered a reali of 
 bad minds becomes, under the ordinance of night and 
 sleep, from what it otherwise would be. Always 
 fresh and strong, incapable of exhaustion as the spring 
 of a watch, moral ideas would seldom get near enough 
 to be felt. Evil is proud, stiffening itself always against 
 the restrictions of God, and trying to be God itself. 
 Therefore only a little modicum of capacity is given it, 
 which runs out in asingle day. After twelve or six- 
 teen hours, the man that rose in the morning, full of 
 might, as if a young eternity were in him, begins to 
 
 flag, his nervous energy is spent, his limbs are heavy, 
 his motions want spirit and precision. If he tries, for 
 some particular reason, to hold on over whole days, his 
 hands grow weaker, his eyelids more heavy, till, at 
 length, he is obliged to resign himself to his fate, and 
 drops, a merely unconscious lump, on the couch of the 
 sleeper. Every day this lesson of frailty is given him. 
 The grass that is cut down by the mower’s scythe does 
 not sooner wither and dry up, than the strength of the 
 mower himself. We take our very capacity thus in 
 little loans of only a few hours, and when the time 
 has gone, we fall back into God’s -bosom again to be 
 recruited. Were it not for this wise and morally beau- 
 tiful arrangement, we might be as stiff in wrong as so 
 many evil angels. 
 
 Having only this short run of power, we are humbled 
 to a softer key. We do not feel or act as we should, if 
 we could rush on our way and have our sin as a law 
 of ceaseless momentum, for the whole period of ou 
 
16 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 life. For we are like an engine that is started off on 
 the track by itself; the fuel and water will soon be 
 exhausted, and then it must stop. But, if it could ge 
 -n without fuel or water, it would even whirl itself 
 across a continent and pitch itself into the sea. So, if, 
 Yeing loose in evil, we could rush interminably on, never 
 vo be spent or recruited by sleep, our bad momentum 
 would itself drive us on, till we are hurried by the goal 
 of life itself. We should be hard in our self-will 
 beyond conception; our very ambitions and purposes 
 would fly, bullet-wise, at their mark; consideration, con- 
 ciliation, candor, patience, would all be driven out of the 
 world by the remorseless persistency of our habit. Hap- 
 pily it is not so. We are stopped every few hours and 
 brought to nothingness. Perhaps we do not say that 
 we are made little, but, what is far better, we practi- 
 cally are so to ourselves, whether we think it or not; 
 for feeling is often truer than thought, and takes the 
 type of fact when thought does not. We are not 
 bad gods or demons in our impetuosity, but men, men 
 that go to sleep as children do and must. Being spaced 
 off in this manner by stoppages, we consent to limits. 
 We are softened and gentled in feeling, more perhaps 
 than we would like to be. It is difficult not to be 
 sometimes tender. Reason will sometimes get a chance 
 to speak, and sometimes even preaching will meet a 
 fair possibility. The tremendous passion for gain, and, 
 speaking more inclusively, all that belongs to the 
 world-spirit, and the spell it works in minds under 
 evil, is broken every few hours by the counter-spell of 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 1? 
 
 sleep, and so the infatuation is restricted. So that, 
 having this appointment in it, we can see that God has 
 prepared even the world itself to be a corrector of 
 worldliness. Even the astronomic revolutions he sets 
 running as a mill against it. He buries the world in 
 darkness that we may not see it. He takes the soul 
 off into a world of unconsciousness and dream to break 
 up its bad enchantment. He palsies the hand to make 
 it let go, palsies even the brain to stifle its infatuations. 
 Were it not for this I verily believe that what we call 
 the world would get to be a kind of demoniacal posses- 
 sion. 
 
 In the same way al: the various malignities of evil 
 passion are either extirpated or greatly softened. After 
 some years, prejudices begin to be tired of being slept 
 over. Jealousies rankle as long as they stay, but they 
 get tired of staying, when we do not stay with them, 
 but go to sleep over them. We can not hate an enemy 
 save intermittently, but have to begin again every 
 morning—which we have less and less appetite for, 
 and finally come to like that morning best which does 
 not begin at all. Were it not for this arrangement, 
 our malignities might burnus up. But the taking away 
 of our consciousness is a kind of compulsory Sabbath, 
 or truce of God. No hatred burns in the unconscious 
 man. No revenge or jealousy lowers on his face in 
 that soft hour of oblivion. If he went to bed heated 
 by an ugly conversation, if he was severe and bitter in 
 his judgments, if all charities were scorched away by 
 his fierce denunciations, he will rise in the morning 
 
18 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 cool and sweet as the morning, and the gentle cheer of 
 his voice will show that he is clear of his bad mood, 
 and likes to have it known. A man must be next +c 
 a devil who wakes angry. After his unconscious 
 Sabbath he begins another day, and every day is Mon- 
 day. How beautifully thus are we drawn, by this kind 
 economy of sleep, to the exercise of all good disposi- 
 tions! The acrid and sour ingredients of evil, the 
 grudges, the wounds of feeling, the hypochondriae sus- 
 picions, the black torments of misanthropy, the morose 
 fault-findings, are so far tempered and sweetened by 
 God’s gentle discipline of sleep, that we probably do 
 not even conceive how demoniacally bitter they would 
 be, if no such kind interruptions broke their spell. 
 
 It is also a great thing for us, as regards the interest 
 and right ordering of life, that we are made into 
 chapters in this manner, and are not left to that tedious 
 kind of way which we sometimes find in a book that 
 goes on to its end without headings of transition, or 
 resting-places of cessation. We go by dates and days, 
 and a year is three hundred and sixty-five chapters of 
 life. By these dates we remember ourselves, and with- 
 out them could scarcely remember ourselves at all. 
 Time itself would only be whisked away, as the trees 
 are when we are whirled through a forest. And so we 
 should have as little note of the present as memory of 
 the past. It is not so when we come to the end of a 
 day and stop. In one view it is a complete chapter, 
 
 and we ourselves are substantially ended with it. 
 - Then, having passed away into the nowhere of sleep, 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 19 
 
 we come out new-born in the morning—other and yet 
 the same—-to begin another more advanced chapter. 
 The waking-point is different from the point where we 
 vanished ; and it is one of the pleasant things we think 
 of, that to-day is going to be different from yesterday. 
 If we really thought it was going to be the same day 
 over again, we should be mortally sick of it in advance. 
 No, we are going to do something, set on something, 
 have or obtain something, in advance of what belonged 
 to yesterday. And why not something better, best of 
 all, wisest and holiest? We do not always ask that 
 question, but the fresh life of our new morning has at 
 least some better affinity in it, as the flowers that have 
 blossomed in the night are more fragrant than the old 
 ones that have, all, the smell of yesterday in them. 
 Not every morning is God’s morning thus in the soul ; 
 but how much closer is that holier dawn to feeling, 
 and easier to be conceived, for the new-born life that 
 has opened so many chapters of morning experience. 
 As one day of the year is certain to be Christmas, there 
 ought to be some day in such a calendar of days when 
 Christ is born to the soul—a sublime Anno Domini, at 
 which all after-dates begin. 
 
 Sleep also greatly enlarges our mental experience, 
 giving us a different sense of ourselves and our im- 
 mortal capabilities. I make nothing of the argument 
 from sleep and a return to consciousness in waking, 
 for the fact of a resurrection and a future life. The 
 faith of immortality depends on a sense of it be- 
 gotten, not on an argument for it concluded. And 
 
20 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 here is the office of sleep, that it wakens the sense, 
 while it does not furnish the argument. It is just that 
 kind of experience that makes us, I might almost say, 
 completely other and different to ourselves. If our 
 life were a continuous waking state, fifty or seventy 
 years long, having light and day to correspond, it 
 might be difficult to say what we should be, but we 
 certainly should not be what we are. Our sleep is not 
 only a great mystery to philosophers, but a practical 
 mystery to all men, even such as never had a thought 
 of it. We are carried by it into a new world, as dis- 
 tinct from that of our waking hours as if our spirit 
 were translated. The body is alive only as a vegetable 
 lives; the senses are closed, the soul itself is uncon- 
 scious, displaying yet its incapacity to cease from 
 action. The thoughts fly as swiftly as when we are 
 awake, and sometimes a great deal farther and higher; 
 we remember, imagine, hope, fear, hurrying on through 
 this and unknown worlds, creating scenes of glory and 
 pain, shuddering in perils, exulting in deliverances, all 
 unreal, yet for the time reality itself. The immortal 
 element strives on, incapable of cessation, determined 
 never to cease; displaying its inherent, essential, self 
 asserting eternity. And so we become, as it were, a 
 different self, that we may know the self we are; for 
 if we make as little of our dreams or sleep-thoughts 
 as we may, they do, at least, show us the fearfully sub- 
 lime activity of our nature, that must still act, when 
 we have no longer any will to action. What a dis- 
 covery is it thus to a child. when first he begins to 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 21 
 
 reach after the distinction of a dream! He has been 
 somewhere, he knows not where; he has seen strange 
 people, he knows not who: only the vanishing smiles 
 and dimples playing on his face told more of the para- 
 dise he was in, hearing their sweet voices and looking 
 on their beautiful faces, than he can even begin to 
 stammer about when he wakes. If he was unwell or 
 overcharged with food, he has probably fared differ- 
 ently ; bad creatures have chased him, strange mon- 
 sters have made strange noises, ogres have taken him 
 in their teeth. Startled out of sleep, he clings in a 
 tremor to his mother, and when she shows him that 
 there is nobody in the room, that it was only a thought 
 in his head, a dream, what isa dream? At that ques- 
 tion he is working visibly for days, till the dream ceases 
 more and more to be a fearful creature, and he begins 
 to imagine that a dream is a kind of nobody or 
 nothing that came out of himself. What a mystery is 
 he thus beginning to be to himself? And just so are 
 we all passing out, so to speak, into this other-world 
 state and returning, as many times as we have seen 
 days, yet knowing nothing of it still, save that we get 
 no understanding at all by our visits. Perhaps we are 
 so dull as never to have had a question about the 
 mystery. No matter, we are none the less altered by 
 it. This double nature, capable of a double existence, 
 is not the same it would be if we made no such excur- 
 sions into unimagined states and worlds. It is great, 
 greater than we can even think, and reaches farther 
 than we can definitely know. Sleep is a spiritualizer, — 
 
po MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 thus, in the constitution of nature itself. By it the 
 capacity of other modes of existence is made familiar. 
 Saying nothing of the faith of immortality, we get a 
 sense in it of ourselves that very nearly contains that 
 faith. It is scarcely possible, in this view, to overrate 
 the importance of it in the moral training of souls. 
 Meantime, night as much enlarges the knowledge 
 we get of the world as sleep the knowledge we get of 
 ourselves. Perpetual sunlight and day would have 
 kept us in a very small circle of discovery; for, as the 
 vail of unconsciousness drawn over the soul in sleep 
 reveals the depths of our spiritual nature to itself, aud 
 makes it a mystery of vastness and immortal grandeur, 
 so the night of the sphere reveals innumerable other 
 spheres, and peoples the sky with worlds of glory 
 otherwise undiscovered. At this point of possibility 
 all the discoveries of astronomic science begin. And 
 the infinitude of God’s reaim begins at this point to be 
 felt, apart from all science. We are no more shut in, 
 or cornered, in a small triangle of knowledge, where 
 sun and moon and earth are the mere-stone boundaries 
 of the All; but we go out to look upon, or apprehend, 
 or rather to be apprehended by, a real universe, in 
 God’s own measures. And this we do as truly before 
 science begins as after. Enough that we are made to 
 think areal Everywhere. We may fall into no specu- 
 lations about the population or non-population of 
 these realms; still the sky will mean something like 
 “heaven,” or heaven something like that, and the 
 word “celestial” will get a place in all languages for 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 23 
 
 powers divine, and creatures of a supramundane 
 quality. Our moral nature will be raised in order, 
 too, by the sense of its religious affinity with other 
 beings and worlds. This, too, by means of the night 
 —‘“night unto night showeth forth knowledge.” 
 
 “Tn her starry shade 
 Of dim and solitary loveliness, 
 I learned the language of another world.” 
 
 Sometimes we shall be oppressed, no doubt, by this 
 dread immensity of worlds, and fall back into im- 
 pressions of our insignificance that quite disable us. 
 But it will be a salutary oppressiveness; for the im- 
 mensity felt is but the type of God, and the sublime 
 purity and order it displays make it only a type the 
 more attractive that it represents our ideals, when the 
 distractions and deformities we meet here below repre- 
 sent only the moral disorder and conscious guilt of our 
 practice. We get an idea thus of God which very nearly 
 asserts itself, and are brought to conceive a glorious 
 unknown society to whom we are somehow related. 
 All the conditions of our moral existence are enlarged 
 and exalted. And this we say, be it observed, not in the 
 sense that we have got arguments to be so used, but in 
 the sense that, being constituted as we are, we are taken 
 by these inevitable impressions, and have them more or 
 less distinctly felt in their practical reality. As tenants 
 of a star-world, we are not the same beings we should 
 be in a world of mere sunlight. 
 
 We have still a different kind of benefit in the fact 
 
24 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 that night and sleep bring us times of revision or moral 
 reflection, such as greatly promote the best uses of 
 existence. To live in a perpetual day, and have what 
 we call the hours of business ceaseless even as the flow 
 of rivers, would leave us no room for reflection. We 
 should be like seas in the trade-winds, never getting 
 still enough to reflect any thing. Our soul would be 
 blind to itself by reason of the perpetual seeing of our 
 eyes. God, therefore, draws a curtain over his light, 
 checks the busy hours of work and the turmoil of trade, 
 and recalls us to moods of silence and meditative thought- 
 fulness in the depths of our own spirit. Many of ns, I 
 know, are sadly indisposed to this, and, in one view, 
 wretchedly incapable of it. Yet, when their day is 
 ended, even such will naturally fall into a different 
 mood. If the day has not gone well, and they are much 
 wearied by its engagements, it will be difficult some- 
 times not to meet the question, who they are that they 
 should be wrestling in such struggles, It is quite 
 natural, too, for them, going over the day, to ask what, 
 after all, it amounts to. And then it will be strange 
 if they do not sometimes go a little further, and ask 
 whither they are going, on what point moving, in such 
 a life. Deeper and more serious natures, even though 
 sadly imbued with guilt, will be turned almost of course 
 to some kind of review. Another day is gone, its works 
 are ended. Ambition has spent the fever of another 
 day. Pleasure has exhausted her charms. Idleness 
 itself is weary. And now, as the world grows still and 
 excitement dies away, the mind calls off its activity and 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 25 
 
 turns it inward on itself. It hears no call of God, 
 perhaps, and thinks of doing nothing as aduty. Buta 
 pause has come, and something it must think of, for it 
 can not stand still. Detained by nothing now on hand, 
 it travels far, and makes a large review. It takes in, aa 
 it were by snatches, other worlds. It touches the 
 springs of its own immortal wants, and they answer 
 quick and heavily. Whatever wrong has been com- 
 mitted stalks into the mind with an appalling tread. If 
 God is a subject unwelcome, and guilt another even 
 more unwelcome, the moral nature has so great ad- 
 vantage now, and, withal, so great sensibility, that 
 the door of the soul is held open to things not welcome. 
 All those highest and most piercing truths that most 
 deeply concern the great problem of life will often come 
 nigh to thoughtful men in the dusk of their evenings 
 and their hours of retirement to rest. The night is the 
 jadgment bar of the day. About all the reflection 
 there is in the world is due, if not directly to the night, 
 to the habit prepared and fashioned by it. 
 
 We sometimes wake, too, in the dead of night, and 
 it must be a very hard man that can read these night- 
 thoughts which are not poems, without being stirred 
 by convictions more or less appalling. The man is still 
 on his pillow, the world is still even to sublimity, the 
 eyes are shut, or at least see nothing if they are open. 
 Perhaps it is some crime that has murdered sleep, and 
 perhaps not. Great thoughts, and wonderfully distinct, 
 crowd in, stirring great convictions—all the more wel- 
 
 come to the good man, to the bad how terrible! 
 a 
 
26 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 “‘Thou has visited me in the night,” says David, “thou 
 has tried me.” And again, “ My reins instruct me in 
 in the night-season.” What lessons of wisdom have 
 every man’s reins given him in the depths of the night! 
 What revelations of thought have come into his mind! 
 things how high, how close to other worlds! reproofs 
 how piercing, in authority how nearly divine! 
 
 In all these specifications, it will be seen that I am 
 not looking after any kind of argument for the truths 
 of religion, or the vindication of God, but showing 
 simply how we are attempered, practically, to the best 
 things; that also, perhaps, without knowing it. Night 
 and sleep are not a contrivance to furnish us with 
 thoughts or notions, afterward to be applied to the 
 moral uses of life, but are fomentations rather directly 
 applied, producing, in that manner, modulations of 
 feeling and mitigations of temper, such as quite un- 
 demonize our bad affinities. They do it also, it remains 
 to say, in yet another way, still closer to the purposes 
 of religion. It has been a great question with many, 
 whether it is possible to make out any proof of the 
 goodness of God from the mere light of nature. But it 
 matters little whether we can or not, if only we are 
 somehow made to feel that goodness, as we most 
 certainly are, prior to all questions of argument or 
 opinion. . And I think it is done more effectually by the 
 institution of sleep than by any thing else. Sleep is the 
 perfectly passive side of our existence, and best prepares 
 us to the sense of whatever is to be got by mere recep. 
 tivity. In the day we protect ourselves, or at least 
 
OF NIGHT AND SLEEP. 27 
 
 imagine we do. In the night we can not so much as 
 think of doing it. We are switched off from all self- 
 care, and our very mind runs in grooves not laid by 
 us. Having spent our loan of capacity, we fall back 
 into God’s arms to he refitted by him. Wesleep in his 
 bosom, even as a child in the bosom of its mother. 
 And this falling asleep, in one view compulsory, has 
 yet, in another, a strange kind of faith in it, in which 
 we consent to drop off the verge of consciousness and 
 be no more ourselves. The gulf we drop into is deep 
 and wild, but we go down trustfully, and there we rest. 
 And this we do every day, coming out as often new 
 created for life’s purposes. If we are not religious 
 enough to say, “God giveth his beloved sleep,” we do, 
 at least, feel ourselves refreshed by some wondrous be- 
 nignity somewhere in which we have trusted. Neither 
 does calling that benignity fate at all satisfy us. There 
 is dear good-will in it somewhere, which, if we should 
 name, is God. And we have this feeling of Un- 
 known Benignity the more certainly, that we gave our- 
 selves to it in wrong and conscious ill-desert, which 
 itself comports not with fate, and as little with any 
 feeling but that of some divine goodness. 
 
 Besides, we are observers here as well as subjects of 
 experience. We look on a good man’s sleep, and there 
 is nothing so beautiful. It is Luther who has worn out 
 his powers in some great fight for God; or it is Wash- 
 ington half deserted by his country when bearing its 
 burdens, and now, forgetting all, he has fallen back 
 into God’s arms, to forget also himself. There he lies 
 
28 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 uncaring, and receiving back, from God’s gentle fomem 
 tations, the powers that shall furnish another great to 
 morrow. Standing at the open door of his chamber, 
 and looking on his deep, still sleep, it is as if the eternal, 
 ever faithful Goodness had him now to Himself! And 
 yet more touching and closer to the tenderness of mercy 
 is the very bad man’s sleep. He has drunk the cup of 
 guilty pleasure dry. His tongue is weary of blasphemy. 
 His deed of crime, perhaps of blood, is done, and the 
 chapter of his day is ended. Having spent the power 
 God gave him for good in a violation of his throne, he 
 goes remorsefully to his bed, and there forgets even his 
 remorse. But God does not forget him or toss him out 
 of the world, but he rests encircled by the goodness of 
 God, nourished by his patience, to be refitted for to- 
 morrow. Probably he will do just what he has done 
 before, but he shall have his opportunity of good, 
 though many times forfeited; for it is a great part of 
 God’s purpose in sleep to renew abused powers; else 
 how many would never sleep again. Therefore, who 
 of us can look on a world buried in sleep, a guilty, un- 
 grateful world, broadly sunk in evil, and do it without 
 some deeply affecting, overwhelming sense of the good- 
 ness of God. I say not that all men have it as a 
 thought or opinion, they do not; but they do have it, 
 which is far better, as a feeling, that some unknown 
 benignity inspheres them, call it by whatever name, 
 In this feeling, too, all the most practical uses of life 
 are concentered and made convergent on the bending 
 of the soul to God, in ways of reverence and religion, 
 
IL. 
 OF WANT AND WASTE. 
 
 By want, I mean a state of short supply; by waste, 
 a creative lavishment of things that are not utilized, and 
 perhaps never can be. Both meet us together at every 
 turn, as light and shade in the same picture, and they 
 so far belong together, that I shall not feel myself at 
 liberty to part them, any further than it may be neces- 
 sary, to give them a sufficiently distinct consideration. 
 
 Considering that God is a being of infinite bounty 
 in his dispositions, as he is of infinite fullness in his re- 
 sources, we should say beforehand that he can never 
 institute a condition of short supply. Proportion, too, 
 is a great and almost principal law of his realm, planet 
 yearning after planet, and atom after atom, quantities 
 of matter and motion after other quantities of matter 
 and motion, regulated by exact ratios of distance—all 
 the masses of the astronomic universe, all the atomic 
 elements of universal chemistry—feeding each other, 
 so to speak, in supplies that exactly meet their quanti- | 
 ties of hunger. And yet, when we descend, or rather 
 ascend, to man, we are met by the remarkable discovery 
 that, for some reason, he is put under an ordinance of 
 want, or short supply. He wants clothing for his body, 
 as no one of all the beasts wants it; but it is given to 
 the beasts and denied to him, except as he prepares it for 
 himself. He wants a house for shelter; the squirrels 
 
30 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 have their trees, and the wolves their dens, but the 
 face of the world offers no house made ready for him. 
 He wants food and must have it; the ravens are fed, 
 but the Father’s bounty prepares him neither table nor 
 bread. He wants tools wherewith to help himself; but 
 the iron lies under the hills, and he must dig it out; 
 and then he must find how to reduce it; and then how 
 to make steel of it; and then how to fashion it; and, 
 finally, how to temper it, before it is ready for use. He 
 has also other kinds of wants. His ear wants music, 
 and his eye wants beauty, and his mind wants knowl- 
 edge, and his heart wants worlds-full of friends, and his 
 imaginative ideals transcend all facts; but though he 
 aches and writhes in so many deep kinds of hunger, he 
 only catches here and there a glimpse of what his long- 
 ings struggle after. His very life, in short, appears to 
 be a fixed ordinance of want. We see him set down 
 upon the world, and a thousand cries break out in his 
 hungry nature which there is nothing ready to supply. 
 His being holds no concord visibly with his condition, 
 and there is no way for him to live,'except as he con- 
 quers to himself means and instruments of living, 
 which his Maker has not seen fit to create. He has 
 given instincts or scenting powers to the young lions, 
 by which they seek their meat; but from man he has 
 withholden even these. So very stringent, so deliber- 
 ately meant is the state of want in which he is placed. 
 It is even as if God really had not enough to make up 
 our needed supply. 
 
 And yet he makes an amount of waste in the ontfit 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 31 
 
 of his realm that is almost infinite. What immense 
 burdens of weeds, and grasses, and woods, has he put 
 growing in the remote wilds of nature. With how 
 many choicest and most brilliant flowers does he gar- 
 nish his solitudes, and how unsparingly does he load his 
 gales with perfumes, to be swept across his deserts of 
 sand and his water-deserts that we call seas. And 
 then these deserts of both kinds are themselves called 
 wastes ; and rightly, because they occupy spaces that 
 might have been covered with good land. Whole re- 
 gions of the globe are waste by excess of frost ; others 
 by excess of rain; and others by excess of dryness and 
 heat. The seas, though waste to us, are vast pasture- 
 grounds of life to the watery herds nourished in their 
 prolific bosom, and they rush through its foaming acres 
 in every clime, in such bulk and number as would feed 
 the whole human race, and suffer no diminution. But 
 they die in their depths when their day is over, and are 
 strewed as waste food in the waters. Cargoes of pearls 
 are hid in the sea never to be gathered. Mountain- 
 weights of gold are sunk, in gravity, down to the 
 earth’s center, or, at least, below where any shaft can 
 reach them. God has cabinets of diamonds and other 
 precious gems, that he keeps in his caverns for his own 
 particular inspection, never to be seen by men. We 
 are learning just now also that the forces of the world 
 are much more precious in his eye than the gems; that he 
 lets no force be lost or wasted ; that what was forest ages 
 ago, and a ledge of coal last month, and a steam power 
 yesterday, is water and diffusive gas and heat to-day; 
 
32 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 and thus, going through her rounds of correlation, na- 
 ture keeps herself exactly good, squandering no mite 
 of her original force. And therefore it is all the more 
 strange, that such immense quantities of forces are 
 kept in play from age to age, that never were and 
 never can be utilized. Thus, if we could husband and 
 apply the whole tide-swing force of the sea, it would 
 suffice to keep more wheels in action than will ever 
 exist in fifty such worlds as this. In the Gulf Stream 
 alone, there is a greater amount of mill-force than in 
 all the rivers and waterfalls of the planet. We offer it as 
 a great proof of God’s beneficence that he has made such 
 provision for our culinary, heating, and steam-producing 
 fires, in the immense coal formations of the globe; but 
 if all the forests and oil and coal measures we have on 
 hand were burned up in a single day, they would not 
 make as much heat, probably, as the great central fires 
 underground are making, day by day and age after age, 
 and will make even for a thousand millenniums. And 
 all this vast expenditure, as far as we can see, is waste, 
 producing nothing, save here and there an earthquake. 
 Even if the fuels were all spent, as many anticipate 
 they will be, we could not get help enough froin these 
 hidden fires, by any method now known, to save our- 
 selves from freezing. Only a mile or two of perpen- 
 dicular distance there would then be between us and 
 supplies of heat sufficient to answer all our purposes, 
 but how to come at the fires we could not find. They 
 are surplus fires, kept burning in their inaccessible cay 
 erns, and shut up there, as consecrated waste, for all time 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 33 
 
 Now these two great elements of want and waste 
 will be seen to produce, and were probably meant to 
 produce, impressions of a moral nature that could not 
 be produced by either, or even by both acting sepa- 
 rately. One of them, standing by itself and taken as an 
 indication of God, would make us think of him as 
 being straitened by too close a feeling of economy, able 
 to give us never what we need, but only what we can 
 possibly make sufficient by much study and weariness 
 of the flesh; the other as being all profusion, caring 
 more to pour it abroad than he does even to serve a 
 possible use by it; as ready to garnish a solitude ora 
 cavern, as to feed a starving invalid or child; doing 
 it, in fact, when many invalids and children starve be- 
 fore him. But these two characters, taken separately, 
 are neither of them true. The just conception is that 
 he is such a being as can fitly combine the two, as the 
 wisest and most completely beneficent sovereignty may 
 require; can stint us for our sakes when not for his 
 own; and then, again, can be lavish in things reducible 
 to no use, that we may not suppose him to have stinted 
 us because he is short, either in his resources or his 
 dispositions. In this manner he can put us always on 
 our industry, without casting any reflection on his 
 bounty. In these cross lights, therefore, of want and 
 waste he is always being discovered, and our impres- 
 sions of him correspond. We could not understand him 
 worthily in a state of merely short supply. As little 
 worthily if he could not limit his profusion, to put us 
 
 in such ways of training as will best meet the wants 
 ge 
 
—— 
 
 B4 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 of our character, and best promote the good design 
 he means to execute in us. 
 
 There is a peculiar felicity and strange cogency also 
 in the impression made upon us of our ill desert in evil, 
 by the joint action of these two factors— an impression 
 that is even a kind of first condition of our moral bene- 
 fit. How many, for example, that are shivering with- 
 out fuel in the cold winter months, are put thinking of 
 the vast, heavy-grown trunks there may be falling down 
 for age, in climes perpetually warmed by the sun, and 
 rotting away on the ground. Monkeys are chattering 
 and leaping in animated glee through the branches that 
 would yield them a fire, how greatly needed, for their 
 comfort. Others are short of food or dying for hunger, 
 who remember the squirrels that are sporting with 
 nuts, or the panthers and bears glutting themselves 
 with food, for want of which they starve. We suffer 
 no want the supply of which is not somewhere perish- 
 
 ‘ ing as waste. The sea is full of food, the solitudes of 
 
 the world are clothed in beauty and vocal with musie, 
 all splendor and beauty and profusion fill the earth; 
 still the riches are sooner wasted than allowed to come 
 to us. And so we are compelled to say—who does not 
 say it?— manifestly God is bountiful, and yet he 
 pinches me. I find it in my nature to love and desire 
 profusion, this is the paradise of my fancy, and almost 
 the practical need of my want, and yet, as if he had 
 some thought against me, God puts me down here low, 
 in short supply. What does it signify? Must I draw 
 some lesson hence against myself?” 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 35 
 
 Pursuing thoughts like these, it will be difficult to 
 avoid the impression of some moral defect or spiritual! 
 alienation that requires a stringently close discipline 
 A sacrament of conviction occupies the whole scheme of 
 life. Whether we speculate or not upon the contrast 
 between our wants and the exuberant waste of Provi- 
 dence, we are set in a different mental attitude, and kept 
 under the dominion of impressions above all salutary 
 to'us. We see the profusion round us, and, if we do 
 not reason from it, we feel what must somehow be im- 
 plied in it. A sense of estrangement breaks in, as it 
 were, through our eyes. We accuse our poverty, and 
 that in turn accuses us. The outward profusion makes 
 us feel our spiritual wants, and the more we feel our 
 spiritual wants, the more closely are we brought to the 
 prodigal’s resolve, when he says, “ I will arise and go to 
 my father.” Notice, also, how these two feelings of 
 want and waste concur in the prodigal’s story. ‘“ He 
 began to be in want,” and he said, “ My father has 
 bread enough and to spare” —more than enough, bread 
 that is even waste; and between these two points or 
 poles it is that his bad conviction works. And so it is 
 with us all; we commonly get our sense of wrong, as a 
 moral state of alienation, more or less distinctly trom 
 the conjoined feeling of our own close poverty and 
 God’s infinite bounty. Were we set down here in 
 short supply, and every thing about us made to bear 
 the same close, stinted look—the sun shining econom- 
 ically, the rains only dewing the ground, the nights 
 revealing only a star or two, the forest lands growing 
 
86 MORAL USES OF DARK TIINGS. 
 
 only sprigs and copse, and the sea producing only a 
 few small fish, afraid both of man and of each other—the 
 niggard aspect of such a state would rather put us on 
 justifying ourselves, and would be as far as possible 
 from begetting any tenderness of conviction toward 
 God. 
 
 But there are uses both of want and waste that 
 depend more especially on their separate action, and 
 the impressions they produce in their own particular 
 spheres. We make our survey next of these. 
 
 1. Of such as belong to Want, or the state of Short 
 Supply.—And here we encounter at once, the fact that 
 we are put on creating something, at the very outset of 
 our life. We must do it, or die; which is the same as 
 to say that we must consent so far to be creative, like 
 our Creator himself. He stopped short in his own 
 work, leaving our supplies unfinished, and requiring us 
 to go on and finish them ourselves—to plant, and culti- 
 vate, and build, and spin, till the furniture of our comfort 
 is complete. God could have made harvests as easily 
 as seeds, and bread ready-baked as easily as harvests, 
 and houses as easily as timber, or bricks as clay; or 
 cloth as easily as wool, and coats as cloth; but he pre- 
 ferred to call us into creation with him, as if he would 
 put meaning enough into our existence, to give it dig- 
 nity somewhat like his own. For what dignity is there 
 in the fact, as we look abroad on the scenery of the 
 world, that all which differs the landscape in beauty 
 from mere wild forest, the meadows, and rich fields, 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 37 
 
 and gardens, and flocks, and roads, and bridges, and 
 churches, and monuments, and towns, and cities, is not 
 God’s particular work, but man’s. God set him to 
 the task, and he has done it, forming what is grander 
 than the thinge themselves, a creative habit like his 
 Maker’s. 
 
 And there is the greater use and dignity in this, that 
 every thing moral, even up to the joy of moral perfec- 
 tion, is, and is meant to be, creative. True moral joy 
 is not infused into souls, but comes up out of hidden 
 wells in their own positive goodness. Their beatific 
 state is nothing but the consummation of a creative 
 force working in the springs of their character. It isa 
 state of power, and its joy is the birth of power. Pas- 
 sively received, it could not be. It is the mounting up 
 of a soul, in the faith of God’s nearness to it, into God’s 
 principles, aims, and emotions. Were it a state of 
 mere passive receptivity, there would be no growth or 
 development in it. A pampered weakness and glori- 
 fied idleness would be the whole account of it. 
 
 Hence, the necessity of some such arrangement as 
 would gird us to creative action, in a way of getting 
 our supplies. Were there a perfect harmony and equi- 
 librium between man’s nature and the world —every 
 want met by supply, every desire of his heart gratified 
 as it rises—it were only a fit completion of the plan to 
 case him in a shell and glue him to some rock, where 
 the floods of bounty sweeping by shall bring him his 
 nutriment. No, he could not be man as belonging to 
 the testacea. Conflict only and battle can effectively 
 
38 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 muster his powers. He does not sufficiently exist if he 
 is not made to fight for his existence. If he is not made 
 creative, then he is but half created. Real life must 
 have some heroic force in it, else it only breathes, but 
 does not live. Sons of ease and luxury, who are never 
 to have a wish ungratified, or the movement of a finger 
 required, are put down as born in the family register, 
 but they are only half-born as yet, and are not likely to 
 be more, till they are put to the strain by wants and im- 
 pediments, which they could better afford to buy than to 
 have been without them. Sometimes a prodigious vol- 
 unteer ambition may fulfill, in part, the same uses; but 
 we commonly expect to see the effectives and great 
 spirits and geniuses of the world struggling up out of 
 obscurity and want and heavy throes of soul-birth, and 
 taking their places as conquerors. They are men of 
 victory, not of fortune. And therefore doubtless it was 
 that, to give man a start, God threw him out of his 
 equilibrium at the beginning, incorporating in him 
 wants, the supply of which he is to get, only as he 
 wrings it from his crude possibilities by strenuous ex- 
 ertion. Possibilities, not supplies, are given him, and 
 it rests with him to convert his possibilities into sup- 
 plies. Want is to be the dry-nurse of his powers, 
 teaching him to think, contrive, resolve, and, putting 
 means to their ends, create for himself. Hunger, mean- 
 time, gnaws at him, the heat scorches him, the rains 
 drench him, the snows drive into his bosom, all the 
 pitiless elements fall to work at him, and he takes up 
 his fight to keep them at bay. At one point of victory 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 39 
 
 he gets courage for another. Every success sharpens 
 his invention, sets him to a firmer tension of resclve, 
 and lifts him to a manlier confidence, and the first 
 grand problem in his training, the development of his 
 creative force, is effectually resolved. He is no more 
 a mere being, but he is a practical being, whose inter- 
 nal possibilities are become more wonderfully full, than 
 the crude and meager possibilities given him for the 
 outward furniture of his life. 
 
 Consider, next, the moral significance of our state of 
 short supply in the fact that so healthful and regular 
 an impulse is imparted by it to habits of industry. In- 
 dustry is the natural teacher and guardian of virtue, 
 and the world is contrived to be its proper schooling- 
 place. It proposes that we may obtain a well-endowed 
 future here, just as holy obedience will do it hereafter— 
 only in a lower plane of endeavor. Its industries are to be 
 systematic, sober,and steady. Its cares are to be thought- 
 ful. It will have us get on by constancy and the frugal 
 saving of our gains; just as every highest saint will 
 get his victories by the tender economy that saves his 
 little advances. It holds the mind to a provident fore- 
 seeing habit, and concentrates the otherwise vagrant 
 expectations and visionary dreams that pay their court 
 to accident or fortune. Its pleasures are such as flow 
 from the sight of its rewards and the enjoyment of its 
 comforts. It consents withal to let go self-indulgence, 
 and bear the toils of patience. It is, in fact, a kind of 
 natural piety ; coming to the great powers of nature— 
 the seasons, the soil, the mechanical and chemical lawa 
 
40 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 of the world—and there making application, as a Chris. 
 tian applies in prayer to his God, suing thence by labor 
 the supplies and benefits it wants. It wrestles with 
 nature as Jacob wrestled with the angel. It prays with 
 Agur: “Feed me with food convenient forme.” Its very 
 toil is liturgical, without even a chance of formality. By 
 how thin a vail is it separated thus from God; let it 
 only bring its suit one degree closer, piercing the vail, 
 and it becomes even holy piety itself. So closely to 
 his bosom does God manage to bring us, under the 
 teaching and discipline of a short supply. Not to ad- 
 mire the sublime teaching of want, viewed in this con- 
 nection, will be difficult for any reflective person. 
 Possibly here and there a man might go into some kind 
 of action, bodily and mental, from a state of complete 
 gratification or full supply. He might bound over the 
 fields like the deer, in mere redundancy of life ; he might 
 pile up edifices just to see how they would look, having 
 no other use forthem ; and if then, having grazed to the 
 full in what is to him the great man-pasture, called the 
 world —every sense delighted, every appetite cloyed— 
 he shall betake himself to his bowers, and there, as the 
 soft breezes fan his temples, let his busy fancy rove, 
 creating images at random, and swimming in the glories 
 of his poetic dreams; this would be activity, but ac- 
 tivity, alas! without an object—a busy caprice, a stren- 
 uous idleness. Manifestly, such kind of activity would 
 be a wretched preparation for any thing moral or holy. 
 Set him under want, gird him to labor, see him wipe the 
 sweat from his brow as he toils to get his bread, and 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 41 
 
 we find him in how good a school, learning how brave 
 a lesson—a lesson, too, that he wants much more than 
 he does bread. Call it the curse: I will not stop to 
 argue the question whether that curse was a miracle 
 of blight added after man’s defection, or a possibility 
 inserted by anticipation, and developed by the terrible 
 reactions of his sin itself; enough to know that, like all 
 God’s curses, it is a curse for benefit, which if we do 
 not like it, will none the less faithfully stay by us. And 
 who is there, what living man, that has any the least 
 capacity of reflection, who has not discovered that good 
 necessities are the grandest wealth of existence? To be 
 cornered and pressed and edged on practically into the 
 best ways and noblest endeavors, turned away from 
 evil and made strong in good, corrected, lifted, amplified, 
 and held fast in the way to be glorified—what man will 
 not thank God for such good necessities more devoutly 
 than for life itself? 
 
 It is also another very amaneud use of want that 
 it prepares a basis for what is called the mewm and 
 twwm of property; which is, in fact, a kind of first 
 condition as regards the moral training of our life. 
 Here it is that we learn what it is to be just and what to 
 be unjust. Here it is that fraud and violence and 
 falsity stir us to such faithful rigor and decisiveness in 
 our moral condemnations. Mere principles would not 
 signify much to us; they would even seem to be a great 
 way off, if they did not touch us in something which 
 vividly concerns us. We take part here for truth and 
 justice and right and faith and exact honor, because 
 
42 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 there is property at stake, and who is indifferent to 
 property? Our courts, too, and public records, and all 
 our immense toil in the perfecting of the civil state as 
 a defender of society, are but a part of the grand moral 
 struggle that centers in the holding and use and trans- 
 mission of property. Every principle we assert is moral ; 
 every right we vindicate is based in moral ideas. 
 
 But it is not perceived by all that God’s institute of 
 want is at the bottom of property, and so of all the 
 moral discipline it brings with it. If we had every 
 comfort and gratification ready for use; if our food 
 were bending to us from the trees ; if gold and diamonds 
 were a full half the common dirt and gravel ; if temples, 
 railroads, and cities full of merchandise, were bursting 
 up everywhere out of the ground of their own accord; — 
 there would, in such a case, be no chance of the exist- 
 ence of property. What we call property is created 
 by the incorporation of: labor, which gets a right, of 
 course, to have what it has created, or by some kind 
 of improvement modified. 
 
 But there can be no labor where there is no want. 
 Who will put himself on toil to make up a supply that 
 is made up already? And what care have we to say, 
 this is mine, when we are more likely to throw it away 
 than we are to have it taken from us? The whole 
 fabric of society, as a moral affair, falls to pieces and is 
 lost, as far as the rights of property and trade and titles 
 and justice are concerned. We are only put to pasture 
 in the world, with a certainty of being satisfied and sur 
 feited, and cloyed by our abundanae. 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 43 
 
 We shall also discover that many other of the prin- 
 cipal preparations for our moral training are discon- 
 tinued, in like manner, by the simple removing of want. 
 The family, for example, is bound together chiefly by 
 this tie. Husband and wife are knit by this tie, more 
 stringent and often more enduring than love. Children 
 want every thing, coming into life, as it were, in a type 
 of universal want. Here, too, is the meaning of that 
 intensely moral word—Aome. If there were a home 
 everywhere, then there were no home. If there were 
 supplies everywhere, then the common labors and rough 
 hardships which bind families together—the property, 
 the expected harvests, the hoped-for income—all the 
 sweet bonds of care and common enjoyment are super- 
 seded. Let the children go into the fields as the young 
 animals do, and they shall findenough. All the tender 
 relations of care, and love, and government, in this 
 best school of virtue are gone, and society has become 
 a herd. 
 
 Again, it will be seen that the manifold distinctions 
 and relations of mutual dependence, which constitute 
 a basis. for reciprocal duties and charities, are mostly 
 due to the ordinance of short supply. For if the same 
 unbounded gifts were poured out to us all, and every 
 man could freely take his full supply, there would be- 
 no acquisition, and by consequence no property; all 
 distinctions but such as are immediately personal would 
 be unknown, and society would so far be dissolved, 
 As it is now, everybody wants almost everybody. 
 Labor seeks capital, and capital seeks labor. The poor 
 
44 MORAL USES OF DARK ‘TILINGS. 
 
 look after employment, the rich look after service, 
 The weak want friends and protectors, the strong 
 want clients and dependents. Leaders must have 
 followers, else they can not lead; followers must 
 have leaders, else they must hew out their way 
 for themselves. And then it is to be seen, through 
 all these diversified relations of dependency, what 
 is in every man’s heart and principle, and what kind 
 of passion will rule his conduct. Pride, arrogance, 
 ambition, oppression, cruelty, avarice, envy, discon- 
 tent, ingratitude, treachery—every man’s evil, what- 
 soever it be—vwill be charactered as in definite 
 sun-picture, and’ held up before him; and whatever 
 is loathsome, disgusting, revolting in wrong, will 
 be discovered to society, in and by society. And s0, 
 on the other hand, provision is made through society, 
 set off by want in so many relations of dependence, 
 for the discovery of whatever is beautiful in so many 
 kinds of virtue—protection, favor, encouragement, ex- 
 ample, patience toward the weak, forbearance toward 
 weak enemies; answered by fidelity, truth, unstinted 
 respect, unenvying homage to position. The immense 
 power given to moral ideas by this light and shade 
 of social distinctions and degrees can hardly be over- 
 estimated, 
 
 In this category, too, of social distinctions prepared 
 by want, it is that provision is made, as it were of set 
 purpose, for charity. It was never God’s intention, in 
 our state of short supply, that any should suffer lack. 
 Had there been no place left among men for sacred 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 46 
 
 charity, that would itself be the sorest lack of all. Who 
 is more truly blessed than he that, being full, loves to 
 impart his fullness to such as are in want? And when 
 the suffering invalid, or child of sorrow, finds a large, 
 free heart of brotherhood open to his want, is he not as 
 truly blessed, though in a humbler key? This dear, 
 divine charity, we can easily see, would have no place in 
 the world, if there were no want in it. God makes 
 room for it by his ordinance of want, giving it in charge 
 thereby, to all that conquer a state of abundance, to 
 make up what necessities are unsupplied ; doing them 
 great respect in leaving so many wants to be made up 
 by them; which, if they do, he takes them, as it were, 
 into honorable, high partnership with himself, saying, 
 “Ye did it unto me.” 
 
 But there isa more géneral and absolute kind of 
 benefit in our state of want that remains to be named 
 last of all, namely, the benefit of limitation itself. It 
 is the sin of all sin that it refuses limitation—will not 
 accept the limitations even of law. And then, since no 
 limitation of law can be carried by mere force, what 
 shall God do, with so great hope of benefit, as to put us 
 under limitations, closely related, that can be so carried 
 with propriety? Besides, if he had given us full scope 
 in our passions and pleasures, as he must in a state of 
 boundless supply, it is impossible to guess, into what 
 depths of license and wid debauchery we should have 
 been plunged. Appetites unrestricted, self-government 
 broken, no labor, boundless gratification poured into 
 the bosom of idleness, passions chastened by no sober 
 
46 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 necessities—a single thought suffices to show us, that 
 want itself is now the greatest want. Let this come 
 and bea cage of iron about us, since we can not be kept 
 in heaven’s order without a cage. If the bars press 
 closely upon us and we writhe, much writhing will do 
 us good, especially if our writhing takes the form of 
 work and self-regulative economy; for the industry 
 we practice is really a sort of obedience that we pay to 
 limitation; and then, as the limitation accepted is 
 nearest in resemblance to the restrictions of law, the 
 obedience practiced is next thing, in a sense, to that 
 holy obedience which is typified in it. Or, if our 
 state of want galls our pride and sometimes worries it 
 quite down, if it checks our presumption, tames our 
 passion, makes us little and poor and weak, what are 
 we doing but trying to make a god of this world, and 
 what is more necessary or fit, than to starve our god 
 and bring leanness into his worshipers? And it is 
 none the worse if our state of want is more than disre- 
 garded in this manner—inflamed, exasperated, and 
 made conscious. “It is a miserable state of mind,” says 
 Lord Bacon, “and yet it is commonly the case of kings, 
 to have few things to desire and many things to fear.” 
 We should all be so far kings, if our supply were full; 
 and, having few things to desire, we should be insipid 
 and dry as most kings probably are to themselves. 
 Great wants, a consciousness of want gaping wide as the 
 sea, is but the yearning of a nature felt to be as great, 
 and crying after God, who alone can be the possible 
 complement of its desires; which want itself is even a 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 47 
 
 kind of luxury, and poor injeed are they that have it 
 not. It still remains to speak more briefly— 
 
 2. Of the uses of Waste—When we see that 
 God pours out of his abundance, in creative lavish- 
 ments that never can be turned to any practical use 
 by us, we are taken quite away from the conceit that 
 something worthy of him is to be found, only when we 
 discover in his works adaptations to our physical want 
 or conyenience. It has been a great study of science 
 for many years past to discover such points of adapta- 
 tion, and so great progress has been made that many 
 are ready to assume the fact of nature’s universal adapt- 
 ation to our human uses in the bodily conditions. 
 Doubtless nature is adapted somehow to our uses, but 
 not, of course, to our physical uses. Some things will 
 be the better adapted to our mental and moral uses, 
 that they are not adapted to our physical, and because 
 they are not. ‘Every thing created must be somehow the 
 expression of God, and all that is in God is adapted cer- 
 tainly to our best uses in thought and duty and charac- 
 ter. But if we could reduce both him and his work to 
 a mere contriving of physical and mechanical adapta- 
 tions for our comfort, we should make him out a scheme 
 of morality in about the lowest figure of utility that 
 ever was or can be imagined. And to save us appar- 
 ently from so great folly and falsity, he has made a 
 very large part of his creation for waste, as far as any 
 mere physical uses are concerned—all the polar regions 
 
48 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 all the inaccessible summits of the mountains, all the 
 deserts, all the immense depths of the seas, and what is 
 more, and some thousands of miles deeper, all the tre 
 mendous steam-gulfs and fire-seas boiling at the world’s 
 core—indeed, there is nothing in God’s whole-creation 
 adapted to our physical use, and nothing that ever can 
 be, save in the globe’s mere bark or peel. In that su- 
 perficial and very thin covering, too, a very great part 
 shows no trace of adaptation, and is, besides, interlarded 
 with agues and miasmas, and all sorts of mineral and 
 vegetable poisons. So carefully has God excluded the 
 possibility of a mere Bridgewater treatise religion—he 
 will not have it assumed that the chief end of God is 
 adaptation to man. He gives us all the productive 
 means we want, and makes the world correspond with 
 us up to just that point where it had best correspond 
 with himself, representing not so much his contrivance 
 as the spontaneous out-pouring of his illimitable quan- 
 tities and exhaustless forces of creatorship. For it was 
 a matter of as great consequence to usto see his exuber- 
 ance as his contrivance, and his creation was to be the 
 more grandly adapted to us, that it transcended so far 
 all petty possibilities of physical use, and revealed, on 
 sv vast a scale, the waste he could afford to spread 
 about him, as the type of his own divine splendor and 
 profusion. 
 
 We look abroad thus over the vast unutilized quan- 
 tities of his realm, and perceive at once that he is 
 measuring his work not by us, but by himself rather; 
 and it comes into mind: “the Lord hath made all 
 
 Z 
 
OF WANT aND WASTE. 49 
 
 things for himself” We behold the realms of air and 
 earth and sea peopled with joyous life; as ifto say that 
 he has pleasure in adaptations made for other creatures 
 as truly as for man—insects and mere animated atoms 
 —able without exhaustion to set their instincts, and 
 -make up their instrumentations, in the nicest forms of 
 fitness; creatures that will live and die unvalued by us, 
 and, therefore, have no value save to him. His care of 
 them is perfect, though it be the care of waste, and re- 
 veals, in just that fact, his really divine capacity. And 
 if it be something to us that the air is adapted to our 
 breathing and blood, the earth to our feet, the water to 
 our thirst, far more does it signify that there are so 
 many myriads of creatures, folded by God’s care, who 
 exist only for his private eye—breathing, leaping, flying, 
 and filling his realm with their gambols, and yet living 
 only as before him. 
 
 By this same exuberance of care expended on the 
 wild races of life it was that the sacred poet’s mind was 
 s0 deeply impressed, when he sang his Bridgewater 
 treatise in this high strain, reciting God’s care of the 
 beasts—“ planting the cedars of Lebanon where the 
 birds make their nests; as for the stork, the fir-trees are 
 her house ; the high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, 
 and the rocks for the conies; the young lions roar 
 after their prey, and seek their meat from God. O 
 Lord, how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast 
 thon made them all; the earth is full of thy riches. So 
 is this great and wide sea wherein are things creeping 
 
 innumerable, both small and great beasts. These wait 
 8 
 
 ale 
 
50 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 all upon thee, and thou givest them their meat in due 
 season.” Wherefore his conclusion is—what other 
 could he think of?—“ The glory of the Lord shall en- 
 dure forever ; the Lord shall rejoice in his works.” For 
 beholding God thus, in works of multitudinous life 
 which are waste to us, having no relation to our physi- 
 cal uses, they have even the sublimer use that they rep- 
 resent the fertile fatherhood of God; and yet another 
 use, in teaching us not to assume that we are measures 
 of the world’s contents, not to put ourselves to any airs 
 of loftiness, as if the world were made for our con- 
 venience. It is made for us mainly in the sense 
 that, being waste for us, it is expression for God. We 
 are tenants here of a large house, emmets, I may say, in 
 a vast cathedral, which if it do not yield us all the sup- 
 plies we want, yet bears the signatures of loftier, holier 
 uses that exceed our petty measure and proportion. 
 And yet the temple, vast as it is, is not too vast for our 
 feeling, and full as it is of things existing only for God, 
 it is even the more appropriate and better adapted to us, 
 because they represent his glory. 
 
 I will only add, in conclusion, what appears to be 
 quite evident, and was doubtless meant to be, in this mat- 
 ter of waste, that use or utility is not any certain law of 
 morality or religious conduct. That box of ointment 
 that was going to be spent for nothing—how plausible 
 was the appeal to use, recounting the pennies it would 
 have sold for, and the nice things it would have bought 
 for the poor! Only it was Judas, and not Christ, that 
 was forward in the argument. Christ was willing to 
 
OF WANT AND WASTE. 51 
 
 have it all spent as a tribute of pious luxury on his own 
 head, and even praised the woman besides, as he almost 
 never praised any one of his disciples. ‘“ To what pur- 
 pose is this waste?” For the very same purpose, we are to 
 answer, that some things are best which do not meet a 
 bodily want, and because they do not; best because 
 they are waste; even as nineteen-twentieths of God’s 
 creation itself is waste. Much he does for our comfort 
 and happiness ; a great deal more to raise an opinion of 
 his resources, and the glorious wealth of his fatherhood. 
 To beget or express a sentiment is a matter of as great 
 consequence to him as to serve a convenience. He nei- 
 ther holds nor would teach, that charity goes by a law 
 of economy, or that virtue tallies with utility. He 
 breaks away, himself, from all utilitarian standards, and 
 pours himself out in his own measures. So there is to 
 be a certain lavishment and waste in what we call our 
 piety. We are to have our secret testimonies, offer our 
 hidden sacrifices, do our alms, which only God shall 
 know ; delight to spend, for love’s sake, more than we 
 need, pour out bounties that never can be utilized, save 
 by some feeling or faith enriched. Ornament, perfume, 
 color, proportion, expense, majesty, any kind of waste 
 that is not ambitious, and only expresses the heart, as the 
 woman’s ointment expresses hers, stands well in the terms 
 of duty. God is no philanthropist, and does not train 
 us to be, save in that high sense that he can sometimes 
 allow even our human want to be stringent, when he lav- 
 ishes bounty on the sea or sprinkles the dust with gold, 
 
Ii. 
 
 OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Ir is one of the complaints of Job, that “the earth is 
 given into the hand of the wicked ;” which, if it is less 
 generally true now than it was in his day, still contin- 
 ues to be a standing complaint of the world. The de- 
 plorable fact, the moan of history, as we all know, is 
 bad men in power, and still bad men in power. We 
 follow down the train of nations and peoples, and dis- 
 tinguish everywhere the groanings of this sorrow. The 
 flies that buzz and flutter in the tyrant spider’s web are. 
 an image too faithfully true of our miserably weak hu- 
 manity, wriggling, age upon age, in the toils of abused 
 power. What unspeakable sufferings crowd the dismal 
 story! Order isthe pretext for all worst and most cruel 
 disorder. Ideas of right and liberty make their ap- 
 pearance late, and then as crimes. Industry is tram- 
 pled, property and titles violated, families broken by 
 exile, weakness stripped of shelter, and crime of redress. 
 Virtue itself is crushed and duty persecuted. Woes of 
 taxation, woes of plunder and lust, under cover of pub- 
 lic authority ; woes of bleeding for conquest, and bleed- 
 ing under conquest—whole nations and peoples dragged 
 into the march to die, leaving other nations depopulated 
 and bare, where their desolating march has swept— 
 there is no end, in short, to the distractions, poverties, 
 starvations, bereayements, and bitter pangs of wrong, 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 53 
 
 which are being laid, in all ages, on the world, by the 
 cruelties of wickedness in power. When we say these 
 things, crowding our large impeachment into a few 
 short sentences, we seem to be rather making a decla- 
 mation than a sober statement of it; but if we could 
 summon up the facts and scenes, and set them forth 
 specifically in fall historic array, they would take an 
 air of verity so dreadful, as to make us even shudder at 
 the possible endurance of the world. 
 
 Why then is it, and how, that power is generally 
 found in the hands of wicked men? It is not always 
 80; as we see when a Cyrus, a Cimon, a Regulus, an 
 Alfred, a Washington, or a Lincoln holds the reins of 
 empire. Sometimes a real usurper like Cromwell 
 seizes the condition of power, to wield it only for the 
 vindication of right and liberty. And when just men, 
 like these, are allowed to show the immense beneficence 
 of power, in the blessings conferred on their times, and 
 the up-looking comfort and strength produced, in a few 
 short years, by their righteous administration, we only 
 wonder the more that such examples could not be more 
 frequent ; asking again, less patiently than before, Why 
 is it that so many bad men are allowed to stalk over 
 the world in baleful prerogative, crushing out again 
 and again, one after another, the rights of merit, and the 
 promises and possibilities of public civilization ? 
 
 Must we, therefore, doubt that God is good? or that 
 he organizes law and public rule for the protection of 
 right, and the advancement of all best er ds in society? 
 Perhaps it may be true, as we often hear, that bad em- 
 
64 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 pire is better than no empire at all; and Providence, 
 it may be thought, is justified by the preponderant 
 benefits of law, however wickedly administered, as com- 
 pared with the unspeakable miseries of general anarchy. 
 But why should it be necessary to make out our vindi- 
 eations of Providence in this low scale of computation ? 
 If authority and empire are so much wanted, that the 
 benefits a little predominate even when wickedly admin- 
 istered, how much better and more invaluable are they, 
 when they are held by just men faithfully serving their 
 times. And just so much worthier is it of Providence 
 —never sufficiently honored save when it provides the 
 best—to have good men always in power. And we 
 seem to have an almost imperative reason why it should 
 be so, in the fact that we are even put in moral obliga- 
 tion to “the powers that be,” on the express ground, 
 that they are “ the ordinance” of God himself. All 
 the more strange is it, therefore, that bad powers are 
 declared to rule thus in God’s right, and that we are 
 further required, on holy principle, to obey them. So 
 at least we reason—why not well ? 
 
 And yet not well, as we shall abundantly see, when 
 we look the problem through more carefully, and bring 
 out the points of a true and sufficient solution. They 
 are such as these :— 
 
 1. Bad men are never in power because they are 
 preferred and selected by Providence; but they are set 
 in power by the laws of inheritance, or they win their 
 election to power by wicked and corrupt arts, or they 
 seize on the condition of power by unscrupulous acts of 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 55 
 
 asurpation. Such laws of inheritance too are created, 
 aot immediately by God, but by human society rather, 
 and are only providential in the sense that God allows 
 society, in a merely permissive way, to establish its own 
 customs and precedents; preferring, as a matter of 
 benefit to society, to let it have a qualified agency in 
 its own government, instead of ruling it by absolute 
 dictation himself. Besides, it is by no requisition of 
 Providence, that the ruler promoted by inheritance is 
 a bad man. He could be a true, just man, such as God 
 is ever prompting and helping him to be. Exactly the 
 same thing is to be said when a bad man mounts into 
 power, as a trust conferred by election. Society made 
 the laws of election; society made the choice. Provi- 
 dence did not prefer his election, but only preferred to 
 have the people elect for themselves, and do it wisely ; 
 only meaning to have them get instruction enough, 
 when they do it unwisely, to rectify their judgments 
 and give them a conviction, more profoundly impressed, 
 of the necessary requisites of justice and character. 
 Not even a usurper need be a bad man, or make any 
 bad use of power. When his act of usurpation is insti- 
 gated only by the public woes of his time, which woes 
 ery to God for redress, he fulfills a call of duty, and is, 
 in fact, the more sublimely right, that he dares to seize 
 a power which feebler souls would not. Had Wash- 
 ington failed, history might question whether he was 
 not a usurper, as it is quite commonly agreed that Crom- 
 well, God’s true champion, was. But the bad usurper, 
 the Nimrod of his time, is not put in his place by God 
 
56 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 and is not wanted there; only God cunsents, for the 
 peace of society, that powers usurped by wrong shall be 
 taken as powers de facto and obeyed, till they are bro- 
 ken by their own excesses, or some counter-revolution 
 ie organized with a rational chance of success. It is not, 
 therefore, true that God puts any bad man in power, 
 or, in any proper or true sense, prefers to have him in 
 power. His plan is simply to let society and man come 
 into this field, and learn sufficient wisdom in it to 
 to prefer and elevate only the just. 
 
 2. It will perhaps be imagined, that if God does not 
 set the bad in power himself, he could, at least, prevent 
 their coming into power, and save the world in that 
 manner from all the public miseries inventoried in his- 
 tory. In a certain coarse physical sense, he could ; that 
 is, managing the world by omnipotent force, he has 
 force enough to do it. But he does not govern the 
 world by force. He has consented to govern it through 
 its liberty; that is, by counsel, influence, secret motivi- 
 ties and providential corrections, just far enough off, or 
 far enough back, to allow no finger’s weight of force on 
 the prerogatives of liberty. In this way God has con- 
 sented because it was best, to have men generate and 
 man their own institutions. In this finer, higher sense, 
 therefore, it is no irreverence to God to say that he 
 could not prevent the obtaining of power by wicked 
 men; for we only mean that, for good and sufficient 
 reasons, he has consented not to interfere by force in 
 holding them back, and that, as will be seen at once, 
 puts his omnipotence out of the question. 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 57 
 
 Besides, there is a great deal more implied in pre- 
 venting their attainment of power than may at first be 
 apparent. No mere holding down or repression of 
 their lustful energies will be sufficient, save as there is 
 an immense uplifting of society also into character, and 
 law, and courage for the right. No bad man seizes the 
 condition of power without help. And here, in fact, is 
 the principal difficulty ; that society itself is so low and 
 weak and wicked, as to offer itself as a prey to 
 any most crafty, unscrupulous leader. And there is, in 
 fact, no way of preventing his attainment of power, 
 save as he is hemmed about by stouter souls in the 
 panoply of stouter principles. Where there is a mean, 
 dejected, fawning spirit, the bad man need not be much 
 of a hero in getting power; he will, in fact, be lifted 
 into it. 
 
