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ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES 
 
 H. CLAY TRUMBULL 
 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 JOHN D. WATTLES, Publisher 
 
 1889 
 
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 Copyright, 1889 
 
 BY 
 
 H. CLAY TRUMBULL 
 
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PREFACE. 
 
 Lessons from one man's experiences and 
 observations will not be of value to all. But 
 lessons from any man's experiences and ob- 
 servations will be of value to some. No man 
 stands, in his feelings and sympathies, for his 
 entire race. But every man, in his sympa- 
 thies and feelings, stands for a class. 
 
 Hence it is, that whatever truths have made 
 a profound impression on a man in the prog- 
 ress of his life-course are likely to make a 
 correspondent impression on others who are 
 like him, if he can bring those truths with 
 any vividness before them. And when a 
 series of related truths have excited interest 
 in their detached separateness, they will 
 hardly fail to excite fresh interest in their 
 exhibited relation to one another and to a 
 
 common central truth. 
 
 S 
 
6 PREFA CE. 
 
 The essays in this volume are an outcome 
 of their writer's observings and experien- 
 cings in his varied life-course. They were 
 received with interest as editorial contribu- 
 tions in the pages of The Sunday School 
 Times, while appearing there, one by one, 
 during a term of ten years or more; and 
 their republication has been urged by many 
 who desire them for preservation in a per- 
 manent form. They are now presented in a 
 new light, in a logical order for the elucida- 
 tion and emphasis of a truth which is com- 
 mon to them all. 
 
 The gaining of the thoughts of this vol- 
 ume has not been without cost to its writer. 
 His hope is that the considering of them 
 will not be without stimulus and profit to 
 
 its readers. 
 
 H. C. T. 
 
 Philadelphia, 
 
 August 14, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. PAGE 
 
 The Value of Day-Dreams 9 
 
 II. 
 The Blessing of Unrest « 19 
 
 III. 
 The Practical Power of Sentiment 29 
 
 IV. 
 Is Prosperity Desirable? 43 
 
 V. 
 Desiring, but Not Seeking 55 
 
 VI. 
 Inclination as a Hindrance to Success .... 63 
 
 VII. 
 Riches as a Hindrance to Success 71 
 
 VIII. 
 Is Success a Worthy Aim? 83 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Gain of a Contracted Sphere 91 
 
 7 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 X. PAGE 
 
 Progress Through Struggle 97 
 
 XI. 
 Attainment Through Catastrophe 105 
 
 XII. 
 Perils of Promotion .. . . • 113 
 
 XIII. 
 Building a Home for the Soul 121 
 
 XIV. 
 Consecration the Price of Comfort 131 
 
 XV. 
 The Gain of Lower Ideals than the Divine . 137 
 
 XVI. 
 Something Better than Angels 145 
 
 XVII. 
 What We Owe to the Sleepless 153 
 
 XVIII. 
 The Ministry of Sorrow 163 
 
 XIX. 
 What Our Dead Do for Us 173 
 
 XX. 
 
 The Aftermath of Influence 181 
 
I. 
 
 THE VALUE OF DAY-DREAMS. 
 
 Day-dreams are more common than night- 
 dreams ; and their practical value is far greater. 
 Sleep that is best and truest is a dreamless 
 sleep; but a waking life that is without 
 dreams is likely to be an aimless and an ill- 
 furnished life; as, indeed, a waking life with 
 dreams may be. 
 
 A " dream" is defined as "a matter which 
 has an imaginary reality;" as "a series of 
 thoughts not under the command of reason." 
 The root-meaning of the Anglo-Saxon word 
 " dream" is "melody;" a pleasing succession 
 of appeals to the finer senses. The same 
 root shows itself, on the one hand, in " drum," 
 and on the other hand, in "drone;" as, on 
 the one hand, a melody — or a day-dream — 
 may arouse to action, or, on the other hand, 
 it may lull to sloth. To dream is to allow 
 
 9 
 
I O ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 
 
 fancy and imagination and unchecked antici- 
 pation to have sway of the mind, or to give 
 shape and color to the thoughts. Dream- 
 life is the mental picturing of what may be, 
 of what might be, or of what the individual 
 soul would fain have to be. Day-dreams 
 are the fancy-melodies which represent and 
 which allure the innermost personality of 
 the dreamer. And so it is that day-dreams 
 are a potent factor in the best and truest 
 human lives ; as too often they are in lives 
 which are wasted and ruined. The day- 
 dreams are no less an element of power in 
 every life which indulges them, whether 
 those dreams present pictures of noble 
 achievement, or bring to mind scenes of 
 sinful indulgence. 
 
 Child-life is largely a life of day-dreams, 
 and children have joy and hope, as again 
 they are susceptible to special temptations, 
 in proportion to their power of dreaming. 
 It is the dream of manliness which gives 
 zest to the tottering boy in his " playing 
 horse" with an older brother, or with a 
 
A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 1 1 
 
 chair to which he has fastened his twine 
 reins. It is the dream of womanly love and 
 womanly ministry which enables the. little 
 girl to tend her doll so faithfully, whether 
 that doll be a marvel of Parisian workman- 
 ship, or the clumsiest rag-baby. Not the 
 toy itself, but the day-dream into which it 
 is taken, is the source of a child's enjoyment 
 in all amusement with the plaything of the 
 hour. Without day - dreaming, childhood 
 would not be true childhood. A Christian 
 missionary among a degraded people said, 
 in illustration of the depths of wretchedness 
 into which that people had fallen, " Nothing 
 could show more clearly the utter hopeless- 
 ness of the life of these poor creatures, than 
 the fact that I have never yet seen one of 
 their children at play." God pity a child 
 who never has a day-dream ! God pity the 
 man, or the woman, who has lost the child- 
 power of day-dreaming ! 
 
 Napoleon said that " imagination rules the 
 world." And the imagination which sways 
 the minds of such masters of men as Napo- 
 
1 2 ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 
 
 leon, gives shape to their day-dreams of 
 empire and conquest. It was in the day- 
 dreams of Alexander of Macedon that the 
 centre of the world's ruling first moved from 
 Persia westward. The day-dreams of Caesar 
 and of Cleopatra and of Anthony caused the 
 banners of victory to wave hither and thither, 
 with the following of Rome's legions. And 
 the day-dreams of Charlemagne, of William 
 the Conqueror, of Gustavus Adolphus, and 
 of Peter the Great, found their realizing in 
 new governments which should continue 
 their forms, or leave their impress, for gen- 
 eration after generation. What issues were 
 the result of the day-dreaming of Muhammad 
 and of Columbus! And how men watch 
 to-day for the outcome of the day-dreams 
 of Bismarck, and of Giers, and of Boulanger, 
 and of Gladstone! 
 
 General Grant tells, in his Memoirs, of the 
 day-dream which filled his mind when, as a 
 young cadet at West Point, he first saw the 
 imposing presence of General Winfield Scott, 
 then the commanding general of the armies 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 3 
 
 of the United States. That day-dream pic- 
 tured the young cadet in the place of the 
 veteran commander; without the impressive 
 stature of the great chieftain, but not without 
 a corresponding record of valiant service. 
 Who can doubt that such a day-dream was 
 a help to, as it was a prophecy of, its own 
 realizing? 
 
 General Grant said to a personal friend, 
 long afterward, that his habit of day-dream- 
 ing never left him. When, after his resigna- 
 tion from the army, he was working away 
 on a farm near St. Louis, he was accustomed 
 to carry into the city a load of wood for sale, 
 and then to ride back in his empty cart. As 
 he rode, he dreamed. His longing had been 
 to command a regiment. And his wish, 
 which now seemed a vain one, was to see 
 Europe, with his good wife to share his 
 sight-seeing. A favorite dream of his, as 
 he rode homeward in the dusky evening, 
 on that empty wood-cart, was of himself as 
 again in the army, this time as a full colonel ; 
 and then the dream would take him, together 
 
14 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 with Mrs. Grant, over the ocean for a tour 
 of Europe. And that day-dream was as an in- 
 spiration and a hope for him until, at the close 
 of his second term as President of the United 
 States, with the military honors of a great 
 chieftain freely accorded to him, accompanied 
 by his wife and children, he passed from coun- 
 try to country, as in a triumphal march, receiv- 
 ing the welcome of crowned heads and the 
 greeting of glad hearts, all the world around. 
 
 It is not more reasonable to say, in this 
 instance, that the day-dream of the soldier- 
 farmer had no part in the successful endeav- 
 ors of the commander, the executive, and the 
 citizen-traveler, than it would be to say that 
 the day-dream of the boy Whittington by the 
 roadside near London had no part in giving 
 hope and energy to that boy in his struggles 
 toward the Lord Mayoralty of the great 
 metropolis. In the one case, as in the other, 
 
 "Still, through the paltry stir and strife, 
 Glows down the wished Ideal ; 
 And Longing molds in clay what Life 
 Carves in the marble Real." 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 5 
 
 In the daily life of the humble toiler, as in 
 the imaginings of the child and in the out- 
 reachings of the man of genius, it is the 
 dreaming of unattained possibilities which 
 makes drudgery endurable, or which gives 
 hope as a barrier to despair. The boy whose 
 mother is left widowed and impoverished, 
 dreams of being the owner of the old home- 
 stead, and of making it the new home of her 
 whose love inspires him ; and because of his 
 dream he struggles on until its fulfilling. 
 The mother dreams bright dreams for her 
 one son, and whether he wilfully strives with 
 or against her dreams, her dreaming enables 
 her to persevere in his behalf against all dis- 
 couragements and hindrances. 
 
 Many whose lot is a life of privation and of 
 disappointment, would despair if it were not 
 for their continual dreaming of better things 
 to come. 
 
 " Dream after dream ensues ; 
 And still they dream that they shall still succeed, 
 And still are disappointed; " 
 
 and yet they dream again. And without the 
 
1 6 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 help of day-dreams, rarely would a human 
 life be joyous or be potent for good. 
 
 Day-dreaming has its dangers. The dreams 
 themselves may be in the wrong direction, 
 unworthy of a true and noble nature. Or, 
 again, while dreams of good they may be 
 idly indulged merely as dreams. Dreams 
 of sin are delusive inducements to sin. 
 Dreams of high achieving are not achiev- 
 ings, but they are calls to such attainment; 
 and seldom is there found a life of high 
 achieving except under the spur and inspira- 
 tion of continuous day-dreams. 
 
 All modern poetry takes its start and its 
 shaping from the day-dreams of Dante. 
 His early day-dream was of a poem which 
 should be worthy of her who had prompted 
 his dreaming. And thenceforward he lived for 
 the realizing of that dream. "The spell of 
 boyhood is never broken, through the ups 
 and downs of life. His course of thought 
 advances, alters, deepens, but is continuous. 
 From youth to age, from the first glimpse 
 to the perfect work, the same idea abides 
 
ASPIRA. TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 7 
 
 with him, 'even from the flower till the grape 
 was ripe.' ... It was the dream and hope of 
 too deep and strong a mind to fade and come 
 to naught — to be other than the achieve- 
 ment and crown of life." 
 
 "Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, 
 What exultations trampling on despair, 
 What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, 
 What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, 
 Uprose this poem of the earth and air, 
 This mediaeval miracle of song!" 
 
 And every man's deepest and truest spirit- 
 ual nature finds its inspiration in and through 
 his purest and worthiest day-dreams. It is 
 what he hopes for, or what he longs for, or 
 what he is sure would be admirable if it were 
 to be, that prompts a true man to his noblest 
 strivings, and that sustains him under his 
 heaviest burden-bearing. If he were with- 
 out those dreams, he would be without the 
 efforts at their realizing. 
 
 Now, as of old, God reveals himself and 
 his plans to his children in their dreams; only 
 it is in the day-dreams, for the shaping of 
 
1 8 ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES, 
 
 which they are themselves responsible ac- 
 cording to his Word, — not in the ordinary 
 visions of the night, — that men may find 
 this revelation of the truth of God. Blessed 
 are they who find and serve and honor God 
 in their day-dreaming ! 
 
II. 
 
 THE BLESSING OF UNREST. 
 
 It was in mid-ocean, on a winter's passage 
 across the Atlantic, eastward. A storm was 
 raging. The great steamer rolled and pitched, 
 by turns. Her beams creaked, and her mighty- 
 frame quivered with the convulsive struggles 
 of her engines and the sea. At the dead of 
 night, her passengers were in their stateroom 
 berths, many of them restless, and longing 
 for rest. 
 
 Suddenly, on that steamer, there was silence 
 and rest, unlooked for. The engines stood still. 
 The creaking and quivering had ceased. The 
 great steamer no longer rolled or pitched. 
 And, in an instant, those passengers whose 
 chiefest longings had been for rest, started up 
 in their berths, more disturbed than by all 
 the disturbing restlessness which had pre- 
 ceded this repose. Rest! at such a time, and 
 
 19 
 
20 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 in such a place as this! Rest! when winds 
 and waves are at battle, and a ceasing to 
 struggle seems a yielding of hope! Rest! 
 Is this the rest of death ? Only in the trough 
 of the sea, and with the engines and the rud- 
 der useless, can there be such rest as this. 
 Oh for the old unrest, against which tired 
 nature so rebelled! 
 
 There was terror, and a new longing, in 
 that untimely rest. And when, after a little 
 season for the repairs of the steamer's shat- 
 tered bow, the familiar quiver came again to 
 the mighty frame, the engines rumbled and 
 plunged as before, the beams creaked with 
 their accustomed strain, and the mammoth 
 vessel pitched and rolled and tossed, in the 
 renewed struggle with the opposing elements, 
 many a passenger who had stood or lain with 
 bated breath, in that period of unwonted rest, 
 thanked God for the restored unrest, with a 
 new sense of its often unnoted blessedness. 
 
 It is not alone upon the sea, in a winter's 
 storm, at the dead of night, that there is a 
 blessedness in unrest, even while the whole 
 
A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 2 1 
 
 soul is longing for rest. Wherever there is a 
 need of struggle, or a desire for progress, or 
 a hope of difficult attainment, — there, passive 
 rest is as the shadow of death, and unrest is 
 the symbol and the evidence of abounding 
 life. Only through present unrest, can abid- 
 ing rest be attained to. Only through the 
 experience of unrest, can abiding rest be 
 found a blessing. 
 
 In the dying-song of Moses, the Lord is 
 represented as lovingly forbidding passive 
 rest to his chosen son Israel ; as shaking him 
 out from his place of satisfied repose, in order 
 to his restless activities in the needed strug- 
 gles of life and progress: "As an eagle stir- 
 reth up her nest, fluttering over her young, 
 spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, 
 beareth them on her wings; so the Lord 
 alone did lead him." So the Lord stirreth 
 up the nest of every loved child of his, in 
 order that that child may use his wings in 
 aspiring flight. 
 
 It was after Dr. Horace Bushnell had found 
 his plans of life-work broken in upon by ill- 
 
22 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 health, and his hope of rest in his loved Hart- 
 ford home rendered vain, by the necessity- 
 laid on him of prolonged absence in travel, 
 that he preached his famous sermon on Spir- 
 itual Dislodgments, from the text : " Moab 
 hath been at ease from his youth, and he 
 hath settled on his lees, and hath not been 
 emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath 
 he gone into captivity; therefore his taste 
 [has] remained in him, and his scent is not 
 changed." And the truth he then brought 
 out from that text, is a truth of universal 
 application : that passive rest of soul is incon- 
 sistent with spiritual progress and high spir- 
 itual attainment; that only through the trials 
 of weary unrest can any blessing of final and 
 abiding rest come to the human soul. 
 
 George Herbert sang of this unrest, as 
 "the pulley " of God's providence, by which 
 man is drawn ever upward toward infinite 
 and eternal good. The saintly poet pictured 
 God as giving to man, at his creation, every 
 possible gift save rest, and withholding that, 
 lest its satisfying possession should deprive 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 23 
 
 man of all longing for a better state than his 
 present one. 
 
 " For if I should, said He, 
 Bestow this jewel also on my creature, 
 He would adore my gifts instead of me, 
 And rest in nature, not the God of nature ; 
 So, both should losers be." 
 
 Let man keep the other gifts of grace, He said, 
 
 " But keep them with refining restlessness. 
 Let him be rich and weary, that at least, 
 If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 
 May toss him to my breast." 
 
 Sure it is, that every true soul is tried with 
 constant unrest; and that because of its con- 
 stant unrest there is in every true soul a 
 continual and an unsatisfied longing for an 
 unattained rest. "The eye is not satisfied 
 with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." 
 That which is beyond our present possession, 
 is to our thought better than the best which 
 is yet secured to us. And sure it is, also, 
 that the highest and noblest service of every 
 true soul is obviously in the direction of that 
 
24 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 soul's restless aspirations. There is often- 
 times great gain to us in what we know to 
 be a vain desire. That which we can only 
 long for, may be a means of our holiest up- 
 ward strugglings. 
 
 As Lowell phrases this truth : 
 
 " Longing is God's fresh, heavenward will, 
 
 With our poor earthward, striving ; 
 We quench it, that we may be still 
 
 Content with merely living ; 
 But would we learn that heart's full scope 
 
 Which we are hourly wronging, 
 Our lives must climb from hope to hope, 
 
 To realize our longing." 
 
 And Owen Meredith voices the thought of 
 many an outreaching soul, when he cries : 
 
 " O heavenly power of human wishes ! 
 For as wings to birds, and as fins to fishes, 
 Are a man's desires, to the soul of a man. 
 'Tis by these, and by these alone, it can 
 Wander at will through its native sphere, 
 Where the beauty that's far is the bliss that is 
 near." 
 
 If it were not for our restless longing and 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 25 
 
 wishing, we should abide contented in our 
 lower estate, and should lose both the possi- 
 bility of high attainment, and the certain gain 
 of noble strivings after the unattainable. 
 
 We often wonder, and still oftener we re- 
 gret, that we have been called to lives of such 
 strange unrest, in spheres where rest was so 
 desirable, and where it would even seem to 
 have been most natural. Our thought is, 
 that if we could only have been spared all 
 these months or years of vain longings, if we 
 could only have had granted to us the one 
 thing which has caused us all these wearying 
 and hopeless strivings, our life-powers could 
 have been so much more effectively employed 
 for good; and we could have been so much 
 happier, while accomplishing so much more 
 for others, for ourselves, and for God. 
 
 But, if we look carefully and wisely at the 
 lessons of our own experience, as well as at 
 this all-pervading truth in the plan of God's 
 providence, we shall see that the best there 
 is in us, and the best that has been done 
 by us, are manifestly a result of our much 
 
26 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 regretted unrest; that it is because the rest 
 was denied us, that we have been outreach- 
 ing and on-going in the direction of better 
 and greater good, continually. Had God 
 granted to us the rest we have longed for, it 
 would have kept us in the passive useless- 
 ness of the fledgling bird in its home nest, or 
 of the mammoth steamer in the trough of 
 the sea. 
 
 There is, indeed, nothing for which we 
 have more reason to be profoundly grateful 
 to God, than the fact that God has never per- 
 mitted us to be fully satisfied with what we 
 have or with what we are. What God has 
 withheld from us, while holding it before us, 
 has, in many an instance, proved more of a 
 blessing than that which he has granted to 
 us. The unattained desire has been a means 
 of our ever-attaining progress. 
 
 Whenever you find a preacher or a writer 
 who moves your very soul by his words of 
 tremulous and sympathetic power; whenever 
 you look into a face that shows depths of 
 character and profounder depths of feeling; 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 2J 
 
 whenever you note a tireless and a tender 
 worker for the cause of Christ, in a lesser or 
 a larger sphere ; whenever you feel a strange 
 and an exceptional charm in the pervading 
 influence of a true man or a true woman, in 
 the realm of quiet social converse, — you may 
 be sure that you have before you another 
 illustration of the blessing of weary unrest; 
 for there is never such power, such attain- 
 ment, or such a charm, to a soul that has 
 been always at rest. 
 
 Even the spiritual rest which is assured to 
 every trustful child of God, is a rest in rest- 
 lessness. It is in a land where there are 
 giants to fight, and walled cities to take, and 
 ceaseless activities to pursue. Divine rest- 
 lessness is a chief characteristic of that rest 
 — which remaineth to the people of God. 
 
 It is hard to be always restless ; but noth- 
 ing that is good is easy. Dying is easy; it 
 is living that is hard. Rest is the symbol of 
 death. Unrest is the assurance of life. Let 
 us thank God that we live, and that we are 
 unceasingly restless ! 
 
28 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 " I cannot choose but live, because I die, 
 And, when I am not dead, how glad am I ! 
 Yet, when I am thus glad, for sense of pain, 
 And careful am, lest I should careless be, 
 Then do I desire for being glad again, 
 And fear lest carelessness take care from me. 
 Amidst these restless thoughts, this rest I find, 
 For those that rest not here, there's rest behind.' 
 
III. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL POWER OF 
 SENTIMENT. 
 
 To say of any lofty aspiration, or of any 
 prompting to action, that " it is only a senti- 
 ment," is, in the popular mind, to throw dis- 
 credit on that which is thus characterized, 
 and to classify it as unpractical, and therefore 
 not worthy of the thought and endeavors of 
 a person of sound sense. Yet there is noth- 
 ing in all this world so practical as sentiment; 
 nothing worthier of the utmost energies and 
 of the innermost yearnings of any true man, 
 or of any true woman. 
 
 What is "sentiment"? Primarily, it is 
 
 perception by the more subtile senses ; it is 
 
 feeling which is a result of one's entirest and 
 
 most distinctive personality. It "denotes a 
 
 refined sensibility on subjects affecting the 
 
 heart." In contrast with the results of cold 
 
 29 
 
30 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 reasoning, we speak of " the sentiments of the 
 heart/' as over against "the opinions of the 
 mind." And just so surely as heart-power 
 is superior to head-power, with this world as 
 it is, is sentiment more potent, and inciden- 
 tally more practical, than opinion. This we 
 recognize, when we ask concerning a man 
 who has expressed his formal opinions on a 
 subject: "Yes; but are those his real senti- 
 ments ?" And so it is, as Dugald Stewart 
 tells us, that " the word sentiment . . . ex- 
 presses . . . very happily those complex de- 
 terminations of the mind which result from 
 the co-operation of our entire rational powers, 
 and of our moral feelings. ,, And so it comes 
 to pass, that the real measure of any true 
 man is the depth and the power of his senti- 
 ment. 
 
 There is all the difference in the world be- 
 tween "sentiment" and " sentimentalism ; " as 
 great a difference as between " child-likeness " 
 and " childishness." Child-likeness is the 
 attribute of the wisest of the sons of men, 
 and is the type of him who is greatest in the 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AXD IXFL UENCES. 3 1 
 
 kingdom of heaven. Childishness is a trait 
 unworthy even of an untutored child. " Senti- 
 mentalism " is the quality of resting inactive 
 in mere feeling. " Sentiment" is that sway 
 of the feelings which carries one out of him- 
 self toward an object of love and life which 
 is dearer to him than rest or safety or posses- 
 sion. Sentiment is ennobling and practical; 
 sentimentalism is ignoble and unpractical. 
 Let no man confound the two, in his esti- 
 mate of the worth and the power of either. 
 
 There is no sphere where sentiment, in its 
 best and truest meaning, is not the prevailing 
 force in impelling to high endeavor. Both 
 the Old Testament and the New give the 
 foremost place in religion to lave; and what 
 is love, if it is not a sentiment? What is 
 patriotism, but a sentiment? What is human 
 affection, but a sentiment? What is love of 
 duty, or love in duty, — duty toward God, 
 duty toward country, duty toward our fel- 
 lows, — if it is not a sentiment? 
 
 When Edward Everett was pleading for 
 the completion of Bunker Hill monument, 
 
32 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 he confronted the objection that this was 
 "only a sentiment," and that it had no prac- 
 tical worth in our national life. " I am asked/' 
 he said, " What good will this monument do ? 
 And I ask, What good does anything do? 
 What is good? Does anything do good?" 
 
 Then he proceeded to show that the dig- 
 ging of canals, or the building of railroads, or 
 the prosecution of any means of wealth, is in 
 itself of no immediate advantage, but de- 
 pends for its ultimate value on its relatings 
 to the interests and to the welfare of human- 
 ity; that, in fact, there is "no good in the 
 mere animal life, except that it is the physi- 
 cal basis of that higher moral existence, 
 which resides in the soul, the heart, the mind, 
 the conscience, — in good principles, good 
 feelings, and the good actions (and the more 
 disinterested, the more entitled to be called 
 good) which flow from them." 
 
 " Now, sir," he concluded : " I say that gen- 
 erous and patriotic sentiments, sentiments 
 which prepare us to serve our country — feel- 
 ings like those which carried Prescott and 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 33 
 
 Warren and Putnam to the battle-field, are 
 good, — good, humanly speaking, of the high- 
 est order. It is good to have them, good to 
 encourage them, good to commemorate them ; 
 and -whatever tends to animate and strengthen 
 such feelings, does as much right down prac- 
 tical good as filling up low grounds and build- 
 ing railroads." 
 
 The love of one's country's flag is only a 
 sentiment; yet brave men are ready to die 
 for that flag on the field of battle; and when 
 in the hush of peace the weather-beaten, bul- 
 let-pierced, stained and tattered old flag is 
 borne proudly through t.he city streets, on 
 some memorial day, strong men shed tears 
 at its sight; — "because of its associations/' 
 you may say ; but what is any power of as- 
 sociation except a " sentiment"? Associa- 
 tions of time: the New Year, Christmas, a 
 birthday, a marriage-day, a death-day, some 
 anniversary tenderer than all these, it may be, 
 — what is the peculiar charm of such a time, 
 but a sentiment? Associations of place: the 
 old homestead, the little school-house, the 
 3 
 
34 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 village church, the woods, the meadow, the 
 brook, the shore, the quiet graveyard; — that 
 which hallows each of these is a sentiment 
 
 " That's hallowed ground — where, mourned and 
 missed, 
 The lips repose, our love has kissed; — 
 But where's their memory's mansion? Is't 
 
 Yon church-yard's towers? 
 No ! in ourselves their souls exist, 
 A part of ours." 
 
 Associations of material things: a mother's 
 Bible, an old arm-chair, a faded flower, a 
 lock of hair, 
 
 u That little shoe in the corner, 
 So worn and wrinkled and brown;" — 
 
 is it aught but a sentiment that makes such 
 a trifle a priceless treasure? 
 
 Literature has power and permanency in 
 its swaying influence, in proportion to its 
 measure of profound sentiment. It is true, 
 in a sense, that that alone can be classified as 
 real literature, which appeals directly to the 
 heart; that only those writings which are 
 
ASPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 3 5 
 
 from the heart to the heart live on from age 
 to age. Even in the sphere of inspired writ- 
 ings, it is many times found that sentiment 
 is a pre-eminent force over the mind of the 
 reader. The poetry of the Psalms of David 
 has swayed the human race a thousand-fold 
 more mightily than the mere chronicle of 
 David's life-story; and the abiding glory of 
 Solomon is not the record of his temple- 
 building, but to the memory of his inspired 
 heart-teachings. Painting and sculpture are 
 but appeals to human sentiment; but what 
 would this prosaic world be without their 
 poetic influence? Music is a sentiment; yet 
 music sways human feelings as if it were an 
 emanation of the Divine. 
 
 Cardinal Newman, speaking of the won- 
 drous power of music, says inquiringly : " Can 
 it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, 
 and keen emotions, and strange yearnings 
 after we know not what, and awful impres- 
 sions from we know not whence, should be 
 wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and 
 comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? 
 
36 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 
 
 No; they have escaped from some higher 
 sphere; they are the outpourings of eternal 
 harmony in the medium of created sound; 
 they are echoes from our Home; they are 
 the voices of angels, or the Magnificat of 
 saints, or the living laws of Divine guidance, 
 or the Divine attributes ; something they are 
 besides themselves, which we cannot com- 
 pass, which we cannot utter, — though mortal 
 man, and he perhaps not otherwise distin- 
 guished above his fellows, has the power of 
 eliciting them. ,, They are, in fact, in the 
 realm of living sentiment, and not of life- 
 less reason. 
 
 So mighty is the sentiment-swaying power 
 of music, that the bravest soldiers are afraid 
 of it when it comes in conflict with a trying 
 duty. The bands of the Highland regiments 
 are, it is said, forbidden to play, during their 
 foreign service, such a plaintive home-sug- 
 gesting tune as " Lochaber No More," a popu- 
 lar Scottish ballad of exile. Similarly, the 
 Swiss bands are forbidden to play, while 
 abroad, a ranz des vaches, or one of the 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 37 
 
 melodies which the Alpine herdsmen play 
 upon their alp-horns while driving home 
 their flocks. 
 
 As showing that every heart is human, 
 and that in every land, and among persons 
 of every race, 
 
 " The bravest are the tenderest, 
 The loving are the daring," 
 
 Dr. S. Wells Williams gives this delightful 
 rendering of an ancient Chinese poem, in 
 illustration of this common truth: — 
 
 " 'Twas night — the tired soldiers were peacefully 
 sleeping ; 
 The low hum of voices was hushed in repose ; 
 The sentries, in silence, a strict watch were keep- 
 ing 
 'Gainst surprise or a sudden attack of their foes ; 
 
 " When a low mellow note on the night air came 
 stealing ; 
 So soothingly over the senses it fell, — 
 So touchingly sweet, — so soft and appealing, — 
 Like the musical notes of an aerial bell. 
 
 "The sleepers arouse, and with beating hearts 
 listen ; 
 
38 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. ' 
 
 In their dreams they had heard that weird music 
 before ; 
 It touches each heart; — with tears their eyes 
 glisten ; 
 For it tells them of those they may never see 
 more. 
 
 "Bright visions of home through their mem'ries 
 came thronging, 
 Panorama-like passing in front of their view ; 
 They were home-sick; — no power could withstand 
 that strange yearning ; 
 The longer they listened, the more home-sick 
 they grew. 
 
 "Each looked at the other; but no word was 
 spoken, — 
 The music insensibly leading them on. — 
 They must return home. — Ere the daylight had 
 broken, 
 The enemy looked, and behold ! they were gone. 
 
 " There's a magic in music, — a witchery in it, 
 
 Indescribable either with tongue or with pen. — 
 The flute of Chang Liang, in one little minute, 
 Had stolen the courage of eight thousand men." 
 
 In our American civil war there was a 
 notable instance of the swaying power of 
 sentiment as expressed in home music heard 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 39 
 
 by soldiers in the field. The two armies were 
 encamped over against one another on the 
 opposite banks of the Rappahannock, when 
 a military band on the Union side of the river 
 played in alternation the favorite airs of the 
 opposing forces. As John Randolph Thomp- 
 son tells the story, 
 
 " Down flocked the soldiers to the banks, 
 Till, margined by its pebbles, 
 One wooded shore was blue with ■ Yanks/ 
 And one was gray with ' Rebels.* " 
 
 The tune of "Dixie" aroused the "yelling of 
 the Rebels," while "Yankee Doodle" started 
 the shrieks of the "Boys in Blue." But 
 when all on both sides were thus excited to 
 the utmost, another tune hushed them all to 
 silence : 
 
 " All silent now the Yankees stood 
 All silent now the Rebels. 
 
 " No unresponsive soul had heard 
 That plaintive note's appealing, 
 So deeply ■ Home, Sweet Home,' had stirred 
 The hidden founts of feeling." 
 
 A vision of his home was in every soldier's 
 
40 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 
 
 heart, and the differences that separated him 
 from his fellows across the river were all for- 
 gotten as he and they turned back to their 
 camps in tender thoughtfulness when 
 
 '* The vision vanished, as the strain 
 And daylight died together." 
 
 It was "only a sentiment" evoked by mem- 
 ory; 
 
 " But memory, waked by music's art, 
 Expressed in simplest numbers, 
 Subdued the sternest Yankee's heart, 
 Made light the Rebel's slumbers." 
 
 It is sentiment which makes every-day 
 home-life a joy and a blessing, where other- 
 wise it would be toilsome drudgery. It is 
 the poetry of affection, which enables many 
 a tired wife and mother to labor on and to 
 endure, through the dull and senseless prose 
 of her existence. It is the sentiment of filial 
 and fraternal love which gives zest to the 
 efforts of children to be faithful to their pa- 
 rents and kindly toward one another in our 
 matter-of-fact world. It is the sentiment of 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 41 
 
 an unselfish and an outgoing friendship, — a 
 friendship which finds its highest pleasure in 
 loving and in serving, with no craving desire of 
 possession or return, — which is the most en- 
 nobling and inspiriting of human affections, 
 and which, in all the ages, has been found to 
 prompt to the best achievements of which 
 humanity is capable. Everywhere and always 
 it is sentiment which is the chiefest force, as a 
 swaying agency of the human heart ; the differ- 
 ences are in the nature and the object and 
 the measure of that sentiment. That senti- 
 ment which rises to the highest ideal, is ever 
 that which rises from the profoundest depths 
 of a consecrated being; and he who sways 
 others mightily, is always one who himself is 
 mightily swayed. 
 
 When General Joseph R. Hawley was ad- 
 vocating, in the United States Congress, the 
 fitting observance of our Centenary of Amer- 
 ican Independence, he was met by the sneer, 
 that " after all this is but a sentiment." " I know r 
 it," responded the General, in his red-hot 
 earnestness; "but I haven't a sentiment that 
 
42 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 I'm not ready to die for." Whatever senti- 
 ment is worth living for, is worth dying for, 
 — if dying be in the line of its right achiev- 
 ing. And it is good to be so possessed with 
 a noble sentiment, as to count it a minor 
 matter whether life or death be a result of its 
 expression and advocacy. 
 
 
IV. 
 
 IS PROSPERITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 In the very nature of the case, everybody 
 wants prosperity. And in the very nature 
 of the case, prosperity may be the worst 
 thing in the world for a person; the last 
 thing in the world to be desired or sought 
 after by that person. As a preliminary, 
 therefore, to any reaching out after prosper- 
 ity, it is well for us to decide whether or not 
 prosperity is a desirable thing for ourselves. 
 Prosperity is evidently desirable for some 
 people; but is it so for us? The answer to 
 that question depends on what we mean by 
 prosperity. 
 
 " Prosperity " primarily means " according 
 to one's hope," "agreeable to one's wishes." 
 But not every man hopes or wishes for the 
 same thing; nor are all men's hopes and 
 wishes alike worthy ; hence a man's standard 
 
 43 
 
44 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 of prosperity is good or bad, according to 
 the man's standard of character and attain- 
 ment. If what he hopes for is really desir- 
 able, then to him prosperity is desirable; but 
 if his wishes are unworthy, prosperity is in 
 his case undesirable. 
 
 If a man is a mail-robber (with or without 
 a contract); if he is a bank robber (on a 
 salary or only on a commission); if he is a 
 stock speculator (with his own funds or with 
 other people's money), — his idea of pros- 
 perity includes the overthrow of somebody 
 else; he hopes to rise by the downfall of 
 others. And a large share of the prosperity 
 that is desired among men, take the whole 
 world over, is a prosperity that can be se- 
 cured only at the cost of other people's 
 possessions or comfort. That prosperity is 
 not desirable. It is not right prosperity; it 
 is not true prosperity. It is prosperity in 
 the sense of being in the direction of one's 
 hopes as they are; it is not prosperity, in the 
 sense of being in the direction of one's hopes 
 as they ought to be. Hence it follows, that 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 45 
 
 prosperity is desirable only to those whose 
 hopes are desirable; that prosperity itself is 
 a good thing only when it is in the direction 
 of wishes which are good, wishes which are 
 worthy of a man's better nature and nobler 
 destiny. To decide, therefore, whether or not 
 prosperity is desirable to us, we must first de- 
 cide whether our hopes and wishes are w r hat 
 they should be. 
 
 Men are very likely to judge of prosperity, 
 for themselves or for others, by mere outward 
 show; by that which can be seen of posses- 
 sions or of success. They count health, and 
 wealth, and a foremost place in the compe- 
 titions of life, as essential elements of pros- 
 perity; without seeking to know the effects 
 or results of all these on the inner life and 
 character, and on the ultimate destiny, of the 
 possessor. If their eyes were clearer, they 
 might come to see real prosperity in what 
 before seemed adversity, and real adversity 
 in what had the appearance of prosperity. 
 They would see that in many an instance the 
 man who has health and strength is distanced 
 
46 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 in both enjoyment and achievement by the 
 man of feeble frame and of invalid body; 
 and that it was the former's possession which 
 caused his lack, while the latter's lack led to 
 his acquisitions. They would see, also, that 
 the rich man often fails of finding the pleas- 
 ures of using money, while a poor man 
 lives a life of personal comfort through his 
 very poverty. They would see that many a 
 man who has been kept in the background 
 is brought to the front because of his keep- 
 ing back; and that often the real victor is 
 the defeated man. They would see that suc- 
 cess frequently means ruin, while disaster is 
 but a stepping-stone to success. As a con- 
 sequence of all this, they would come to be 
 more solicitous to have hopes and wishes 
 that might safely be realized, than to have 
 the realization of their existing wishes and 
 hopes. 
 
 To a child of God, true prosperity is what 
 God would choose for that person, rather 
 than what that person would choose for him- 
 self. And God's standard for his children's 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 47 
 
 acquirements is not the standard of the nat- 
 ural heart for its own possessions. This 
 truth is made clearer and clearer in the 
 progress of divine revelation; all the way 
 along from the picture-book lessons of the 
 patriarchal histories, to the didactic teach- 
 ings of the apostolic epistles. 
 
 Lord Bacon says : " Prosperity is the bless- 
 ing of the Old Testament; adversity is the 
 blessing of the New — which carrieth the 
 greater benediction, and the clearer revela- 
 tion of God's favor. Yet, even in the Old 
 Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you 
 shall hear as many hearse-like airs, as carols; 
 and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored 
 more in describing the afflictions of Job than 
 the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not 
 without many fears and distastes; and ad- 
 versity is not without comforts and hopes. 
 We see in needleworks and embroideries, 
 [that] it is more pleasing to have a lively 
 work upon a sad and solemn ground, than 
 to have a dark and melancholy w r ork upon 
 lightsome ground: judge, therefore, [in this] 
 
48 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure 
 of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious 
 odors — most fragrant, when they are in- 
 censed or crushed : for prosperity doth best 
 discover vice; but adversity doth best dis- 
 cover virtue." 
 
 It is not that God's standard has been dif- 
 ferent in different ages; but it is that God 
 had to teach man by symbols before he could 
 make clear to man the full truth symbolized. 
 In the days of Job, prosperity was commonly 
 measured among men by camels and oxen 
 and sheep and asses, together with sons and 
 daughters. So commonly was this the stan- 
 dard, that Satan himself had the idea that a 
 man would love and serve God just in pro- 
 portion to the pay of this sort which he 
 received from God ; and there was probably 
 a good deal in the conduct of men to make 
 Satan have this opinion. But God tested 
 the loving confidence of Job by giving him 
 a touch of New Testament prosperity, that 
 is, adversity; and Job stood the test glori- 
 ously. It was after this testing that God 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 49 
 
 gave to Job a new prosperity according to 
 man's standard of judging; for Job had been 
 found a safe man to have prosperity by God's 
 standard, and by man's standard also. 
 
 When Solomon, however, had everything 
 that his heart could wish for, his heart went 
 to wishing in wrong directions ; and then it 
 was that "the Lord was angry with Solo- 
 mon, because his heart was turned from the 
 Lord God of Israel," and was seeking a pros- 
 perity according to its own standard instead 
 of according to God's standard. Therefore 
 it was that Solomon's prosperity was not so 
 prosperous as Job's adversity; and hence it 
 is that "the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath 
 labored more in describing the afflictions of 
 Job [and their results] than the felicities of 
 Solomon [and their consequences]." 
 
 It is no new truth that is disclosed in the 
 New Testament, when the blessing of God 
 is shown to be in adversity quite as surely as 
 in prosperity. It is simply a new disclosure 
 of the truth which was symbolized in God's 
 calling Abraham to leave his early home, 
 4 
 
50 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 and become a pilgrim and a stranger in the 
 world, with his richest possessions in prom- 
 ises which could have their fruition only after 
 his own death. The symbolic promise of the 
 Old Testament to the obedient children of 
 Abraham was of "a good land, a land of 
 brooks of water, of fountains, and depths, 
 springing forth in valleys and hills; a land 
 of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, 
 and pomegranates; a land of olives and 
 honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread 
 without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any- 
 thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and 
 out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." 
 That promise an uninstructed Hebrew wan- 
 derer could understand. 
 
 But the New Testament promise of the 
 same God to the faith-filled spiritual descend- 
 ants of the same Abraham reads very dif- 
 ferently: "In the world ye have tribulation." 
 " Yea, and all that would live godly in Christ 
 Jesus shall suffer persecution." " For whom 
 the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth 
 every son whom he receiveth." " Blessed 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 5 1 
 
 are ye when men shall reproach you, and 
 persecute you, and say all manner of evil 
 against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and 
 be exceeding glad : for great is your reward 
 in heaven. ,, This New Testament phrasing 
 of the Divine promise is not so attractive 
 to the natural eye as the Old Testament 
 phrasing was ; but to the eye of faith there 
 is more to be grateful for in the later form 
 than in the earlier. But this puts a new 
 meaning into the question, Is it prosperity 
 after God's sort, or after man's sort, that we 
 are seeking, and for which we are longing? 
 
