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SERMONS OUT OF CHURCH 
 
SERMONS OUT OF 
 CHURCH 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN" 
 
 
 " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 
 
 tl 
 
 
 LONDON 
 
 DALDY, ISBISTER, & CO. 
 
 56, LUDGATE HILL 
 
 1875 
 
 [The Right of Translation *i reserved.} 
 
^v 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO. 
 
 CITY ROAD. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 SERMON PAGE 
 
 I. WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? ..... 3 
 
 II. OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES 43 
 
 III. HOW TO TRAIN . UP A PARENT IN THE WAY HE 
 
 SHOULD GO 87 
 
 IV. BENEVOLENCE — OR BENEFICENCE? . . . -139 
 V. MY BROTHER'S KEEPER 1 73 
 
 VI. GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS 215 
 

Sermon 3L 
 
 c* 
 
 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 B 
 
I. 
 
 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 
 
 T LATELY saw a drawing, not unknown to 
 archaeologists, which, though it might shock 
 some people as painfully profane, struck me 
 with just the contrary feeling, as being a solemn 
 and touching confirmation, from the outside, of 
 that internal truth which we call Revelation. It 
 was a copy of a street caricature, found, not 
 very long ago, on a newly discovered wall — I 
 think in Rome — where it had been hidden for 
 eighteen hundred years ; — evidently the work of 
 some young gamin of the ancient world, and 
 depicting a man, after the most primitive style 
 of Art, with a round O for his head, an oblong 
 O for his body, two lines for legs and arms, and 
 five rayed fans for hands and feet. This crea- 
 ture stood gazing in adoration upon a similar 
 
4 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 man, only with an ass's head instead of a human 
 one, who hung suspended upon a cross. Under- 
 neath was scrawled, in rude Greek letters, 
 " A lex aminos worships his God." 
 
 It set me thinking. " Alexaminos worships 
 his god." Not God, mind you, but his god ; 
 the divinity of his own making, with an ass's 
 head on. How many excellent and earnest- 
 minded people do much the same ! 
 
 To pull the ass's head off — to show how many 
 a ridiculous idol is esteemed divine ; how often 
 a so-called virtue is in reality a vice, or slowly 
 corrupting into one ; how the sublimest and 
 holiest truths may be travestied into actual 
 lies — this is the aim of my Sermons out of 
 Church. Out of Church : outside each and all of 
 those numerous and endlessly diversified creeds 
 preached in buildings made with hands ; but 
 not, I hope, outside of that universal Church — 
 God's consecrated Temple — built without hands, 
 " eternal in the heavens." 
 
 Is this iconoclasm ? I cannot think so. Is it 
 irreligious ? Surely not ; to those who believe 
 that the heart of all religion lies in the words I 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 5 
 
 have put on my title-page, " Thy will be done on 
 earth as it is in heaven." But to find out what 
 that will is, and — so far as the finite may com- 
 prehend the infinite — Him who declares it, this, 
 and this alone, is real Christianity. 
 
 Let me begin " at the very beginning," as 
 children say — children, in their holy ignorance, 
 often so much wiser and nearer heaven than we. 
 
 In first planning this first sermon, I entitled it 
 " The Sin of Self-sacrifice ; " because I have 
 noticed, as one of the sad and strange things 
 in life, what folly, what misery, what actual 
 wickedness, result from the exaggeration of this 
 particular virtue, esteemed the highest of all, the 
 very key-stone and crown of our faith. But 
 considering the point, and feeling that such 
 a title might startle weaker brethren, and give 
 an impression that I meant what I do not 
 mean, and that my Sermons out of Church 
 are also out of the pale of all Christianity, I 
 have abstained, and simply commence with the 
 open question — What is self-sacrifice ? 
 
 The most obvious answer is this. Self-sacrifice 
 means the sacrifice of one's self, one's personal 
 
6 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 ego, with its aims and desires, to something or 
 somebody else. Then, in this transaction, is the 
 most important element the self which is sacri- 
 ficed, or the object which it is sacrificed to ? In 
 other words, granted that self-sacrifice is a good 
 thing, which side is to reap the good ? Or is 
 there to be a third consideration, more im- 
 portant than either — its end and aim ? And 
 what is its end and aim ? 
 
 A moralist might answer, "Absolute truth, 
 absolute right." A Christian, knowing how 
 difficult it is to define either, might reply, 
 " God ; " which involves three necessities — the 
 comprehension of Him, the worship of Him, 
 and the duty and delight of obeying Him. 
 Briefly, God and His will, so far as we know 
 it, must be the only right end of self-sacri- 
 fice. 
 
 Then, what is its beginning ? — the passion 
 from which it takes its rise ? Usually, nay, 
 universally, that passion which is the heart of 
 the universe — love. The root of all true self- 
 sacrifice is some strong affection, which makes 
 the welfare of the beloved of more importance 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 7 
 
 to us than our own, or an equally strong devo- 
 tion to a principle, which is merely an abstract 
 form of the same emotion. Both these motives 
 are noble — and ignoble likewise, sometimes ; for 
 the latter is often alloyed by ambition, egotism, 
 obstinacy, love of power ; while the former is 
 seldom free from that recondite but very 
 common selfishness, the hope of having our 
 self-sacrifice duly appreciated. Very few of 
 the most devoted of our lovers and friends 
 would come up to the standard I once heard 
 given of true affection : " He might die for you, 
 but he would never let you know it." 
 
 Now most of your self-sacrificers take abun- 
 dant pains to let you know it. When they 
 offer themselves up, it is with a lurking hope 
 that not only the object of so much devotion, 
 but a select circle of sympathizing admirers, 
 may be present at their immolation. The heroic 
 self-control which "dies and makes no sign" 
 is a virtue of which very few are capable. 
 As I once heard commented by a small but 
 sage commentator on the poem of "Enoch 
 Arderj," "Yes, it was very good of Enoch 
 
8 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 not to tell his story until he died, but, mama, 
 what a pity he didn't die and say nothing at 
 all!" 
 
 There is another view of martyrdom which 
 deserves a word. It may be a very grand 
 thing, despite its pains, for the martyr, who 
 has made his choice, accepted his fate, and is 
 prepared to go up in a cloud of glory to heaven ; 
 not unconscious, perhaps, of the eyes that will 
 be following him thither. But what of those 
 who have permitted or exacted the sacrifice ? 
 And suppose it has been offered foolishly, need- 
 lessly ; perhaps even in some bitter outburst of 
 feeling not quite so holy as the act appears ? 
 Before we lay ourselves down before Jugger- 
 naut, is it not as well to see if he is a god, or 
 only an ugly idol ? And in preparing our 
 suttee, should we not pause to consider how far 
 we are really benefiting the affectionate friends 
 who come to assist thereat ? Possibly the role 
 of victim which we are so anxious to play 
 may affix upon some one else the corresponding 
 title of murderer. 
 