 It takes very little force to mount above weakness, 
 ignorance, and low servility; it would even require a 
 very considerable power of self-control not to usurp, by 
 their instigation, some right of precedence. What 
 wonder, in fact, is it that men have been deified and 
 set up as idols of religious worship, where souls are only 
 abjects to themselves; where the low-born feeling is 
 dazed by airs of pride and circumstance, and the feeble 
 admirations and base sycophancies of sin have taken 
 away, not only the manliness, but the proper energy of 
 selfishness? Thus comes also caste, a classification of 
 orders that is set on a footing even of religious con- 
 viction; not that the upper rank has put down the 
 
 lower, any more than the lower has lifted and sanctified 
 3° 
 
68 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 the upper. Had the lower continued to be men, the 
 upper could never have become gods). They made a 
 bid for degradation themselves, and took it by divine 
 right, because it was in them already. Much the same 
 is true of fashion. Some tyrant, or some favorite of 
 some vicious court, or it may be only a court exquisite, 
 or court harlot, has been able, by a certain splendid auda- 
 city, to set the mode; and then how tamely, nay, how 
 eagerly, submits the world! running to put on its 
 badges of humiliation, ashamed to be without them, 
 and even fearing not to be as abject as the law of ab- 
 jectness requires. Terrible power this tyrant of the 
 mode! Rather say, sad, awful weakness, this subser- 
 viency, nay, pride of subserviency, in the race. And 
 how many things does it include—opinions, associations, 
 duties, and even the choice of a religion itself! How 
 few can dare to be singular even in these. It requires, 
 in fact, less nerve to fight a battle than to resist a fashion. 
 
 We help bad men into power in other ways less feeble 
 and as much more greedy. The usurper makes no 
 stride by himself, but he has his retainers and conspir- 
 ators about him waiting for the spoil. Thus, if he is 
 to be elected to power, he will have his file-leaders 
 and voters and vote-buyers about him, even as the 
 eagles are gathered to their prey. Or, perhaps, they 
 will have banded themselves together, and set him up 
 to be promoted by their vote, not for his sake but their 
 own ; in the name of precedence making him their tool. 
 And the greediest, wildest despotism in the world is 
 the power that is wielded asa tool. A political party 
 
OF BAD GUVERNMENT. 59 
 
 will often be more sure of its ascendency, as it is 
 more desperate in character—held together as a many- 
 headed tyranny, for whole generations, by the cohesive- 
 ness of wrong, and a liberty that is free to sell the 
 muniments of order and right. Conquerors do not 
 harness the people to their chariot unhelped; but the 
 people themselves want, some of them, a hero, and 
 some of them a chance to be heard of themselves, and 
 a great many more to see the brave sight of an army; 
 so they march to the standard with cheers—only drag- 
 ging after them, by compulsion, such as will not go for 
 the spoil or the glory. Slavery might seem to be mere 
 force, instigated and helped by nothing but the lust of 
 gain. And yet this ownership of men was only bought 
 of another ownership that was gotten by capture, and 
 that capture again was bid for by the weakness of the 
 captives, waiting, as it were, to be seized. And so poor 
 Africa groans under the heel of slavery, simply because 
 Africa herself is breeding and hunting her children, to 
 endow this awful tyrant power of slavery, the worst and 
 most wicked, in some respects, the world has ever seen. 
 
 Glancing about thus,in every direction we discover 
 some kind of bad power mounting into ascendency. 
 What men can, they seize—usurpation is the devil, so 
 to speak, of all high possibility. But, generally, there 
 is a vast complex connivance with them in society 
 itself. They are instigated, set on, thrust forward, 
 lifted up, by the weakness, the foolish subserviency, the 
 mean servility, the greediness, and rampant passion of 
 the world. So that, if we require it of God to prevent 
 
60 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 the attainment of power by bad men, he ean do it only 
 by preventing society at large from being just what it 
 is—exactly what he has been doing, in all ages, from 
 the first day until now ; only it is not yet done, and, in 
 fact, can be done, only by the slowest and tardiest re- 
 generation possible. 
 
 3. It will sometimes occur to us that if God may not 
 prevent the raising of bad men to conditions of power, 
 he might well enough restrain them in their abuses of 
 power ; hedging them about by his providence, humbling 
 them by his providential judgments, inventing checks 
 and counter-checks, making the love of popularity re- 
 strain the greediness of plunder, setting a balance 
 between sensuality and ambition, holding back from 
 manifold wrongs by the dread of wide-spread conspira- 
 cies, making the temptation of a name an argument for 
 great public beneficence, wielding the dread of other 
 powers,as a motive for the highest possible advance- 
 ment of wealth and character and art in the people of 
 the tyrant power to be maintained. Even masters 
 might be set to the cultivation of all best powers, 
 whether of body or mind, in their slaves, by the con- 
 sideration of higher honor and higher profit to them- 
 selves, in the use of their faculties. All such counter- 
 balancings and restrainings of motive by opposing 
 motive, are, in fact, employed to a certain extent, and 
 are always at work under providence; but they only 
 moderate, never effectually stop the rage of bad power. 
 To a certain extent, we come into this field ourselves, 
 having it as one of our own great points of wisdom ip 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 61 
 
 the adjustment of political institutions, to make up 
 what we call “a system of checks and balances ;” and 
 some of our most theoretic statesmen appear to imagine 
 that it can be done, with such perfect nicety of per- 
 ception, as to make every thing keep traverse, no matter 
 how bad the magistrates or the people. This most 
 preposterous conceit, which undertakes to make bad 
 society good enough for good government, has never 
 been attempted by the supreme government of the 
 world. And if possibly God could execute such a feat 
 of skill, he would certainly deem the trick more mis- 
 chievous than ingenious. What could be a greater 
 subversion of moral distinctions, than to have bad men 
 as beneficent, as much beloved, as profoundly honored, 
 as the good and the just? If wicked sovereigns, having 
 no regard in principle for righteousness, would yet, for 
 policy’s sake, be always faithful to the right; if they 
 would sanctify justice, not because it is just, but because 
 justice is salutary; if they would assert the right of 
 the poor, because the poor may yet be rich, though 
 despising now their brotherhood; if, for any and all 
 such false motives, they would rightly moderate the 
 uses of power, and win it thus for their distinction in 
 history, that they did well and grandly served their 
 people, when caring for no principle, and living in no 
 terms of moral order, they would be the very greatest 
 curse to society that society has ever seen—greater, 
 happily, than ever has been or ever will be seen. 
 Wrong in the attitudes and honors of right! profligacy 
 wholesome! pride as good as principle! passion trust- 
 
62 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 worthy! selfishness beneficent! Such kinds of character, 
 if we had them, would very nearly overset the distinctions 
 of virtue, and would be, in fact, the greatest conceivable 
 calamity to the race. We are brought on thus:— 
 
 4. To that which appears to be the grand all-deter- 
 mining reason of Providence in the elevation of bad men 
 to conditions of power; namely, the very important, quite 
 indispensable uses they may serve, by their wrongs in that 
 condition, as related to the better and more effective 
 development of moral ideas. It is simply letting society 
 and man be what they are, to show what they are. For, 
 in raising a world out of evil, a very considerable and first 
 problem is, to reveal it to itself, or set it in the best 
 conditions to make such a revelation. The revelation 
 of God is one thing, but a prior and equally neces- 
 sary thing is that man should make a revelation of 
 himself; that is, a revelation of what is evil and de- 
 mands acure. For evil, as a purely spiritual matter, 
 hid in the heart, is not so very obvious, and is all the 
 less so that we are so much accustomed to it, and so 
 necessarily blunted by it. Hence it becomes a great 
 and forward problem in the world’s economy, how to 
 get evil most effectually revealed to itself. And it is 
 done, as we shall see, in three principal modes or de- 
 grees; namely, in what we are and do to inferiors, 
 what we do as between equals, and what we do in con- 
 ditions of power that give authority. 
 
 Thus if one is hard upon the poor, harsh to children, 
 cruel to animals, he makes, or may, a very great discov- 
 ery of himself; such as, simply sitting down to muse 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 63 
 
 or think within himself, it would even be impossible to 
 make. What is in him is brought forth by his acts, 
 and distinctly mirrored in them. The same is true of his 
 conduct amongequals. If he is unjust, passionate, severe, 
 revengeful, jealous, dishonest, and supremely selfish, he 
 is in just that scale of society, or social relationship, 
 that brings him out to himself. Simply existing, with 
 so much evil in him, would give him no such impres- 
 sions; but the friction of his life among equals, in 
 neighborhood and family, in trade and travel, in soci- 
 ety and opinion, keeps him all the while astir, and lets 
 him forth in continual self-discovery. He can not slink 
 away out of sight into the obscurity and occult mean- 
 ness of his own self-containing silence, but he is obliged 
 to feel his torment, and reveal his malady, both ‘to 
 himself and to others. 
 
 But the full, sufficient, supremely impressive revela- 
 tion is never made save in the condition of authority, 
 and it appears to be one of the great ends of civil soci- 
 ety, to prepare and bring forth to the general sense of 
 mankind this revelation. The fact is recognized that 
 government is wanted, and must somehow or other be 
 had, and then society as it is—the weak, the wicked, 
 the foolish, the strong, all mixed up together, and 
 brewed historically as a caldron heated by much fire—is 
 to throw up leaders, chiefs, princes, magistrates, constitu- 
 tions, here in one form and here in another, and what man 
 can do for himself, in getting up protections and protect- 
 ors,is to be seen. And a very considerable part of his 
 benefit is to be gotten by his failures, Evil is scarcely to 
 
64 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 be known as evil, till it takes the condition of author 
 ity. We do not understand it till we see what kind of 
 god it will make, and by what sort of rule it will man- 
 age its empire. So it results, that bad men get their 
 ascendency, because there is badness in the world; and 
 then they rule the world as tormentors and tyrants, 
 because they must needs act out the evil that is in 
 them. In this very simple statement, we have the 
 short account of how large a part of the world’s bitter- 
 est woes! This one word oppression, what a history 
 has it !—in the tears and groans and robberies and cap- 
 tivities and shackled bodies and desolate homes of man- 
 kind; in so many peoples moaning to each other, age 
 upon age, the outcast lot of merit, and the ernel perse- 
 cution of religion ; in so many times of dejection when 
 society loses hope and possibility under the humiliations 
 of defeat, the prostrations of industry, the disabilities 
 of debt, the violated honor of contracts and treaties— 
 representing, all, the madness of power. The feeling 
 brought forth in this manner, and kept in painful 
 tension, under almost all experiences of power, is the 
 feeling of wrong, bitter oppression and abuse, mockery 
 of right and reason, and the cry goes up audible or 
 silent to God—O Lord ! how long, how long? 
 
 What now is this but a conviction impresred, or rev- 
 elation made, of some dreadfully malign principle in 
 our humanity. It can not bear elevation. Power 
 makes a demon of it. And yet we go on trying tc 
 make society safe, and organize some kind of power 
 that will save us from the abuses of power—a task that 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 65 
 
 is, alas! how difficult. But this cne grand fact or issue 
 is at least made sure, and it is of greater moral conse- 
 quence than success itself would be; namely, that in 
 all our nations and families that class above the grado 
 of barbarism, we are kept in continual stress, or strain, 
 to conquer a condition of right and safe protection. 
 Hence all the struggles, agitations, and great revolu- 
 tions for liberty, from the times of the Greeks down- 
 ward. Almost every people have had in turn their 
 Draco, their Pisistratus, and their thirty tyrants more 
 or less, and the struggle has been going on, everywhere, 
 in every age, to heave off the burdens of oppres- 
 sion and pluck down the oppressors, and conquer, if 
 possible, some state of law and liberty; for what we 
 mean by liberty is not release from law, but a state of 
 security and sheltered equity under it. Such liberty, 
 how dear to man! made dear, by what ages of trial and 
 sorrow under the loss of it! The very idea of such lib- 
 erty is moral, and the grand struggle of the ages to gain 
 it is a struggle after moral ideas and the sublime, divine 
 equities of law. And just here all the merit of God’s 
 plan, as regards the permission of power in the hands 
 of wicked men, will be found to hinge; namely, on 
 the fact, that evil is not only revealed in its balefu 
 presence and agency, but the peoples and ages are put 
 heaving against it, and struggling after deliverance 
 from it. We do not commonly think of it—this tossing 
 of men’s souls after liberty—-as being moral at all; we 
 call it political, but the contest, if we can but see it, 
 hangs entirely on such moral ideas of right and benefi- 
 
66 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 cence as are staple matters in gospel itself. Our very 
 struggle against the domination of evil-doers puts us 
 so far in respect of right, and begets a kind of salutary 
 prejudice in us against evil. Even if we never pray for 
 this holy boon of equity and right which power has 
 robbed us of, we do, at least, long heavily, strive earn- 
 estly, suffer manfully, and fight in life’s peril to regain 
 it. What we call society, kept heaving in this kind of 
 struggle, becomes intensely moral, and all we do for it 
 is done to make our life endurable, by the re-establish- 
 ment of just such muniments of right as we have 
 ourselves cast off. As far as we go, we are fighting 
 ourselves up into redemption. Not that every man 
 who is earnest for liberty, is trying how to become a 
 saint, but that, in a certain general way, the drift 
 and striving of society is toward conditions of right 
 and equity, such as faithfully accord, when deeply 
 sounded, with all the highest and divinest principles of 
 duty. And how great a point is this to be gained in a 
 world under evil! 
 
 We do not always turn ourselves about in pious re- 
 flections, it is true, on what we are doing in these 
 matters—do not imagine perhaps that we are getting 
 human evil revealed by these woes of wrong and op- 
 pression ; still less that when we are rioting and wrest- 
 ling for liberty, we are drawing toward everlasting 
 principles of right and divine reason; probably still 
 less, that we are uncovering, in all, the glory of God 
 and God’s true magistracy. Here is power that wants 
 no checks and balances to keep it safe; here is duc 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 67 
 
 shelter for the weak; here is equity for the proud and 
 the vivlent themselves; here is justice never perverted, 
 and law never misapplied. All this exactly is what 
 we are striving after, and yet we do not see it; what 
 has our great struggle with bad power to do with God? 
 We have no thought in it of being at allreligious. Just 
 80, it is probably true; and still I am obliged to believe . 
 that religious ideas are brought as much closer to us, 
 as we are brought closer to them, and God as much 
 closer to our feeling as religious ideas are more closely 
 bound up with our successes. What is the great political 
 reformer and champion of his people doing, under sc 
 many abuses of power, but contending for terms of 
 right and benefit? What is he maintaining but that 
 government is for the benefit of the governed?—based, 
 in this manner, in the supreme law of beneficence. 
 What then is he doing but affirming and glorifying 
 God’s “powers”? And what is more likely, more 
 necessary in fact, than that he and the people that 
 follow him will be drawn sometimes to think of God 
 more approvingly and with a softer feeling. They 
 want beneficence—how bitterly do the poor creatures 
 ache for it !—and here it is, full-orbed and ideally per- 
 fect. It is quite impossible that nations, struggling 
 thus after deliverance from iniquitous power, and the 
 establishment of righteous liberty, should not more 
 easily be drawn to God and religion. They may for 
 the time be less religiously reverent, they may rather 
 seem to have their affinities with all kinds of unbelief, 
 but their real bent even then is better than it seems 
 
68 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 they only disbelieve what power has so. fearfully 
 abused; but God as he is, when fitly seen, will be 
 more easily loved as the world’s Great Friend and 
 Keeper. 
 
 We discover also, what accords with this, that all 
 our modern advances in the department of government 
 and public liberty are attended by another kind of 
 advance which is moral, and exactly keeps pace with 
 them. Our constitutions, our limitations of monarchy, 
 our abatements of priestly despotism, our vindication 
 of free thought and opinion, our new created parlia- 
 ments, our emancipations, our world-free commerce 
 under world-wide guaranties of law—while we are 
 asserting in all these forms the supreme right of society 
 to be ruled for its own good, there begins to be a defer- 
 ence paid almost everywhere to the principle of benefi- 
 cence itself. We assert the brotherhood of man; we 
 take part in feeling with weakness and dejection the 
 world over; we educate our own peoples and try to 
 evangelize others; we think we begin to see how party 
 can be organized and held fast in right, instead of 
 being wild force only, organized by the cohesiveness 
 of plunder. Moral ideas are set up in publie argu- 
 ments, incorporated in the documents of thrones, and 
 also begin to have an acknowledged place in statesman- 
 ship. Not only do magistrates by election, but the 
 most absolute princes, admit the strictly moral tenure 
 of their rule, and their obligation to rule only for the 
 good of their people. The change, in one view, is a 
 result of Christianity, beginning, at last, to win ite — 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 69 
 
 true place in society. In another view it is due to the 
 immense struggles of our modern nations after liberty; 
 instigated originally by the oppressions and the unen- 
 durable wrongs of wickedness in power. Both concur, 
 one as a power moving down upon society from with- 
 out, the other as a power bursting up out of society 
 instructed by its woes. 
 
 It requires to be added, for the complete develop- 
 ment of this subject, that political society makes no 
 real and permanent gain when it makes a conquest for 
 liberty, save as that gain is utilized and set fast in the 
 department of moral ideas and principles. We have 
 just passed through a great public contest for example, 
 not with our thirty tyrants, but our thirty or three 
 hundred thousand tyrants of slavery, to induce and 
 bring to the ground the malign power they were assert- 
 ing above our laws and institutions. They had been 
 educated to .be tyrants, and could not be republicans, 
 There was never any possibility that a leadership 
 trained by slavery should not make a magistracy con- 
 temning right and the restraints of law. They now 
 lie prostrate, and their many-headed tyranny is broken ; 
 and yet there is nothing done for true liberty in them 
 by merely forced emancipation of their slaves. Give 
 them power, and it will be bad power still, until the 
 gain is utilized and made fast in their moral feelings 
 and opinions. They can never be republicans till they 
 get into the divine principle of law, as the guardian of 
 liberty. If the tyrannical passion of mastership is in 
 their hearts, if the slavery stays by morally, though 
 
70 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 broken physically, they can not be citizens in any true 
 republic. 
 
 Let them have the condition of power, and it would 
 be bad power, still impossible, as ever, to be kept in 
 terms of allegiance. There have been a great many 
 overthrows of bad power in the world, but not one of 
 them has ever been a gain to liberty, save as there has 
 been some moral gain accomplished, to sanctify and 
 set in place the principles of right and beneficence. 
 How many republics have the French people had pro- 
 claimed during this present century! Have they 
 gained their liberty? Just as much of it as they have 
 gained in moral convictions, principles, ideas of right, 
 and duty. If they should only gain a little more, they 
 might bear the liberty of the press, and perhaps Napo- 
 leon could bear it too. So if we proclaim the republic, 
 as against slavery, ten times in a century, we’shall only 
 gain upon the slavery as far as God’s free principles— 
 goodness and true brotherhood—are incorporated, by 
 our ten campaigns against it; and it makes a very 
 great difference, be it observed, whether it is they 
 campaigning for liberty themselves, or we campaigning 
 for it in them. 
 
 It remains, in conclusion, to suggest what appears to 
 be a very important deduction, as regards the moral 
 uses of abused power, that it would be a very great 
 misfortune to any people who are loose and low in 
 their moral ideas, to have a smooth and equitable 
 government kept up among them for a great length of 
 time. If, by some mischance, some power of right 
 
OF BAD GOVERNMENT. 71 
 
 tradition, or a kind temperament in a royal stock, some 
 adjustment of checks and balances, some distribution 
 of public functions in the departments of legislation, 
 of justice, and of executive administration—if in any 
 such way the government should keep itself in whole- 
 some respect to right, when the people are growing 
 selfish, and dastardly, and cruel, and sensual, and false- 
 hearted, and knavish in trade, what is there, in the 
 east of their history, to make them any better? Mani- 
 festly nothing. What they want is bad government, 
 and a good long time of it; and what they want they 
 will have, though it may come late. They must have 
 a call for courage, else they will never get it, and they 
 must groan bitterly, before they can raise that ery for 
 liberty that rallies courage. The only good medicine 
 for their selfishness will be found in their public sacri- 
 fices. Much blood-letting will be needed to get their 
 meanness out of them. If they are cruel and treach- 
 erous—for the two things commonly go together—they 
 will get a softer, truer magnanimity in the heroics of 
 liberty. Their time may not come along just as we 
 imagine, but it will come. Let us not imagine that it 
 will not come to us, because we have a government 
 written out. Men are not controlled by the wrappings 
 of paper. If we come to want a usurper, and make a 
 bid for one by our moral degeneracy, our sycophancy, 
 our violence and reckless passion, we shall have him. 
 A thoroughly wicked majority is enough to make as 
 much wickedness in power as we can find how to 
 master. There is, in fact, no tyranny so dreadful as 
 
72 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 that tyranny by the million, which is organized by a 
 corrupt party. It is not, of course, smooth sailing that 
 we have to do in future, as many are ready to assume, 
 As we have had to groan for our deliverance, so may 
 also our children. Better is it for them, if they require 
 it. Have we not ourselves gotten benefit out of our 
 sacrifices? Do we not feel strengthened mightily in 
 our principles? Do we not seem to have had a new, 
 grandly moral sense of them opened in our hearts? 
 In that sense, maintained by whatever means, let the 
 republic stand. 
 
IV. 
 
 OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 
 
 Ir there be any thing worth living for, in the case of 
 & man ora people, most of us would be ready, by a 
 kind of natural inference, to conclude that there must 
 be so much that is worth being remembered. In this 
 inference, too, we are helped by the filial reverence 
 that binds us to the men or ages that have gone before 
 us, and by the almost invincible instinct of historic 
 curiosity itself; allowing us never to rest without know- 
 ing something of the strange world-field behind us, and 
 the seeds out of which we have come. We have it also 
 as a maxim, that we differ as men from the brutes, 
 chiefly in our capacity to profit by example, and we 
 even go so far in this matter, as to think that we make 
 out real philosophies of history. And yet of all that 
 we call history—that is, human history—the greater 
 part is dead, utterly gone out and lost. The rocks of 
 the world have registered the story of creatures far 
 inferior. Even the birds have printed their tracks, and 
 the rain drops spattered their marks on the pages of 
 the register ; but of man’s great history, so much later 
 begun, and so much deeper in its meaning, only the 
 
 dimmest and most scanty vestiges remain, to represent 
 4 
 
74 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 whole thousands of years. What thoughts wrestled in 
 those dim centuries; what songs were sung; what 
 structures reared; what names figured; what peoples 
 tramped across the fields of time in their marches and 
 wars—all these are gulfed in oblivion, and practically 
 tousare not. Descending to what are nominally called 
 first eras, we begin to gather up traditions, and vestiges, 
 and scanty and dry records, that have a certain historic 
 look, but not much of history. And the history is 
 scarcely more real when we come to the times of defi- 
 nite and formal narrative; only a few forward names 
 and events, and figures, are put moving as shadows in 
 the story, but what the vast populations have been 
 doing, what they have felt, and been, is dead; not only 
 not recited in the past tense of grammar, but having no 
 longer any tense at all. Not even the recent past is 
 preserved accurately enough to be really known. Who 
 ever fails to note the misconceptions, or only half con- 
 ceptions of a written story, having lived in the time, 
 and been a part of the transaction, himself? And how 
 many that read this article, after all they may have 
 heard of their own grandfather and the facts and in- 
 cidents of his life, will be able to feel that they truly 
 possess the man. Probably there is a kind of mythic 
 air in so many stories and traditions, such as seem to be 
 shadows only of his life and person—nothing more, 
 and scarcely so much as that. 
 
 Now it will be obvious to any one at a glance, that 
 God has not made any such thing as a complete 
 remembrance of past ages possible. He writes oblivion 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 75 
 
 against all but a few names and things, and empties the 
 world to give freer space for what is to come. No 
 tongue could recite the whole vast stury if it were 
 known, the world could not contain the books if it 
 were written, and no mind reading the story could give 
 it possible harbor. Besides, there are things in the 
 past which no tradition can accurately carry and no 
 words represent. Who that will untwist the subtle 
 motives of action can do it far enough to make out 
 any thing better than a tolerable fiction! Who can 
 paint a great soul’s passion as that passion, looked 
 upon, painted itself? To come down to things more 
 humble, yet by no means less significant, by what 
 words can any one find how to set forth a gait ora 
 voice? And yet, if I could simply see the back of Cato 
 jogging out a-field, or hear one sentence spoken by 
 Ceesar’s voice, it really seems to me I should get a bet- 
 ter knowledge of either, from that single token, than J 
 have gotten yet from all other sources. So very im- 
 potent are words to reproduce, or keep in impression 
 the facts and men of history. We have a way of 
 speaking, in which we congratulate ourselves on the 
 score of a distinction between what are called the un- 
 historic and historic ages. The unhistoric, we fancy, 
 make no history, because they have no written language. 
 But having such a gift, with paper to receive the re 
 cord of it, and types to multiply that record, and libra- 
 ries to keep it, and, back of all, a body of learned 
 scribes, who are skilled in writing history as one of the 
 elegant arts, we conclude that now the historic age has 
 
76 MORAL USES OF DARK TIIINGS. 
 
 come. We do not perceive, that, in just this manner, we 
 are going to overwrite history, and write so much of it 
 that we shall have really none. If we had the whole 
 world’s history written out in such detail of art, we 
 could not even now make any thing of it—the historic 
 shelf of our library would girdle the world. What, 
 then, will our written history be to us, after it has got- 
 ten fifty millions of years into its record? for we must 
 not forget that the age we live in is but the world’s 
 early morning. Calling it the historic age, then, what 
 are we doing in it but writing-in oblivion, as the un- 
 historic age took it without writing at all? 
 
 By a simple glance in this direction, we perceive that 
 God, for some reason, scrutable or inscrutable, has de- 
 termined to let large tracts of past events be always 
 passing into oblivion; and though it disappoints, to a 
 certain extent, that filial instinct which unites us to 
 the past, and puts us on the search to find, if pos- 
 sible, who are gone before us and what they have 
 done, I think we shall discover uses enough, and those 
 which are sufficiently beneficent, to comfort us in the 
 loss. 
 
 And, first of all, it will be seen that we do not lose 
 our benefit in the past ages, because we lose the re- 
 membrance of their acts and persons. Do the vegetable 
 growths repine or sicken because they can not remem- 
 ber the growths of the previous centuries? Is it not 
 enough that the very soil that feeds them is fertilized 
 by the waste of so many generations moldering in it? 
 The principal and best fruits of the past ages come 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 77 
 
 down to us, even when their names do not. If they 
 wrought out great inventions, these will live without 
 a history. If they unfolded great principles of society 
 and duty, great principles do not die. If they brought 
 their nation forward into power and a better civiliza. 
 tion, the advances made are none the less real that 
 their authors are forgotten. Their family spirit passed 
 into their family, and passes down with it. Their man- 
 ners and maxims and ideas flavored their children; 
 then, after them, their children’s children; and so more 
 truly live, than they would in a book. About every 
 thing valuable in a good and great past is garnered in 
 oblivion ; not to be lost, but to be kept and made fruit- 
 ful. For it is not true that we have our advantage in 
 the past ages mainly in what we draw from their ex- 
 ample, or gather from the mistakes of their experience. 
 We have our benefit in what they transmit, not in what 
 we go after and seek to copy. And passing into causes, 
 they transmit about every thing they are; and, to a 
 great extent, their corrections for what they are not; 
 producing emendations probably in us, that are better 
 than they could find how to make in themselves. 
 
 But we do not really strike the stern moral key of 
 Providence in this general sentence of oblivion passed 
 upon the race, till we make full account of the fact that 
 the major part of our human history is bad in the mat- 
 ter of it. This, to some, will seem uncharitable, or 
 unduly severe; but if they feel it necessary to be 
 offended, they have only to run over the general bill 
 of written history, and see what makes the staple mat- 
 
78 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 ter of the record, to perceive how faithfully the stricture 
 holds. Very few good men, and very few really great 
 deeds figure in the record. Great wrongs, oppressions, 
 usurpations, enmities, desolations of unholy war, perse- 
 cutions of righteousness and truth, are the chief head- 
 ings of the chapters. The eminent characters are, for the 
 most part, eminently bad, or even abominably wicked. 
 And when the staple matter of the story is less revolt- 
 ing, it is generally not because there is a better mind 
 or motive, but only because an immense cloak of hypoe- 
 risy is habitually drawn over actions, to make them less 
 disgusting, and more decent-looking than they really 
 are. Nothing prodigiously bad is done by many, sim- 
 ply because of the mean, dastardly, selfish spirit which 
 dares not heartily do the evil it thinks. In this view, 
 as I conceive, the major part of man’s history is bad— 
 better, therefore, to be forgotten than to be remem- 
 bered ; pitch it down under all-merciful oblivion, and 
 let both sight and smell of it be gone forever. We 
 want a clean atmosphere, and there is no way to give 
 it, but to let the reeking filth and poison pass off. 
 Even if we did not copy so many bad things cramming 
 our memory, it would cost us incredible damage sim- 
 ply to be meeting and taking the look, every moment, 
 of these bad images, whether we copy them or not. We 
 could not be familiar with such types of evil, without 
 being fouled by them, and, therefore, God has merei- 
 fully ordained a limbo into which they may be gathered 
 and sunk out of sight. Who could be less than a rep- 
 robate, having all the monster villainies of the past ages 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 79 
 
 crowded into his memory, and compelling him tc have 
 their touch upon his feeling day and night? But as God 
 has ordered the world, he is all the while making it mor- 
 ally habitable, by successive purgations. He permits us 
 to breathe safely, in permitting us to know almost noth 
 ing of the bad past. And the institution of written 
 history does not very much vary our condition. Who 
 of us does not remember instances of very bad and very 
 brilliant men, who were the common talk of their times, 
 but are now less and less frequently mentioned, and will 
 shortly be quite forgot? Good men are not so easily 
 forgotten; partly because they are more rare; partly 
 because they take hold of respect, which is firmer and 
 more fixed than memory ; and partly because their good 
 is closer to the principle of immortality, imbibing life 
 therefrom. Hence they stay longer, lingering as benig- 
 nant stars in the sky, while the bad and wicked are 
 mercifully doomed to make blank spaces for them, and 
 contribute what of benefit they can by their absence. 
 “The name of the wicked shall rot”—this is their gos- 
 pel; which, if it be wholly negative, is so far grandly 
 salutary. 
 
 Consider, also, in this connection, how certainly we 
 create a better past, when the real and frequently bad 
 past dies, or is lost. And for this very purpose it would 
 seem that God has set every thing sliding away into 
 oblivion. He means it for our moral benefit; so that 
 when the actual past is faded away, we may retouch it, 
 or create another, by an idealizing process of our own. 
 We know that other generations have lived before us, 
 
80 MORAL USES OF ARK THINGS. 
 
 and also that we .ad ancestors, and though we hunt 
 after traditions, and keep family registers, we really 
 know very little more. But we think we know, be 
 cause we imagine; for our busy imagination begins 
 half unwittingly to fill up our blank spaces with pater- 
 nities and maternities, and, in fact, with whole popula- 
 tions and ages, such as we can think ideally, and 
 probably a great deal better than the real fatherhoods 
 and motherhoods whose places they occupy. So we get 
 rid of a bad past by oblivion, and set up a good, or at 
 least better one, for ourselves; such as will not harm 
 us to think of, or shame us to remember. And this 
 imaginary fatherhood and people of the past—what 
 reverence do we pay them, in which reverence to be 
 profoundly profited and blessed? What better can a 
 great and worthy filial feeling do than to create and 
 sanctify a great and worthy past? and then, when it is 
 so created and sanctified, what will it more certainly © 
 do than to make itself more filial in return, and morally 
 better every way? We do not commonly state the mat- 
 ter in this form. We know the very names of our 
 grandfather and grandmother, and likewise, it may be, 
 even of theirs. So we think we have them, in merely 
 having their names. Doubtless, it is something to have 
 their names, because we may so easily put our own feel- 
 ing and desire into them; and if we have beside some 
 few scant vestiges of knowledge, these also are dear; 
 but more commonly the names and vestiges we body 
 into men and women have little body, or meaning, or 
 merit, to attract our reverence or support our praise, 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 81 
 
 save as we ourselves give it. And, in just this manner, 
 we have it as one of our delightful occupations to be 
 creating our own grandfathers and grandmothers; and, 
 in fact, the general past we seek to revere. And it isa 
 most excellent opportunity; for these ideal men and 
 women are wholesome to think of, and the more we 
 honor them the more they do for us. 
 
 In this manner we get the advantages of a tolerably 
 good world behind us—just such a world as we cer- 
 tainly could not have, but for that ordinance of supreme 
 oblivion that makes room for it. It is a very great 
 thing for us morally that we shape so many ideals, for 
 we escape, in doing it, the awfully foul tyranny of 
 facts; and our ideals are just as much more real than 
 the facts, as they are better and closer to the wants of 
 character. Therefore doubtless it is, that so great lib- 
 erty is given us in the creating of our own past. We 
 escape thus into another and generally better realm, 
 where the air is more free and the attractions more 
 pure. We have ideal personages with us, and, what 
 signifies much for us, they are at least as good as we most 
 naturally try to think, And they have the greater power 
 and value to us, that they seem to loom up into quality 
 and magnitude out of the unknown, whence we our- 
 selves have evoked them. We see them fringed about 
 with mystery thus, calling them “reverend fathers of 
 mankind.” ‘ Whatever is unknown,” says the proverb, 
 ““we take for something great.” Oblivion itself is a 
 great magnifier, raising the names we idealize and 
 
 idolize into sublimity, by the haze of unknown merit 
 4* 
 
82 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 through which it permits us to see them. And the gods 
 of the mythologies appear to have been created largely, 
 thus, out of the unknown reverend fathers idealized— 
 only their sanctities were rubbed off shortly, or defiled, 
 by the gross actualities of practical use. 
 
 How far this idealizing method or law is taken ad- 
 vantage of, in a way of supplementing real history, and 
 giving the greater power and value to a few bold 
 touches of narrative than a full circumstantial record 
 could possibly have, may not be at once decided. But 
 we all recognize it as the wondrous felicity of certain 
 characters that we know so little about them, and yet 
 seem to know so much, and that of a type so impress- 
 ive. We say that we wish it were possible to know 
 more, which is very nearly equivalent, not unlikely, if 
 we could see it, to wishing that we knew less. For if 
 their full story were written, so as to answer all inqui- 
 ries, and bring all circumstances into light, the addi- 
 tions made would rather stale and flatten the great 
 character than raise it; for one must be a singularly 
 perfect man to be lifted in majesty by picking up the 
 crumbs and saving the small items of his story. What 
 greater injury, in general, can befall a character, than 
 to have its story made up in such nice precision ag 
 exactly to meet the little curiosities of little minds? Te 
 be so perfectly known argues a sad want of merit, and, 
 if the perfect story is but fiction, amounts to almost a 
 scandal. If Hamlet were known as perfectly, or ex- 
 haustively, as some of the critics will show when they 
 make out his story, he would not be Hamlet longer. If 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 83 
 
 Joan of Are, not flitting into history and out again, had 
 come abroad duly certificated, with the facts of her 
 biography regularly made up, and all her supposed 
 visitations, revelations, debates, bosom struggles and 
 motives accurately detailed, she would only seem to 
 have been a case for the hospital, and would, in fact, 
 have been sent to the hospital before she reached the 
 field. She struck, she won the post of leadership as in 
 God’s mission, because she spoke out of mystery, and 
 took the faith of her time by the spell she wrought in 
 its imagination. And she wins a place with us in the 
 same manner, compelling us to supplement her almost 
 unknown story, by the faiths and admirations chal- 
 lenged by the wondrous, seemingly divine, force of 
 her action. And therefore it is, I conceive, that 
 when God would paint, or have painted, some highest, 
 grandest miracle of character, setting it forth in a way 
 to have its greatest power of impression, he makes 
 large use of oblivion, brushing out and away all the 
 trivialities and petty cumberings of the story. Let the 
 blank spaces be large enough to give imagination play, 
 and, for this, let as much be forgotten as can be, and 
 save the few grand strokes that are to be the determin- 
 ing lines of the picture; let the story be so scantily 
 told that we shall often wonder, and sometimes even 
 sigh, that we have so little of it. Only so could a 
 real gospel be written. What we call our gospel is 
 so written, and no such life as that of a Christ could be 
 otherwise given to the world. A full-written, circum- 
 stantial biography would be a mortal suffocatinn of his 
 
84 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 power. There was no way but to let oblivion compose 
 a good part of the story. And if we can not imagine 
 oblivion to be inspired, we can perceive it to be one of 
 the grandest of all evidences of inspiration in the writ- 
 ers, that they could not stoop to over-write and mud- 
 dle their story, by letting their foolish admirations pack 
 it full of detail. How very natural would it have been 
 to write a particular account of the infancy of Jesus, 
 and of the whole thirty years preceding his ministry, 
 telling how he grew, and looked, and acted, and what 
 the people thought of him, calling it perhaps the Vol. I. 
 of his biography. How often have we regretted this 
 missing picture, and longed to have it supplied— 
 with how much real wisdom we can probably see in 
 that foolish Gospel of the Infancy which undertook 
 afterward to supply it. How easily could it have been 
 given by any one of the Evangelists. And yet their 
 whole account of the infancy is made up in a few brief 
 sentences. John, the apostle, had Mary, the mother, 
 with him, we know not how many years, and she told 
 the story over, how tenderly, how many times. He was 
 getting old, too, when he wrote his gospel, and old men 
 are proverbially garrulous; and yet he says not one 
 word of the infancy, or gives any faintest allusion to 
 Mary’s conversations. No; he has something great to 
 record here, and something which can be fitly honored 
 only in a few bold strokes of narrative, such as will 
 even make the story idealize itself more vividly than 
 words can describe it. Why should he pile it with car- 
 goes of circumstance, when the world itself could not 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 85 
 
 contain the books, and Christ himself would be written 
 out of his divinity, by an itemizing gospel that pro- 
 poses to enhance his record. On this principle all the 
 gospels were written. The wonder is, that so much is 
 let go for oblivion when so much could be easily told. 
 And the result is that, being put in this manner to the 
 supplementing ideally of what is so massively, yet sum- 
 marily, given, we get a Christ who proves himself to 
 our feeling as much by what is not said, but left to our 
 faith to supply, as by what is told in so great brevity 
 and boldness of confidence. The story is told as if it 
 were believed, and had power to make itself believed. 
 I will not say that every great character must be shown 
 as the “ Word made flesh” required to be. More of 
 circumstance is permissible in the inferior characters, 
 and consistent with a due respect. Yet even a great, 
 good man, may be sadly weakened by over-remem- 
 brance. His moral value depends on his getting far 
 enough into oblivion to be strongly remembered. Not 
 even the sun is half as bright in clear, full day, as when 
 he. burns a passage through his clouds, proving his 
 effulgence by the obscuration he has overcome and the 
 close, black setting in which he is envisaged. Nothing 
 is sufficiently revealed which does not refuse to be hid, 
 and has force to burst into knowledge through oblivion 
 —through clouds, through falsifications of enmity and 
 prejudice. On the other hand, nothing is so little 
 known as that which is lugged into knowledge. 
 
 Passing hence to other points more promiscuously 
 
86 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 related to the general subject, it may further increase 
 our good opinion of the moral uses of oblivion, that it 
 sometimes proves and magnifies its consequence by not 
 coming soon enough, or not expunging names and 
 characters that only perpetuate their evil in being 
 remembered. What we call the aristocracies of the 
 world are generally grounded in such. I take no part 
 - here as against social and political distinctions because 
 they offend the principle of equality. I speak of aris- 
 tocracy as a purely moral affair, where its real demerit 
 is commonly overlooked by assailants. Few persons 
 appear, in fact, to make any just observation of the 
 stupendous immorality in which these high conven- 
 tionalisms have their beginning. Orders might exist in 
 a world not under evil, but orders of caste are based 
 in evil itself, and commonly show it by their origin. 
 Thus, how many noble families in England take their 
 beginning from some castled robber, some wild chieftain 
 or pirate ravaging the seas—any kind of man that 
 was the terror and principal thief of his time, eight 
 hundred or a thousand years ago. Barbarians, men 
 of lust, high wassailers drinking out of the skulls of 
 their victims, freebooters winning a crest by the pillage 
 of a province—any thing is good enough that is bad 
 mough to get a name. And the misery here is that 
 ramily ambition gets the start of oblivion, and is able, 
 against the laws of Providence, to embalm its founder 
 in the honors of wickedness; which honors of wicked- 
 ness, having won it a crest, it is very likely to emulate 
 and perpetuate. Hence the generally unmoral or 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 87 
 
 demoralizing power of aristocracy; abjuring, at the 
 beginning, the principles of God and the brotherhood 
 of man, and assuming to be ennobled by wrong. Usurp- 
 ation is better to it than right, because it gets more 
 play of will in daring insult to right, and asserting its 
 pre-eminence by the self-elation of its manners. There 
 are, I know, many virtuous and really good men in the 
 noble ranks of the world; men who are morally en- 
 nobled by their worth and modesty ; which signifies a 
 great deal more, and puts them back consentingly into 
 the acknowledged brotherhood of their race. Allowing 
 such exceptions, it is not to be denied, as a matter of 
 history, that the very worst, most hideous, most dis- 
 gusting crimes ever committed in human society, have 
 been perpetrated under the instigations and within 
 the honored circles of nobility. The wrongs by which 
 these chieftain classes trampled the happiness, and 
 mocked the rights of the inferior orders, in the former 
 ages, make a most sad and revolting chapter of history. 
 Could the broom of oblivion, ordained for wickedness, 
 have only swept away clean the dates and recollections 
 out of which such monsters grew, how great the moral 
 and social benefit that would have followed. Exactly 
 this, most happily, is done for us. We have abun- 
 dance, doubtless, of noble and even royal blood, 
 sprinkled through our American families, but we do 
 not know it or care for it. All such airy notions of 
 quality and absurdities of date-worship are fenced 
 away from us by walls of oblivion. We have and 
 want no footing but the common brotherhood of man. 
 
88 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 All the more hopeful, and brighter in new possibility, 
 is the great moral future before us. Owning God’s 
 appointed brotherhood, what shall follow but that we, 
 at last, be grounded filially in his principles. We shall 
 thus achieve a new and better form of society, because 
 oblivion has come to our help, as it bas not hitherto, 
 save partially, to the more ancient civilizations of 
 Europe. 
 
 Meantime it will be seen that in another department 
 of life, somewhat related, the law that keeps opinion 
 flexible and free has never failed of its office. I speak 
 here of the part which God himself is always maintain- 
 ing, in the expurgation of history, against what may 
 be called the over-conservative, anti-moral tendencies 
 ef many. There isa good and much-wanted conser- 
 vatism, viz.: that which can bravely withstand precipi- 
 tate measures, and subversive and wild innovations, 
 sanctifying, in conviction, what conviction has sancti- 
 fied; but there is also a bad, unmoral, sometimes 
 almost immoral conservatism, which is very different. 
 A certain class of men, without courage, or imagina- 
 tion, or high moral convictions, are never able to see 
 that any thing can be in respect save what is now re- 
 spectable, and contrive to be always fawning about the 
 idols already set up, with sophistries and cold servilities 
 of argument, that amount to a worship nothing better 
 than hypocrisy. To consider what is wanted, or is 
 true, or in real candor obligatory, is not in them; but 
 they are emulous of selectness or high associations, and 
 think it safer and more skillful to coast along the past, 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 89 
 
 aud not strike out where the needle only of responsi- 
 bility can guide them. These timid Chinese souls are 
 going always to save a Celestial Empire, not to make 
 one; and the danger was that they would get so 
 stunted in courage and imagination, that nothing 
 would be left to carry on the grand progressions of 
 morality—nothing left but a hopelessly effete and 
 lapsed condition, under the tyranny of the past. No 
 greater misfortune to character could befall the world. 
 It was a great problem, therefore, how to keep off this 
 ’ tyrannizing power, and hold the race in courage, fore- 
 thought, self-determination, and that free advance in 
 truth which is necessary to a great future in character. 
 And here is the meaning, herein lies the value, of that 
 vast, wide-sweeping, almost undiscriminating oblivion 
 that God has let in as a gulf-stream to sweep the past 
 away. Plainly enough he is no conservative in the 
 style of what is commonly called conservatism. He is 
 always letting things come into the world that he will 
 not let stay in it. Almost every thing done here is 
 done for transition, not for stationary fixture. He is 
 always saying, not to old men only, but also to old 
 fact, “pack and be gone, that new fact may come in, 
 finding room and fresh air.” He will not let us keep 
 ourselves on hand over-largely, lest, if we remember 
 too much of our past, we get stalled under it, and die 
 before life is ended. A great many things appear to 
 be swept away and lost that we should suppose might 
 be saved, and here and there something is saved that 
 we should think might as well be forgot. We wonder 
 
90 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 especially that some very bad names are stuck in im- 
 mortality, as flies in amber, and preserved—only we 
 may note that, as it is without much advantage either 
 to the amber or the flies, but with real advantage to 
 science in both, to have their date and story so regis- 
 tered, so it was necessary that some bad names, such 
 as the Nimrods, and Ahithophels, and Neros, and Bor- 
 gias might furnish, should stay for long-remembered 
 ages, and allow us to get courage in the discovery, that 
 our own bad men are no new product of our degenerate 
 times, but were even preceded by worse. Be this as it 
 may, we do have it fixed as an impression, and it is an 
 impression that deeply concerns our moral benefit, that 
 nothing has, or ought to have, any sure chance against 
 the broom of oblivion, save what belongs to principle. 
 And even principles will require a great winnowing 
 out of men, and require to be many times winnowed 
 and redeveloped themselves, before they are settled 
 into their true interpretations, and forms, and places. 
 A great many things, we thus perceive, are not to be 
 conserved, but to pass; and we are never to be worried, 
 or thrown out of courage, because even what is good 
 appears to be going; for if the good is making room 
 for what is better, and the admirable for what is more 
 to be admired, what reason have we for regret? Above 
 all, let there be no timid and heartless emulation of 
 past things, taking refuge under them from the bold 
 responsibilities of the present. Let the passing pass, 
 and the great moral ideas keep their ferment a-going, 
 and new life freshening in the world. So much of 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 91 
 
 gospel is there in the dreadfully negative, world-empty- 
 ing work of oblivion. 
 
 And this same lesson accrues, in another way of ben- 
 efit, to the mitigation of another and less tractable kind 
 of mischief. A certain class of souls that were narrow 
 in quantity, and hot in conviction, were likely to get 
 stalled in bigotry, becoming, in this manner, only haters 
 and extirpators, in the name of duty and religion. If 
 there were some way of becoming thieves, on principle, 
 it would scarcely be worse. For the bigot, sacred as 
 may be his pretensions, and earnest as he appears to be 
 in the uncomfortable heat of his devotion, is neverthe- 
 less, in almost every case, a morally sinister and evil- 
 minded person—uncandid, unreasonable, jealous, some- 
 times treacherous, often sensual, always cruel—all the 
 worse and more thoroughly detestable, that he finds 
 how to marry so much of passion with so much of what 
 he thinks to be conviction. And yet he holds nothing 
 as if it were true, but every thing asif it were false; 
 that is by his will made fierce by his passion. Now 
 this kind of character was going to be one of the greate 
 est dishonors and pests of a moral system and of moral 
 society. Medicines for such were therefore wanted, 
 and what better could there be than this grand nar- 
 eotic of oblivion, that buries, in unwaking sleep, so 
 many idols, and so many bloody and fierce champions, 
 that all may be forgot together. If contending earn- 
 estly, as they say, for the faith, they really had faith 
 and not merely contention, it would be well, but they 
 make a most sad figure when we look upon them, burn- 
 
y2 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 ing down their life so often to a cinder, without even a 
 spark of that fire that is kindled by God’s love in the 
 breast. Ifsuch men had the world to themselves, they 
 would make a hell-state in society, more pitiless and 
 fierce, and further off from heaven’s principle, than a 
 good many prison wards where felons congregate. 
 How much easier, too, is it for souls under evil to be- 
 come extirpators than brothers in candor and sacrifice ! 
 It will not even cost the necessity of a conversion. 
 How mild and beautiful a ministry for them is God’s 
 deep gulf, down which they are dropping into silence and 
 out of remembrance. A world to make the bigot more 
 absurd than this, I think could not well be contrived. 
 I must not omit to mention, last of all, the very im- 
 portant change produced in the moral temper of our 
 world under evil, by so many desolations and blank 
 spaces in its historic map and annals. We move, and 
 are largely moved, in the moral life, as in masses,— 
 that is, by cities, by nations, by empires—for what we 
 think and feel in such high airs of consequence and con- 
 fidence, when we are bodied in some great realm or 
 people—our pride, conceit of power, ambition, untama- 
 ble wili—passes into our moral temper as individuals, 
 and casts the habit, to a great extent, of our character 
 itself. Therefore as we have free license to do as we 
 will, by states, or empires, or churches, it becomes 
 necessary toput these in ward, and temper them by 
 needful corrections. And when we let our thought 
 run over so many mere bird-tracks of oblivion etched 
 on the map of history, what a picture do we see, and 
 
OF OBLIVION, OR DEAD HISTORY. 93 
 
 what sad tokens of remembrance, nearly expired, do we 
 there recall. The great North African Church, stretch- 
 ing along the whole south coast of the Mediterranean— 
 where is it, by what single vestige is it discovered ? 
 And where is the world-famous Church of Alexandria ? 
 where the great Syrian, centered at Antioch? and the 
 Church of Asia Minor, centered at Ephesus? If we 
 call over the roll ofthe great cities, Thebes stands 
 mute in stone, speaking no more. Great Carthage is 
 almost as difficult to find as the body of Hannibal. Tyre 
 has forgotten her merchants of old, as completely,in- 
 deed as tohave a people any more. Palmyra was dis- 
 covered in the eighteenth century; Babylon and Nine- 
 veh have just been dug up. The cities of the Aztecs 
 are overgrown rock-formations, where forests luxuriate 
 as naturally as they do on the world’s geological strata. 
 Ifwe speak of temples and monuments, the stones of 
 the Incas remain, but the Titans that piled them are 
 gone. The pyramid-temple of Cholula remains, but 
 nobody can tell how it was used. The great mountain 
 heaps of Egypt lift their tops as high as ever, but the 
 stern old victor, Oblivion, has pressed in between the 
 monuments and the monarchs they were to commem- 
 orate, thrusting these away out of remembrance, and 
 leaving those to be mere piles of stones. And so it is 
 of the empires ; all the great empires of the East and 
 South, and also of our own, falsely called new, West. 
 Some of them we can locate, some of them we can trace 
 by their marks, but can not even guess their names. 
 What pride was there now in all these cities, temples, 
 
94 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 monuments, and empires, and what figure were they to 
 make in the immortal ages of the future! But how 
 humble, and cheap, and almost foolish they look! 
 And this same power of oblivion has us al] in hand in 
 the same manner, to do with us just as it will, and 
 what traces of our name and fame are to be left, I do 
 not know. What we built, whither we marched, 
 where we fought, and whom we conquered, and the 
 great leaders we honored with triumph—we really do 
 not like to think that oblivion will carry all these away ; 
 perhaps it will not for a very long time, but there is a 
 very long time coming, which may be so long that no- 
 body will name any more these proud things, or even 
 know what people lived here. Or we may imagine, 
 without being very absurd, that Philadelphia will 
 sometime be dug over to find the marbles of Washing- 
 ton. It may take a million of years to bring such 
 things to pass, but our great teacher, Oblivion, is 
 long-breathed, and will not have his lesson soon ended. 
 And how very weak and small does our high public 
 figure appear in the presence of such examples from 
 the past. We slink back into ourselves, instructed and 
 humbled. It is not so proud a thing to figure out our 
 little day here as we sometimes try to imagine. The 
 contact now of any great principle which is everlasting, 
 or of God, who is the soul’s Eternal Rock and Friend—- 
 how grand a thing it is, compared with any such pom- 
 pous and puffy airs in the trivialities of empire and victo- 
 ry. ‘‘So foolish was I and ignorant, I was asa beast 
 before thee. Nevertheless, I am continually with thee!” 
 
Vv. 
 CF PHYSICAL PAIN. 
 
 WE recoil instinctively from pain as a matter of ex. 
 perience, and only somewhat less from it as a subject. 
 As it isa hard, ungenial fact, so it is a kind of surd to 
 us, unreducible by thought, and generally unattractive. 
 If we take it, too, in the larger view, as including the 
 pains of animals, our first look stumbles us, and we 
 naturally enough prefer to leave it under the chloroform 
 of silence. The physiologists and physicians are obliged, 
 of course, to give it their attention. A matter so pun- 
 gently real, and filling so large a place in the physical 
 economy, must be abundantly investigated. The nerve- 
 tracks by which it comes and goes, and the disorders it 
 reports, in this or that part of the body, must be studied, 
 and all the pathologic symptoms and therapeutic pos- 
 sibilities must be sought out. But here the inquiry ends, 
 unless we include the fact that the theologians find 
 something to say of the origin of pain, and the penal 
 offices it fills in supplying the necessary sanctions of 
 divine government. But the really great question, that 
 which overtops all others—the question of moral bene- 
 fit to the subjects, and to the world generally—is passed 
 by, as far as I can discover, in almost total inattention. 
 One little book I hear of, in a foreign tongue, that, 
 
96 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 judging from the title, may be an attempt of the question; 
 but apart from this, I find scarcely a trace of thought 
 or inquiry on the subject. A fact themore remarkable, 
 that we are attempting so eagerly and treating so pro- 
 fusely almost every kind of subject, whether practical 
 or merely curious. Is it because this question of uses 
 is too pungently moral? or is the disinclination toward 
 it created by the fact, that, taken largely, as including 
 the general economy of pain, the question is felt to be 
 wholly mysterious and really impossible? I can not 
 pretend that I suffer no such feeling myself; but I find 
 it in my field, and therefore will not shrink from it. 
 That I can bring it to a full solution I have really no 
 confidence ; I only hope to suggest some practical as- 
 pects of the points involved that may be useful, and, 
 to a certain extent, satisfactory. 
 
 Entering this field, about the first thing we meet is 
 the reminder of those remarkable words of the apostle 
 when he says—“ the whole creation groaneth and travail- 
 eth in pain together until now.” He uses words of 
 largest import, and, as if outreaching the sense of his 
 time, shows, not the living world only, but the whole 
 creation groaning—the rocks themselves groaning be- 
 fore the animals, and the animals sinking into rock in 
 groans, before man comes to his groaning life, as the 
 superior occupant ; all travailing, as it were, product- 
 ively and travailing together; not merely now but “ un- 
 til now ”—even from the first incipiency of chaos or neb 
 ular condensation, down through all progressive dates of 
 order, and disorder, and providential history, and re 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 97 
 
 demptive suffering, till this present hour. The world, in 
 short, symbolizes pain even from the first ; begins to be a 
 habitation of pain as soon as it has any kind of inhab- 
 itant; becomes a habitation for the pains of intelligence 
 when intelligence arrives, and continues to be as long 
 as it stays. 
 
 In this very impressive fore-glimpse of the subject, 
 two points are suggested that we set our negative upon, 
 before raising the question of use. (1.) That a world 
 so pierced and threaded by pain is not made by God 
 immediately for himself, or to gratify his own tastes and 
 dispositions. Mere pain is barren and valueless taken by 
 itself—he can find no revenue init. He can value it 
 only as it is valuable to his subjects; and it has no value 
 to them, save as they have wants of character that can be 
 faithfully met by such rugged kind of discipline. (2.) 
 That the condition of pain is not a result posterior in 
 date to the fall or sin of mankind—no miracle of retribu- 
 tion, by which, as the world is blasted and stuck with 
 thorns, human bodies are also pricked with torments. 
 The pains of animals, existing before, as in symbol and al- 
 soin fact, may have been dependent, as in reason, on the 
 superior race that were to come and the sin they would 
 commit, and in that sense doubtless were posterior ; for 
 how often do we see that things are prior in time which 
 are post in reason. This indeed is the very highest dis- 
 tinction of high counsel, that it prepares a future and 
 deals with it before it arrives—which prior dealing is 
 just as truly post in order, as if it were post in time. 
 And then, if it should be expressly described as having 
 
 5 
 
98 MORAL USES OF DARK TUINGS. 
 
 followed in time, and as being a result of causation, or 
 miraculous sentence, a very great truth would be 
 affirmed in perhaps the best and only feasible manner; 
 for the prior dealing is really caused by the future 2on- 
 dition it was preparing to meet. Thus if truly the 
 whole creation was groaning, in all orders and degrees, 
 from the rocks upward, before the arrival of the occu- 
 pant and his sin, prefiguring and symbolizing the great, 
 sad history to come, and preparing fit environment for 
 it, what so true method of telling his story as to show 
 him unparadising his paradise, and provoking against 
 himself, or creating for himself, the many thousand 
 pangs inserted beforehand for his discipline. If I build 
 a house in July for the winter to come, the winter will 
 be shaping that house before the day of cold arrives. If 
 there were no winter to come it would be a different 
 house. Even soa world that is made for evil will be 
 such as evil requires it to be, and one of the best deserip- 
 tions, nay, the only feasible description of it that could 
 be given to a rude age, would be that which tells how 
 it was new-stamped by evil and configured retributive- 
 ly to it. All this with the better truth and propriety, 
 that our sorrows and pains exist only as in germs at 
 the first, and are never actually developed in experi- 
 ence, till it is done by the sin itself and the retribu- 
 tive action of causes upon it. 
 
 But these are points which have only a casual rela- 
 tion to the main subject, viz.: the question of use. As- 
 suming here that pain is for man, the question is, How? 
 in what offices and uses? And here we cut off, at the 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 99 
 
 beginning, three or four several answers, that plainly 
 are not sufficient. 
 
 1. It is nothing to say, or show, that being made 
 sensitive to pain in certain organs and parts of the 
 body, we are by that means secured against other 
 bodily pains and damages more fatal. Thus the eye, 
 it may be said, is offended by any disagreeable sensa- 
 tion, and so closed up against the fumes of acid, or 
 clouds of lime-dust, in which it is enveloped. In the 
 same way, the fingers are plaited at their ends with a 
 texture of fine-woven nerve, that makes them exceed- 
 ingly sensitive in the matter of touch, and even the 
 whole skin is so inlaid with nerve as to be a covering 
 of sensibility wrapped about the body; and thus it 
 goes into the world with a self-conserving instinct on 
 the outlook, which notifies it of danger, and keeps it 
 from fatal damage. Otherwise we might tear ourselves 
 against every thorn or briar, and might even hold our 
 limbs in the fire till they were burnt off; for the more 
 inward parts of the body are comparatively inappre- 
 hensive, and would never take care of themselves. 
 _ But it does not follow that actual pain is for the con- 
 servation of the body—the facts referred to are not 
 large. enough to support any so broad conclusion. The 
 showing is not, in the first place, that pain keeps the 
 hody safe, but only that sensitiveness to pain, appre- 
 hensiveness working preventively, in the organs of 
 sense and the skin, keeps it alive, so far, to dangera 
 that may invade the surfaces; next, that all the prin- 
 cipal and worst pains we suffer are not of the apprehen 
 
100 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 sive and cautionary parts, but of the inward parts, and 
 are such as have been produced by some kind of lesion 
 or disorder—no mere notifiers of harm, but harm itself 
 —pains of the flesh, and bones, and marrow ; pains of 
 the head, and feet, and teeth, and lungs, and liver; 
 neuralgic torments, combustions of fever-heat, chills of 
 ague, rheumatisms, gouts, horrors. These are the 
 pains, not the sentinels to keep off pain; and these 
 stay by, and ache, and burn, and lengthen out the 
 groans of their victims, and do not spare. Doubtless 
 the sentinels referred to are doing beneficent service, 
 but what beneficent use have these—the long, appal- 
 ling, dreary catalogue ? 
 