 The words "prosper," "prospered," "pros- 
 perous," "prospering," "prosperity," are 
 found more than eighty times in the Old 
 Testament. They sparkle to the natural 
 eye all along the ancient record. But in 
 the New Testament they appear only four 
 times, and then each time with a peculiar 
 signification, or a peculiar application, which 
 can have a sparkle only to the quickened 
 eye of faith. Twice Paul uses these words, 
 and twice they are used by John. 
 
52 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 Paul writes to the Romans that he is pray- 
 ing that now at length he may " have a pros- 
 perous journey by the will of God" to come 
 to them at their city. Yet he knew that 
 "bonds and afflictions" were awaiting him 
 " in every city." He was praying to be car- 
 ried through, to get his share of those bonds 
 and afflictions in Rome. Is that the kind of 
 prosperity you are praying for? Again Paul 
 writes to the Corinthian Christians, urging 
 every one of them to give every Lord's Day 
 according "as God hath prospered him." Is 
 that your thought in connection with pros- 
 perity? Are you thinking of success only 
 as it will enable you to give more at next 
 Sunday's collection (not in your will: Paul 
 does not speak here of legacies) ? 
 
 John uses the word "prosper" twice, or in 
 two forms, in one sentence of an epistle. He 
 prays that his loved follower may "prosper 
 and be in health" even as the soul of that 
 loved one prospereth. In other words, he 
 wants to have that one have just as much 
 prosperity outside as he already has inside 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 5 3 
 
 — no more. Are you willing to accept that 
 as the standard of your prosperity ? Do you 
 want the Lord to see to it that you keep just 
 as full (and just as lean) outside, in body and 
 in all material possessions, as you are inside, 
 in your heart and soul ? 
 
 He who recalls the methods by which he 
 has been helped upward and onward in the 
 line of true spiritual progress, will see that 
 his greatest gain has been made at times 
 when he was receiving that which God knew 
 was best for him, but which he himself 
 deemed most undesirable. Recognizing the 
 truth which underlies and is illustrated by 
 these experiences and their results, he might 
 well look for new prosperity as an outcome 
 of new adversity. And his words might be: 
 
 "When I look back upon my former race, 
 Seasons I see at which the inward ray 
 More brightly burned, or guided some new way ; 
 Truth in its wealthier scene and nobler space, 
 Given for my eye to range, and feet to trace. 
 And next I mark, 'twas trial did convey, 
 Or grief, or pain, or strange eventful day, 
 
54 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 To my tormented soul such larger grace. 
 
 So now, whene'er, in journeying on, I feel 
 The shadow of the Providential Hand, 
 
 Deep breathless stirrings shoot across my breast, 
 
 Searching to know what He will now reveal, 
 What sin uncloak, what stricter rule command, 
 
 And guiding me to work his full behest." 
 
V. 
 
 DESIRING, BUT NOT SEEKING 
 
 Desire is an impulse of the nature. Seek- 
 ing is an act of the will. It is not always 
 within our power to shape and regulate our 
 desires; but it is within the scope of our 
 powers to control and direct our seekings. 
 Therefore it is that we, being what we are, 
 are sure to have desires which we, being what 
 we are, have no right to seek the gratifying 
 of. Both our desirings and our seekings are 
 measures and tests of our character; but our 
 desirings indicate our character in its specific 
 tendencies, while our seekings indicate our 
 character in its deliberate purposes. And 
 this is alike true whether the desiring and 
 the seeking be noble or ignoble; worthy of 
 us, or unworthy. It may be wrong for us to 
 seek that which it is not wrong for us to 
 desire; as, again, it is sure to be wrong for 
 
 55 
 
56 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 us to seek that which it is not right for us 
 to desire. 
 
 A man's nature may be such that he de- 
 sires retaliation or revenge, when he has been 
 injured. In such a case, it is clearly his duty 
 not to seek that which he desires. So, again, 
 if his nature prompts him to desire more 
 than his fair share in a division of property, 
 he would be wholly at fault in seeking the 
 object of his desire. If, indeed, his natural 
 desires are in the direction of an indulgence 
 in appetite or passion or lust, it would, obvi- 
 ously, be wrong for him to seek the gratifi- 
 cation of his desires. 
 
 So far, it is easy to see, that one's desires 
 are not in themselves a justification of one's 
 seeking. But when, on the other hand, one's 
 desires are not unworthy, and especially when 
 they are in the direction of that which is in 
 itself good and admirable, the wrong of seek- 
 ing that which is desired is not so apparent. 
 Yet in many a case it clearly is wrong to seek 
 that which it is not wrong to desire; or, in 
 other words, that which, in such a case, may 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 5 7 
 
 properly be desired as a result, must not be 
 sought as an end. 
 
 Take, for example, a soldier in battle, a 
 physician in time of pestilence, a ship's cap- 
 tain on a sinking vessel with a crowd of pas- 
 sengers to look after, an engine-driver on an 
 express locomotive at the time of an impend- 
 ing collision, or a man in any other peculiar 
 peril under a sense of responsibility for others ; 
 — it is as proper as it is natural for him to 
 desire his personal safety; but it is clearly his 
 duty not to seek that object of his inevitable 
 desire. His seeking in such a case must, in 
 a sense, be in the opposite direction from his 
 desire; he must persistently do that which 
 imperils the life he desires to protect, and 
 only as he refuses to seek safety, even while 
 still desiring it, can he prove himself a true 
 man, and evidence a purpose of character in 
 a nobler direction than the natural tendency 
 of his character. 
 
 Nor is it only on the plane of life-shielding 
 that a man is likely to find himself forbidden 
 to seek that which he is not forbidden to 
 
5 8 ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 
 
 desire. Popularity, the favorable opinion of 
 the public generally, is a thing to be desired; 
 but not only is it wrong for a man to seek 
 popularity as an end of his striving, but it 
 may be his plain duty to do that which is 
 sure to lose him popularity; and in such a 
 case his right seeking is contrary to his not- 
 wrong desiring. Praise, honor, position, may 
 be desired without impropriety, when it would 
 be wrong to seek that which is thus desired. 
 To desire a nomination for an exalted public 
 station is not unworthy of any man who has 
 any measure of fitness for that station; but 
 to seek a nomination to such a position is 
 unworthy of any man who otherwise has high 
 fitness for the station desired by him. In 
 every walk of life, in fact, a man is constantly 
 called on to refrain from seeking honors and 
 gains which he cannot, nor indeed ought to, 
 refrain from desiring. 
 
 Even if it be in the realm of science, or 
 literature, or art, or philanthropy, the man 
 whose seeking is for that recognition and 
 those rewards which he cannot but desire, 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 59 
 
 instead of for that attainment in the line of 
 his own ideals which ought to command recog- 
 nition and reward, but which may not, is 
 never likely to do so well, nor can he show 
 himself so worthily, as if his seeking were 
 not directly to obtain the object of his desires. 
 No seeking to win a desired prize is so high 
 a stimulus to supreme endeavor, as is the 
 seeking to compass one's noblest ideal — prize 
 or no prize. 
 
 A good illustration of this truth is given 
 in the life of Giovanni Dupre, an Italian 
 sculptor, who died in Florence a few years 
 ago. After several attempts — more or less 
 successful — at winning prizes by artistic 
 execution, Dupre was working hard for 
 another prize, when word came to him 
 that the proffered prize was withdrawn. 
 " In his first fury of disappointment, he 
 dashed his model to the ground, and broke 
 it to pieces. And yet this very passion was 
 but another step to his fame; for in his re- 
 pentance he determined to atone for it by 
 some grand work — a work which should 
 
60 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 live, and which he would produce alone, 
 with no thought of winning prizes, and with 
 no help from academies." Then it was that 
 he designed and wrought his Death of Abel, 
 on which his future fame was builded; and 
 which can never be forgotten by one who 
 has looked on it in the Pitti Palace, in 
 Florence. Had Dupre continued to work 
 for prizes, his best energies would never have 
 been called forth; and his permanent repu- 
 tation would never have been secured. And 
 so in every department of mental activity; 
 prize-offering and prize-seeking cannot bring 
 out the best that is in those who are pos- 
 sessed of high possibilities. Although it is 
 every way proper for the artist to desire 
 prizes, no artist can do his best work while 
 seeking prizes. 
 
 A desire to be loved is not only universal, 
 but it is universally commendable. God 
 himself seems to desire the love of all his 
 creatures; and whoever retains any measure 
 of the image of God desires to be loved by 
 his fellows. But it is not universally com- 
 
. ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 6 1 
 
 mendable for one to seek a love which is 
 eminently desirable. A true woman, for ex- 
 ample, may inevitably, and without impro- 
 priety, desire the love of a true man whom 
 she has come to know and to honor, when 
 she must not seek his love; when, indeed, to 
 seek his love would be the surest way of 
 losing it. And as it is with a true woman, 
 so, under other circumstances, it sometimes 
 is with a true man. He may be forbidden 
 to seek the special favor and approval of a 
 noble woman whose esteem and regard it is 
 not wrong for him to count desirable. 
 
 Yet again the seeking to evidence love 
 may be nobler than the desiring to win love. 
 Just here, indeed, it is that the distinctive 
 peculiarity of the highest friendship is found; 
 in its triumph of the unselfish seeking to evi- 
 dence love for a friend, over the not unworthy 
 and yet the selfly desire to secure love from 
 a friend. To desire to have a friend is emi- 
 nently natural; to seek to be a friend is glo- 
 riously preternatural. In other words, true 
 friendship illustrates the truth that seeking to 
 
62 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. ■ 
 
 be good is better than desiring to have good; 
 and that seeking is not necessarily to be in 
 the direction of one's desire. 
 
 Desire is, indeed, never a safe guide of 
 conduct; but seeking ought always to be in 
 the direction of right conduct. Our desires 
 ought to be worthy and noble desires; but 
 whether they are worthy and noble or un- 
 worthy and ignoble, our seeking ought to be 
 that which, unmistakably, is both worthy and 
 noble. We are not always directly responsi- 
 ble for our desires ; but we are always directly 
 responsible for our seekings. In every emer- 
 gency, whether our desires are for food or 
 dress or praise or fame or life or love, we are 
 to seek first the kingdom of God and his 
 righteousness, — to seek to be and to do that 
 which is right, — and then all of those desired 
 things which it is best for us to have shall be 
 added to us; and herein is the comfort and 
 the gain of duty-doing. 
 
VI. 
 
 INCLINATION AS A HINDRANCE TO 
 SUCCESS. 
 
 Unless a man has his heart in his work, 
 he is not worth much for that work. Yet 
 not every man can have his heart in the same 
 kind of work. One man can give his whole 
 heart only to one line of service, and another 
 man only to another line of service. Either 
 of these men would be out of place, and 
 comparatively useless, in the sphere of the 
 other. The success of either pivots on his 
 being where he belongs. How to find one's 
 real place and work in the world is, there- 
 fore, a question of practical moment for one's 
 self and for those whom one is set to control 
 or to counsel. 
 
 A widely prevalent thought in connection 
 with this subject is, that one's natural or one's 
 acquired inclination in a certain direction is 
 
 63 
 
64 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 an indication of probable success in that 
 direction — under favorable conditions. Yet, 
 as a matter of fact, an inclination is more 
 likely to be a hindrance than a help to suc- 
 cess — in the direction of that inclining. And 
 true gain in life ordinarily comes through re- 
 sisting one's inclinations, rather than through 
 following them. 
 
 An inclination is a natural or an acquired 
 tendency, rather than an intelligent purpose. 
 And with human nature as it is, one's ten- 
 dencies are toward personal ease, rather than 
 toward personal discomfort ; toward personal 
 indulgence, rather than toward personal con- 
 straint. One naturally inclines to do that 
 which he can do with small effort, rather 
 than to undertake that which will tax his 
 utmost energies ; and the longer one follows 
 his inclinations, the more difficult it is for 
 him to break away in another direction. Yet 
 it is obvious that activity and struggle and 
 self-denial are essential to the developing of 
 one's powers and to one's attainment of any 
 high success in the world. Hence it is that 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 65 
 
 inclination may prove a barrier to success, 
 and that at the best it is a peril and a hin- 
 drance in one's life-course. 
 
 If, indeed, a young person inclines to over- 
 eat, or to over-sleep, or to mope listlessly 
 through the day, or to fly about in aimless 
 motion, every parent or teacher recognizes 
 the fact that that person ought to be trained 
 away from his inclinations, rather than in 
 their direction. So, again, if a young person 
 inclines to extravagance, or to miserliness, 
 or to carelessness, or to hasty speech, or to 
 inconsiderate action, it is admitted by all that 
 the inclination in such a case stands as a hin- 
 drance to successful progress, and that added 
 endeavor will be needful for the overcoming 
 of that hindrance. 
 
 But, on the other hand, if a boy inclines 
 to spend his time reading, or drawing pic- 
 tures, the thought of his parents is more 
 likely to be that he ought to become a stu- 
 dent or an artist. If he inclines to the use 
 of tools, or to the examination of machinery, 
 they are likely to take it as an indication of 
 5 
 
66 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 his fitness for some mechanical or inventive 
 pursuit. If it is to the enjoyment of music 
 that he inclines, that is counted a ground of 
 hope that he will become a musical composer 
 or performer. If he inclines to endless dis- 
 putings and arguings in the home circle, it 
 is supposed that he would make a good 
 lawyer. His inclination to write out little 
 stories or moral reflections is looked upon 
 as a fore-gleam of his power as an author, 
 an editor, or a preacher. And so all along 
 in the line of indicative tokens of possible 
 success in life. Yet, as a rule, a young 
 person's inclination in any direction is likely 
 to be a hindrance, rather than a help, to 
 success in that direction; because a man is 
 less of a man for doing only what he inclines 
 to do. 
 
 High attainment involves persistent strug- 
 gle. Persistent struggle demands compacted 
 character. Compacted character is secured 
 only through pressure and resistance. No 
 man can gain the compacted character which 
 enables him to struggle persistently toward 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 67 
 
 high attainment, without a resistance of his 
 personal inclination, and a pressure against 
 unwelcome obstacles in his pathway. Incli- 
 nation would carry a man in the direction of 
 the swift-flowing current; but the brawny 
 arm and the alert sense of the skilled boat- 
 man are acquired in the pulling of the oars 
 in the up-stream course, against one's inclin- 
 ings. No man has eminent success in any 
 sphere without doing a great deal of work 
 which he would be inclined to leave undone; 
 without, in fact, resisting his inclinations, in- 
 stead of following them. 
 
 It is so easy to follow one's inclinations, 
 that a man is in danger of losing all the gain 
 of struggle, with the consequent growth of 
 manhood, in his favorite, but unfavoring, 
 pursuit. He who always studies, or who 
 always paints, in the direction of his inclina- 
 tions, is not likely to be a successful student 
 or a successful artist. He will lack that dis- 
 cipline of mind and that mastery of personal 
 powers which come through the doing of 
 what one ought to do, whether one inclines 
 
68 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 
 
 to do it or not; and such a lack is fatal to 
 success. 
 
 Ease of writing is rarely the natural pos- 
 session of a successful editor. If he had 
 had that, he might have relied on it to his 
 injury. Exceptional facility of speech would 
 commonly stand in the way of a man's being 
 a first-class advocate or preacher, because of 
 his making it a substitute for the means of 
 real attainment in his profession. On the 
 contrary, a firm purpose of success in the 
 opposite direction from one's inclinations — 
 in any line of endeavor — is in itself an earn- 
 est of some sure attainment, if not indeed of 
 high success, in the direction of that pur- 
 pose. And so far one's inclinations are made 
 a help to progress through their resistance, 
 when they would prove a hindrance if they 
 were conformed to. 
 
 One's inclination is one thing; one's pref- 
 erence is quite another thing. An inclination 
 is a matter of tendency; a preference is a 
 matter of choice. A true man's inclination 
 is often in one direction, while his preference 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 69 
 
 is in the opposite direction. A soldier com- 
 ing under fire may be inclined to turn and 
 run; but as a soldier his preference is to 
 stand at his post, in spite of the risk. A 
 loving watcher by a sick-bed may incline to 
 sleep, and at the same time may prefer to 
 keep awake. So in every sphere of life, the 
 inclination may be against the dictates of 
 wisdom and of duty; the preference ought 
 always to be in accord with those dictates. 
 What one inclines to is, indeed, a minor 
 factor in one's proper preference for an occu- 
 pation or a profession in life. 
 
 In making one's choice of a life -pursuit, 
 the chief question for one to ask himself is 
 not, What do I incline to ? But it is, What 
 ought I to prefer? As a basis of one's in- 
 telligent preference, three points are to be 
 considered wisely: Where can I best please 
 and honor my Master? Where can I make 
 the most of myself, and attain to the highest 
 development of a noble personal character ? 
 Where can I be of largest service to my fel- 
 lows, in view of their interests for time and 
 
70 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 for eternity ? In answering these three ques- 
 tions, one's special fitness — actual or attain- 
 able fitness — ought to be taken into consid- 
 eration. Ordinarily, it will be found, on a 
 fair examination of the case by any child of 
 God who sincerely desires to know and to 
 do God's will, that the answer to all three 
 questions will point in one direction, and 
 that that direction is away from one's natural 
 or acquired inclinations. But when one's 
 duty is thus indicated, his deliberate pref- 
 erence ought to be in the line of that duty y 
 in spite of the obstacle, or the hindrance, of 
 his inclinations. 
 
VII. 
 
 RICHES AS A HINDRANCE TO 
 SUCCESS. 
 
 It is often admitted as a theory, even though 
 it be depreciated as a practical teaching, that 
 riches are a hindrance rather than a help in 
 the spiritual life, and in aspiring struggles 
 heavenward. But it is not a common belief 
 that riches are liable to prove a hindrance to 
 high success in the life that now is, and in 
 laudable endeavors to attain to a permanent 
 position among the honored names of earth. 
 Yet it is equally true of the life that is and 
 of the life that is to come, that riches are 
 commonly a hindrance, and are often an ab- 
 solute barrier, to successful progress and to 
 permanent high attainment. If only this 
 truth were realized in its entirety, what a 
 difference it would make in the popular esti- 
 mate of riches and of their possession ! 
 
 7i 
 
72 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 Concerning the bearing of riches on the 
 spiritual life, the words of Jesus are explicit, 
 unqualified, and wide -reaching. "Jesus said 
 unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, It 
 is hard for a rich man to enter into the king- 
 dom of heaven." The Revised Version shows 
 the force of this statement even more clearly 
 than did the old translation. "And again I 
 say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go 
 through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to 
 enter into the kingdom of God. And when 
 the disciples heard it, they were astonished 
 exceedingly, saying, Who then can be saved ? 
 And Jesus looking upon them said to them — 
 With men this is impossible; but with God 
 all things are possible." 
 
 There can be no escape from the conclu- 
 sion that Jesus here affirmed that riches are 
 a natural hindrance to spiritual progress, and 
 that only by a special miracle, by an act of 
 God in arresting the natural order of things, 
 can one who has riches be brought in safety 
 through the spiritual peril of riches; that 
 while it is possible for God to accomplish 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 73 
 
 this fact, it is one of the hard things to do in 
 the realm of the miraculous. Christian peo- 
 ple generally do not act as if they really be- 
 lieved this truth unhesitatingly; but there are 
 those who will admit its correctness just as it 
 stands, who are not ready to admit the added 
 truth that it is hard for a rich man to attain 
 to a really desirable position in the kingdom 
 of this world. Yet this truth is as true as 
 the other. 
 
 Lord Bacon, who was a prince of modern 
 worldly philosophers, and who never spoke 
 merely from a spiritual plane in his treatment 
 of practical themes of thought, says emphati- 
 cally: "I cannot call riches better than the 
 baggage of virtue. The Roman word is bet- 
 ter, impedimenta [hindrances] ; for as the bag- 
 gage is to an army, so is riches to virtue: it 
 cannot be spared, nor left behind, but it hin- 
 dereth the march; yea, and the care of it 
 sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory.' , 
 Then, in commenting on the suggestion that 
 riches will enable men to purchase themselves 
 successes, Bacon adds that " certainly great 
 
74 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 riches have sold more men than they have 
 bought out." And that which the great 
 English philosopher here affirms as a gen- 
 eral principle, is verified by the experiences 
 of mankind in earlier and in later times. At 
 the best, worldly riches are dragging hin- 
 drances to progress ; and the successful march 
 of life must be made in spite of these hin- 
 drances, and not because of them. 
 