 He who causes his brother to err is himself a 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 9 
 
 sinner. Now do you see what I mean by the sin 
 of self-sacrifice ? 
 
 A sin to which I fear women are much more 
 prone than men. It is apparently a law of the 
 universe that the male animal should be always 
 more or less a selfish animal. No doubt there 
 is some reason in this, some good reason ; in- 
 deed we can almost trace that. A large ego is 
 oftentimes necessary to enable a man to hold 
 his own in the hard battle of life ; and the creed 
 of " self-preservation is the first law of nature," 
 which presents itself so forcibly to the mind of 
 the ordinary man, in all phases of society, from 
 the savage to the sybarite, may contribute 
 a good deal to the advantage of the species. 
 Be that as it may be, I am afraid it must 
 be owned that, with some noble exceptions, 
 men are, as a rule, ignobly and incurably 
 selfish. But it remains to be proved how far 
 they are so in themselves, or how far it is 
 the women's fault, who, by this exaggeration 
 of unselfishness, this sinful self-sacrifice, help 
 to make them what they are. 
 
 Despite all the fancies of lovers and poets, 
 
10 
 
 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 
 
 throughout life, women are the offerers, and 
 men the accepters, of an amount of devotion 
 which would ruin an angel. They are the 
 slaves who manufacture the tyrants. 
 
 Yet how sweet and charming it is to be a 
 slave — at first. To a loving-hearted woman for 
 love's sake, to a weak one because it saves 
 trouble, lightens responsibility, and flatters that 
 self-conscious vanity which, if we tear off its 
 saintly robes, underlies so much devotion, ama- 
 tory as well as religious, female devotion espe- 
 cially. 
 
 " He for God only — she for God in him." 
 
 So wrote Milton, and few men ever wrote a 
 more false or dangerous line. Why, — though it 
 may be less nattering to the man, less easy for 
 the woman, — why should not she as well as he 
 live " for God only " ? Why, instead of seeing 
 no medium between blind idolatry or childish 
 subserviency, and a frantic struggle after im- 
 possible " rights," should she not accept calmly 
 her plain duty, to be man's help-meet, and assist 
 him in doing his duty, before the world and be- 
 fore God ? 
 
WHA T IS SELF- S A CRIFICE ? 1 1 
 
 Instead, how many, knowingly or unknow- 
 ingly, do their very utmost not to amend but to 
 destroy the objects of their love ? For women 
 will love men, and all the philosophers in petti- 
 coats, or less graceful habiliments, who aim at 
 remodelling society, free from the old-fashioned 
 folly of wifehood and motherhood, will never 
 succeed in conquering this amiable weakness. 
 It is all very well to pretend that women are the 
 adored and men the adorers ; so they are, for 
 a year or two, and towards one or two women — 
 but at the beginning and end of life, and all 
 through it, save during the brief courtship-time, 
 it is the business of their womenkind — mothers, 
 sisters, wives, daughters — to worship them, to 
 serve them, to obey them. Every man in his 
 secret heart recognises this fact, and is com- 
 placently satisfied that it should remain a fact, 
 for ever. 
 
 Well, let it be so ! Perhaps the "Whole Duty 
 of Woman " is man ; but it is in order that she 
 may be the agent for making him into a real 
 man, fulfilling all the noble aims of manhood. 
 
 Gay, in his "Acis and Galatea/' has one fine 
 
12 
 
 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 
 
 line — finer, perhaps, than he meant it to be. 
 The nymph, changing her dead shepherd into 
 a fountain, says, 
 
 " Be thou immortal, since thou art not mine." 
 
 And any woman who ever truly loved a man 
 would desire to make him so — not " hers," 
 perhaps, but " immortal ; ' that is, what he 
 ought to be, in himself, and towards God and 
 man. If, instead, she thinks only of what he 
 is to her, and what she wishes to be to him, 
 her love will prove, despite all its passionate 
 or affectionate disguises, not his blessing, but 
 his life-long curse. 
 
 This, though she may have shown towards 
 him any amount of self-sacrifice and blind de- 
 votion. If women's devotedness to men in 
 any relation of life teaches the latter to be 
 selfish, lazy, exacting, imperious, the act is 
 not a merit but a sin, and causes their beloved 
 ones to sin. In the cant phrase, which while 
 I use I detest, they are " setting the creature 
 above the Creator," and will surely reap — and 
 deserve — their punishment. Not, as some theo- 
 
WHA T IS SELF- S A CRIFICE ? 1 3 
 
 logians put it, in the divine revenge of a 
 jealous God, angry that any poor mortal is 
 loved beyond Himself — but as the inevitable 
 result of that perfect law : " The soul that 
 sinneth it shall die." It must ; for in all sin 
 is the seed of death, and God Himself, unless 
 by changing His all-righteous essence, could 
 not make it otherwise. 
 
 Therefore, if a mother by overweening indul- 
 gence helps her son to become a thoughtless 
 scapegrace ; if a wife by cowardly subserviency 
 converts her husband into a selfish brute ; even 
 if a daughter — as in a late case of somewhat 
 notable literary biography — sets up a weak, 
 luxurious, unprincipled father as the idol of 
 her life, and expects everybody to bow down 
 and worship him ; — all these foolish women have 
 condoned sin, and called vice virtue ; have left 
 the truth and believed, or pretended to believe, 
 a lie. When their false god falls, or turns 
 into an avenging demon, then they come to 
 understand what means the sin of self-sacri- 
 fice. 
 
 Sinful, in one sense, because it is often only 
 
1 4 WHA T IS SELF- SA CRIFICE ? 
 
 a disguised form of a rather ugly quality — self- 
 will. 
 
 I heard the other day enthusiastic praises of 
 a sister in one of those Protestant communities 
 who are trying — and not unwisely — to emulate 
 the Roman Catholic sisters of mercy, by ab- 
 sorbing into useful work the many waifs and 
 strays of useless spinsterhood, eating their 
 hearts out in lonely, aimless idleness in the 
 midst of a struggling and suffering world. 
 But this woman was not lonely. She had a 
 father, whom she paid a nurse to take care 
 of; married sisters, who would have been 
 thankful for her occasional help in their busy, 
 anxious homes ; loving friends, to whom her 
 influence and aid might often have been in- 
 valuable. Yet she left them, one and all, and 
 went to spend her strength — not so very 
 great — upon strangers. She did expend it ; for 
 she died, and was almost canonised by some 
 people; but some others, with a simpler 
 standard of holiness, might question whether 
 this devoted self-sacrifice should not be called 
 by another name — self-will. She did the thing 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 15 
 
 she wished to do, rather than what seemed 
 laid before her to do ; and, though it is always 
 difficult to judge such cases from the outside 
 without being unjust to somebody, I think it 
 is an open question whether she did right or 
 wrong. 
 