 2. It is no sufficient or complete account of pain to 
 say that it serves economic uses, or the maintenance of 
 economic functions, in the body; closing up valves, 
 stopping secretions, gathering up ulcerations that will 
 work off and separate disorders that might otherwise be 
 fatal ; contracting the muscles in spasmodic throes, for 
 the mechanical detrusion of stone, or gravel, or the 
 violent ejection of poisons. All such pains are nature’s 
 labor, it may be said, the conatus by which it struggles 
 to clear and restore itself How is it then with pains 
 that expel nothing and rectify nothing? pains of the 
 head and the bones, which expel neither brains nor 
 marrow, pains of the heart which commonly create 
 worse pains till death ensues? pains of pleurisy that 
 end in suffocation? all pains that kill and work no 
 benefit—which is the natural and frequent result? Is 
 it any better for a broken tooth or broken limb, that it 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. - 101 
 
 aches? Besides, if we imagine some conatus of the 
 body, in such cases, striving to clear, or to heal itself, 
 is it not found that chloroform, stopping the pain, 
 allows the supposed conatus still to go on, just as 
 before! Of what use then is the pain? Again :— 
 
 3. It is nothing to say, that pain is wanted to set off 
 and make duly appreciable the advantages of exemp- 
 tion from pain. Dr. Paley, recurring once and again 
 to this kind of argument, appears to have more satis- 
 faction in it than it deserves. Not even the comforters 
 of Job could have offered him more dismal consolation 
 than to show him how kindly God was putting his 
 plague upon him, that he might know the very great 
 blessedness of being clear of it! And yet we are told 
 by this very eminent teacher, that “pain has the power 
 of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease which 
 few enjoyments exceed. * * A man resting from 
 the stone, or the gout, is, for the time, in possession of 
 feelings which undisturbed health cannot impart. * * 
 I am far from being sure that a man is not a gainer by 
 suffering a moderate interruption of bodily ease for a 
 couple of hours out of the four-and-twenty.” A very 
 “moderate interruption” it must certainly be. We 
 are not fond of learning how to be happy by being 
 made miserable. The true question is, why God does 
 not make us happy by happiness? Doubtless it is a 
 fact, that light and shade and lines of contrast do in- 
 struct our apprehensions of things, and make us more 
 keenly appreciative. In this manner, evidently, God 
 could make us value immensely a very little and 
 
102 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 short respite from pain; but that single minute’s res 
 pite will be no sufficient compensation for a dreadful 
 campaign of suffering continued through whole years. 
 Or if we speak of the goodness put in evidence, it 
 would take but a very little goodness—with a sufficient 
 quantity of pain—to be even infinitely good. Mean- 
 time the real question is, why we suffer any pain 
 at all? 
 
 4, It can not be said, as being any sufficient account 
 of pain, that it belongs inherently to animal natures. 
 Thus it is conceivable that friction pertains inherently 
 to mechanism, by a necessary law, and so it may be 
 imagined that pain belongs to all sentient beings 
 because they are sentient—that the ancient, extinct 
 races of geology were in this manner subject to death, 
 and that all animate races now existing suffer pain and 
 die in the same manner. Pain, it may also be said, 
 belongs to them all, as being temporary natures; in 
 that fact liable to pain and death, as they are to ex- 
 haustion, or the decrepitude which must needs attend 
 the expiration of their term. I think it must be ad- 
 mitted, that all pain can be thus accounted for on the 
 ground of absolute necessity, if only we consent to 
 lose, or give up, the faith of a God; for the argument 
 is good only when it is taken atheistically. Thus if 
 animal bodies are self-existent, or products of fate, or 
 chance, that may as easily be true of pain; for the 
 necessity of which they are born may be as good to 
 account for their suffering. But if we begin at the 
 belief in God—infinitely good, infinitely wise and 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 103 
 
 powerful-—such a being can make animals certainly 
 that are under no necessity either of dying or suffer- 
 ing. He cannot, it is true, do any thing which is im- 
 possible, anything in the sphere of the unconditional, 
 which is inherently beyond power. But that is not 
 true of any animal nature; it belongs to the world of 
 contrivance and conditionality, not to the world of 
 necessity. The question therefore is, how a God, cre 
 ating animals and men, can allow them to be subject to 
 pain? And it is no answer to say that they must be. 
 If there be no God, then it may be so; if there is, then 
 why and how can it be? 
 
 So far we obtain no real solution of pain at all, and 
 there is no solution plainly to be obtained, that does 
 not go above the consideration of mere physical neces- 
 sities and uses. It exists for uses purely moral, and we 
 get no shadow of reason for it, till we ascend to the 
 higher plane of moral ideas and the scheme of religious 
 discipline by which God undertakes their enforcement. 
 And here we meet considerations like these :— 
 
 1. There is a pain which belongs to the mind itself, 
 in the consciousness of evil, which would almost neces- 
 sarily prick through into the body, and which really 
 needs, in the way of moral advantage, to be interpreted 
 to the mind by the body. And this is the very idea of 
 penalty or pain [pena], that it is a bad mind stung 
 with moral pain, which pain is answered, interpreted, 
 made more pungently just, by the pains of a disordered 
 body. We all agree that moral wrong, or sin, begets, 
 and must beget, a pain of the mind which we call re 
 
104 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 morse, and that sc the mind has a kind of moral gov- 
 ernment in its own nature. But there is apt to be a 
 limit in this very subtle kind of trouble ; it begins ere 
 long to blunt the sensibility, and work a state of moral 
 apathy. Besides, there is a wondrous power of sophis- 
 try in evil, by which it covers itself over with pretexts, 
 and puts on even the semblances of good. Hence 
 there was a clear necessity that souls in evil should be 
 pierced and pinned through by arguments in the feel- 
 ing, which can not be turned by any kind of sophistry, 
 or glozed by any lapse into habitual stupor. What is 
 wanted is, that some sharp, ineradicable torment shall 
 prick into sensibility, and keep just conviction alive. 
 And exactly this will be done by physical pain, which 
 no mental apathies or sophistries can evade. Almost 
 every kind of evil, too, runs to sensuality, and drugs 
 the sou] in that manner, and what can better expel the 
 narcotic fumes of the body, than pangs that are always 
 shooting in their twinges to keep it alive, and be inter- 
 preters of guilt, just where again it might very soon be 
 smothered. 
 
 All physical pain is so far penal; penal, that is, not 
 in the sense that the pains of the body exactly match 
 the guilt of the mind, or exactly match the particular 
 comparative deserts of persons. Some persons really 
 want more pain than others, and some very good per- 
 sons will utilize a vastly greater amount than others 
 less deserving can. The pains all come, be they many 
 or few, in the lines of justice, only they do not here, in 
 our present wicked state, conform exactly to the meas- 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 105 
 
 ures, or keep the proportions of justice. Generally it 
 is not a matter of so much importance that we have 
 them in ourselves, in some given degree, as that we 
 have them in the world. Some persons will be more 
 beneficially affected by seeing what others suffer, than 
 they would in suffering as much themselves; indeed 
 they may even suffer more pungently themselves, that 
 they have their natural sympathies so tenderly pained. 
 The great thing is that pain is in the world by God’s 
 right sentence upon it, and we know, as certainly as 
 we do the goodness of God, that it is the interpreter 
 of wrong—God’s moral sentence felt, beheld, every- 
 where present, the frown of his abhorrence to wrong, 
 the pungent witness of our guiltiness. 
 
 2. Pain is a matter of great consequence in the fact 
 that it gives a moral look and capacity of moral im- 
 pression to the world, of which it would otherwise be 
 totally vacant—a similar impression also of the benig- 
 nity of God. If we had the world only for a garden or 
 a landscape, if it meant nothing but what it is in pro- 
 duction, or the delectation of the senses—a place of 
 good feeding, and health, and jocund life—it would be 
 God’s pasture only, not his kingdom. Moral ideas 
 would not even be suggested by it. But the simply. 
 finding pain in it puts us on a wholly different con- 
 struction, both of it and of life. Now there appears to 
 be something serious on hand. The severity bears a 
 look of principle and law, and the unsparing rigors, 
 hedging us about, tell of a divine purpose and authority 
 
 that respect high reasons, and are able to be immovably 
 5* 
 
106 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 faithful in their vindication. In this manner pain 
 changes the whole import and expression of our moral 
 sphere. Every pain strikes in, touching the quick of 
 our remorse, and giving it practical sanction. We can 
 not look about on such a spectacle of groaning, writh- 
 ing members as the world exhibits, and think of it as 
 being any way reconcilable with God’s perfect father. 
 hood, without perceiving that there is a moral frame 
 about the pict ire, that it means eternal government and 
 responsibility to God. 
 
 Having so great an effect on the world, it also has, 
 we have already intimated, a correspondent effect on 
 the attitude and even the accepted idea of God. As 
 the world is, so’also is God; for the world is but the 
 shadow of God. But the impressions we obtain of God 
 are varied by the fact of pain, principally as respects 
 his goodness. If there were no mixtures of pain in our 
 human experience, we should have no possible concep- 
 tion of severity in his goodness, but should think of it 
 as being a disposition simply to gratify, and keep in 
 terms of comfort or pleasure. But the stern, fixed ele- 
 ment of pain—if this be good, then it is in goodness to 
 be firm, unsparing, experimentally and dreadfully sov- 
 ereign. Such goodness, shooting in such pangs, and 
 searching a way by them into all inmost secrets of evil, 
 is how very different from that unmoral goodness that 
 is only concerned to please. How fearfully earnest, and 
 pure, and holy, must it be, to have such abhorrences 
 witnessed by such pains. These pains, too, must be 
 somehow the result of retributive causes—we cannot 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 107 
 
 think otherwise—end our feeling undergoes a change 
 that answers exactly to the moral effectiveness given to 
 public law by decisive, faithfully executed punishments. 
 What the State is doing in such terrible emphasis, mus- 
 tering its judicial wrath up even to the pitch of capital 
 execution, must, we feel, express the opinion it has of 
 law, and the moral sacredness of law. Doubtless the 
 murderer could be kept safe without being hurled out 
 of life; others could be measurably deterred, at least, 
 
 by a milder punishment; and yet the question of death- 
 ' sentences is not ended; for the main thing to be se- 
 cured is moral impression, impression for law, and only 
 some tremendous shock, it may be, can sufficiently do 
 it. The mere deterring of crime is nothing, as com- 
 pared with something done to make crime felt, or, what 
 is nowise different, to make felt the sacredness of law 
 as a power that shelters the world. And what shall do 
 it but to sometimes see society forgetting all softness, 
 and resolutely set on doing only damage, the last extreme 
 of damage. So in this article of pain, God’s rectoral 
 goodness works by damage. Pains are his silent thun- 
 derbolts, shooting in the sense he has of law, and they 
 are expected to consecrate law in men’s feeling the 
 more powerfully, that his tenderly benignant nature 
 breaks into such damage in them—just damage it is 
 true, yet real, purposed damage. What an opinion of 
 wrong and of law does he thus imprint on our feeling, 
 by his seemingly strange work in the pains. Still we 
 call him good, and have only the more tremendously 
 deep sense of his goodness, that we find him good 
 
108 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 enough to sharpen these pungent woes of damage in our 
 bodies. It is eternal tenderness, iron-clad for the right. 
 
 3. It is another and very important moral effect of 
 pain, that it softens the temperament, or temper, of souls 
 under evil, and puts them in a different key. Thus it 
 will be seen, that, in all cases of long-continued and 
 very severe suffering, there is a look of gentled, per- 
 haps we should say, broken, feeling. The gait is softer, 
 the motions less abrupt, and there is a lingering moan 
 we fancy in the voice, and a certain dewy tremor of tear 
 intheeye. Itisasifthe man’s willfulness had been tem- 
 pered down, or at least partly broken. He may be 
 to us a stranger, yet we see by all his demonstrations 
 that he has come out of the fire, and is tempered to the 
 sway of many things he can not resist. Thus it is that 
 a great many of the best and holiest examples of piety 
 are such as have been tried and finished in the crucible 
 of suffering. Or, if we speak of the race at large, how 
 very often, and how far, are they tempered to the sway 
 of duty by the fact, or consciousness, that they have not 
 been and can not be superior to pain. Had we all been 
 trained in a condition of perfect immunity from it, how 
 intractable and wild in comparison should we be—even 
 like those millennial monsters of will and lust that 
 lived before the flood. They had great advantages over 
 us, no doubt, in their healthiness and the immense ti- 
 tanic vigor of their constitutions, but ten times as many 
 pains with one-tenth as many years, would have been 
 a far better endowment. Have we not a little more to 
 say of the respectability of good health, than the sober 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 108 
 
 est and deepest observation will justify? Good health 
 in evil is not specially respectable, and we see by the 
 multitudes of pains God puts upon us, that his opinion 
 of it is abundantly qualified. 
 
 * 4, It appears to have been necessary for the best ef- 
 fect of pain, that it should be a liability of the whole 
 mundane system, and be, in that manner, a kind of 
 general sacrament for the world. It might have been 
 confined to human beings, and to them who have be- 
 come old enough to be responsible, and to be responsi- 
 ble in just such a degree as matches their sin, but no 
 such limitation is observed. It is put upon the harmless, 
 unoffending age of infancy. It is the lot of all animate 
 creatures without exception, for whatever lives must die, 
 and whatever dies must be subject to pain. Many vege- 
 table growths give tokens of sensibility, which supposes 
 a liability to pain—and if they all, as a class, are ex- 
 empt, they compose about the only class of substances 
 that are wholly clear of the sad implication ; for the very 
 rocks of the world, as already suggested, are monuments 
 of buried pain, themselves also racked and contorted, as 
 if meant to be lithograph types of the general anguish. 
 The meaning is, plainly enough, that pain shall set up its 
 flag on the world, and by some mysterious right claim 
 ownership, 
 
 Now, it is of this that we are specially ready to com. 
 plain. If only the guilty were required to suffer, we 
 could justify it, but why should this bad liability be laid 
 upon the poor animals, who have done no wrong to 
 make it just? We are not satisfied, we sometimes say, 
 
110 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 and can not make it seem worthy of a good being. A 
 great many strike out straightway into atheism, for they 
 say that, in this pain of animals, it is proved beyond 
 dispute than no principle of right, or of just moral dis 
 tribution, governs the world—only fateful chance, or, 
 what is more exact in this case, fateful mischance casts 
 the die for pain. Moral government is out of the ques- 
 ‘tion, for what can a moral governor be doing in such 
 plain violation of right? The argument here is a large 
 one, that can not be exhausted in our present restrieted 
 limits; but three points duly observed will not only 
 clear the bad impeachment, but reveal the fact of a 
 grand, far-reaching positive benefit, without which the 
 moral uses of the world would even be incomplete. 
 First observe that a great part of the suffering of ani- 
 mals, just that part which most offends our feeling, is 
 caused by the abuse and cruelty of man, and that there 
 is no more reason to accuse the right of Providence in 
 allowing man to injure the animals, than there is in 
 allowing him to injure and cruelly torment his fellow- 
 man. By the supposition he is to act morally, and 
 then if, using that liberty, he will do wrong, somebody 
 —animals, or men, or both—must suffer the wrong 
 done. The very scheme of morality and responsible 
 action implies a power to create suffering, and just so 
 far a liability to suffer. Only in one of two ways, 
 therefore, could this liability of animals to suffer be 
 avoided; either man must have no moral liberty, or 
 else he must have no animals. In the former case he 
 would not be a man morally—capable «f character; in 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 111 
 
 the latter he would not be a man bodily—capable of 
 life; for it is a matter of doubt whether he could even 
 live without their fertilizing and co-operative aid. 
 Next observe that animals are things, and not in any 
 such relation to God as to have a moral right against 
 pain. They have no moral ideas, and can not be mor 
 ally wounded. It is only we that are morally wounded 
 when they are cruelly treated—what they suffer is only 
 so much of physical subtraction from their comfort. In 
 this view nothing more appears to be required, in respect 
 to their existence, than that they should have some fit 
 benefit, or advantage in it. If they are made to suffer 
 some pain, wholly irrespective of their own desert, it must 
 not be forgotten that, morally speaking, they have no 
 desert, and are nowise conscious of any. They are so 
 far furniture only, and furniture is not in court for the 
 redress of its abuses. Besides, if they are sometimes 
 abused, how much oftener are they provided for, labored 
 for, and served by whole months of drudgery—no herd 
 or flock ever suffering for its owner a thousandth part 
 of what he suffers for them. They have their pains and 
 distresses too, apart from all abuse, and if they have 
 them still, under the solidarity principle that links their 
 fortunes with his, is it not that he may let forth his sym- 
 pathies more tenderly toward them, and give them as 
 great benefit as he receives at their cost? And if he 
 finds them fellow-partners with him, suffering innocently 
 with him in his lot, they will less need comfort than he, 
 and will only show, by their clinging still to life, that 
 they have comfort enough, in having it valuable as it ia 
 
112 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 Thirdly, the fact that all the world is made to follow 
 the fortunes of man and, in some sense, go down with 
 him and groan with him in his evil, is a fact that car- 
 ries with it an immense power of moral benefit. No 
 matter if the pains are initiated long ages before his 
 arrival, still they are just as truly for him and from him 
 as if they had come after, and had come of being sim- 
 ply horror-smitten with him by his wrong. He is 
 finally to have the general lordship, and a vast, all- 
 ruling sympathy fills and configures the world to his 
 fortunes; so that what he is to be and want in himself, » 
 he shall see in the creatures that have sad company 
 with him. The poor animals, looking up to him in their 
 sorrow, are to say, “ We are with you, only we ask some 
 tender recognition of our suffering for you.” And what 
 can have a more subduing effect on his feeling than to 
 see the mute creation groaning with him—types of pain 
 filling all tiers and orders of substance up to the stars, 
 and holding forth their mirror to his pity. This grand 
 sacrament of pain is ever with him, saying, “ This is my 
 body that you have broken.” I do not say that we are put- 
 ting the matter always in this form. It may even seem to 
 have more of fancy in it than of fact. I only mean to say 
 that the world is so tempered to us, when we think not 
 of it, bearing a look of sympathy, suffering common dis- 
 aster and judgment with us, provoking tenderness by ita 
 broken fortunes and forlorn appeals. How much better 
 it is for us than a world all bright and smiling and pain- 
 less would be, it will be difficult for us even to conceive. 
 
 I have spoken thus largely of the pains of animals, be 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 113 
 
 cause theimpeachment of Providence on accoun of them 
 is so very common, and so very unjust. They are even 
 a necessary part of God’s moral economy, as we can 
 easily see. Only it remains to be added that, when all 
 cruelty to animals is done away, and we learn to have 
 them in due care and tenderness, yielding them true 
 sympathy, as partakers in our sad fortunes, they will 
 yield us lessons of benefit more and more touching, and 
 closer to the fineness of a genuinely perfected character. 
 
 The pains of infancy have their uses and solutions in 
 much the same manner. These we can see are even 
 physiologically derived to them by inheritance, and it 
 is not to be doubted that immense moral benefits will 
 accrue to them forever after, from the pains they suf- 
 fered in their innocence here, whether for a longer or a 
 shorter time. And how powerful is their mute appeal 
 to natural affection, when looking up in their moments 
 of distress, they seem to ask imploringly—‘‘ Who is it? 
 whence and why does it come?” The pitying mother 
 had perhaps never any such thought as that her own 
 liabilities include both her and her child, and yet the 
 pang that comes back from her child has a moral vigor 
 somehow in it that she feels in tenderly remorseful, 
 persuasively bitter compunction. 
 
 5. It is a very important use of pain, that it prepares 
 some of the highest possibilities and most fruitful occa- 
 sions of character. It never misses observation that 
 pain is the pungent educator of that sturdiest and most 
 sublime virtue, fortitude. Danger is the educator of 
 courage, a” ain of this other twin principle, not infe- 
 
 toe 
 
414 MORAL USES DF DARK THINGS. 
 
 rior; and between them both God finds motive enough 
 to justify much terrible severity of schooling. To bear, 
 and dare—these two great lessons are among the chief 
 moral uses of life; and, if he could not give them, he 
 would think it better for us and a more true honor that 
 we be excused from living altogether. If we could neither 
 be martyrs, nor heroes, the highest inspirations would be 
 needless, and nothing would be left us but to earn the 
 common rewards of duty by common drudgeries in it. 
 Sympathy, also, and all the virtues fitly called graces, 
 that keep it company, and all the works by which it 
 ministers, begin at the fact of pain. Even animals will 
 rush to one of their kind who is howling for some ter- 
 ror, or moaning for some present distress. And this 
 natural kind of sympathy, based in mere instinct, be- 
 comes charity in the higher plane of Christian feeling 
 and sacrifice. Therefore, when Christ came into the 
 world, the world’s pains first of all took hold of him. 
 At that point his sacrifice began, and there all sacrifice 
 begins. God might reveal his bounty. by bounty be- 
 stowed, and so far might reveal his love; but there 
 would not be much meaning in the love, if it did not 
 come to pain and minister in sacrifice to it. _Nay, it 
 can be worthily and fitly revealed only as it comes 
 through pain, and bears the burden of pain. And it 
 will not even be revealed by that, save when it bears 
 the inflictions of wrong, for the benefit of wrong-doers 
 and enemies themselves. Pain, therefore, is the pos 
 sibility of all that lies in sacrifice, because it is the 
 possibility of disinterested sympathy, and so of all self- 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 116 
 
 eacrifice. No world that God has made pught ever to 
 want redemption ; but if it does, there ought to be and 
 must be a vast comprehension of pain let down upon it. 
 It need not crucify, but it will, and since it will, the 
 love that bears so much of enemies will best reach it. 
 And so there is launched upon us, in Christ’s descent 
 to the world, his miracles of healing, his words of com 
 fort to creatures in sorrow, his suffering of death at the 
 hands of his enemies—all included in the one word 
 sacrifice—the full out-beaming fact of the love of God. 
 And in the same manner, under the same conditions, 
 we ourselves are to be fashioned and perfected in the 
 graces of the divine love, by the burdens we bear and 
 the sacrifices we support, whether for other men’s 
 pains, or the pains they inflict upon us. 
 
 The very comforting conclusion to which we are 
 brought by these inquiries is, that pain, which seems to 
 be no truth, and as far as teaching is concerned, quite 
 meaningless to thought, is yet no barren evil. It is 
 wholly mute, felt only in some hidden center of flesh 
 or bone, giving no lectures, forming no arguments or 
 propositions, pointing no definite reproofs, and yet 
 there is nothing in all our experience, that changes so 
 many aspects of things, and is so grandly productive, 
 so fertile in good. After all, there is no unreason which 
 it does not somehow contrive to correct, no right argu- 
 ment which it does not uphold, no lesson which it does 
 not find how to give, no temper which it does not in- 
 cline to the truth. It is God’s mute prophet in the 
 body, giving there its mighty, silent oracles to the soul. 
 
116 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 We sometimes shudder at the extremities of agony we 
 see, and ask how it is possible for a good being to sharpen 
 such pangs in a creature bearing his image, but the true 
 solction is that he is good enough to do it and not spare, 
 faithful enough to work out his problem of character, by 
 such painful kind of surgery. If we shudder still before 
 him, it is the tremendous benignity and sovereign fer- 
 tility of his working that we shudder at. Far better is it 
 and worthier, to confide and acquiesce ; for he is only the 
 higher in good that he can be appallingly good. 
 
 The great practical matter, the point whither we are 
 come, and where we may sit down, is that finding how 
 to suffer well is a thing to be much studied and faith- 
 fully learned. Passivity is not the true lesson; for a 
 bulrush bowing to the wind could take that lesson as 
 well; neither is it to brace up all our force in a tough 
 strain of stoical energy, refusing to feel; but it is to set 
 our whole activity quietly, manfully, down upon the 
 having well learned what our fiery teacher will show 
 us. To wade through months of pain, to spin out years 
 of weariness and storm, can be done triumphantly only 
 by such as can resolutely welcome the discipline their 
 nature wants. And the man or woman who has learned 
 to suffer well has gotten the highest of mortal victories. 
 Great works are often romantic because of their magni- 
 tude, and the fleshly nature itself, kindled with en- 
 thusiasm, bears up the undertaker and keeps his vigor 
 good; but in the long-drawn months or years of inev 
 ‘table pain, where there is no castle without to be car- 
 ried as by storm, but only a dull blind nature to be 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 117 
 
 fertilized within—there to ho!d a placid mind, a:id to 
 keep firm grapple with the agony, is to be equal to a 
 great occasion, as few men ever can be. And if God 
 by any severity of discipline can bring us up to this 
 pitch of heroical suffering, he will have made as much 
 of our human nature as it is capable of becoming. 
 
 It will be permitted, in closing this article, to suggest 
 that our natural theologians, in their argument from 
 mature for the goodness of God, commonly, if not 
 always, fall into a large mistake. Their plan or pre- 
 scribed sphere of argument very nearly compels it. 
 The problem is to prove the required fact out of nature 
 itself, and without going above the range of her mere 
 physical appointments. They are shut down thus 
 below the range of moral ideas, and away from all ends 
 of moral and religious discipline. Whether so un- 
 derstanding their problem or not, they do, in fact, en- 
 deavor to make out a goodness that consists in providing 
 means of happiness, comforts, bounties, delectations, 
 pleasures, feedings for waste, lubrications for friction, 
 sleep for exhaustion, healings for wounds, and the like. 
 Physical arrangements for physical ends compose the 
 staple of their argument. How little they can make 
 of pain in this manner is evident. They can show that 
 there are sentinels in our bodies to keep us away 
 from pain, doing it by smaller twinges of pain. They 
 can show, perhaps, that we have a great deal more 
 pleasure than pain, and so make out a balance for 
 the divine goodness; as if it stood in casting a bal- 
 ance between what God gives and what God fails to 
 
118 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 give. They can challenge any one to show, on the 
 contrary, that any single thing is made to create 
 pain, or any single member to ache, no matter what 
 pains or aches may actually come. Be all this as 
 it may, there is abundance of pain which omnipotence 
 might certainly avert. Besides it is damage, indiver- 
 tibly sent, coming visibly by no mistake, and compre- 
 hending all sentient creatures from the highest to the 
 lowest. The whole creation is put groaning and trav- 
 ailing together in it. Taking the world then as a 
 machine contrived for happy sensation, or for mere 
 economic uses, it is plainly a most absurd failure; no 
 machine invented by man was ever kept in use under 
 such failure. To say that such broad seas of suffering 
 rolling over the world are mischances not preventable, 
 is about as sore an impeachment of the divine capacity, 
 as it could be of the divine intention to say that they 
 are meant with no concern beyond the damage created. 
 
 Besides, if the argument for goodness were made out 
 thus in terms of mere physical computation, it would 
 only show that God is concerned to have us fare well 
 or happily, in the plane of physical experience. He 
 would be good as being in good nature, or, at most, as 
 being morally engaged to keep us in comfort. But this 
 is not the goodness of God, or any but a very faint ap- 
 proximation. There is truly but one kind of moral 
 goodness, and it is the same in all moral beings, the 
 created ard the uncreated. But in every grade of 
 being, it wiil require acts and works, and demonstrations 
 according to its rank or quality, or office. Moral 
 
OF PHYSICAL PAIN. 119 
 
 goodness in mere subjects will be summed up m ohedi- 
 ence or duty. But as certainly as it rules in God, it 
 will make him a Ruler, even as he is elected to be by 
 his own everlasting supereminence and capacity. And 
 so, in him, it will be rectoral goodness. And then, as 
 acts of damage by us to wrong-doers would be sin, so 
 they may even be required of him, because he is in 
 government, as we arenot. If he can not minister pain 
 therefore, he can not rule, and can not be good enough 
 to fill his supreme office. But if he can, if with all 
 paternities, all tenderest, most personal love ia his feel- 
 ing, he still can be so faithful in rule as to bend himself 
 to the instigations of pain, passing his own nature 
 through a kind of Gethsemane of revulsion to do it, 
 that in him is Rectoral Goodness—nothing short of 
 which is really divine. The kind of goodness therefore 
 attempted so generally by our natural theologians 
 would not be the goodness of God, and he would not 
 be set in godship by it. To be good for him, is to be 
 rectorally good; that is, to be capable of majesty, 
 capable of wielding and ministering pain, and faithful 
 enough to do it. And so it is that by this fact of pain, 
 we arrive at the only sufficient discovery of the good- 
 ness of God. He could not be more tenderly close to us 
 or more adorably great, than he is in this most earnest 
 way of fidelity. Probably every physical pain we suffer 
 is to him a moral pain, that would to us be manifold 
 heavier. Let us have some proof then of his goodness 
 that makes him good enough to bear the sword and be 
 God, good enough to rule in the grand fidelities of pain, 
 
VL 
 
 OF FHYSICAL DANGER. 
 
 Ir must strike al:nost any person, at times, as a thing 
 paradoxically strange, that in the realm of God, a being 
 confessedly good above all measure and degree, there 
 should be a feeling of insecurity or apprehensiveness so 
 nearly universal; as if unknown dangers were lurking 
 for us everywhere, and perils waiting for the spring. 
 Had any man his house full of guests, accepted each in 
 trust by his hospitality, and were they all the while in 
 visible concern for their safety—haunted by strange 
 noises in the night, flitting about the halls, whispering 
 and gesticulating at the doors of their chambers, set- 
 ting watches in the corridors and stairways, sometimes 
 breaking into panic and rushing out into the street, talk- — 
 ing always in a manner of concern when together, and 
 when they go abroad telling everywhere the dreadful 
 apprehensions they live in—he would certainly take it 
 as a sore affront or cruel impeachment. And yet there 
 is no phase of mortal sentiment in the world so preva- 
 lent, or so nearly universal, as that apprehensiveness 
 which we name by the word danger. Weareall upon the 
 watch for it, ready to catch the least intimation of it, 
 ready sometimes to be rushed into any wildest panic to 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 121 
 
 escape it; a condition of things, we may see at « glance, 
 in which it is clear that God has us in discipline and 
 not in hospitality. Enough, too, that the discipline is 
 salutary, however little complimentary to himself. 
 All the more impressive, too, is his fidelity, that he has 
 even made an institute of danger, and set it in the 
 very cast of his mundane economy. Let us see if we 
 can discover the benefit he intends for us in it. 
 
 There is nothing so indubitably real as danger, and 
 yet there is nothing more difficult if we attempt to de- 
 fine it. Thus if it is evil actually coming or to come, 
 then it is fact; and if it is evil not coming, as in fact, 
 then there is no danger of its coming; so that fact or no 
 fact is the whole matter, and the danger is nothing. 
 No, it is not the whole: we may be ignorant enough to 
 be concerned lest the evil thought of may be coming, 
 when we do not know that it actually is or actually is 
 not, and our unknowingness will itself keep us in the 
 sense of danger. Strictly speaking, danger is subject- 
 ive only ; save that we certainly know there are causes 
 at work in great power, a little way back of our igno- 
 rance, that make our apprehensive feeling rational. 
 And it is these apprehensive torments of unknowing- 
 ness that we call danger. God is doing facts and we 
 are thinking dangers; and his facts, considering that we 
 can know so little what they are to be, suffice to keep 
 us, and are meant to keep us, in a mood of apprehen- 
 siveness—all the while conversant with danger. 
 
 Consider a moment how this feeling of danger is in- 
 stigated, or by how many factors working together i’ is 
 
 6 
 
122 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 kept i1 wakeful sensibility. (1.) We are in wrorg, 
 and therefore tempered apprehensively, looking every 
 way after some evil to come, such as we consciously de- 
 serve. A sound is in our ears when there is no sound ; 
 
 we flee when no man pursueth. (2.) We are ignorant, 
 ‘ and ignorance under evil is even more apprehensive 
 than knowledge, raising more ghosts often than there 
 are facts of retribution. (3.) There are terrible powers 
 working with terrible energy about us; and we know 
 that when they overtake us, or we fall in their way, 
 they will not spare. They work by laws, and laws we 
 understand will never be adjourned or moved aside for 
 our accommodation. They are lictors all of retribution; 
 and the danger is not that they will possibly, or by 
 some mischance, fall in our way, but that they are actu- 
 ally on our track, and will certainly overtake us shortly. 
 And furthermore, (4.) there are grounds of distrust 
 and concern secreted everywhere, so to speak, in the 
 world’s bosom, on purpose apparently to keep us to our 
 caution, and forbid our possible security—mirages in 
 the air, poisons in woods and flowers, green-covered 
 morasses and quicksand bottoms that will drop us down 
 out of sight, if we trust a foot on them; atmospheric 
 breathings of ague, miasmatic infections and hidden 
 death-plagues burdening the night; horses that have 
 death in their heels, tigers ravening in the wood, roar- 
 ing lions that frighten us by their noise, and lions more 
 terrible because they are silent, roaring not at all. We 
 are the more fearful, too, sometimes, that we may not 
 get time to fear; as when some lightning-stroke may 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 123 
 
 get beforehand with us, or when some earthquake 
 shudder—only one—may topple down our house «or 
 city upon us. Or, what is more appalling than either 
 lightning or earthquake, a few drops too many of blood 
 may rush upon our brain, or the heart may burst and 
 send no blood at all. Three-quarters of the life-and- 
 death processes, going on by the hundred in our bodies, 
 are steered, or separated, only by films a little more 
 tender and thinner than gauze. Every thing in us and 
 about us is arranged to keep us in a danger-element and 
 make us somehow alive and apprehensive to evil. And 
 it is not weakness that is appealed to but it is reason— 
 all the rational capacities we possess. If it is in one 
 view an appeal to ignorance, what higher, better, wiser 
 function has reason than the making due account and 
 the keeping due care of ignorance-—requiring it, in fact, 
 of ignorance to be apprehensive, just because it can not 
 see ? 
 
 Reverting at this point to our supposed case of hospi- 
 tality, we see at once how far off such a supposition may 
 be. Itis not as guests that we are being entertained 
 and kept ; we are not accepted as in trust at all, not shel- 
 tered and castled by our Responsible Host, not expected 
 to be inapprehensive and secure ; but on the contrary, it 
 is clearly his fixed design to put us into life as an ele- 
 ment of danger, and keep us, doubtless for some moral 
 purpose, in a condition of unrest and more or less pain- 
 ful concern. What that moral purpose may be we 
 need not be greatly ata loss to discover. 
 
 1. There is no better way to put us on the care of 
 
124 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 ourselves morally, than to make the physical care of 
 our body and life the first lesson of our experience. 
 And this is done most effectively by the crowding of ° 
 all sorts of perils about us, from our childhood onward. 
 In the moral life there is no government but self-goy- 
 ernment, no conservation but self-conservation. Things 
 are governed and conserved by their laws; but men, 
 moral agents, are conservable not by moral laws, but 
 only by their own free choice under such laws, in a 
 way of obedience. And the peril here is great—not 
 in respect of the laws, but in respect of the choices. 
 Every thought, inclining, predisposition, all ends de- 
 sired, motivities played with, parleys and parliaments 
 held in the soul’s chambers, make up an element of 
 danger. All the more beautiful is it that God begins, 
 at the earliest possible moment, to put us on keeping 
 due care of ourselves. He sets us down among physi- 
 cal dangers, where our first puttings forth are to be for 
 our safety. The first thing learned by the child is that 
 Nature goes her own way by herself, and does not con- 
 sider or pity or spare. There is no motherly concern 
 for him, he finds, in the fire, none in the water, none 
 in the hard floor. After a few scorches and physical 
 mishaps, he becomes apprehensive, and takes his body 
 into such care as the danger-lesson has taught him— 
 balancing himself cautiously as he tottles on his feet; 
 standing off from the fire, as if the fire might be com- 
 ing forth after him; scanning with timorous cireum- 
 spection the look and approach of the animals, lest per- 
 chance they mean some injury. And then as the life 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 125 
 
 lesson begins, so it goes on afterward. Made acquainted 
 with danger by his first experiences, danger goes with 
 - him and keeps him faithful company. He stands in 
 some kind of jeopardy every hour. Perils of all sorts 
 and sizes lurk for him in things most common; the 
 pestilence walketh in darkness when he sleeps; m 
 business and travel, fire and water and wind serve him 
 with appalling threats; in his medicine there may be 
 death, in his food ingredients more fatal than gun- 
 powder. And so, brewing always in his danger- 
 element, from childhood onward, he learns to be, in 
 his very habit, a prudent, foreseeing creature; and 
 being thus inducted into the care of himself, as respects 
 the life and life-interests of his body, it is also to be 
 seen whether he will take up, in like faithful caution, 
 a right self-care of his moral and responsible nature. 
 To see the benefit and profoundly wise purpose of 
 God in such a scheme of experience, we have only to 
 suppose that our life had been set on a footing of per- 
 fect, inviolable security ; that every power of nature 
 had been cushioned, so to speak, so as never to give a 
 blow; that the fires had been softened by infusions of 
 dew, and the snows by mixtures of wool; that the 
 lightnings had brought their conductors with them, 
 and the thunders sung their explosions on Molian 
 harps: in a word, that no living man ever scented the 
 possibility of danger, or even conceived what it is. 
 How totally unprepared is he thus for any thing which 
 can be called responsibility. He does nct even know 
 what a critical thing is, much less how to take care of 
 
126 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 himself in a matter as critical as duty, under a peril as 
 momentous as the retributions of immortal wrong. 
 What care has he for any of God’s commandments, — 
 when no single touch of disaster has ever wakened a 
 feeling of concern for any thing in his bosom? What 
 signifies responsibility, when he knows only self-indul- 
 gence and security ; when simply to be dandled in the 
 world-mother lap has been the whole matter of his 
 experience? What can he think of caution, or pre- 
 caution as against any kind of evil, when as yet no 
 pang or sting or blow has ever come nigh enough to 
 startle apprehension? He would go to sea as quietly 
 in a leaky vessel as in a sound one, eat poison as un- 
 concernedly as food, risk a tempest as he would a 
 breeze, and fire as quietly as chloroform. A creature 
 thus trained has plainly no one qualification for the 
 exercise of that really sublime self-care, that belongs 
 to a morally perilous and responsible state. He will 
 have no more concern for his conduct than he has for 
 his breathing, and will let one have its way as uncon- 
 cernedly as the other. He is never attent to any thing; 
 for it is only a life steering itself through dangers, and 
 educated by them, that gets wakened to the stringently 
 practical, manly state of attention. And what is this 
 habit of attention but a first condition of all right 
 keeping and conduct in the moral, as it is of all sound 
 culture and development in the intellectual, life? But 
 we go a stage deeper into this economy of danger— 
 
 2. When we consider the tit relation it has to beings 
 in a state of wrong and disobedience already begun, J 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 127 
 
 speak here not so much of government, or of what is 
 necessary to its maintenance—the retributive sanctions, 
 or penal enforcements apart from which all law is only 
 advice—but I prefer to set the point suggested directly 
 before those instinctive sentiments of order and fitness 
 that bear sway in the moral judgments of the race. 
 Saying nothing of law thus, or of what is needed to 
 maintain it, we do yet, as by some inborn sentiment of 
 justice, require the state of wrong to be a state of dis- 
 turbance. We pronounce it a thing unfit and mon- 
 strous for peace to be joined to evil, and we forbid the 
 bans. Nothing satisfies us but to have evil-doing 
 linked to evil expectancy and fear. When sin mounts 
 the chariot, we require that danger shall have a seat 
 with it; nay, that, as often as it will, it shall drive. 
 We assume, as by a kind of universal instinct, that 
 wrong of every sort shall have fear and jeopardy for 
 its element ; and if we supposed we had gods lurking 
 anywhere, that could have it for their art to give quiet 
 to wrong, we should sooner pluck down their images 
 than pay them worship. 
 
 Furthermore, it is a consideration more impressive 
 still, that wrong itself maintains the same opinion— 
 demanding for itself all which it can most bitterly fear, 
 invoking, so to speak, the evils it deserves, challenging 
 unknown terrors, and feeling itself quite unsphered, 
 when it is not in its element of danger. Sometimes 
 bad men or great criminals get hardened, as we speak, 
 and seem to be quite clear of all misgivings; but we 
 only mean by this that they have become apathetic to 
 
128 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 dauger, not that they have discovered the non-existence 
 of it. Even such would deem it a thing most horrible, 
 if they were assured that wrong has no more any thing 
 to fear. And if there were declared to be a God on 
 high, dispensing equally to evil and to good, and as 
 much concerned to shelter one as the other, they would 
 recoil from his worship even as from sacrifice to Ahri- 
 man or Siva. 
 
 So fixed—so unalterably, universally fixed—are we 
 in the opinion, that a bad world, occupied by souls 
 under evil, must be haunted everywhere by danger, 
 and can not be dissociated from it. There is no miscon- 
 junction so absurd as that of safety and wrong, becanse 
 it is a moral misconjunction, showing our mortal state 
 itself to be out of joint, even down to its lowest foun- 
 dations; a jargon, a chaos, held by no fixed principles, 
 settled by no terms of order. God’s world is a world 
 out of character, all government apart, and as there 
 is no quality of fitness in it, so there is nothing good 
 to come of it. Most vain it will be to look for any 
 kind of moral uses in it; for it could not be more 
 clear that moral ideas themselves have nothing to do 
 with it. 
 
 But this appeal to universal judgment in the race 
 cannot, after all, be held as apart from government, or 
 from what is necessary to the fit maintenance of gov- 
 ernment. We believe in government as universally as 
 in any thing else, and in penal sanctions as the due 
 enforcements of government. And a great part of the 
 abhorrence we feel, as of something monstrous in the 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 129 
 
 state of misconjurction that marries wrong to safety, 
 is due to the implied want of government.. Our feel- 
 ing is that right is mocked by the loss of its defenses. 
 What worse thing or more dreadful can be said of any 
 civil state or body politic, than that evil-doers are at 
 peace in it, having never any thing to fear. Is this 
 government, we say, that is keeping all crime fearless? 
 which permits the robber to show us our money in his 
 purse, and langh at us? which guarantees the mur- 
 derer, when he stalks defiantly by and before the wife 
 and children of his victim? Immunity in crime—what 
 can be more horrible? We require instead that it shall 
 be found either suffering or flying. If the fangs of 
 punishment are not actually fastened upon it, then it 
 must be only that the dogs of justice in pursuit have 
 not yet overtaken it. Andso of all government. If 
 God has any government, it will be right for him to 
 make all crime unsafe. That feeling of misconjunc- 
 tion, of which I have been speaking as a universal 
 sentiment, is after all more than a sentiment; the 
 offense we suffer in it is not «sthetical merely, but 
 profoundly practical, requiring penalties to be as strong 
 as sins, and as universally present. It is nothing, in 
 short, but our fixed opinion that God ought to govern 
 his world, and that, if he does, dangers will be frown- 
 ing in it as many as the wrongs to be redressed, 
 Speculate as we may, we have none of us any practical 
 difficulty, after all, with penalties and penal terrors in 
 God’s realm. We should only be revolted if there 
 were none. It would be as if eternal mockery and 
 6* 
 
130 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 misconjunction had taken away, not government only, 
 but the distinctions of conduct and character. 
 
 3. It is a point still further in advance, that nothing 
 done for the recovery of minds under eyil can have any 
 chance of success, which does not weaken their confi- 
 dence by impressions of insecurity and tokens of dan- 
 ger. It is not enough that, being in evil, fears spring 
 up in prophetic menace from within. To obtain due 
 point and emphasis, that menace wants to be seconded 
 by appalling correspondences of fact without. If the 
 conscience, violated by wrong, utters sentence against 
 itself, there needs to be also a kind of conscience with- 
 out in things visible—a remorse frowning in the sky, 
 and driving its black tempests across in crashing thun- 
 der and hail; throes of wrath shuddering underground 
 and bursting up in flame. The world itself, in short, 
 needs to be a bad conscience physically represented. If 
 there be immutable law for the right, it must, when 
 trampled, be immutable law as an avenger; powers 
 ordained for comfort and blessing must be working 
 disaster; perils must look out from behind objects of 
 beauty ; sleep must be scared by shapes of terror flit- 
 ting across the brain. All the soul’s remorseful judg- 
 ments require to be seconded and set home by the 
 executive preparations of justice. Who will care to be 
 delivered from evil when he sees, in fact, no fiery and 
 bad portent, and no terror of misgiving is felt in his 
 eonfidence ? 
 
 But this we shall be told is fear, and what place for 
 fear can there be among the motives to good? Is it 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 131 
 
 true reformation to be afraid? Is it obedience to be 
 driven a-field in duty by the dogs of terror? Do we 
 call it homage to God that we give him up our self- 
 possession, to serve him as in panic or compulsion? It 
 takes but a very little of this cheap sort of argument to 
 raise a considerable show of philosophy for the point 
 of question or denial made; though, if it were a single 
 degree weaker, and more flashy, it would even miss the 
 repute of sophistry. Probably the casuists most for- 
 ward in it will resolve all virtue by the law of self- 
 interest ; and what is fear but a consideration of self-in- 
 terest. Or they will be such as look for a general and 
 complete expurgation of character in the future life, by 
 long ages of pain there to be endured; and what again 
 is fear but the foreshadow, or fore-sentiment, of pain? 
 and how does pain appear to be a motive at all worthier 
 and nobler than fear? Just this, in fact, is the princi- 
 pal office of pain, or suffering, as one of our terms of 
 discipline, that it prepares to apprehensiveness, so to the 
 avoidance of wrong. Pride might be willing to shake 
 off fear, but it can not shake off pain; and that once 
 entered, opens the sense of danger, never again to be 
 shut. The sense of pain initiates the sense of danger, and 
 so, by a kind of Cxsarean way, the birth of souls into 
 good is made possible. The true conception to be held is 
 simply this: that the argument of fear or danger or felt 
 insecurity is only a preparatory or first-stage argument, 
 never a proximate or properly integral argument for 
 duty. It simply enforces consideration where there is 
 none, and then consideration is to bring on choice and 
 
132 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 settle it in new dispositions, by other and higher mo 
 tivities; to bring up truth and love and beauty, and 
 God as their all-containing spring, that they may have 
 their captivating power in their own excellence, and be 
 embraced in everlasting homage for what they are— 
 possible never to be really embraced for any thing else. 
 
 And why should there be any so great jealousy of 
 fear as a check to heedlessness and bad living, and as a 
 cautionary motive to the consideration of duty? Is it 
 weak to be alive and thoroughly attent to evils about 
 our path? Who is more distinctively wise than the 
 man who can be cautious enough to foresee dangers, 
 provide a way of safety through them, and maintain, as 
 it were, in this great sea of perils, a firmly balanced 
 prudence? Whao, in fact, do we all agree to consider 
 more incurably doltish and thick-headed than the man 
 who can not see any thunderbolt of danger before it 
 strikes him, and then can not see it afterward because 
 it has struck him? What is fear, in this view, but one of 
 the best functions of intelligence? And when we take 
 note of the faet that every human being is organized for 
 the apprehension of danger and pain, the whole skin 
 woven through with nerves of sensibility, to keep it 
 apprised of damage from exposures to fire and frost and 
 violence; the eye made quick to apprehend and shut 
 its gates against every sort of invasion; the very fin- 
 gers’-ends reticulated with nerves of touch, to make 
 them sensitive to the approaches of pain—when, I say, 
 we note this tempering of the whole body to a mood of 
 precaution, or of quickened sensibility to danger, shall 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER, 133 
 
 we take it as the Creator’s plan to make us weak, 
 organize us into weakness, humble as to a pitiful 
 dejected way of living under the sway of fear? Exactly 
 contrary to this, he is making us quick to fear, that he 
 may put us on our intelligence; train us to a nobler 
 and more capable prudence; lift us into a wisdom 
 more completely sovereign over the bad liabilities that 
 beset us. 
 
 And then, if we ask what is the verdict of conscious- 
 ness in a right life thus initiated or enforced, we shall 
 not find the subject humiliated by the reference he has 
 had to prudential motives, or the beginnings he has 
 made under instigations of peril. The prudentials he 
 began with are now for the most part left behind, and 
 their temporary uses are so far ended, and he is only 
 the more exalted in his consciousness that, beginning 
 at a point of mere self-interest, where and wherewithal 
 it was only possible to begin, he is now rising out of his 
 danger-element into personal majesty above himself— 
 conquering and casting out, and even forgetting, his 
 fear, in that glorious liberty that springs from the 
 supreme love of the good for its own sake. All these 
 lower moods of the mind, therefore—apprehensiveness, 
 fear, danger, concern—have moral uses to serve of the 
 highest consequence and dignity, and the world is 
 wisely ordered to keep them in their proper activity. 
 
 4, There are yet two points to be named where the 
 institute of danger fulfills uses more direct or immedi- 
 ate, in training all character up—moral as natural, and 
 natural as moral—to its highest culminations of honor 
 
134 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 and respect. I refer to the two attributes of personas 
 power and personal courage unfolded by it, or by 
 means of it. 
 
 About the highest exhibition of power obtained or 
 obtainable by man is discovered in the command or 
 sovereign mind-grapple he learns how to maintain over 
 causes infinitely above him, as respects their physical 
 efficiency. He is not only not cowed before the tre- 
 mendous forces of the creation of God, but he steals 
 their secret, and by means of it he actually takes them 
 into service. And in doing it he is often moved by the 
 stimulation of danger, going directly into the chambers 
 where the danger lurks, and working in close precinct 
 with it. His most striking contrivances, combinations, 
 tools, machines, operations, discoveries, are ways found 
 ~ out by his intelligence for keeping at bay, or reducing 
 to subserviency, forces that would otherwise crush him. 
 As he must go mining underground, in halls that are 
 filled with combustible, explosive gas, he learns by a 
 little experiment how to fence about his light with a 
 fine wire-gauze, when he has a safety-lamp that com- 
 mands the gas to be harmless; and walking there 
 underground, through the valley of the shadow of 
 death, with it in hand, he fears no evil. Beset by a 
 dreadful plague, that breathes infection round him year 
 by year, carrying off a third part of the world’s chil- 
 dren, he learns to steal a poison from one of his domes- 
 ticated animals, and, vaccinated with a touch of this, 
 he goes, and lets them go, directly into the bad expo- 
 sure, doing it as securely as if the plague-infection were 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 135 
 
 wholly at his bidding. The wild, half-demoniacal ter- 
 rors of alchemy attract his search instead of repelling 
 it, and chemistry is the result. The sea is a terrible 
 devouring element, and the mariner goes coasting cau- 
 tiously along the frightful shores for long ages, fearing 
 not only the rocks and winds, but vastly more that he 
 shall wander into unknown regions, and be never able 
 to find where he is, or by what course to reach his - 
 home. By and by it is discovered, by explorative 
 genius groping far away among the stars, that by angle 
 and distance and calculated tables and observations, 
 the random ship that was can find her place, at almost 
 any time, within a mile, and set her course with relia- 
 ble precision for any country or harbor on the globe. 
 The sea again he finds a yawning gulf between him and 
 the world; he searches it out with his mind as the fishes 
 can not with their fins, maps the still bottom, draws his 
 wire along it, and then sits down to think and talk 
 serenely through three thousand miles of wave and 
 storm. Still more sublime, because vastly more com- 
 plex, is that wonderful combination of study and expe- 
 rience by which human society learns to organize itself 
 in law and government, so as to keep in safe control 
 those worst infestations of danger that are created by 
 social wrong and passion. The problem is, how to dis- 
 tribute selfishness and set bad power in balance, so as 
 to keep it safe in the maintenance of order and justice. 
 A very cheap, small thing it is to make out navigation 
 tables, even though we go to the stars for our data; but 
 to make out safe navigations for society, and steer the 
 
136 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 ark of liberty through the perilous seas of wrong and 
 passion—this, alas! is an art that comes more slowly; 
 and yet it comes! We shall have it by and by, the 
 world over. And yet all these and other puttings forth 
 of skill and adaptive discovery, in the nature-field of 
 our life, are only types of that vastly higher and more 
 qualified intelligence by which we are to get the worlds 
 of spirit and, religion into our command, and bring the 
 powers of the world to come into our service. In its 
 highest view, the great problem of religion, it is true, 
 is not safety, but righteousness—how to be right witk 
 God; how a soul in evil may come up out of evil inte 
 God’s acceptance and friendship, as being co-ordinate 
 with him in character. And yet the first impulse to 
 this is the felt insecurity of evil, set home and seconded 
 by all the perils of time. From that humble beginning 
 the soul is to get spring, and then, by its divine explo- 
 rations of study, and faith, and sacrifice, it is to climb 
 up into God’s eternity, appropriating all the grandest 
 truths and powers and celestial navigations of his 
 realms. Nowhere does he engineer so loftily and 
 ascend to such a grade of intelligence as here. We 
 have almost no conception of intelligence, what it can 
 contrive, and seize, and command, till we follow it up 
 hither into this diviner field. Think what we may of 
 fear, and danger, and the weakness of all such initia- 
 tions of motive, they do in fact prepare us to exactly 
 that which is the crown of intelligence, and without 
 which it has no crown. 
 
 It only remains to speak now of the courage-prin- 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 137 
 
 tiple, rising, as it does, out of the world’s perils and 
 dangers, and made sovereign, as to fear, by the ascend- 
 ency it conquers above them. Great courage—that 
 which makes a hero—is, by general consent, one of the 
 grandest and most eminent distinctions possible to 
 man. Indeed, we are so eager to find heroes, and pay 
 them a voluntary homage, that we sometimes overleap 
 all terms of merit, and take up what are only mock 
 examples. We commonly take our heroes from the 
 fields of war, doing it clearly in the opinion that such 
 kind of greatness may be fitly measured by the dangers 
 encountered. And so far we are right—if only the 
 commander whom we have taken for our hero was a 
 leader, who himself was led by the inspiration of a 
 great and worthy cause. But these are not the only 
 heroes. Just as dangers fill the world, so all men and 
 women too are called to act insome heroic part, and the 
 plan of life itself is to make heroes, according to the 
 nerve and resolute faith by which the fight of life’s 
 trial is maintained. The mere infant learning to walk 
 is taking a first lesson of courage, and how much the 
 getting heart for such terrible adventure costs him you 
 will see from the delight he shows in his victory. The 
 boy that dares to be singular is finding how to be about 
 as great a hero as if he were the leader of a battle. 
 The man that makes a great investment, or opens a 
 new trade on the other side of the world, wants great 
 nerve, steadied by a firm confidence of right judgment, 
 such as many wild-brained, accidental leaders in war 
 never knew. All the great inventors, such as Watt, 
 
138 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 Fulton, Arkwright, and Bessemer, have to fight pitched 
 battles against poverty, conspiracy, and only half suc- 
 cess, and finally prevail because they are too great 
 heroes to be mastered. Whether Wellington was more 
 of a hero than the man last named is really doubtful. 
 From certain discoveries in iron, he took the hint of a 
 new possible art that has made him the Tubal Cain of 
 his age. His partial failures, and the consequent loss 
 of confidence he suffered, the beauty of his new com- 
 binations, and the stake he made so heroically to re- 
 trieve his loss, have made his name one of the grandest 
 names of our time. It is as if he had turned all the 
 railroads of this and all coming ages into steel, and 
 built in steel a network arch of triumph that spans the 
 circles of the world. So in all the engagements of 
 life, the expeditions, adventures, travels, trades, and 
 toils, there is some kind of peril to be mastered, some 
 terrible risk or danger to be met, which none but a 
 most real hero will have mettle enough to attempt; 
 and then as a result he becomes a man as much 
 manlier, as he had more to fear and more to conquer. 
 And what kind of opinion does God indicate con- 
 cerning man, when he sets him down here in death’s 
 shadow, and hemming him about with every thing to 
 be feared, charges him to get the sovereignty of all, by 
 his wakeful prudence and his steadfast courage. It 
 was here, as it would seem, that Job, considering the 
 storms and perils invading him on every side, fell into 
 so great maze and bewilderment. What kind of crea- 
 ture does my God think me to be, that he hedges me 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 139 
 
 about with so many terrors, and sets me contending 
 with such wild seas? Am I something more than a 
 man, oris it more to be a man than I have thought it 
 tobe? “Am Ia sea, or a whale, that Thou settest a 
 watch over me? Thou scarest me with dreams. Thou 
 terrifiest me through visions. What is man that Thou 
 shouldst magnify him, and that Thou shouldst set Thine 
 heart upon him, and that Thou shouldst visit him every 
 morning and try him every moment ?” 
 
 Surely a creature nursed in such wild perils must 
 be designed for some heroic standing and degree. It 
 may not be necessary to suppose that he is either a sea 
 or a whale; enough that he is a man; call him, if you 
 please, a weak, frail creature; the more sublime is it 
 that a creature so frail can find how to master powers 
 so unequal, and assert himself in sovereignty over such 
 dangers. Whoever has seen a storm on the ocean has 
 been made to feel this truth, and probably in a manner 
 that even seemed to be a discovery. The water flies 
 into mist like dust upon a dusty road, filling the air 
 and hiding the foreship from the sight; the ropes groan 
 to the tempest with a deep shuddering sound; wave 
 musters after wave, tossing the huge frame as a play- 
 thing or a bubble, driving it up’ through summits and 
 down through cataracts, sending it over with a lift 
 and down with a shove and a shout—who shall say 
 whither? Ah! man, what now is man? A reed, a 
 straw, a helpless, powerless creature, drifting where 
 God’s tempest wills, ready to sink as a fly, into just 
 what gulf will open, there to be no more. But he 
 
{40 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 looks again, notes the commander at his post, watching 
 the symptoms of the storm and the working of the 
 ship. He is a slight-made, very diminished creature, a 
 man; to the smallest of these waves he is nothing. 
 But he has stuck a few chips together, and balanced a 
 bit of wire on its center to guide him, and he is out 
 here on this howling waste, a thousand miles from the 
 rand, careering through the waves, and holding on his 
 way, as securely as if they were !oaned to his service. 
 And this, indeed, is man—a creattre deeper than this 
 sea, and more sovereign, rising out of frailty into 
 grandeur, and creating the sublimity that before was 
 only possible by the conquest of his perils. So God 
 tries him every moment, and so he is magnified. Hay- 
 ing nothing to fear, and no rough perils to conquer, 
 how contemptible in comparison the figure to which 
 he would be left. 
 
 By this time it must be sufficiently clear that our 
 human world would be an amazingly stupid place, and 
 life itself a wretchedly profitless experience, if there 
 were no dangers in it. We should fall into wrong as 
 it were by dozing; or if we say nothing of wrong, we 
 should do the right idly and without heart, as if it were 
 not fit to be done. We should not be timid, because 
 we have nothing to fear; and as little should we be 
 brave, because we have nothing to conquer. Weshould 
 never be unfolded in that power and courage which are 
 ‘he real sublimities of character, but we should live in 
 a low, mean key, and die of mediocrity and dullness. 
 Our tempests would be lullabies, our rivers ropy and 
 
OF PHYSICAL DANGER. 141 
 
 slow; our lightnings heat lightnings only; and death, 
 throwing by his scythe, would come in gloves with 
 narcotic vials. And then, being what we must, our 
 heaven, if we are to have any, would be a society com- 
 posed of dull, insignificant people. 
 
Vil. 
 
 OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY 
 
 As it appears to be a first principle in morality that 
 every man shall be responsible for himself, it would 
 really seem that we ought also to be started every man 
 by himself; that is, separate and sole, a strictly indi- 
 vidual nature, common with no other, implicated in no 
 social liabilities that touch the character. And yet we 
 have our very being, as a personality, inwoven with 
 other personalities, and sometimes half consolidated 
 with them. We exist by race, in families, under laws 
 of inheritance, circulating derivative blood, and bear- 
 ing qualities bred in and in, which as nearly amount to 
 moral character as they well can, without our being 
 answerable for them. And then, again, we are herded 
 afterward, in schools, and guilds, and states, and 
 churches; where we are taken by the common mo- 
 tives, breathe the common atmosphere, and receive a 
 common headship, under the leaders and more forward 
 minds that express because they represent, and repre- 
 sent because they express, the common life. And the 
 result is that we get the stamp of our school, »r sect, or 
 general body upon us, so visible, so legibly written, as 
 to be distinguishable even by a stranger, The young 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 143 
 
 Quaker, for example, dropping off his drab and his 
 grammar, and even his morality, will certainly reveal 
 the type of his connection to any one at all conversant 
 with it. 
 