 The more common thought in this matter 
 is, that large wealth gives a man a great im- 
 mediate advantage in position and in power 
 in almost every sphere of life's activities; 
 and that a lack of wealth is correspondingly 
 to a man's immediate disadvantage almost 
 everywhere: yet, as a matter of fact, the 
 truth is quite the reverse of this popular im- 
 pression. In order to test the truth at this 
 point, it might be helpful to turn to some 
 record of the world's great names, and to 
 observe what proportion of those who at- 
 tained to permanent eminence among men 
 were either given their place for their wealth, 
 or were materially aided in their struggle for 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 7$ 
 
 it by their wealth. Perhaps there is no fairer 
 measure of the relative permanent eminence 
 of men among men than the fact of their 
 securing a mention in a standard cyclopedia 
 or a biographical dictionary. And accord- 
 ing to this measure, what are the facts in 
 the case? 
 
 For example, there is the revised edition 
 of Lippincott's Dictionary of Biography and 
 Mythology, as edited by Dr. Joseph Thomas. 
 It contains, say, forty thousand names, more 
 or less, covering the great names of ancient 
 and modern story, both historical and mythi- 
 cal; including living celebrities in all lands. 
 These names are of men and women distin- 
 guished in every sphere of life: rulers, 
 statesmen, heroes, travelers, financiers, manu- 
 facturers, merchants, inventors, reformers, 
 writers, preachers, orators, artists, actors, 
 philanthropists, scientists, scholars ; even 
 monstrosities, and criminals, and all others 
 who for any cause are deemed worthy of ex- 
 ceptional note in the world's story. It would, 
 perhaps, be a surprise to those who deem 
 
76 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 wealth a foremost agency in securing emi- 
 nence among men, to ascertain how few in 
 all that record are named because of their 
 great wealth, or because of that which their 
 wealth obtained for them. From Midas and 
 Croesus down to the Rothschilds and Astors, 
 the men of wealth who are there named be- 
 cause of their wealth are a pitiably small 
 array; and the space which is devoted to 
 them, even when they have a place there, 
 bears no comparison with the space devoted 
 to authors, or preachers, or discoverers, or 
 inventors, or philanthropists, or to helpers of 
 their fellows in any other way. 
 
 All the stories combined of all the men 
 who were eminent merely for their wealth, 
 in that entire thesaurus of biography, oc- 
 cupy no such space as that which is given 
 to one man like Martin Luther, or William 
 Shakespeare, or Immanuel Kant, or Jona- 
 than Edwards, or Benjamin Franklin, or 
 Abraham Lincoln, or many another who 
 started in poverty and made his way up in 
 the world without the aid of riches. The 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 77 
 
 Rothschilds and the Astors together, in all 
 'their generations, are there only given as 
 many lines as Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
 Cornelius Vanderbilt has less space than 
 David Livingstone the missionary, or than 
 even Paganini the fiddler. William H. Van- 
 derbilt is not even mentioned. A. T. Stew- 
 art's space does not equal that of Lemuel 
 Haynes, the colored preacher; and it barely 
 comes up to that of Daniel Lambert, the fat 
 giant. 
 
 Even where the wealth was employed in 
 well-doing, the prominence of the money- 
 giver seems to justify no such extended men- 
 tion as that which is accorded to thinkers 
 and scientists and reformers. Thus Stephen 
 Girard, and George Peabody, and Sir Moses 
 Montefiore, put together, do not have the 
 space which is occupied by John Wesley, 
 or by Nathaniel Hawthorne, or by Michael 
 Faraday. For, after all, the most famous in- 
 structor in a college is likely to have a popu- 
 lar eminence above that of the man who 
 merely endowed the college; and he who 
 
78 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 
 
 writes a great book which finds its place in 
 a public library will be more widely honored 
 than he who founded that library. 
 
 The money value is, in fact, always the 
 lowest measure of permanent renown. And 
 among the many living men of prominence 
 noted in this collection of notabilities, not 
 one of, say, the ten richest men in the United 
 States at the time of its issue, receives even a 
 passing mention among the celebrities of the 
 reputed " land of the almighty dollar;" not 
 one of them is named either for his posses- 
 sions or for his performances; not one of 
 them has won a place there by what he has, 
 by what he is, or by what he has done or is 
 doing. All of them have so far utterly failed 
 of success in securing eminence in or through 
 their pre-eminence as capitalists. Yet no 
 other class of foremost men is so ignored; 
 nor would it be likely to be. 
 
 This selection of names for prominence in 
 a thesaurus of biography like Dr. Thomas's, 
 and the relative space given to them sever- 
 ally, is not a matter of personal preference; 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 79 
 
 but it is, as far as it can be, a record of the 
 world's verdict on the claims of the individu- 
 als to the permanent interest of their fellows 
 generally. If, indeed, any intelligent observer 
 of the course of events were to look around 
 him now, and to say who of those whom he 
 sees in the struggle of active life were to have 
 a place in a permanent record like this, how 
 rarely would he point to a man of great 
 wealth as one who was likely to be thus 
 honored! All the history of the race, and 
 all the philosophy of life and of living, go to 
 show that wealth neither purchases perma- 
 nent fame, nor is ordinarily a means of its 
 securing. 
 
 Worldly fame is not the highest and noblest 
 ambition in life; and no man ought to live 
 for the purpose of securing a place for his 
 name in a biographical dictionary. But, in 
 view of the fact that so many are striving for 
 wealth, or value wealth when it is in their 
 possession, because of their belief that large 
 wealth secures eminence and power, it is well 
 to recognize and to face the fact that wealth 
 
80 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 does not bring the very result which is sup- 
 posed to be its natural outcome. 
 
 There are, indeed, many men of wealth 
 who would give all their present and pros- 
 pective possessions for the purchase of such 
 a niche in the temple of fame as many a poor 
 man has before now obtained. They would 
 agree with the poet who says on this point : 
 
 " Can all the wreaths that crown his head 
 Compensate now to Homer dead 
 The living Homer's want of bread? 
 Yet who would not a beggar be 
 To be as much renowned as he ? 
 I would in sooth 'twere offered me." 
 
 And although these men of wealth can make 
 no such purchase as this, there may be a 
 gain in setting before others who have as yet 
 only started out in life, the unmistakable fact 
 that if it is permanent honor among men 
 that they desire, they will find riches more 
 likely to be a hindrance than a help in their 
 pursuit. They must win fame, if they win it 
 at all, without wealth, or in spite of it, not 
 directly because of wealth. 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 8 1 
 
 The possession of wealth by a young man 
 deprives him of the spur of necessity as a 
 stimulus to that persistent and untiring en- 
 deavor which is a requisite of the highest 
 success in any line of business, or in any 
 profession of life. If he makes progress in 
 spite of his wealth, it is through the exercise 
 of qualities which are rare among men; and 
 at the best he is at more or less of a dis- 
 advantage in comparison with those who are 
 neither hampered nor tempted as he is. In 
 almost every direction it will be found that 
 those who are now foremost in their busi- 
 ness or profession are those who were not 
 encumbered w T ith riches to begin with ; and, 
 on the other hand, it will appear that many 
 who started in the same direction with the 
 consciousness of riches at their disposal were 
 speedily distanced in the race by their neces- 
 sity-impelled competitors. 
 
 If, therefore, a young man finds himself 
 without riches, present or prospective, let 
 him thank God for this advantage in his life- 
 struggle; and let him push ahead in the line 
 6 
 
82 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 of a high purpose in noble doing. He may 
 yet do a great work in the world, and be per- 
 manently honored by the world because of 
 his well-doing. If, on the other hand, a 
 young man finds himself in the possession, 
 present or prospective, of worldly wealth, let 
 him realize that he is at a decided disadvan- 
 tage in his life-struggle; and that unless he 
 is a good deal more of a man than his money- 
 less competitors, he is likely to seem a good 
 deal less of a man in the world's ultimate es- 
 teeming. But let him not despair of success 
 on account of this hindrance of his riches; 
 for — "with God all things are possible." 
 
VIIL 
 
 IS SUCCESS A WORTHY AIM. 
 
 In the popular mind, success stands over 
 against failure; the one being understood'as 
 the converse of the other. And as no man 
 deliberately aims at failure, most men aim 
 at success. But the question is a fair one, 
 Is success a worthy aim? Is a desire for 
 success as success commendable and praise- 
 worthy ? 
 
 And to begin with, in considering this 
 inquiry, it is well to ask, What is success? 
 The w r ord " success " means, primarily, "to 
 take another's place." It is from sub and 
 cedo, "to go in place of;" more literally, "to 
 go under" another, to come up in his stead. 
 This primitive meaning of the w r ord is re- 
 tained in the word "successor," as applied 
 to one who comes into office, or position, or 
 business, after another who has left it. The 
 
 83 
 
84 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 
 
 struggle of life being so largely one of com- 
 petition, it is not to be wondered at that men 
 come to look at all effort for position as a 
 strife between one and the many ; the victor 
 pushing aside his fellows, and obtaining that 
 which they had held, or which they had 
 sought. And so attainment has come to 
 be practically deemed synonymous with 
 success. 
 
 " Success " in its primitive meaning is 
 another term for that condition of things 
 which modern scientists call "the survival 
 of the fittest. 5 ' A vessel is sinking in mid- 
 ocean; there is a scramble for the boats; 
 strong mean and weak women and children 
 are in competition for the few places in those 
 boats; the strong men succeed, the weak 
 women and children fail. A party of ex- 
 plorers are on an ice-locked headland wait- 
 ing for expected rescue; the supply of food 
 is insufficient for all; those who are in fuller 
 health take its larger share, causing the 
 others to starve by degrees; the former 
 succeed, the latter fail. A bank watchman 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 85 
 
 is guarding his trust; a burglar grapples with 
 and overpowers him; the burglar succeeds 
 in his effort to get at the bank vault, the 
 watchman fails in his endeavor to guard that 
 vault. These are extreme cases, it is true; 
 but they illustrate the primitive meaning of 
 the term "success." 
 
 Historically it is obvious, that, as a rule, 
 men came to have prominence in their suc- 
 cess through overpowering, or undermining, 
 or displacing, their opponents and competi- 
 tors. This was the case in the struggles for 
 empire, in the contests of personal valor, in 
 the strife for wealth. It was by the enforced 
 failure of many that one would succeed; and 
 whatever tended to or promoted failure on 
 the one part, in the same measure tended to 
 or promoted success on the other part The 
 world's story of men's success is, therefore, 
 largely a story of crime and craft and heart- 
 less self-seeking. Success of that sort is 
 surely not a worthy aim for any person. 
 
 As the world has grown better, public 
 sentiment is less ready than formerly to give 
 
86 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 open approval to success which is clearly 
 based on crime. But even at the present 
 day the primitive elements of success are 
 not wholly eliminated from all those attain- 
 ings and obtainings which enter into the 
 successes which command popular attention, 
 and which excite personal envy. Political 
 success is often secured, and is still oftener 
 sought, by means which elevate the unworthy 
 man into the place of a deserving one. 
 
 Many a successful capitalist has built up 
 his colossal fortune on the failure of rail- 
 road corporations which he has wrecked, or 
 of estates which he has plundered, or of 
 dealers whom he has "cornered," or of 
 families ruined by the liquors, or the lottery 
 tickets, or the nostrums which he has vended. 
 The very basis of hope for success in many 
 a line of business is the breaking down of 
 others in the fields of its competition. Who 
 will claim that such success is worthy of any 
 true man's aim? 
 
 He who strives to be ahead of others may, 
 from one cause or another, have the success 
 
A SPIRA TIONS A ND INFL UENCES. 8? 
 
 for which he is anxious, even though his 
 efforts are less deserving than are those of 
 his competitors. An unfortunate slip on their 
 part, or an unfair advantage on his, may put 
 those competitors behind him, while neither 
 his own attainment nor theirs is so great as 
 it might be. In a similar struggle for the 
 pre-eminence, the same man might fail of 
 success, while doing better than in the other 
 instance; he failing not because of his own 
 lack, but because of the yet better doing of 
 a competitor. Who can say that success 
 through another's failure is so noble an aim 
 as is high achievement — even in failure 
 through another's higher achieving? 
 
 Jacob is the typical man of success. His 
 very name means Succeeder, or Supplanter. 
 His craft and shrewdness enabled him to 
 succeed in every contest with brother and 
 father and uncle. But there came a time 
 when Jacob was more desirous of a blessing 
 than of success in his personal conflict; and 
 then it was that he won a better name than 
 Jacob. He was more of a man in his one 
 
88 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 failure than in his every success. John the 
 Baptist had a higher aim than success. He 
 wanted to fill his own place faithfully, and he 
 was ready to rejoice that another was to have 
 a higher place than himself. And in noway 
 did John the Baptist more clearly evidence 
 that there had not been born of woman a 
 greater man than he, than in those words of 
 his generous testimony to Him by whom he 
 was to be transcended: "He that cometh 
 after me is preferred before me. . . . He 
 must increase, but I must decrease." 
 
 Any success which pivots on another's 
 failure lacks the elements of a noble purpose. 
 It is worthy of a man's best strivings to do 
 as well as it is possible for him to do, and to 
 rise as high as it is possible for him to rise, 
 whether he be before or behind his fellows. 
 It is not worthy of a true man to strive 
 merely to transcend another, whether that 
 other's mark and compass be high or low. 
 Nor is it worthy of any man to reach out, 
 graspingly, after that which belongs to 
 another. Yet the world's ordinary measure 
 
A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 89 
 
 of success, now as formerly, is met in a man's 
 distancing of those who compete with him, 
 or in his displacing of one who before had 
 the first position. And herein it is that suc- 
 cess, according to the world's standard, can- 
 not be satisfying to a good man and a true. 
 
 It is true, as the worldly-minded maxim 
 has it, that " nothing succeeds like success/' 
 And this is by no means a saying of modern 
 origin; for Seneca said, at the beginning of 
 our Christian era, " Success makes some 
 crimes honorable;" and Tacitus, a little 
 later, declared, "There is no room for hesi- 
 tation in any enterprise which can only be 
 justified by success." But it is also true, 
 whatever the world has thought of it or may 
 think of it, that faithfulness is better than 
 success; that the right filling of one's own 
 place in life, however humble and incon- 
 spicuous that place may be, is a worthier 
 aim for any man than the occupying of 
 another's place. 
 
 The "championship" and the "prize" are 
 the world's approval of success; for these 
 
90 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 awards show that all competitors have been 
 distanced by the successful one. "Well done, 
 good and faithful servant," is the Lord's 
 commendation to every one who has done 
 his best with his talents, even though he has 
 gained by them only other two, where his 
 fellow has gained five. The Lord's approval 
 is a worthier aim than the world's approval, 
 in any sphere of life. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE GAIN OF A CONTRACTED 
 SPHERE. 
 
 Practical power in this world is largely 
 dependent on the limitations of the sphere 
 in which that power is exercised. In the 
 realms of physics and of morals, as in the 
 realm of logic, the intension of a force is 
 increased as its extension is diminished; 
 hence the closer the contractions of our 
 personal sphere in life, the more potent 
 may be our influence within and beyond 
 that sphere. 
 
 A small quantity of gunpowder ignited in 
 an extensive open field will spend itself in a 
 powerless flash. The same gunpowder shut 
 within the contractions of a gun-chamber 
 would drive a solid shot far beyond the 
 boundaries of that field, with the possibility 
 of doing execution that shall decide a 
 
 91 
 
92 ASPIRA TIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 battle or a campaign, and perhaps make a 
 turning-point in the world's history. House- 
 building is for the very purpose of contract- 
 ing the limits of a home, so that there can be 
 warmth there in winter, and cool air in sum- 
 mer, and taste and convenience and comfort 
 at all times. The garments which we wear by 
 day, and the bed-clothing which covers us at 
 night, do not in themselves give to us any 
 warmth; they simply contract and limit the 
 sphere within which the warmth of our own 
 blood can be kept from dissipating its life- 
 sustaining power. And so, in all things, the 
 walls, the bounds, the limits, are in a sense 
 both the measure and the source of power. 
 
 No man ever grows so great as to fill im- 
 mensity. He whose sphere of control and 
 of influence is vastest, is still dependent on the 
 limitations of that sphere, and on his abil- 
 ity to occupy it fully. Be he tsar or kaiser, 
 king, governor, shaykh, or chief, he is potent 
 because he represents, or rules, not all hu- 
 manity alike, but a limited portion of the 
 human family; and just so soon as the limi- 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 93 
 
 tations of his sphere are beyond the limita- 
 tions of his ability, all the ability he has, 
 however much it be, is useless for that 
 sphere; and so he is a failure, not because 
 he had no power, but because his sphere 
 was not sufficiently contracted to make his 
 power available. Many a military com- 
 mander who has proved himself a man of 
 rare power within certain limitations of com- 
 mand, has utterly wrecked his reputation by 
 being assigned to a larger sphere than he 
 could fully fill as a commander. It is the 
 same in all lines of business and of enter- 
 prise, and of activity generally. A man is 
 dependent for his practical efficiency on the 
 due limitations of his sphere; and he owes 
 quite as much to the boundaries which shut 
 him in, as to the ability and the energy which 
 he exercises within those boundaries. 
 
 He who preaches or who teaches would 
 labor without hope if there were no contract- 
 ing limits to his sphere of effort. To stand 
 on the highest mountain-top and cry aloud 
 to the whole world, would be a mere waste 
 
94 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 of strength and breath. The preacher de- 
 pends on the walls of the room in which he 
 proclaims the gospel invitation, to bring that 
 invitation back on the ears of his hearers, 
 where otherwise it would be dissipated in the 
 air beyond. Even if he stands at the street 
 corners to deliver his message, he looks to 
 the limits of the little knot of people who 
 gather about him while he preaches, as form- 
 ing and fixing his sphere of influence for the 
 immediate hour. * 
 
 The teacher, again, must have his school- 
 room and his class, in order to his imparting 
 instruction effectively. His best exhibit of 
 attainments would be as flashing powder in 
 the open field, were it not for the gun-chamber 
 boundaries which give it force and directness 
 within and from its class-room limitations. 
 And so in all the sphere of mental and moral 
 endeavor, the encircling and contracting 
 limits of power, rather than the outgoing 
 reaches of power, are the causes of good 
 to the world, and the occasions of chief re- 
 joicing to the worker. 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 95 
 
 It is in and through the contracted sphere 
 of home life, and because of the very con- 
 tractions of that sphere, that woman is more 
 potent in the world's forces than man can be. 
 It is because she is wife, or because she is 
 mother, or because she is sister, or because 
 she is daughter, and that her personal influ- 
 ence and her personal efforts are intensified 
 within the contractions of that personal rela- 
 tion, that she shapes and directs the spirit 
 and thoughts and purposes and endeavors 
 of her husband, or her son, or her brother, 
 or her father, in a wider sphere than she 
 herself could directly fill, and which but for 
 her would never have been filled by him. 
 Had her own sphere been larger, her power 
 would have been less, — if indeed it had been 
 anything at all. 
 
 He who has the reputation of doing most 
 for others is very often he who is simply 
 responsive to the inspirations and the incite- 
 ments of some loved friend, or other self, 
 who is in the contracted sphere of personal 
 influence which is back of his best endeavors. 
 
96 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 If that sphere were not so contracted, its 
 influence could not be thus intensified as a 
 force for his uplifting and on-speeding. The 
 solid iron of his nature would remain inert 
 and useless, but for the propulsion given to 
 it by the carbo-nitrate in that inner chamber 
 of generated enthusiasm, from which he 
 makes his appearance in a show of power. 
 And in the day of great disclosure the 
 sources of good to the world will be shown 
 as back of most that the world has credited 
 with power. - 
 
 No one of us can know surely the limita- 
 tions which are essential to his effective 
 working in his sphere. But God knows 
 them exactly, and he never fails to assign 
 them wisely. Not only does God give to 
 one man five talents, to another two, and to 
 another one, " to each according to his sev- 
 eral ability," but he gives to one man a five- 
 talent sphere, to another a two-talent sphere, 
 and to another a one-talent sphere; "to each 
 according to his several ability/' 
 
X. 
 
 PROGRESS THROUGH STRUGGLE. 
 
 It is a good thing for a young man, or for 
 an old one, to have a great deal to contend 
 with. Every man longs to make progress 
 as long as he lives, and as a matter of fact 
 there is no real progress in this life except 
 through struggle. 
 