 The same doubt arises when one hears of 
 soldiers, volunteering — not sent, but volunteer- 
 ing — on dangerous expeditions, leaving young 
 wives or helpless children to endure at home the 
 agony of suspense over a risk which was not 
 demanded by duty; — of missionaries, quitting 
 the unobtrusive, useful work of a parish priest 
 in trying to win poor Hodge from his drink, 
 or Black Jem from his poaching, for the more 
 exciting duty of converting a handful of savages, 
 at a cost of about three hundred pounds per 
 head, and at last making them not so very 
 much better Christians than either Hodge or 
 Jem, if these only had an equal chance of 
 spiritual instruction. 
 
 Lastly, I own that I have no ardent admira- 
 tion for those religious devotees of any sort — 
 High Church, Low Church, or no church at all — 
 
1 6 WHA T IS SELF-SA CRIFICE ? 
 
 who, obeying an often imaginary call, " Come 
 out from among them, and be ye separate/' 
 think that it is "the will of the Lord" they 
 should break the hearts of parents, alienate 
 fond friends, renounce the plain duties of daily 
 life — and all for what ? To " save their soul," 
 as they term it ! As if the saving of their own 
 petty individual soul — whatever that phrase 
 may mean — was a good worth the cost of so 
 much actual evil, and to so many other souls ! 
 
 Understand me. I do not deny that there is 
 such a thing as conversion — nay, sudden con- 
 version ; that even in this noisy nineteenth 
 century, as once on the silent shores of Galilee, 
 a man may hear the voice, " Follow Me," and, 
 leaving all, may follow Him, to wearing life- 
 long work in East-end parishes, or in scarcely 
 less barbarous foreign lands. But let him be 
 quite sure first who it is that calleth him, and 
 let him take care that the sacrifice offered is 
 really to God, and not to his own restless, 
 excitable, unsatisfied imagination ; that, in 
 short, it is not a sacrifice to self, rather than 
 a self-sacrifice. 
 
WHA T IS SELF-SA CRIF1CE ? 1 7 
 
 For such, alas ! are a great many of the 
 immolations I am dealing with; especially 
 among women. Women, who are so strong 
 in their capabilities of loving, are above all 
 liable to that guiltiness in the form of loving, 
 which does incalculable harm to its object. 
 That is a short-sighted affection, indeed, which 
 causes us to help another to do wrong instead 
 of right. When our unselfishness makes others 
 selfish ; — when we submit to their injustice, 
 condone their offences, call their errors follies, 
 and their follies pretty " lovablenesses ;" — then 
 we love them in a mean, unworthy way; we 
 are not devotees, but idolaters. 
 
 There are women — sisters and wives — tied 
 to men so unworthy of the bond, that their 
 only safe course is, not obedience, but a little 
 righteous rebellion. There are men, beginning 
 life as very good men, who are seen slowly 
 growing into the bores, the torments, the 
 laughing-stocks of their more clear-sighted 
 friends; eaten up with vanity, intolerable 
 through self-assertion, just because their 
 womenkind love them — not rationally, but ir- 
 
1 8 WHA T IS SELF-SA CRIFICE ? 
 
 rationally; put them on a pedestal and worship 
 them, expecting everybody else to do the same. 
 But everybody does not, and so this self- 
 devotion only makes its object ridiculous, if 
 not contemptible, except to the poor enthusiasts, 
 who go on adoring him still, half from habit, 
 half from fear. 
 
 For fear is the root of many a so-called self- 
 sacrifice. Weak natures find it so much easier 
 to submit to a wrong than to fight against it. 
 Less trouble also. Many lazy women prefer 
 getting their own way in an underhand, round- 
 about fashion, by humouring the weaknesses 
 of the men they belong to, instead of honourably 
 and openly resisting them, when resistance be- 
 comes necessary. That is, using the right — the 
 only honest " right" a woman has, of asserting 
 her independent existence before God and men, 
 as a responsible human being, who will neither 
 be forced to do wrong herself, nor see another 
 do wrong, if she can help it. 
 
 Yet how many women not only err them- 
 selves, but aid and abet error, knowing it to be 
 such, under the compulsion of that weak fear 
 
WHA T IS SELF- SA ORIFICE ? 1 9 
 
 of man, which is called or miscalled " conjugal 
 obedience." 
 
 Here-^— I can almost see my readers shudder 
 — " What ! not obey one's husband ? What ! 
 counsel rebellion in our wives ?" 
 
 Stop a moment. I never said so. On the 
 contrary, I say distinctly, Wives, obey your 
 husbands, as children your parents — " in the 
 Lord." But only "in the Lord." Yield as 
 much as possible in ordinary things ; conquer 
 your tempers, modify your tastes ; give up every- 
 thing, in short, that is not a compromise of 
 principle. When it comes to that, resist ! 
 Whatever they may be to you, and how great 
 soever your love for them, resist them. Never 
 allow either father, husband, brother, son, to 
 stand between you and the clear law of right 
 and wrong in your own soul, which the God 
 who made you has put there. If you do, you 
 fall into that sin of which I speak, and will as- 
 suredly, soon or late, earn its bitter wages. 
 
 For how sad it is to see wives, whose husbands 
 are inclined to extravagance, deny themselves 
 not only lawful luxuries, but needful comforts, 
 
2 o WHA T IS SELF-S A CRIFICE ? 
 
 in order to make up silently for the wilful waste 
 against which they had not the courage to pro- 
 test; when, perhaps, a few words, tender as 
 true, would have brought the man to his right 
 senses, and prevented his friends from calling 
 him, as of course they do (behind his back), a 
 selfish, pleasure-loving brute. And why should 
 other men, crotchety, worrying, or bad-tempered, 
 though not really bad fellows at heart, slowly 
 become the torment of a whole household, be- 
 cause the mistress considers it her bounden 
 duty to force everybody into yielding to what 
 she euphuistically terms "papa's little ways"? 
 Can she not see that she is thereby destroying 
 all domestic comfort, and teaching both servants 
 and children to avoid, to fear, nay, actually to 
 dislike, one whom they ought to honour and love ? 
 A grain of moral courage on her part, an honest 
 appeal to that generosity which lies hid in most 
 men's hearts, would have helped the wife to 
 help her husband, and, by teaching him to 
 restrain himself, make him a far better and 
 happier man than if he had been tamely yielded 
 to, and so converted into a sort of family ogre, 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 21 
 
 which, little as they suspect it, a good many men 
 really are in private life. 
 