 In so many ways we discover the largely compre- 
 hensive, far-reaching fact of our solidarity; a fact 
 which has never been overlooked, but which, for the 
 want of any better term of designation, we are learning 
 of late more and more familiarly to speak of, under this 
 rather dry French name, or epithet. Our theology has 
 long been conversant with ideas closely related under the 
 phrases, “ federal headship,” ‘‘ original sin,” ‘‘ covenant 
 of works,” “imputed sin,” “sinning in Adam,” and the 
 like. Some of these are scriptural expressions sub- 
 jected to a dogmatical construction, and some of 
 them are terms of merely theologic invention; but 
 whatever else may be said, or understood, whether in 
 or out of the Scripture use, they all recognize the one 
 general fact of a solidarity in human life, such as ex- 
 tends, in one way or another, to the liabilities of char- 
 acter. Sometimes the Scriptures speak of “going with 
 a multitude to do evil,” asif the multitude were a flood 
 in which all the particular units are drifting ; some- 
 times they speak of judgments descending on “the 
 third and fourth generation” of wicked men, as if the 
 law of a common retribution included all. 
 
 Now it is by these conditions of solidarity that we 
 are most often balked in our notions of individuality, and 
 the responsibility of individual men for their conduct. 
 We remember the idolatrows religions of the world, and 
 
144 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 it coes not escape our notice that whole peoples are 
 configured by them to each other, in common ways of 
 falsehood, lust, and cruelty. Suicide or self martyr 
 dom is even held to be an act of pagan saintship. In 
 at least one such pagan tribe, murder is executed under 
 the bonds of religion. And, apart from all religious 
 configurations of character, how often are children 
 trained up in human families to dexterity in crime— 
 sent forth in the morning, for example, to steal, and 
 returning at night to feed on the light-finger revenue 
 of their day—when, if they have not stolen'quantities 
 enough, they must be punished for their want of success ! 
 Wrong is the very matrix, in a sense, in which thou- 
 sands of hapless children are formed. There is, in 
 fact, no vice or crime in the world, which is not drunk 
 in often from the element in which human beings live, 
 almost as naturaily as a sponge receives the waters of 
 the sea. The dreadful disadvantage thus ineurred 
 under the solidarity principle troubles immensely all 
 our notions of morality or responsible obligation. We 
 can not refuse to make some large allowance of charity 
 for such examples, and we are sometimes tempted even 
 to go the length of justification. ‘“ Under such enor- 
 mous disadvantages,” we say, ‘‘ who could be worthier 
 or better? If there is any stone to be cast, let some 
 other do it; we cannot.” 
 
 Here, then, is our problem, and it must be admitted 
 to be a really dark one. What are the uses or advan- 
 tages to be gained at so great cost? By what con- 
 ceivable advantage can disadvantages so immense be 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 145 
 
 morally compensated? In preparing our answer to 
 this question, three preliminaries of great importance 
 are easily settled :— 
 
 1. That something closely akin to a condition of soli 
 darity, or common liability, appears to be involved in 
 the existence of moral obligation itself. Such obliga- 
 tion supposes the fact of society, for it is only in social 
 relations that opportunities of right and wrong are cre- 
 ated. And then, having such opportunities. provided, 
 as moral liberty or freedom of choice is given there is 
 just so far a liberty given to be bad, carry a bad 
 influence, create a poisonous atmosphere, perpetrate 
 frauds and deeds of violence, so to infect or shake 
 the whole frame of society, as also all the members 
 may be doing by a like abuse of liberty; and then 
 society itself being contaminated, will be in turn a 
 contaminating power, of necessity. The whole stress of 
 solidarity in it will now be set for evil. All which 
 could noway be prevented, without either taking us 
 out of society, or never putting us into it; in which 
 case we must have a completely sole existence—which 
 is the same as to say that we shall have no moral 
 sphere at all. As regards the solidarity plan, there 
 
 Pec] 
 
 was in fact no choice; for, not existing under such a © 
 
 condition, we could have no other field of responsible 
 action. Our right of morality would be just like a 
 marital right and duty in a world where all are men. 
 2. It is equally plain that we could not exist in 
 a way of reproduction, or in terms of family relation- 
 ship. _— being involved in derivative conseqnencea 
 
 ws 
 
146 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 and liabilities. Fatherhood and motherhood must carry 
 down effects on childhood, by a law of necessary causa- 
 tion. We encounter, at this point, a grand fact of 
 solidarity, at the foundation or first inception of life. 
 We must either be created outright, every man by 
 himself, full-grown probably and without distinction of 
 sex, or else we must be one race in the constituent lia- 
 bilities of solidarity—hooked together, in our generations, 
 by a law of derivative life. And so, inherent qualities and 
 tendencies must pass by organic participation. Assum- 
 ing this fact, which is incontrovertible, we have it then as 
 a question, whether a scheme of existence without child- 
 hood, without fatherhood or motherhood, without nat- 
 ural affection of any kind, without any right of training, 
 or counsel, or authority, or any element of family life, 
 sanctified or unsanctified by religion—whether such a 
 scheme of existence would have any moral advantages 
 over the reproductive, family state by which our life is 
 initiated? We judge not unlikely, in our haste, that it 
 would; but there could not be a greater mistake. 
 
 We must be created, in that case, in the full matu- 
 rity of our powers; but we should have no particle of 
 experience to begin with, no judgments formed by ex- 
 perience. Our full-grown passions would be schooled 
 by no habit of self-control. Our will would be green 
 as infancy, and yet in full volume as to power. Our 
 curiosity to know the unknown would inevitably put 
 us on just the bad experiment of Adam, and every one 
 would try it for himself. Meantime we should have 
 entered on a loveless life, which is, so far, worse even 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY, 147 
 
 than our fall—nobody caring for us, and we for nobody 
 —for we have, in such a case, no ties of natural affec- 
 {2on. It would be wonderful, too, if we were not set 
 upon by every sort of robbery and wrong from the 
 comers that arrived before us, only to get our compen- 
 sation, by like robberies and wrongs upon those who 
 come after, when our turn of hazing arrives. Having 
 no constituent solidarity, our sole state would be the 
 state of Ishmael. We should be obliged to create 
 artificial bonds of defense by conspiracy; and our con- 
 spiracies, gotten up without friendship, would be soli- 
 darities in selfishness—bonds themselves of oppression 
 —the most unmitigated, devilish type of woe that can 
 well be conceived. The freeness of character in good 
 would be vastly more abridged than now, and the com- 
 mon liabilities of wrong immensely increased. Exist- 
 ing in this manner as solitary magnitudes, our soleness 
 would only bring us into a state of moral oppression 
 hostile to all benefit, and in fact quite unendurable. 
 After all, our solidarity, that brings so many kinds of 
 moral detriment upon us, and of which we so often 
 complain, throwing all the charges of our misdoing 
 upon it, is a far more genial and beneficent condition 
 than any more solitary or separately-begun estate we 
 are able to conceive. 
 
 3. It is another very important preliminary, never 
 to be hid or forgotten, when speaking on this subject, 
 that no human being is so far dominated by the moral 
 disadvantages of his bad connection, or the bad exam- 
 ple in which he has been trained, as to be wholly un 
 
148 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 conscious of wrong, or clear of blame, on account of it. 
 There are two kinds or degrees of wrong; one which 
 violates the everlasting, ideal principle of right, and a 
 second which only violates certain specific rules or 
 maxims of conduct which are conceived to be exeeutory 
 of the principle. No moral being can reject the prin- 
 ciple, or consciously be out of the principle, without 
 blame. No condition of solidarity can excuse him 
 from this blame; for the principle of right-doing is in 
 all men, passing through all solidarities, the same in all, 
 whatever be their religions or customs. They would 
 not be men without this great, fixed law of duty in 
 them, even as the animals themselves are not. But it 
 is not so in respect to the particular preceptive rules 
 of conduct which are gotten up to interpret and apply 
 this law. They may vary largely in different nations 
 and ages, being more developed in one, more crude and 
 wild in another; demanding here what is forbidden 
 there, and begetting, under one solidarity, a practice 
 which is abhorrently wrong under another. Here, in 
 this department of specific action, there will be great 
 diversities, and no one is likely to blame himself, when 
 the practice he maintains coincides with the practice 
 of his time, or people, or family. Therefore we are to 
 make, in this field of preceptive rule and practice, a 
 very large allowance for what to us is very false and 
 low; never judging others, differently associated and 
 trained, as we would judge ourselves. They may even 
 be justified in that which to us would bring the bitter- 
 est self-condemnation. We only know that they never 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 149 
 
 are justified in doing or meaning any thing wrong, as 
 related to eternal principle. Thus it may be that the 
 Spartan children, trained to theft by public law itself, 
 had never a feeling of compunction in their lives con- 
 cerning that practice; and yet, being consciously out 
 of principle, and wrong in the grand moral aim of 
 their life, they would carry along so much, at least, of 
 condemnation in all their conduct, and would have no 
 more claim to be justified by us, than they have reason 
 to justify themselves. 
 
 We teach ourselves, in this manner, to give full 
 scope to the solidarities of feeling and practice in which 
 men are trained ; condemning them never, save as they 
 violate their convictions, but perfectly assured of this, 
 thet they never do, in fact, quite justify themselves ; 
 because they go into all their conduct with a sentence 
 of self-condemnation upon them, for the conscious 
 alienation of their life from what should be its reign- 
 ing principle. And so much is there in this, that we 
 should be much nearer the truth if we judged them to 
 be guilty, in all their deviations from our own stand- 
 ards of practice, than we should in a clean acquittal of 
 all wrong because they have not been trained in our 
 standards; for there is one standard everlasting, which, 
 as being simply men, they have revealed in their 
 hearts, and by which they are consciously condemned. 
 The question of wrong or sin is never ended, ag a cer- 
 tain class of writers in our time very flippantly assume, 
 when they find one people or tribe maintaining a stand- 
 ard exactly contrary to the standard of another; for there 
 
150 MORAL USES OF Dunk THINGS. 
 
 is a higher, all-inclusive, absolute standard, and it may 
 be that none of us are justified by that. In this stand- 
 ard all our judgments touch bottom, and by this every 
 thing is to be squared; and if we have precepts less in- 
 clusive and more superficial, it is better to make ot 
 them only what is to to be made. 
 
 Having settled these preliminaries, we come out in 
 the conviction that our debate is not ended, and that, 
 after all due allowance made for the solidarities of our 
 existence, there is yet abundant room for the belief that 
 they belong to the best-appointed moral condition pos- 
 sible, and have moral uses in which our advantage is 
 deeply concerned. What these uses are we are now to 
 inquire. 
 
 1. It will of course be conceded that, where there is 
 a solidarity or common life in good, that good will 
 have a more complete and more easily controlling 
 sway. The hard thing we complain of is, that evil 
 gets a power so nearly absolute in this manner. Of 
 course it will be admitted that good obtains a similar 
 advantage. The state of solidarity works either way, 
 and the design appears to be to bring it more and more 
 completely on the side of good; for a progress in truth 
 and character and all forms of good appears to be 
 expected: so that, finally, grand consolidations and 
 massings of society will be gathering heavier momen- 
 tum and a more and more beneficent sway over the 
 conduct and life of individuals. Good men will then 
 be born by nations-—a nation in a day. 
 
 The beneficent powers thus garnered up in the soli- 
 
ON THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 161 
 
 darity principle, we have never yet seen; and we take 
 up very hastily the impression that it is a kind of 
 organic law of advantage given only to wrong and evil 
 But suppose we take, for example, that fearfully depress- 
 ing and disabling power, which is exerted against indi- 
 vidual industry and character by a bad or oppressive 
 government. It is a public despotism, massing the 
 might of a nation against private worth and success. 
 Let now such private worth and success, consolidated 
 in some people by intelligence and religion, so far get 
 the start of despotism, here or there, as to organize for 
 itself institutions that give full hope and liberty and 
 scope to every man and child—what will now be seen 
 more certainly than that every sort of despotism in the 
 world will be yielding itself slowly to the new exam- 
 ple; growing beneficent, fostering intelligence, liberat- 
 ing the press and religion; so that finally, private 
 worth and character, instead of being suppressed, will 
 be called forth and created in all the old, exhausted 
 nations by the governments that seemed before to be 
 their inevitable hinderance? Here, then, we have one 
 people, constructing, at last, a grand solidarity of right- 
 eousness in government, more or less nearly universal, 
 And so this one people gets a hold, through the soli- 
 darities of civil order all over the world, whereby it 
 changes and raises up into character and new-sprung 
 life all other peoples all over the world; making even 
 the kings to be their nursing fathers and the queens 
 their nursing mothers, in all noblest principle and most 
 vigorous intelligence. And then, when it has ccme to 
 
162 MORAL JSES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 this, how very difficult will it be for any government 
 ever to become bad or oppressive again; for every 
 throne or state is looked upon by every other, and can 
 not willingly lose its respect! 
 
 Take another example of a different type. We 
 speak, and so does the Scripture, of a lapsed condition 
 that is brought on the race by inheritance ; for, as cer- 
 tain as evil is upon any former generation, some damage 
 must accrue, on physiological principles, to every sub- 
 sequent generation. Without being made responsible, 
 then, for what we have not done ourselves, we are in- 
 volved in the common damage of a common liability, 
 and go down as a race in the strict solidarity of our 
 connection. We might also go down, every man for 
 himself, in a state of sole existence—we probably 
 should—but the disorder we suffer by inheritance puts 
 us in a state of common disadvantage, where evil gets 
 the ascendency prior even to our consent. We some- 
 times complain of this, and imagine that no fair chance 
 at all is given us. But suppose this same law of 
 physiological connection to be finally rectified and 
 purified in the progress of time, all Christian parent- 
 ages becoming the spring thus of a graciously rectified 
 and purified germinal life in their children—and it 
 must as certainly be so as that there is any transmission 
 of quality at all—and then these two results will follow: 
 First, that the new solidarity in good, thus consum- 
 mated, will be at once more prosperous and more 
 healthy, being clear of the poisons of vice and of all 
 habits of excess, and will thus overpopulate and virtu- 
 
ON THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 153 
 
 ally live down the more corrupted families: Secondly, 
 that every such family will become a rectified stock, 
 transmitting seeds of uprightness that will propagate. 
 much as they themselves are propagated, even to the 
 end of the world. In these two modes, the great soli- 
 darity principle, which we think of only as our disad- 
 vantage and the spring of our moral disaster, is to be- 
 come itself the propagator finally of righteous life for 
 the whole race. We now think, and are wont often to 
 say, that being down, as a race, under evil, there is not 
 much really to come of our truly forlorn world, but 
 loss and a vastly preponderant undoing ; but we do not 
 consider that our experiment is barely begun; that we 
 are yet to go on—as all our vast incipiencies and the 
 foregone geologic eras prophesy—existing so long, in 
 populations so vastly increased, and raised so high in 
 quality, that the ages, looking back, will see us to be 
 very nearly contemporary with Adam, and will think 
 of the race as a grand providential success, fruitful only 
 in good and triumphant only in blessing! 
 
 2. Where a bad power gets advantage and a more 
 dominating sway by massing itself in family connec- 
 tions, and guilds, and castes, and whole nationalities, it 
 is almost certain to finally weaken itself by the very 
 solidarities that in the beginning gaveitstrength. It acts, 
 at first, with a fearfully propelling power; and then 
 it begins to react, letting itself down, as it were, by 
 exhaustion. Aristocracies flourish in this manner, ob- 
 taining, for a time, greater and still greater eminence, 
 as the splendors and pomps they display are raised in 
 
154 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 the scale of magnificence; captivating, as by a spell 
 of admiration, vast multitudes of retainers; but the 
 pride and gilded virulence of their contemptuous habit 
 begins at length to make them felt as an oppression 
 
 they sink in dignity as their frequent profligacy com- 
 pels; the admirations they raised fall away and are 
 sickened by impatience, till at last the tremendous 
 reaction of their pompous lie breaks it utterly down, 
 and the sublime truths of universal manhood and broth 
 erhood are erected into higher sway and a more benefi- 
 cent solidarity. Fashion goes through a similar course; 
 nothing is so captivating and all-compelling as a rising 
 fashion, and nothing so weak and wind-broken as a 
 mode that begins to have the symptoms of wane. And 
 the more nearly any fashion approaches to licentiousness 
 of manners and conduct, the more sure is the reaction 
 to be hastened, and the fools most ambitious to be for- 
 ward in it, to slink away humbled and mortified by it. 
 The power of domination wielded by a corrupt party 
 will seem for a long time to grow by the appetite that 
 feeds it, and what is called the discipline of the party 
 will very nearly submerge all liberties of character and 
 opinion in the individual members. But whether it be 
 seen or not, such kind of growth is only organizing a 
 monster, and that monster, like another of old time, 
 will by and by devour his own children. His bad 
 power will culminate, in other words, in such disorders, 
 and distractions, and oppressions, within itself, as will 
 rend its own combinations, and hurl it off the stage as 
 an outlaw no more to be endured. The grandest, most 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 155 
 
 appalling solidarity the world has ever seen is the 
 Church of Rome; but it has passed the crisis of its 
 majesty, and is sloping downward into a state of dejec- 
 tion that is fast growing pitiful. And when it breaks, 
 as break it must, what a lesson for good will it have 
 given by its amazing assumptions and the dismal inani- 
 ties of superstition it has finally worn out in the world! 
 We spoke just now of another kind of solidarity in the 
 organic propagations of the race. It propagates in one 
 view, as we saw, evil itself, even as it propagates the 
 existences that are its subjects. In that view, it seems 
 to be only a law of moral disadvantage inserted into 
 the human populations. But this bad solidarity, 
 though it may never be wholly extirpated by its re- 
 actions, is yet working powerfully always by reaction, 
 We speak of it and think of it as our bond of death, 
 the common desolator of our good possibilities and 
 hopes, that which baffles our best personal endeavors 
 and mocks all the dearest prospects of human society. 
 The important thing to be noted is, that our common 
 state of evil—evil as in terms of blood and kindred— 
 creates in this manner a salutary and very intense preju- 
 dice against it. Seeing its foul touch everywhere, 
 and consciously struggling with its dreadful bondage 
 within, we picture it as a destroyer with a grudge of 
 animosity; we virtually detest its bad dominion, 
 whether it is cast out in us or not. If we knew the 
 state of evil only as our own bad choice, apart from all 
 bad kinship and contamination of blood, we might 
 even try to hold a good opinion of it; we certainly should 
 
156 MORAL Uses OF DARK LHLNds. 
 
 not help ourselves into a bad opinion of it, as now, by 
 the instigation of our flagrant fellow-sympz thy against it, 
 On the whole, it will be found that all bad solidarities, 
 while doing much to the moral disadvantage of the 
 race, are yet under a doom of reaction, by which they will 
 finally assist the complete reign of truthand righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 3. The condition of solidarity compels even those 
 who are dominated by it to see what hideous evils and 
 wrongs are in it, by the woes they bring on society and 
 the persons closest to them in their human relation- 
 ships, when its bad instigations are upon them. Take 
 the example, near at hand, of our own late rebellion. 
 Considering the numbers implicated, and the atrocity 
 of the purpose attempted, there was never before so 
 great a crime. We had a government that was the 
 noblest fabric of liberty and public reason ever con- 
 structed, looked upon with new-born hope by the 
 weary, time-worn civilizations all over the world. It 
 was cloven down by revolt, and a conspiracy vast 
 enough to make an empire by itself proclaimed its end. 
 War only could restore it, and it must be war upon a most 
 gigantic scale. By its armed millions trailing over broad 
 spaces of territory, occupied by millions before resting 
 in peace ; by its hundreds of battles, great and small, strew- 
 ing these spaces with dead; by cities, and even whole 
 states swept clean, as by a tempest of fire; by families, 
 in almost every neighborhood, mourning the loss of 
 their manliest fathers, and sons of noblest promise; by 
 four long years of terror and distraction that kept even 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 157 
 
 the air tremulous with apprehension—at so great cost 
 the victory of right is won. And yet the solidarity in 
 wrong was a body too vast to be cooled ina day. But 
 few, alas! of all the agitators and forward leaders of the 
 rebellion—none of all the people concerned in it but the 
 poor victims who were forced into it against their loyalty 
 —appear to have become truly sensible, as yet, of the 
 enormity of the crime. They still smoke and smolder 
 in the pride of their defeat, defiant, for the most part, 
 of control, relieving their impotence by the violent epi- 
 thets they heap on the friends of order, and claiming 
 even the right, as before all rights were forfeited, to 
 make their own terms of pacification! All which we 
 duly understand when we speak the word slavery—it is 
 the solidarity of wrong in human slavery; that which 
 overawed dissent, and hunted the friends of order into 
 the ranks to die; that which, having organized a vast 
 savage empire, in the domineering instincts of absolut- 
 ism, cannot be suddenly tempered to order and reason. 
 But there is just now a token of relenting here and there, 
 and the time is not far off when all this rage shall utterly 
 die. The bond of wrath is broken, slavery is gone, the 
 slave country for the present is a ruin, the sublime 
 masterhood is poor, and the immense burdens it has 
 hung as an incubus on the productive industry of many 
 generations, it must now itself assist to bear. Is any 
 one ignorant as to what must be the issue? It can be 
 none but this: that they are going, as reflection gets 
 more opportunity, to look on these terrible woes of 
 rebellion as witnesses against the stupendous solidarity 
 
158 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 of sin, in their slaveholding manners and society. The 
 walls they see here and there grimed with smoke and 
 scarred with shot; the breastworks and redoubts over- 
 grown with bushes; the sad stories repeated, and faces 
 looked upon of orphans now grown up, and widows 
 gray with age, whose loyal protectors they tore away 
 and sent off to their.armies, never to return; yes, and 
 the faces they meet of contemporaries whom they knew 
 standing fast by their country in the wild, mad hour, 
 suffering scorn and confiscation for its sake—all these 
 tokens are going to be witnesses, more piercing as life 
 advances; and the whole bad history of the time is going, 
 before they die, and for all generations to come, to be a 
 standing revelation of the terrible virulence of this in- 
 stitution, this overgrown solidarity of wrong, such as no 
 testimonies or confessions of individual men could pro- 
 duce. And what is to be specially noted further is 
 that the Union masters, those who were so totally over- 
 borne by the current, and suffered such bitter cost for 
 their fidelity, will themselves have gotten from the wild, 
 mad violence that took away their liberty, a feeling of 
 responsibility for the common sin of slavery, such as 
 they could never have felt, under any most pungent 
 appeals of private conviction. Here, then, is a vast 
 solidarity in wrong, probably unmatched before in the 
 history of the world, and it is going to result in a felt con- 
 viction of the wrong, that is not exceptional, but com- 
 mon to all. Indeed, when there was a fast proclaimed 
 by the Confederacy in revolt, it is not difficult to believe 
 that the solitary men of Union -vent deeper into it, and 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 159 
 
 felt more humbled by their ill desert in the common 
 sin of the time, than any of their neighbors most 
 forward in the rebellion. 
 
 Take a different kind of example. A once profligate 
 and vicious father has a child spotted with incapacity 
 in his organization—idiot, or deformed, or subject to 
 pain, and perhaps distorted by it. Under the laws of 
 blood and kindred that child is his, and “ this,” he is 
 obliged to say, “is my stamp put upon it.” He may 
 be a man practically restored to ways of virtue; and, 
 if so, it will only cost him conflicts the more dreadful, 
 that he is obliged to look thus on the face of his sin, 
 still and always before him, in a shape so appalling. 
 Meantime, if his child has sense enough to know why 
 he is so badly misshapen, or whence he draws his mor- 
 bid, misbegotten temperament, it will yet never occur 
 to him that he is no subject of accountability, because 
 the poison of his fatherhood is in him. Or we may 
 take a case where the law of the house, after birth, be- 
 comes the poison. A robber who murdered his victim 
 is brought forth to the scaffold, where he is to suffer the 
 extreme penalty of the law. And there is a poor, lorn 
 creature there, who is called and calls herself his mother. 
 She never inculcated in her son a single right principle. 
 She taught him to steal, sent him forth to it every 
 morning, flogged him at night when he returned with- 
 out booty, and so, as we should say, made him exactly 
 what he is,—we might even think of her as being her- 
 self the criminal, which in some true sense she certainly 
 is, And if she has any capability of compunction left, 
 
160 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 it will now, if ever, be seen, and will be as pungently 
 moved as it can be. And yet we shall see that the son, 
 brought up in such an atmosphere of crime, whipped 
 into crime, learning how to live only by the fruit of 
 crime,will distinctly show, and frankly confess, that he 
 is rightly made responsible for his actions. How far 
 short, indeed, any such bad solidarity may be from sub- 
 merging individual responsibility, we are sometimes 
 given to see, when a son or a daughter grows up as a 
 flower of virtue, in the filthiest, most poisonous atmos- 
 phere, more fixedly abhorring every sort of baseness, 
 for the proximity to it in which the early childhood 
 was passed. 
 
 Once more, it is only by the resolute, upheaving power 
 of individuals against the crushing weight of bad or 
 opposing solidarities that a really massive and over- 
 mastering virtue is prepared. A great character sup 
 poses great victories, won by invincible courage. It is 
 not, of course, to be supposed that God has raised up 
 these frowning solidarities about us, and arrayed them 
 against us, merely for our good. As far as they are in 
 wrong, they create themselves, and then it is given us, 
 every one, to have his advantage in the power we get 
 by confronting them. And so the great leaders, agita- 
 tors, and champions of civil liberty, bursting their way 
 through the bonds of despotism ; the reformers of wrong 
 and vicious custom; the restorers of holy truth, long 
 disfigured by the dogmas of false science; the heroic 
 believers, who, for Christ’s sake, have been cast out in 
 their youth by the fierce, ungodly will of their fathers; 
 
OF THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 161 
 
 the martyrs who have carried their bodies into the fire 
 to bear witness against persecutors in power—all such 
 we look upon as the true men, because they pay so great 
 a price for their birthright. The solidarities they found 
 against them; but they had their principle, and in that, 
 single handed, they were the majority. The respecta- 
 bilities stood mountain high in their path, but they had 
 the courage to pass over. They had soul enough in the 
 right to confront multitudes, and dignities, and sancti- 
 ties, and all kinds of powers and times. Having some- 
 thing true to be thought, they could think it; some- 
 thing right to be done, they could do it. They could 
 be unpopular; and when they had great principles to . 
 wrestle for, they expected to be. In this manner, being 
 never atall willful, they yet came to have a tremendous 
 will—meek, gentle, immovable; able to look quietly 
 down over numbers and names, and all dictations of 
 bad solidarity, moving, as it were, in calculable force 
 and certainty against them. And this it is that makes 
 the sublimity of a character morally great. How it can 
 ever become massive and solid enough, when it has no 
 such heavy bulk of resistance to move, we are scarcely 
 able to imagine. 
 
 Thus if a time should finally come, as we have shown 
 reason to expect, when the solidarities will themselves 
 be converted to the other side, beginning to work 
 through all the laws of inheritance and society, for the 
 propagation of good, as they have done for the propa- 
 gation of evil, then, as duty will have so much less to 
 resist and overcome, it must take on a character having 
 
162 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 as much less vigor. It will be fashioned more by yield 
 ing, and less by the overcoming of resistance, and wil. 
 have a smooth, gentle, innocent way, forming a char- 
 acter more like that of children translated early, and 
 having only to bloom in the soft airs of Paradise, never 
 to fight. Such kind of character will have a true 
 beauty, but there will be nothing grandly heroic in it. 
 The heroes of the world came earlier, and we may well 
 count it one of our particular privileges and honors to 
 live in these heroic ages, when virtue gets due bulk 
 and brawn by its victories. 
 
 On the whole, I think it will be seen, as the result 
 and proper conclusion of this discussion, how very 
 little weight and significance there is in the assump- 
 tion, so pompously and frequently thrust upon us, 
 that wrong is but a word, and no real matter for 
 which we are answerable. The doctrine propounded 
 in high airs of philosophy is, that we are all going on 
 by development, and that the virtues and crimes, the 
 saints and felons, are all, in fact, equally good; prod- 
 ucts all of circumstance, inheritance, and social insti- 
 gation. If such teachings were less shallow, they 
 would be atrocious. Weak souls, emulous of strength, 
 often hope to conquer the repute of it by audacity—a 
 very cheap form of vigor to which they ought certainly 
 to be equal. Nobody, in fact, believes, speculate as he 
 may, that circumstance or society does every thing in 
 us, and we nothing. Good and evil are, in our idea, 
 the most absolute opposites; and there is no bridge, or 
 place, or space for a bridge between them, more than 
 
ON THE CONDITION OF SOLIDARITY. 162 
 
 between a straight line and acrooked. When we do 
 wrong, no matter under what inducement, it is not 
 because we are fools that remorse takes hold of us, but 
 because we are men. When we suffer wrong we spurn 
 the philosopher at hand,who will save us from the feel- 
 ing of blame by what he can tell us of development— 
 that is, of society, circumstance, family origin, family 
 training; we think there was something also in the 
 bad will of the wrong-doer, and we hold him respon- 
 sible to justice. We do not abjure punishments, 
 because we believe in society; we have a place for 
 punishments, just because society exists, wanting their 
 defense; for we see that single souls have power to 
 face all society, and seize upon it as their prey. Who, 
 meantime, are more unsparing and fierce in their 
 denunciations than our philanthropizing philosophers, 
 when they undertake to be reformers? Is there noth- 
 ing blamable in what they so bitterly denounce? 
 Doubtless, all due allowances are to be made in our 
 moral condemnations, for the bad solidarities in which 
 wrong-doers have been trained—not for those only 
 which have put their stamp of ignominy on the weak 
 and the low, but as readily for those which are inbred 
 in men of condition. Slaveholding for example—who 
 has been swayed and fashioned by a power more abso- 
 lute than the solidarities of slavery ; bred as a tyrant, 
 trained up to a domineering habit, even in childhood ; 
 wonted in cruelty ; stimulated in passion; fed on the 
 spoils of right? There was never a form of society 
 more imperiously toned, as respects the liberties of 
 
164 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 duty and the possibilities of character. All men are 
 to have their allowance, and yet as certainly to have, 
 in wrong, their condemnation. Nor let any one think 
 it hard that he himself is required to stem so many 
 opposing tides and storms, in maintaining the struggles 
 of duty; rather let him take it bravely as his oppor 
 tunity. 
 
VIil. 
 OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 
 
 Tue creation of God is one, having all its parts ip 
 such relation that they make up a whole which ex- 
 cludes the possible notion of plurality. This oneness 
 also is the type in matter, of a complete, universal 
 society preparing in its populations. As God has but 
 one creation so he has but one society, and he is doing 
 every thing to compact and perfect that society; draw- 
 ing it to everlasting accord, in one kind of morality, 
 under one set of principles, resulting in one kind of 
 character, and a common beatitude with himself. And 
 yet there seem to be fences of separation here and 
 there, that, in working such a state of complete unity, 
 would not be expected. As far as we know, there is 
 no intercourse allowed, or made possible, between the 
 populations of the stars, but they go their rounds of 
 revolution, as completely separated as if they were 
 always to be as many societies, separated by as many 
 gulfs of incommunicable distance. Sometimes we are 
 not altogether patient of this non-intercourse. We 
 want to know these populations; and it is not mere 
 curiosity, but the sense of a fellow-nature and feeling, 
 that puts us reaching after them. Who are these 
 hrethren of the stars? In what fortunes do they have 
 
166 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 their lot? What stature and figure have they? What 
 kind of history do they make? Have they stood clear 
 of evil, or are they down under it, and struggling up 
 through it and out of it, in much weariness and sorrow, 
 even as we are? Our heart, which has no sense of 
 distances, yearns after them and beckons them; yet 
 there they hang, as far away as if we cared not for 
 them—and there is no bridge! 
 
 This walling apart we discover also in other matters 
 closer at hand, where we should not look for it; as if 
 it were designed to separate, or hold apart, large fami- 
 lies and nations of people that belong to the general 
 brotherhood of the race. Vast wilds and almost con- 
 tinental forests, great deserts, and immense oceans of 
 water, separate and hold apart how many of the chief 
 populations of the world. And yet, perhaps, we can 
 distinguish reasons of beneficence here, that will, in 
 part, explain the separations -we discover elsewhere ; 
 showing how they do, in fact, conduce to the growth, 
 and right, final development of the one, complete 
 society. These wild forests and deserts and oceans are, 
 in one view, circumvallations of so many peoples, 
 living apart thus in their fortresses. Were their habit- 
 able parts swung up side by side with each other, and 
 separated only by imaginary lines, they would all be 
 marching everywhere, and safe against the chances of 
 defeat, or sudden irruption, nowhere. In a bad world 
 populations are hostile, and fences and defenses are 
 wanted to keep them safe. They are better prepared 
 for society, that, for the present, they are kept apart 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 167 
 
 In the particular instance also of the sea, setting nations 
 apart by spaces of water that are in fact highways of 
 commerce and beneficent community in trade, may we 
 not see typified and illustrated the general fact, that 
 all separations of peoples and worlds are separations 
 for society and not against it? Had the populations 
 of the stars free travel and swift, passing at will and 
 telegraphically through all distances, the very sky 
 might have been scarcely better than a battle-ground, 
 and the zodiac itself kept red by the fights of armies. 
 If these populations are all in evil, the spaces between 
 them, whether grateful to our human curiosity or not, 
 are probably not wider than they should be. 
 
 By these suggestions, which are confessedly sugges- 
 tions of ignorance to a great extent, I hope to get some 
 little advantage, in the introduction of « particular 
 subject that is more pressing; namely, the condition 
 of absolute non-intercourse, that appears to be ordained 
 between departed souls and their friends whom they 
 have left behind. We very frequently express our 
 wonder at this, and sometimes we complain of it. 
 Could these departed come back and make report, how 
 much would they tell us that we need above all to 
 know! How easily, too, could it be done; and who 
 would be disadvantaged, or damaged by it? And 
 what short work would be made of all our most 
 troublesome doubts concerning immortality and God, 
 and God’s great future! Now, we should know, we 
 think, and no more only guess, or believe. What 
 appetite also would our returning brothers give us for 
 
{68 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 the celestial things; telling what they have seen of 
 them, what kind of greetings met them when they 
 arrived, and what ravishments took hold of them, in the 
 wonderful scenes and societies into which they entered. 
 We do not speak with any such desire of the return of 
 our bad friends or acquaintances, and testify no such 
 regret that they are not allowed to come and report 
 their story; though perhaps we might look for as good 
 profit in that. Perhaps we recoil from that unpleasant 
 kind of intercourse, making tacitly a selection that 
 will bring us none but the righteous and well condi- 
 tioned. Perhaps we forget for the time, that the de- 
 parted are possibly not all in such condition, as regards 
 felicity, that we can receive them and hear the report 
 of their experience with pleasure. 
 
 Let me not be understood, however, to assume that 
 the departed of this world never do, in fact, return. 
 Two or three such cases of righteous men returning to 
 the world, besides the case of Lazarus and others raised 
 from the dead, are reported in the Scriptures. If, as 
 many suppose, the bad spirits concerned in the demo- 
 niacal possessions are the spirits of bad men, working 
 still in craft and malignity, and doing still their mis- 
 chiefs, then it would seem that these are, at least so far, 
 to be taken as cases of return; only they do not come 
 in the bodily form, to be personally known and spoken 
 with. Many persons in our day believe that by a cer- 
 tain art of necromancy, in what are called mediums, 
 or magnetic clairvoyants, the dead are recalled very 
 rauch at will, making responses to questions that are 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 169 
 
 put to them, and giving their advice in real oracles. I 
 know nothing of this, save that such as were very intel- 
 ligent, cultivated men when alive, give very unintelli- 
 gent and crude answers now, and also that, when their 
 oracles prove false, it is given as excuse, that bad or 
 dishonest spirits coming back will of course deceive, 
 and are therefore to be trusted with caution. Sweden- 
 borg thought he had commerce with spirits—good 
 spirits, of course—and had a theory about our relations 
 to the spirit-world that took away all sorts of distance, 
 but distance of character. Doubtless it has occurred 
 to almost every thoughtful person, that our affinities 
 put us in immediate company, possibly, with all like 
 affinities good or bad, and that so we get helps in good, 
 or demonizing powers in evil, from the invisible access 
 to us of departed spirits. I shall recur to this matter 
 in a way more positive hereafter, and therefore dismiss 
 it for the present. 
 
 Still it is practically true that our departed do not 
 come back in such visible, external way as we appear 
 to mean when we speak of it, and that they are so far 
 kept in a relation of practical non-intercourse. This 
 is the loss, if it be a loss, that we deplore in our com- 
 plaint. And the fact Christ himself appears to recog- 
 nize, denying most expressly that we suffer any loss on 
 account of its Thus, when the rich man of his parable 
 makes request that a messenger may be sent back to 
 warn his brothers, the reply is, for substance, It will 
 do no good, they will not believe the messenger—“ If 
 
 they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they 
 8 
 
170 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” I be 
 lieve there is a general feeling that Christ exaggerates 
 a little in this answer of Lazarus ; that we should, nev- 
 ertheless, be really persuaded, and that Christ only 
 means to put in the best defense he can for the existing 
 fact of non-intercourse, as he finds it in our actual ex- 
 perience—arguing rather from the fact than toward it. 
 Indeed, it seems to us all a thing perfectly obvious, 
 that the question of immortality could be settled easily, 
 by just letting witnesses come back and tell their story ; 
 80 easily, that it sometimes wakens a feeling of suspicion 
 lest there may be something hollow in the faith of im- 
 mortality; else why should an evidence, so much 
 wanted and so reasonably demanded, be withheld? 
 These friends of ours and of God would certainly come 
 back if they were still alive, even though it might cost 
 them much revulsion of feeling to mix again, so far, 
 with scenes of guiltiness and characters uncongenial. 
 Costing them much sacrifice, they would do it the more 
 gladly for that reason. Why, then, is this gate of eter- 
 nity so fast barred? Why are these dead so dumb— 
 showing no token or sign? Has that nothingness we 
 dread overtaken them? Most of us think otherwise, 
 and yet how often are we made to think just this. 
 Now, the first thing, as we open this question for study, 
 is to form a more full and exact conception of what is 
 implied in the kind of intercourse we ask. We are in 
 no condition to judge rightly, if we do not follow out 
 the subject far enough and carefully enough, to see the 
 very uncomfortable things which may possibly belong 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 171 
 
 to such a mode of intercourse, or which are, in fact, in 
 cluded in it. The supposition is, that the departed are 
 to come back in body and voice, to communicate with 
 us through sight and hearing. It is not their silent 
 ghost we ask ; for then what evidence could we have, 
 that any thing better than a strange illusion has be 
 fallen us? When they come, it must also be, either 
 because they are sent by selection, or because they are 
 particularly sought by us, or because they are free 
 to come and go at their own will. Probably enough 
 all three suppositions will concur. The latter, not 
 including the others, appears to be the general 
 thought which occupies our demand; for it is not a 
 few sporadic cases of return that we ask—so few and 
 far apart that all evidence brought us will be rumor 
 and hearsay—but we want them to come freely, and 
 come to us and to everybody that wants light, so that 
 we may have witnesses always at hand. In this man- 
 ner, they are to be somewhat common among us—not 
 sufficiently common to be included as fixed residents in 
 our society ; but so far common as to create no special 
 surprise. And it does not appear to be often considered 
 that our required evidence will be incomplete unless 
 the bad souls also come back; for they have had an 
 experience as truly as the good, and it is an experience 
 which it greatly concerns us possibly to know. The 
 good, not being in that experience, will know nothing 
 specially concerning it; and their story, being wholly 
 beatific in its color, will put us in a feeling that every 
 thing is beatific there, unless some adequate representa 
 
172 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 tion of the bad experience is also given. But if these 
 bad souls are to come back, they may come as deceivers 
 possibly, and not as faithful witnesses, and it will 
 be impossible for us to guess whether their report 
 is true or false. What their behavior, too, will 
 be, is a question that looks ominous and difficult. 
 Who shall answer for them that they will keep the 
 peace? What conspiracies may they not concoct? 
 What revolutions and tumults may they not stir 
 up? In times of public war, what advantage will 
 they have in the spy service? In the intrigues of 
 diplomacy, they may easily become the chief intriguers. 
 When they meet the good spirits returned, as they 
 sometimes will, being all in body and so made visible, 
 it is not quite certain that they will not sometimes be 
 moved with so hot a feeling of hostility as to attack 
 them with violence. And what forbids the supposition 
 that we, grown familiar thus with the other world’s 
 people, as we certainly should be in a little while, 
 may not sometimes be so badly annoyed by the inter- 
 ruptions and the unwelcome advice of the departed 
 good, and so easily exasperated against them by the 
 hostile instigations of the bad, as to set ourselves upon 
 them in a real persecution—even as we persecuted 
 Christ, who himself came down from heaven, and proved 
 himself by his miracles, as no departed brother of our 
 race ever could or can. 
 
 But suppose we consent to take up with a half repre- 
 sentation of the other world, and let the bad departed 
 remain wholly shut away, a great many other perplex- 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 173 
 
 ities will be involved, such as more than counterbal- 
 ance the chances of benefit. A certain man, of reputed 
 worth and piety, died yesterday, and we ask the de 
 parted brother, who returns this morning, and who 
 knows him well, if he has seen him? He replies, with 
 a sad look, that he has; that he has come out badly on 
 the other side, where it is discovered that he gained 
 his late case at law, against the estate of a poor widow 
 and her children, by perjury. The dispossession re- 
 quired by the verdict is to be executed to-morrow, and 
 what shall be done? Will the court execute an order 
 against the discovery thus made? Can the case be re- 
 opened? Probably not, for no such thing is known to 
 the law, as hitherto administered. But if such discov- 
 eries were really coming out every day, the law would 
 be different. Every court must have its right to revise, 
 and even to revise the public records, when such new 
 evidences come back in the report of God’s messen- 
 gers. So if we ask whether the court, in the case sup- 
 posed, will cite the departed man to appear and testify ; 
 perhaps it will not; but if such reappearances of the 
 departed were grown common, common law would 
 require it. And if the departed citizen who is cited to 
 appear and testify, should refuse, in a case where both 
 mercy and justice so plainly require it, he would even 
 be accessory to wrong. In this way, as the departed 
 are to be largely mixed with the living, so they must 
 be mixed with all the proceedings of law, civil and 
 criminal. And what the result will be, in such a mix- 
 ture of worlds, it is not easy to guess. It is very cer 
 
174 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 tain that no man will be hung for a crime, when 
 twenty messengers from the other world come testify- 
 ing that he is innocent; as certain that no public 
 record can stand, when as many messengers from the 
 unseen world testify that it is a forgery, and that the 
 forger was discovered there a hundred years ago and 
 put to his reward. All public records, in fact, will 
 have to be corrected by the records of eternity. 
 
 Meantime, what a state of confusion will come down 
 upon all the schools and teachers and books of 
 ‘theology, when departed men come back to report 
 the facts, discoveries, and principles accepted in the 
 better world. All the authoritative doctrines, elabora- 
 ted with so great care and study, will have to be re- 
 vised—some to be modified, some to be corrected, some 
 to be expurgated, some to be abated and denounced. 
 The new witnesses will not be fanatics or revolu- 
 tionists; but there is a way of wisdom, in their tranquil 
 utterance, al] the more impressive, that they tell how 
 largely they have been themselves corrected, and how 
 they have learned to put every thing in a color so 
 different. Probably some of the doctors will be wholly 
 unable to believe their testimony, or will insist on their 
 being impostors, and not the departed whose names 
 they have taken. Neither can we forget how very soon 
 the feeling of awe must be taken off by such conditions 
 of familiarity, and how liable the two kinds of teachers 
 —one from this world and the other from above— 
 might be to fall into a public wrangle for their opinions, 
 Probably not even Luther, coming back as rectified, 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 175 
 
 would be orthodox. The teachers returned will of 
 course be more capalile; but the teachers we have of 
 our own will be enough more positive and logical, to 
 hold a considerable chance of preponderance. 
 
 Every department, in short, of life and every sort of 
 transaction will be somehow changed and put in dis- 
 order. Sometimes the departed, nowise diminished in 
 their affections and the sense of what is due to family 
 engagements, might intrude on new connections formed, 
 in very unwelcome and appalling visits. Sometimes 
 a godly saint might be recalled and found present, 
 as the only true mourner, weeping over the heartles. 
 ness and hollow parade of his own funeral. 
 
 Now, it will be objected, I pxesume, by some, that I 
 am able to raise this look of maladjustment oly by 
 supposing an over-physical or literal return of the de- 
 parted. What, then, is really meant, we again ask, by 
 those who so often complain or testify their wonder 
 that no state of intercourse with the dead is permitted ? 
 Do they simply want a flitting, cursitating, ghostly ap- 
 pearance, such as we name by the word appariticn ? 
 some phantasm which is here and there and nowhere; 
 which vanishes as soon as it is seen, and can not be 
 found, and which nobody can be quite certain that he 
 has seen at all? How many such uncertified, practically 
 unbelieved appearings do we hear of every day. No, 
 they want something to make evidence—not some ap- 
 parition that requires more evidente—a man from the 
 dead solid enough to certify himself, real enough to be 
 distinguished by his roice, and staying long enough te 
 
176 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, — 
 be no figure of the fancy. They also want such visit 
 
 ations to be more or less common, that all may have 
 the profit, and the strangeness of them may not shock 
 or discourage the faith they are expected tohelp. And 
 then, how far off are we from the very same over-real 
 and literal conception I have been drawing out? The 
 forbidding pictures and conjunctions I have sketched 
 are clearly seen to be no extravaganza gotten up by 
 overdrawing the matter in question. Exactly such 
 reappearances are, in fact, wanted, and to be just as 
 nearly common asI have represented. We may not 
 so understand it, but this is the exact purport of our 
 - desire—this and nothing else. 
 
 It begins, in this manner, to be evident that the con- 
 dition of non-intercourse between the departed world 
 and the living, so much regretted by many, is not as 
 undesirable as they assume it to be. If the fences that 
 part the two worlds were taken down, and a state of 
 free intercourse permitted, about every thing in the 
 present order of life and society would be subverted. 
 This, if only the good were allowed to return; and all 
 the more certainly, if the bad also were coming abroad, 
 to be at large among us. I think, too, that we shall be 
 the better satisfied with our present state of non-inter- 
 course, if, as I now propose, we set ourselves to a delib- 
 erate consideration of the moral uses and benefits re- 
 sulting from it. 
 
 And here it will be seen, at a glance, that our state 
 of non-intercourse, so-called, makes a full period, at the 
 closing point of life, giving it a look of finality that is 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 177 
 
 both impressive and salutary. If we thought our dying 
 friends would be coming back to us to-morrow, to speak 
 more impressively than to-day, because they will know 
 more and testify from a point more advanced, we should 
 not catch their last words to be concluded by them, for 
 they are really not last—other and better we expect to 
 follow. So if we were coming back ourselves, to make 
 up our deficiencies of duty to our friends, how easily 
 and securely should we postpone all our most important, 
 most responsible obligations. But when we remember 
 as now, that “the night cometh, when no man can 
 work,” the charge that our Master connects with that 
 most cogent argument—“ work while it is day”—prac- 
 tically means “to-day,” allowing no postponement of 
 the duties of to-day. 
 
 It would also be a very great moral damage to us to 
 have the grand realities of religion made as familiar as 
 they would be if departed souls were allowed to be re- 
 turning frequently, in visible form, to mingle with us. 
 Such familiarity would breed contempt, just where a 
 little more distance and withdrawment would give 
 power. There isa foolish and presumptuous side in our 
 human nature that makes too great familiarity danger- 
 ous. Not even Jehovah would be God to his people, 
 if he allowed them to see more than just the back of 
 his retiring form. For this reason, doubtless, it is that 
 the gate of the other world opens only that way, and 
 never backward. The sanctity of that dread world is 
 both more dread and more inviting, because it is kept 
 
 unknown, or practically unreported to us. 
 1* 
 
{78 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS- 
 
 We are kept in this manner also from that kind of 
 dissipation which is so easily begotten by an obtrusive 
 and shallow curiosity. In this kind of curiosity, we 
 forget both our errand and our measure. Could we 
 question thus departed souls as often as we please, and 
 of such historic figure as we please to select, there 
 would be no end to our questions, and no beginning to 
 our moral benefit. We should be like those people 
 _ who are going so often to the seers and sittings of necro- 
 mancy, exulting much in the fine proofs they get of 
 their immortality by so many witnesses, yet believing 
 only just as much less as they are more astounded 
 by the revelations—religiously addled, and counting it 
 the same thing as religion. If we could have departed 
 souls returning thus at call or without, to be familiarly 
 questioned, the simple curiosity gendered would be 
 enough of itself to frustrate all the most sober purposes 
 of life. In a spirit so frivolous, ora mood so light- 
 headed, the motives of duty get no power. It is as if 
 the soul were amusing itself in experiments on the un- 
 known leap and what comes after, and so much delighted 
 with the revelation obtained, as to look no more for 
 profit, than it would in the breathing of a gas. Nothing 
 is worse than to get the matters of duty and religion 
 into the sphere of gossip. All the worse, if the dread 
 gates of eternity are opened thus, chiefly for the sake 
 of gossip, and the righteous dead let forth to be the 
 chief gossipers ; telling stories for the curious, indulging 
 them in talk and free report, and making up a gospel 
 which is only gossip, nothing more. 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 179 
 
 It would also give us an immense opportunity for 
 ambition if this free intercourse with the departed were 
 allowed us. If it were given us to make our own se- 
 lection, we might never call for any but some very 
 distinguished personage. We might desire; not sc 
 much the saints as the high saints, such as made a name 
 by their figure in this life. Intercourse with God’s 
 little ones might not please our vanity, and the result 
 would be that the great and celebrated personages 
 would be hurried and worried, and set trooping day 
 and night, to answer the calls of all most beggarly, in- 
 significant people, while the little ones who pack God’s 
 family—really the great to him, and for us the most 
 competent teachers, because most truly on the level of 
 or, experience—would not be summoned once in a 
 thousand years. And if they should come to us of their 
 own accord—supposing all to come in this manner and 
 not by our selection—I fear that some of us might be 
 mortified, and that sometimes the uncelebrated souls 
 would encounter incivility enough from us to send them 
 back to their places. While if one of us should have 4 
 spontaneous visit from some great personage— W ash- 
 ington, Luther, Paul, Moses, for example—it would 
 inflate our ambition, I fear, to such a pitch as to quite 
 overset the balance of our dignity. In our present . 
 temper, neither class of souls, the great or lowly, could 
 hope to bring us any spiritual gift. 
 
 Again, it is a very great argument, as respects the 
 subject in question, that we get all the best, most valid, 
 most effective conceptions of things from the things 
 
180 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 themselves, and not from what rumor or tradition reveals, 
 or from what talkers can tellus. We leari about nature, 
 for example, by going directly to nature herself, putting 
 our ear to her voices, observing her changes with our 
 eyes. We do not look for genii to come forth out of 
 nature and show us how she began and by what laws 
 she works; we do not implicitly trust even travelers, 
 when they report opinions or convictions instead of 
 phenomena and fact. We expect to know the things, 
 not from their mere talk about them, but from the 
 things themselves, challenged by investigation, tested 
 carefully by experiment. In the same way God will 
 not have so many of those departed come back as tray- 
 elers abroad, to be reporters and talkers of knowledge 
 for us; for he wants to have us go directly to the 
 subjects of duty—all subjects of a moral and spiritual 
 nature—and learn what they are from themselves. Too 
 much report and talk would ruin us, we should never 
 know any thing at first hand, if we were all the while 
 obtruded upon by revelations of message and story. 
 Real conviction goes before talk, and is grounded in the 
 soul’s own thinking of subjects and questions them- 
 selves. Real faith is not something talked into us, but 
 a most inward perception of that which is inwardly re- 
 vealed. Real principle comes, not after society and 
 social communication, but goes before them rather, 
 certifying immortality and heaven and future society for 
 itself. I think we know more of the grand world- 
 future before us from Paul’s handlings of the great 
 truths in his written epistles, contriving how to get 
 
OF NON-INIERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 181 
 
 them based in thought and verified by it, than we should 
 from the reports he might give us of his experience, in 
 case he should return. The very excitement he would 
 raise by his testimonies might render us less capable of 
 understanding what is in the subjects themselves. In- 
 deed, there probably could not be a greater hinderance 
 to the sober and rationally solid convictions of duty and 
 religion, than to have all the glorified spirits of the 
 upper world crowding about us in verbal talk and testi- 
 mony. 
 
 It is also another and very great consideration, as 
 regards the moral uses of non-intercourse established 
 between worlds, that it shuts away the lighter, less ca- 
 pable modes of benefit, with a view to put us more com- 
 pletely in the power of such as have greater competency. 
 There is, for example, no really competent revelator for 
 a soul but God himself, and this is exactly the revela- 
 tion that he undertakes to give. Saints coming back 
 could only report what they have seen; but God, by 
 his all-present Spirit, is able to be a presence of truth 
 itself in the secret chambers of the mind; to blazon him- 
 self and his counsel and his feeling and all that belongs 
 to his eternity in the inner sense itself. To let the soul 
 get occupied, therefore, with much talk, and heated by 
 the very dear society of so many glorious strange- 
 comers, would be to inflict upon it a very great loss. 
 To be still with God and only hear him whisper sig- 
 nifies a great deal more. Such kind of knowledge is 
 not talked into the soul, but thought into it. There is 
 no clatter in it drowning the sense, but it is born from 
 
182 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 within, out of God’s deep silence. That silence, there 
 fore, is kept for us, undisturbed by voices and oracular 
 spirits, who might rather confound than teach by their 
 tuo friendly interruptions. It is not denied, in this 
 manner, that we really want all that we regret the not 
 having in our state of non-intercourse with the departed ; 
 it is only assumed that God himself can be, and will be, 
 a more sufficiently, deeply informing power. They 
 could only externalize something in words: he can work 
 convictions, knowledges, presentiments, that shall be 
 inward states. Living in our sensuous habit, we perhaps 
 think otherwise, and therefore wish that spirits from the 
 other world might come and talk with us; but the 
 very reason why they do not is that, having the eternal 
 Father himself with us, their stories in our ears would be 
 only a feeble impertinence. 
 
 Still, it will be imagined perhaps that the one great 
 subject of immortality would be set in evidence by 
 the report of departed spirits, as it could not by any 
 divine impressions or informing revealments within. 
 This exactly is the claim put forward so often by our 
 necromantic gospelers. Before, they could not, as 
 they tell us, believe any thing about this matter of im- 
 mortality ; they lived in the dark, and could only think 
 of death as a lapse into nothingness. Now they know 
 that there is a future state; friends whom they loved 
 have come back to them and told them all about their 
 new experience. Thank God, they are sure of some 
 thing now beyond this life, and the condition they are 
 in borders, they will say, on ravishment itself. Now, 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 183 
 
 the simple answer to be made here is, that the continent 
 they have discovered is a real continent, only not more 
 real than it would be if it had been sooner discovered, 
 in God’s more genuine, less superficial way. Have they 
 not some reason still to doubt the necromantic oracles ; 
 and is not the very close approach they have made to 
 jugglery a rather uncomfortable source of evidence for 
 a truth so serious and sublime? Suppose, instead, they 
 had simply let their vast religious nature open itself to 
 God’s full movement within, and that so they had 
 become conscious of God himself, knowing and receiv- 
 ing him by his immediate revelation. What is that 
 consciousness of God but an implied consciousness of 
 immortality? And which is better, the soul itself 
 awakened inwardly to the sense of its own inborn 
 eternity, or the soul put on thinking itself immortal by 
 the verbal message of friends who are now beyond the 
 gulf speling out their reports, by such tokens perhaps 
 as will make up an evidence without much help of 
 dignity? It is certainly most strange that men wil’ 
 go so far, and even strain their faculty under suck 
 prodigious tricks of charlatanism, to make out the 
 confidence of immortality, when it is even natural 
 to them as their breath, and would never be doubted 
 for a moment, if they could consent to simply be 
 as in God—apart from whom, as the complement 
 and divine light of their spirit, they have no more 
 real possibility of being, than a day without the sun. 
 Having eyes to see the houses on the other side 
 of the river, is it incredible that such houses exist, til’ 
 
184 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 the occupants themselves come over and tell us that 
 they do? 
 
 Our argument here is summed up in the fact that 
 God himself is teacher enough, a teacher indispensable 
 and really more effective, when interruptions of talk 
 and irruptions of talkers, from the unseen world, are 
 shut away. And yet there isa certain ground of reason, 
 I must also concede, for the desire we have to receive 
 sensible visitations, and visitors appearing to the senses, 
 from the unseen world. As neglectors of God we live in 
 the senses, and get stalled in the senses; so that final- 
 ‘your chief inlets appear to be there, and we scarcely 
 make out the reality of any thing which does not meet 
 us in some visible shape or audible accent. Christ, 
 therefore, came to be incarnate among us, and to be 
 that revelation of God in the flesh, that is required by 
 the shutting up of our higher modes of perception. 
 He comes down from above, just as we are wishing 
 often that our departed friends might come, wondering 
 in much sadness thatthey do not. He brings all knowl- 
 edge of the worlds unseen with him, and even the glory 
 that he had with the Father before the world was. He 
 knows more about the great future than all the dead 
 that have ever died, and, what is more, he understands 
 exactly what we most want to know, and he can tell 
 it so as to put more real evidence into it, than their 
 whole cloud of witnesses testifying together. He is 
 visible as we can wish him to be, audible as visible; 
 nay, he is so completely one with us in our human 
 society, that we count him a man, and think we have 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 185 
 
 the table of his human genealogy. By this act God 
 means to comfort us, in just that sensuous want, which 
 puts us on complaining of the non-intercourse act that 
 fences us in. And the design is to recall us by a visit 
 ation that shall enter him back, and enter his unseen 
 kingdom back into souls, by the sense thus awakened. 
 But not even he must stay too long. Three short years 
 were the limit of his public appearing, and he declared 
 himself that it was expedient, or practically best for him 
 _ to go away and let the Comforter, or unseen Father, 
 come into his place and be his own immediate witness. 
 If, then, it would not do for him to stay longer, if it 
 would rather put us under the senses and sensuous evi- 
 dences, than help us up through them, how much great- 
 er damage will it do us to have departed friends rush- 
 ing back upon us, displacing him by their multitude, 
 and the merely curious matters of their personal story, 
 and holding us back from God’s internal teaching, by 
 the hum of so many voices filling the air about us. If 
 we want the visible, as to a certain very limited extent 
 we do, are these multitudes going to add any thing to 
 Christ? Is he not a witness more significant than they 
 all? Is he not as truly from their unseen world? Is 
 there not more light in him and more future than they 
 have everseen? And when they come to thrust them- 
 selves in between us and him, what are they buta 
 hinderance to our benefit in him? The very thing we 
 want in them is given us in him, in a form so simple 
 and pure and grandly concentrated, that their petty 
 figures come upon the stage only to confound our at- 
 
186 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 tention and tempt the weakness of our curiosity. Pro 
 cw], procul, este ! 
 
 We discover in this manner that we do not have our 
 state of non-intercourse established, because no such 
 intercourse with the unseen world could be allowed, but 
 because we have it already provided, in a way so im- 
 pressive, that we can not afford to be taken off from it, 
 or to have our attention divided. The next best thing, 
 if there were no Christ in the world, might be to have 
 the good souls flocking back as birds of passage, but it 
 would not do for them, in such a case, to stay for a sin- 
 gle half week; for the tumult of mind they would raise 
 must very shortly make it expedient for them to go 
 away, and leave us more to our God-instructed 
 thoughts, and the deep-set ineradicable convictions of 
 our religious mind. 
 
 I will only add in closing, to prevent ried 
 ing, that our desire to know the good condition of our 
 friends, and to have the sense of their company for its 
 own sake, is a natural desire, and seems to be graciously 
 provided for. I have spoken already of the revelations 
 or open states of access, that are possibly implied in 
 congenial affinities. This open state in us appears to 
 be that opening of heaven of which Christ speaks, 
 declariyg that the angels of God shall be distinguished 
 ascending and descending through it. It is the nature 
 of every mind set open by good, to have the commerce 
 and felt presence of all the good. They will not come 
 to the senses, or speak with us by their voices, but 
 there will be a sense of their company unseen, and 
 
OF NON-INTERCOURSE BETWEEN WORLDS. 187 
 
 their friendly help. They will be nigh in sacred power, 
 as a kind of good possession, proving their friendship 
 and flavoring the mind with their peace. In this man- 
 ner we are permitted a most real society with them, 
 such as comforts our external separation, and takes 
 away the pangs of our unreasonable sorrow. Any thing 
 more, or different from this, it is very clear, would 
 rather, work our detriment than our benefit. 
 