 Unless there were a hammer to swing and 
 an anvil to strike, the blacksmith would never 
 have the brawny arm which marks his power. 
 If there w r ere no hills to climb and no storms 
 to face, the sturdy mountaineer would show 
 no such superior vigor as makes him another 
 being from the ease-loving dweller in the 
 vine-embowered valley.. It is not the uniform 
 and the parade which bring out the courage, 
 and develop the highest manhood, of the 
 enlisted soldier; but it is the march, the pri- 
 vation, and the battle, which transform him 
 7 97 
 
98 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 into the bronzed and ennobled veteran. Not 
 the receiving of riches by inheritance, but 
 the securing of them by unintermitted strug- 
 gle, gives a capitalist the ability to be a 
 leader in the world of wealth. It is rather 
 the hindrances to knowledge than the helps 
 to them, that give the scholar his final pre- 
 eminence in the field of letters. And the 
 man of character is always the man who has 
 made progress through struggle, who has 
 had a great deal to contend with, and has 
 contended successfully. 
 
 It is very natural for us to long for ease; 
 but it is very well for us that we do not have 
 ease. Ease is a good thing to look forward 
 to; but we ought to thank God that there 
 are so many streams to be crossed, and 
 thickets to be pressed through, and moun- 
 tains to be clambered over, before the place 
 of ease can possibly be reached by us. It 
 is really a cause for rejoicing, rather than for 
 regret, that our children take so much of our 
 time just now, that our housekeeping cares 
 are so absorbing, that we have so much 
 
A SPIRA TIONS A ND IX FL UENCES. 99 
 
 trouble with the servants, that our business 
 interests are so perplexing, that our personal 
 health is so precarious, and that one or an- 
 other of the family is always getting sick. It 
 would be worse for us, rather than better, if 
 we did not have quite so many difficulties in 
 the way of carrying on our school, or our 
 farm, or our factory, or our newspaper, or 
 our parish. 
 
 The truth is we should not do so well in the 
 very work where we now have these troubles, 
 if we were without these troubles. If a min- 
 ister, for example, seeks a new charge because 
 he thinks that he can thereby get more time 
 for reading and study, and for religious visit- 
 ing, by using his old sermons without having 
 to write new ones, it is commonly found that 
 he gives no more time either to study or to 
 visiting than before, and that he simply ceases 
 to grow 7 in intellect or in spirituality. By the 
 removal of the demand for his constant strug- 
 gle to keep up with his work, there has been 
 an interruption of his progress in his work, 
 and a lessening of his power to work. And 
 
100 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 it is not the housekeeper, nor the teacher, 
 nor the business man, who has least to con- 
 tend with, who fills his or her place best, or 
 who gets on most successfully. Can you say 
 that it is ? 
 
 Looking at this side of the truth, what 
 have you most reason to be grateful for, 
 when you awake in the morning, and think 
 of the duties before you for the day? Just 
 this, that you have so much to contend with ; 
 that there are so many difficulties in your 
 way; that you are beset before and behind 
 and on either hand, and that you cannot 
 move in any direction without a struggle. 
 Even your very pains and aches ought to be 
 a comfort to you. And what a satisfaction 
 there may be in the thought of your prox- 
 imity to that stupid servant, and that dis- 
 agreeable neighbor, and that unfair business 
 rival ! Really, there are obstacles enough in 
 your path to be very encouraging. What 
 cause you have for thankfulness! 
 
 In the formation of personal character, 
 even more than in material interests and in 
 
ASPIRA TIOXS AND IXFL UENCES. I O I 
 
 things external to one's self, progress is made 
 only through struggle. It is what one has 
 to contend with, rather than what is favoring 
 and helpful, that gives the opportunity of 
 soul growth. When we see one who com- 
 mands respect and admiration by the char- 
 acter in his very look and bearing, we are 
 sure that that character represents struggle 
 and endurance — 
 
 "As if the man had fixed his face, 
 
 In many a solitary place, 
 
 Against the wind and open sky." 
 
 There is, in fact, no such admirableness in 
 any human countenance as that which shows 
 the result of successful struggle in the daily 
 conflicts of life and in the exceptional battles 
 of great emergencies. The plainest face ac- 
 quires attractiveness through the signs of 
 triumph over opposing forces of evil, within 
 and without; while the most regular features 
 lack winsomeness of expression if they lack 
 the evidences of combat for the mastery over 
 that which would hinder the soul's progress. 
 
102 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 Only, indeed, as a face marks attainment in 
 character through struggle, does a face mark 
 any high attainment in character. 
 
 It is not pleasant to face this truth con- 
 cerning the mode of true progress in life ; but 
 it is pleasant to face the fact of the results 
 of this mode of progress. He who has the 
 combat before him must fix his thought on 
 the issue of that combat rather than on the 
 combat itself. This is the way in all of earth's 
 conflicts. The bravest soldier shrinks from 
 battle before he enters it; but when it is upon 
 him, all his energies are aroused to fight it 
 through to the end; and he knows, when that 
 battle is over with, that he is more of a man 
 than he could have been without the struggle 
 it involved to him. So it is that we are to 
 pray continually, " Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion" — or trial; for trial and temptation are 
 synonymous : and, at the same time, that we 
 are to "count it all joy" when we "fall into 
 divers temptations" — into many and strange 
 trials which are upon us without our choice — 
 "knowing this, that the proving of our faith 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 1 03 
 
 worketh patience/' — or endurance; and that 
 by the struggles and endurances of that trial 
 we can be advanced in personal character. 
 
 It is hard to be tempted; hard to be com- 
 pelled to struggle day by day with new 
 temptations, and, what is still worse, with 
 old ones that seem never to lose their power 
 or their persistency; it is hard to be some- 
 times worsted in the struggle — for it is a rare 
 campaign that knows never a temporary dis- 
 aster or check to the soldiers who will have 
 final victory; 
 
 "But noble souls, through dust and heat, 
 Rise from disaster and defeat 
 
 The stronger. 
 And conscious still of the divine 
 Within them, lie on earth supine 
 
 No longer." 
 
 For our temptations, and our struggles with 
 them, we have reason to be grateful to God. 
 The very things that seem at this hour to be 
 the great barriers to our progress in the 
 Christian life are designed of God as means 
 to our Christian progress. If they were 
 
104 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 removed, we should lose the struggle with 
 them; and losing that we should lose the 
 victory over them, with its spiritual uplifting 
 to ourselves. Those barriers are, under God, 
 a source of our hope for a higher and truer 
 Christian manhood and womanhood. Let us 
 rejoice in them now, because we shall rejoice 
 over them by and by. 
 
 " Beloved, think it not strange concerning 
 the fiery trial among you, which cometh 
 upon you to prove you, as though a strange 
 thing happened unto you : but insomuch as 
 ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, re- 
 joice that at the revelation of his glory also, 
 ye [as conquerors through his grace over 
 this trial] may/ejoice with exceeding joy." 
 
XL 
 
 ATTAINMENT THROUGH 
 CATASTROPHE. 
 
 There are beautiful teachings of spiritual 
 truths brought out, or rather suggested, by 
 many of the discoveries of modern science. 
 Whatever may be thought of the theories 
 of materialistic naturalists concerning the 
 world's beginning and progress, the facts 
 which are disclosed through the studies of 
 such men, as well as through those of rever- 
 ent Christian scientists, are worthy of the 
 close attention of every lover of God and 
 of his works. God's writings, in the book 
 of nature and in the book of revelation, com- 
 mend themselves to all who would know the 
 mind of God. 
 
 The same great truths and the same great 
 
 laws run alike through the kingdoms of 
 
 nature and of grace, and the more we know 
 
 105 
 
106 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 of the lower sphere the better fitted we are 
 to understand and to appreciate the lessons 
 of the higher. Even while some of the 
 plausible scientific hypotheses are yet un- 
 proved, there is a value in them from their 
 correspondence with the recognized truths of 
 spiritual life and progress. This is true, for 
 example, of Professor Darwin's view of the 
 origin of species in "the survival of the fit- 
 test ;" and again of Professor Huxley's hy- 
 pothesis, that by successive evolutions the 
 nobler and the better orders of life came up 
 from the inferior. How many illustrations 
 of both these processes of formation and 
 progress are found in the moral world, in 
 accordance with the teachings of the Scrip- 
 tures and the observations of our experience! 
 Yet another theory that is broached in the 
 realm of science, has its bearing, still more 
 obviously, by way of illustration, on the spir- 
 itual life. This theory is what Mr. Clarence 
 King, the venturesome and enthusiastic 
 Pacific slope explorer, has called "Catas- 
 trophism and the Evolution of Environ- 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 107 
 
 ment." His idea — which although not new 
 is newly applied by him — is, that in the devel- 
 opment of the higher from the lower orders 
 of animal life, each successive stage of prog- 
 ress was brought about by some great catas- 
 trophe of nature, with a consequent new 
 environment, or new surroundings, for the 
 creatures which survived the shock. 
 
 Thus in the case of the fossil horses of this 
 continent, about which so much is said by 
 Professor Huxley, Mr. King is confident, 
 from his studies in the geological strata of 
 the country from which the bones in question 
 came, that "between each two successive 
 stages of the horse there was a catastrophe 
 which seriously altered the climate and con- 
 figuration of the whole region in which these 
 animals lived." And the scientist's conclu- 
 sion is "that He who brought to bear that 
 mysterious energy we call life upon primeval 
 matter, bestowed at the same time a power 
 of development by change, arranging that 
 the interaction of energy and matter which 
 make up environment should, from time to 
 
108 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 time, burst in upon the current of life, and 
 sweep it onward and upward to ever higher 
 and better manifestations. Moments of great 
 catastrophe, thus translated into the language 
 of life, become moments of creation, when 
 out of plastic organisms something newer 
 and nobler is called into being." 
 
 How strikingly this hypothesis illustrates 
 many of the processes of spiritual progress ! 
 By divine ordering, the interaction of cir- 
 cumstances and associations which make up 
 a soul's environment burst in upon the cur- 
 rent of spiritual life, and sweep it onward 
 and upward to ever higher and better mani- 
 festations. , Moments of great catastrophe 
 thus become moments of creation, when out 
 of plastic natures, under the influence of 
 grace, a nature newer and nobler is called 
 into being and play. 
 
 A catastrophe befalls a quiet and lovely 
 home, by which the husband and father is 
 taken suddenly away. The elder son is but 
 a bright and thoughtless boy. At once, how- 
 ever, he is in a new environment. There is no 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 109 
 
 one for him to look up to and to lean upon. 
 His mother and younger sisters are reaching 
 out to him for support. He is changed as it 
 were in an hour. New responsibilities press 
 upon him; his struggle to bear up under 
 them develops and strengthens his every 
 faculty. His step is firmer; his bearing is 
 more erect; his face already shows the lines 
 of thought and care and unselfish endurance 
 for others. Through that catastrophe he has 
 been raised from the plane of a careless, de- 
 pendent youth to the sphere of a noble and 
 holy manhood. 
 
 Or, it is the young wife with the helpless 
 babe, who seems crushed under the catastro- 
 phe which deprives her of a loving husband's 
 presence and care. How different a world 
 she lives in now ! How changed is her en- 
 vironment! And how she changes with her 
 change of condition! How much less she 
 cares for the attractions of the world about 
 her! How her thoughts center on the little 
 one left to her, and on the home where the 
 family shall be reunited! Through grace 
 
1 10 ASPIRA TIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 her unspeakable sorrow transfigures her very- 
 face and form, until she seems so spiritual- 
 ized and refined by sanctified suffering that 
 her every look becomes an inspiration and a 
 benediction to all who watch her. She is of 
 a higher order of being than before that 
 catastrophe with its change of her environ- 
 ment 
 
 The young man engaged in his studies is 
 startled by the intelligence that his father is 
 a bankrupt, and that he must abandon his 
 plans for a college course, and go out at once 
 to earn his bread by daily toil. The man of 
 wealth finds his property swept away through 
 unfortunate investments, and is compelled to 
 begin again in poverty after long years of ease 
 and indulgence. He who has trusted another 
 without doubt or hesitation finds in a sad 
 hour that he has been betrayed by one whom 
 he loved as his own soul. It may be fire or 
 flood or pestilence which changes the whole 
 face and circumstances of a community, and 
 brings through that catastrophe a new envi- 
 ronment to all whose home is there. There 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 1 1 
 
 are a thousand ways in which the shock may 
 come. Coming in any w T ay, its influence is 
 manifest in the uplifted characters and the 
 ennobled lives of all who are truly profited 
 thereby. Without such a catastrophe, — some 
 great bereavement, or disappointment, or loss 
 of possessions, or change of condition and 
 circumstances, — there can never be that great 
 and rapid transformation by which a soul is 
 swept onward and upward at once into a 
 loftier realm of spiritual being. There is no 
 other way " into the kingdom of God," than 
 "through much tribulation," and tribulation 
 often involves catastrophe with its change of 
 the soul's environment. 
 
 It is at last by the great catastrophe that 
 we call "death," that our spiritual natures 
 are brought into an environment which will 
 enable them to exercise their best and high- 
 est powers to an extent before impossible. 
 And so it is that the material world in which 
 we live moves on unceasingly toward that 
 greatest of all catastrophes, "by reason of 
 which the heavens being on fire shall be dis- 
 
1 1 2 ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 
 
 solved, and the elements shall melt with fer- 
 vent heat ; " when, "according to His promise, 
 we look for a new heaven and a new earth, 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness" — because 
 perfect righteousness is consistent with that 
 new environment. 
 
XII. 
 
 PERILS OF PROMOTION. 
 
 He who has no desire for promotion in or 
 beyond his present field of service, lacks an 
 important stimulus to best endeavor in the 
 sphere of his present service. Yet promo- 
 tion is almost sure to bring an increase of 
 perils, even greater than its increase of 
 honors and of opportunities. In order to 
 do well where he is, a man must be inspired 
 by the hope of a higher station than he now 
 occupies. Yet a man's doing well where he 
 is, does not prove that he would do equally 
 well in a place above this one; and the 
 moment of his transfer from a lower plane 
 to a higher one is always a critical moment 
 in his life of struggle for achievement. 
 
 Well-doing in any sphere involves the 
 
 possession and exercise of fine qualities; 
 
 and he who has qualities which would fit 
 8 113 
 
114 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 him for well-doing in a high sphere is sure 
 to show those qualities in his well-doing in 
 a lower sphere. But the lower the sphere, 
 the smaller the measure of qualities neces- 
 sary for success in that sphere; hence he 
 who is fully competent to meet the measure 
 there, may lack competency for the larger 
 measure beyond and * above. Because the 
 lower sphere requires a smaller measure of 
 ability than the higher one, it is easier to 
 find a man for the one than for the other; 
 and on this account there is a constant lack 
 of, and a consequent call for, well-doers in 
 the higher spheres of service of every sort. 
 
 Therefore it is that a man who does ex- 
 ceptionally well in a lower place is pretty 
 sure to be sought for in a higher one. But 
 while competency for a higher place is cer- 
 tain to manifest itself in competency for a 
 lower one, competency for a lower place does 
 not insure competency for a higher one; 
 and when a man is promoted from the one 
 to the other, his promotion may simply dis- 
 close the limitation of his power, and prove 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 1 5 
 
 the means of his failure. And so it is that 
 there is always peculiar peril to a man in the 
 time of his promotion and advancement. 
 
 In every higher sphere of effort there is 
 need of new qualities in order to its filling. 
 It is not enough that there be a larger 
 measure of the qualities before called into 
 exercise, but there must be qualities which 
 were not required for success in a lower 
 sphere. The question comes, therefore, at 
 every step of promotion, " Has the promoted 
 one the added qualities which, together with 
 those which he has already displayed, will 
 meet the demands of his new position ?" 
 It may be, for instance, that a man has 
 shown rare fidelity and carefulness and skill 
 in a position of personal trust and responsi- 
 bility, and in consequence he is promoted to 
 a position over others. His good qualities, 
 as already evidenced, will be quite as impor- 
 tant in his new sphere as in his old one ; but 
 in addition to these he must have power to 
 oversee others, and to direct them wisely. 
 Without this added power he is a failure in 
 
Il6 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 his new position, and his promotion has put 
 him where he cannot be a well-doer. 
 
 Thus it is that it is sometimes said of a 
 man, " He is a good lieutenant, but a poor 
 captain.' , He can do well so long as he has 
 another to tell him what to do, but he cannot 
 plan for himself. Even if he has the plan- 
 ning power of a captain, he may not have 
 the power to oversee all that a colonel would 
 have to be responsible for. And so all the 
 way up in the line of military promotion. 
 There was a remarkable illustration of this 
 in our Civil War, where one of the most 
 successful commanders of a division was 
 incompetent to the command of an army, 
 because he lacked those qualities which were 
 essential to the oversight and wise use of a 
 large number of divisions. In a battle, he 
 was pretty sure to be interested chiefly in 
 the portion of the field immediately before 
 him, to the forgetfulness of its equally im- 
 portant portions elsewhere. 
 
 Whatever the sphere of endeavor, the 
 perils of promotion are much the same. 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 1 7 
 
 In the counting-room, the shop, or the 
 factory, an advance to a higher grade im- 
 perils the standing of him who is promoted. 
 The good student may make a poor teacher; 
 the eminent lawyer may lose his reputation 
 for ability through his elevation to the bench; 
 the first-class business man may wreck his 
 prospects by taking a seat in Congress. A 
 clergyman, who is doing an excellent work 
 in the small parish for which he is suited, 
 may prove a failure in a large city pastorate 
 to which he has been called because of his 
 success in the smaller field. Every step of 
 promotion is a step into surroundings of new 
 peril, and may prove a step beyond the limits 
 of usefulness to him who takes it. 
 
 One cause of peril to him who is promoted 
 is his forgetfulness of the fact that he owes 
 his promotion to no disclosed fitness for his 
 new sphere, but wholly to his fitness for the 
 sphere he has left. Because a man has done 
 well in one place, he has, it is true, reason to 
 think that he could continue to do well in 
 that place; but he has therein no sufficient 
 
1 1 8 ASPIRA TIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 ground for supposing that he would do well 
 in another place, which demands the exer- 
 cise of qualities not yet evidenced by him. 
 Others, indeed, may be willing to take the 
 risk of trying him in the new place; but their 
 risk is not so great as his in his transfer. 
 
 Many a man, however, loses sight of this 
 truth as he accepts a proffered promotion; 
 and he starts out in his new sphere with the 
 thought in his mind that he owes his pro- 
 motion to a fitness for it already evidenced, 
 whereas all his former achievements are in 
 no sense a proof that his failure here will 
 not be as marked as were his successes there. 
 He does not realize that his past is no guar- 
 antee of his future, and that, if he does well 
 now, it must be by doing that which he has 
 never done before. He is not only on trial 
 anew, but he is on trial with the disadvantage 
 of having acquired a reputation in another 
 field, which he may be totally incapable of 
 maintaining in this one. 
 
 Confidence in one's powers is essential to 
 one's best use of his powers- but no man 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 1 9 
 
 ought to have undue confidence in powers 
 which he has never exercised. And just 
 here it is that the man who is most likely 
 to fail through promotion is least likely to 
 be timid in the acceptance of promotion. 
 He has such confidence in powers which he 
 knows he possesses, that he permits his 
 confidence to include powers which he takes 
 it for granted that he has, simply because 
 he sees that he needs them. And he who, in 
 such a case, thinks that he is sure to stand, 
 is the man who is in greatest danger of fall- 
 ing. One's honest questioning of his ability 
 to succeed in a new field which opens before 
 him by promotion, is essential to one's fair 
 prospect of success in that new field. One's 
 unhesitating confidence at such a time in his 
 ability for an untried sphere, is a confidence 
 based on his supposed possession of other 
 powers than those now in demand; and it 
 is likely to fail him when he finds its basis 
 to be a false one. 
 
 Entering a new field with a consciousness 
 of its peculiar perils to him, a man may 
 
120 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 strive so earnestly and determinedly for the 
 meeting of its requirements, that his filling 
 of it shall be even more conspicuously suc- 
 cessful than was his filling of the place below 
 it In this way it is that promotion is a gain 
 to a man, not because it is without its perils 
 to him, but because by a sense of its perils 
 he is aroused to new and larger endeavors 
 for their overcoming. 
 
 In other words, the man who thinks there 
 is no risk to him in his promotion, is likely 
 to be a failure through his promotion; 
 whereas the man who realizes the perils 
 of promotion may be advantaged by every 
 step he takes in the line of promotion. If 
 he knows that he is not yet fitted for his 
 new place, he may become so. If he thinks 
 he is already fitted for it, he never will be. 
 His only safety, in fact, lies in his sense of 
 his danger. 
 
XIII. 
 
 BUILDING A HOME FOR 
 THE SOUL. 
 