 And I think the ogre's wife in Hop-o'-my- 
 Thumb is a very good illustration of your 
 meek, self-sacrificing, self-devoted wives — who 
 after all sometimes end in assisting themselves, 
 as she did, to become happy widows. Mean- 
 time, they "do their duty" most obediently; 
 will even help in the fattening of children for 
 their lord's provender — other people's children, 
 certainly. But there are women who consider 
 it a point of duty to immolate their own. 
 
 How many stories one could record in which 
 a wife, fancying herself a pattern of conjugal 
 obedience, has sacrificed her children just as 
 much as Chaucer's "Griseldis" — detestable 
 heroine ! — sacrificed hers ; allowing her whole 
 family to be worried, bullied, and otherwise evil- 
 entreated by him whom the law presumes to be 
 its guardian and head. 
 
 A misery — which ends not even there. For 
 in such households brothers soon learn to treat 
 sisters as papa treats mamma, with rough words, 
 ceaseless grumblings, selfish exactingnesses. 
 
22 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 Daughters, brought up to hush their voices 
 or run away whenever the father's step is heard 
 — papa, who generally comes home cross, and 
 requires to be coaxed and "soothed "by mamma 
 whenever she wants anything — these girls, ac- 
 customed to be considered inferior animals, who 
 must get their own way by stratagem, grow up 
 into those designing young ladies, who owe 
 their power over men to first flattering and then 
 deceiving them. 
 
 But what a future for the new generation ! 
 How many unhappy girls have paid dearly for 
 the early upbringing of their young husbands, 
 who, the first glamour of love passed, treat their 
 wives as they were allowed to treat their sisters, 
 and as they saw their fathers treat their mothers, 
 carelessly, disrespectfully, with a total want of 
 that considerate tenderness which is worth all 
 the passionate love in the world. This — though 
 they may pass muster outside as excellent 
 husbands, never doing anything really bad, and 
 possessing many good and attractive qualities, 
 yet contriving somehow quietly to break the 
 poor womanly heart, or harden it into that 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 23 
 
 passive acceptance of pain, which is more fatal 
 to married happiness than even temporary- 
 estrangement. Anger itself is a safer thing than 
 stolid, hopeless indifference. 
 
 The best husbands I ever met came out of a 
 family where the mother, a most heroic and self- 
 denying woman, laid down the absolute law, 
 " Girls first." Not in any authority ; but first 
 to be thought of, as to protection and tender- 
 ness. Consequently, the chivalrous care which 
 these lads were taught to show to their own 
 sisters naturally extended itself to all women. 
 They grew up true gentlemen — gentle men — 
 generous, unexacting, courteous of speech and 
 kind of heart. In them was the protecting 
 strength of manhood, which scorns to use its 
 strength except for protection ; the proud 
 honesty of manhood, which infinitely prefers 
 being lovingly and openly resisted, to being 
 " twisted round one's finger," as mean men are 
 twisted, and mean women will always be found 
 ready to do it; but which, I think, all honest 
 men and brave women would not merely dislike, 
 but utterly despise. 
 
24 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 
 
 It seems, hitherto, as if of this sin of self- 
 sacrifice women were oftenest guilty. Not 
 always. 
 
 I have spoken of tyranny; there is nothing so 
 absolute as the tyranny of weakness. Some- 
 times a really good man will suffer himself to 
 be so victimized by a nervous, silly, selfish wife, 
 that he dare not call his soul his own. By a 
 thousand underhand ways, she succeeds in 
 alienating him from his own family — breaking 
 his natural ties, hindering his most sacred duties ; 
 putting a stop to his honest work in the world — 
 his rightful influence therein, and all the plea- 
 sures that belong thereto. And these being, to 
 a man, so much wider than any woman's, the 
 loss is the greater, the pain the sharper. 
 
 One can imagine a large-minded, honourably 
 ambitious man actually writhing under the 
 sacrifices forced from him by a wife, feeble in 
 every way — who destroys not merely his happi- 
 ness, but his good reputation. Since, when it is 
 seen that her merest whims are held by him of 
 paramount importance — that her silly, selfish 
 Yes or No is to decide every action of his life, do 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 25 
 
 not his friends laugh at him behind his back, 
 even though before his face they may keep up 
 a decorous gravity ? " Poor fellow ! with such a 
 goose for his wife ! " Yet the pity is akin to 
 contempt; and something more than contempt 
 is felt — especially by his mother, sisters, or 
 critical female friends — towards that wife, who 
 exacts from him the renunciation of all his 
 duties, except those towards herself; in plain 
 English, " makes a fool of him," because in his 
 devotion he has offered everything to her, and 
 she has meanly accepted the sacrifice. 
 
 He ought never to have made it. He ought 
 to have given her care, tenderness, affection — 
 all that man should give to woman, and strength 
 to weakness ; but there it should have ended. 
 No wife has a right to claim the husband's 
 whole life, its honourable toil, its lawful enjoy- 
 ments. If she cannot share, she should learn 
 at least not to stand in the way of either. And 
 the man who submits to be so tyrannized over — 
 as weak women in their small way can tyran- 
 nize, with that " continual dropping that weareth 
 away the • stone" — deserves all he gets ; his 
 
2 6 WHA T IS SELF-S A CRIFICE ? 
 
 friends' covert smiles, his enemies' unconcealed 
 sneer. 
 
 We talk a great deal about the error of 
 " spoiling " our children ; may we not "spoil" our 
 wives, our husbands, not to speak of other less im- 
 portant ties, quite as much, and as sinfully ? For 
 life is a long course of mutual education, which 
 ends but with the grave. If we are wise enough 
 to recognise this, and act upon it, nor be afraid 
 of that accidental attrition which only rubs off 
 inevitable angles — if, in short, our aim in all the 
 dear bonds of existence is not so much to please 
 either ourselves or one another, but to do right — 
 which means pleasing God — then all is well. But 
 if we shirk the right, and accept the agreeable — 
 if we expect life to be all holidays and no school, 
 then we shall soon begin to find out its utter 
 weariness and worthlessness, to blame the faith- 
 less, ungrateful world — as if good done with the 
 expectation of gratitude were ever worth any- 
 thing ! And we shall come to the end of it all 
 with a dreary sense of having renounced every- 
 thing and gained nothing, except, perhaps, the 
 poor consolation of considering ourselves martyrs. 
 
 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE 7 27 
 
 And why ? Because we mistook the boundary 
 where virtue passes into vice — self-devotion 
 into blind and foolish, nay, sinful self-sac- 
 rifice. 
 
 There is a point beyond which we have no 
 right to ignore our own individuality — that is, 
 supposing we have any. Many people have 
 none. They get the credit of being extremely 
 self-denying, because they really have no par- 
 ticular self to deny. Their feeble nature is only 
 capable of imitating others ; and their stagnant 
 placidity is no absolute virtue, but the mere 
 negation of a vice. Even as there are many 
 most " respectable ** people, whom nothing 
 keeps from being villains, except one fortunate 
 fact — that they are such arrant cowards. 
 