IX. 
 OF WINTER. 
 
 fr is most remarkable that we have, in our winter, a 
 whole season of the year that bears a- look of unbe- 
 nignity. We can not say or think that God is cold 
 here to his children, but no reverence can hide it from 
 us, in these winter months of the year, that his physical 
 treatment is fearfully chill and severe. A pitiless,stern 
 aspect rests upon the world. The forests stand brown 
 and bare. There is no song in their tops; they only 
 roar and crackle to the blast in their frozen branches. 
 Lake and river bellow to the winds afar, as if monsters 
 shut under by the freezing were tearing to be free. 
 The world’s body is not dressed, but shrouded rather, 
 looking all the colder that we see it in a laying out of 
 white, unflushed by mortal sympathy. God’s tender- 
 ness appears to be quite shut away, or shut in, by his 
 cold. The animals stand crouching in their yards, or 
 under copse or wall, holding their heads low to the 
 storm, as if missing God’s pity init. The little child 
 whom Christ would have taken up so fondly in his 
 arms gets stalled in the snows, and when his hands are 
 freezing screams imploringly for help, but help is 
 nowhere, and God’s unpitying cold goes on to freeze 
 him as remorselessly as if he were a man. The trav 
 
OF WINTER. 189 
 
 eler is overtaken at night on the prairie, by a howling, 
 wildly driving storm; all trace of a road is gone; his 
 point of direction is lost, and he drives still on, still 
 round and round, passing more than once quite near 
 the light which his wife has set in her window. She is 
 praying that God will spare him; he himself is pray- 
 ing that God will spare him for her dear sake and his 
 children’s; but it is as if the prayers themselves were 
 falling under the snow—two days afterward he and his 
 exhausted team are found upright and stiff in a snow- 
 bed miles away. 
 
 Physically speaking, this is the picture of God’s win- 
 ter. Does it represent him? Certainly it does in some 
 true sense, though not in any such general and com- 
 plete sense as to yield a just conception of him. Many 
 of God’s doings and appointments do not represent his 
 feeling or disposition, but they only represent the more 
 truly his counsel, his purpose, his ends of discipline, his 
 modes of compelling industry, begetting reflection, set- 
 ting fast habits of attention, consolidating attributes of 
 strength that are wanted to compose a manly character. 
 In this manner we shall see that God is represented 
 tather by the moral uses of winter, than by winter 
 itself. Turning our thoughts in this direction then, we 
 shall find enough to satisfy us; nay, we shall see the 
 benignity of God unfolded here, if not more tenderly, 
 yet more convincingly, than in any of the softer seasons 
 of the year. 
 
 Some persons have thought that God would have 
 shown his goodness more perfectly, if he had planned 
 
190 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 to omit the winter altogether. Thus, if he had made 
 the world a eylinder instead of a sphere, setting its 
 axis in the same line, he would have given us a per- 
 fectly equal season, they say, up to the very ends of 
 the cylinder, throughout the year. To urge the incon- 
 venience in such a case, of an endwise attraction, 
 balancing itself at the center, and growing stronger 
 each way from the center, is probably unnecessary. 
 But if all the waters and the atmosphere must be slid- 
 ing down toward the mid-circle or equator, if the people 
 farther north and south must be living thus on a stair- 
 way, and climbing it with heavier lift, as they approach 
 the ends, there to find themselves on a mountain 4,000 
 miles high, these and the other consequent incon- 
 veniences—breathing without air, and cooking without 
 fire, and cultivating growths without ever a possibil- 
 ity of rain—might be many times greater than to 
 have a winter. Nine-tenths of the cylinder would be 
 a desert. The less we amuse ourselves by such kind 
 of suggestions, and the more steadily we set ourselves 
 to look after the moral benefits designed for us in the 
 ordinance of winter as it is, the better satisfaction shall 
 we obtain. 
 
 First of all, then, we need to observe that it may be 
 a very great point for us to have some whole season, or 
 considerable department of our life, so ordered as to 
 show that God’s beneficence is not always concerned, 
 of course, in the promotion of physical ends. The 
 supreme utilities with us are physical, and we look to 
 see God planning every thing to serve the ends we 
 
OF WINTER. 191 
 
 ealue, viz., physical ends—in that prcving his benefi- 
 éence. Even Dr. Paley himself, who ought to make 
 some principal account of ends and uses more religious, 
 falls into the way of the general world-worship, con- 
 triving always to show how this or that fulfills some 
 end or use within the compass of nature itself; as when 
 beasts of prey or venom are shown to have their use, 
 not morally, but in keeping down the over-multiplica- 
 tion of beasts. Raising this kind of argument, we. 
 should have it on hand to show the beneficence of 
 winter, by the mere physical ends and uses it serves, 
 and that might not be easy. Do animals and children 
 grow faster because of the cold? Do we make up our 
 supplies more easily, for having a whole third part of 
 the year given up to consumption, while producing 
 nothing? Is the pasture more sufficient, for lying 
 dead under the snow a full third part of the year? 
 Are the roads more advantageous that they are made 
 impassable ?—the rivers and lakes that they are put 
 under embargo by ice? Are the rocks and trees that 
 are rifted by frost made any the better for it? Is the 
 landscape improved by stripping it? Do the howling 
 storms of winter cherish any thing fruitful or kill any 
 thing noxious? The remarkable thing here, in this 
 matter of winter, is that, as far as we can see, almost 
 no single end of our mere physical life is at all ad- 
 vanced by it. It is as if God took us off here into a 
 field, where nothing is done for physical ends, to show 
 us on how large a scale he builds, and governs, and 
 works, for ends that are superior, and even such as lie 
 
i ht oe 
 
 192 MORAL USBS OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 beyond the world itself. He does it more or less, some- 
 times here and sometimes there, in the other seasons 
 of the year; but here he does it, as it were by system, 
 on the largest scale possible; calling us to observe 
 that he has other, higher ends, beyond all terms of 
 mere physical beneficence. It may be that we do not 
 consciously take up any such conclusion, by a distinct 
 intellectual recognition. But we are thrown, practi- 
 cally, into a state of moral impression that corresponds. 
 Our God is not a summer God only, but a winter God, 
 ruling with stout emphasis, and caring visibly less for 
 all mere comfort, than for the grand prerogatives and 
 rigors of principle. The immense moral benefit of 
 such impressions can not easily be over-estimated. It 
 does not show us all God’s contrivances in the creation, 
 _ tapering off into some mere physical use, but it shows 
 him dropping out of sight, and, as it were, forgetting 
 all physical uses, for whole months in the year, to bring 
 on the other, higher uses that relate more especially to 
 character and worlds beyond the world. 
 
 It has not escaped the notice of physicians and phy- 
 siologists, that winter effects a marked change in our 
 bodily habit and temperament. The diseases are gen- 
 erally of a different type, and health itself is a different 
 experience. In summer the senses are more awake, 
 and the body has free communication with nature 
 through every gate and pore of the skin. Im the 
 winter these gates are closed, and the vital force re- 
 treats to its cell, to fan the fires and sustain’ the inter- 
 nal heat, by extra exertion there. We fold our cloak 
 
OF WINTER. 193 
 
 instinctively about us, and ask to be separated from 
 nature by walls that are impervious. It is impossible 
 that so great a change should not powerfully affect the 
 tone and temperament of the mind—a fact which many 
 have not failed to observe. We have thus a summer 
 mind and a winter mind. The distinction is not as 
 wide as between the state of sleep and the waking 
 state. Neither is it any way analogous, and yet it is 
 not less real. The mind works differently and has dif- 
 ferent proclivities in the winter. It is less given up to 
 sensation—it is even fighting off sensation a great part 
 of the time. Passion is moderated and keyed more 
 closely in the terms of order and reason. The delecta- 
 tions and delicate pleasures of summer life are farther 
 off, and as much less desired. In a perpetual summer 
 life, as in the tropics, they all but macerate the soul’s 
 capacities ; but where there is a good interspersing of 
 winter habit, a more rugged and more distinctly moral 
 temperament is induced. The mind has a closer aftinity 
 with moral subjects, thinks responsibility with more of 
 traverse and high understanding, and puts itself down 
 upon all great questions of religion, with more of 
 appetite and a steadier mastership. 
 
 The contrast observable here between summer and 
 winter life, in respect to the habit or capacity of re- 
 flection, is specially remarkable. Self-indulgence, 
 luxury, and a free bathing of sensation in the world’s 
 temperatures and odors make soft motive for us in the 
 summer, and lull us in a softening element. We seek 
 
 the out-door shade and open air, and the motion of our 
 9 
 
14 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 Leing is outward, away from its own centre. The 
 songs of the morning are music in our ear. The air is 
 laden with incense. Scenes of beauty open to the eye, 
 and we fill ourselves all day with images of freshness 
 and life. All which is of the highest use—it is even 
 necessary to the furniture of the mind. But it requires 
 a.time of reflection afterward, to enable us to realize 
 the moral benefits prepared. After the mind has re- 
 ceived the summer into its storehouse, then it wants 
 the winter, as a time wherein to review and con over 
 its stores. Then let the summer wane, and the autum- 
 nal frost begin to whiten the plain. Let the songs be 
 hushed, the verdure fall off, and the scented air breathe 
 only cold. Let the snows spread their blanket over 
 the dead world, and the wintry blasts howl vengefully 
 and wild. Now the senses lose their objects, and the 
 man, not as being moved inwardly, but frost-nipped 
 rather without, gathers in his mind to reflection. And 
 there he finds gathered in also all the images of the 
 creation, himself among them present also to himself. 
 Their meanings, monitions, suggestions, and the matter- 
 forms of thought there are in them, throng in to his aid. 
 He hears the whispers of his conscience, and thinks of 
 other worlds. Every prospect without forbidding and 
 desolate, and the in-door fire more attractive in hig 
 evenings than any walk abroad, he is shut up, in a 
 sense, even wontedly, to his chamber, and to thoughts 
 that relate to his own being and well-being. If he ever 
 cogently and closely thinks, it will probably be now. 
 If he is ever seriously bent to the very highest concern- 
 
OF WINTER. 195 
 
 ments of his nature, he is likely to be 30 now. There 
 is more of tone in his moral perceptions than at other 
 times. Truth is seen more clearly, and his soul rings 
 like a bell under its touch, because he is undiverted by 
 things without, and thought is single in its action. 
 Now, it is well understood that the mind never 
 attains to great intellectual strength without first form- 
 ing a habit of reflection. And the same is necessary to 
 a vigorous pronouncement of the moral man—the con- 
 science, the spiritual emotions, and the religious aspi- 
 rations. Hence the well-known superficiality and the 
 great intellectual and moral dearth of the tropical cli- 
 mates. Having no winter, they have no capacity of 
 deep, well-invigorated reflection, and no firm condensa- 
 tion of thoughtful temperament. Their moral nature 
 especially wants the true frigorific tension of a well 
 wintered life and experience. For it is often observed, 
 partly because the habit is more reflective, and partly 
 for other reasons, that men have a stronger sense of 
 principles in winter, than at any other time. They see 
 them invested with a certain rigor and severity, like 
 the season itself. Or, perhaps, without making any 
 such comparison, they do, by a certain force of associa- 
 tion, behold them, as they do the trunks of the forest, 
 standing in their pure anatomy, curtained by no garni- 
 ture of leaves, and stretching their bare, stiff limbs to 
 the sky. Hence the contrast between tropical con- 
 sciences, which are out-door, self-indulgent, unpro- 
 nouncing consciences, and those which have been 
 trained *n the more rugged and severe climes of the 
 
196 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 North. Who tl.at understands the moral efheacy of 
 climates would undertake to form a Scotch people, ot 
 New England people, as to the sense of principles, in 
 either Central America or Jamaica? 
 
 In the same way, we are made more conscious of 
 our moral and religious wants in the winter, than we are 
 in the softer, balmier seasons. If we can judge from 
 the feeding of the swine on the ripened products of the 
 year, the parable of the prodigal son is a winter par- 
 able in its date. He came also to himself, and began 
 to be in want, because it was a time of short allowance. — 
 The intimation therefore is, that the sense of guilt and 
 hunger in the moral nature is the needed precondition 
 of all highest spiritual good; and when but in the 
 winter shall this necessary sense of want be wakened? 
 Let every thing about the man be an image of the 
 dearth and coldness of a cold heart. Surround him 
 with winter as a counterpart to the winter of the mind. 
 Cut him off from the diversions and halfsatisfactions 
 of his summer pleasures, take away the sceneries and 
 prospects that relieve the tedium of an empty heart. 
 Shut him up to himself, leaving no resource, save what 
 he finds in himself. And then, if ever, he will be likely 
 to feel the stir of those sublime, everlasting wants, that 
 put all moral natures reaching after God. In this 
 matter, it is not the question simply, what a cold, blank 
 soul may be put on thinking, by the experiences and 
 sceneries of winter. We have a great many gospelings 
 that do not come to thonght, or work by thought at all, 
 but only by the states or impressions they beget in 
 
OF WINTER. 197 
 
 ways more immediate; even as hymns do not take our 
 head by their mere creed matter, but play themselves 
 straightway into sentiments. And so it is that God’s 
 great ordinance of snow—the blank of it, the white of 
 it, and the cold, and the readiness to be dissolved and 
 pass away—is just that power on human feeling most 
 profoundly adapted to the fit movement of the soul’s 
 immortal want. It is a kind of scenery felt to be both 
 congenial and chill; answering faithfully to the dreary 
 chill of hunger that pinches the bosom within. 
 Analogous to this effect of winter and closely related, 
 is the fact that we are more capable of realizing invisible 
 sceneries and worlds in the winter, than at any other 
 time. God is more vividly imaged to the mind, we 
 can not but admit, in the sceneries, and showers, and 
 dews of summer. It appears to be intimated also, that 
 our paradise will have tropical attractions, yielding 
 twelve manner of fruits—a fruit every month—but the 
 time to realize these invisible things of God and his 
 paradise is when a pall is thrown over things visible 
 that have a resemblance. Thus it would be very un- 
 skillful if any one, having it for his problem how to 
 produce the most vivid impression of the beauties of 
 paradise—the river clear as crystal, the golden sands, 
 the trees of life blooming fast by the river—were to 
 choose thé time when spring is bursting into leaf and 
 flower, and the odors are floating, and the music warb- 
 ling on the air. In that case he will only raise an im- 
 pression that the good world’s delectations are about on 
 @ par with our present, which does not after all appear 
 
198 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 to be very superlatively blessed ; whereas, if he should 
 rather choose the dreary and bleak winter, when the 
 creation is desolate and bare, he would call on our im- 
 aginations to paint the picture, and be sure that they 
 would make it blessed above all fact—as superlatively 
 blessed as it need be. It must also be remembered that 
 the invisible things of religion will be just as much 
 more real in the winter, as the want of them is more 
 impressively felt; as much more real as their princi- 
 ples are more distinctly apprehended; as much more 
 real as the power of thought is more separated from the 
 distractions of the senses. 
 
 It is also another very grand moral advantage of 
 winter, that the will of man, or the voluntary power of 
 his nature, becomes more erect, more vigorously attent 
 and determinate, under that kind of experience. One 
 of the most remarkable distinctions of the men of tropi- 
 cal climates is that they seem to have no will; that is, 
 no such steadiness and persistent grasp of will, as 
 amounts to a capacity of high resolve and determinate 
 action. They bask, they float, they are delicate and 
 sensitive, but far too inefficient commonly for any de- 
 cisive kind of action. The nearest approach they make 
 to it is in their gustiness and the tempest-rage of their 
 passion ; but here the very thing most wanting is a will 
 that has force enough to master their impulse, and 
 steady their self-government. To breast oppositions, 
 stem currents, fight causes, resolve on changes or 
 amendments, rise above misfortunes, seems impossible, 
 How many tropically-nurtured martyrs have we ever 
 
OF WINTER. 199 
 
 heard of? And weneed not gy:t our zone te learn the 
 reason. Who of «s does n@ observe that, in the heat 
 of summer he is iang"¢, faint, averse to resolution. 
 We even call the sum wer the languid season. We also 
 speak of the bracing winter, by which we mean that we 
 have nerve to do, determine, plan, withstand, endure— 
 in a word, that we have now a new installment of will, 
 and so of practical energy. Now, therefore, is the time 
 when we shall be girded to the closest mental attention, 
 and shall most distinctly comprehend our own moral 
 state and want. And what we discover we shall set 
 ourselves in firmest resolution to do; to mend our de- 
 fects, renounce our sins, revolutionize our habits, take 
 up our crosses, enter into new duties and hopes, and 
 pluck up courage, in God’s help, to begin a new and a 
 better life. All this we may do in the summer, it is 
 true; but weare far more likely to do it in the winter, 
 or in the neighboring season of spring, when the tonic 
 force of one is passing into the softening genialitieg of 
 the other. 
 
 We shall also discover, what will be more impressi-+c 
 to many, that winter has a practical effect, in a large 
 way, on the economic and social conditions of life, that 
 is in the highest degree beneficial to character. Winter 
 is not commonly productive, but is rather a time of ex- 
 penditure. And in this way it impels, by the most 
 atringent motive possible, to habits of industry and 
 providence, which are the acknowledged conservators 
 and securities of character. A few of the trades find 
 their harvest-time in the winter, but, for the greater 
 
200 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 part of society, summer is the productive season. And 
 they do well if they do not consume in the winter all 
 which their summer produces. As production falls off 
 or diminishes, expenditure 1s, by the same causes, en 
 larged. The comfort of the house 1s to be maintained 
 by artificial heat, which makes a large expense. The 
 body requires heavier, more expensive clothing. It 
 also requires a larger quantity of more substantial food 
 to sustain its internal heat. Meantime the herds of 
 domestic animals are kept in life through the winter by 
 generous supplies, which it has cost many acres of land 
 and whole months of labor to provide. Income is no- 
 where; out-go is the general law. And then, when the 
 spring and summer return, the same winter stock is to 
 be provided over again for the inevitable expenditure. 
 Every thing is hung on providence, and the man who 
 will not provide can not live. He must bow himself to 
 industry, and then what he creates he must store, and 
 keep in careful husbandry. And so, by the very drill 
 of life, he is trained to a cautionary, fore-looking habit. 
 He is no such man as he would be, if nature were pour- 
 ing out her bounties to him all the year. And as he 
 provides for the winter, carefully gathering and storing 
 what will stock his comfort, it will be strange, if his 
 very habit does not sometimes set him on forecasting 
 the wants and necessities of a life beyond life. And 
 then, having gotten this also provided, he will have it 
 in his heart to borrow a larger lesson from the winter, 
 He will be no more churlish, or barren of gratitude, in 
 so much of expenditure; but seeing that God gives for 
 
OF WINTER. 201 
 
 expenditure, and that in this all his gifts have their 
 value, he will set his fireside comforts in contrast with 
 the bleak and dreary desolations around him, and will 
 thank God, with a full and tender heart, for the supplies 
 of his year. His industry, making suit to God as to 
 the soil and the seasons, and his temperate life-care in 
 the provisioning of his wants, are in one view a drill, 
 in anothera hymn. We might think that the people 
 of a tropical climate would, of course, be more religiously 
 bent, and more grateful. And yet they are likely to 
 even forget what gratitude means. They receive their 
 blessings as a thing of course, and being occupied 
 always with receiving, and having no separate time of 
 use and expenditure, their blind selfish habit runs them 
 -by all remembrance even of the giver. Nature pours 
 out her flood upon them, and they receive it as they 
 receive the air, without any sense of its value, or the 
 bounty which it signifies. 
 
 The moral benefit of winter is also great, super- 
 eminently great, in the contributions it makes to home- 
 life, and the fine moral serenities of a close family state. 
 Home is a northern word, not found in the languages 
 of the tropical nations. Living out of doors, reclining 
 under shades, or strolling here and there at any time 
 of day or night for the whole year, families are less 
 regularly gathered into a home circle, or any thing 
 which can be called domestic proximity. They take 
 the habit of the herds, in part, and their passions are 
 as much loosened as their domestic ties. It is only at 
 the hearth where the winter fire is kindled, and the 
 
 oF 
 
202 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 family is gathered into close companionship, that father 
 hood and motherhood, and the other tender relation- 
 ships, become bonds of unity and consciously felt con- 
 cern. A whole half-year spent at the hearth—morn- 
 ings there begun with prayer, long evenings enlivened 
 by mutual society and common studies, books opening 
 their treasures, games their diversions—this it is that 
 condenses a home. Nothing can buy it or bring it to 
 pass, without help of winter as the prime condition. 
 A “ Cotter’s Saturday Night ” in the tropics! who can 
 imagine it? Winter then, we are to see, is that best 
 educator, in whose school spring all the thousand name- 
 less influences that guard the life, strengthen its princi- 
 ples, and save its affections from vagrancy and dissi 
 pation. There is no moral influence not immediately 
 religious that is so essential to virtue and religion, as 
 this most untropical institution that we call a home. 
 Thus far we have been occupied in tracing certain 
 particular results of character operated by winter cli- 
 mates. I wish it were possible, taking a different way, 
 to sketch the many impressive scenes or occasions of 
 winter, that are working always, perhaps unobserved, 
 results not less important. As I can name only two or 
 three, notice, for one, the almost religious impression 
 of the winter storms. The tropical storms, such as the 
 hurricane of our southern seas, and the cyclone of the 
 eastern, are far more violent—so violent or furious as 
 to be simply terrible, and to leave no moral impression 
 at all. But our winter storm gathers up its force more 
 thoughtfully, as if moving only great instigations; 
 
OF WINTER. 203 
 
 driving steadily on, with a roar that is, at once, the 
 voice of power and of cold. We imagine certain 
 rigors of eternal majesty in the sound, hearing it with 
 only the deeper, more considerate awe, that we appre 
 hend no damage or danger from it. The driven snow- 
 dust fills the air and whitens on the window-panes, so 
 that seeing nothing without, we can only sit by our fire 
 and hear the commotion; save that we feel the jar of 
 it also now and then, when the gusty shocks of broad- 
 side pressure butt upon the house. Waking in the 
 night, when the storm is at its highest pitch of em- 
 phasis, we meditate composedly, yet how distinctly, 
 God, who saith to the snow, “ Be thou on the earth,” 
 and by such voice of majesty executes his word. The 
 storm is only such as we have seen many times, and 
 are likely again to see more than once before the spring 
 arrives, and therefore we think less of it than we 
 should. And yet, if we recall our impressions, we per- 
 ceive that under this same winter-piece, performed by 
 God’s aérial orchestra, we have had our soul in vibra- 
 tion, as never under any combinations of art and 
 instrument and voice, that have won the greatest ap- 
 plause. It had no rhythm, it was not a movement of 
 time and harmony, but it was a grand chromatic of 
 the creation, that we felt all through, heaving out our 
 soul in tremulous commotion before God. It is impos- 
 sible that such experiences should not have a powerfully 
 predisposing effect in our capacities for religion. 
 Consider also the moral value of winter as a time for 
 charity. In the summer, God pours out his bounty so 
 
204 MORAL USES OF DARK ‘SHINGS. 
 
 freely that even the idle and improvident will scarcely 
 miss their needed supply. Not even the invalid will 
 often suffer. In the winter he withholds, that we may 
 so far take his place, and seek out the beneficiaries, and 
 dispense the benefactions of Providence, forhim. To 
 prepare a way of suffering, in order to prepare oc- 
 casions for charity, would, of course, be a harsh and 
 very unequal method of beneficence. If that were all, 
 it would only be a sacrifice of one class, to promote the 
 virtues of another. But where there is much idleness 
 and vice, there ought to be much suffering, and it ap- 
 pears to be even a fault of the tropics that they do not 
 bring suffering enough. It would be much better, as 
 far as we can judge, if the profligate and worthless 
 were more severely handled ; for the examples of retri 
 bution would be more impressive, and the cogent forms 
 of misery would furnish appeals of charity, sufficiently 
 strong and frequent to make it one of the common ha- 
 manities. In this respect the winter climates have a 
 great advantage. They have the further advantage 
 that the conditions of hunger and cold authenticate 
 themselves. If there is no fire, the lack can be seen. 
 If there is no sufficient covering, the fact is not difficult 
 to be distinguished. The poor child found in rags, 
 asking bread, and saying by his piteous, crouching look, 
 “Who can stand before His cold?’ wants no cer- 
 tificate. In the howling cold of the night, sheltered in 
 our warm, comfortably-tempered chamber, we have 
 reason enough to be thinking of the poor, uncovered, 
 shivering creatures not far off, and we can certainly 
 
OF WINTER. 205 
 
 find them to-morrow. Some of us, it may be, do not 
 much value these tender humanities and really divine 
 ministries. We dispatch them sometimes gruffly, it 
 may be, and without the tenderness, and yet the moral 
 benefit we all receive is greater than we can estimate— 
 all the greater, of course, when we learn to claim our 
 privilege in such offices of mercy and true brother- 
 hood. 
 
 I will name one other occasion, or contingency of 
 winter, that sometimes takes a wonderfully strong hold 
 of our religious instinct, and often produces effects 
 more decisive than we trace ourselves. I speak of our 
 winter funerals. To bury a friend in winter is a kind 
 of trial that connects strange inward commotions of 
 feeling which it is difficult to master. We have cleared 
 away the snow and hewn a passage down through the 
 solid pavement of the frost, and there, in that inhos- 
 pitable place, we come to bury our departed; be 
 it child, or wife, or mother, or much loved friend. 
 Our heart shudders, in convulsive chill, at the forlorn 
 last offices we are come to perform. While our feeling 
 is protesting, the solemnity, so called, goes on, and 
 before we have gotten our own consent, the “tribute 
 of respect” is ended. The frozen chips of earth, 
 loosened again by blows, are piled on the loved one’s 
 rest, and we turn to go. “ Will it storm to-night? 
 The wind, alas! is howling even now in the trees, and 
 the sleeting is already begun. O God, it shall not be! 
 We were going to be fools, we see, but now the spell is 
 broken. Our departed is not in that hole, and we 
 
206 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 scorn to say our farewell over it! Let the snows fall 
 heavy, if they will, and the winds rage pitiless and 
 wild above, ours it shall be to thank thee, Father, Lord 
 of the warmer clime, that our dead one lives with 
 thee.” Practically almost nothing will more surely 
 compel a faith in immortality, even if one chances to 
 be unbelieving, than to bury a friend in the winter. 
 And, as a matter of fact, it is not in the fresh, out- 
 bursting life of the spring, or in any softer season of 
 the year, that we think of immortality with half the 
 tension that we do at the winter funerals. We ask it 
 instinctively, as we do a fire for the cold. 
 
 We have it then, for our conclusion, that if we have 
 some physical reason to complain of our harsh and 
 rugged climate, morally speaking it stands well. Re- 
 garding only personal and moral vigor, and the supreme 
 interests of character, it is a climate thoroughly re- 
 epectable, and is not a whit too severe. Many think it 
 a great misfortune that our excellent fathers did not 
 push their way farther south, at their landing, and seek 
 out a softer and more genial clime. There is no greater 
 folly, as facts most conclusively show. If there be any 
 people on earth who have reason to accuse their climate, 
 it is they who enjoy a perennial season of growth and 
 verdure, and a soft and sunny sky throughout the year. 
 There it is that mind also is soft, enervated by ease 
 and luxury. There it is that eternity offers beauty and 
 bloom to minds that can not be moved by their attrac- 
 tion, and virtue her stern requirements to souls toe 
 much relaxed by habits of ease and passion to be 
 
OF WINTER. 207 
 
 girded by sentiments of high responsibility. After all, 
 the best favors of God are those which take on shapes 
 of rigor and necessity, and prepare the strongest 
 hunger in us for the good of a world invisible. The 
 advantages of the body are poor and mean compared 
 with the advantages of character and religion. Under- 
 standing thus our want, we shall thank God most for 
 the frosts, and the snows, and the sleet, and the bleak 
 winds, and the raw dank seasons interspacing the cold. 
 We shall be like the trees coated in gems of ice and 
 glittering in thankfulness before Him. For the winter 
 of the body is, in some very true sense, the summer of 
 the mind. What softer clime then shall the sons of 
 New England envy—wading to their temples on the 
 hills through wintry snows, gathered at their firesides 
 in domestic mutualities and pleasures, trained to close 
 economy and patient industry by the even balance of 
 growth and expenditure, rugged in their virtues as in 
 their experience of hardship, firm in their conscience, 
 clear in their religious convictions, and knowing how 
 to gild the rigors of time with glories of future ex- 
 pectation. Who, again we ask, of all that bask 
 in the warmth of skies more genial, have they to 
 envy ¢ 
 
 It is most remarkable, too, and a fair subject of con- 
 gratulation, that the Christian sense of winter, if we 
 should not rather say the Christian providence of 
 times, makes an election of seasons that so nearly cor- 
 responds with the choice, or good fortune, of our 
 fathers ; for the great church days most consecrated by 
 
208 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 observances of religion are days in winter, and of early 
 spring—such as the festivals of the Nativity and of 
 Easter and the forty days of Lent, with others that 
 might be named. Whether the institution of Lent is 
 fixed in its particular season, because that is a time 
 when mind is more congenially tempered for the Ligher 
 meditations and severer exercises of religion, some 
 perhaps may auestion, but any one can see that a Lent 
 in July and August would have much less chance of 
 the intended benefit. We may also observe that the 
 time selected coincides, as nearly as may be, with the 
 season of the year most commonly distinguished by 
 what in other modes of church order, not observing 
 Lent, are rather unhappily called revivals of religion. 
 And it turns out in both modes alike, and for reasons 
 that are really the same, that the winter becomes, in 
 some practical and special sense, the harvest time of 
 religion. It is so, not as many cavilers will say, 
 because the Christian people have done up their bnsi- 
 ness, and made their money, and, having nothing else 
 to do, are going to do up their religion; but it is 
 because the tonic force of winter gives a possibility of 
 thought and mental tension, specially needed for the 
 most resolute and really most earnest exercises of devo- 
 tion. It is also a considerable advantage, that we love 
 proximity in winter, and covet more easily the warmth 
 of assemblies and of high social impulse. And since 
 the Spirit of God has it as a law of divine wisdom, to 
 work most powerfully in seasons that best work with 
 him, what should we expect but that his widest move 
 
OF WINTER. 209 
 
 ments of grace, whether called by one name or another, 
 will be revealed in the times of winter? 
 
 It follows, we must also observe, that we all have a 
 gift of personal advantage in the winter that we can 
 not afford to lose. Now is the time to meditate all our 
 most serious concerns of life anew. If the main ques- 
 tion is still unsettled, or unattended to, there is no other 
 80 good time for a duty that requires so much of con- 
 centration. If we have grown slack in our principles, 
 now is the time to set them up and be ourselves set up 
 in their company. If the fascinations of time have 
 stolen us away from the invisible good, now is the time 
 to set our gaze more steadfastly on it, when the good 
 that is visible is frosted, and hid under snows from the 
 sight. Now is the time to be rational and strong, to 
 revise our mistakes, shake off our self-indulgences, 
 prepare our charities, justify our friendships, shed a 
 sacred influence over our families, set ourselves to the 
 service of our country and our God, by whatever cost 
 of sacrifice. Doing this, as we may, it will not much 
 concern us, I think, if our flight should also be in the 
 winter. 
 
x. 
 OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUOL, 
 
 Gon’s thought is beauty; and as he creates in the 
 form of his thought, his creation must, we infer, repre- 
 sent his beauty. The argument goes further; for as 
 God’s mind is all-beautiful or infinite in beauty, so the 
 world must be an infinitely beautiful world. And yet 
 it visibly is not, but a great way from it. If we take 
 up the opinion that it is, by no inference but only by 
 reverence, still we cannot stop our eyes by reverence; 
 and the moment we open them, we see as distinctly as 
 we see any thing, that perfect beauty is not here. No 
 matter if we recoil from such a conclusion, as one that 
 takes away the possible proof of God’s existence, then 
 that possible proof must go; for there is nothing more 
 certainly discovered, than that we have immense dis- 
 figurements, and objects and airs intensely disgustful, 
 in the world’s composition. And, what is more, these 
 uncomely or revolting elements in the picture are not 
 incorporated by accident, or oversight, or some prece- 
 dent necessity, but, as far as we can see, by deliberate 
 purpose and plan. No animal, for example, is created 
 by any thing less than a sovereign act; therefore, when 
 we encounter buzzards and many beasts of prey, whe 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 211 
 
 neither relish, nor will eat any thing which is not flavor- 
 ed and thoroughly cooked by decomposition, this is their 
 nature, we infer, the original instinct of their kind, and 
 was just as truly created in them as their anatomy. 
 These are facts which no possible gloss can hide, and 
 they are thick sown among the sceneries, the odors and 
 flowers, and all the blooming beauties of the world. 
 What shall we make of them? A very difficult and 
 immensely significant question. 
 
 A different verdict is, I know, quite commonly ac- 
 cepted. A great many religious writers volunteer it .as 
 a point of reverence, without any thought of being 
 critically responsible for it, and a great many poets 
 and professed expounders of nature also speak as if it 
 were a point to be taken by admission, that the works 
 of God are in God’s beauty and exclude the possible 
 right of qualification. They are so captivated by what 
 they call nature, and luxuriate with such fondness in 
 the poetical fervors kindled in their fancy by what 
 they call his beauty, that they often disrelish and 
 recoil from the revealed religion of the Scriptures, 
 however beautifully or magnificently revealed, prefer- 
 ring to indulge what they conceive to be a religion 
 more tasteful; viz., the admiration of God as dis- 
 covered in the natural objects around them. And yet, 
 even such, without raising at all the question how far 
 they are consistent in it, will be playing their criticism 
 every hour on the defective sceneries, and the un- 
 sigutly, disproportioned shapes of nature, showing that 
 not even their superlatively tasteful religion is tasteful 
 
° 
 212 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 enough to satisfy their own ideals. They quite agree 
 with us still, that no bog, or swamp, or heath, or 
 desert, or dead plain, or stagnant water, no slimy 
 reptile, or carrion bird is a beautiful object. They 
 plainly do not think a howling wilderness at all com- 
 parable in beauty to a cultivated landscape; allowing 
 without scruple, that nature from the hand of God 
 requires to be retouched and finished by the hand of 
 man. And whatever field of nature they find so 
 drenched with water, or parched with drought, or 
 pinched with cold, that no industry or art of man can 
 improve it, they conceive to be unsightly, irredeemable 
 waste. They have also what they call “foul days” 
 and “nasty weather ;” and when they are able to say 
 “it is a perfect day,” they mean that it is an excep- 
 tional, uncommon, superlative day. 
 
 So far, we all agree, however much or little we have 
 . to say of the perfect beauty of nature. We discover 
 disproportions and blemishes, we are annoyed by things 
 distasteful, we suffer many disgusts. And we go so 
 far in this involuntary criticism, that when we come to 
 the human form itself, which is the noblest and choicest 
 of all, we find no single member of the race that per- 
 fectly fulfills our ideas of beauty—not even our utmost 
 conceit can look in the glass, without thinking of some 
 feature that might be greatly improved. And we are 
 even accustomed to assume, without scruple, that con- 
 sidering height, proportion of parts, perfection of single 
 members, complexion, gait, posture, expression, nO man 
 or woman ever existed, in whom the practiced eye 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 213 
 
 could discover no blemish —no excess, or defect, or false 
 conjunction. Hence it is steadily assumed as a first 
 maxim of art, that the perfect beauty is not, but is to 
 be, created. We do not say that all are deformed, and 
 yet with the single qualification, “more or less,” it 
 would hardly be an extravagance. Some limb is awry, 
 some member too long or too short, some feature too 
 sharp or too clumsy. Indeed, the remarkable thing is 
 that, conceiving man, as we do, to be created in the 
 image of God, we meet so very few persons, in the 
 intercourse of life, that awaken at all, our sense of 
 beauty. We have, in fact, a way of saying that a 
 person is common, as denoting an unattractive, badly 
 molded figure and look. 
 
 I have been careful, it will be observed, in the mak- 
 ing up of this picture, to give it in its softest, least 
 exaggerated form. My object has not been to frame 
 an impeachment of nature, but a respectful and suit- 
 ably delicate representation rather. It would be easy 
 to draw up specifications of scenes, and facts, and pro- 
 cesses, that would make a hideously disagreeable, or 
 even revolting picture, but the taste of one who should 
 do it would probably suffer the principal infliction 
 itself It would be as when a Jumbo occupies whole 
 years of industry in molding a circumstantial and 
 minutely particular representation of the horrible and 
 disgusting charnel made ly the plague in the streets of 
 Florence. It was bad enough that such a scene must 
 be, as an event of Providence, but a great deal worse 
 that any kind of art should labor at the picture, and 
 
214 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 work up the hideous details, by which it may be form- 
 ally perpetuated. I prefer to take the milder, mildest 
 possible conception of the uncomely and disgustfu 
 matters in the field of nature; for we shall have 
 enough to do, in that case, to make out an account of 
 them sufficiently agreeable to satisfy us. 
 
 Proceeding now in this endeavor, it will be neces 
 sary ,— 
 
 I. To dispose of certain solutions, or pretended solu- 
 tions, which are either not permissible, or do not reach 
 the mark. 
 
 Thus it may be imagined that God does not like to 
 be imprisoned in his own beauty, but prefers sometimes 
 to assert his liberty, in creating things unshapely and 
 wild; even as some human artist, who could easily con- 
 ceive more beautiful things, chooses the less beautiful, 
 with a view to certain humorous and grotesque effects, 
 or to certain moral effects that depend on acts of merey 
 to the lame, or leprous, or the outcast poor. But the 
 point to be first noted here is that the artist is studying, 
 nevertheless, in his choice, what will help him to com- 
 mand effects most beautiful in the particular field or 
 subject chosen. How far the dignity of God permits 
 the supposition that he indulges the grotesque and dra- 
 matic by-play of sentiment in this way need not here be 
 discussed, for it is only a very small part of the un- 
 sightly and hideous deformities of nature that can, by 
 any possibility, be classed in that manner. They are 
 too disgustful and repulsive, too dreadfully serious, to 
 be thought of as contributions for dramatic sentiment 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 215 
 
 of any kind. Besides, the disgustful and hideous points 
 of nature are not given pictorially, but really. If the 
 artist were not painting lepers or lunatics, but creating 
 them, we should have a very different impression of his 
 work. No advantage, in short, is to be gotten by this 
 kind of argument. 
 
 As little can it be said that there is no defect o1 
 blemish in nature, but only in our own standards, or 
 ideals of beauty. What then are standards and ideals 
 but just what they are made to be, save that evil must 
 be allowed to have wrought some corruption of our 
 judgments and perceptions under them. The same is 
 to be said of all our perceptions. We have as good rea- 
 son to confide in our judgments of what is beautiful, or 
 unbeautiful, or disgusting, as we have to confide in our 
 judgments of perspective and color. And we know as 
 well what is out of shape, or hideous, or disgustful, as 
 we do that the sky is blue, or that snow is white, or 
 that righteousness is right. If we can not trust our in- 
 tuitive perceptions, there is nothing more for us to say. 
 For aught that appears, disgusting odors are as good as 
 perfumes, and deformities are the essence of beauty. 
 
 As little can it be imagined that our distastes and 
 condemnatory judgments are due to the lowness and 
 perversity of our criticism; that we find blemishes be- 
 cause it pleases our conceit to find them; that we meet 
 disgusting objects, because we are fastidious enough to 
 be disgusted by what is inherently beautiful; that we 
 take a low-minded pleasure in gloating on deformities, 
 and are too hasty, or short-sighted, to pierce the matters 
 
216 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 blamed, deeply enough to apprehend their real merit 
 and dignity. Undoubtedly there is a possibility of just 
 this perverse and nanseously absurd way of criticism. 
 But when it is considered that all most rhapsodical 
 admirers of nature as well as all most rigid devotees 
 of science agree in the opinion that fault and blemish, 
 and defect of color, and loathsomeness of look, are 
 largely infused among the objects and scenes of nature, 
 it will be as improbable as it can be, that all our dis- 
 gusts are due to the distempers of our criticism. 
 Neither can it be said, with any sufficient show of 
 evidence, that the uncomely and distorted forms of 
 nature were never created, but have resulted, since the 
 creation, from uses that produced the distortion; that 
 the giraffe, for example, has lifted his shoulders and 
 spun out his enormous length of neck, by the habit of 
 browsing on tree-tops; or that the elephant, having the 
 enormous weight of his head to support, at the end of 
 a neck proportionately long, became weary of the bur- 
 den, and gradually drew in his neck, till it was short- 
 ened; pushing out meantime the length of his mouth- 
 piece, till it became a proboscis long enough to reach 
 the ground and gather his supplies of food. We have 
 a strangely disfigured race of fishes, comprising the 
 halibut, the plaice, and the flounder. They swim flat- 
 wise on their side, having their back-bone on one mar- 
 gin, and their belly on the other, and their head so far 
 twisted out of place, that a single eye stands up promi- 
 nent and bold on the top, and the other eye is a little, 
 nearly extinct organ, underneath. These creatures take 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 217 
 
 their prey, it is said, by churning up the mud on the 
 bottom of the ocean and letting it settle upon them for 
 disguise, while they lie in perfect stillness under their 
 chin cloak, waiting for some fish to be discovered, by 
 their beetling eye, swimming directly over them. Then 
 darting up their twisted mouth upon him, they have 
 him for their prey. Now the question springs, at this 
 point, whether these strangely distorted and deformed 
 creatures were made as they are, or whether they have 
 twisted themselves out of all symmetric figure by their 
 practice? If there is some special cunning given them 
 for this practice, then they were so far made for it, and 
 for all the disfigurements they incur from it. And 
 if it is not so, and as good cunning is given to all 
 the other fishes of prey, why has no other family of 
 fishes learned to set their trap in the same way? On 
 the whole, very little can be made of this kind of argu- 
 ment; and, partly for the reason that only a few of the 
 malformations we meet have any thing to do with such 
 physiological practices. The jungles, the swamps, the 
 deserts, the putrid lakes, are malformed plainly by crea- 
 tion, and fill a very much larger chapter. 
 
 But it will be said, and often is said, that the deform- 
 ities and disgusts of nature are all intended as reliefs, 
 to set off the ornamentations and beauties. As there 
 must be discords in music, light and shade in pictures, 
 so there must be contrasts, in order to make up any 
 really perfect landscape, or perfectly composed beauty 
 in things not pertaining to landscape. This is really 
 
 the most plausible account that can be given of the dis- 
 10 
 
218 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 figured and distasteful things in nature. But there is 
 no solid merit of reason in the solution, as we can easily 
 see. Does any artist ever execute one corner of his 
 picture badly, in order to bring out the beauty of his 
 work in the other? What painter ever put a swamp 
 or a desert in his picture, to heighten the pleasing 
 effect of it? Such a thing may have been done, as all 
 absurd things can be, but I happen never to have seen 
 the instance. A reedy lake, or wide-spread shallow, 
 such as the muskrat populations love to inhabit—who 
 ever undertook to set off his landscape by putting it in 
 the foreground, or middle-ground, or anywhere else ? 
 What sculptor ever thought to make a leg or an arm 
 more beautiful, by setting a deformed one with it, as we 
 often see in the juxtapositions of nature? The need of 
 contrasts in setting off the charms of things beautiful, 
 is itself a false assumption. Such contrasts are com- 
 monly painful. A park and a swamp, a group made 
 up of hags and graces, gambols of life and decays of 
 death—all such misconjunctions are offensive. Light 
 and shade are a wholly different matter, operating not 
 by contrast, but by the magic power of the sun, play- 
 ing out, in both alike, the forms and colors of the 
 scene it is painting. Things unlike, as rock and water, 
 complement each other, not by contrast, but by joint 
 contributions of beauty. Meantime all the unbeantiful 
 stuff the world contains has abundance of contrasts in 
 it; only it happens that they are so devoid of expres- 
 sion, as to be simply wearisome because of their com- 
 monness. Whole regions are too common to raise any 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 219 
 
 thought of a landscape. Farms and localities are com. 
 mon. Maultitudes of faces, abundantly unlike, are yet 
 so meagre, and dry, and dreary, that we call them com- 
 mon, and let them go. But it can not be imagined 
 that these commonnesses help, as terms of contrast, te 
 garnish any larger whole. They only whet our appe- 
 tite for something better by starving us in what they 
 are. 
 
 Dismissing, then, all attempts to solve the deformi- 
 ties and disgustful things of nature, on the footing of 
 mere natural criticism, we come— 
 
 II. To what is really the chief point of their signifi- 
 cance; the moral uses they are fitted and appointed to 
 serve. 
 
 And the first of these I name is the broad, every 
 where visible, token of retribution they show imprinted 
 on the world. I do not undertake to say, that all these 
 unsightly and disgustful things are deformities actually 
 caused by the fact of wrong or transgression, appearing 
 for the first time after it. The world was originally 
 made, no doubt, for the occupant, to serve such uses as 
 his moral training would require; and if it was prelud- 
 ing his bad history long before he came, the disgustful 
 tokens were none the less truly fruits of his wrong, than 
 if they had appeared only afterward, as the literal 
 effects of it. Tke medicines a traveler carries with him, 
 when going into regions infested with plague, are none 
 the less truly dictated by the plague than if they had 
 been chosen after the symptoms appeared. And if any 
 one shonld think that such a way of regarding the 
 
220 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 world’s deformities and disgusts might diminish or 
 quite take away the impression of any retributive 
 meaning in them, that impression will be cogently 
 affirmed by seeing, every day, new-sprung deformities 
 and disgusts every way correspondent, that are visibly 
 penal reactions and retributive consequences of vicious 
 conduct. When a once robust, handsomely formed, 
 nobly commanding person, has it for his lot as a father, 
 to look on a family of feeble, half-sized, chronically dis- 
 eased, pitifully deformed children, it is only necessary 
 to speak the word “licentiousness,” and we see at a 
 glance by what kind of mill retribution is at work to 
 make one class of deformities. Who that compares the 
 unwieldy and coarse obesity of a gormandizer, and the 
 swinish configurations of his face and mouth, with the 
 fine elastic play of his figure and features before his 
 habit was established, fails to see how surely retribution 
 fits a beastly appetite with a beastly figure. We suffer 
 no revulsion more painful than to look on the stupid 
 unmeaningness and bloat and blear of a thoroughly 
 besotted drinker, and it hardly seems a possibility, that 
 a lump so disgusting can have been made, even by 
 retribution itself, out of a person as finely molded, in a 
 look of expression as attractive, as he is remembered to 
 have worn but a very few years ago. And so it is in the 
 whole moral department of life, where retribution is 
 easting forms and figures, so to speak, for every sort of 
 sin. ! 
 If a man has no principles and thinks only of ap- 
 pearances, the affectations he lives in will print them- 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 221 
 
 selves on his face and make it an embodied lie. If one 
 lives in cunning only, the foxy character creeps into 
 his eye and motions, and we almost think the man is 
 changing species. Hate, jealousy, petulance, miser- 
 hood, envy—every sort of obliquity has its own dis- 
 figurement. By so many mills kept running day and 
 night retribution is at work, to manufacture deformities 
 and disgusts. And this we see so often, growing so 
 familiar with the story, that it becomes a general habit 
 with us, to look on the disfigurements and disgusts of 
 the world, as being somehow connected with wrong 
 and its penal causations. 
 
 Now, the immense value of this impression can not 
 be over-estimated. It connects all evil with its fit 
 tokens of expression. The races all march down their 
 way carrying their own dishonored flags. The families 
 have their own disfigurements and scars. There is no 
 concealment ; every thing is out in visible shape, and 
 is going to be. We could never have any just opinion 
 of moral retribution as inexorably connected with 
 moral conduct, unless these galleries, down which we 
 go, were hung with just so many unsightly figures and 
 objects of disgust. Sin will get fit discipline here only 
 as it occupies the house it builds, looking on the forms 
 it paints and catching in the air the scent of its own 
 low practice. When we con over, indeed, the malfor- 
 mations and disfigured shapes that are crowding about 
 us here in such multitude, and confronting in such 
 libelous airs the beauty of the Creator, we seem, at 
 times, to have somehow missed ovr world; and yet 
 
fu oa 
 
 222 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 there is all the beauty here there can be, and all there 
 ought to be, unless there can be more of worth and less 
 of wrong. If the house we live in humiliates our feel- 
 ing, it does not sink us below the scale of our merit. 
 
 A second moral advantage of the unbeautiful and 
 often disgustful things of the world is closely related, 
 and yet radically different; I speak of the representa- 
 tional office they are designed to fill. We fall into a 
 great mistake when we assume that nature and natural 
 objects must represent the thoughts only and resources 
 of the Creator. It may have been, nay, certainly was 
 his purpose in them, that man should be represented 
 to himself; or, what is the same thing, supplied with 
 images to express his sentiments and thoughts. Lan- 
 guage is a first necessary of existence, and everyone 
 who knows what language is finds it bedded in 
 physical types and images naturally significant, and 
 prepared before-hand—even before they are vocally 
 named—to express, by their figurative power, mental 
 thoughts and ideas. And these being vocally named, 
 no matter by what sound, become words that recall so 
 many figures, and carry so many different kinds of 
 expression. The physical heaven is height, purity, and 
 order, and so the figure heaven signifies the state of the 
 blessed. Ground is the prostrate, underfoot element, a 
 figure thus to signify humility [humus]. Integers are 
 wholes, hence integrity. All the words we get for the 
 uses of mind and the expression of moral ideas are 
 figures brought up thus out of nature, and made to 
 pe the staple of our language And this is possible, 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 223 
 
 simply because the objects of nature are relationally, 
 or representationally, made; contrived, that is, to rep. 
 resent our thoughts and help us figure ourselves tc 
 ourselves and to one another. 
 
 At this point we strike the question, what if there 
 were no base, unbeautiful or disgustful things in the 
 world ; what if every image were an image of God’s 
 . beauty unmarred, every object cast in the molds of 
 ideal order and unblemished life? Of course there is 
 no language now to represent or figure wrong, bad 
 character, vice, moral obliquity, or corruption; all 
 because there is no representational matter, out of 
 which figures to carry a bad impression can be drawn. 
 Our language is good enough for all but the moral 
 uses of our life, but here it is utterly wanting. And 
 what benefit can we get in living, when we can not 
 think, distinguish, express, or interpret, any single 
 working of our disorder? The very thing now wanted, 
 above every thing else, is a good supply of disfigure- 
 ments, distortions, uncomely shapes, loathsomenesses, 
 objects of aversion and disgust. Just all that differs 
 the world now from what it would be,representing only 
 God, is required for our sakes, to be the timber of a 
 language that will serve our morally misshapen life, 
 and permit us to think and talk of our condition as our 
 truest good requires. Only so can we get such terms 
 as these—vile, unclean, corrupt, polluted, rotten, lame, 
 distorted, crabbed, venomous, distempered, revolting, 
 loathsome, depraved, and five hundred others of the 
 same class, all based in figures of deformity and dis- 
 
224 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 gust supplied by the unbeautiful things of nature. 
 And any one can see that without these forms of 
 language all the moral uses of life must fail. We 
 should be scarcely more completely out of our element, 
 if we were installed in some third heaven where we 
 could not get bread for our bodies. 
 
 Thirdly, it is a great moral advantage of the un- 
 sightly things, that they put us endeavoring after 
 improvements. Nature we say is rough and wild, 
 valuable mainly as a good possibility given for the pro- 
 duction of something better. And so, without scruple, 
 we fall to work in ways of culture and amendment, to 
 improve what the Creator’s hand has left us. We 
 expect to make finer growths, fewer points of deform- 
 ity, and far better, more attractive sceneries. It is 
 well. The very effort puts our thought climbing in all 
 directions. Our aspirations, personal, moral, spiritual, 
 are all put struggling up into a better key. We sigh 
 for beauty more often, and wonder whither it has fled. 
 It happens, too, not seldom, that our moral nature 
 recoils accusingly upon itself when trying thus to 
 improve the sterile sceneries, or the slow, cold fields 
 we cultivate. It is also a fact most remarkable at this 
 point, that while we are put down so very close upon 
 deformity, and have so much really disgustful stuff 
 crowded in upon us, we are yet allowed to create the 
 very most perfect things we can conceive—to enlarge 
 and new-pencil the flowers, to enrich and vary and 
 make generous all the naturally niggard fruits, toe 
 build houses that are palaces of beauty and forms of 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 225 
 
 geometrically perfect thought never before entered into 
 landscape, to set fountains in play and cascades spilling 
 from the rocks, to cover up, in short, by the garnishes 
 of art, all the uncomely and coarse defects of nature. 
 God has no jealousy of us in these things. He loves 
 _ to put us trying to create some kind of beauty; for he 
 knows that, in doing it, we must think it, which we 
 can not do without running out our thought, in all 
 directions, fast and far—far enough to cross over the 
 boundaries of our great moral and responsible life, and 
 the possible sceneries to be unfolded there. And so 
 the very ambition we have to create and improve, and 
 finish up a more attractive state, is a kind of physical 
 endeavor that carries some most excellent effects. 
 
 A fourth moral advantage of the misshapen creatures 
 and disgustful objects of the world is one not often 
 suggested, and yet iminensely significant, considered as 
 belonging integrally to a completely furnished moral 
 state; viz., the keeping under and due regulation of the 
 fastidious spirit. All bad minds and all partly good are 
 exposed to this kind of peril, and if it were not for the 
 rough practical encounters we have with so many dis- 
 gusts and so many coarse, unsightly things, mixing, in 
 one way or another, with our very experience itself, we 
 can hardly imagine to what pitch the vice would grow. 
 As it is even now, under so many strong correctives 
 constantly applied, it is a vice most widely prevalent, 
 and destructive as widely to the finest generosities and 
 highest possibilities of character. It is not the sin of 
 
 little minds only playing with affectations of qaality 
 10* 
 
226 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 but it creeps into large, high natures, to make them 
 little; for, when it has gotten firm hold even of such, 
 they are not likely to be worth much afterward, as 
 respects any of the heroic and beneficent virtues. Their 
 prodigious delicacy eats up their sympathies, and so 
 far unspheres them as to put them out of range, in all 
 great works attempted for society. They can not dress 
 a wound, or visit a hospital. The barefooted child ask- 
 ing bread in the street, ought to make a more presenta- 
 ble appearance. What right had a beggar last night to 
 . come and die at their gate. They would like to copy 
 the Master in doing charities to the poor, but the bad 
 air and the squalid appearances repel them. They 
 would have more pleasure in the communion if it were 
 more select. They do not like to be accosted as a 
 brother, lest a little more relationship may be claimed 
 than they are ready to allow. They apprehend some 
 lack of delicacy in attempts to rescue a certain fallen 
 portion of society. They are also greatly scandalized 
 by demonstrations of piety that go beyond the conven- 
 tional forms. And how can they be expected to get 
 benefit from prayers and addresses that mistake their 
 grammar. This weak, unreasoning, very unpractical 
 vice creeps everywhere, and no specification can ex- 
 haust the forms of mischief it assumes. It is the vice 
 of not doing, or rather of not quite liking any thing 
 proposed to be done. We can not too much honor the 
 beneficence of God, in the disgusts and disagreeable, 
 distasteful-looking things by which he is all the while 
 crowding us, if possible, out of our fastidiousness and 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 227 
 
 the foolishness of our unpractical delicacy. Were it 
 not for this, it is doubtful whether Christ himself could 
 ever have gotten hold of personal respect enough to 
 make good his evidences. Why should he do so many 
 unrespectable things? Why did he give out his sym- 
 - pathies so freely to so many disgusting creatures? How 
 could he hear unshocked Martha’s speech at the 
 grave of Lazarus? Nothing saves us from this mean- 
 minded, foolish kind of criticism, but the fact that our 
 every scheme of life is a drill to keep us off from it. 
 And yet even now there is more great living, and 
 grandly toned beneficence killed by this contemptible 
 delicacy, than there is by the rough, hard fights of war. 
 We do not commonly think of it as having any particu- 
 lar moral significance, and yet it poisons human broth- 
 erhood more perversely, in ways more wide of reason, 
 than any other kind of sin. Indeed, if Christianity 
 squarely confronts any particular point in the moral 
 configuration of the world, it is exactly here. It comes 
 into the world, we may almost say, as a good angel, to 
 look after the disgusts of it, the lunatic ravings, the 
 blind eyes, the halting limbs, the leprosies and sores, 
 the publicans and harlots, and their much dishonored 
 sorrows. This is the true moral beauty, and to this 
 God is training us, by all the revulsions through which 
 we are made to pass. 
 
 And so we are brought out, last of all, at the very 
 poirt which makes the only sufficient and true conclu- 
 sion of our subject; viz., the fact that what we call 
 God’s beauty is not anywise dishonored by the deform- 
 
 , 
 
928 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 ties and disgusts of nature, but is, after all, only per 
 fectly and effectively expressed by means of them. 
 When he gives away mere physical beauty, for a good 
 and necessary end, his moral beauty is only displayed 
 in that kind of sacrifice. To have his own works 
 marred and scarred, stamped with ignominy, configured 
 to the disgusts and obliquities of evil, was a most costly 
 condescension, fitly to be called a sacrifice; for it was 
 impossible that so great mental beauty should not cling 
 to its own perfect forms, and long to look on the unsul 
 -ied faces of its children—thinking regretfully of them 
 even as he did of his Son, when he sighed: “ his visage 
 was so marred more than any man, and his form more 
 than the sons of men.” Call it, therefore, sacrifice— 
 even the creation itself—the sacrifice before the sacri- 
 fice ; for how much real beauty, dear to God, is sunk 
 in the grotesque and forbidding forms created! True, 
 we call it still a beautiful world, though it is plainly 
 enough a great way off from that—farther off to God 
 than it can be to us. 
 
 What, then, shall we say—is God dishonored, or at 
 all less honorable, that we find him presiding over so 
 many uncouth shapes, and creatures so infected with 
 airs af disgust? By no means. Exactly contrary to 
 this, his most real, his gloriously sublime beauty could 
 never have been seen, except under just these condi- 
 tions. Just because it was so great a thing for the 
 Creator to give up the beauty of things, and subject his 
 whole vast product to adverse criticism—to let all the 
 deformities, all the commonnesses, all the disgusts be 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 229 
 
 installed in it—by this very sacrifice in things is his 
 ineffable moral beauty revealed. At this point comes 
 out the true glory of his fatherhood. He is willing to 
 let even his great work fall with us, and take on the 
 shows of our dishonors; for he means to have our moral 
 
 ideas unfolded by them, and also to be with us and 
 assist our struggles upward out of them. By so many 
 abnegations and paternal condescensions is he proving 
 out his greatness and beauty upon us. And the result 
 is that, after we have begun, as in this article, to lay 
 our criticism on the unsightly facts of the world, draw- 
 ing our own conclusion that there is probably about as 
 much blemish as beauty in things, we are brought 
 round, at the close, to make our discovery, that God’s 
 real beauty—viz., that which is chiefest and highest 
 above all, his moral beauty—is, after all, about us and 
 upon us, and if we speak of blemish or stain, is practi- 
 eally infinite. So that our unbeautiful world is yet 
 both symbol and pledge of God’s infinite beauty. He 
 suffers no subtraction thus, in the blemished things of 
 his creation, but is raised in all highest majesty and 
 greatness by them; let forth, we may even say, into 
 the full-orbed moral effulgence of his character. 
 
 How important, also, this may be in its moral effect 
 upon us will be readily seen. We inhabit, thus, a 
 world where moral beauty is the chief beauty. I 
 believe, too, that we commonly feel it to be so, apart 
 from any such refinements as may seem to have been 
 attempted in this article. We do not see the exact 
 amount of beauty here that we think we have a right 
 
230 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 to look for, and yet there comes upon us somehow, 
 apart from all fine-spun distinctions, an impression that 
 our nobly great and Perfect Friend is with us, and that 
 still the infinite beauty of good isin him. He hangs 
 about us like a moral vision, certified to our feelings in 
 spite of, or even by, just all the deformities of the 
 world. And this vision, or impression, always wel- 
 come, is printing itself more and more deeply on 
 us, every hour, by our scarcely conscious, yet fixed 
 habit of reverence. We get accustomed, in this way, to 
 thinking of moral beauty as the only sovereign distine- 
 tion. And it is exactly this impression that we want; 
 so that we may have our own great struggle consum- 
 mated init. All the moral uses of life, therefore, come 
 to their point in this—in learning how to let go capti- 
 vating things for such as are solid, in making sacrifices 
 of things innocent for things beneficent, in ceasing to 
 please ourselves that we may work out the fruit of our 
 principles. 
 