 Many years ago, the writer of these words 
 was riding with a gentleman through the 
 woods, among the hills of New England. 
 It was just at the close of an autumn day. 
 The sound of a falling ax, in its quick, sharp 
 blows, was heard in the distance with grow- 
 ing distinctness. Presently, at a turn of the 
 road, an old man was seen, at the work of 
 felling trees. The gentleman stopped his 
 horse, and called the wood-cutter by name. 
 The latter turned with a hasty movement, as 
 if impatient of delay, and looked to see what 
 was wanted. The gentleman told of a job 
 of work to be done on his own premises, in 
 the village below, and asked if the woodman 
 could come and attend to it. " No/' was the 
 prompt and earnest response. "No; I'm 
 
 121 
 
122 A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 
 
 building me a house to live in now; and I 
 mustn't do anything else till that's done. I'm 
 an old man; and I've got no home. I've only 
 a little while longer to live; and I must get 
 me a house ready before I die. I'd like to 
 do the job for you, I'd like to earn the money. 
 But I must build me my house before it's too 
 late." And the old man turned impulsively 
 to his wood-cutting again. As the travelers 
 drove on, the sounds of his falling ax were 
 in their ears, until its quick, sharp blows 
 grew fainter and fainter in the distance, as 
 the evening closed in upon them. 
 
 Many a time since then the thought has 
 come back of that old man in his homeless- 
 ness, longing to build himself a house before 
 he should die. As he stood there with bared 
 head, the last rays of the sunlight, as they 
 streamed through the open woods, falling on 
 his silvered hair; his worn face and keen eyes 
 beaming with intensity of feeling and pur- 
 pose; his trusty ax held with nervous grasp 
 as he stayed its blows at the moment of un- 
 welcome interruption; speaking out, as if in 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 23 
 
 a struggle between determination and de- 
 spair: "I'm an old man, and I've got no 
 home; I've only a little while longer to live; 
 and I must get me a house ready before I 
 die," — that anxious woodman was a type of 
 homeless souls everywhere; and he ought to 
 be an example as well as a type. None of 
 us can have satisfactory homes for our souls 
 except as we build them : 
 
 " Our to-days and yesterdays 
 Are the blocks with which we build.'* 
 
 As, in one sense, our bodies — which are 
 given to us without our choice — are the tem- 
 porary home of our souls; so, in another and 
 wider sense, our characters, and our affilia- 
 tions, and our heart possessions — which we 
 are privileged to choose or to construct for 
 ourselves — are to be the permanent home of 
 our souls. It is in view of this truth that 
 the Apostle counsels, "Let all things be 
 done unto edifying," — edifying being simply 
 another term for house-building; it may be 
 building for others, or it may be building for 
 
1 24 A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 
 
 one's self; and that again he gives warning 
 to those, even, who are building on the right 
 foundation: "Let each man take heed how 
 he buildeth thereon." 
 
 In building a material structure to live in, 
 we have three things in mind: appearance, 
 comfort, stability. We want the house with- 
 out and within to be pleasing to the eye — to 
 our eye, and to the eyes of others — therefore 
 in its form and adorning and furnishing we 
 need to be guided by a correct and a refined 
 taste. So it ought to be in the building of a 
 home for the soul. It is right to seek an at- 
 tractive character, pleasing manners, and win- 
 some ways. He who disregards appearances 
 — who does not care how he may seem to 
 others, and who has no preferences of mere 
 taste, in thought and speech and action — is 
 a poor builder, and is sure of a shabby home 
 for his soul. It is a duty to have one's soul- 
 home so full of loveliness that all who see it 
 will admire. Its gathered treasures and rare 
 adornments should show through the win- 
 dows. Whatever the face may lack of origi- 
 
A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 1 2 5 
 
 nal grace of feature, it ought so to glow with 
 the light of kindness and sympathy as to 
 appear beautiful to all. Manners and speech 
 should so please, and conduct should so com- 
 mand approval, that all who are lookers on 
 will be glad that that soul-building has been 
 erected near them, even though it is very 
 unlike their own. To secure such attractive- 
 ness of character and conduct the builder 
 must cultivate his own taste in these direc- 
 tions. He must seek companionship with 
 those who have similar tastes, or higher 
 ones; and he must zealously strive to con- 
 form himself to the image of Him who alone 
 is " altogether lovely." 
 
 But what is attractive appearance in an 
 earthly home, if there be no comfort there? 
 Of what use is all the adornment that pleases 
 s the eye, if no want of body, or craving of 
 mind, or longing of the soul, is met in any 
 room or its furnishing? In the soul-dwell- 
 ing, as in every material home, there must 
 be the means of light and warmth and ven- 
 tilation. There must be appliances for the 
 
126 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 preparation of food, for the opportunities of 
 study and work, and for the securing of rest. 
 There must be rooms for others also; for 
 those who are loved, and for those who serve. 
 No soul-home can be a place of comfort unless 
 it is larger than enough for one person. There 
 must be noble thoughts, and holy purposes, 
 and worthy endeavors, and high and pure 
 imaginings, and delightful memories, and 
 sacred affections, and unselfish friendships, 
 as the furnishings of any house which gives 
 comfort to the soul whose dwelling it is. And 
 there must be the pillows of a good con- 
 science, and the couch of that peace which 
 is given only to those who put their trust in 
 the Saviour of sinners, if comfort be possible 
 there by day and by night. 
 
 Such a comfortable home for the soul as 
 this does not come to us by earthly inherit- 
 ance. Nor is it found in the market for sale 
 or to rent. It must be built by him who 
 would have it; built slowly stone by stone, 
 and furnished by degrees through the toils 
 and self-denials of those who appreciate the 
 
A SPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 27 
 
 value of all these possessions, and are willing 
 to labor and to wait for them. 
 
 " As in a building 
 Stone rests on stone, and wanting the foundation 
 All would be wanting, so in human life 
 Each action rests on the foregoing event, 
 That made it possible, but is forgotten 
 And buried in the earth." 
 
 He who yet lacks a home of comfort for his 
 soul, has only himself to reproach for his 
 homelessness, or for the cheerlessness of the 
 home he has reared, but not duly furnished. 
 Nor is it yet too late for him to seek this fur- 
 nishing of that home. " If there be there- 
 fore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort 
 of love/' — of love for Christ, or of love for 
 those who are given to us by God's bless- 
 ing, — let us secure to ourselves as a perma- 
 nent furnishing of the home of our souls, 
 that " comfort wherewith we are comforted 
 of God." 
 
 Yet a home may be attractive in appear- 
 ance, and may seem filled with all helps to 
 comfort, while it lacks the stability which 
 
1 2 8 A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 
 
 shall secure it permanence. Unless the home 
 of the soul is to endure, the time and strength 
 and treasure expended in its uprearing and 
 furnishing have been a vain outlay. The 
 testing time will surely come. " Every man's 
 work shall be made manifest: for the day 
 shall declare it, because it shall be revealed 
 by fire; and the fire shall try every man's 
 work of what sort it is." This final fire test 
 is not of the foundation alone; "for other 
 foundation can no man lay than that is laid, 
 which is Jesus Christ;" but it is the test of 
 the building upreared as a soul-home, on that 
 foundation. It is the test of the Christian's 
 pursued studies, and indulged tastes, and 
 chosen affections, and prosecuted activities. 
 It is the test of his memories and ideals and 
 friendships and devotions. It is the trying 
 of his gathered treasures in the furnace that 
 spares nothing but the refined gold. 
 
 Resting on the one sure foundation, "if 
 any man's work abide which he hath built 
 thereupon, he shall receive a reward" — the 
 reward of a home with its stability, its com- 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 29 
 
 forts, and its adornings, secured to him and 
 to his forevermore. "Out of the common 
 stones of your daily work," says Theodore 
 Parker, "you may build yourself a temple 
 which shall shelter your head from all harm, 
 and bring down on you the inspiration of 
 God." Therefore it is that the Apostle urges 
 that not even a word be spoken by any Chris- 
 tian believer, in ordinary social intercourse, 
 "but such as is good for edifying" — good 
 for house-building for the soul. 
 
 Every soul has its place of sojourn even if 
 it has not yet a home ; its tabernacle before 
 its finished temple. And so long as the life 
 of probation continues, there is yet time for 
 the building of a permanent home for the 
 soul, as an improvement on its earlier resting- 
 places. But "the night cometh when no man 
 can work," therefore it is that he who would 
 have a fitting abode for his soul should hasten 
 to prepare one that is worthy of its inhabi- 
 tant. This thought it is that Dr. Holmes 
 finds in the lesson of the "chambered nau- 
 tilus," vacating successively its temporary 
 9 
 
130 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 dwelling-chambers, in order to make prog- 
 ress in its pearly temple-building: 
 
 " Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
 As the swift seasons roll ! 
 Leave thy low vaulted past ! 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unrest- 
 ing sea!" 
 
XIV. 
 
 CONSECRATION THE PRICE OF 
 COMFORT 
 
 The only way of gaining Christian comfort 
 is through Christian consecration. He who 
 would have rest in Christ must be unreserv- 
 edly in the service of Christ. Christ is never 
 the truest helper until he is recognized as a 
 master. The failure to perceive this truth is 
 the cause of much vain seeking after rest and 
 comfort and peace. 
 
 " Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden," says Jesus, "and I will give 
 you rest." How the multitudes would flock 
 at that call to share the benefits of that 
 promise, if there were no qualifying clause 
 to its provisions! All have their burdens. 
 All want rest. All would turn to Jesus to 
 tell him of their troubles and to ask his help, 
 if nothing more were required of them than 
 
 131 
 
1 3 2 .4 SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 
 
 this. But he adds, as showing the method 
 of obtaining the desired blessing, "Take my 
 yoke upon you," — assume the livery of my 
 service, — "and learn of me; for I am meek 
 and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls." Ah! that puts another 
 face on the matter. Everybody would be 
 glad to have Christ as a servant; but not 
 everybody wants to be a servant of Christ. 
 Christ is a servant. He came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister. But his 
 highest service is to those who count them- 
 selves his servants. His choicest ministry 
 is to those whose greatest joy is found in 
 doing anything for him. This is but one 
 among many of the Christian paradoxes. 
 Contradictory as it seems, it is in accord- 
 ance with the principle which underlies all 
 successful pursuit of enjoyment and efficiency 
 in any sphere or relation of life. 
 
 The happiest mother is always the devoted 
 mother. She whose only thought of her 
 children is of getting enjoyment from them, 
 has no enjoyment in them. She has all the 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 3 3 
 
 trials of motherhood with none of its com- 
 forts. She, on the other hand, who lives for 
 her children; who would do anything for 
 them; who seeks to make them happy, has 
 a delight in her children, receives joy from 
 them, which no mother less devoted can 
 know. The husband whose chief thought 
 of a wife is of some one to make him happy, 
 has no true home happiness. It is only he 
 who is asking constantly, What can I do for 
 my wife? how can I lighten her burdens? 
 how can I gratify her tastes ? how can I add 
 to her pleasures? who knows the fullest 
 enjoyment of married life. It is a beautiful 
 touch of true wifeliness in Dora, the child- 
 wife of David Copperfield, which makes her 
 find pleasure in sitting quietly by her hus- 
 band's side to hold his little stock of pens, 
 which he frequently changes as he writes, 
 because she longs to do something for him, 
 and has found that she can give him help 
 in his literary pursuits in no other way. 
 
 No real pleasure is found in any friendship 
 except as a desire to prove one's self a help- 
 
134 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 ful, inspiring, comforting friend is the pre- 
 vailing purpose of heart in that friendship. 
 A readiness to serve, a desire of serving, is 
 ever the measure and the proof of true affec- 
 tion. As it has been said of Mary of Beth- 
 any, in the exhibit of her abounding love 
 for her divine Friend: "There was such a 
 love in her heart for her friend and benefactor 
 as imperatively demanded expression, and yet 
 could not find expression in words. She 
 must do something to relieve her pent-up 
 emotions: she must get an alabaster box 
 and break it, and pour it on the person of 
 Jesus, else her heart will break. ,, 
 
 In the Ordinary vocations of life, a man 
 finds pleasure in his business or in his pro- 
 fession in proportion as he is devoted to it. 
 If he thinks of it only as a means of sup- 
 port, it is a drudgery to him. But if he 
 loves it for its own sake he can work for it 
 night and day without tiring. Its demands 
 on him become a delight, and he has happi- 
 ness in its prosecution. It is the man who 
 thinks his business is worth risking his life 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 3 5 
 
 for, or whose profession is dearer to him 
 than wealth or ease or personal safety, who 
 has satisfaction in all his labors and sacrifices 
 in that occupation year by year. 
 
 The true soldier is a devoted soldier. He 
 loves the cause for which he is in service, or 
 the commander who represents that cause; 
 and he is happiest when he can do most for 
 the object of his devotion. The greatest 
 commanders have always been those who 
 were most successful in securing the per- 
 sonal attachment of their soldiers; and no 
 soldiers have had such enjoyment or such 
 efficiency in service as those who were 
 readiest to give their strength and to risk 
 their lives for those who were over them. 
 Nor is a soldier ashamed of his uniform, 
 because it shows that he is in his command- 
 er's, or his country's, service. The proud- 
 est badges of nobility are often the collars 
 or yokes of service — insignia of office in 
 subjection to an honored sovereign. All 
 the way along in life, in every department 
 and sphere, there is no enjoyment except 
 
136 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 as a result of devotion; no comfort except 
 through consecration. Why should we 
 wonder that the same is true of the service 
 of Christ? 
 
 He who wants the joys of Christ's service 
 must first be in Christ's service. Consecra- 
 tion must precede comfort in the believer's 
 life. He must look to Jesus for direction, 
 before he calls on Jesus for assistance. His 
 first thought in the morning must be, What 
 can I do for my Master? not, What can my 
 Helper do for me? So long as he is looking 
 at Jesus merely as one to give him help and 
 comfort and peace, he will fail to find what 
 he looks for. But when he looks at Jesus 
 as one whom he loves, and lives for, and is 
 ready to die for; as one whose badge of 
 service he is proud of, and whom he enjoys 
 doing anything and everything for, — then 
 he will have help and comfort and peace, 
 according to the order of nature in all de- 
 voted service, and according to the specific 
 and unfailing word of Jesus in this sphere. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE GAIN OF LOWER IDEALS 
 THAN THE DIVINE. 
 
 Man's best endeavors are always in the di- 
 rection of some external ideal ; for, although 
 an ideal is a standard of perfectness or of 
 beauty which exists in the mind, that ideal 
 standard is always formed by mental com- 
 parisons with existing realities which are out- 
 side of the mind. The genesis of the ideal 
 must come from without, before the evolution 
 of the ideal can begin from within. No artist 
 can conceive a form or a hue of beauty, until 
 he has perceived beauty in outline and in 
 color with the natural eye. If, indeed, a man 
 were born blind, no artist-sense could create 
 for him an ideal that he could shape to de- 
 light another's eye. And as it is in the realm 
 of sense, so it is in the realm of thought, and 
 of action, and of character; the mind must 
 
 137 
 
138 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 have its standard pattern and model in the 
 real, in order to have the power of conceiv- 
 ing an inspiring ideal. 
 
 An artist's best work presupposes good 
 models. If he be a real master in his line, 
 the artist has found his models in nature. If 
 he be lower than a master, he has followed 
 some master's pattern. History or tradition 
 tells of the living models on which were 
 based the loftiest ideals in the art of Phidias, 
 Praxiteles, Michael Angel o, Raphael, Murillo, 
 and the other master artists of the ages. And 
 to-day the features and the form and the ex- 
 pression of living models, or of well-known 
 masterpieces of art, are recognized in the 
 paintings or in the sculpture of the best of 
 modern artists. All choicest landscape paint- 
 ing is the idealized portraiture of nature. In 
 every form of strength or of beauty in archi- 
 tecture, there is the basis of some corres- 
 ponding form in nature — in cavern, or grotto, 
 or mountain, or rock, or tree, or leaf, or 
 flower, or fruit, or vine. The ideal in art 
 is ever and only the mentally transfigured real. 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 39 
 
 Music in the soul is the echo and the re- 
 sponse of music in the outer world. No 
 thought of the poet or of the romancer ever 
 came to the thinker until the thinker had 
 come to its external suggestion, in his own 
 or in another's experience. High achieve- 
 ment was never a desire in the mind until 
 high achievement was known to the mind as 
 a possibility in the conduct of others. Nor 
 was any attribute or trait of character ever 
 longed after or aspired to, before that attri- 
 bute or trait had been made known to the 
 soul by its disclosure and its illustration else- 
 where. The worthiest and the noblest innate 
 promptings of a man toward the good and 
 the true impel him to choose the best that is 
 before him for a choice, and to reach out 
 after the best that is above and beyond him 
 as an object of desire; but they do not in- 
 form him what is best absolutely, before that 
 best has, in some way, been set before him 
 as a reality. A man's truest ideal must have 
 its basis of conception in the truest real. 
 
 The divinely implanted conscience tells 
 
140 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 every man that he ought to be good and do 
 good, but a divine revelation is needful to 
 show a man what good is, in character and 
 in conduct. Where there is no explicit reve- 
 lation of the Divine nature to guide man's 
 thoughts of God, man's conception of God, 
 or of tfie gods, is never above the reality of 
 imperfect and depraved human nature as it 
 is. And even where there is an explicit rev- 
 elation of God's attributes, man's conception 
 of those attributes is still vague and partial 
 until he sees some reproduction of them, 
 however faint, in the best traits of a fellow- 
 man. 
 
 Here, indeed, is both the need and the 
 proof of the Incarnation. God must be man- 
 ifest in the flesh, in order that human nature 
 could be seen in its ideal possibilities of like- 
 ness with the Divine nature. And unless 
 God had been manifest in the flesh, the con- 
 ception of Jesus Christ as a character and 
 personality would be an impossibility to the 
 human mind to-day. God would never have 
 been clearly disclosed to man as an ideal of 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 141 
 
 perfectness, without the figure of Jesus Christ 
 in the world's history. And Jesus Christ 
 could never be the ideal figure that he is to 
 the world, if he had not been a God-revealed 
 reality in history. 
 
 Nor is it sufficient to have Jesus Christ as 
 the ideal standard of human character and 
 of human conduct, without any intermediate 
 exhibit, between him and ourselves, of the 
 attributes and traits which his nature person- 
 ifies and illustrates. Human nature needs 
 the inspiration and the encouragement of 
 purely human ideals, reflecting and, so far, 
 reproducing the one perfect Ideal, as an in- 
 centive and a pattern to worthy being and 
 doing. We know that we ought to be like- 
 minded with Christ; but Christ is so far 
 above us, and we are so hopelessly unlike 
 him at the best, that we are in danger of 
 despairing in the struggle, while we have 
 nothing before us but that absolutely per- 
 fect Divine-human standard of attainment. 
 When, however, we see the likeness of Christ 
 imaged in one trait or another of a human 
 
142 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 follower of Christ, that trait has new attrac- 
 tiveness to us from its very possibility of 
 imitation; and so the followers and wit- 
 nesses of Christ become our inspiring help- 
 ers toward Christ. 
 
 Every truest follower of Christ and every 
 exceptionally earnest servant of God to-day 
 has before his mind some human ideal, or 
 ideals, as his incentive and as his cheer in 
 his daily strivings God-ward. He would 
 never have known the beauty and the noble- 
 ness of an absolutely unselfish affection, of 
 a simple fidelity to duty in all things, of an 
 unswerving consistency of uprightness in 
 conduct, of tender considerateness in word 
 and manner toward others, of heroic bearing 
 and doing in emergencies, if he had never 
 seen one of those traits of character attrac- 
 tively illustrated in fact or in story. 
 
 It may be that it was a man's mother or 
 his father who first held before him an in- 
 spiring ideal of character and of conduct; 
 or, again, it may have been his teacher, or 
 his pastor, or some companion and friend; 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 1 43 
 
 or, yet again, it may have been a missionary 
 hero, or a saintly worker in the home-field, 
 of whom he heard or read. Not, commonly, 
 from one character alone, although often from 
 one chiefly, the ideal has been derived, which 
 is unfailingly before the mind of the aspiring 
 struggler after good. And on the worthiness 
 and the nobility of a man's human ideals of 
 desirable attainment depends much for his 
 own progress and ultimate gain. 
 
 Well is it for a young person if so lofty an 
 ideal is before him in his home circle that it 
 can remain his worthy inspiration all his life 
 through. And well is it for an older person, 
 who has never had a truly inspiring ideal 
 before him, or who has outgrown his earlier 
 ideals, if he can be made newly acquainted 
 with a character which shall inspire him to 
 yet unreached attainments of good. There 
 is no treasure on earth to be compared with 
 an attractive human ideal of character and of 
 conduct, which draws one ever upward and 
 onward in the line of his best and truest 
 nature, humbling him by his sense of lack in 
 
144 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 that direction, while it incites him to ceaseless 
 struggle to be better and to do better after 
 that inspiring pattern. Unfailing gain is a 
 certainty so long as such an ideal is all-sway- 
 ing in a human life. 
 