 But to those born with decided tastes, feel- 
 ings, possibly talents, the exercise of all these 
 is an actual necessity. And lawfully so. If 
 God has given us our little light, what right 
 have we to hide it under a bushel, because some 
 affectionate, purblind friend dislikes the glare of 
 it, or fears it will set the house on fire ? No ; let 
 us put it in its proper place, a safe candlestick, 
 
2 8 WHA T IS SELFS A ORIFICE ? 
 
 if it be a light, but let nobody persuade or force 
 us to put it out. 
 
 What bitter sacrifices one member of a family- 
 gifted with a strong proclivity, perhaps even a 
 genius, for art, music, or literature, sometimes has 
 to make to the rest, who cannot understand it ! 
 
 Now, a one-sided enthusiast — a Bernard Pal- 
 lissy for instance — makes a very disagreeable 
 husband and a still worse father of a family ; and 
 a modern Corinne, with her hair down her back, 
 sitting playing the harp all da,y long, instead of 
 going into her kitchen, ordering her dinner, 
 and looking after her servants, would be a 
 most aggravating wife for any man to marry. 
 But, on the other hand, a gentleman with no 
 ear for music, married to a wife who is a born 
 musician, may make a very great victim of that 
 poor lady. And the pretty commonplace girl, 
 whom a clever man of poetical nature has 
 idealized into an angel in the house, some- 
 times succeeds in slowly but completely extin- 
 guishing in him that higher life of heart and 
 intellect — the spiritual life, compared to which 
 the worldly life is mere dust and ashes, and 
 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 29 
 
 even the domestic life, sweet as it is, a body 
 without a soul. 
 
 We ought always to be chary in allowing our- 
 selves to be forced into sacrifices which do not 
 benefit, but merely gratify the persons exacting 
 them. First, because a person who can be grati- 
 fied by a self-sacrifice is — rather a mean person ; 
 secondly, because to renounce any innocent taste 
 or pursuit is not merely foolish, but wrong. All 
 our talents were given us to use ; not to bury in 
 a napkin. If we do so bury them, to please even 
 the dearest friend on earth, we are guilty of not 
 merely cowardice, but infidelity to our trust ; and 
 depend upon it, the sacrifice will do no good to 
 that other person and great harm to ourselves. 
 To say nothing of the sneering comments of 
 outsiders, and the just condemnation of wiser 
 folk, to which we expose — not ourselves, we 
 are exalted into martyrs — but those we love, if 
 we love them so foolishly as to suffer them to 
 victimize us unnecessarily. 
 
 And very sad to see is the extent to which 
 some people are victimized in domestic life ; from 
 bad health — bad temper, acting and reacting 
 
3 o WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 
 
 upon each other, and both equally blamable 
 for miserable as the sufferers are, the cause of 
 their sufferings is often nobody but themselves. 
 To maintain a sound mind in a sound body, so as 
 to be a help instead of a burthen, not to say a 
 nuisance, to our family and friends, requires an 
 amount of self-control of which not everybody is 
 capable. Some people consider it " silly " to 
 be careful of health, and others find it so "in- 
 teresting" to be ill — that the amount of pain, 
 worry, and anxiety which is inflicted by those 
 who allow themselves to fall into absolutely 
 preventible illness is very great. Equally 
 great is the self-sacrifice entailed upon kindly 
 people, who cannot stand by and see others 
 suffer, although deservedly, without coming to 
 the rescue with every help they can bring. 
 
 How often, too, do we see in a family, not 
 otherwise unamiable, one especial " root of bit- 
 terness," a thoroughly ill-conditioned person, 
 of whom all the rest stand in dread, to whom 
 they give up everything, and for whom they 
 will do anything, just for the sake of peace. 
 Long habit has perhaps half accustomed them 
 
WHA T IS SELF-SA CRIFICE ? 3 1 
 
 to the torment; they have learned to walk 
 pretty steadily under it, like a man with a 
 nail in his shoe — but what a torment it is ! A 
 person who takes everything amiss, whose mood 
 you never can be sure of for a single hour, whom 
 you are obliged to propitiate, as the savages 
 their idols ; one whom you must be on your 
 guard with, and make perpetual apologies for, 
 lest the world outside should surmise anything 
 wrong — with whom you never can find any rest, 
 and though he or she may be your nearest and 
 dearest, ostensibly, you are painfully conscious 
 that the only relief is to get away from him, or to 
 get him away. 
 
 I have grave doubts whether in a case of this 
 kind — and we all know many such, though we 
 are too polite to say so — it is not the duty of a 
 conscientious head of a family, or its members, 
 to take very strong measures. There are some 
 people so intolerable to live with that nobody 
 should be allowed to live with them. Every 
 effort should be made by the family which un- 
 happily owns them, to free itself from them, in 
 any lawful way, and at any cost of money or 
 
3 2 WHA T IS SELF- S A CRIFICE ? 
 
 inconvenience. Some who are an absolute tor- 
 ture to their own relations, do well enough with 
 strangers ; the self-restraint they then are ob- 
 liged to exercise is a wholesome discipline for 
 them, and the people they afflict, being farther 
 off, are not so deeply afflicted as their own kith 
 and kin. 
 
 Would it not be worth while, if, instead of 
 lauding to the skies the self-sacrifice of a family 
 in thus victimizing itself, we were to institute 
 an Asylum for Family Nuisances, to which could, 
 be removed the cross-grained brother or sister, 
 the cantankerous aunt, the " difficult " relative 
 of any sort, whom, if not a relative, the other 
 members of the household would fly from as 
 from something harmful and hateful? Instead, 
 they go on enduring and enduring, till the harm 
 becomes irremediable. Which is the worst, to 
 put a detestable thing or person so far from you 
 that you cease to feel anything towards him save 
 a mild indifference ? or to suffer yourself and 
 others to be so tormented by him, that the 
 sanctimonious " if it would please God to 
 take him " — which is only an elegant form 
 
 ? 
 
WHA T IS SELF- S A CRIFICE ? 3 3 
 
 of murder — ceases to appear wrong, only 
 natural ? 
 
 Yet this is what your vaunted self-sacrifice 
 leads to, when perpetrated for the sake of un- 
 worthy people. 
 