 There is yet derivable from this whole subject, as 
 now presented, a very simple inference in regard to the 
 future that is too significant to be suppressed. When 
 the present life is ended, and the grand consummation 
 of its uses complete, the reasons that require so much 
 of deformity and loathsomeness in the world will be 
 discontinued, and the new state entered upon will be 
 garnished, doubtless, by new forms and images that are 
 without blemish—perfect in purity and beauty. Then, 
 for the first time, will it be seen how largely the faces 
 and sceneries and objects of our present world were 
 
OF THINGS UNSIGHTLY AND DISGUSTFUL. 231 
 
 marred by defect and disproportion. The dreary com- 
 monness of all these things will be a discovery; for the 
 beauty of the new world will be so complete, we may 
 believe, as to exclude even the lack of interest and ex- 
 pression, retouching all faces aud forms in such manner 
 as their perfect idealization requires. 
 
 In the same way it also follows that, going into a 
 second state of probation hereafter, which many assume 
 to be an authorized expectation, we must of course 
 encounter there all the unbeautiful things, deformities, 
 and loathsomenesses we encounter here, and probably 
 as much worse and more frequent, as the key we start 
 upon there is lower, by the whole unprofiting of a mis- 
 spent life. All the reasons that require unsightly and 
 disgustful things will still hold good, requiring the 
 second state of trial also, to be insphered representa- 
 tionally by such kind of images and disfigurements as 
 will most exactly tally with the qualities and characters 
 insphered. Whether such a prospect is more agreeable 
 than none atall, some persons will not readily decide. 
 
XL. 
 
 OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE, 
 
 As certainly as God exists, maintaining a complete 
 and perfect government over the world, all events have 
 some definite use or meaning, which is the reason 
 of their existence. They take place, not merely by 
 causes but for causes ; that is, for ends of intelligence 
 and goodness—always for moral ends; for if we some- 
 times speak of physical ends in the Divine govern- 
 ment, there will ever be some last end still beyond, 
 wherein God has respect to the discipline of souls; 
 that is, to character. That any thing physical can be 
 a last end with God is quite unsupposable. At the 
 same time, while plagues and pestilences are not more 
 truly appointed for given ends or uses than other 
 events, the place they fill in the grand economy of 
 human existence is too important to allow the belief 
 that they occur for any reasons but such as are of the 
 greatest moment. 
 
 The figure they make in written history is not prom- 
 ment, I know, when compared with the figure made 
 by the wars of the race; and yet I am by no means 
 certain that their effects on the race have been either 
 less destructive to life, or, in a social and moral point 
 
OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 233 
 
 of view, less important. The history of war is the 
 history of exploit and passion, full of dramatic energy, 
 and abounding in examples of heroic valor and scenes 
 of tragic suffering. But pestilence is death without a 
 history. It shows us men melting away in silence 
 before the breath of an invisible destroyer. It is car- 
 nage without heroism. There is no leadership, no 
 counsel, no exploit or victory. Death and burial, and 
 death too fast for burial, cities pale with fear, streets 
 where the dying pile upon the unburied dead, nations 
 thinning away, helpless and panic-struck, beseeching 
 heaven to spare, and offering hecatombs of children to 
 appease their gods—these and such like are the mate- 
 rial of pestilence. It is too painful for history. His- 
 tory shuns it, only raising a monument here and there, 
 in some brief paragraph or section, just to perpetuate 
 the memory of so great weakness, fear, and spiritual 
 dispossession. But we must not think that, because 
 the plagues and pestilences fill no large spaces in writ- 
 ten history, their effects and consequences are only 
 trivial. They represent the silence of God, which 
 is more operative sometimes, moving on a vaster 
 scale, and causing, it may be, greater desolations than 
 the noisiest thunders and bloodiest commotions of 
 human strife and battle. The rule of Providence is 
 in them; and Providence does not require a history 
 to give it name and effect; still it goes on, from age 
 to age, doing its will upon all peoples and empires, 
 working out, by silent campaigns of causes, results 
 that, for scope and central depth of meaning, have a 
 
234 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 comparatively unmeasured and measureless conse- 
 quence. 
 
 To merely recapitulate the great plagues or pesti- 
 lences that have swept over the world, within the 
 period of definite history, would be quite impossible 
 in such an article as this. I will only instance a few, 
 just to raise a degree of impression, where commonly 
 almost no impression appears to exist. Thus, in 4. p, 
 170, a terrible pestilence ravaged all Europe. In Rome 
 alone, when at its height, it was estimated that the 
 deaths were at least 10,000 a day. Again, the whole 
 Roman Empire, from Egypt to Scotland, was swept 
 over, in the same manner, by a pestilence that raged 
 between A.D. 250 and 262. Gibbon says it was caleu- 
 lated that half the human race perished in that single 
 pestilence. Passing over a great number of interven- 
 ing plagues, another general pestilence was coursing 
 back and forth, through Europe and the world, for a 
 period of fifty-eight years, between a. p. 542 and a. D. 
 600, limited to no climate, no season of the year, no 
 mode of communication, but coming and going at 
 pleasure, with little respect either to means or reme- 
 dies. Some cities were even left without an inhabit- 
 ant. Passing over whole centuries again, that were 
 marked by destructive plagues, we descend to the 
 period between a. p. 1345 and 1350, when we trace a 
 terrible pestilence, sometimes called the black death, 
 extending from Eastern China to Ireland. In many 
 cities, nine out of ten of the inhabitants perished. 
 Some were entirely depopulated. In London, 50.000 
 
OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENOE. 235 
 
 of the dead were buried in one grave-yard. Venice 
 lost 100,000 inhabitants, Lubec 90,000, Flerence the 
 same number. During the three years of the disease 
 in Spain, it is affirmed that two-thirds of the people 
 perished. Another general plague desolated Europe in 
 1665-7 ; Naples losing 240,000 out of 290,000 inhabit- 
 ants, Genoa 80,000 out of 94,000. In London, 68,000 
 perished by the same disease, and the other great cities 
 of Europe were visited scarcely less severely. Again, a 
 terrible pestilence broke out and continued to rage be- 
 tween A. p. 1702 and 1711, which visited all Europe, 
 and extended also to this country. Now, consider that, 
 in this little calendar, I have named only a few of the 
 great and general plagues on record; that, meantime, 
 a certain regular band of contagious diseases, which 
 seem to be inexhaustible and immortal, such as yellow 
 fever, scarlet fever, small-pox, and the like, are march- 
 ing ever round the world on their mission of death;- 
 and then, besides, that peculiar and strange outbreaks 
 of malignant epidemic have meantime been desolating 
 one or another part of the world—and you begin to 
 conceive what rank must be assigned to pestilences in 
 the grand economy of human existence. If, in the 
 empire of China alone twenty-five millions of people 
 were carried off by a single one of the plagues to which 
 I have referred—a number greater, by many times, 
 than perished in all the wars of Napoleon—if, by an- 
 other, it is found that even the world itself is half 
 depopulated, it can not be that God has not some end 
 of the highest consequence to serve, by an instrument- 
 
236 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 ality so tremendous. What, then, we ask, are the sup- ~ 
 posable ends and uses of God in the appointment of a 
 discipline so appalling? I answer— 
 
 1. That they undoubtedly serve important uses as 
 regards moral and social advancement, by the effects 
 wrought in the physical economy of the race. Sin, 
 running constantly down into ways of vice and de- 
 pravity, produces a certain virus, or poison, in the 
 physical stock of families. This morbid quality, or 
 virus, accumulating for several generations, and work- 
 ing both a moral and physical debility in the subjects, 
 continually aggravated by filthy habits of life and low 
 supplies of food, it becomes necessary that some deso- 
 lating disease be developed, which will purge the race 
 of so much low or diseased blood, and prevent the in- 
 fection from extending further. Accordingly, it is 
 observed that all plagues and pestilences begin, as 
 fermentations of death, in the lowest forms of society 
 and character, and generally in the most degraded 
 nations of the world. And so, notwithstanding sin 
 working ever as a poison of death in the world, God 
 manages, by occasional plagues or pestilences, break- 
 ing out just where and when they are wanted, to keep 
 good the physical stock of the race, raising it even to 
 a higher pitch of cultivation and of spiritual capacity, 
 from one age to another. And without this kind of 
 agency, exerted by occasional plagues or pestilent dis- 
 eases, there is reason to fear that the stock of the race 
 would become fatally infected and poisoned through- 
 out; and so, human society, instead of rising, might 
 
OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 237 
 
 ~ be ever descending to a feebler type of manhood and 
 a meaner capacity of character. 
 
 2. Great pestilences appear to be needed in order to 
 sustain the reality or keep alive in the race efficient 
 impressions of God. For it is humiliating, that the 
 proof of God which most avails with mankind is not 
 that which is offered to our intelligence, but that which 
 meets our conscience and our fears. It is so, partly 
 because we are under so great intellectual and moral 
 blindness—so unreflecting and careless of things in- 
 visible ; principally because we do not seem really to 
 be met, if I may use that figure, by those gifts of un- 
 deserved favor and blessing which are dispensed in 
 connection with a plan of redemptive mercy. Indeed 
 there are certain incidental defects, if I may so call 
 them, in any such plan of mercy, which could hardly 
 be avoided, and which render it liable, so far, to 
 the encouragement of atheism. For, in order to be 
 impressed by the sense of God in the events of life, we 
 must feel a conviction that they have a meaning and a 
 relation to ends of high significance. But this we shall 
 not feel unless they seem exactly to meet something in 
 our own desert, or want, or character. Accordingly 
 it will be found, that men who have no sense of God, 
 or of final causes, in the common events and mer- 
 cies of life—because mercies meet no conscious feeling 
 of desert in transgression—or who even deride the 
 suggestion that God has any definite end or use in 
 such events, will immediately give in to the contrary 
 conviction, when some terrible visitation of calamity 
 
238 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 appears. All because there is a certain correspondenes 
 felt between such tremendous judgments and their own 
 convictions of desert. Now the religious instinct is 
 moved. This, they will cry, is God; the just anger of 
 God or the gods. The sacrifices are multiplied, the 
 solemn processions are made, the fasts are proclaim- 
 ed, and when the destroyer rages fiercely they will 
 rush into the temples in panic-stricken crowds, tearing 
 their hair, falling on their faces, and beseeching God 
 or the gods, in distressful outcries, to turn away their 
 anger. 
 
 Every great pestilence is in this view a much needed 
 apostle of religion. And if such visitations did not 
 occur, at intervals, there is reason to suspect that a plan 
 of mercy would of itself encourage atheism, or obliter- 
 ate the sense of moral government—by reason of the 
 fact, that a perpetual run of undeserved mercies would 
 bring no sense of fitness, therefore none of a God dis- 
 tributing events by laws of fitness. It is necessary, 
 therefore, that God should open, now and then, the gates 
 of terror, and march out on the guilty fears of the race. 
 Then, how real is God! how true and just are his judg- 
 ments ! how sober a thing is life! how momentous an 
 interest is religion ! 
 
 8. It is another use of great pestilences, that they 
 yield us a conviction so intense of the moral debility 
 and degradation of sin. Inthe exploits of war you 
 might even forget, sometimes, that men are not gods 
 themselves, by reason of the magnanimous spirit dis- 
 played and the heroic scenes transacted. But when 
 
OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 239 
 
 you see them under a pestilence, they appear to be the 
 tamest and most unmagnanimous of beings. 
 
 Though it is well understood, at such times, that cer. 
 tain indulgences, whether of vice or vicious appetite. 
 are connected with danger, still, as if to prove the in- 
 tense sensuality of their nature, how many will steal on 
 after appetite, cheated of all reasonable self-control and 
 discretion, till the fatal limit is passed. And then, the 
 moment any symptom of the disease is felt, they will 
 give way to a tempest of fear, which overturns all 
 equanimity and offers them to the death, half dead al- 
 ready. There will be noble examples of charity and 
 manly courage in such scenes; but oftener, and espe- 
 cially if the pestilence becomes exceedingly violent and 
 fatal, it will be aggravated and rendered tenfold more 
 fatal by a gratuitous panic, in which spirit, confidence, 
 and self possession, are all quite taken away. And if 
 the disease rages a great length of time, it will gener- 
 ally be seen, too, that selfishness, in its pure meanness 
 and degradation, is about the only residuum of char- 
 acter left. The well will flee from the sick and dying 
 —friend from friend. The dead will be left unburied ; 
 children will desert their dying parents; fathers and 
 mothers flee, in consternation and superstitious horror, 
 from their children ; and it will seem that every thing 
 has given way that belongs to the dignity of the human 
 creature, leaving only a herd of sheep in the forms of 
 men, without the innocence that makes even that spirit 
 less animal respectable. 
 
 There is sometimes revealed a stage cf depravity be 
 
240 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 yond even this, when, throngh a protracted despair of 
 life, the state of panic has passed into that of horror 
 and wildness. Such was the plague of Athens, as de- 
 scribed by Thucydides. The people of Attica had been 
 driven into the city, and there they were besieged by 
 their enemies. The plague fell among them under the 
 siege, and they began to die with continually increasing 
 frequency, till, at last, burial was forgotten or impos 
 sible. The dead were piled in circles about the fount- 
 ains, where they crept to slake their insupportable 
 thirst. Panic soon changed into horror, the people 
 grew wild and desperate, all the bonds of feeling and 
 duty gave way. Brutal crimes and licentious pleasures, 
 justified by sneers at the impotence of the gods, and by 
 the argument that nothing better was left, became the 
 spirit of society itself, and the city appeared to be 
 rather a city of fiends than of men. 
 
 And so it will always be found, though not always 
 in the same degree, that man or the human race never 
 appears to be so weak, unrespectable and base, as 
 when some dreadful pestilence displays the true un- 
 restrained view of their character. Is it no purpose of 
 God, in the permission of plague and pestilence, to give 
 us a revelation so painfully instructive and so mortify- 
 ing to our self-respect ? 
 
 4, While the less instructed and more paganized 
 souls are likely to be affected in the manner just de- 
 scribed, it will be quite otherwise with such as have 
 been trained to juster impressions of God. These will 
 be thinking rather of the great ends of beneficent dis 
 
OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENOE,. 241 
 
 cipline, for which their chastisement is sent, and are 
 likely so to be more softened by it. They will not 
 forthwith break loose in some outcry of superstition, at 
 such times, in the manner of certain Christian preachers, 
 testifying of God’s judgments now come, in the sense 
 that God’s judgments have their meaning only in de- 
 structions ; but they will be thinking of a terribly good 
 meaning in them, which ought to bow them in repent- 
 ances. Thus, when it was given to David to choose 
 between famine, captivity, and pestilence, he made 
 choice of the latter, because it was better to fall into 
 the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men. 
 Famine is generally from man, or by man’s fault. Cap- 
 tivity is from man. But the pestilence that walketh in 
 darkness, or cometh in mystery, is God’s messenger, and 
 represents the hand of the Lord—that very strong, some- 
 times awful, always good hand. No people can by any 
 sort of inquest trace its birth, or lay open its causes. 
 But they can all say that it cometh out from God, and 
 bowing under it with unquestioning homage and trust, 
 they are likely to be corrected and won by his appall- 
 ing discipline, as they would not be by a more unbroken 
 flow of his favors. When such judgments of his are 
 abroad in the lands, they will, at least some of them, — 
 learn righteousness. 
 
 True, it may be said that men die at other times, and 
 that, if no pestilence came, we all should die. But 
 when we only fall away one by one, in regular order, © 
 then it is in our habitual atheism to say that there is a 
 
 eause for this, and not see any longer that it is for a 
 1 
 
242 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 cause. It is the ordinary way of things, we say; it is 
 the law of nature that lives should reach their limit. 
 But when some giart death marches round through 
 cities and kingdoms, and over lakes and rivers, 
 mowing down whole populations before their time, we 
 think of something back of nature, and higher. We 
 are admonished of God, and there falls upon us a so- 
 bered feeling that even passes into a character, and be- 
 comes fixed in the deepest associations of our life. Thus 
 whoever, at this fur-off day, thinks of the plague of 
 Athens or of London, thinks of God as a tremendous 
 }eing, and of man as chaff before him. On esthetic 
 principles, God is a different being to the world be.ause 
 of his judgments—mysterious, fearful, sovereign, and, in 
 goodness, awfully good. We are set in a different tem- 
 perament before him and his truth—to be more modest 
 and sober, more teachable, more readily convinced, 
 less captious in our doubts as we are less bold in feeling. 
 
 5. It is a most important use of great pestilences that 
 they enforce, with an energy so terrible, the conviction 
 of the unity of the race, and especially that they com- 
 pel the higher and more privileged ranks of mankind 
 to own their oneness of life with the humbler and more 
 degraded or even savage classes. It is a most remark- 
 able fact that, as the Asiatic cholera, so called, took its 
 birth in the remote East, among a most degraded and 
 decayed family of the race, so all the great pestilences 
 of history—black death, glandular plague, small-pox, 
 and other like visitations of God that have extended 
 over the world—had their rise in China, Egypt, Africa, 
 
OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENOE. 243 
 
 or among some other people of the globe, run down by 
 heathenism and its vices. Here, among the ruins of 
 sin, where the race has been reduced in quality by a 
 long course of pliysical and moral corruption—by sav- 
 age passions, by indolence, filth, falsehood, oppression, 
 - fear and licentiousness—just here, I say, when we are 
 beginning to doubt whether a type of humanity so low 
 can be properly called human, there is generated the 
 virus of some death that is to desolate the whole world. 
 First, we hear of it in the distance of a half circumfer- 
 ence of the globe; then that it is marching on through 
 kingdom after kingdom, till, finally, it reaches the high- 
 est points of civilization, filling cities and palaces with 
 death and terror. It returns too, probably, again and 
 again, in its circuit of woe, as if it were sent of God to 
 unpeople the world. 
 
 And so the highest ranks of character and cultivation 
 _ are seen to be one family with barbarians and savages; 
 dying like sheep from one age to another, under the 
 ignoble diseases they generate. We can not escape the 
 dark fraternity of woe in which they claim us, for there 
 is no other and separate world to which we can retire. 
 We are shut up with them to breathe the miasma of 
 their sins, and die with such kind of deaths as they 
 may propagate. 
 
 Thus, also, we ought to die. Itisright. For if we 
 visit them not in the brotherhood of light and love, to 
 raise them up into newness of life, then let them visit us, 
 by a fixed law of social unity, and pour the virus of 
 their degradation upon us, in cholera, black death, or 
 
244 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 plague—in whatsoever form God may appoint. This 
 terrible brotherhood, this oneness of organic order and 
 fate signified by the word Awmanity /—what an appeal 
 does it make to us for the gospeling of these barbarous 
 and decayed nations. It is China, Asia, Egypt, Africa 
 —one dark region or another—sending out its messen- 
 ger of pestilence to assert the old affinities of blood, 
 and lay the awful demands of brotherhood and mercy . 
 at our door! When we deny the fraternity claimed, 
 and our children, fathers, brothers and wives die for it 
 in our houses, we follow them out to their graves, con- 
 fessing by our tears that our community of life with 
 the diseased nations of sin is, alas! too fearfully proved. 
 And so each plague and giant death that stalks across 
 the world, is really sent forth as a tremendous call for 
 mercy and light wanted in some dark realm far away. 
 One speaks for China, another for middle Asia, another 
 for Africa, or the islands of the Indian Archipelago; 
 and so they will continue to speak, until their terrible 
 call is heard and the plagues of their degraded life 
 are healed. Meanwhile it is also to be noticed that, 
 when any kind of plague or malignant disease, passing 
 round its deadly circuit, makes a beginning in any 
 given nation or city, the first notice had of it will 
 almost always be among the lowest and most depressed 
 ranks of the people. If there be any spot, or commu- 
 nity, or corner, where vice has its orgies, and where, 
 under want and filth and sin, the wretched, half-dis- 
 eased members of society congregate; if living in such 
 a way for generations has brought down even the 
 
OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE. 245 
 
 native tone of the stock and produced a people gan- 
 grened, so to speak, in the birth; just there the new 
 plague, whatever it be, will be attracted, and they will 
 receive it as tinder receives the fire. And there it 
 will gradually spread and rise in its range, till habits 
 of temperance and virtue cease to have any power 
 against it. As it was in the plague of Athens, which 
 appeared first among the sailors congregated in the 
 Pirzeus, soit has been with almost every plague, in its 
 first appearance, at any place or in any city. 
 
 And thus, again, we have it brought yet closer to us, 
 that we live in the real brotherhood of alJl corruption, 
 and no pitch of rank or wall of caste can separate us 
 from its woes. When it takes a pestilence and has 
 nursed it into power, it is for us! As fashions go 
 downward, diseases and plagues go upward; one sim- 
 ply preparing shapes for the body, but the other, by 
 a more awful prerogative, the disease by which, 
 under fashion or without, it shall die. What an argu- 
 ment, again, is this, requiring us to become the guard- 
 ians and ministers of love to the children of want and 
 degradation around us. For if we do not raise them 
 up out of vice and dejection by the Christian means we 
 apply, they will bring in woes and deaths upon our 
 children, the infection of which ages can not expend or 
 expel. 
 
 Once more: there is a great moral benefit to accrue 
 from the dispensation of plague and pestilence, in the 
 evidence, thence to be revealed, of the remarkable san- 
 ative power of Christianity. If we had no seats of vice, 
 
246 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 no degraded and abject classes, run down by idleness, 
 want, uncleanly and vicious habit, the propagations of 
 plague would almost certainly come to their limit in a 
 very short time. No such plague, for example, as the 
 Asiatic cholera, has ever been able to get any strong 
 hold, or rage with any great violence, among the New 
 England people. They have such habits of industry, a 
 condition of life so plentiful and healthful, so much of 
 physical tone, and so little withal of that superstition 
 which is the soul of all panic, that the infections of 
 pestilence meet a barrier, when they arrive, that is very 
 nearly impassable. Besides, it is a fact most remark- 
 able, that the virus of no desolating plague is known 
 ever to have originated among a Christian people. In 
 the propagations of causes, all evil runs from bad to 
 worse by a fixed law, and there is no self-remedial 
 function in mere nature that will ever stay the pro- 
 cess. Things will go on, asin a disordered machine, 
 the very motion of which aggravates the disorder, till 
 it is finally quite threshed to pieces and brought to a 
 stand. And in much the same way the pestilences of 
 the world appear to generate the virus of their death 
 in what may be called the last run, or the lowest run, 
 of their disordered causes. When some people is 
 fairly rotted down by low living, or filthy and base 
 habit, they generate, finally, a plague-infection that 
 poisons the world. Hence there appear to be no 
 Christian plagues, because no Christian people can 
 ever sink to a type of moral and physical dejection low 
 enough to breed them. They will have too much of 
 
OF PLAGUE AND PESTILENOE. 247 
 
 character, condition, good keeping, courage superior 
 to panic—too much antidote, in a word, to allow the 
 distilling of any such poison. Is it idle to suggest, or 
 foolish to believe that Christianity, as a grace of 
 remedy in the world, has a supernatural touch, that 
 sends a qualifying counter-shock through the bad 
 - eauses of nature, and prevents the plague-mischief 
 being fully concocted? Is there no healing virtue going 
 out of the hem of its garment, which is entered, super- 
 naturally, into the run of the bad causes, to divert, or 
 turn them off, from their otherwise natural consumma- 
 tion ? 
 
 However this may be, Christianity, as a matter of 
 fact, is seen to hold a position of antagonism to plague 
 and pestilence, that gives it a remarkable superemi- 
 nence above all the false religions of heathenism. It 
 has antiseptic properties, which prove both its origin 
 and its value. We see what it can do in the fact that 
 plague, the lowest fermentation of sin, is averted, or 
 at least decisively counteracted by it. So much of 
 health, or healing, goes with the reconciliation or re- 
 generated harmony it proposes to work in the mind. 
 By such tokens it puts us in courage to believe that all 
 worst forms of debility and moral degradation will 
 finally be removed, and a new type of energy and 
 power developed in the race. Seeing what our gospel 
 can do, as against plague and pestilence, we are 
 strengthened, in fact, by plague and pestilence, as we 
 could not be byits more indefinite ministries and helps 
 in the ordinary forms of disease. We anticipate under 
 
248 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 it a day of health and robust life, in which great things 
 will be done and higher inspirations of genius revealed. 
 Population will be multiplied and grow dense without 
 danger, society will receive more impulse, and all the 
 conditions of existence will be raised. Toward this 
 grand consummation our gospel is piloting all the poor 
 diseased nations. What it has done, and is seen to be 
 doing, is the token, as well as proof, that the healing it 
 has undertaken it will be able also to perform. The 
 sublime picture of prophecy it will so fulfill, hecoming 
 a river of life, covered on the banks with trees of life, 
 whose leaves are the healing of the nations. The great 
 plagues and pestilences are ended and gone. Minis- 
 ters of wrath, as being ministers of good, they are 
 wanted no more, and there is no more curse. 
 
Xi. 
 
 OF INSANITY. 
 
 Tue subject of insanity is by no means fresh or 
 inviting. But since the fact itself is the darkest of all 
 dark things in the catalogue of the world’s suffering 
 allotments, I do not feel at liberty to decline it. Enough 
 is said of it, but not all that most needs to be said. 
 The topic is in the hospitals and the courts—expounded 
 and re-expounded—handled pathologically, therapeuti- 
 eally, statistically, philanthropically, and, so far, ex- — 
 haustively. All the natural phases and conditions 
 appear to be fully explored. And yet there is a partic- 
 ular point in the higher relations of the subject which 
 I do not remember ever to have seen referred to. I 
 mean the strong anti-moral look it seems to carry ; 
 presenting facts that, as far as they go, appear to be 
 almost unreducible to the supposition of a moral pur- 
 pose, or even to cloud the more general confidence of a 
 moral government concerned in the rougher allotments 
 of life. I do not feel obliged, of course, to surrender 
 to this kind of impression. I even hope to throw some 
 partial light upon the question, such as I believe the 
 case permits. The frowning anti-moral aspects it 
 
 presents are these :— 
 11* 
 
250 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 1. That it is not as distinctly retributive on the 
 subjects as we should naturally expect where there is a 
 treatment so terribly severe; being often hereditary, 
 often a calamity befalling the most saintly persons, 
 invading often the most amiable dispositions, and not 
 seldom associating impressions of some wild possession 
 by evil spirits, of whose presence and agency we scarce 
 know what to make. 
 
 2. That it puts a full stop always to the uses of the 
 moral life, causing the subject to exist in a way that 
 cuts off the benefits of existence, and forbidding him 
 thenceforward any possibility of improvement, in that 
 which was the principal and almost only errand of his 
 mission asa human creature. He can not even dosuch 
 a thing as duty, of which, perhaps, he sometimes fondl 
 talks. 
 
 3. Almost nothing can be learned by others from 
 his vagaries. Being out of the moral life, there is no 
 moral lesson to be drawn from his discourse or his 
 action. 
 
 4, Where there is a recovery and even complete 
 restoration, the whole space covered by the interregnum 
 of the insanity is a blank; so that he can get back 
 uothing to remember from it, but can only start again, 
 at the point where his reason left him. He has lost so 
 much, grown old by just so many months or years, and 
 gets no compensation. Probably he has lost what stood 
 him in much higher consequence, the confidence of his 
 nature in itself; for returning now to himself, he re- 
 turns to a self that has been shattered, always to be 
 
OF INSANITY. 251 
 
 weakened and oppressed by misgivings that discourage 
 the assurances, if they do not unsettle the equilibrium, 
 of his moral character itself. 
 
 5. Where there is no recovery, the life was practi- 
 cally ended from the day when the empire of reason 
 
 _was broken; after that he passes just so many years of 
 time, as one of the dead unburied; talking, suffering, 
 wrestling with his enemy, yet practically dead; getting 
 nothing of life for himself, and communicating noth- 
 ing to others, save the cares and claims of pity he lays 
 upon them. 
 
 In all these points the moral possibilities of the 
 subject appear to be sadly crippled, and we do not see, 
 at once, the uses by which so great a loss may be 
 compensated. I recollect no other case in the whole 
 contour of our human experience, where a suspicion 
 can be so naturally taken up, that the moral ends of 
 life are forgot. If chance, or fate, or what some call 
 nature, were the supreme arbiter in events, we might 
 look to see just such gaps of rule without reason or a 
 true moral end; but that a supreme intelligence, dis- 
 posing all things in the interest of character, should so 
 often break down even the chances and capacities of 
 character is a perplexing discovery. What, then, shall 
 we say? Is it so, or is it not? Can we bring the 
 question to a point that affords some partial relief to 
 our perplexity? Almost all dark things in our hu- 
 man allotments are cleared by a careful explanation 
 of their moral ends and offices. The daylight of the 
 world is in its adjustments for character. Whether 
 
252 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 it be so here, in this ill-looking subject, we are now to 
 inquire. 
 
 And, first of all, we shall find, recurring to that 
 point and scanning it more closely, that cases of in- 
 sanity are much more frequently retributive than our 
 very tender pity at first allowed us to perceive. 
 
 Three great vices, one or all, carry this dreadful 
 penalty, in examples that are numerous and easily to 
 be traced. (1) The vice of intemperate drink, which 
 maddens first the body, and then, as by necessary con- 
 sequence, the mind; producing either delirium or 
 idiocy, or a state of uncontrollable exasperation. (2) 
 The vice of general and excessive over-eating, breeding 
 disorder and finally distress in all the digestive fune- 
 tions, and producing states of grim depression, hypo- 
 chondriac torments and nervous horrors, that drive 
 more patients to the hospital than even the vice of 
 drink—all very correct, blameless people, as we say, 
 whose misfortune we pity, but can nowise explain. 
 Few persons conceive the amount of constitutional and 
 mental wreck produced by this habitual overloading of 
 nature, restrained by no terms of prudence and self- 
 observation. And, when the catastrophe comes, the 
 wonder is that a nature so robust has crumbled into 
 madness without any assignable cause! (3) The vice 
 of over-doing. We call it sometimes our American 
 vice. The nature is put under a heavy pressure of 
 instigation, and driven up to the limits of possibility, 
 year upon year; spelled by no relaxations, freshened 
 by no play of society, and scarcely permitted the neces- 
 
OF INSANITY. 253 
 
 sary respite of sleep. Life goes on like a storm that 
 never lulls, and the powers are so relentlessly driven, 
 that they are seldom gathered up into consciousnesa 
 and self-recollection. The brain itself becomes a 
 driving engine, that never slacks the whirl of its 
 _impulsions, It is as if the man were all momentum 
 and nothing else. What wonder then is it, if the 
 powers never gathered up, the brain always whirling, 
 the momentum no longer possible to be stopped, hurl 
 aside, finally, the mastery of self-government by which 
 they have never been really mastered, and the whole 
 mental incontinence flies to wild insanity. Whether 
 the wreck is partly physical or not, at first, is a matter 
 of no consequence. The result we deplore as calamity, 
 and the cause we call imprudence. It is vice, it is 
 crime; no such rank abuse of nature is possible with- 
 out crime, and the eternal laws of retribution forbid 
 that any man be so long drunk with excess, and escape 
 the consummation of a state of madness, 
 
 Besides these three more general and widely-sown 
 vices, and the crops of insanities they propagate, we 
 have abundance of smaller ones doing what they can to 
 extend the harvest. Thus how many live on affectations 
 and contrived seemings of principle and character, till 
 they lose the distinctions of reality, and are landed in 
 complete insanity! Excesses and fierce tempests of 
 passion—how often do they burn out the natural colli- 
 gations of reason, leaving only fumes and vagaries, and 
 frenzied exasperations. What is avarice but a vice that 
 runs to miserhood? and what is that but insanity ? Im- 
 
254 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 pure habits rot the brain of how many victims? Idle 
 ness unyokes all the judgments, lets fly all the vagrant 
 uncollected powers, and finally, as age advances, breeds 
 a state of nonentity that can not hold opinions, or a hair- 
 brained, addled state that opinions can not hold. Rash 
 adventures pitch how many headlong down the gulf 
 of insanity? Conceit is next thing to insanity at the 
 beginning, and is how very often identical with it at 
 the close. Glancing over these and a hundred other 
 sporadic vices of character that could be named, we see 
 how many causes making suit to retribution against 
 the continuance of reason. Though we were at first so 
 ready to conclude that insanities are not, or almost 
 never, retributive, we distinctly perceive that they are 
 so in a very large proportion of the examples. It is 
 even difficult to believe that a good many cases of re- 
 ligious insanity are not connected with some kind of 
 mal-practice, or perhaps with some moodiness of tem- 
 per, that is really perverse ; though they are many times 
 due, no doubt, to causes previously at work in the 
 nature itself, possibly to such as are, in a sense, hered- 
 itary. Diseases in genera. are commonly supposed to 
 have their root in moral causes and their bad implica- 
 tions; in that sense to be the common heritage of the 
 ‘ race. Thus certain particular diseases, such as deaf- 
 ness, blindness, consumption, are supposed to be hered- 
 itary in certain particular families ; and many have as 
 little difficulty in saying that the same is true of insan- 
 ity. It may be so in appearance; but that any death 
 of faculty, so immeasurably deep and horrible to think 
 
OF INSANITY. 255 
 
 of, is let down upon a human creature by mere physical 
 derivation, and without any blame in himself, is too 
 shocking to be allowed, without some partial and collat- 
 eral explanation that will ease the severity of the state- 
 ment. Such things must be left to the future; and it 
 must suffice, for the present, that we distinguish so 
 clearly, on so wide a scale, the retributive connection 
 of our insanities with our self-abusing crimes and vices. 
 On the whole it is even a fair subject of wonder, that so 
 large a portion of mankind, driven by so many excesses, 
 tossed by so many tempests of unreason, sunk so deep 
 in wrong, eaten by so many acrid humors, battered by 
 s0 many abuses of faculty, get through life without 
 being hopelessly insane. Nokind of machine was ever 
 kept running for so long a time in a state of general 
 disorder, without being threshed into wreck by its own 
 motions. 
 
 Consider, secondly, the moral intent, and what must 
 be the ultimate moral effects, of this clearly discoverable 
 connection between the insanities of the world and its 
 self-abusing practices. Calling it a “clearly discover- 
 able connection,” as in many cases it most certainly is, the 
 remarkable thing appears to be that it is so very gener- 
 ally undiscovered. Unless we have put our minds to 
 the question, we have scarcely taken up any impression 
 of the fact; and very few persons, who have occasion- 
 ally noted examples of the kind, have any conception 
 at all of the tremendous reactions by which the wrongs 
 and excesses of men are battering and tearing asunder 
 the integrity of their rational nature. 
 
256 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 Therefore, some may ask, what moral benefit can 
 there be in a kind of retribution, or retributive action, 
 that almost nobody observes? To which it is a good 
 and sufficient answer, that a great many kinds of moral 
 benefit, and such as are of the very highest consequence, 
 come late, and require long and heavy discipline to 
 start the sense and beget the want of them. We have 
 heard how many thousand lectures on the uses of ven- 
 tilation, and the necessities of wholesome air? They 
 began late, after millions had died for the want of it; 
 and yet, even now, what multitudes have no conception 
 that air is any thing! Probably a thousand years are 
 wanted still to get the world apprised of the fact that 
 breathing requires something to breathe! Lessons that 
 come by self-observation and reflection come still later 
 and more slowly. How many thousand years of dys- 
 
 -pepsia did it take to get the sense of it fixedly enough 
 to find a word for it? a word it was to be that is itself 
 borrowed, in its composition, from a language already 
 dead. And now that we have it, how many suffering 
 invalids that have the genuine matter of it in their 
 bodies—nay, in their minds beside—do we hear every 
 day thanking God that they still have an excellent 
 appetite left them! Everybody knows that a ship 
 works heavily having too much cargo; but our poor 
 life-function has to groan long ages for excess of cargo, 
 before anybody guesses what the groaning is for. So 
 when minds wade deep in troubles, wondering why 
 there must be so many troublesome and perverse people, 
 the discovery comes, how late, that what they suffer is 
 
OF INSANITY. 259 
 
 all of themselves and their miserably oppressed bodies ; 
 and to many it will never come at all! Probably 
 enough, some of David’s enemies were not in Saul’s 
 camp, nor in his own court, nor even in his bad son 
 Absalom ; but in his own tired, overworked, unsleeping 
 brain. Others, again, are overhung, whole months and 
 years, with a dreadfully oppressive gloom—financial, 
 political, or religious—never at all to know that this 
 gloom is in their liver, and that in black discourage- 
 ment from their self-indulgence. All these and a thou. 
 sand such like pathologic matters, are abundantly de- 
 scribed, or expounded, and we have a good right to 
 know them. We do have a little more sense of them 
 than the more ancient people had, and, probably 
 enough, the people of the hundredth generation after 
 us will get to be so well aware of what their moods and 
 moodinesses mean, as to rectify, or skillfully keep away, 
 all such kinds of torment. And so, the late-coming 
 lessons insanity is to bring will finally come, dispensing 
 their intended moral benefit. 
 
 There are, then, be it observed, two great depart- 
 ments of the moral life; one of which includes the 
 wrongs men do against each other, and a second that 
 includes the wrongs they do against themselves. The 
 former kind press into recognition at once, and awaken 
 prompt sensibility, because the subjects of the wrongs 
 ery out themselves, demanding redress, and making the 
 very air tingle with their complaint. But the wrongs 
 men do against themselves start no outcry, the wrong- 
 doer is the victim, and the victim calls for no arraign 
 
258 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 ment or redress. Probably the wrongs men do against 
 themselves are twenty fold, or possibly even a thousat.d- 
 fold greater in amount of damage than the wrongs they — 
 do against each other ; and yet they very seldom think 
 of them as being any wrong atall. They very gener- 
 ally are not conscious of them; and when they are, they 
 think of them as being only indiscretions, imprudences, 
 excesses such as they have a good right to indulge, since 
 they injure nobody but themselves; and which, there- 
 fore, they only regret or chastise a little with their 
 tongue, but do not really blame as morally criminal. 
 Now, the other class of crimes we can not miss the sense 
 of, because they come back to be seen, or heard from, 
 without our asking; but these latter come only by 
 reflection, and men as we have just been saying, are 
 exceedingly slow to reflect. They see what is about 
 them and before their eyes, but how to turn their soul- 
 eye back on themselves, and see what they are to them- 
 selves or against themselves, is almost never done till a 
 certain reflective habit is formed, and commonly not, to 
 any but a very small extent, till a reflective habit gets 
 possession of society itself. 
 
 We have, then, here, in this fearful woe of insanity, 
 a great retributive law that is waiting and working for 
 the time when a more reflective habit shall arrive. 
 And then it is going to fasten men’s minds to the 
 crimes they commit against themselves, making them 
 felt as crimes in their real turpitude. And when it is 
 done, a vast major department of the moral life will be 
 voiced for command, in a complete set of moral con- 
 
OF INSANITY. 259 
 
 victions hitherto scarcely recognized. Now, for the first 
 time self-government, temperance of feeling and action, 
 a genuine right keeping of life, and a religiously close 
 ordering of it that suffers no excess or abuse of faculty, 
 will beget a more sound state of body and mind, and 
 prepare a higher form of virtue, that is health itself. 
 In the other department of the moral life, public justice 
 and the bad repute of all wrong-doing are the argument 
 for duty. Here the argument is the tremendous insti- 
 tute of insanity, visiting the silent wrongs men do 
 against themselves, with its inevitable, terribly aveng- 
 ing penalties. In this second stage, and broader form 
 of virtue, it will be understood as a first principle that, 
 if we are to keep our reason, our reason must keep us. 
 We shall consider well our faculties, what they are for, 
 what they want, what they can do and bear, and what 
 they cannot; and we shall have a conscience that will 
 cover the whole ground of our actions toward ourselves ; 
 withholding us from all excesses of overdoing and self- 
 indulgence as from suicide itself. Temperance, so- 
 briety of feeling and passion, self-regulation at all points, 
 will take the rank of duties, and their violation will be 
 considered as great a crime against God, as frauds and 
 deeds of blood against our fellow-men. And this con- 
 viction will strengthen our practical morality all round, 
 enlarge our practical wisdom, rectify our spasmodic 
 overdoing, raise our family stock itself in vigor, and 
 settle us in a manly and rational way of happiness. 
 The serenities will be many and the insanities few, and 
 
260 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 whatever belongs to character will have a way of firm 
 ness far aloof from all the nervous horrors. 
 
 Again, thirdly, it is one of the great moral uses of 
 insanity that we are so powerfully adraonished by it 
 never to surrender our self-keeping to any kird of im 
 pulse or dominating sway, outside of our own person- 
 ality or self-active liberty. For it is a great and rad- 
 ical distinction of moral natures, that they are to steer 
 themselves by their own helm, and be responsible for 
 what they may thus become—mere animals and things 
 having no such high prerogative, and no capacity to 
 be, different from what they are made to be, under the 
 sway of causes not in themselves. Just here, accord- 
 ingly, we discover a principal reason for that proneness 
 to insanity, which is the infirmity of men in distinction 
 from the animals. It is that, as being in evil or sin, they 
 so far and frequently surrender themselves to impulsions 
 or enchantments outside of their own responsible self- 
 keeping. The power that was given them to gather up 
 their nature in due self-colligation, and centralize it in 
 the supreme domination of reason, is weakened, and 
 they fly asunder, so to speak, in a scattering, unkept 
 habit, that approaches, and finally becomes, insanity. 
 They fall under a kind of possession, and are just so far 
 dispossessed of themselves. In their zeal to get posses- 
 sion of money, money gets possession of them, driving 
 them on past all bounds of reason, as if it were a 
 demon. Instead of possessing their business, their 
 Dusiness possesses them, shoving them on to all atmost 
 overdoing, and finally to madness, Society pcssesses 
 
OF INSANITY. 261 
 
 them, and so completely dominates in their habit, that 
 any coming short of its conventionalisms or fashions 
 goads them to distraction; their own self-keeping 
 force is so far taken away, that their judgments them- 
 selves are reduced to a kind of insanity. They get 
 possessed by other men in the same manner; one by 
 some other that he thinks a hero or a genius; one by 
 the name and successes of a great operator in the 
 market; one by the fascinating airs and gayeties of a 
 libertine ; one by a charlatan or a quack ; and another 
 by a false prophet. Every soul in evil is under some 
 kind of bad instigation or possession, that comes upon 
 him as a gale of impulsion, swaying his objects and 
 actions, and so far abating in him the sovereign keep- 
 ing of his own right reason. 
 
 How far we are subject, in this manner, to the pos- 
 session of foul spirits, and how far they are concerned 
 in cases of insanity it may be difficult to say. Any 
 thing is a possession that dispossesses the man of him- 
 self, from whatever world it comes. In this respect, 
 the supposition of a possession by evil spirits is only an 
 extension of the bad liability we incur under the other 
 kinds of possession just named. We know that there 
 are bad spirits, and it may be that they are no way 
 separable from association with us, save by the fences 
 of character. It does not follow that every sinister 
 influence they communicate will make the subject 
 insane, any more than that the other kinds of bad 
 inspiration from the world and society will do it. Per- 
 haps the foul possession will reach the state of com- 
 
262 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGE 
 
 plete insanity, only when it has been harbored long 
 enough to get the soul decentralized, as we see in the 
 other cases of excess and self-abuse referred to. On 
 this subject of possession by evil spirits we have little 
 or no direct knowledge of our own, but we have these 
 three kinds of evidence that go a certain way, and are 
 perhaps sufficient. (1) The scripture account of de- 
 mons and their expulsion, where however, the language 
 of description appears, in one or two cases, to indicate 
 the impression that they are only cases of disease. 
 Still, the scripture cases are so many and so dramat- 
 ically given, and there is, withal, a reason so profound, 
 jast now, for a state of commotion among all powers 
 of darkness, that they can hardly be reduced to any 
 such construction. (2) The fact that so many cases of 
 insanity, coming to our knowledge, have a demoniacal 
 air and manner ; the subjects talking as demons, eall- 
 ing themselves demons, and acting in a style of frenzy 
 so unhumanly foul and malign. (3) The professed 
 discoveries of magnetism, where one will is believed to 
 subject another to its absolute sway, even across wide 
 spaces of distance; and especially the revelations of 
 necromancy, where one being, called a medium, offers 
 himself to be played upon by whatever spirit, foul or 
 fair, will come to possess him for its oracle—which 
 oracle, it is admitted, will often be the utterance of a 
 lying instigation. I know nothing of these matters 
 save by report; I only perceive that they are making 
 the world familiar with demoniacal possessions now, 
 exactly answering to those of the ser ptures, on'y ander 
 
OF INSANITY. 263 
 
 a different name. Instead of being laid, the bad spirits 
 are now evoked; for the medium is a person offered to 
 be possessed, and if the pretenses are true, actually 
 getting possessed—all the parties engaged running 
 down morally, as their habit of deference to the bad in- 
 visible powers weakens their moral and responsible 
 selfhood, till finally they are landed, one after another, 
 in a morally dejected profligacy which is real insanity. 
 We are brought out, thus, in the conclusion, that 
 every human creature is in the way to insanity who 
 allows himself to be possessed by any kind of impul- 
 sion, outside of his own responsible self-keeping. The 
 weakening of the moral nature puts the very bond in 
 jeopardy that is to hold the mind together, and keep 
 it in the order of reason. Any kind of possession has 
 this danger, this hideous form of peril, connected with 
 it. And when the insanity is fully completed in a 
 state of total dispossession, an equally complete and 
 even terrific warning is given, to every man who will 
 maintain his reason, that he beware of any least sur- 
 render which displaces the moral sovereignty of the 
 soul, in the government of its own ways and actions. 
 The great institute of insanity is partly designed, ne 
 doubt, to yield this kind of moral benefit. It may be 
 that the very cases of insanity that we are wont to call 
 hereditary are so only in the sense that it is a family 
 weakness to be overdriven, or possessed by engage. 
 ments and objects that might be well enough shaken off, 
 but are finally allowed to break the mind’s integrity. 
 Fourthly, a due observation of the distinction be 
 
264 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 tween the state of sanity and that of insanity raises a 
 conception of the beauty and dignity of the moral 
 nature which ought to be impressive, and to yield the 
 highest practical benefit. In this distinction we per- 
 ceive what a human creature becomes—how wild, and 
 weak, and helmless—when the capacity of responsible 
 action is suspended. Before, he was in government, 
 having thought, and memory, and will, and passion, 
 all bound up in terms of personal unity and self-acting 
 responsibility. Now, he is a sad-looking wreck, an 
 pbject of forlornest pity, not because the faculties 
 thus named are gone, but because the moral soy- 
 ereignty or supreme moral nature that held them in 
 right order is fallen off its throne. They are nearly 
 the same men that they were before, only minus in 
 that supremely great something, which puts them in 
 obligation, or makes them capable of it. This one 
 summit faculty gone, how different are they become! 
 We define their insanity itself, by saying that they are 
 not any longer responsible, or capable of being respon- 
 sible, for their actions; paying thus a tribute how 
 grand to the supreme dignity of the moral nature! 
 We sometimes state the definition of their loss in a 
 different manner, by saying that they have lost their 
 reason. But we mean by this, if we understand our- 
 selves, their moral reason. They understand causes, 
 aud do acts of causation correctly. They frame propo 
 sitions that connect subject and predicate, in as good 
 logic as ever. They reason correctly in the sense of 
 drawing conclusions out of premises. But they fail, it 
 
OF INSANITY. 265 
 
 8 said, in the right perception of premises; which term 
 “right perception” means such kind of perception as 
 co-ordinates things in the scale of right, and holds 
 them in their fit signification, as related to the practical 
 working of the moral life. What Kant calls the Prac- 
 tical Reason, by which he means very nearly the same 
 thing as the moral sense, or morally sensing power of 
 things and actions, is dislodged or broken. 
 
 And we can see at a glance why it ought to be this 
 power, this moral nature, that goes in the breakage of 
 sanity. For whatever be its immediate cause in a 
 particular case, it comes, in the large view, as one of 
 the damages of evil, and evil is evil as having the total 
 stress of its wars against the moral nature. We have 
 on hand thus all the activities, or active functions and 
 faculties, working in full play ; only the supreme moral 
 self-dominion is gone, the power that colligates all the 
 other faculties in terms of order and responsible action. 
 Without this we are maniacs; with it, men. And 
 what a lesson of respect and homage do we thus re- 
 ceive for our simple moral nature—super-eminent, 
 balanced in the poles of law, self-regulative, regulative 
 toward all order and perfection, that which makes a 
 manaman. Sometimes we do not like to hear of this 
 moral nature, we have low bad thoughts concerning it, 
 a prejudice or even a kind of animosity against it, and 
 prefer to see men go by other parts and powers that 
 overtop, we think, this kind of magistracy. And yet, 
 when we come to the using of a man who is out of his 
 responsibility, we can do nothing with him, make 
 
 12 
 
266 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 nothing of him, hope nothing for him; he is a gas, 
 thimney smoke in the wind, a combustible blazing in 
 the fire, and no more. Or, if we gather up all his fine 
 faculties and parts, and go into careful computation of 
 their value, we find them to be worth just nothing; 
 and, if we still may use the personal pronoun of the 
 poor bereft one, it will be only to say that he is become 
 just nothing. If the world kad no sun, we still might 
 call it world, but it would be exceedingly difficult to 
 find what it is. The moral nature is in like manner the 
 sun of the soul, the gravitating center and light, and orbit- 
 marking rule of all beside. All which we are given to see 
 in convincing and most sad evidence, by these terrible, 
 perhaps, we add, inscrutable insanities, that pluck the 
 supreme orb, the moral nature, out of the soul’s sky. 
 
 It may be that we do not consciously think all this 
 when we fall upon a case vf insanity, and yet we have 
 it tacitly or implicitly in us. We miss that glorious 
 something in. the unhappy subject, which is a most 
 dear something to us all. We turn away from God 
 and duty still, it may be, and yet we feel that we carry 
 a very great morally divine something with us, which 
 it is a nearly total loss to lose. We have seen a fellow- 
 nature broken down, despoiled of all capacity, by the 
 loss of that benignant sovereignty, whose appointed 
 office it is to conserve the soul’s unity and order. Re- 
 pelling this benignant sovereignty, which holds such 
 orderly command, and keeps the mind conserved and 
 centralized in such high consciousness before its throne, 
 what do we but waive the rule of the keeper, and chal- 
 
OF INSANITY. 267 
 
 lenge a like discontinuance of reason? This kind of 
 moral debate is silently raised how often in us all, when 
 we go through the wards of a hospital, or encounter 
 the maniac who was once our friend. 
 
 We come now, lastly, to a whole chapter of uses that 
 are doubtless intended for us in this most terrible of 
 all providential appointments, and which must, to a 
 certain extent, accrue from it ; though remaining to be 
 more and more largely discovered in the future ad- 
 vancements and more complete developments of human 
 character. These frequent exhibitions of insanity ap- 
 pear to be quite indispensable, as revelations carried to 
 their extremity of something that is working more 
 latently and gently in us all. We are not all insane, 
 but we are in a kind of incipiency that must be recog- 
 nized, if we are to exactly understand ourselves. We 
 are not in perfect equilibrium and can not be, in evil, 
 any more than the eye that has sand in it. Evil is 
 against nature, and nature must accordingly receive a 
 shock of at least incipient derangement from it. In 
 this manner it results of necessity, not that we are 
 ‘nsane, but short of perfect sanity, practically unsane. 
 We do not understand the world and the working of 
 the world’s mind, save as we see it out of perfect bal- 
 ance, and working more or less disorderly. We do, in 
 fact, complain that it is unregulated, or out of complete 
 regulation—which is so far a state of unsanity—and 
 we ought to have it as a much more fixed opinion, and 
 more constantly remembered fact, than we do. We 
 can not manage ourselves rightly, or act our part rightly 
 
268 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 toward the world, if we do not recognize the general 
 unsanity in this manner. 
 
 Here, then, is the very great lesson we are to receive 
 from so many examples of wreck and mental catas- 
 trophe, holding it in constant recollection, both in our 
 management of ourselves, and our judgment of others. 
 And there is no end to the uses to be made of if, for it 
 covers the whole ground of our moral conduct, in all 
 the infinitely diversified particulars that make up a 
 wise and beautiful life. On the other hand, there is 
 no end to the mischiefs, and miseries, and disfigure- 
 ments, any one will suffer, who goes into life acting on 
 a different assumption ; viz., the assumption of his in- 
 fallible, right-seeing sanity. 
 
 Thus we need, every one of us, to know that we live 
 in moods and phases, working eccentrically, sometimes 
 more unhinged and sometimes less; sometimes in better 
 nature and sometimes irritable; sometimes more dis- 
 posed to jealousy ; sometimes more to conceit. Noth- 
 ing looks fresh after a sleepless night; nothing true 
 after an over-heavy dinner. A touch of dyspepsia 
 makes the soul barren and every thing else barren to 
 it—even the finest poem it turns to a desert. Any 
 mood of gloom, in the same manner, hangs a pall over 
 the sun, and even the very bones will sometimes seem 
 to be in that mood as truly as the eyes. Opinion is 
 sometimes bilious, sensibility morbid and sore, and 
 passion, tempest-sprung, goes wild in all sorts of ram- 
 pages. At one time we can be captious toward a 
 friend, at another generous toward an enemy, at 
 
OF INSANITY. 269 
 
 another about equally indifferent to bith. Now a 
 wise man is one who understands himself well enough 
 to make due allowance for such unsane moods and 
 varieties, never concluding that a thing is thus or thus, 
 because just now it bears that look; waiting often to 
 see what a sleep or a walk, or a cool revision, or per- 
 haps a considerable turn of repentance will do. He 
 does not slash upon a subject, or a man, from the point 
 of a just now rising temper. He maintains a noble 
 candor, by waiting sometimes for a gentler spirit, and 
 a better sense of truth. He is never intolerant of other 
 men’s judgments, because he is a little distrustful of 
 his own. He restrains the dislikes of prejudice, 
 because he has a prejudice against his dislikes. His 
 resentments are softened by his condemnations of 
 himself. His depressions do not crush him, because 
 he has sometimes seen the sun, and believes it may 
 appear again. He revises his opinions readily, because 
 he has a right, he thinks, to better opinions, if he can 
 find them. He holds fast sound opinions, lest his 
 moodiness in change should take all truth away. And 
 if his unsane thinking appears to be toppling him down 
 the gulfs of skepticism, he recovers himself by just 
 raising the question, whether a more sane way of 
 thinking might not think differently. A man who is 
 duly aware thus of his own distempered faculty, makes 
 a life how different from one who acts as if he were 
 infallible, and had nothing to do but just to let himself 
 be pronounced! There is, in fact, no possibility of 
 conducting a life successfully on in that manner. If 
 
270 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 there be any truth that vitally concerns tke morally 
 right self-keeping and beauty of character, it is that 
 which allows and makes room for the distempers of a 
 practically unsane state; one that puts action by the 
 side of correction, and keeps it in wisdom by keeping 
 it in regulative company. Just to act out our unsanity 
 is to make our life a muddle of incongruous, half-dis- 
 cerning states without either dignity or rest. There is 
 no true serenity that does not come in the train of a 
 wise, self-governing modesty. 
 
 For the same general reasons we need, in maintain- 
 ing a right treatment of the world, to understand the 
 condition of unsanity in which it also lies. Our friends 
 must not be infallible; our enemies must be allowed 
 their just palliations ; our charities must not only cover 
 a multitude of sins, but a great many weaknesses and 
 blots beside. The mere crotchets of some men are to 
 have as much respect as the over-wise judgments of 
 others. Proud airs are to be had in compassion, com- 
 monly, as revelations of disease, or lack in the function 
 of self-understanding. 
 
 Opinions are to have a certain allowance or liberty 
 of error, because they are human. Motives are to 
 be tenderly judged, because many thorns of evil are 
 festering under them. There is not a bad thing felt or 
 done, in all the wrongs of the world, that is not to be 
 viewed understandingly, as being the wickedness of a 
 creature partly weak and broken. And there is no 
 best, greatest, noblest thing ever done, that is not 
 partly to be more admired and partly less, because it is 
 
OF INSANITY. 271 
 
 a deed that only some great inspiration coud shape in 
 the molds of mortal infirmity. We can not, in short, 
 level one of our judgments or actions toward the world, 
 so as to give it a perfectly right and skillful treatment, 
 without being duly aware of its unsane condition. 
 Many, too, of the great moral questions are impos- 
 sible to be answered rightly, when this fact is ignored. 
 If we talk of development as the great want of man or 
 society, it will be the development, if that is all, of 
 unsanity, and toward unsanity. No development can 
 help any thing which does not have corrective causes, 
 whether discipline or gospel, working with it. Family 
 order is family disorder, where nothing is attempted or 
 allowed, but the simple growing of childhood. It 
 were better not to be grown at all, unless there is some 
 power to shape the growth that works correctively, by 
 laws impressed and authority maintained. Public 
 education is no handmaid of order and law, unless 
 order and law are the handmaid of education. Moral 
 weakness and distemper can be supplemented only by 
 moral strength and the all-tempering sway of duty. If 
 we talk of progress, or a law of progress, whether in 
 society or character, there is no law of progress in 
 mere living or continuance, when it is operated and 
 molded by no guiding forces. Such mere continuance 
 can do nothing better than to run the unsanity of 
 nature down upon a savage state, which is, in fact, a 
 kind of insanity bred in and in, and become incurable. 
 Majorities are no reliable cure of public ills, unless the 
 public ills are, somehow, gotten out of the majorities, 
 
272 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 Great gales of impulse, that mo'e whole nations, are 
 not great inspirations or embodied wisdoms, as the 
 immense numbers joined might seem to indicate,—the 
 Crusades, for example, the French Revolution, the 
 Southern Confederacy,—but they are great heats of 
 unsanity rushing to their ultimation in frenzy. 
 Insanity, we thus perceive, has an immense, far- 
 reaching moral use, considered as an extreme of dis- 
 possession that puts us duly in mind of our general 
 distemper. We see it coming on by degrees, and 
 culminating, here and there, in a complete overthrow 
 of the moral nature. Then we consider what it was 
 that was coming on by degrees, and discover the same 
 kind of incipiencies and bad liabilities working in us 
 all. So we understand ourselves, and what kind of 
 keeping is necessary for us. We now make allowances 
 for our moods, and the discoloration of our judgments. 
 We steady our conduct of life by the laws of good 
 manners, and keep it in right order by recognizing the 
 moodiness and gustiness of our impulses. And so we 
 meet the world as it is, do our duties to it in candor 
 and charity, and are hurried away by no romantic 
 expectations that promise a paradise without some recti- 
 fying light and discipline to make it possible. We act 
 from the moral nature in ourselves toward a moral 
 nature in the world, looking for no remedy of the 
 common distemper, save in that complete re-establish- 
 ment of the moral nature, which is health and sanity 
 for all. And this work of re-establishment, we know, 
 is possible only in that grace of religion which is come 
 
OF INSANITY. 273 
 
 into the world, “to heal all that have need of healing.” 
 There is, in fact, no sufficiently real antagonism for 
 insanity or unsanity, but that which is the divinely 
 qualified antagonism of sin. Let the weary, heavy 
 laden, sorely possessed mind of the world turn itself 
 to Christ, and it shall find rest. And when we come 
 to this, when as a race we drink at this fountain “the 
 spirit of a sound mind,” we shall, for the first time, 
 discover how far off we have been from sanity, and 
 how beautiful a thing true, perfect sanity may he. 
 1% 
 
XII 
 
 OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS, 
 
 Ir is a difficulty encountered by the Paleyizing, or 
 Bridgewater school of theologians, that what they gain 
 by their argument from design, they sometimes appear 
 to lose by the discredit they bring on the ends for 
 which designs are made. Thus, if we take it for a 
 fact that the whole creation is a framework of design— 
 every object, and creature, and member, being nicely 
 adapted to its uses—then it follows of necessity, that 
 all beaks and talons, all claws and cuspidal teeth, all 
 fangs and stings and bags of venom, are adapted to 
 their particular uses as accurately and studiously as 
 any thing else is seen to be; and then again it follows 
 that as some creative builder is shown to exist by so 
 many tokens of design, the apparent badness of the 
 design indicates a malign power in him, working just 
 as evidently for ends not good. Various devices are 
 planned, it is true, for turning the argument, but, as 
 far as I have seen, with very little show of success. If 
 then, it be as great a matter to discover the goodness of 
 God as to discover God; if indeed we make no dis- 
 covery of God at all when we trace him in designs 
 that are related to ends either bad or doubtfully good, 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 275 
 
 there ought certainly to be some explication of the 
 difficulties referred to that is more satisfactory. 
 