 Whoever has a worthy ideal before him, 
 let him thank God for its possession, and let 
 him remember that that ideal can be to him 
 a worthy ideal only so long as he recognizes 
 it as a gift from God and as a help toward 
 God. And let him who struggles toward a 
 worthy ideal, bear in mind that even he may 
 be an ideal to some one yet behind himself 
 in the God-ward race. That thought should 
 be an added incentive to every man to falter 
 not nor tire in his ideal-ward strivings — for 
 the sake of others as well as for himself. 
 
XVI. 
 
 SOMETHING BETTER THAN 
 ANGELS. 
 
 All angels — all good angels — are God's 
 "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister 
 for them who shall be heirs of salvation. ,, 
 But, not all ministering spirits sent forth to 
 minister for them who shall be heirs of sal- 
 vation, are angels. There are times when 
 only angels can help a child of God in his 
 earthly need ; and again there are times when 
 an angel can do very little for a troubled 
 child of God. There are some things which 
 only angels can do ; and there are some things 
 which angels obviously cannot do. When 
 an angel's help is available, there is nothing 
 better than an angel's help. But when an 
 angel is helpless for ministry to an heir of 
 salvation, then there is something better than 
 
 the help of angels. God's loving provisions 
 10 145 
 
146 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 for his earthly children are not limited by 
 the capacity and the experience of angels. 
 
 The heir of salvation, while he is an heir, 
 has need of human sympathy; and no angel 
 can give human sympathy, however much 
 he longs to give it. The best that an angel 
 can do, is to bring cheering promises, and to 
 give material help, from God. Sympathy is 
 based on experience, and no mere angel has 
 entered into our human experiences — as a 
 basis of sympathy. 
 
 When Elijah felt himself all alone as a 
 servant of God among a sinful people; 
 hunted for his life by a cruel queen, away 
 from the habitations of men, weak, famish- 
 ing, despairing, and finally falling asleep in 
 his weariness, — it was an angel who came 
 and wakened him, speaking to him words of 
 cheer, and ministering to him in tenderness, 
 giving him food and drink, and watching 
 him again as he slept; awakening him once 
 more, to send him to God for fresh assurance 
 and direction. But the Lord knew that there 
 was a limit to an angel's help to Elijah, and 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 1 47 
 
 that Elijah had need of something better than 
 this for his permanent help. The prophet 
 could go " forty days and forty nights" in 
 the strength of the angelic supply of his 
 wants; but then he would tire out as before 
 in his wearisome work, if he were left with- 
 out a sympathizing human fellow. So the 
 Lord provided young Elisha to be a com- 
 panion helper of Elijah; and from that hour 
 Elijah seems never to have been without the 
 loving presence of that human helper, until 
 the ascending prophet looked down through 
 the opening heavens upon his earthly com- 
 panion and successor. 
 
 When Paul was on the storm-driven ship, 
 with neither sun nor stars appearing for 
 weeks together, — not one, nor all, of his two 
 hundred and seventy-five despairing ship- 
 mates, could speak the word which should 
 assure him of his earthly future. An angel 
 of God must be deputed for that service. 
 So the angel was sent; as God is always 
 ready to supply the angel-ministry which his 
 children's necessities require. But when the 
 
148 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 storm was over, and the winter was passed, 
 and the shores of Italy were finally reached, 
 and Paul, the prisoner, was nearing the city 
 of the Caesars, his human heart had its 
 human longings for that human sympathy 
 which no heaven-deputed angel could bring 
 to him ; therefore God saw to it that Chris- 
 tian brethren from Rome went down along 
 the road to meet the soldier-bound apostle : 
 "Whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, 
 and took courage." Those sympathizing 
 brethren were better than angels in their 
 ministry to Paul; for their ministry of sym- 
 pathy was beyond the possibilities of angel 
 ministry. 
 
 There are times when one loving, tender, 
 sympathizing human helper can give us more 
 of courage and cheer in our desponding 
 earthly struggle, or . in our trial of loneli- 
 ness, than a legion of angels would be able 
 to. Our Saviour recognized this truth when 
 he would come into the world to evidence 
 to the race his love and sympathy. " Since 
 then the children are sharers in flesh and 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 149 
 
 blood, he also himself in like manner par- 
 took of the same. . . . For verily not of 
 angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold 
 of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it be- 
 hooved him in all things to be made like 
 unto his brethren." 
 
 And it is because Jesus was here in flesh 
 and blood, having the nature of the sons of 
 men, and not the nature of angels, that he 
 can sympathize with us, being "touched 
 with the feeling of our infirmities," he hav- 
 ing been " in all points tempted like as we 
 are," although "without sin." Thus there 
 is a power of personal sympathy with us on 
 the part of our loving Saviour, which he can- 
 not delegate to an angel who was never of 
 our nature, to the extent that he can dele- 
 gate it to one of his human servants and 
 representatives. In other words, Jesus him- 
 self can do for us by means of our human 
 fellows what he cannot do for us by angel 
 ministries; and he can do through us for 
 others of his children, beyond all that he 
 could do for them through the angels. So 
 
150 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 it is, that there is something better than 
 angels in the provisions of God's grace for 
 the heirs of salvation. 
 
 There are many trials which no angel could 
 understand, and which we are inclined to 
 think no other human being than ourselves 
 can feel the weight of. It is a comfort, in 
 such a case, to be assured that we are under- 
 stood and sympathized with by some one 
 who would gladly help. us if he could. A 
 loving look, a look of fellow-suffering in our 
 behalf, the pressure of a warm hand, a start 
 or a shiver of pain because of our pain, even 
 an unexpressed though not an undisclosed 
 sense of personal sympathy with us in our 
 peculiar burden-bearing, is sometimes far 
 more helpful to us than many words of in- 
 spired counsel could prove. 
 
 If, indeed, we were seriously and hon- 
 estly in doubt as to God's wisdom and love, 
 or as to the ultimate issue of our severest 
 trials, then an angel's assurances might ben- 
 efit us beyond any human ministry. But 
 when we know that it is all right that we 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 5 1 
 
 should suffer as we do, and that good will 
 finally come of it, it is better to be told that 
 some one knows how hard it is for us to bear 
 up under this all, than to be told that it is 
 our duty, and that it is for our highest ad- 
 vantage, to endure patiently, and in faith, 
 unto the end. 
 
 It is those who have been through trials 
 themselves, those who have been bereaved, 
 or betrayed, or disappointed, and who have 
 suffered and sorrowed accordingly, whose 
 words and looks of appreciative sympathy 
 come home to our hearts in our hours of 
 need, as no words of well-meant instruction 
 or encouragement can come at such a time. 
 All of us have felt the difference between 
 the ministry, in our sorrow, of one who 
 could say, out of an overflowing heart, "I 
 know all about it. It is terrible ;" and one 
 who could only speak out of a loving heart 
 which had never bled from wounds like this. 
 Even in the closest friendship, there is more 
 comfort in being thoroughly understood in 
 our weaknesses, than in being admired in 
 
152 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 our strength. Appreciation is in itself the 
 truest and most helpful affection. 
 
 In the light of this truth, do we not see a 
 new cause for rejoicing in our own peculiar 
 experiences of temptation and struggle and 
 endurance and sorrow? Apart from any 
 question of our personal need of chastise- 
 ment, or of discipline, or of progress toward 
 holiness, through those experiences which 
 try us most sorely, we are, by their agency, 
 being fitted for a better than an angel's min- 
 istry to our Saviour's loved ones. We could 
 never do such work for Christ, without these 
 experiences, as we can do through their 
 enduring and improving. No one, on earth 
 or in heaven, in the lack of such experiences 
 as these, could do the work which we are 
 thus preparing to do. 
 
XVII. 
 
 WHAT WE OWE TO THE 
 SLEEPLESS, 
 
 It is because there are others who will not 
 sleep, that we have the privilege of sleeping 
 in restfulness and in safety. And it is be- 
 cause of the wakeful watching of those who 
 cannot sleep, that our wakeful hours have 
 much of their added cheer and helpfulness. 
 Sleeping and waking we are indebted to those 
 who wake while others sleep; and it be- 
 hooves us to be mindful of our multiplied 
 obligations to the sleepless. 
 
 In our city or our village homes we go to 
 our sleep at night with a feeling of security 
 because of the wakefulness of policemen and 
 of other watchers, who guard our persons 
 and our property while we sleep. Riding 
 across the country by railroad at night, we 
 lie down to sleep as restfully as in our 
 
 i53 
 
154 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 
 
 homes, because of our confidence in the 
 sleepless watching of engineer and of brake- 
 men on the train, and of guards at the bridges 
 and the switches along our track. Crossing 
 the ocean, we seek rest in our berths without 
 anxiety, because we know that at the pilot- 
 house, on the deck, at the lookout, and in 
 the engine-rooms below, there are keen eyes 
 that will not sleep. And so on land or sea, 
 at home or abroad, we have reason to realize 
 our indebtedness to those who wake while 
 others sleep. 
 
 From the beginning of our troubled life 
 to its fevered close, our safety pivots on the 
 willing sleeplessness of those who watch in 
 our behaif. It is because the loving mother 
 will not give way to sleep, when her tired 
 body and her throbbing head long for it, and 
 she keeps awake only by the exercise of all 
 her firm will, prompted by the best impellings 
 of her whole true heart, that the helpless child 
 is brought safely through the varied trials 
 and ills of infancy. It is only as the de- 
 voted wife or sister, or as the skilled nurse, 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 155 
 
 watches in tireless wakefulness by the bed- 
 side of the strong man struggling with acute 
 disease, that he on whom the family, the 
 community, or the nation, leans is held to 
 continued life, and is raised to renewed ac- 
 tivities in health. It is, indeed, by the sleep- 
 lessness of the sleepless, that the sleeping 
 and the waking of those who sleep and wake 
 bring rest and refreshing, and are guarded 
 from unnumbered perils. 
 
 The importance of sleeplessness on the 
 part of those who must watch while others 
 sleep, is brought out and emphasized in that 
 article of war which makes it a crime pun- 
 ishable with death for a soldier on guard to 
 sleep on his post. On that soldier's sleep- 
 lessness there may depend the safety of his 
 command, the issue of a campaign, the life 
 of a nation, the current of a century's his- 
 tory. If, therefore, he sleeps, he must die; 
 for many may die as a consequence of his 
 failure to be sleepless. A sense of his re- 
 sponsibility as a watcher goes far to enable 
 a soldier-sentry to keep awake on his post 
 
156 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 
 
 when his eyes are heavy with sleep. A cor- 
 responding sense of indebtedness to him for 
 his fidelity in being sleepless ought to have 
 a place in the minds of those who are saved 
 by that soldier-sentry's waking and watching. 
 And it is true that no one so fully realizes 
 how hard and how important it is that a 
 soldier on guard should be a sleepless sol- 
 dier, as does a soldier who has himself been 
 compelled to faithful sleeplessness in such 
 a place. 
 
 At the close of the terrible series of seven 
 days' fights in the vicinity of Richmond, in 
 the second year of our civil war, when Gen- 
 eral McClellan was making his move from 
 the Chickahominy to the James, a detach- 
 ment of cavalry was ordered in advance to 
 the position which the Union Army was to 
 occupy near Harrison's Landing. A young 
 officer of that detachment had assigned to 
 him, at night, the picketing of an extended 
 line, with only ten men at his service. It 
 was a critical time. His force was pitiably 
 insufficient for its purpose; but it was all he 
 
ASPIRA TIONS A ND INFL UENCES. 1 5 7 
 
 had. The best he could do, therefore, was 
 to do the best he could. If he could guard 
 that line until daylight, he would do all that 
 he was asked to do. But his men were 
 already well-nigh exhausted through pro- 
 longed active service without sleep ; and he 
 feared that some of them would be unable 
 to keep awake. His own added sense of 
 responsibility enabled him to be sleepless 
 even while as tired as any of his men. 
 
 Anxious and faithful, that young officer 
 moved from post to post all the night through, 
 keeping watch of the watchers. As he neared 
 one man on this outpost duty, he found him 
 asleep. At a glance he took in the whole 
 situation, and he acted in view of it. Arous- 
 ing the sleeper, he brought him face to face 
 with his peril. Asleep on his post, in the 
 presence of the enemy ! The penalty of that 
 crime was death. The officer reminded the 
 soldier of this. The soldier realized it. 
 "But," added the officer, in generous con- 
 siderateness, "I know how tired you are, 
 and I know the service which has worn you 
 
1 5 8 A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 
 
 out. We are all tired together. But this 
 line must be guarded, and we must keep 
 awake to-night. Now give me your carbine, 
 and lie down and get a nap. I'll take your 
 place here for half an hour. Then you must 
 get up, and you must keep awake; for there's 
 no 'relief to us until daylight." And that 
 officer insisted on carrying out this arrange- 
 ment to the letter. As the tired cavalryman 
 stretched himself for his needed and longed- 
 for sleep, he realized as never before his 
 indebtedness to one whose sleeplessness en- 
 abled him to sleep; and to the day of his 
 death that lesson was never forgotten by him 
 who learned it then and there. There is not 
 one of us who has not in some way had 
 cause for similar gratitude to one whose 
 sleeplessness has secured to us the privi- 
 lege of needful sleep. 
 
 There is, in fact, no promise of God's lov- 
 ing fidelity to those who trust him which is 
 more precious as it stands, or for which we 
 have more reason to be grateful, than the 
 promise of his tireless sleeplessness as the 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 59 
 
 watcher over his dear ones, and as " he giveth 
 unto his beloved in [their] sleep : " 
 
 " He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : 
 He that keepeth thee will not slumber. 
 Behold, he that keepeth Israel 
 Shall neither slumber nor sleep." 
 
 Therefore it is that the Psalmist says, and 
 therefore it is that every one of us can say : 
 
 " In peace will I both lay me down and sleep : 
 For thou, Lord, alone makest me dwell in safety," 
 
 But it is not alone those who wake and 
 watch of their own choice, as a matter of 
 duty, to whose sleeplessness we are indebted 
 for much that we have reason to be grateful 
 for. Those who cannot sleep are, in many 
 an instance, enabled by their very sleepless- 
 ness to be a means of good to us beyond all 
 that they could compass in our behalf if they 
 slept as others sleep. There are sorrows and 
 sufferings which forbid sleep, but which en- 
 rich the soul of the sleepless one; and out 
 of such sleeplessness there comes a blessing 
 to all who are within the sweep of its benefit 
 
160 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 cent influence. Paul and Silas, with their 
 smarting backs and their fettered feet in their 
 inner dungeon at Philippi, could not sleep, 
 but in their sleeplessness they could sing 
 God's praises with such added sweetness and 
 power that the strains of their rejoicing filled 
 the ears of their heaviest-hearted companions 
 in bondage, and transformed the gloomy- 
 prison-house into a sanctuary of light and 
 peace in Christian believing. And the song- 
 filled sleeplessness of weary prisoners of 
 grief and pain is one of the potent forces 
 of good in the universe of God to-day. 
 
 " Lo ! a band of pale 
 Yet joyful priests do minister around 
 The altar, where the lights are burning low 
 In the breathless night. Each grave brow wears 
 
 the crown 
 Of sorrow, and each heart is kept awake 
 By its own restless pain ; for these are they 
 To whom the night watch is appointed. See ! 
 They lift their hands, and bless God in the night! 
 Whilst we are sleeping, those to whom the King 
 Has measured out a cup of sorrow, sweet 
 With his dear love, yet very hard to drink, 
 Are waiting in his temple, and the eyes 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. l6l 
 
 That cannot sleep for sorrow or for pain 
 Are lifted up to heaven ; and sweet low songs, 
 Broken by patient tears, arise to God. 
 Bless ye the Lord, ye servants of the Lord, 
 Which stand by night within his holy place 
 To give him worship ! Ye are priests to him, 
 And minister around the altar, pale 
 Yet joyful in the night." 
 
 And because of this loving, grateful service 
 of God's sleepless worshipers, we w T ho sleep 
 and rest are sharers in the blessing which 
 their devotion brings. 
 
 It is in the hours of sleeplessness from 
 sorrow and pain that the faithful heart grows 
 tenderest toward God and toward God's dear 
 ones; and it is only through these experi- 
 ences in sleeplessness that any God-inspired 
 comforter of those who mourn or who suffer 
 acquires his chiefest power of comforting. 
 He who has never been so racked and 
 tried that he could not sleep, cannot speak 
 intelligibly to the heart of hearts of a sleep- 
 less sufferer. And he whose words come 
 home to every aching heart like strength- 
 bringing balm, is sure to be one who has 
 ii 
 
1 62 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 waked and watched involuntarily while others 
 slept restfully. To realize this truth is in- 
 evitably to give us a new sense of our indebt- 
 edness to those who have acquired their 
 power to help us at the cost of wearying 
 sleeplessness. 
 
 There is comfort in this truth to those who 
 cannot sleep. Because there is new power 
 for good through waking and watching while 
 others sleep, that sleeplessness which is un- 
 welcome for its own sake can be welcomed 
 for Christ's sake. When we must count the 
 long hours of darkness drearily, through 
 pain or sorrow that will not let us sleep, 
 we can thank God that by this means we 
 are gaining an insight of his love, and a 
 nearness to himself, that shall enable us to 
 minister in his name to those whose needs 
 can be met only through our wise use of 
 sleeplessness. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF SORROW. 
 
 The pain of sorrow is readily perceived; 
 but the gain of sorrow it is not so easy to 
 recognize. Yet to no experience of our 
 human life do we owe more for the devel- 
 opment and the perfecting of our personal 
 character, and for the bringing of us into 
 right relations with our fellows and with our 
 God, than to the experiences of sorrow. In- 
 deed, it may be said that none of us are at 
 our best save through God's ministry of sor- 
 row to us, and in us, and through us; and 
 that the measure of our tenderness, of our 
 sympathy, of our practical helpfulness, and 
 of our abiding and prevailing faith, corres- 
 ponds with the measure of our wise improve- 
 ment of our personal sorrows. 
 
 To have sorrow is a very different thing 
 from being sorry. To be sorry is simply to 
 
 163 
 
1 64 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES^ 
 
 be sore-y ; to wince under pain caused by our 
 own or by another's loss or misdoing. To 
 have sorrow is to have "mental suffering 
 under the privation of some good we actually 
 possessed, or concerning which we entertained 
 a pleasing expectation; " it is to grieve over a 
 lost good, or under a present evil. Sorrow 
 is deeper and more permanent than sorriness. 
 It does not always move one's innermost 
 being to be sorry; but one cannot have real 
 sorrow save as his innermost being is moved. 
 If, indeed, it were not for the ministry of sor- 
 row, the highest ministry of joy would be 
 unknown to us. We could neither love nor 
 be loved at the best without the lessons of 
 this ministry; and only thereby can we know 
 the full blessings of memory, of hope, and 
 of faith. 
 
 It is discipline, not indulgence, that devel- 
 ops character; and discipline comes rather 
 through our losses than through our retain- 
 ings. Living on in ease and comfort, and in 
 the possession of all that our hearts have 
 known a longing for, we have no call to the 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES, 165 
 
 exercise of high courage, ol heroic endur- 
 ance, and of sublime patience. He who has 
 never known sorrow, has never made that 
 attainment in character, through discipline of 
 character, of which his nature is capable. 
 
 " O sacred sorrow ! he who knows not thee 
 Knows not the best emotions of the heart." 
 
 There is always more or less of a lack in a 
 character which is inexperienced in sorrow. 
 And every truly admirable personal charac- 
 ter, every great and noble character, every 
 most winsome character, is a character w r hich 
 has known sorrow, and which has secured 
 the gain of sorrow through the acceptance 
 and improvement of sorrow in its noblest 
 ministry. Our one Pattern of character and 
 of attainment was "a man of sorrows and 
 acquainted with grief;" and it is divinely 
 declared that it was needful that he should 
 be made "perfect" — should be brought to 
 the highest conceivable standard of charac- 
 ter — " through sufferings." God says to every 
 child of his love, " I have chosen thee in the 
 
1 66 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 furnace of affliction." And every sorrow- 
 smitten child of God will, sooner or later, 
 have reason to say, " It is good for me that I 
 have been afflicted.' ' 
 
 " Man, till the fire hath purged him, doth remain 
 Mixed with all dross : 
 To lack the loving discipline of pain 
 Were endless loss." 
 