 But there are people, amiable, interesting, 
 affectionate (externally), to whom one some- 
 times sees whole families sacrificing themselves, 
 without the slightest sense of the harm they 
 are doing, — I mean the " ne'er-do-weels." Not 
 the people who do actual evil, but the people 
 who never do good. Of such is the weak, 
 amiable, impecunious brother who always 
 comes back and back, to drain the last half- 
 penny from his hard-working sisters. Perhaps 
 he has no vices whatever, is of a pleasant 
 and not un affection ate nature, only somehow 
 he contrives to let everything slip through 
 his fingers — money, time, opportunity. And as 
 he in reality thinks of nobody but himself, of 
 course he marries early and rashly, and brings 
 his wife and family to be kept by his sisters, 
 ' who go on impoverishing themselves year by 
 year, doing not only their duty — all sisters must 
 
 D 
 
34 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 
 
 do that— but a great deal more than their duty ; 
 submitting to endless exactions, allowing not 
 only the feeble, who are a natural burden, but 
 the strong, the self-indulgent, the extravagant, 
 to live upon them, and drain the life-blood out 
 of them, till death comes in mercy to end the 
 never-ceasing sacrifice. A sacrifice which has 
 done no good to anybody ; for it has left the 
 selfish selfish still, and the extravagant as reck- 
 less as ever ; perhaps worse than ever, from the 
 long habit of receiving supplies from others, 
 instead of earning their luxuries, if they must 
 have them, for themselves. The life-long devo- 
 tion of a whole family to one unworthy mem- 
 ber has been no more than pouring water into a 
 sieve ; it has never benefited him, and it has 
 ruined the rest. 
 
 Another, though rarer case, and less patent to 
 the world, we sometimes see, in which a number 
 of unmarried sisters hang round a kind brother, 
 as their natural guardian ; which he is, within 
 certain limits. But these limits the amiable, 
 helpless women do not see. He enters the 
 flower of his age, he passes it, yet still he cannot 
 
 
WHA T IS SELF- S A CRIFICE ? 3 5 
 
 marry — could not possibly do it, without turning 
 his sisters out of doors. He shrinks from that ; 
 shrinks, too, from offering such an encumbered 
 hand and heart to any girl. And besides, it is 
 not every girl who in marrying likes to marry 
 a. whole family. So time slips on ; the more 
 high-minded and generous the man is, the more 
 complete is his sacrifice. Perhaps he gets 
 habituated to it, and almost content in it — but 
 it is none the less a sacrifice. He may be a 
 good and not unhappy old bachelor, but he 
 would have been much better and happier 
 married, and in a home of his very own. His 
 sisters too, if, though poor, they had ceased to 
 be helpless, had gone out into the world and 
 earned their own living, or if rich, they had 
 made for themselves an independent household, 
 how much higher and more perfect lives they 
 might have led ! 
 
 Of course, there are exceptions to everything, 
 and sometimes a combination of sad destinies, 
 mutual disappointments, strong fraternal attach- 
 ment, and great natural affinity make these 
 households of unmarried brothers and sisters 
 
3 6 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 
 
 very peaceful and honourable substitutes for the 
 better and completer domestic life. One has 
 seen more than one such ; which is more than a 
 resting-place — a visible haven of refuge : not 
 only to its inhabitants, but to all around. Yet 
 there are others, upon which standers-by look 
 with pity not unmixed with indignation. And 
 the nobler, the more silent the sacrifice, the 
 greater is the sadness of it — even though it 
 cannot quite come under the name of sin. 
 
 Self-devotion — God forbid I should ever say a 
 word in condemnation of that ! It is the noblest 
 thing in all this world, and the rarest — No, not 
 rare : few family histories are without some heroic 
 or pathetic instance thereof, continued through- 
 out whole lives, with unflinching fortitude. And 
 could death open the locked records of many a 
 heart, how often would some secret be found 
 there that would furnish a key to all the history 
 of the finished life — some strong, one love — some 
 eternal faithfulness,— which all the chances and 
 changes of existence could never shake, which 
 was the impulse of every thought, the motive 
 of every action, the compelling force of every line 
 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 37 
 
 of conduct. A devotion, not a passion, inas- 
 much as it was able to set itself entirely aside — 
 absorb itself in the well-being of the other, 
 whose good it sought, without reckoning any 
 personal cost, through weal and woe, pleasure and 
 pain, requital or non-requital. This is a sight — 
 not to blame or weep over, but to rejoice in : for 
 it is not blind self-sacrifice ; it is open-eyed self- 
 devotion — blessed on both sides, both to the 
 giver and receiver. It has sharp agonies some- 
 times — what deep emotion is without them ? 
 but out of all come peace and content. It is 
 pleasing in God's sight as lovely in man's, 
 because there is no sin in it, no selfishness on 
 either side ; and in its very sadness— it must of 
 necessity be often sad — there is a sacredness 
 beyond all mortal joy. 
 
 Of all forms of self-devotion, the one which, 
 even when it amounts to absolute self-sacrifice, 
 we cannot but regard with very tender and lenient 
 eyes, is the devotion of the young to the old, 
 of children to parents. No doubt, there is a 
 boundary beyond which even this ought not to 
 be permitted ; but the remedy lies on the elder 
 
3 8 WHA T IS SELF-SA CRIFICE ? 
 
 side. There are such things as unworthy, selfish, 
 exacting parents, to whom duty must be done, 
 simply for the sake of parenthood, without 
 regarding their personality. " Honour thy father 
 and thy mother" is the absolute command, 
 bounded by no proviso as to whether the 
 parents are good or bad. Of course no one can 
 literally " honour " that which is bad — still one 
 can respect the abstract bond, in having patience 
 with the individual. 
 
 But I think every high or honourable instinct 
 in human nature will feel that there is hardly 
 a limit to be set to the devotion of a child to a 
 good parent — righteous devotion, repaying to 
 failing life all that its own young life once 
 received, of care and comfort and blessing. 
 And no good, or even moderately good parent 
 is ever likely to allow this devotion to pass into 
 self-sacrifice. Surely, as long as conscious- 
 ness and reason lasted, all true fathers and 
 mothers would prevent, in all possible ways, the 
 complete absorption of the younger life into 
 theirs; nor allow their poor expiring flame 
 to be kept alight a few years, a few months, 
 
WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE? 39 
 
 by the vital breath of a far more valuable 
 existence. 
 
 But if such a case does happen — the child alone, 
 and no outsider, has a right to decide upon the 
 due extent of the sacrifice, and how far it is ne- 
 cessary or beneficial, even to the aged sufferers 
 themselves. There may be a point beyond which 
 the most affectionate child has no right to go — 
 but must pause and judge whether a duty, which 
 inevitably overrides all other duties, has not 
 in it something amiss ; even as a love which de- 
 stroys all other loves, cannot fail to deteriorate 
 the whole being. 
 
 And here, reasoning in a circle, we come round 
 to the point from whence we started — " He that 
 loveth father or mother " — or any other — " more 
 than Me" — that is, he who allows his love for 
 them to make them err against Me — "is not 
 worthy of Me." Therefore all self-sacrifice, made] 
 solely for the love of man, or for the gratification 
 of some merely human ambition, is not a 
 righteous but a sinful thing — and, as sin, will 
 assuredly find its punishment. 
 