 Thus it is put forward by Kirby, that “all organized 
 beings have a natural tendency to increase and mul- 
 tiply,” and that Providence “sets necessary bounds to 
 their increase, by letting them loose upon each other.” 
 “Tn our first view of nature,” he says, “we are struck 
 by a scene which seems to be one of universal conflict 
 —man constantly engaged in a struggle with his fellow- 
 man, laying waste the earth, and slaughtering its 
 inhabitants; his subjects of the animal kingdom fol- 
 lowing the example of their master, and pitilessly 
 destroying each other.” And the solution which he 
 thinks sufficient is that, “ unless the tendency to mul- 
 tiply had been met by some such check, animated 
 beings would be perpetually encroaching upon each — 
 other, and would finally perish for want of sufficient 
 food.” And why not as well let them perish in that 
 way, as by devouring each other? What comfort is it 
 to the lamb that a lion has eaten him up, and prevented 
 the over-multiplication of sheep by the larger multi- 
 plication of lions? Is it not also the precise point of 
 objection here, that such kind of arguments look for 
 the increase of just those creatures that are worthless 
 and destructive, and a limitation of increase in the 
 harmless and useful? Besides, how easy was it for the 
 Creator to keep down the over-population of the animal 
 races, by making them lese fruitful, or shortening the 
 time of their life! 
 
 In another connection, when speaking of animals 
 
276 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 “particularly injurious to man,” Kirby suggests that 
 they have their object in “his punishment.” And this, 
 he thinks, may be true, more particularly of “ those 
 personal pests, that not only attempt to derive their 
 nutriment from him by occasionally sucking his blood, 
 as the flea, the horse-fly, and others, but of those which 
 make a settlement within him, infesting him with a 
 double torment.” But almost every kind of anital, 
 as truly as man, suffers by injury from some other, and 
 has in fact its pests without and pests within, after the 
 fame manner. Are we then to say that every such 
 animal is undergoing punishment? A far more general 
 fact may indeed be true, viz., that the whole creation, 
 animals and men together, is groaning in the common 
 liabilities and corporate reactions of evil; which, if 
 we call it punishment, is not a private dealing in terms 
 of personal justice, but only a shock of general disorder 
 in the world itself. 
 
 At still another point, Mr. Kirby contrives to get a 
 semblance of comfort in the supposition, that the 
 tormenting insects are blood-letters which prevent the 
 cattle from overfeeding by their annoyance, and so 
 promote their health; also that man is compensated 
 here, as regards the torment he experiences, “ by the 
 care of the wise Physician, who prescribes the painful 
 operation, and furnishes his chirurgical operators with 
 the necessary knives and lancets.” But unhappily the 
 amount of blood taken by such infestations is too small 
 to support the argument, and the amount of poison or 
 pain dispensed too large to allow us any though’ or 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 277 
 
 care, whether some drops of blood are gone or not. 
 If we could be let off with the blood-letting, taken 
 without the poison, we should scarcely want any such 
 cehirurgical analogy for our comfort. 
 
 In still another place, Mr. Kirby launches a different 
 suggestion, in which he appears to have a more theo- 
 logic satisfaction; observing, with regard to “this 
 constant scene of destruction, this never-intermitted 
 war of one part of the creation upon another, that the 
 sacrifice of a part maintains the health and. life of the 
 whole, and the great doctrine of vicarious suffering 
 forms an article of physical science. Thus does the 
 animal kingdom, in some sort, preach the gospel of 
 Christ.” The capitals in which this last clause is put 
 do not appear to be wanted; for the meaning it con 
 veys is sufficiently horrible, I think, without additional 
 emphasis. That there is a really answering relation, 
 between a bullock eaten by a grizzly and the death of 
 the cross, is simply revolting. As little will a sparrow 
 killed by a hawk be conceived to have died for the 
 hawk, or a child for a viper that bit him, or a man 
 for the gorilla that clubbed him in the wood. Such 
 attempts at Christian argument are doubtless well 
 meant, but they are, to say the least, very unfortunate. 
 
 Dr. Paley himself handles the argument here with 
 better effect. Admitting distinctly, at the outset, that 
 * venomous animals and animals preying upon one 
 another” are constructed with organs that must be 
 referred to design, and obliged also to allow that “ we 
 cannot avoid the difficulty, by saying that the effect 
 
278 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 was not intended,” he only imagines that our trouble is 
 created by our ignorance, and that, having so many 
 and preponderant cases of beneficent design discovered 
 to us, we are required to have it as “a reasonable pre- 
 sumption,” that the goodness of his purpose would 
 sufficiently appear, if we understood his purpose more 
 deeply. And exactly this we shall by and by see to be 
 true, only we shall find the truth outside of all mere 
 physical ends and reasons. Not satisfied, however, 
 with this merely excusing way of vindication, he goes 
 on to specify something which may “ extenuate the 
 difficulty ;” (1) that the venomous creatures, for ex- 
 ample, have their venom faculty only as a good to 
 themselves, because it is the power by which they sub- 
 due their prey, and so are able to feed their bodies— 
 which is far as possible from being true of whole tribes 
 of venomous insects, like the gnat, or mosquito, taking 
 the sleeper off his defense, humming first their poison- 
 ous note in his ear, to vex the quiet of his rest, and 
 then having sucked their fill with his blood, leaving the 
 poisonous toll of their blessing in the wound for com- 
 pensation; the very complaint against them being, not 
 that they kill, not that they get their living, but that 
 they bestow their venom gratis, and with no conceivable 
 reason; (2) that such kinds of venomous creatures and 
 beasts of prey do not, after all, kill as many people as 
 we think, and much oftener kill other animals and not 
 men—a very small comfort, if we can not know that 
 their venom does no killing at all but for good; (3) 
 that the venomous species, vipers and rattlesnakes for 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 279 
 
 example, stand guard, so to speak, for “whole tribes” 
 that have a similar look and no venom—a very far- 
 fetched argument, to say the least, which does not even 
 show that the protected tribes are not themselves more 
 terribly harassed by the venom of their protectors, 
 than by the other enemies these are supposed to intim- 
 idate, or affect with shyness; (4) that it is our fault, 
 in which we are to blame ourselves, that we crowd 
 after and annoy the venomous creatures, and do not let 
 them have the dens and dry places where they belong, 
 unmolested—a much better argument, if they did not 
 crowd after us, into our cities, and houses, and cham- 
 bers. 
 
 Having exhausted this line of argument with little 
 apparent success, he finally subsides into the same field, 
 where Mr. Kirby is but a follower, showing how it was 
 necessary, in order to keep the world full, that all crea- 
 tures should be over-fecund in their increase, and then 
 when the spaces are stocked to have such thinning off 
 _ provided for, that all populations will be graduated by 
 their supplies, and the contracted or expanded limits of 
 their field. Thus he imagines, “that immense forests 
 in North America would be lost to sensitive existence, 
 if it were not for gnats, and that vast plains in Siberia 
 would be lifeless without mice.” But the great difii- 
 culty is to see what interest eternal benevolence has, 
 whether in the population of gnats or of mice—how 
 there should be any complaint of a lack of “ser sitive 
 existence,” because there is a lack of gnats in the for- 
 ests, if only there is enough of them in the populated 
 
280 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 regions; or why we should be much concerned for the 
 plains of Siberia, because of the want of mice, as long 
 as the cities and towns are so far from being “life- 
 less” on that account. However this may be, it is 
 really a considerable impeachment of Providence, to 
 say that God can no other way limit the superfecundity 
 of his creatures, than by giving them venom to poison, 
 and claws to tear each other. God is conditioned only 
 by what is absolute or unconditional; but venom-bags 
 and claws do not belong to the absolute. 
 
 There is plainly no solution for this difficulty which 
 stops short in the mere physical economy, considering 
 only ends and uses that pertain to mechanical and 
 bodily conditions. Nobody ever saw far enough into 
 God’s designs to justify him, who did not see far 
 enough to distinguish what ends his designs are for; 
 viz., the moral ends and uses of existence. This frame 
 of things was never understood, and never will be, with- 
 out going back of things; it is mere jargon otherwise, 
 confusion, absurdity, poison, torment—any thing and 
 every thing but rationality and goodness. Here, then, 
 is our question—viz., whether any sufficient account of 
 venom and destructiveness in the animal infestations is 
 to be discovered in the moral wants and uses of exist- 
 ence? And here we are met by the discovery— 
 
 1, That a great part of the evils of life are on us pur- 
 posely, and not by accident, or by any kind of fatality, 
 or pantheistic necessity. Many of us would like to im- 
 agine that our pests, and poisons, and various kinds 
 of torments are at least not designed; that however 
 
OF TITE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 281 
 
 they may come, they are only mysterious; or that if 
 they must be allowed to be, in some sense, from God, 
 the Universal Creator, it must in reverence be held, 
 that he did not mean to have them as annoying and 
 deadly as we find them to be. Then let any one dis- 
 sect a talon, or a claw, or a carnivorous jaw, and decide 
 whether there is any contrivance here for tearing and 
 devouring flesh ; and whether any preparation for scent- 
 ing is deliberately contrived, in the outspread nervous 
 texture of the nostril. Whence came that terrible vise 
 in the mouth of a shark, and whose invention is it? 
 ' That viper fang, both sharp and hollow, laid down flat 
 upon the jaw when there is no occasion for it, but hung 
 with pulleys of muscle to throw it up when attack is 
 to be made, allowing it now, in the bite, to be pressed 
 directly down upon a bag of liquid yenom deposited 
 just under its roots—whose invention is this? Is if 
 not plainly a deliberate contrivance, as truly, visibly 
 deliberate as any injecting or ejecting engine in the 
 world? And how many venomous creatures are there 
 —-spiders, ants, ticks, scorpions, serpents, flies, mosqui- 
 toes, centipedes, that have their bags of poison made 
 ready, as the fearful artillery of their otherwise con- 
 temptible life! Let no one imagine that such kind of 
 artillery is not meant; there is no other that is gotten 
 up with a machinery more skillful, or with better am 
 munition. All that may be done with such tools is 
 plainly meant to be done. Whatever else may be true, 
 God has created venom, and we must not scruple to 
 say it. If we have any conception of goodness that 
 
282 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 forbids this kind of possibility in God, then our God 
 plainly enough does not exist, or the God that does 
 exist is not he. The really existent God, as we can see 
 with our eyes, is such a being as can use contrivance 
 in adjusting the due apparatus, both of prey and of poi- 
 son. And we need not scruple to confess a degree of sat- 
 isfaction in this kind of discovery, showing that goodness 
 js no such innocent, mawkishly insipid character, no 
 such mollusc softness swimming in God’s bosom as 
 many affect to suppose; that it has resolve, purpose, 
 thunder in it, able to contrive hard things, when hard 
 are wanted. No other impression is at all equal to the 
 moral training for which we are sent hither. If we 
 could not see distinctly that God is able to plan for suf- 
 fering, and prepare the machinery to produce it, what 
 we call his goodness would only be a weak, emaseu- 
 lated virtue, which, if we should praise it, would not 
 long keep our respect. One of the very first and most 
 necessary conditions of a right moral government in 
 souls is vigor; a will that is visibly asserting itself 
 everywhere in acts of sovereignty that do not ask ow 
 consent. It is better for us even to be shocked some 
 times, than never to be impressed. Mere safe-keeping 
 is not rugged enough to answer the moral uses of our 
 life. Elemental forces, grinding hard about us and 
 upon us, are necessary to the due unfolding of our 
 moral and religious ideas, and it is in just these severi- 
 ties of discipline that we afterward discover the deep- 
 est counsels of beneficence, and the highest culminations 
 of eternal goodness itself. 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 282 
 
 2. We here perceive that not only dangerous and 
 fierce animals are wanted as the necessary furniture of 
 our discipline, but a large supply of annoyances, irri- 
 tants, and disgusting infestations. We laugh at these 
 creatures many times, and try to amuse ourselves at 
 their expense, aud it might not be desirable to take 
 them more seriously, but it is a very serious matter, 
 nevertheless, that we have them to laugh at. Indeed 
 it is even a fair subject of doubt whether we get as 
 much real discipline, after all, from all the beasts of 
 prey together, as we do from any single one of a half 
 dozen tribes of pests that infest the world—ants, mos- 
 quitoes, wood-flies, jiggers, and the like. A part of 
 their value is that they annoy us enough to keep us 
 awake, and if they sometimes keep us awake when we are 
 really demanding sleep, it is not altogether ill. Unmo- 
 lested sleep might settle us at length into lethargy. 
 We want irritants to stir us up and nettle us into 
 vivacity, as truly as we do the lull of music and breeze 
 to quiet us. Besides, we are always trying to get the 
 world into a law of happiness, as if that were the main 
 errand here, or as if God made it and must needs take 
 it to be the law of his will. How often do we say this, 
 and sometimes we even set our speculation upon it, to 
 show that so it must be It was very important, there- 
 fore, to keep us off this ground, and worry and sting us 
 away from it. And to this end doubtless it is that God 
 lets in upon us, on our face, and hands, and whole bod- 
 ily skin, such numberless troops of hostile infestation. 
 They come with bite, and creeping feet, and slimy 
 
284 ,. MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 touch, and sting, and stinging voice. They break no 
 bones, they stir in general no fear, they seem to have 
 no errand that could not as well be dispensed with. 
 And yet, they do bring irritations, annoyances, disgusts 
 upon us, that have a considerable significance, and 
 ought to have, must ‘have, a considerable use. Not all 
 the elephants, and tigers, and hyenas, and crocodiles of 
 the world, have a thousandth part of the power exerted 
 by these on our feeling and temperament. And it isa 
 great thing they do, when they only keep us off the 
 folly of conceiving that God is principally concerned 
 with us here to make us happy. Therefore he shows 
 us that he is not, by instrumentations most unremorse- 
 ful, most deliberately contrived; leaving us nothing less 
 or different to believe, than that he is shaping us to 
 good, moral good, let the happiness and all the fine 
 computations of pleasures fare as they may. But these 
 are things by the way; the grand determining reason 
 for the existence of these creatures and the divine con- 
 trivance in them is to be found, I have no doubt— 
 
 3. In the fact that, in order to our highest moral ben- 
 efit, there is a fixed necessity that we have a world so 
 prepared in its furniture, as to be a representation of 
 man to himself. It would be impossible to carry on our 
 moral training, if we could not be insphered in condi- 
 tions that reflect, express, and continually raise in us 
 the idea of what we are. It is not enough that what 
 may be known of God should be clearly seen in things 
 that are made; other great purposes of existence can 
 be secured only as we have images and a language to 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 285 
 
 mirror the nature, and state, and moral quality of our 
 action. The world must be a dictionary where objects 
 are supplied, that may serve as bases of words mher- 
 ently significant of what is in us to be signified. And 
 it is here that Swedenborg comes in with his doctrine— 
 whence derived I really do not know—of correspond- 
 ences. Nothing is more certain, however he came by 
 his doctrine, than that all moral terms of language 
 suppose pre-existing terms of correspondence in the 
 world’s objects, that fitly represent or express the moral 
 ideas and facts of our personality. It is also remark- 
 able that all most expressive words and images, in this 
 department of speech, are derived from animals ; which, 
 again, he says, were not created as we know them, but 
 “exist from man.” By which I suppose him to mean, 
 that while they exist, in a sense, from God’s appoint- 
 ment, they take their evil type, whatever it be, from 
 the evil in man. A similar thought appears to be 
 laboring in the story of the curse reported in Genesis ; 
 viz., that in some sense there is a general unmaking of 
 the world by transgression, in which it changes type 
 and falls with the fall of the occupant. So far, accord- 
 ingly, it will be from man, bearing the expressional 
 stamp of man; and it makes no difference whether it 
 is changed after such a fall and by it, or adapted to it 
 by anticipation. Be this matter as it may, all the 
 animal types especially ; the bats, and owls, and un- 
 clean birds of night; the tigers, wolves, foxes, alliga- 
 tors; all the serpents, and venomous creatures, and 
 base vermin, with all the disgusting or annoying in- 
 
286 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 festations of insect life, are appointed to serve grand 
 purposes of benefit in the moral training of souls, 
 Their destructive, poisonous, and loathsome nature, 
 carrying all nicest, most deliberative marks of design, 
 is good because it is evil; that is, because it expresses 
 so faithfully what most needs to be expressed, in these 
 four particulars: (1) the ferocity of our sin; (2) the 
 venom principle there is in it; (3) the immense dis- 
 turbing power it obtains, even under the limitations of 
 our human insignificance; and (4) the interior efficacy 
 it has in its working. These four factors let us con- 
 sider more deliberatively, and each by itself. 
 
 First, then, nothing is more certain than that evil, 
 as a law of selfishness, begets rapacity, violence, and 
 even a certain ferocity in wrong, which wants remind- 
 ers set on every side, and a world packed full of images 
 to show the picture of it; and then that these same 
 images should pack the languages with words, to be 
 the coins of interchange, description, observation, ac- 
 cusation, reflective thought, concerning it. The moral 
 uses of life would fail if the outward state were not 
 made answerable and largely analogous to the state 
 within. Hell in the bosom could not see or know it- 
 self in a paradise. If prey is the element within, it 
 must be duly objectivized in the element without. To 
 say that animals are organized for prey, and made 
 creatures of prey, just to keep down over-multiplica- 
 tion, is to fool ourselves in a very slim pretext of phys- 
 ical adaptation, and miss altogether the grand symbol. 
 ism in the stupendous engineering of God for our moral 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 287 
 
 and immortal benefit. Indeed, the only good point 
 there is in that physical solution is, that the tribes 
 thinned away are the least harmful and most useful, 
 and the tribes of extermination that remain precisely 
 those which are most utterly worthless and piratical ; 
 for there seems to be some use in that, when taken as 
 a revelation of the terrible devastations of wrong, ex- 
 tirpating innocence always, and emptying the world 
 of righteousness. Still there is not much in this; for 
 it will be seen that, in the long run, the more harmless 
 and useful animals, having a domestic value, will ob- 
 tain defenders, and will over-live and over-multiply 
 their destroyers, and will even stock the world after 
 these are extinct. However this may be, the general 
 purpose of God in these creatures of prey is plain as it 
 well can be. They are given to be our kinsmen, the 
 cousins-german of our sin. They are the moral furni- 
 ture of a world in selfishness and evil. There is a kind 
 of bad litany in them, howling congenially with all 
 wrong feeling and doing. They not only kill and 
 devour savagely, by sting, and fang, and beak, and 
 claw, but some of the least of them march out man- 
 nishly in columns and fight pitched battles, lasting for 
 whole days; and they even take on airs of high civil- 
 ity, by reducing fellow tribes to a condition of regular 
 slavery; where, as they were heroes in fight, they be- 
 come lords in mastership and exaction. Sometimes 
 they work by satire, as in the case of the ants here re- 
 ferred to; sometimes by terror, by spitefulness, by 
 cunning stealthiness and tricks of decoy, by immense 
 
288 MORAL USES OF DARK ‘THINGS. 
 
 deglutitions, by any and all sorts of animal habits that 
 connect with prey, ferocities, voracities and disgusts 
 that make it symbolic of evil. In this way they give us 
 profitable company, and keep us at home in surround- 
 ings morally adapted to the omnivorous habit of our 
 sin—no very lionorable calling for them, but an excel- 
 lently useful and even morally indispensable one for us. 
 
 I proposed also to speak, secondly, of the venom 
 principle incorporated in a great many animals, and 
 especially of the moral analogy it fills in relationship 
 with evil. The number of animals that have the gift 
 of poison, and have bags of poison carefully prepared, 
 in connection with a hollow sting, or bill, or fang, or 
 claw, for the injection of it, is larger than many appear 
 to know. Sometimes the object is to repel, or disable 
 an attack, and is only defensive. Sometimes it is to 
 incapacitate and prostrate the animal that is to be 
 taken as prey, where it classes with all other contriv- 
 ances for the capture of supplies. But there are cases 
 where the venom appears to be dispensed gratis, just 
 because it belongs to a venomous nature to put forth 
 that kind of power. What can the venomous spider, 
 or the venomous ant, Solpuga, mean, but simply mis- 
 chief, when, creeping over a man by night, he vaccin- 
 ates him with a mortal poison? The mosquito comes, 
 we know, to get his supply of blood, and so we may 
 not object; for if he is to exist, he must live. But the 
 strange thing is that he pays for the blood he gets with 
 the poison he leaves. His victim was asleep, we may 
 suppose, and there was no resistance. All that he 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 289 
 
 wanted he took, but he must needs distil a poison be- 
 fore he goes; without any pretext of self-defense, or 
 of doing it to capture supplies, but sometimes even 
 waking his victim by it, after he has gotten his fill. 
 It is as if the very bill of the animal exuded poison by 
 the simple instigation of pleasure itself. Other infesta- 
 - tions of the forest and the chamber impart their venom 
 in a similar way, when, apparently, they have nothing 
 to gain by it. What, then, does it mean, that infu- 
 sions of venom have so large a place in the very con- 
 trivance of so many animal natures? The natural 
 theologians give us no plausible, or even tolerable an- 
 swer. Their whole scheme of argument from design is 
 at fault in this matter, and must be, till they ascend 
 above the mere physical ends of contrivance, and behold 
 those moral ends which are the sovereign, all-controlling 
 reasons of God, in what he creates or designs. 
 
 The fearful truth, never to be hid or lost sight of, 
 though indignantly repelled by many, is that the state of 
 wrong or sin in mankind goes beyond selfishness and 
 the rapacious instincts of prey, and does sometimes be- 
 come a venomous principle, doing evil because it is evil, 
 perpetrating mischief because it is mischief, and havoc 
 because it has that kind of power. More commonly, the 
 erimes committed—arson, robbery, rape, murder—are 
 such as gain or some hope of advantage instigates. In- 
 deed, we seldom encounter examples where wrong is 
 done for the mere sake of wrong ; though now and then 
 we do meet even such. Our poor freedmen of the South, 
 for example, hunted, whipped, hung upon trees, burned 
 
 13 
 
290 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 up in their huts by night—what have they done, what 
 are they going to attempt, that such barbarous severities 
 are put upon them? The simple answer is, that men 
 who are fiends will fulfill the definition, doing deeds of 
 havoc, or of torment, for the enjoyment of it! Fearful is 
 the truth that such beings can exist, appalling is the 
 fact that they do. Even so madly inspired by evil is it 
 possible for man to be. These hapless creatures, lately 
 slaves, are free by no offense of their own. The hares 
 of the wood are scarcely less capable of harm than they. 
 No, their crime is that they have been injured; for 
 as Tacitus, with true insight, declares, “ Whom a man 
 hath injured him he hates.” Dear sport is it, therefore, 
 to set them flying into the bush; music itself to hear 
 them howl and beg under a limb! This element of 
 mischief for the sake of mischief, not often displayed 
 in as flagrant examples, still enters largely into human 
 conduct. We have not made up the full inventory of 
 evil, when we have simply shown what selfishness will 
 do for selfish ends. Evil has a demonizing power, not 
 working always by calculation, but sometimes by a 
 spell, and becoming thus, by its own bad inspiration, an 
 end to itself. So far there is nothing in nature to rep- 
 resent it, or be its analogy. The revenge of elephants, 
 the cunning stealth of foxes, the prey of wolves and 
 tigers, the blood-hunger of leeches—not all the powers 
 of damage and destruction wielded by all the animals 
 can at all represent this kind of evil-doing. Only 
 venom can sufficiently do it; and without the venom- 
 bags, and bills, and fangs, and stings, and claws, the 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 291 
 
 moral furniture of the world would not be complete. 
 Evil for evil’s sake, disinterested evil, is the fearful pos- 
 sibility and fact that must have signs and a language 
 provided. In this office all the venomous animals do 
 service, and more especially such as do not use thei 
 functions for self-defense, or the conquest of supplies, 
 but distill their poison gratis or without reason. 
 
 Again, thirdly, it was necessary to a true understand- 
 ing of our responsibility in evil-doing, that the plea of 
 insignificance be taken away from us,—which: appears 
 to be done most effectively by the fact that we are made 
 to suffer so great torment or damage, often, by creatures 
 of prey, or venom, that are exceedingly small. We are 
 perfectly defenseless against them in a great many 
 cases, because they are small. A single mosquito will 
 defy and torture a man all night, when if it were a 
 horse or an elephant, he would very shortly have him 
 
 in control. A single jigger, scarcely visible to the eye, 
 will hide himself under the skin and have a populous 
 city there, before there is even a thought of such occu- 
 pancy. The land-leeches of the woods of Ceylon will 
 scent a man before he arrives, and, hurrying toward 
 him, will dart their thread-like bodies through his 
 clothing, pinning it to his skin, so that when he comes 
 out, fifty heads will be pumping at his blood. Some- 
 times the diminutive creatures come in armies, and 
 there is no conquering host of men whose march is 
 half as destructive, or half as difficult to resist. The 
 weevil, the fly, the caterpillar, the army-worm, the 
 locust, the military hornet, that “ drove out the Amor- 
 
292 MORAL USES OF DARK IIINGS. 
 
 ites betore Israel”—who can withstand? When the 
 latter locm up as a cloud on the plains of Syria, they 
 fill the company of travelers with greater consternation 
 than a water-spout, and set them flying madly every 
 way, if only the torture permits,—otherwise they lie 
 down with their animals and die. It is even reported 
 that Sapor, king of Persia, was compelled by a cloud 
 of gnats to raise the siege of Nisibij ; where the very 
 point of contest lay between the gnats on one side, and 
 his elephants on the other, and the latter were put to 
 rout, with his whole army, just because the insect crea- 
 tures had too great advantage over creatures in such 
 mark for bulkiness and indefensible majesty. In all 
 which examples we discover, that the most fearful, 
 most perfectly irresistible enemies we encounter are the 
 smallest, the mere living specks of the creation. They 
 come in greatest power, be it as one or as many, and 
 we are most appalled by them, because we are least 
 capable of defense against them. In this manner they 
 invert all our notions of size, and make diminutiveness 
 a terror. So that when we shrink away from all terrors 
 of responsibility, because we are practically dwarfed 
 and sunk out of sight before the oppressive weight and 
 magnitude of God, we have a mental correction already 
 prepared, in the fact that size has come to signify so 
 little as regards real power and consequence. There is 
 no size, either in agents or actions, that has conse- 
 quence. If we die for the bite of an ant, it signifies as 
 much as that we die for the bite of a tiger. Doubtless 
 God is a very great being, and it may seem that we can 
 
OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS, 293 
 
 do little against his immensity, but all the more does it 
 signify that we can sting the immense sensibility of his 
 goodness. It is the moral significance of actions that 
 creates their true guiltiness, not their size, or report, or 
 show, or linear sphere of dimensional effect. The in- 
 gratitude, the falsity, the venom, the poison, the mon- 
 strous filthiness and corruption—these are the offense, 
 and the measure is quality of meaning, not any bulk 
 of movement or physical effect. We are not too small, 
 however diminutive, to do great injuries to God, and 
 move revulsions in his pure feeling that are only the 
 more prodigious offense, because they wound sensibili- 
 ties essentially infinite and infinitely tender. 
 
 I proposed also, fourthly, to speak of these destructive 
 and venomous animals considered as types of the in- 
 terior working of evil. We might easily get occupied 
 with wrong as a merely exterior affair—the annoyance, 
 misrule, destructiveness, oppressiveness, and the num- 
 berless inconveniences and desolations of it. Almost 
 everybody is so far against wrong, and many are stir- 
 red up by the dreadful miseries of it, to become re- 
 formers against it. The danger was that we might 
 always be looking outwardly to find it, and not realiz- 
 ing at all the deep, all-penetrating, thoroughgoing 
 infection of it—humanity pricked through with evil 
 infestations and disorders might, perchance, not be at 
 all conceived. What then does it signify, that we are 
 not only beset with so many external infestations and 
 infections, but are so commonly attacked within, by 
 hideous creatures that undertake to be co-inhabitants 
 
294 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. : 
 
 with us! It is no pleasant subject, but the naturalist 
 are obliged in mere science to make out at least twenty 
 species of these pestiferous creatures, that inwardly 
 inhabit and are peculiar to man ; even as the cattle to 
 the pastures, or the fishes to the sea. They fix on any 
 organ of the body, too, according to their kind, from 
 the brain downward, and many of them have such 
 power that life is finally sure to be discomfited by 
 them. A symbol so impressive can not but impress, 
 and will even more deeply impress, when the revela- 
 tions of science are more familiarly known. We do, in 
 fact, have this impression largely verified in us, before 
 such revelations arrive; we believe that powers of 
 death are lurking everywhere in us, as that we are 
 wrong in fact all through. The infection, we say, is 
 deep, and mortality has the touch of every thing that 
 lives—which touch is internal. That which is within 
 defileth. The immense value of all such impressions, 
 recognizing evil as infesting life at the core, is greater 
 than we often imagine. We sometimes call it corrup- 
 tion, imagining in the very word a kind of venomous 
 action; all which is figure of course, representing the 
 tremendous body-and-soul-dissolving infestations of evil 
 working inwardly. Life has been so contrived, that 
 we can not well miss the idea, however much or little 
 we know of the verminous infestations referred to, as 
 therapeutically discovered and scientifically taught. 
 On the whole, I think it will be seen that the de 
 structive and venomous animals of the world have a 
 good reason for their existence. If there is any thing 
 
——_—— ee 
 
 OF THE ANIMAL INFESTATIONS. 295 
 
 dark in their existence, it is not solved in the very 
 shallow philosophy that supposes their introduction for 
 mere physical ends. There is no solution massive 
 enough, and grand enough, to meet the real scope of 
 the problem, save that they are all the outfit and furni- 
 ture of a moral system, and the uses such a system is 
 
 _ ordained to serve. They belong to the revelation and 
 
 fit discipline of evil, being symbols, physical analogies, 
 such as draw their type from man, and not from the 
 beauty and goodness of God. What he is they become 
 
 for his sake; for in him, as a creature going into wrong, 
 
 they all received their law and came forth, in their time, 
 to work with him in the sad but really wild and terribly 
 sublime history of his life. 
 
XIV. 
 OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 
 
 Wuen we speak, as Americans, of distinctions of 
 color, or distinctions of races marked by color, we are 
 neditating probably the existence, in particular, of the 
 African or black race, and the possible reasons for their 
 existence. Our attention is specially centered on them, 
 because their existence heretofore as bondmen among 
 us has been at so great cost, having shaken nearly to 
 its fall the Republic itself; also because, being now 
 emancipated by the fortunes of war, they bring us a 
 most difficult problem, viz.: what to do for them, or by 
 what kind of recomposition to prepare them a condition 
 of hope and righteously protected liberty? Their con- 
 dition, we are obliged to perceive, is a condition of 
 immense disadvantage. How much of respect they 
 might command by their own natural force and charac- 
 ter, it is not easy to say; but the stigma we have our- 
 selves put upon them by our wrong—this, if nothing 
 else,—has thrown a crushing weight of disrespect upon 
 them, such as makes it far more difficult for them to 
 hold a self-asserting position among us. When consid- 
 ering, too, by what means we can help their depressed 
 condition, we are greatly discouraged by the fact, that 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 297 
 
 their former masters will endure them in a condition 
 of power, however qualified, only with difficulty, and 
 are likely to break out, almost any day, in bloody con- 
 epiracy against them; also by the fact that so many of 
 yur own race will be making prey of them; and again 
 by the fact that large numbers of them have already 
 caught the poison of vices that will make them a prey 
 to themselves. They become, in this way, a kind of 
 mystery of unhopefulness; so that we can not pass a 
 little colored child in the street, and especially one that 
 is neatly dressed and has a look of careful motherhood, 
 without sighing inwardly and sometimes with a moisten- 
 ing eye—“ poor hapless one, what place or good possi- 
 bility is therein the world for you? Growing up, you 
 grow into what; for what can you be? Scarcely have 
 you a right to be, or become, any thing ?” 
 
 Perhaps we carry our pity too far; perhaps our want 
 of respect for the race, partly caused by our own abuse 
 of them, does not see as much that is hopeful in them 
 as there really is. They discover often a remarkable 
 talent, and there are certainly individuals among them, 
 who have power to make a character and carve ont a 
 way of success. There have been such examples dis- 
 covered among the Indian races, but the difficulty has 
 ever been with them to get such hold of the race, as a 
 whole, that they could be put forward in culture and 
 saved from extinction. It may not be so here; it proba- 
 bly would not, if their friends in the white race could 
 have them to themselves, separated from the plunder 
 
 and poison of their enemies. But that again is impos 
 13* 
 
298 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 sible. They must take their places with us, and main- 
 tain a footing for themselves in our society; and if we 
 can not help them, and shelter them, by such protection 
 here as will enable them to maintain it, they must in- 
 evitably go under. e 
 
 They are far more hopeful subjects of culture and 
 civilization, in certain of their qualities and points of 
 character, than the Indians. Their humanities are im- 
 mensely large in comparison. They can have a sense 
 of home. They are too genial for the dry revenge and 
 prowling wolfishness of Indian life. They have world- 
 fuls of music in their sentiment, and close to this a 
 most wonderfully inspirational capacity for religion ; 
 
 and these, in one view, are about the highest capa- 
 
 bilities of man. All the higher, that they are con- 
 nected here with a remarkable capacity or power to 
 seize on the second sense or figure-power of facts and 
 symbols, which is the distinctive mark of all true poetic 
 faculty, and was never more conspicuous in the untrained 
 habit and imagination of any people in the world. 
 Such a race may never be distinguished in the matter 
 of invention, or provisional and productive enterprise; 
 but who can say that they will not have a sufficiently 
 grand work to do in the world’s last days, when whole 
 races of fresh-born prophets and singers may be wanted, 
 to bear up the world to its last level of inspired eleva- 
 tion, and free rhythmic play. The Jewish race, let us 
 not forget, is also a generally disrespected race; and 
 that, in great part, just because the sordid qualities 
 that belong to their habit are forced upon them, and 
 
 / 
 
 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 299 
 
 bred in and in, by the long ages of cruelty and oppres- 
 sion they have suffered under Christian power; and yet 
 we are obliged to admit, that they are among the most 
 talented, if not the very most, of all the races of man- 
 kind. 
 
 In such kind of suggestions we make our sallies after 
 hope; and still we are obliged somehow to fall back 
 - under discouragement and a seeming overcast of doom, 
 regarding the future of this hitherto ill-starred African 
 race. It is as if their color was the stamp of night on 
 their history, both past and future. They are in a case 
 that perplexes beneficence, and discourages the expecta- 
 tion of friendly statesmanship; and we are put here to 
 the question, how it was and why, that Providence 
 allowed them to be entered into our more advanced 
 society —a condition so unhopeful, so nearly impos- 
 sible to them, and so perplexing and full of oppressive 
 concern to us. Getting no satisfactory answer, in this 
 matter of historic providence, we go farther and begin 
 to arraign the fact of their creation; asking why God 
 should have put a race in existence encumbered with 
 such disadvantages? Their dark faces veil a darker 
 mystery ; and the more we are drawn to them, by their 
 free good nature, and the warm humanities we learn 
 often to admire in their friendship, the more heavily 
 are we oppressed by the very hard lot so mysteriously 
 put upon them, in the unfavored type of their race. 
 
 Is it possible then—this is our question—either to 
 mstance, or to imagine, any reasons of beneficence that 
 will practically account for their misfortune, or make 
 
300 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 us less disposed to question the divine goodness in their 
 creation? I think it is, and that if we carefully attend 
 to the real conditions of the problem, we shall discover 
 such benefits secured by the distinctions of color and 
 type here in question, as will greatly diminish our per- 
 plexities, and make the colored race themselves more 
 nearly content with their lot. In this view I put 
 forward— 
 
 1. What is certainly a matter of great moral signifi - 
 
 cance for humanity at large, the very certain fact, that, 
 under this distinction of races, we arrive at a very dif- 
 ferent, vastly more cogent, impression of the under- 
 soul, the man, the everlasting, divinely moral person- 
 ality, such as we should never develop under conditions 
 of strict homogeneity. If the various stocks and 
 families of the world were copies visible, one of another, 
 and each of all, the immortal, spiritual nature, the real 
 man, would be swamped to a great degree under the 
 reigning similarities. The external duplications would 
 occupy us, or take us away from those inward explora- 
 tions, which great external distinctions would provoke. 
 These distinctions put us on a way of abstraction, Sy 
 which we cast off this and that, and all the more im- 
 pressive unlikenesses of the external nature, till we come 
 down, by our process of exclusion, to the grand common 
 property or somewhat, that refuses to be taken away; 
 and this we say is thestock man, that which, being duly 
 housed, gets also its due exercise under all the particu- 
 lar colors and types that are given it. As a result of 
 this abstractional process, we learn to look upon the 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 301 
 
 properties excluded as having only a lighter and more 
 secondary consequence; while the unreducible diamond 
 of the moral nature, that which forms absolute ideas 
 and receives their immutable stamp in its character, 
 proving in that manner its plainly godlike affinities— 
 that we say is the man, the everlasting man, the same 
 as to kind, under all colors and aspects and configura- 
 tions. 
 
 It is not pretended that we all consciously reason in 
 this manner, for we do not. Most of us probably were 
 never conscious of any such process in our lives. I only 
 say that, without being aware of it, we get our impres- 
 sion largely of the common timber included in our 
 moral word, man, in this manner. We have seen, or 
 heard of very different kinds of peoples; and throwing 
 off the accidents of difference, we strike directly in upon 
 the core, and say: These are the real humanities. We 
 have them, too, in this manner, with a wonderful dis- 
 tinctness, such as we could not arrive at without some 
 purchase of antagonism or point of reaction physio- 
 logically given, to set us in upon the true discovery. 
 The distinctions of color and race will sometimes strike 
 us, for the moment, with such force that we seem to be 
 etunned or confounded, and so, and for so long a time, 
 the sense of a common unity is quite driven out of us; 
 but our next thought strikes through the casement of 
 color and body into the men, and the word has a ring 
 of eternity and true moral significance, more distinctly 
 pronounced than we could ever get for it under any one 
 given type and color. 
 
302 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 Certain low-minded scorners of the African race, who 
 are willing to insult them by any most cruel caricature 
 of their physical type, and would even delight, if pos 
 sible, to put them outside of humanity, compare them, 
 under mock pretensions of science, with the African 
 gorillas and chimpanzees, as if separated from them 
 only by slight shades of difference. Suppose, then, it 
 should be discovered that these mere animal creatures 
 of the forest, such as we have supposed them to be, still 
 have endowments of humanity like these:—They are 
 capable of home. They do not simply love their child- 
 ren till they are grown up to maturity and then shake 
 them off like the animals and forget them; but con- 
 tinue to live with them till they die; and want them 
 nigh, even to the third and fourth generation. They 
 do not work by instinct, like bees and beavers, but use 
 new methods and contrive new arts. They discover 
 laws in things, and have beginnings of science. They 
 frame political organizations, and maintain distributions 
 of justice. They have the same absolute ideas of truth, 
 and right, and love, that men have. Hairy and wild 
 creatures to look at, they have, nevertheless, a remark- 
 able capacity for music, and their music has power to 
 move the deepest, finest human sentiment. They have 
 the gift of language, not only recollecting certain snere 
 names to go at their call, as many animals do, but they 
 take the interior, second sense of words, and the 
 spiritual meanings or expressions of figures and images ; 
 which proves their intelligence [intus lego] and puts 
 them clean ove: into the humanly intelligent class, 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 303 
 
 Nay, they can do more: they can improvise ballads that 
 have a mysteriously wild, weird power, and even 
 excite a certain wonder in the literary classes of the 
 world. They are, furthermore, plainly and even super- 
 latively religious, capable of high inspirations, and 
 abounding in examples of practical beatitude and seer- 
 ship. What now shall we say of these quadruman 
 people? We encounter no little disadvantage in the 
 fact that we know them to be, physically speaking, 
 animals, and nothing else. But no matter for that, if 
 only we can hold our supposition firmly enough to make 
 due account of the mind-tokens and spiritual capabili- 
 ties discovered in them. Call them, after that, by what 
 name we please—they still are men. ‘They are not 
 physiologically descended from the stock of Adam. 
 But, if they were, it would not make them a whit more 
 certainly human. By all the moral attributes they 
 reveal, we even hear them say, with invincible self- 
 affirmation, “we also are men.” And by just as much 
 closer as they draw themselves to us, do they shove 
 themselves farther off from the animals. They have 
 come over to us, where the African race have always 
 been, by force of the same high attributes; and the 
 chasm that separates them now from all animals is on 
 the other side, wide and deep as the unfathomable 
 abyss between time and eternity. And the grand 
 result is, that they sink all inferior distinctions of 
 anatomy and color, and make us feel, as never before, 
 how real and solid, how essentially everlasting, that 
 moral nature, that sublime under-soul is, that we name 
 
804 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 when we call ourselves men. The moral advantage 
 derived to us, in this manner, from the distributions of 
 color and physical type in humanity, is great beyond 
 our possible estimation; accruing to the benefit of laws, 
 and liberties, and morals, and religion, by methods too 
 numerous for computation. We think humanity more 
 adequately because of it. Our genus man is not based 
 in similarities of shape and color, but far deeper 
 
 down, upon the hard-pan of an everlasting common 
 
 property, which no classifications of shape and color 
 can as decisively express. 
 
 2. It is another and partly distinct matter, that these 
 diversities of race and color, exactly contrary to what is 
 commonly assumed, are preparations of God for the 
 outruling of slavery, and its final expurgation from the 
 world,—proved to be such by experiment. Such dis- 
 tinctions of physiology do undoubtedly connect with 
 a condition of weakness and low culture, that exposes, 
 at first, to the wrong of slavery; but they begin, at the 
 same time, to beget, and more and more intensify, the 
 sense of kinship asa moral affair, till finally the slavery 
 dies out under that which, taken as mere natural inferi- 
 ority, was the principal facility and temptation to it. 
 The remarkable thing about all our modern agita- 
 tions against slavery is, that the question has been 
 drawing closer and still closer down upon the last point 
 where, in fact, every thing hinges, and where, as the 
 debate is carried, the result will be final—there will 
 never again be. as there never again can be, any re 
 institution of slavery, because the question is now 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 305 
 
 settled, or is soon to be, on the base of a moral kin 
 ‘ship. 
 
 First we had slaveries of all races, more com- 
 monly such as were homogeneous. The early Romans 
 captured and reduced to slavery the very peoples closest 
 about the city. And these enslavements of races, in 
 the same type, color, and culture, were the most cruelly 
 severe the world has seen, and gave way soonest, partly 
 for that reason, to considerations of public humanity. 
 The argument came out now and then, and could not 
 be suppressed, that such persons were too close akin, 
 too visibly of one stock, which made the enslavement a 
 shocking violation, as visibly, of nature. But the modern 
 slavery is based more entirely on dissimilarities of stock, 
 and grades of form and color assumed to be physically 
 inferior. The discovery is made that here is a race or 
 races, purposely made for slavery, and that slavery is 
 the best possible condition for them. At this point 
 the issue has been joined, and the argument for liberty 
 has been that real human kinship is not a matter of the 
 skin, or the hair, or the physical anatomy; but is of 
 just that which we have seen tobe more impressively 
 ’ developed, under and by means of such animal dis- 
 tinctions; viz., the fact of a grand common property . 
 in our moral nature, by which, as being men, we are 
 made everlastingly congener to each other. The ques- 
 tion ceases, in this manner, to be a question of mere | 
 natural sentiment, and becomes a question of relation- 
 ship purely moral. On one side the effort is to insist 
 on physical inferiorities; on the other, to make nut the 
 
. B06 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 proof, by that very means, of a common under-soul, in 
 which all are members of a universal, everlasting 
 orotherhood. And just here it is that the question 
 is being carried against slavery forever. It is no more 
 a question of power against weakness; no more a ques- 
 tion of the cuticle or the hair; but a question of moral 
 right in one, assuming, as by force, to buy and contro] 
 the moral right of another. We are learning to say: 
 “No, it is impossible ;” and that is the end of slavery 
 forever. 
 
 Some persons have insisted much of late, and are 
 even pressing the argument now, as against colored 
 suffrage, that the African race are not of the same orig- 
 inal stock with us, but are one of several distinctly 
 created families, in the manner suggested by Prof. 
 Agassiz, and by him positively asserted, both on 
 grounds of science and of Scripture evidence. Our 
 common belief has been different, and is not given up, 
 viz.: that conditions of climate, and social disadvantage, 
 have set this particular race, originally one with us, 
 gravitating downward toward a less capable and more 
 nearly animalized habit ; and that so they have passed 
 into their present type of form and color. We have 
 taken, heretofore, what the Scripture says of our com- 
 mon sonship “in Adam,” and of our being made “ of 
 one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth,” as a 
 literal declaration of our natural kinship and common 
 derivation. Besides, it appears to us not a whit less 
 credible, that the African race, put browning and bak- 
 ing under tropical suns for whole thousands of years, 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOk. 307 
 
 should have undergone so great a change, than that 
 our American stock itself has been differed so widely, 
 in its physiology, from the English, in but two centu- 
 ries and a half. Ourwholetemperament is changed, our 
 muscle is more wiry and capable of endurance, our 
 brain is larger, our features sharper, our whole action 
 more subtle and mercurial, and our mark distinguish- 
 ably higher in the tables of longevity—in short, we are 
 no more the same people. Not even the French stock 
 are more visibly distinct from the English than we. 
 Still we are far less concerned about this doctrine of 
 another, distinctly African, stock, than we are about 
 the very offensive and morally bad uses made of it. It 
 may seem to us that they have a considerable advantage, 
 as regards mere feeling, in the physical kinship we have 
 allowed them. And yet, if they are to be taken asa 
 race so fatally humbled by deterioration, it may put 
 them in a case that is really far less hopeful, than to re- 
 gard them as an original race, not yet raised by culture 
 to their true pitch of power and possible eminence. If 
 I were of the race, I should certainly prefer the latter. 
 For, in this latter view, they lose nothing of their rank 
 asmen. To be “of one blood” with us signifies littie 
 by itself—nothing but a mere natural kinship—about 
 as much as that calves may bleat responsively, in the 
 sense of their fellow nature among cattle; but to have 
 the common under-soul, and common properties of kin- 
 ship with God, and be another original stock by our 
 side, and as such congener with us in all the moral 
 affinities of our interior manhood—this is the really 
 
308 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 grand footing most of all to be desired. By what kind 
 of rebuke then may we more fitly chastise the coarse, 
 low-minded insolence of men, who fling it as a taunt 
 upon the African race, that they are of another stock, 
 than simply to ask, whether possibly it is not God’s 
 plan to finish this race last, and set them on the sum- 
 mit, when their day shall come, as the topstone of all 
 righteous peace, and most inspired religion ? 
 
 Recurring now, in the light of these suggestions, to 
 the historic phases and facts of slavery in the past ages, 
 we see more understandingly what has been going on. 
 As a good type of the more ancient slavery, that which 
 had no respect to race, we see the great Roman empire 
 scouring the vast circuit of the nations in expeditions 
 of conquest, from Britain round to Babylon, and from 
 the Baltic round to the Great Desert, taking thousands 
 and thousands of captives, and setting them off in trails, 
 from every point of compass, toward Italy. Solda 
 dozen times_over on their way, and haying as many 
 fortunes made out of them, they were poured in upon 
 the Italian cities and farms to work and die. Some of 
 the great landholders bought as many as twenty thou- 
 sand of them, and had a complete power of life and 
 death allowed them by the public laws. If any master 
 was killed, all his slaves, within a given distance, were 
 put to death. Many of the slaves were persons of rank 
 and high personal accomplishments. And, what is above 
 all sad to think of, the hardest, most unpitying severi- 
 ties of service fell to the lot of women. The vast 
 bread-supply of all families and cities was ground by 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 309 
 
 mills that were operated by women, and at this terrible 
 wrench of toil, the fair daughters of Corinth, and the 
 wild maidens of Thrace, and the stately matrons of 
 Carthage, were all compelled to serve. Mercy appeared 
 to be a thing forgot. There was no sensibility thought 
 of or expected. A slave must be a slave, and there 
 was no place for tenderness, be his kind or country 
 what it would. How perfectly bereft of human pity 
 for these captives the highest, most approved virtue of 
 their owners could be, we may see distinctly, looking 
 into their bosom as through an open window, when the 
 horrid old virtue-dragon, Cato, censor-general of the 
 morals of his time, gives written advice to the farmers 
 to have it as a law of economy—and economy to him 
 was virtue—‘to sell worn-out iron implements, old 
 slaves, sick slaves, and other odds and ends that have 
 no further use on the farm!” There was no debate of 
 right in this kind of slavery for along time. Nations 
 were natural enemies, and slavery was the natural 
 punishment of enemies. 
 
 At length a new chapter was opened by the importa 
 tion of negro slaves from Egypt. And these were very 
 much sought after, because the public feeling was get- 
 ting drugged by so great severities, and the critical 
 task of managing so many great people. The new 
 Africans were bought as household toys and ornaments, 
 “valued for their complexion, and considered luxuries.” 
 Finally, after some ages have passed away, the modern 
 slavery emerges in just this form. It takes possession 
 of the African race, and thinks it no crime to appro- 
 
310 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 priate their labor, because they are so very inferior, 
 that having a master is having their natural privilege. 
 
 They are not going to be captives, every way as re 
 spectable as their masters; but they are going to be 
 things procured by commerce, and convenient, every 
 way, to be so used—done up in a different color, which is 
 to be the police-mark of their ownership. But the 
 Christian sense of the world begins to look into this 
 matter of color, and it comes out, more and more dis- 
 tinctly, that, under it, there are moral personalities, 
 brothers of an everlasting, divine brotherhood, creatures 
 of thought, and speech, and music, and vision, and hay- 
 ing all most inborn rights of such. And so, by going 
 down a stage, where color will cover it, slavery draws 
 the argument down, to just that point where it is itself 
 going to be weakest, and most certainly doomed to give 
 way. In this manner it is now, in our own day, close 
 upon its end, and it will soon be gone, never more to 
 be seen. Farewell to it; for with it goes the rankest 
 poison of private virtue, the worst blight of society, the 
 most fatal incapacity sin has begotten for public law and 
 liberty. From this point onward the world may breathe 
 more freely ! 
 
 3. It isa great thing, as regards the moral training of 
 life and society, that distinctions of color and race help 
 us to arrive-at just conceptions of human equality. 
 We begin, as already suggested, in a way of abstraction, 
 casting off the inequalities that visibly inhere in one 
 stock compared with another. So far there is no equal- 
 ‘ty. Brought down thus upon the inner properties of 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 311 
 
 manhood, we are met by the discovery that individuals 
 of the same race are certainly not equal, whether in 
 quantity of being, or capacity of doing. Single persons, 
 again, of a race that is inferior, will sometimes have a 
 larger, more capable nature, than others of a supericr 
 race. So far, we find no base on which to build a 
 scheme of duty that makes everybody the exact equal 
 of everybody. On the contrary, a great part of the 
 duties of life are based, and must be, in the fact that 
 men are unequal; some inferior, some superior; some 
 elected to power and leadership, and some to homage 
 and trust. Every thing here will depend on how much 
 of personal quantity and soul-force different men may 
 have for their endowment; how much reason, con- 
 science, love, will, vision, music, science, and worship, 
 they have room for; and then it will be seen what pre- 
 cedences they are to yield, what deferences to pay, or 
 what patronages to assume, what forward conditions 
 to support. Thus far, the true beauty of life will con- 
 sist in a due observance of inequalities ; every man con- 
 senting to be himself, and let everybody else be himself 
 too, in his own true measure. But, carrying our ab- 
 straction one degree farther, we do, at last, arrive ata 
 stage of true unquestionable equality. Excluding all 
 distinctions of type and appearance, and all diversities 
 of quantity and force, we have left us an exact sameness 
 of species. That is, we are all men, all moral natures, 
 so completely akin to each other that truth to one is 
 truth to another, right principle to one right principle 
 to another, God, and love, and worship, and joy the 
 
 a 
 
312 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 same to all. So that here an almost new code of duties 
 dawns on our discovery, assisted, in a marked degree, 
 by the antagonisms of color, and the strange counter- 
 envisagements that make sameness of kind so conspicu- 
 ous. In this new code of equalities, our ripest, finest 
 moral culture is to be perfected ; and many have a large, 
 long lesson here to learn, who do not yet imagine it. 
 For there is a whole high tier of virtues opened here, 
 that are really the most delicate of all, and have the 
 finest mold of dignity. They are such as take note of, 
 and observe, what belongs to sameness of kind; virtues 
 that we class under the words deference, consideration, 
 and the like. They are such kind of acts, as pay re- 
 spect to man in that he is man; reflections, so to speak, 
 of the respect a man has to himself. Consideration is 
 a word that covers a whole class of virtues that, in 
 beauty of soul, exceed all others. In that beauty it 
 says: “ This isa man, thus much I must observe in that 
 he isa man. I must not wound his respect, must not 
 violate his feeling. As he is a being in my own nature, 
 I must do honor to him in that nature, as my fellow ; 
 I must do him true man-help for his manhood’s sake.” 
 And how beautiful is the opportunity given for this 
 late-growing kind of excellence, in the distinctions of 
 race so often trampled by coarse insult, and wanking 
 words of contempt! 
 
 When we come to assert our bill of rights in the 
 State, rights that, in our American doctrine of liberty, 
 are supposed to be included in the principle that we 
 
 re ‘created equal,” we are to base our civil equality 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 313 
 
 just where we do our moral. We are equal and have 
 equal rights, simply in the fact that we are all men, 
 having all a right to be treated as men, and one 
 as truly as another. If one is lame, another poor, 
 another untaught, another varied by the color of 
 his skin or the crisp of his hair, yet they are all men, 
 and the law must do no disrespect to the equal and sub- 
 lime right which inheres in their manhood. If the ques- 
 tion be whether, as men, they have inherently the right 
 of suffrage, the true answer is No; that right belongs 
 to nobody as of course. A government may be every way 
 legitimate which acknowledges no such right—what- 
 ever may be asserted by reformers and constitution- 
 mongers to the contrary notwithstanding. But as the 
 world advances, this prerogative of suffrage will be 
 naturally extended ; for, as the world is capable of it, 
 and will be more capable of benefit because of it, a 
 wider concession of it may be rightly demanded. And 
 then, if it is conceded, it must be done equally, or im- 
 partially. If it is conditioned by sex, or age, or prop- 
 erty, or ability to read, then it must be so conditioned 
 for all. But if color is made the condition, then man- 
 hood is not, and equality is so far denied. Such law is 
 but a name for oppression, whether it be a law of Con- 
 necticut, or of South Carolina. It may be difficult to 
 establish, in certain parts of our Union, a basis of right 
 so impartial; it may even cost us scenes of blood; but 
 we have learned to bleed for our principles, and the 
 duties we owe to our sublime future may help us, if we 
 
 must, to do more of it. 
 14 
 
314 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 4. It belongs to the genius of Christianity to prove 
 itself by remarkable inversions of order, which it may 
 well do here. It never moves in the same lines with 
 policy, or state craft; considering by what combina- 
 tions it may obtain weight, or by what wisely projected 
 wars it may extend its dominion; neither in the same 
 lines with philosophy, where the uncultured multitude 
 are of no account, and the school is to win its success 
 by the number and high intellectual distinctions of its 
 pupils; but it begins with low-grade men, descending 
 itself into their low grade of life. It begins at Naza- 
 reth, and is, morally speaking, born there, and Nazareth 
 is the name of a mean provincial town that carries 
 ignominy in the sound. It takes for its first disciples 
 a company of Galileans, and these, unlettered fisher- 
 men. And from that day to this, it has been a gospel 
 specially preached to the poor, and has raised great 
 movements in the world by heaving continually up- 
 ward; seldom by taking hold of powers at the summit 
 of society and working downward. And the reason for 
 this very singular inversion of order is not, that God 
 prefers to let nobody have the compliment of his work 
 but himself, or that he is set in willfulness and jealous 
 self-assertion against the great and forward men who 
 might move on his cause more rapidly. No, the real fact 
 is that nobody can be duly taken hold of by the gospel, 
 but the meek or humble. The wise, and prudent, and 
 great, know too much, and are too full of their prodi 
 gious over-wisdoms, to really believe; only the babes 
 of poverty and obscurity can do that, so as to verily 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 315 
 
 come into the gospel as it is. Paul was accepted as a 
 man of learning, it is true, but he was so completely 
 humbled by the hand of God upon him, as to be truly 
 schooled into his place. Constantine also was allowed, 
 as a king, to come into the fold, and it was a really dark 
 dispensation; for the fold had a very heavy load to bear, 
 when he put his kingcraft down upon them and their 
 gospel. Accordingly it is one of the most remarkable 
 facts of our Christian history, that it has been always 
 exalting them of low degree, and setting them in ad- 
 vance of the lofty and the proud. It has been the king- 
 dom of the weak, and has thrown itself up into power 
 by the tremendous underlift of its humble, once dejected 
 people. 
 
 For a truly observing, richly experienced Christian, 
 therefore, it will be difficult, I think, not to anticipate 
 another great turn of Christian history, to be sometime 
 accomplished by another more sublime inversion of 
 order than has ever yet been seen; I refer of course to 
 the possible consummation of our gospel by the uplift- 
 ing and spiritual new birth of the African race. In 
 their present low state of culture they do not bear a 
 hopeful look, but in certain points of quality and tem- 
 perament that are most peculiar in them, they seem to 
 be contrived, and made ready for some such grand final 
 chapter of inversion. They are now the true Nazarenes 
 and Galileans of the world—they are humble enough, 
 and they know how to believe. It has been the great 
 defect of what are called the western nations, that they 
 speculate overmuch, and strangle the gospel, or make 
 
816 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 it small, by trying tc think it in their own small heads. 
 They receive the inspirations of it cautiously of course, 
 and only partially. But these Africans are constitu- 
 tionally inspirable, and when they get far enough ad- 
 vanced in culture to be carried evenly, without excess, 
 or undue heats of frenzy, and the clatter of our specu- 
 lation is so far spent as to allow silence in heaven for a 
 space, what may be more properly expected than a 
 grand, prophesying testimony by these Africans, heard 
 at the top of the world? Their gentle, friendly nature, 
 tempered by the necessary culture, will make them pop- 
 ular, as their history makes them cosmopolitan, and the 
 long affliction of their history will prepare them, not 
 unlikely, to a kind of cosmopolitan precedence that 
 moves no jealousy. Besides, the contempt of their per- 
 son is now gone by; for how certainly is every worst 
 complexion or worst texture of skin fined toward qual- 
 ity, by character and culture; and how easily, by varia- 
 tions how evanescent, are the lubber-lines of a wild, 
 rude nature put flowing into grace and fair proportion, 
 when the plastic hand of Christian beauty lays its touch 
 upon them. . Call them black, they will yet be written 
 “black but comely,” and our races most advanced in form 
 will, it may be, have no gift of beauty more unqualified. 
 When the believing throngs are gathered in therefore 
 from the East and the West, and the North and the 
 South, to sit down together in the kingdom, even as 
 Christ has given us to expect, what is more easy to be- 
 lieve than that our long ago despised African brothers, 
 now despised no-longer, will reveal the meaning of 
 
OF DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR. 317 
 
 their late-maturing, last-day gifts, their capacities of 
 vision, and music, and song, and will let us hear the 
 harps they carried in their bosom strike into play in the 
 customary inspirations of religion? Their “ word of 
 the Lord,” breaking into the old literature, will be like 
 the prophet’s word to the bones, and, for aught we 
 know, will be darting along the wires of the world— 
 bulletins of trade and diplomacy all still—as the fresh- 
 est, newest news of the kingdom. 
 