 Yet sorrow is never anything less than sor- 
 row, and as sorrow it is always hard to bear. 
 This, indeed, is one of the primal elements 
 of its helpful ministry. If all our losses were 
 losses which we could see the reason of, or 
 which we could endure with entire calmness, 
 our innermost nature would not be moved by 
 our losses. If all our griefs were griefs which 
 brought their own consolation with them, 
 there would be no sense of hopelessness in 
 the overpowering and bewildering mystery 
 of our grief. But, as it is, "all chastening" 
 — through real sorrow — "seemeth for the 
 present to be not joyous but grievous;" even 
 though "afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit 
 unto them that have been " rightly " exercised 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 1 67 
 
 thereby." "Ah," says Madame Guyon, "if 
 you knew what peace there is in an accepted 
 sorrow ! "—in a sorrow accepted in its divinely 
 designed ministry of good. Henry Vaughan 
 says quaintly: 
 
 " Affliction is a mother, 
 Whose painful throes yield many sons, 
 Each fairer than the other." 
 
 But all this is in the "afterward," not in the 
 immediate presence of a freshly experienced 
 sorrow. At the first a sorrow is even more 
 than a sorrow; for, as Shakespeare has it: 
 
 " Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows, 
 Which shows like grief itself, but is not so ; 
 For sorrow's grief, glazed with blinding tears, 
 Divides one thing entire, to many objects." 
 
 And it is only through the experience of a 
 sorrow that seems unbearable, that one gains 
 in his personal character through bearing up 
 and bearing on, by being upborne. 
 
 The chiefest gain in the ministry of sorrow 
 is in its bringing the stricken one to a sense 
 of helpless dependence on God. It is not 
 
1 68 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 that the loving hand of God is always in- 
 stantly recognized in sorrow; for it is often 
 the case that a great sorrow seems to put, for 
 the time, a cloud between the believer and 
 his God, and the breaking heart cries out 
 piteously under the heavier load than it can 
 bear. But it is that, even from under the 
 cloud and from beneath the crushing bur- 
 den, the cry, although piteous or despairing, 
 is a God-ward cry. As Mrs. Browning tells 
 us, in her "Cry of the Human:" 
 
 " 'There is no God,' the foolish saith, 
 
 But none, ' There is no sorrow ; ' 
 And nature oft the cry of faith 
 
 In bitter need will borrow. 
 Eyes which the preacher could not school, 
 
 By wayside graves are raised, 
 And lips say, ' God be pitiful ! ' 
 
 Who ne'er said, ' God be praised ! ' " 
 
 And it is in this very tendency of sorrow 
 that there is, so far, a gain to the soul which 
 sorrows. " Man's extremity is God's oppor- 
 tunity. ,, It is when man is consciously help- 
 less that God can be man's sufficiency. Thus 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 69 
 
 it is that God's strength is made perfect, is 
 shown in its completeness, in and through 
 man's weakness. And thus it is, as the godly 
 Faber says, that: 
 
 " Good is that darkening of our lives, 
 Which only God can brighten ; 
 But better still that hopeless load 
 Which none but God can lighten." 
 
 Sorrow's ministry to us begins by its shutting 
 us up to help and hope in God alone. 
 
 But there is a ministry to us in the loving 
 sympathy of others in our sorrow; and it is 
 for us to minister to others through our new 
 attainments by sorrow. We should never 
 know how many hearts are drawn to us in 
 loving sympathy, if we were never in sor- 
 row; nor, indeed, could we be the means of 
 drawing the hearts of so many to us in ten- 
 derness, if we were never sorrow-smitten. 
 More share with us in our sorrows than 
 could ever share with us in our enjoyments. 
 And more are prompt to express this sense 
 of sympathy than that. Those who would 
 stand aloof from us while all went well, are 
 
I/O ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 moved to tell us freely, or to show us clearly, 
 how their hearts bleed with and for us in our 
 grief. We may even gain love through los- 
 ing our loved ones. And through the lesson 
 of our sorrow, and through our new sense of 
 the value of loving sympathy in the hour of 
 sorrow, we are fitted to be ministers of sym- 
 pathy and cheer to the sorrowing. 
 
 Says Esther Maurice Hare, in her Letters 
 to her sisters in sorrow : " Sorrow is a force 
 of incalculable power; able, rightly applied, 
 * to move mountains.' . . . Rightly viewed, 
 sorrow is a gift, as much as our wealth or 
 our health; and we must as much prepare to 
 be asked what we have done with the one, as 
 how we have used the other. For sorrow is 
 as fruitful of graces as charity itself." Hence 
 a ministry of sorrow through us to others, is 
 that ministry by which we " comfort them 
 that are in any affliction through the com- 
 fort wherewith we ourselves are comforted 
 of God." 
 
 One of the most comforting ministries of 
 sorrow, when the true ministry of sorrow is 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 7 1 
 
 recognized and accepted by the child of God, 
 is the proof it brings to the sorrow-stricken 
 one of the abounding love of God, and of 
 the loving nearness of God. " God does not 
 afflict willingly, nor [willingly] grieve the 
 children of men." It is "whom the Lord 
 loveth" that he causeth to sorrow; and 
 when the Lord has reluctantly laid a bur- 
 den of sorrow on one whom he loves, the 
 Lord knows just how heavily that burden 
 presses, and no human heart can have such 
 loving sympathy with the one who sorrows 
 as has the Lord himself. The heavier the 
 sorrow, the surer the sustaining presence of 
 Him who has permitted it to his loved one: 
 
 " He gives his angels charge of those who sleep: 
 But He himself watches with those who wake." 
 
 And so it is that the ministry of sorrow is 
 God's ministry of love to us, and in us, and 
 through us, by his grace. By that grace 
 " our light affliction, which is for the moment, 
 worketh for us more and more exceedingly 
 an eternal weight of glory; while we look 
 
172 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 not at the things which are seen, but at the 
 things which are not seen : for the things 
 which are seen are temporal ; but the things 
 which are not seen are eternal." 
 
 " Should Sorrow lay her hand upon thy shoulder, 
 
 And walk with thee in silence on life's way, 
 While Joy, the bright companion once, grown colder, 
 
 Becomes more distant day by day ; 
 Shrink not from the companionship of Sorrow, 
 
 She is the messenger of God to thee ; 
 And thou wilt thank him in his great to-morrow, — 
 
 For what thou know'st not now, thou then shalt 
 see ; — 
 She is God's angel, clad in weeds of night, 
 
 With whom ' we walk by faith, and not by sight.' " 
 
XIX. 
 
 WHAT OUR DEAD DO FOR US. 
 
 Much of the best work of the world is 
 done through the present personal influence 
 of the dead. And in our estimate of the 
 forces which give us efficiency, we ought to 
 assign a large place to the power over us, 
 and in us, of loved ones whom we mourn as 
 wholly removed from us. Yet this is a view 
 of the truth which we are prone to lose 
 sight of. 
 
 When death takes away one on whom we 
 have leaned, or to whom we have looked up, 
 or with whom we have toiled and endured 
 and joyed, or for whom we have had care 
 and responsibility, — we recognize the mys- 
 tery, and we feel the sorrow, of the event; 
 while, at the same time, we are ready to 
 believe that it is better for that dear one, in 
 his new sphere of existence, than it could 
 
 i73 
 
174 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 have been for him here. We know that 
 there has been no mistake on the part of 
 Him with whom are the issues of life and of 
 death; and that the career of usefulness for 
 which the departed child of God had been 
 preparing so faithfully, or on the outer verge 
 of which he still stood, has not been utterly 
 closed against him, in his dying; but that 
 somehow and somewhere he is continuing 
 to serve and to glorify God in tireless activ- 
 ity. For him, we have no fear. But the 
 temptation to us is, to feel that his work for 
 us is done, and that henceforth, while we live 
 on here, we must live on without his presence 
 or aid. Yet, as a practical fact and as a great 
 spiritual truth, our dead do for us as con- 
 stantly and as variously as they could do 
 for us if they were still here in the flesh ; and 
 they do for us very much that they could 
 not do unless they were dead. 
 
 Some of the saintly faces of fathers and 
 mothers, which are a benediction to all who 
 look at them, could never have shone as 
 now with the reflected light of heaven, unless 
 

 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 175 
 
 they had been summoned to frequent upward 
 lookings through the clouds, in loving com- 
 munion with their children in heaven. There 
 are manly and womanly children, who are 
 more serious and earnest and devoted in 
 their young life-struggles, because of their 
 constant sense of the over-watching presence 
 of their dead parents. Many a mature life 
 has more of symmetry, and more of strength 
 and beauty, as a result of the chastened and 
 hallowed memories of an early great sorrow 
 through bereavement, which seemed as if it 
 would utterly crush the young heart, but 
 which really gave to that heart an unfailing 
 tenderness of sympathy, and a limitless ca- 
 pacity for clinging devotedness, which would 
 have been an impossibility with less of a trial 
 through death. And so the dead live on 
 here, for, and with, and in, those who mourn 
 and remember them as gone hence forever ; 
 and, living on, they live to bless. 
 
 Our living friends do much for us, but 
 perhaps our dead friends do yet more. We 
 do what we can for our friends while we live; 
 
176^ SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 
 
 but possibly, if we were to die, we could be 
 more of a help and more of an inspiration 
 to those who are dearer than life to us. 
 Cardinal Newman voices this thought ten- 
 derly, when he says of the grief and the 
 gain of David in the death of his peerless 
 friend Jonathan: 
 
 "Yet it was well: — for so, 'mid cares of rule 
 
 And crime's encircling tide, 
 A spell was o'er thee, zealous one, to cool 
 
 Earth-joy and kingly pride; 
 With battle-scene and pageant, prompt to blend 
 
 The pale calm specter of a blameless friend. 
 
 "Ah ! had he lived, before thy throne to stand, 
 Thy spirit keen and high 
 Sure it had snapped in twain love's slender band, 
 
 So dear in memory ; 
 Paul, of his comrade reft, the warning gives, — 
 He lives to us who dies ; he is but lost who lives." 
 
 When the aged Simeon welcomed the 
 child Jesus in the temple courts at Jerusalem, 
 his words of prophecy concerning the won- 
 drous possibilities in the infant Messiah in- 
 cluded a distinct reference to the good that 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 177 
 
 should be done to the world through the 
 suffering and the sorrow which the death of 
 that Son should cause to his agony-stricken 
 mother. "Yea, and a sword shall pierce 
 through thine own soul," he said to her; 
 "that thoughts out of many hearts shall be 
 revealed." And how much to this world 
 has been the soul-moving power of the 
 Virgin Mother's sorrow over the death of 
 her Son! 
 
 There is light and cheer in the loving 
 face of the pictured Madonna with her infant 
 Child; but there is no such touching of the 
 innermost heart, and revealing of the more 
 secret and more sacred thoughts of the mind, 
 in that blessed face, as there is in the up- 
 turned look of the bleeding-hearted Mater 
 Dolorosa. And of all the representations 
 of the Mother and Child, by the great artists 
 of the ages, no other approaches — in its 
 power of heart -touching and of thought- 
 revealing — that wonderful face in the Sistine 
 Madonna, where the far-away look of the 
 tear-starting eyes gives a fore-gleam of the 
 
 12 
 
178 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 sword-piercing sorrow of the mother of the 
 Crucified One. 
 
 And when Jesus himself was about to die, 
 he distinctly assured his loved disciples that 
 he could do more for them after his death 
 than he could do by continuing to live with 
 them here in the flesh. " Because I have 
 spoken this thing unto you, sorrow has filled 
 your heart," he said. " Nevertheless, I tell 
 you the truth ; it is expedient for you that I 
 go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter 
 will not come unto you; but if I go, I will 
 send him unto you." There is a sense in 
 which this truth applies to every follower of 
 Jesus, as it applied to Jesus. There is a pe- 
 culiar influence of redeemed souls over their 
 dear ones still on earth, which cannot be 
 exercised except as a result of death. 
 
 "They never quite leave us, our friends who have 
 passed 
 Through the shadows of death to the sunlight 
 above ; 
 A thousand sweet memories are holding them fast 
 To the places they blest with their presence and 
 love. 
 
ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 1 79 
 
 "The work which they left, and the books which 
 they read, 
 Speak mutely, though still with an eloquence 
 rare ; 
 And the songs that they sung, the dear words that 
 they said, 
 Yet linger and sigh on the desolate air. 
 
 "And oft when alone, and as oft in the throng, 
 Or when evil allures us, or sin draweth nigh, 
 A whisper comes gently, ' Nay, do not the wrong ; ' 
 And we feel that our weakness is pitied on high." 
 
 It is not that we should be unwilling to 
 live on, doing our best for our dear ones 
 here, because of the possibility of our doing 
 yet more for them through our dying. Nor 
 yet is it, that we should part from our dear 
 ones without a pang of sorrow, when they 
 are called away by death, because their 
 dying will bring them added joy and larger 
 influence, and may give them more power 
 for good over our own lives, as we continue 
 our earthly course without their visible com- 
 panionship. But it is that, in our thought 
 of being taken away from those whom we 
 love, we need not feel that we shall thereby 
 
180 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 be lost to all possibility of loving ministry 
 to their comfort and welfare; and that, in 
 the bitterness of our keenest grief over the 
 death of our loved ones, there may be the 
 consoling thought that we do not lose the 
 stimulus and the inspiration of their memo- 
 ries, nor part, even for the time being, with 
 the more sacred influence of their example, 
 and of their spiritual fellowship. 
 
 To them and to us alike, "whether we 
 live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we 
 die, we die unto the Lord : whether we live, 
 therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to 
 this end Christ died, and lived again, that he 
 might be Lord of both the dead and the 
 living." And they who are in Christ, will 
 not fail of a part in the work of Christ for 
 those who are dear to themselves and to 
 their Saviour. 
 
XX. 
 
 THE AFTERMATH OF INFLUENCE, 
 
 Who, that has lived in the country, does 
 not know the mellow and refreshing beauty 
 of the autumn "aftermath," on some hillside 
 field, or in some sweeping meadow which had 
 seemed given over to winter's death, but is 
 marvelously restored to spring-tide's life? 
 That field had been plowed and sown and 
 harrowed. The seed had sprung up and 
 brought forth fully after its kind. Then the 
 mower had come, the scythe had been swung, 
 and the grain or the grass had been gathered 
 into the barns. The mowed field lay deso- 
 late and bare under the summer's sun and 
 the latter rains. But up from the hidden life- 
 giving roots of the garnered crop there sprang 
 fresh blades of promise and beauty, and again 
 the wide-spreading field rejoiced in its cover- 
 ing of verdure. Another harvest was made 
 
 181 
 
1 8 2 A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 
 
 ready for; and there were life and bloom 
 where had seemed only decay and death. 
 There is an added beauty and an added pre- 
 ciousness in the "aftermath" of the husband- 
 man's grass crop from the very fact of its 
 unexpectedness, and its token of abounding 
 fulness in the field. The first harvest had 
 been looked for in the ordinary course of 
 nature; the second could not but be reckoned 
 of grace. 
 
 In the field of mind and character, as in 
 the grass-field, there is an aftermath of influ- 
 ence which is not always taken into account 
 in our plannings for the harvest, but which 
 has an impressiveness and a value which are 
 all its own. As in the natural world, so in 
 the world of influence, the aftermath has a 
 peculiar beauty under the light of its autum- 
 nal skies; and in this field, as not in the other, 
 it is commonly the larger and more impor- 
 tant garnering of the two. The aftermath of 
 influence is likely to be the real measure of 
 influence in any sphere; and until the after- 
 math is gathered from the field, none can say 
 
A SPIRA TIONS A ND I NFL UENCES. 1 8 3 
 
 with any positiveness what shall be the har- 
 vest there. 
 
 The first garnering of a mother's, or a 
 teacher's, or a pastor's, influence, in the field 
 of a child's mind, sometimes seems to give 
 no return for the labor it has cost; and, after 
 it all, the field looks bare and hopeless enough. 
 The harvest is past and the summer is ended, 
 and that child is not saved; but then for the 
 aftermath. John Newton's mother died when 
 he was scarcely seven years old. She had 
 faithfully sowed the seed of truth in his 
 mind; but he grew up godless and vicious. 
 A profane infidel sailor, the servant of a slave- 
 dealer, and again a public felon, bound in irons 
 and flogged at the whipping-post, his man- 
 hood's harvest was a poor garnering for his 
 mother's sowing. But underneath the sur- 
 face of his heart's soil lay buried the memory 
 of that mother's hand upon his head in prayer 
 as he kneeled with her, in his boyhood. The 
 loving pressure of that hand was never wholly 
 lost to him. It was felt by him, at times, in 
 all his darkest days of sinning ; and, by God's 
 
1 84 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 grace, it gently drew him back to the place 
 of faith-filled prayer. From that root of im- 
 pressions there came the starting of new life 
 in all the field of his mind and heart; and the 
 aftermath of his mother's influence has filled 
 the world with song and story. And so, to 
 a lesser or a larger degree, with many another 
 wayward boy. 
 
 In a city mission-school in Hartford, Con- 
 necticut, nearly forty years ago, a kind-hearted 
 teacher toiled faithfully and endured patiently 
 with one boy in his class who seemed thor- 
 oughly and hopelessly bad. He visited that 
 boy in his wretched home, he invited him to 
 his own pleasant room, he clothed him, found 
 one place after another of employment for 
 him, spoke to him always in kindness, coun- 
 seling and warning him untiringly; but all to 
 no seeming purpose. The boy was still wild, 
 coarse, profane, reckless, ungrateful. At last 
 he ran away from his home, and shipped on 
 a Liverpool vessel from New York. The end 
 had come to his life in that mission-school ; 
 but what a harvest for all that sowing ! 
 
ASPIRA TIONS AND INFL UENCES. 1 8 5 
 
 Three years went by. Then from far up in 
 British India word came from that boy, say- 
 ing that he was a soldier in the English Army 
 under Sir Colin Campbell, battling against the 
 Sepoys. Already he had marched eight hun- 
 dred miles, and endured untold privations 
 and hardships. But there, in that far land, 
 shut in among the mountains, away from 
 home and Christian surroundings, sick in 
 body and sad in spirit, he had recalled the 
 lessons of his Hartford mission-school; and 
 now the aftermath of his discouraged teach- 
 er's influence showed itself in his words of 
 penitence and gratitude, and of trust in his 
 Redeemer's love. 
 
 The hope of the aftermath of influence may 
 well stay the fainting heart of parent and 
 teacher and preacher, when the first harvest 
 in a well-sown and well-tilled field is a dis- 
 appointment and a mockery. While there is 
 life below the surface, there is hope for a new 
 garnering above it. It is natural and proper 
 to expect the greatest good in the immediate 
 results of influence; but we afe encouraged 
 
1 86 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 also to believe that the secondary, or the ulti- 
 mate, results of good influence may be larger 
 and better than the primary results. If not 
 now, then by and by. If not in the first gar- 
 nering, then in the aftermath. 
 
 " Age is opportunity no less 
 Than youth itself, though in another dress ; 
 And as the evening twilight fades away, 
 The sky is filled with stars invisible by day." 
 
 There is a warning, as well as an encour- 
 agement, in this thought of the aftermath of 
 influence; for it is a truth as applicable to 
 evil seed as to good. This is peculiarly ap- 
 parent in the case of many a man of lovely 
 spirit and of admirable personal qualities who 
 embraces error and teaches it. His imme- 
 diate influence is largely on the side of right, 
 and the first harvest of his life teachings gives 
 much to rejoice over. But, after he has passed 
 away, up from the roots of error which he 
 planted, there springs a noxious growth which 
 results in a sad harvest of evil to the world. 
 His followers evidence the pernicious nature 
 of his beliefs, without the redeeming qualities 
 
A SPIRA TIONS AND 1NFL UENCES. 1 87 
 
 which gave them attractiveness as he held 
 them. Our peculiar personal faults of speech, 
 or manner, or conduct, seem only flaws — or 
 hardly that — to those who know us at our 
 best; but the aftermath of our influence, 
 through what we say, or what we do, or what 
 we are, in the wrong direction, may be such 
 as would make the angels weep. 
 
 Seed-sowing in the field of influence is 
 always for more than one harvest. There is 
 the sure aftermath, as well as the first garner- 
 ing. Whether of good or evil, there is life 
 • in the root even after all that was above the 
 surface has been cut away. What you do, 
 and, more than all, what you are, to-day, is 
 to have power over others, or in others, not 
 only to-day, but in the long-distant future. 
 "The teacher," says Confucius, "is a pattern 
 for ten thousand ages;" and every person is, 
 in one sense or another, a teacher. The chief 
 harvest of our influence may be to-day; and 
 again it may be ten thousand ages hence — 
 whatever may seem our failure or our suc- 
 cess to-day. 
 
1 88 ASPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES. 
 
 " Read we not the mighty thought 
 Once by ancient sages taught ? 
 
 Though it withered in the blight 
 
 Of the mediaeval night, 
 Now the harvest we behold ; 
 See ! it bears a thousand-fold. 
 
 " If God's wisdom has decreed 
 One may labor, yet the seed 
 Barely in this life shall grow, 
 Shall the sower cease to sow ? 
 The fairest truth may yet be born 
 On the resurrection morn."