 This furnishes, apparently, a solution to 
 
40 WHAT IS SELF-SACRIFICE ? 
 
 the great mystery, why so many noble self- 
 sacrifices are so futile, so aimless, so positively 
 injurious ? "I am the Lord thy God ; thou shalt 
 have none other Gods but me." If we make to 
 ourselves idols, of any sort — that is, if we allow 
 love to conquer right, and set aside what we 
 ought to do in favour of what we like to do, we 
 suffer accordingly — and God Himself, who is 
 justice as well as mercy, cannot save us from 
 suffering. And this is what I meant when I first 
 called this sermon the Sin of Self-sacrifice. 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES, 
 
II. 
 
 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 ^\OES it ever occur to those of us who are no 
 longer young — who begin to feel this won- 
 derful machine a little the worse for wear, while 
 its spiritual inmate is as fresh and strong as 
 ever, how low apparently is the standard of 
 health in this present generation ? How seldom 
 among our friends and acquaintances can we 
 point out a thoroughly healthy person ? I will 
 not even say a robust person, but one who has 
 sufficient vitality of body to keep up the daily 
 requirements of his mental work, or any sort of 
 work, without complaining, without having con- 
 tinually to resort to extraneous helps, medical 
 or hygienic, wherewith to bolster up his failing 
 powers, and make him capable of his necessary 
 duties. 
 
44 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 We do not need to reach the first half-century 
 of life in order to see our compeers, and alas ! 
 too often others much younger in the race, drop 
 out of it one by one — sink into miserable valetu- 
 dinarians, or, growing old before their time, slip 
 from the active enjoyment of life into the mere 
 endurance of it. How many among us who only 
 yesterday, as it were, seemed ready for an eter- 
 nity of youth and labour — to whom threescore 
 years and ten appeared all too short for what 
 they had to do, now consciously or unconsciously 
 echo the pathetic words of one whose name I 
 this day write with tears, for Charles Kingsley 
 only yesterday a fell on sleep : " — 
 
 " Men must work, and women must weep, 
 And the sooner it's over the sooner to sleep." 
 
 Nay, all have not even strength to work, and 
 some scarcely enough strength to weep, but 
 drop into helpless silence and a weary looking 
 forward to that death-slumber which is to them 
 the only possible rest. I have heard people say 
 they do not even want to " go to heaven ; " they 
 only want to go to sleep. They are " so tired." 
 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 45 
 
 Why so ? Why, in an age supposed to be 
 thus civilised — over-civilised indeed ; which takes 
 such exceeding care of itself, mentally and phy- 
 sically ; writes cartloads of medical books and 
 makes speeches by the hour on sanitary sub- 
 jects, — is r j the old-fashioned health of our^ fore- 
 fathers a thing almost unknown ? True, we are 
 said to live longer than they did, but what sort 
 of life is it ? Do we enjoy the full vigour of a 
 sound mind in a sound body, to be used both for 
 the service of God and man ; good at work, 
 good at play; able to make the very most of 
 every hour ? Are we wholesome trees bearing 
 fruit to the last, and still keeping " strong and 
 well-liking " ? Or do we, immediately after our 
 first youth, often before it is ended, begin to fade 
 and fail, to grumble at our work, to weary of 
 our pleasures, to be pestered ourselves, and, 
 worse, to pester all our friends, with our " often 
 infirmities"? Not actual sicknesses, but in- 
 firmities ; small sufferings of all sorts, and 
 a general sense of incapacity for the duties of 
 life, which entirely takes away its happy normal 
 condition — not to think about one's self at all. 
 
4 6 
 
 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 When a man makes a habit of dwelling upon 
 his sins, depend upon it he has a good many sins 
 to dwell on ; and he who persists in " investi- 
 gating his own inside " will very soon fall, if he 
 has not already fallen, into a thoroughly dis- 
 eased state. Even as truly good people are 
 good without knowing it, so really healthy 
 people never notice their health. The perfect 
 life is the child's life of absolute unconscious- 
 ness. 
 
 But this is a condition so rare nowadays, 
 whatever it was in days past, that the question 
 of our often infirmities, to borrow an apostolic 
 phrase, deserves a sermon quite as much as 
 many topics which are discussed in pulpits, 
 where it is mostly the fashion to attend to the 
 soul first and the body afterwards. 
 
 Not very long ago I heard a clergyman seri- 
 ously proclaim that " the Gospel " must first be 
 given to the starving, sinning, suffering deni- 
 zens of London courts and alleys — the Gospel 
 first, and food, clothes, soap and water, and 
 decent dwellings afterwards. It is one of the 
 trying things of going to church that whatever a 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 47 
 
 man says one must hear him ; one cannot stand 
 up and contradict him ; else I should like to 
 have suggested to this well-meaning but narrow- 
 visioned preacher, how much a man's moral 
 nature depends upon his surroundings. Diogenes 
 might not have been a cynic if he had not lived 
 in a tub ; and I doubt if the noblest man alive, 
 if compelled to inhabit a pigsty, would long 
 remain much better than a swine. 
 
 Therefore it behoves us to take heed that the 
 corporeal habitation into which our spirit is put 
 — for this life at least — is dealt with as kindly as 
 circumstances allow, carefully cherished, swept 
 and garnished, and made the most commodious 
 residence possible, so as to allow free play to 
 its immortal inhabitant. 
 
 It is true — too true, alas ! — that in many in- 
 stances this desirable end is neutralised by here- 
 ditary weaknesses — the sins of the fathers in- 
 evitably visited upon the children ; and by our 
 own early faults ignorantly committed, and the 
 unalterable circumstances in which our lot is 
 placed. We cannot care for ourselves with- 
 out sacrificing more than ought to be sacrificed 
 
48 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 by any hnman being to his own individuality. 
 But there is a medium course always possible ; 
 and sore let and hindered as we may often be, 
 I think some of us very often create our own 
 hindrances and add weight to our natural bur- 
 dens by the want of a certain respect for the 
 body, as a faithful servant, out of whom we must 
 get a good deal of work before we have done 
 with it. 
 
 We generally begin by working it a great 
 deal too hard. We rejoice in our youth ; we 
 exult in our strength ; we use both recklessly, 
 boastfully, as if they were wholly our own to 
 do as we liked with, and could never possibly 
 wear out. So, in a thousand careless ways, we 
 squander vitality, never thinking that we have 
 only a certain quantity given us to last till 
 death, and that for every atom of wasted health, 
 heedlessly wasted — nature, that is God, will 
 assuredly one day bring us to judgment. 
 