 This appears, it may be, quite extravagant—extrava- 
 gant enough to be weak—but we have it to say, that it 
 is the genius of Christianity to work these grand inver- 
 sions, and that we have, in this very singular people, just 
 the qualities and seed-gifts which long ages of culture 
 and piety may lift into a precedence of so great beauty. 
 It is not said or expected with confidence, that so great 
 honors are to be won by the race, or find their realiza- 
 tion here in this country. They take their places here 
 under great disadvantages, and their friends, doing all 
 they can for them, will suffer many misgivings. What 
 shall save them from their enemies? what from them- 
 selves? Perhaps they were allowed to be brought 
 hither, that they might obtain conceptions of society 
 and government for Africa; perhaps to open a way into 
 the English tongue and its books, and so into the possi- 
 bility of creating an Anglicized Africa. However it 
 may be with them here, Africa, we suppose, will con- 
 tinue in its own sable color, and be covered in the 
 course of ages with new and populous commonwealths. 
 The nations that come first into history do not of 
 
318 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 course rise highest. The Babylonians and Egyptians 
 and Persians had their day early; the Syrians, Cartha 
 ginians, Greeks, and Romans, came after, also to die 
 Then came along much later the German, Anglo-Saxon, 
 Gallic races, all to reach a higher mark of power and 
 civilization. Perhaps the Africans will come up late 
 enough to be last, rising into great inspirations as their 
 forerunners have into great wealth, and science, and 
 heroism. The European nations are not likely to settle 
 Africa, because of the climate—Africa must belong to 
 the Africans. And it is right proper for them, if they 
 may, to make it a last, new sphere of righteousness and 
 peace; the best and most nearly divine it has been 
 given to the world to see. 
 
XV. 
 OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIF, 
 
 Ir is difficult to maintain as much sympathy as, 
 perhaps, we ought, for that class of people who are 
 always bewailing the mutability of earthly conditions. 
 For the dark things they encounter so complainingly 
 have their darkness, mainly, in the blind self-sympathy, 
 that has shut away the manlier functions of intelli- 
 gence. Indeed, we could hardly speak with patience of 
 persons in this mood of affliction, were it not that some- 
 times very great and sudden changes do occur that are 
 stunning surprises to everybody, and even throw the 
 mind of the sufferer off its balance, for a time, by the 
 tremendous shock they give it. What these may say, 
 when the tempest is on them, and before the whirl of 
 their brain is settled, will, of course, be pardoned. 
 Still, generally, it is not such that are most apt to 
 complain, or can not manage to receive the shock in 
 silence, but it is the drooping, low-tempered, half-manly 
 souls, that think they have a right to be afflicted, be- 
 cause the world refuses to keep such gait as they would 
 have it. They find themselves at sea, though but a 
 little way off the shore, and begin, before encountering 
 any specially rough weather, to make a point of being 
 sea-sick because of the element. Their difficulty is 
 
820 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 that they give way to their temperament, and let it 
 keep them moping, or moaning, when a little more 
 counsel taken of thought and reason would steady 
 their vigor and keep them erect. They would no more 
 pine over their changes, and have it, as the lamentable 
 poetry of their life, to repeat— 
 
 “Naught may endure but mutability,” 
 
 but they would rather like the whirl of their vehicle, 
 and even laugh at an occasional jolt in the passage. 
 Of course they will be tried as we all are; bright prom- 
 ises will fade, friends will betray them, fortune will 
 vanish, health will break, a great many troubles will 
 - overtake them, and a great many annoyances invade 
 their peace; but if they have only some just opinion 
 of life and of what is wanting in it, they will never take 
 the mood of self-sympathy or dejection, as if some very 
 strange thing had befallen them. They will even keep 
 their feet the more stiffly because of their changes. 
 Now, the fatal omission of those who take the more 
 dejected key, and are much in complaint respecting 
 life’s changes, is, that they have never made discovery 
 and due account of the fact, that what we call muta- 
 ‘ bility, apart from the fickleness of evil, is nothing but 
 the Jaw of motion, or mutation, as included in the ne- 
 cessary progress of motion. In other words, God has 
 made us not simply to be, but to move, and by such mo- 
 tion get a way of transit through the course of discipline 
 we want. And then, as the discipline comes, chapter 
 after chapter, sometimes heavy, almost never,-such as 
 
 
 
 4 
 F 
 . 
 4 
 
e 
 
 OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 321 
 
 we should choose for ourselves, it is to be our comfort, 
 and a very considerable satisfaction besides, that we are 
 on the move whither God sends us, and getting just the 
 benefit he means to give us. In one view nothing is 
 secure and abiding, just because nothing is made to be 
 stationary. The present is transitory, the future uncer- 
 tain, but not because God chooses, for some inscrutable 
 reason, to put us sighing over the mutabilities. The 
 question was between having something done here, and 
 having nothing done; between having events coming 
 out in progressions, and having neither events nor pro- 
 gressions; between giving us some benefit in life, and 
 setting us up as pasteboard men in a painted world, to 
 find no use or real meaning in it. What is much bet- 
 ter than that, and exactly contrary, God has ordained 
 motion for us, transit, and, what is but another name 
 for the same thing, grand mutations that are all to be 
 our lessons. If, then, life, as we say, is a river, and 
 creation itself is a flood; if nothing really zs to us but 
 events or turnings out—changes that are always ending, 
 never ended; if in this flood we live, and with it are 
 borne along to the ocean; if the worlds can not stop 
 rolling above us, or the winds settle round us; if our 
 body is itself a river of circulation, flowing away and 
 replacing itself every year; if one generation goeth and 
 another cometh, all battling their way forward, wear- 
 ing and worn, till their work is done; and then, if all 
 this outward transition is but shaping and writing out 
 a soul-history correspondent, changing the sky of the 
 
 mind within, and setting it onward—feeling, fancy, 
 144 
 
822 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 hope, will, all the myrmidon powers that play the 
 phases of experience—through doings and comings-to- 
 pass, that are seas of mutabilities within, but are steadily 
 shaping, and meant to shape a character: if this, I say, 
 is the motion God ordains, what better can we do than 
 to bravely consent to it, and take the mutabilities, one 
 and all, save the mutabilities of evil, in glad, strong 
 welcome? 
 
 No one fails to observe the general going on of the 
 creation—the seasons, day and night, the moons, the 
 tides, the breathings, the heart-beats, the soul itself not 
 able to cease thinking when it sleeps—even as if the 
 universal order were a clock, running to keep time; 
 but it is not seen as distinctly as it might be, that in- 
 numerable, ever-progressing mutabilities are involved 
 in it. Not a thing can be to-day where it was yester- 
 day; the past is vanishing, the future is coming, and it 
 can not be that many things we value and cling to will 
 not, in one way or another, go by even as we go our- 
 selves. Property, friends, expectations, foundations— 
 every thing we value—is in transit ; and if it does not 
 wholly go by at-some particular minute, it will change 
 color, fall into new relations, and be so far modified 
 that we can hardly think it the same. In this general 
 economy of motion it is impossible that the changes 
 should not sometimes take us off our feet, or crowd us 
 to the wall; and it will be none the worse, or any thing 
 to put us whimpering or complaining, if they do. New 
 chapters are wanted, and if the last new chapter is dif- 
 ferent from the one preceding, it will probably be all 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 323 
 
 ‘the better that it is. To be thrust out of fortune, or 
 thrust into misfortune, is no so prodigious calamity, 
 save where the man is weak; and then the misfortune 
 is probably just the thing that is needed to put a little 
 strength into his weakness. But if he gets heart-sick 
 easily, and sinks into the condoling and complaining 
 mood, he can not be said to be unmanned by it, for in 
 fact he only was not manned before. 
 
 I wish it were also possible for these afflicted people 
 who are so easily disturbed and made anxious by the 
 little mutations or seeming losses of their life, to see 
 how intolerable their condition would be if they were, 
 in fact, glued fast in a motionless position, and corm- 
 pelled to simply stay. After awhile they would begin 
 to sigh for some kind of relief from the tedium of their 
 immobility. Only let there be some stir, they would 
 say; let this dreary monotony take in something to 
 give a sense of change. What we call fortune gets to 
 be a bore, if it brings no changes, but merely keeps up 
 for us the stale rounds of comfort—the dress, the house, 
 the furniture ; the same table, and tax-bill, and grocer’s 
 bill; the same coach and the same driver, and the same 
 dull-looking, stereotyped faces, called our friends. We 
 want something to change color. It would even be a 
 relief to lose something; to be less fully supplied, and 
 get a new motive for economy; no matter if it be a 
 little more anxious economy, or more nearly pinched 
 with want. To have only made a bad indorsement, 
 and lost one’s means by it, is better, a great deal, than 
 to have the fixity of a stone. To get no sense of mo- 
 
32-4 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 tion, no stage of transit, is inexpressibly wearisome 
 And it will not do to be delicate as to the kind of 
 transit we are to have. If it is not pleasant or agree- 
 able, it is not half as unpleasant or disagreeable as none 
 atall would be. Even passing out of a good and losing 
 it is better than to be a petrifaction in it, or to have it 
 petrified about us. What kind of time would plants 
 have, in the most splendid herbarium in the world, if __ 
 only a very little sense and vitality were left in them, 
 when so booked ? 
 But a great many of the mutabilities we complain 
 of, it will be remembered, are occasioned by the wrongs 
 that rob, or sting, or betray us. Even so, and we have | 
 it as a right, of course, to be dissatisfied with the wrong- 
 doers, and deeply feel the injury we suffer from them. 
 The insecurities, instabilities, and dark adversities of 
 life, are largely due to perfidies and frauds in this man- 
 ner. Simply to lose confidence in a friend is enough, 
 sometimes, to change the whole cast of our condition— 
 the revelation discovered takes away our expectation, 
 eclipses the bright point of life, and changes the very 
 color of the world. And we shall not feel it the less 
 when it strips us of our property, breaks our credit, or 
 invents insidious attacks on our good name. Still, even 
 here, the mere changes we suffer, apart from their 
 causes, ought not to be any so great part of our afflie- 
 tion. The changes may be only great morai advan- 
 tages to us, pushing us on to higher points of character 
 than we could otherwise reach. As men judge, the 
 being stripped of one’s property is a very great and sore 
 
 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 325 
 
 calamity ; and yet, how many have been really created 
 by it, in all that constitutes their noblest manhood! 
 how many families that were going to be only pam- 
 pered and softened by the condition of ease it gave 
 them, girded to a manly habit and a grand overmaster- 
 ing energy, which gives them a significance to them- 
 selves otherwise never to be attained! If they had 
 been thus stripped by lightning, and not by human 
 wrong, the change itself would have been the same, 
 and perhaps they will get a very great additional ad- 
 vantage when it has been done by wrong, in the fact 
 that it gives them a more wary apprehension of what 
 may be looked for in mankind, and sets them in a 
 closer way of exactness themselves, as regards the 
 keeping of their integrity. An over-implicit or over- 
 facile trust in men is a very great practical weakness, 
 and many can afford to be cured of it at almost any 
 cost. It begets, in fact, a moral weakness, that offers 
 itself to be preyed on by every sort of cunning or bad 
 association. All evil is perfidy at bottom, and we can 
 not be too soon aware that some kind of perfidy is 
 always likely to be working in it. All the worse sign 
 is it for us, when defrauded or betrayed by wrong, to 
 shut our eyes, instead of letting them be opened, and 
 fall to moaning over the sad uncertainties and muta- 
 bilities of earthly things. All such dreary sentimental- 
 izing is weakness. How much better to remember 
 that, if we have been troubled and thrown out of con- 
 dition by others, we have not been by any fault of 
 honor and truth, or any sort of vice, in ourse:ves. In 
 
326 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 that noble consciousness it ought to be much that we 
 can firmly rest. 
 
 Thus far we deal with only the minor and subordinate 
 conditions of the subject, such as lie more nearly in the 
 common field of thought and observation concerning it ; 
 he principal matter still remains. 
 
 What we have been saying of motion, transition, pro- 
 gression, and shifting discipline of experience, needed 
 for the consolidation of character, is true, and the moral 
 uses of the instabilities or mutabilities of time are suf- 
 ficiently evident, even if we look no further. But there 
 is another kind of use, or class of uses, which is deeper 
 and more nearly fundamental, growing out of the rela- 
 tions of these mutable conditions to a future condition 
 both immutable and immortal. We are put to sea, we 
 shall find, in the mutable, that we may reach the im- 
 mutable, which is only a true version of the immortal. 
 There is a very close connection, as will thus appear, 
 between the dark and lowering instabilities we so much 
 complain of, and so resolutely fight against, and the 
 idea discovered of our immortality ; between it also, 
 and the practical bent of our life in that direction. 
 
 1. These mutabilities give us the idea, and so the ac- 
 cepted and established fact of immortality. Let us see 
 it we can trace the manner of the process. 
 
 Nothing is more commonly observed than the im- 
 mense eagerness of mankind to get away from the 
 mutations, or above the mutabilities, of their mortal 
 condition. Not less observable is the unregulated sen- 
 sibility by which the less resolute, less firmly tempered 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 327 
 
 souls are so piteously distressed, when their seeming 
 foundations begin to be shaken or shattered by some 
 kind of disaster. And the true explanation is, that 
 every moral nature has belongings to a state that is really 
 above mutation ; so that when it casts off the bond, or 
 forgets the grand affinities that should fasten it there, 
 it is turned to look after some kind of anchorage in the 
 mutable that will answer its want. Hence the panic 
 we suffer in our losses; hence the indefatigable indus- 
 tries and the prodigiously strenuous works that engage 
 us. The zest, the passion, the infatuation, we may 
 almost say, of our endeavor is, to so far get above 
 causes, or get the command of causes, as to fix or 
 fasten our own future. And the pitch of tension to 
 which we are often raised in this endeavor is even 
 frightful—as if the strain of it must sometime snap the 
 cords of life itself. And then we make up our account 
 of the fact, by saying that man pursues the mortal with 
 the zeal of a nature immortal. In which we are right, 
 only we do not perceive as distinctly as we might, that 
 this fact of immortality is a fact that gets both its evi- 
 dence and enforcement, at the precise point of antago- 
 nism between the mutable and the immutable. The 
 real first question is not immortality, as we commonly 
 assume, but immutability ; for the sense of our ever- 
 duringness comes through no speculation about the 
 matter of dateless continuance, but through what ger- 
 minations we have in us, and what experiences we get, 
 of the immutable. It is morally and not speculatively 
 pronounced in us. As a mere opinion, or intellectually 
 
328 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 discovered fact, it is nothing. No argument of that 
 
 kind ever made the smallest approach to proving it. 
 But the grand mutation element in which we live is 
 continually heaving us upon it, and compelling us to — 
 have it as in fact, whether we have it as in opinion — 
 or not. We have no thought of immortality, it may 
 be, but only of something to be gotten out of the 
 mutable that shall be as good as immutable; some pro- 
 visioning of a perfectly sure state, such as no mischances 
 
 and changes can overset or shake. In these prodigious — 
 
 throes of endeavor that keep the world astir, we are 
 scorning the mutabilities and pressing toward the 
 changeless. Our effort is absurd, as being in the plane 
 of mere temporalities, but it proves our want of the im- 
 mutable, and so our immortal capacity. Having a 
 nature packed full of possibilities and fore-reaching 
 affinities for a morally immutable condition, we are 
 thus tremendously moved by aspirations toward it after 
 it is lost. Seeing every thing in transit about us, we 
 still go on to build the untransitory in it, moaning 
 feebly when it seems to be sliding from under us, or 
 striving, in all hugest endeavor, to fasten a foundation 
 that can not slide. And the result is that our mutabili- 
 ties, of which we so often complain, are proving always 
 the sublimity of their uses, by crowding us toward the 
 immutable state we do not even dare to think of, and the 
 immortal state we think of, but can only faintly believe. 
 
 We exist here in a double connection ; first, with 
 the transitory on one side, and, secondly, with the un- 
 transitory on the other; and we fare, as many other 
 
 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 829 
 
 creatures do that are made for two distinct elements, 
 coming into distress in one element, the moment they 
 lose connection with the other. The sponge, for ex- 
 ample, gets its food and life from the fluid, ever-moving 
 waters of the sea ; but it must be also fastened to some 
 rock that does not move, and gives firm anchorage to 
 it in the waters. And then, if by any mischance it is 
 detached from its hold, it floats away, driven loosely 
 by the unstable element, and is actually drowned by 
 the very waters that were to give it feeding and main- 
 tain its growth. The bird has wings connecting it 
 with the air, and feet on which it takes the ground for 
 rest, or settles in firm hold on its perch for the sleep of 
 the night. But if it wanders too far seaward on its 
 fickle elements, or is driven wildly out by the tempest, 
 it gets bewildered, and settles weary and heart-sick on 
 the deck of some ship espied from afar, submitting to 
 be taken by the hands. Trees get their feeding largely 
 from the air and the light, in which their foliage so recep- 
 tively spreads itself, and their limbs so gracefully play. 
 But they must have their roots also taking firm hold 
 of the ground, by these to be localized and kept erect 
 and steady in the storms. And when the changing 
 season tinges them in sad colors above, and finally 
 strips them bare, they so far seem to even die; only 
 holding fast their clinch upon the frozen earth with 
 their numbed, icy fingers—even as a diver holds his 
 breath in the water—till the summer light and heat 
 return to quicken their life. By these and other like 
 feekle analogies we conceive the double state of man, 
 
330 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 connected on one side with infinite mutabilities in 
 things, and on the other with immutable ideas and 
 truths and God; so that if he undertakes to get on 
 apart from these latter, to be fed on the transitory, 
 established in the ficklenesses, or to get firm footing in 
 the cloudland of weather and storm, he must do what 
 neither sponge, nor bird, nor tree was ever able—make 
 the transitory constant, and the mutable as good and 
 sure as the immovable. 
 
 But we must have a closer and more critical inspec- 
 tion of this matter. Immutability is a character that 
 is commonly reserved for God, as being his exclusive 
 right or possibility; and there may even seem to be 
 some want of reverence in the supposition that it can 
 at all belong to man as a human attainment. That 
 depends entirely on the question whether God’s immu- 
 tability is grounded in his quantities, or in his prin- 
 ciples. If it is grounded in his quantities, like his 
 omniscience or omnipotence, and belongs in that way 
 to his infinite magnitudes, then, of course, it is impos- 
 sible for any creature. If it is grounded in his prin- 
 ciples, if it is a moral and no mere natural attribute, 
 then it may belong as well to any creature who can be 
 established in the same principles; the very object of 
 his training, too, may be to get him thus established. 
 And when this is done, when he is gotten forever above 
 temptation, clear of mental swervings or mutations, he 
 is morally immutable. His integrity is perfect never, 
 till it becomes immutability. Meantime, it will be 
 difficult to find how God’s mere quantities should make 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 331 
 
 him immutable without principles, or a state of moral 
 fixity in them ; quite as difficult to find how the same 
 fixity in the same principles should fail to make his 
 creature immutable, for mere defect of quantity. 
 
 It less easily occurs to us to think of immutability, 
 as a character belonging to man, that he is visibly and 
 consciously so far off, and so confusedly mixed with all 
 the mutations of time. He is temptable in his best 
 condition, so far mutable, and it is well if he does not 
 show it by a good deal of sadly mutable practice. And 
 yet it should not be incredible that he may have found 
 his bearing in principles that do not change, in God 
 who is forever as to-day, and so far has gotten the sure 
 presentiment and germ of a perfectly unchanging chars 
 acter, finally to be consummated. 
 
 I think it likely, too, that the proposing of any such 
 ideal for man’s attainment will be scarcely welcome to 
 many. They will think of the immutable state as a 
 kind of imprisonment, or stale monotony, where liber- 
 ties are gone by, progressions ended, varieties excluded. 
 When the mutations are all over, what will be left 
 them, but to simply be falling into just that state we 
 have described of insupportable tedium, that will make 
 any kind of motion, or change, a relief. Whereas the 
 supposed imprisonment will only be a state of fixity in 
 principles, which principles will be themselves guaran- 
 ties of unchanging liberty and progression, instigators 
 of all highest action, fountains of all grandest muta- 
 tions and varieties not evil, laws of eternally right 
 motion. Nothing is excluded but the bad motions 
 
832 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 and double-minded caprices of a nature, warping and 
 warped, swerving and swerved, under evil. Evil ex- 
 cluded and gone, immutability is everywhere. 
 
 Let us see, then, from the inventory of man’s gifts, 
 by what furniture and outfit he is equipped for any 
 such transcendent character. First, we have the fact, 
 that certain great moral ideas, which are immutable and 
 eternal, belong inherently to his moral nature itself, 
 and assert their standard authority in it. To be aman 
 is to think them, and not to think them is to be merely 
 an animal; all men do in fact think them exactly alike. 
 And when they bind, they bind us all alike. They are 
 necessary and absolute. They can not be less or dif- 
 ferent; rejected they stand, violated they are whole, 
 In their own nature immutable, they assume the right 
 to govern all mind, and whatever mind receives them 
 so far passes out of the mutable. 
 
 Take, for example, the truth-principle, the necessary, 
 everlasting, ideal distinction between the true and the 
 false. It can as little be debated, in a way of opinion, 
 as the idea of space: it is absolute. If now any moral 
 being accept this truth-principle, to live for the truth 
 and by it, he becomes a principled man as regards all 
 truth, in distinction from an unprincipled, or non-prin- 
 cipled man. He is not settled, of course, in the knowl- 
 edge of all particular truths. He may err a long time 
 in opinions, or matters of fact; but being in the truth- 
 principle, sworn to seek, and serve, and live and die 
 for, the truth, he is polarized in that principle, and 
 will settle his vibrations closer and closer, in all his 
 
 _ 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 335 
 
 discriminations, determinations, and faiths. Being 
 fixed in the principle of truth-seeking, he is just so far 
 a true man; whereas there are multitudes of men, it 
 may be, holding vastly more true judgments and 
 opinions and fewer errors than he, who are yet only 
 governed by the market, or the school, or the church, 
 and are really not true men at all, because there is ne 
 immutable first principle in them of devotion to the 
 truth for truth’s sake. They are clocks set by all other 
 clocks, and not dials set for the sun. 
 
 Exactly the same thing holds, in exactly the same 
 manner, as respects the absolute, necessary, ideal dis- 
 tinction of right and wrong. And the truly right man 
 is not he that does prevailingly right things, according 
 to the mos or common law moral of society, but he that 
 takes the principle of right-doing to follow it implicitly, 
 at any cost, and even when it puts him against society 
 itself. All the repentances, sacrifices, and martyrdoms 
 begin here, at the point of immutable right; but there 
 are thousands of men who will be offended when they 
 are not admitted to be properly righteous, who never 
 took the ordeal of right-principle, to stand or fall with 
 it, in their lives. All the right doings in which they 
 please themselves are deferences to custom in the mu- 
 table, never to the all-dominating sovereignty of right 
 itself—immutable, everlasting right. This whole side 
 of their moral nature, where its affinities are to prove 
 their sublimity by conducting them inward where 
 God’s own immutability rests, is ignored. They are 
 virtuous men as far as the whiffling element of 
 
334 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 what the world calls virtue makes them so, but the — 
 
 everlastingness of absolute right they know nothing of. 
 
 The same is true as regards the more strictly religious, 
 inborn relations of the soul with God. When it turns 
 itself to God, it is not as when it came to its own moral 
 ideas simply, but it comes to a being other than itself, 
 before and over against itself. It is deing trusting itself 
 to being, finite being to infinite being, in that also to 
 be complemented and, as it were, infinited with it. 
 Whereupon, as God is himself a nature supreme above 
 all force or change by force, it gets the sense of touching 
 bottom in the changeless. No man really believes in 
 God, as in practical trust, in distinction from only 
 believing some propositional matter concerning him, 
 without having God verified to him as by consciousness 
 —substance in substance—and then he will as certainly 
 be fixed in the sense of his own ever-duringness; which 
 ever-duringness is not the opinion, reasoned or gotten 
 up, of his own immortality, but the sense, in fact, of 
 being down upon, in and of the immutable. 
 
 We perceive, in this manner, that the immutable is 
 not as far off from our human nature as we commonly 
 think; that our moral ideas and religious affinities stock 
 us, so to speak, for the attainment, and that just here 
 all our convictions of immortality get their spring. 
 Immortality is nothing but the fact translated of im- 
 mutable morality. We are so bound up with eternal 
 ideas and God, that we have the fact of immortality by 
 mora. impression. Feeding, or prepared to feed, on the 
 eternal and immutable, feeling it stir within us ever 
 
 
 
 
 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 335 
 
 more, we need not ask for it, or go after it to fetch it 
 by wise argumentations; we have its certifying touch 
 already felt in our consciousness. Besides, these muta- 
 bilities in which our lives are mixed are turning us ever 
 about, and driving us on, and crowding us in, where, in 
 trying to get hold of the changeless, the changeless in 
 a higher key gets hold of us. And we so begin to 
 think our immortality as a fact of the understanding, 
 because it is already upon us in power, in moral impres- 
 sions back of the understanding. What we last and 
 least imagine, the candidacy of our moral nature for 
 the immutable becomes an awakened sense of it, which 
 sense emerges, and takes form in thought or opinion, as 
 a mentally discovered fact of immortality. Hence it 
 is that we so readily believe it as a truth, when we 
 make so poor a figure in maintaining it. We reason it 
 from the immateriality of the soul; or from the great 
 powers of mind, so scantily developed in this life; or 
 from our unwillingness to cease and be no more; or 
 from any worst, or best, of fifty other kinds of premise; 
 but the short account of the matter is, that nature is 
 beforehand with us, commanding us, so to speak, into 
 immortality; commanding us, that is, into and by ever- 
 lasting, absolute principles, even the same which anchor © 
 God’s immutability itself; and, what is more, command- 
 ing us home to God’s own infinite nature, there to be 
 complemented in his ever-during sufficiency. Nature 
 scorns, in this manner, all the speculative arguments, 
 and puts it on us, going directly by both theologians 
 and skeptics, to know our immortality, as we know the 
 
; 336 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 face of duty, or of God. What they teach, or reason, 
 is a matter of comparatively small consequence, because 
 the fact is already out, asking neither help nor consent 
 from them. We pass now— 
 
 2. To the more advanced position or use already 
 suggested, viz., the fact that our instabilities, or mutable 
 conditions, not only discover to us our inherently im- 
 mortal nature, but so work upon us as to bend us 
 practically toward the immortal state, as the only 
 sufficiently wise end or satisfactory consummation of 
 our life. 
 
 We are set on thus, practically, toward the condi- 
 tion of immutability by two kinds of impulse from the 
 mutable state, a negative and a positive acting concur- 
 rently. In the negative we have it discovered to us, 
 that there is and can be no such reliable basis of 
 expectation as we try for in things, and before coming 
 into principles. Nothing short of immutability, whether 
 we so think or not, really meets our want, and this we 
 strike nowhere, save in the everlasting principles of 
 duty, and the divine anticipations of religion. Whether 
 it was possible to give a more reliable, and less fluctuat- 
 ing, billowy character to mere things, 1 do not know; 
 but if it was, I think we can see that we profoundly 
 want just all the transitional, unsteady elements we 
 have. There plainly must not only be motion, or 
 transit, but there must be’surprises, iucaleulable somer- 
 sets, infinite unreliabilities—all that we include in our 
 weakest sighs of surrender, and stoutest wars of 
 defiance to the fickleness of fortune—else we shall be 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 337 
 
 only losing all the benefits of living, by rooting our 
 selves down into the crevices of things, as trees in the 
 clefts of the rocks, thinking so to es firm enough foot- 
 hold in time. 
 
 Hence the almost visibly contrived instabilities of 
 the world; as if it were God's purpose to let every 
 good of time shake us out of its lap. Reputation— 
 what is it but a phantom that we are more likely to be 
 anxious for, than to have by a secure title? Friends 
 are not angels, and too often prove that they are more 
 wisely suspected than trusted. Money—where shall 
 we place it? The safe is not safe enough. The bank 
 is scarcely better. The public securities are most 
 insecure in the keeping. Short notes have wings that 
 are long enough to fly away. Stocks are sometimes 
 only wings without a body. Mortgages must be clear 
 of liens going before, and fires and collapses of value 
 coming after. Executors, guardians, agents, who can 
 tell what breaches of trust they are concocting? So 
 that no kind of footing, or property, or benefit of con- 
 dition obtained, is sufficiently clear of risk to be entirely 
 reliable. Unlooked for mischances will come, and a 
 dozen mischances coming together will put their 
 victim in a strait he never expected to see. Or suppose 
 a man too firmly grounded in his wealth to be dis- 
 turbed by any such combination of mischances, he is 
 yet subject to other kinds of mischances, that will 
 make his life more baseless and frail than any mere 
 collapse in property. A profligate son, a daughter 
 badly married, a wife hopelessly insane, secreted in a 
 
 <ta 
 
838 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 hospital to die—any one, or all these together, show 
 him how completely subject he still is to the mutabili- 
 ties of time. Or, it-may be that he only suffers that 
 most common of mortal disasters, the loss of his health, 
 and when that goes, how incontinently vanish the de- 
 lights of the senses, the joys of motion, the zests of 
 enterprise ; and from that point onward the poor man, 
 laden with so heavy spoils of fortune, is like a mule 
 dragging in deep sands and getting no foothold. There 
 is also a grand mischance, or king of mischances, whose 
 shadow, riding by, we often think we see, and the 
 touch of whose fell finger, we know, sends us quickly 
 away. Our very world-element, in short, is fickleness, 
 and if we try to make it firm by the firm hold we put 
 on it, straws are only straws, though we clutch them 
 ever so tightly. 
 
 There is very little use in sentimentalizing, or mop- 
 ing in sad complaints, over these fugacious, baseless 
 things in which we have our experience. They are all 
 very soberly meant, very deliberately planned for us. 
 If God could have made things stand more securely, as 
 we are apt to believe, he certainly has not done it, and 
 has not for the wisest and best reasons. We could not 
 plainly be trained for immortality in a time-element 
 that is itself as good and reliable as immortality. It 
 must not be as good and reliable, else we shall contrive 
 to stay in it. If we are to let go of it and rise to some- 
 thing higher, we must see it to be hollow, treacherous, 
 uncertain, unreliable, insufficient, and then we are so 
 far clear of it, or even exclusively thrust forward by it. 
 
 7 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 339 
 
 But this mutable element is more than negatively 
 good, as regards the choice of ends that belong to the 
 immortal state; it works negatively that it may work 
 positively, and exert a really introductive power. The 
 changes we are passing, hour by hour, are all before the 
 open gate of principle, showing us in, raising also wants 
 to draw usin. Wants are wonderfully perceptive ; and 
 the royal base-work of immutable order and rest, pre- 
 pared in their nature itself, many will never find, till 
 their ponderous wants, somehow developed, settle them 
 down upon it. Hence also the mutabilities. God puts 
 us at sea in them that we may get tired of them. It 
 is not altogether ill to be at sea. The fire-gleams of 
 the night, the mirages of the day, the sea-storm voice— 
 deepest of all voices—the sceneries of the weather, the 
 pomps of the waves, make up a world by themselves; 
 but the painful thing is, and it is more and more felt, 
 and grows more and more wearisome, that there is no 
 fixity, nothing but change, the very feet grow sick of 
 it, aching, if but for a single hour, to get the touch of 
 some foundation. The plays of change that, for a time, 
 were interesting, grow dull and stale and dreary, and 
 the wonder is, at last, that so many fine things came 
 to pass in the beginning of the voyage, and none at all 
 now. Finally, if the voyage is a long one, or the ship 
 gets disabled, the simple word shore comes to have 4 
 kind of paradise in it. When shall it be seen? Shall 
 it ever be seen? Why not put ourselves to the oars and 
 try for it? Just so it is that men get weary and sick 
 in the mutabilities. And it does not make much 
 
230 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 difference, whether they suffer losses, or get on by 
 successes ; for they have about the same sense of inse- 
 curity or unsteadiness in one, that they have in the 
 other, and get sick and hungry in about the same de- 
 gree. Only there are some who will never get away 
 from things far enough to embrace principles, till some 
 final sweep of calamity strips all things away; never 
 come unto God, till, by some great storm, they are 
 virtually wrecked on him. Then for the first time, 
 when they touch him, so to speak, with their feet, and 
 rest on him, do they begin to know what a coming to 
 land itis to trust him. All true-born souls are brought 
 ashore in this manner, on the continental principles of 
 duty and religion. What we call the world-element, 
 unsteady and mutable as the sea, is no finality for them, 
 but they are put in it, as a merely transitional chapter, 
 to be inducted, and pressed inward, and downward, 
 upon real foundations—the immutable, the immortal. 
 It is also a very great positive benefit, in this school- 
 ing of the mutable state, that it gives us the fact of 
 immortality, not as a speculation, but as a grand, over- 
 towering moral impression. We take it up because 
 everlasting principles are heaving in us. Our sense of 
 God contains it, and gives it a wide, warm bosom. 
 Let a human creature reason out some wise conclusion 
 of the head in this matter, and project his mole-eye 
 sight far enough into words to fetch eternities out of 
 them, and then, having got his wise opinion set in the 
 conclusion that he is certainly immortal, let him put 
 himself to the use of it, and see how much, or little 
 
 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 341 
 
 rather, it will mean. It will be such a flickering light, 
 such a feeble and cold moonshine out of eternity, as to 
 engage no earnest feeling, carry no strong impulse. 
 These speculated notions of immortality are, in fact, 
 often a hinderance and no help. Whereas the immor- 
 tality that has come out through the gate of immutanle 
 mortality, that which has thundered in the soul’s mora 
 ideas and affinities for God, that which, coming before 
 all speculation, has raised the plane of the man, and 
 made him a superior creature, will have a glorious, 
 almost glorifying power. It has a positive moral 
 meaning, next akin to the sense of immutability itself, 
 though probably never so conceived, and the soul 
 hastens longingly toward it, as its continental Rest and 
 Home. 
 
 Besides, this morally felt immortality will be always 
 waking to consciousness those moral wants and convic- 
 tions that are closest to the standards of duty and 
 religion. There is no exactly fit relation between 
 mere world-sickness and a morally right life. It might 
 about as well be expected that a man will make that 
 kind of choice because he is work-sick or weary. There 
 must be some moral quality in the want developed, 
 else it has no relation to sucha result. But this moral 
 quality will here seldom be wanting. There is such 
 close company in souls between the want of stability 
 and the principles that are to make it, that whoever 
 gets weary and sick of the mutabilities can, with diffi- 
 culty, exclude some pungent reflections on the neglect 
 of those principles. It is possible, I grant, for a man 
 

 
 
 342 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 to be crushed in his expectations, stripped by losses, — 
 broken down by defeats, or, in a career of general 
 auccess, to be utterly disgusted with the chaffy look of 
 his gains, and yet to encounter no reflections on the 
 moral significance of what he suffers. But there will 
 be few such cases, and it will at least sometimes be seen, 
 that men who are at the highest strain of their powers, 
 and fighting in stoutest throes of endeavor, to conquer 
 a reliable footing for their life, just there discover, and 
 by that very means, the practical nonsense and wrong 
 of their wild instigations ; that they are straining after 
 foundations where there are none, and neglecting them 
 where they are—this, too, because they are principles of 
 duty and religion; such as have a right, in their own 
 divine order, to be first accepted and acted from, and 
 be themselves the footing of the life. Thoughts of this 
 kind are never far off from the man who is delving, 
 heart-sick and wearily, among the mutabilities, and he 
 will not always be in a mood to repel them. He is far 
 more likely to say, “I have been a fool and a prodigal. 
 I forsook my Father—evil was the day—and now I 
 will arise and go to my Father.” No man ever really 
 embraces a principle that has been deserted without 
 some contrition felt for the desertion of it. And there 
 is a wonderful fitness in the incertitudes and cireum- 
 gyrations of our mortal affairs, to bring us round, 
 where the eternal love and order have their rest, with 
 wills effectually tamed by self-discovery. They are a 
 kind of sermon that all men hear at times, and they 
 have it as their peculiar advantage, that they preach 
 
OF THE MUTABILITIES OF LIFE. 343 
 
 conviction out, so to speak, instead of preaching it in, 
 and do it by a kind of power that wakens no jealousy. 
 
 On the whole it will be seen, that what we call the 
 baselessness of the world, and speak of with so little 
 respect, is a really grand institution, adjusted for our 
 moral benefit. If the light whifflings of its changes, 
 the heavy and grim overturnings, the everywhere 
 unsteady footings, put us all at sea, there is yet a 
 continent hard by—principles immutable, and immuta- 
 bility in principles. Human nature nowhere looks so 
 great, capable of a footing so divinely solid and strong, 
 as in precisely these contrived environments of change 
 —pressing, all together, landward, and drawing us on, 
 by their ceaseless mutations toward a base that. is 
 
 changeless. 
 
XVL 
 
 OF THE SEA. 
 
 Hap it been given us to compose or settle the pro- 
 portions of the world, there is probably no particular 
 in which we should have differed the scheme of it more 
 widely from the present, or now existing scheme, than 
 in not allowing any so great amount of surface to be 
 covered with water. It would not even occur to us that 
 80 many, vast, outspreading seas and oceans—unfruit- 
 ful, inhospitable, next to impassable—could have any 
 fit place or use. Is it not a world for man to inhabit ? 
 and is he not a creature wanting chiefly land—a soil 
 to cultivate, a firm foundation to build upon, a steady 
 footing of reaction for his works? Allowing a large 
 supply for his economic uses, who can imagine that 
 only oceans of waters will suffice? And what can he 
 do with waters that are only brine, covering four-fifths, 
 or nine-tenths of the world? Having it on hand to raise 
 the best conditioned and most numerous possible herd 
 of men, we should always be contriving how to enlarge 
 the pasture. Instead of these immense water-deserts 
 we should be laying out for as many and productive 
 acres of land as possible. We should make the globe 
 itself a good round ball of meadow and plowland. 
 
OF THE SEA. 345 
 
 The leviathans would have to make room for the reap: 
 ers, and if we could find how to keep the ground in 
 good and safe drainage without seas, we should allow 
 but one great floor of sontinent wrapping about the 
 world ; which floor should be carpeted, in close order, 
 with great flourishing empires. 
 
 This would be our wisdom—God’s how different ! 
 By him these great oceans are excavated, and the habit- 
 able parts are islanded in narrow strips between them. 
 It is as if he were planning vast regions of waste, that 
 he may stint the fruitfulness, and set a bound to the 
 populousness of his realms. The natural philosopher 
 and man of science will doubtless have another account to 
 give ; showing how the physical uses—the comforts, sup- 
 plies, and populative capabilities of the world—depend 
 on having just so large a portion of the land submerged. 
 The sea, as he will represent, tempers the climate of 
 the land, making the heat less intense and the cold 
 less rigorous. It supplies, too, the rains that water the 
 land and make it fruitful; furnishing also immense 
 stores of provisions from its own pastures. All which 
 may be true; though it does not follow that the same 
 results could not have been accomplished in some other 
 way. Mere physical uses or ends are never the final 
 causes of things, and it will be difficult to imagine that, 
 if God had been planning for the particular uses here 
 specified—viz., how to provide the largest and best sup- 
 plies for a great population—he ecnuld not have wid- 
 ened vastly the spaces of land and made them tenfold 
 
 more productive. We recollect here that God’s last 
 15* 
 
346 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 ends are always moral ends, and we seem therefore to 
 
 see that, in this vast overspreading of seas, he is pre- 
 paring the world, not so much for a physical, as for a 
 moral habitation. And he seems, in this view, to be 
 rather preferring to limit, than to extend the popula- 
 tions provided for ; lest our school of virtue may be too 
 large and too easily kept in supply, for the intended 
 moral benefit. So he makes small the globe by reduc- 
 tions of the existing spaces, narrowing down our 
 field, not by the seas alone, but by rigors of frost, 
 and deserts of sand, and mountains of rock; as if 
 meaning to bring us into compass or compression, and 
 set us in a discipline of toil and hardship for the due 
 unfolding of our personal force, and the right establish- 
 ing of our character. His fundamental assumption 
 appears to be that, to such a being as man, virtue can 
 be only a conquest. 
 
 Prepared by considerations like these, we are now 
 ready for the more deliberate inquiry, what are the 
 moral uses of the sea, or in what respects does it appearto 
 have been appointed for the moral benefit of the world? 
 And I think it will appear, as we prosecute this in- 
 , quiry, that the ordinance of the sea is so thoroughly 
 interwoven with all that is of the highest interest to 
 man—the progress of society, art, government, science, 
 and religion; in a word, all that is included in moral 
 advancement—that, without the sea, the world could 
 hardly be considered a fit habitation for his use. 
 
 One great problem of God, in building a school for 
 man, was, how to distribute the school; for it is manifest 
 
 
 
 — 
 
OF THE SEA. 347 
 
 that no one government, or society, cuuld fill and occupy 
 the whole domain—certainly not, without producing in- 
 definite confusion, and sacrificing many of the most 
 powerful stimulants to energy and advancement. Nei- 
 ther could it be done, without exalting the throne or 
 governing power to such a pitch of eminence as would 
 probably command the religious homage of mankind, 
 and make it the head of a universal Lamaism. But if 
 the world is to be distributed into nations, or kingdoms 
 —which are likely to be always jealous of each other and 
 sometimes hostile—they need to be separated by natural 
 barriers, such as will prevent strife by inclosing them 
 within definite boundaries, and, when they are in 
 actual strife, will fortify them against destruction one 
 from the other. This is effected, in part, by interpos- 
 ing mountains and rivers, but more effectually, and on 
 a iarger scale, by spreading seas and oceans between 
 them. For there is, in fact, no maxim of the poets, 
 often cited, more utterly destitute of foundation, or more 
 unjust to Providence, than Cowper’s well-meant lines :— 
 “ Mountains interposed 
 Make enemies of nations, who had else, 
 Like kindred drops, been mingled into one;” 
 for mountains are the well defined boundaries, rather, 
 and pacificators of nations. Oceans and great bodies 
 of water have the still further advantage, that they can 
 be passed more easily for purposes of convenience than 
 for those of destruction. Indeed, it is impossible for 
 whee nations to pour their military hordes across them, 
 as across a mere geographical line. Nature is here the 
 
348 MORAL USES OF DARK THIN 
 
 grand distributor and fortifier of nations. She draws — 
 
 her circle of waters, not around some castle or fortified 
 citadel of art, but around whole nations themselves, 
 Then it is within these fortified circles of nature, that 
 nations are to unfold their power and have their 
 advancement. Such was Greece, cut off from all the 
 world by boundaries of rock and water, which no 
 Xerxes with his invading army could effectually pass; 
 having, at the same time, enough of strife and struggle 
 within to keep her on the alert, and waken all her 
 powers to vigorous exercise. Such is England now. 
 England, for so many ages past the foremost light of 
 Europe, the bulwark of law, the great temple of 
 religion, could never have been what it is, or any thing 
 but the skirt of some nation comparatively undistin- 
 guished, had not the Almighty drawn his circle of 
 waters around it, and girded it with strength, to be the 
 right hand of his power. It is the boundaries of nations, 
 too, that give them locality and settle those historie 
 associations which are the conscious life of society and 
 the source of all great and high emotions; otherwise 
 they fly to perpetual vagrancy and dissipation—there is 
 no settlement, no sense of place or compression, and, as 
 nothing takes root, nothing grows. Thus the ancient 
 Scythian, roaming over the vast levels of the North, is 
 succeeded by the modern Tartar—both equally wild 
 and uncultivated, the father of three thousand years 
 ago and the son of to-day. 
 
 Again it will be found that the oceans and seas have 
 sometimes contributed, beyond all power of estimation, 
 
 
 
 | 
 ! 
 
 
 
OF THE SEA. 849 
 
 to the moral and social advancement of the race, by 
 separating one part of the world even from the knowl- 
 edge of another, and preserving it for discovery and 
 occupation at an advanced period of history. Had the 
 territory of the United States been conjoined to the 
 eastern shore of Asia, or the western of Europe, or had 
 there been no oceans interposed to break the continu- 
 ous circle of land, it is obvious that the old and worn- 
 out forms of civilization would have wanted a spur to 
 reform and improvement that is now supplied. When, 
 at length, the new world was discovered, then were the 
 race called out, as it were, to begin again. The tram- 
 mels of ancient society and custom, which no mere 
 human power could burst, were burst by the fiat of 
 Providence, and man went forth to try his fortunes 
 once more, carrying with him all the advantages of a 
 previous experience. We set up here no invidious 
 claim of precedence. We acknowledge our rawness and 
 obscurity, in comparison with the splendor and high 
 refinement of more ancient nations. We only claim it 
 as our good fortune that we are a new nation, peopled 
 by men of a new world, who had new principles to be 
 tested, for the common benefit of mankind. As such 
 the eye of the world is upon us, and has been for many 
 years. The great thought of our institutions—the hap- 
 piness and elevation of the individual man—is gradu- 
 ally and silently working its way into all the old fab- 
 rics of legitimacy in Christendom, and compelling the 
 homage of power in all its high places. Whatever 
 motion there has been in European affairs for the last 
 
350 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 half century—all the mitigations of law, the dynasties 
 subverted, the constitutions conceded, the enlarged lib- 
 erty of conscience and the press, popular education, 
 every thing that goes to make society beneficent—has 
 been instigated, more or less directly, by the great idea 
 that is embodied and represented in the institutions of 
 the United States. This same great idea, the well- 
 being and character of the individual man, has been 
 brought forth, too, to offer itself to the world, at just 
 the right time. Without it, we may well doubt 
 whether the institutions of Europe had not come to 
 their limit, beyond which they had not, in themselves, 
 any power of advancement. Had it come earlier, 
 Europe was not ready for it. The immense advantage 
 that is thus to accrue to mankind, as regards the great 
 interests of truth, society, and religious virtue, from 
 the fact that our western hemisphere was kept hidden 
 for so many ages beyond an impassable ocean, to be 
 opened, in due time, for the planting and propagation 
 of new ideas, otherwise destined to perish, no mind can 
 estimate. Nor is this process of planting yet exhausted. 
 There are islands in the southern oceans larger than 
 England, that are yet to become seats of power and of 
 empire, and possibly to shine as lights of Antarctic his 
 tory eclipsing those of the North; or, if not eclipsing, 
 giving to all the northern climes, both of the eastern 
 and western worlds, the experiment of new principles 
 needful to their progress and happiness. 
 
 But it is another and yet more impressive view of 
 the moral utility of seas and oceans, that, while they 
 
 4 
 
 : 
 
OF THE SEA. 361 
 
 have a disconnecting power operating in the ways first 
 specified, they have at the same time a connecting 
 power, bringing all regions and climes into correspond- 
 ence and commercial interchange. Fortified by oceans 
 and seas against injury from each other, they are yet 
 united by the same for purposes of mutual benefit. 
 Were there no seas, were the globe covered by a con- 
 tinuous sheet of land, how different the history of the 
 past from what it has been! how different the moral 
 and intellectual state of human society from what it now 
 is! There being no medium of commerce, save that of 
 land travel, no intercourse could exist between nations 
 remote from each other. They would know each other 
 only by a kind of tradition, as now we know the past. 
 Tradition, too, in its long and uncertain transit dcross 
 the longitude of the world, would clothe itself in fable, 
 and we, instead of being made to feel the common 
 brotherhood of man as now, should probably be fast in 
 the belief that the opposite hemisphere of the world is 
 peopled by giants, centaurs, anthropophagi, and such 
 like fabulous monsters. There would, of course, be no 
 commerce, except between nations that are adjacent; 
 and society, being life without motion or stimulus, 
 wou.d rot itself down into irredeemable bigotry and de- 
 crepitude. God would not have it so. On the ocean, 
 which is the broad public highway of the Almighty, 
 nations pass and repass, visit and revisit each other, 
 and those which are remote as freely as those whick are 
 near. And it is this fluid element that gives fluidity 
 and progress to the institutions and opinions of the race. 
 
3852 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 It is only in the great inland regions of the world, as in 
 Central Africa and Asia, that bigotry and inveterate 
 custom have their seat. In these vast regions that 
 never saw the sea, regions remote from the visits of 
 commerce and the moving world, men have lived 
 from age to age without progress, or the idea of prog- 
 ress, crushed under their despotisms, held fast in the 
 chains of indomitable superstition, rooted down like 
 their trees, and motionless as their mountains. In the 
 mean time, the shores and islands of the world have 
 felt the pulse of human society, and yielded themselves 
 to progress. It is, in a word, this fluid sea, on whose 
 bosom the free winds of heaven are wafting the world’s 
 commerce, which represents all mobility and progress 
 in the human state. Without this interposed, the rock- 
 based continents themselves were not more fixed than 
 the habits and opinions of mankind. On the other 
 hand, we observe that the prejudices of men who live 
 upon and by the waters are never invincible. They 
 admit of change, somewhat by habit and association, 
 as their element changes, and they shift their sail to the 
 winds. It was never a Babylon, or a Timbuctoo, or 
 any city of the inland regions, that was forward to 
 change and improvement. But it was a Tyre, queen 
 of the sea; a Carthage, sending out her ships, beyond 
 the Pillars of Hercules, to Britain and the Northern 
 Isles; an Athens, an Alexandria—these were the seats 
 of art, and thought, and learning, and liberal improve- 
 ment of every sort. So, too, it was the Italian com- 
 mercial cities that broke up the dark ages, and gave 
 
 4 
 
OF THE SEA. 353 
 
 the modern nations that impulse which set them for- 
 ward in their career of art and social refinement, and, 
 remotely speaking, of liberty. 
 
 The spirit of commerce, too, is the spirit of peace, 
 its interest the interest of peace, and peace is the ele- 
 ment of all moral progress, as war is the element of all 
 barbarism and desolation. Every ship that sails the 
 ocean is a pledge for peace to the extent of its value; 
 every sail a more appropriate symbol of peace than the 
 olive-branch itself. Commerce, too, has at length 
 changed the relative position of nations. Once upon a 
 footing of barbarism, they are now placed on a foot- 
 ing of friendship and civilization. In the most splendid 
 days of Athens, piracy was a trade, not a crime ; for it 
 wag the opinion that nations were naturally hostile, and 
 will, of course, prey upon each other. But now, at 
 length, commerce has created for itself a great system 
 of international and commercial law, which, to a certain 
 extent, makes one empire of all the nations, maintain- 
 ing the rights of person and property, when abroad upon 
 the ocean, or in other lands, as carefully and efficiently 
 as if there were but one nation or people on the globe. 
 Search the history of man, from the beginning till now, 
 you will find among all the arts, inventions and institu- 
 tions of the race, no one so beneficent, none that reveals 
 so broad a stride of progress, as this. And it promises 
 yet to go on, extending its sway, tillit has given rules to 
 all the conduct of nations, provided redress for all inju- 
 ries, and thus lawed out forever all war from the earth. 
 
 The nations engaged in commerce will, of course 
 

 
 354 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS, 
 
 be most rapidly improved, and become the most forward — 
 nations. In perpetual intercourse with each other, 
 they will ever be adopting the inventions, copying the 
 good institutions, and rectifying the opinions, one of 
 another; for the man of commerce is never a bigot. 
 He goes to buy, in other nations, commodities that are 
 wanted in his own. He is, therefore, in the habit of 
 valuing what is valuable in other countries, and so, 
 proportionally, is the people or nation that consumes 
 the commodities of other countries. And so much is 
 there in this, that the government, the literature, nay, 
 even the religion of every civilized nation, must receive 
 a modifying influence from all the nations with whom 
 it maintains an active commerce. In opinions, liter- 
 ature, arts, laws—nay, in every thing—they must 
 gradually approximate, till they coalesce, at last, in 
 one and the same catholic standard of value and excel- 
 lence. Commerce is itself catholic, and it seems to be 
 the sublime purpose of God, in its appointment, to 
 make every thing else so, that as all are of one blood, 
 so, at last, they shall be one conscious brotherhood. 
 In the mean time, the nations most forward in art 
 and civilization are approaching, by the almost omni- 
 present commerce they maintain, all the rude and 
 barbarous nations of the world, carrying with them, 
 wherever they go, all the tokens of precedence by 
 which these nations may be most impressed with a 
 sense of their backwardness, and set forward in a 
 career of improvement. They need only be visited by 
 the ships, or especially the steam-vessels, of European 
 
OF THE SEA. 355 
 
 commerce, to see that they are in their childhood, and 
 there must remain, except as they adopt the science 
 and the institutions of European nations. What, con- 
 sequently, do we behold? Not the wilds of Northern 
 Russia only, not the islands only of the sea becoming 
 emulous of European laws and arts and manners; but 
 the throne of Siam inquiring after the methods and 
 truths of the West; all British India studying Eng- 
 lish, in a sense more real than the study of words; 
 Muscat sending over to examine and copy our arts; 
 both branches of the Mohammedan empire receiving 
 freely, and carefully protecting Christian travelers, and 
 adopting, as fast as they can, the European modes of 
 war and customs of society; China, shaken with the 
 rough hand of civilized war, and moved with a far 
 deeper respect by the approaches of Christian trade 
 and justice, accepting a Western republican to be her 
 general embassador, and seek out for her once celestial 
 empire the advantages of an acknowledged relationship 
 with all the more forward. nations. All this by the 
 power of commerce. They feel our shadow cast on 
 their weakness, and their hearts sink within them as 
 if they had seen a people taller than they. For the 
 same reason, too, the false gods are trembling in their 
 seats the world over, and all the strongholds of spirit- 
 ual delusion shaking to the fall. The sails of commerce 
 are the wings of truth. Wherever it goes—and where 
 does it not #—the power of science, and all that belongs 
 to cultivated manhood, is felt. The universal air be- 
 comes filled with new ideas, and man looks ont from 
 
356 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 the prison of darkness in which he has been lying — 
 chained and blinded, sees a dawn arising on the world, 
 and feels the morning-breath of truth and liberty. 
 What we have said, in this gereral way, of human 
 advancement, as connected with the uses of the sea, 
 involves religious advancement, both as regards knowl- 
 edge and character. All the advancement, too, of 
 which we have spoken, is, in one view, the work of 
 Christianity ; for this it is which has given to Christ- 
 endom its precedence. And it is precisely the office 
 of the Christian faith that it shall thus elevate and 
 bless mankind ; bless them, not in their devotions only, 
 not in their sacraments, or in passing to other worlds, 
 but in every thing that constitutes their mortal life—in 
 society, art, science, wealth, government—all that 
 adorns, elevates, fortifies, and purifies their society. 
 We also perceive that the very tone of Christian piety 
 itself, especially where it is not tempered, as in the 
 United States, by the presence and toleration of all 
 varieties of faith and worship, needs to be modulated 
 and softened by the influence of a general intercourse 
 with mankind ; for such is the narrowness of man, that 
 even the love of Christ itself is in perpetual danger of 
 dwindling to a bigot prejudice in the soul; mistaking 
 its mere forms for substance ; becoming less generous 
 in its breadth, the more intense it is in degree; and 
 even measuring out the judgment of the world by the 
 thimble in which its own volume and dimensions are 
 east. The church can never attain to its proper power 
 and beauty till it has become thoroughly catkolic in 
 
 
 
OF THE SEA. 357 
 
 its spirit; a result which is to be continually favored 
 and assisted by the influence of a catholic commerce. 
 In this manner we anticipate a day for man, when 
 commerce itself shall become religious, and religion 
 commercial; when the holy and the useful shall be 
 blended in a common life of brotherhood and duty, 
 comprising all the human kindred of the globe. 
 
 The oceans and their commerce have indeed no 
 Christian power in themselves, but they make a con- 
 tribution to religion of inestimable value, in what they 
 do to prepare a way for the Christian power. They 
 quell the prejudices of the nations, and shame away 
 all confidence in their gods and institutions, and then 
 the Church of God, as the ground is cleared, or being 
 cleared, comes in to fill the chasm that is made, by 
 offering a better faith. What, then, do we see, but 
 that the ocean is becoming the pathway of the Lord? 
 He goes forth among the nations, and their courage 
 dies before him! The islands give up first, the con- 
 tinents must follow! One thing is always sure, either 
 commerce must fold up its sails, and the ocean dry up 
 in its bed (which few will expect), or else every form 
 of idolatry and barbarous worship must cease from 
 the world. This I say apart from all the Christian 
 efforts and instrumentalities supplied by missions; for 
 these are as yet insignificant, compared with those 
 mighty workings of Providence whose path is in the 
 sea. But if these precede, those must follow. As man is 
 a religious being, God will never undertake to rob him 
 of a false religion without giving him a better. Neither 
 
358 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 can any Christian mind contemplate the rapid and 
 powerful changes which, in our day, have been wrought 
 in the practical position of the heathen nations, with- 
 out believing that some great design of Providence is 
 on foot, that promises the universal spread of the 
 Christian faith and the spiritual redemption of all the 
 races of mankind. “ Lift up thine eyes round about 
 and see, they all gather themselves together, they come 
 
 unto thee! The abundance of the sea shall be con- 
 
 verted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come 
 unto thee !” 
 
 The sea has yet another kind of moral and religious 
 use, which is more direct and immediate. The liquid 
 acres of the deep, tossing themselves evermore to the 
 winds, and rolling their mighty anthem round the 
 world, may be even the most valuable and productive 
 acres God has made. Great emotions and devout affec- 
 tions are better fruits than corn, more precious luxuries 
 than wine or oil, And God has built the world with a 
 visible aim to exercise his creatures with whatever is 
 lofty in conception, holy in feeling, and filial in pur- 
 pose toward himself. All the trials and storms of the 
 land have this same object. To make the soul great, 
 he gives us great dangers to meet, great obstacles to 
 conquer. Deserts, famines, pestilences walking in dark- 
 ness, regions of cold and wintry snow, hail and tem- 
 pest—none of these are, in his view, elements of waste 
 and destruction, because they go to fructify the moral 
 man. As related to the moral kingdom of God, they 
 are engines of truth, purity, strength, and alJ that is 
 
OF THE SEA. 359 
 
 great and holy in character. The sea is a productive 
 element of the same class. It is even a great moral 
 educator; and the world, for so many ages patiently 
 enduring, bravely daring, and kept steadily contriving 
 to get the mastery of it, becomes, at last, step by step 
 and slowly, another world; having all courage, and 
 force, and manly science, compacted and close-knit by 
 the stern motherhood of the sea. Meantime, how many 
 here have bowed, who never bowed before, to the tre- 
 mendous sovereignty of God? How many prayers, 
 otherwise silent, have gone up, to fill the sky and circle 
 the world, from wives and mothers, imploring his pro 
 tecting presence with husbands and sons they have 
 trusted to the deep? It is of the greatest consequence, 
 too, that such a being as God should have images pre- 
 pared to express him, and set him before the mind of 
 man in all the grandeur of his attributes. These he 
 has provided in the heavens and the sea, which are the 
 two great images of his vastness and power; the one, 
 remote, addressing itself to cultivated reason and 
 science; the other nigh to mere sense and physically 
 efficient, a liquid symbol of the infinitude of God. It 
 is remarkable, too, how many of the best and most 
 powerful images of God in the Scripture are borrowed 
 from the sea. “ Canst thou by searching find out God? 
 The measure thereof is longer than the earth and 
 broader than the sea.” “Thy judgments are a great 
 deep.” “Which alone spreadeth out the heavens and 
 treadeth upon the waves of the sea.” “Thy way is in 
 the sea, and thy path in the great waters.” “ The 
 
860 MORAL USES OF DARK THINGS. 
 
 waters saw thee, O Lord, the waters saw thee; they 
 were afraid, the depths also were troubled!” Every 
 kind of vastness—immensity, infinity, eternity, mys- 
 tery, omnipotence—has its type in the sea, and there 
 is as much more of God in the world for man to see 
 and feel as the sea can express, and as much more of 
 worship and piety as there is of God. 
 
 The sea, then, as we now clearly perceive, is not 
 waste land; no other part of God’s territory is more 
 productive. Not too soon, then, did he arrest the sub- 
 siding waters of the new creation; for he was contriv- 
 ing, we perceive, not the physical abundance, but the 
 moral benefit and blessing of the world. He did not 
 make the seas too large. He laid them where they 
 should be. He swept their boundaries with his finger 
 in the right place. The floods are mighty, but the Lord 
 is mightier; they lift up their voice, but not too high, 
 to lift the courage and exalt the mastery of man. They 
 have been always, and are more and more visibly to be, 
 the general clearing-house of the trade of the world, 
 They are highways laid for the running to and fro of the 
 great last day of knowledge, and of universal brother- 
 hood complete. No more leviathan only, but God’s swift 
 truth, “maketh the deep to boil, and the sea like a 
 pot of ointment.” No more a symbol only, it is also 
 the medium, between so many coasts, of God’s uni- 
 versal beneficence. He saw, in the beginning, that it 
 was good, and now we see it also; and all kindred and 
 people that dwell upon its shores, and hear it lift up its 
 voice, respond to the anthem it raises to its Author. 
 
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