 Still, we are not wholly to blame. I believe 
 many feeble men or delicate women of to-day 
 owe the helplessness of their lives to the igno- 
 rance of sanitary laws of the parents of forty 
 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 49 
 
 or fifty years ago. Even as fifty years hence 
 our children may have to reproach us for that 
 system of over-feeding, and especially over- 
 drinking, which many doctors now advocate 
 for the young generation. I doubt if even the 
 calomel powders, jalap and gin, brimstone and 
 treacle, of our tormented childhood, were worse 
 than the meat three times a day, the brandy 
 and the daily glass of wine, poured into innocent 
 little stomachs, which naturally would keep to 
 the infant's food of bread and milk, and almost 
 nothing besides. Certainly, not stimulants. 
 
 This is neither a medical treatise nor a tee- 
 total essay, yet, as he is a coward who does not 
 openly advance his colours, I do not hesitate 
 to say that I believe half the bodily and 
 spiritual ailments of this world spring from 
 that much misinterpreted and not by any 
 means inspired sentence of St. Paul, " Drink 
 no longer water, but take a little wine for thy 
 stomach's sake and thy often infirmities." How 
 often do we hear it quoted. But nobody con- 
 siders that the advice was given because of the 
 "often infirmities," the origin of which we, of 
 
 E 
 
50 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 course, do not know. That which is most 
 valuable as a medicine, is poison when taken 
 as a food. To accustom a child, or a youth, to 
 strong drinks, is to institute a craving after 
 them — a necessity for them — almost more dan- 
 gerous than the temporary good, if it be a good, 
 effected by their use. 
 
 Most children have an instinctive dislike to 
 alcohol in any shape ; unless, indeed, there be 
 an hereditary predisposition towards it — of all 
 predispositions the most fatal. Any one who 
 knows the strong pureness of a constitution 
 which has received from two or three temperate 
 generations an absolute indifference to stimu- 
 lants, can hardly overvalue the blessing it is 
 to a child, boy or girl, to bring it up from 
 babyhood in the firm faith that wine, beer, and 
 spirits are only medicines, not drinks ; that 
 when you are thirsty, be you man, woman, or 
 child, the right and natural beverage for you 
 is water, and only water. If you require it, if 
 you have been so corrupted by the evil influences 
 of your youth, or the luxurious tastes of your 
 after years, that you "cannot drink water," 
 
 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 51 
 
 either there is something radically diseased in 
 your constitution, or you will soon bring your- 
 self to that condition. Long before you are 
 middle-aged you will have no lack of " often 
 infirmities. " 
 
 I could write pages on the folly — the abso- 
 lute madness, of parents, in allowing unlimited 
 beer to growing lads, daily glasses of wine to 
 over-worked, delicate girls. Nay, descending 
 to the very root of things, I would implore all 
 parents who wish their sons to have the strength 
 of a Samson, to remember Manoah's wife, 
 and suffer neither doctors nor old women to 
 persuade them that strong drinks are essential 
 to even a nursing mother ; but that that mother 
 is specially wise, specially blessed — ay, and her 
 children will rise up and call her so — who has 
 had the self-restraint and courage to make them, 
 before their birth and after, in the solemn lan- 
 guage of Holy Writ, " Nazarites from their 
 mother's womb." 
 
 To " drink no wine nor strong drink," to be 
 absolutely independent of the need for it, or 
 the temptation to it, — any young man or woman 
 
52 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 brought up on this principle has not only a 
 defence against many moral evils, but a physical 
 stronghold always in reserve to fall back upon, 
 when accidental sickness and the certain feeble- 
 ness of old age call for that resource, which I 
 do not deny is at times a most valuable one. 
 But the advice I would give to the young and 
 healthy is this : Save 3^ourselves from all spirit- 
 uous drinks, as drinks, as long as ever you can ; 
 even as you would resist using a crutch as long 
 as you had your own two legs to walk upon. If 
 you like wine — well, say honestly you take it be- 
 cause you like it, that you prefer indulging your 
 palate at the expense of your health ; but never 
 delude yourself, or suffer others to delude you, 
 that alcohol is a necessity, any more than stays 
 or orthopcedic instruments, or strong medicinal 
 poisons, or other sad helps which nature and 
 science provide to sustain us in our slow but 
 sure decay. 
 
 Still, to retard that decay as much as possible, 
 to keep up to the last limit the intellectual and 
 physical vigour which is such a blessing, not 
 only to ourselves but to those about us, this is 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 53. 
 
 the religion of the body — too often lost sight of — 
 but which I for one count it no heathenism both 
 to believe in and to preach. A religion, not a 
 superstition ; the reverence and care for the phy- 
 sical temple of the divine human soul, without 
 in the least sinking to that luxurious Greek philo- 
 sophy which considered the body only as worth 
 regarding. 
 
 On the contrary, if we must be either Syba- 
 rites or Spartans, better be Spartans. The 
 harsh and rough upbringing of our grand- 
 mothers probably did less harm than the pre- 
 sent system of mingled over-care and careless- 
 ness. If they thought too little of children, 
 made them often poor miserable victims to 
 their elders ; we, nowadays, see ourselves 
 victimised to the younger generation rather 
 too much. They also suffer ; in fact, to use the 
 common phrase, are " killed with kindness/' 
 Parents will not see that a child is safer turned 
 out to play in all weathers than shut up from 
 the least breath of wind in nurseries so ill 
 ventilated that the air is actually fetid. And 
 people who would shudder at the idea of their 
 
5+ OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 boys and girls running about barefooted, take 
 them (in low-necked, sleeveless muslin frocks, 
 which leave exposed the most sensitive region, 
 the chest and upper arm, or velvet tunics that 
 do not reach to the shivering little knees) — take 
 them to children's parties, where they must 
 necessarily encounter chills, which to the young 
 are absolute death, and eat food which to their 
 tender stomachs is all but poison. There they 
 stay, in a heated room or in draughty passages, 
 sitting up till their innocent eyes are shutting 
 with sleep, or blazing with feverish and pre- 
 mature excitement, till ten, eleven, and even 
 twelve o'clock, and then are carried off to bed. 
 Next morning the parents wonder that poor 
 little Tommy is cross, or Mary ill, or that Lucy 
 and Charlie cannot attend to their lessons as 
 they ought to do. How should they ? Whole- 
 some amusement — and plenty of it — is essential 
 at all ages; and children's society most bene- 
 ficial to children; but that pitiful imitation of 
 the "show" society now cultivated by fashion- 
 able elders, which is- slowly drifting downwards 
 to corrupt the children, ought to be resisted by 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 55 
 
 wise parents with all their might. Not merely 
 on moral, but on simply physical grounds. Any 
 person who gives or goes to ordinary "children's 
 parties" of this sort is, I think, guilty of a whole- 
 sale massacre of the innocents. Worse than 
 massacre — slow murder ; for such entertainments 
 lay the foundations of half the infirmities of 
 which I write, which sap the very springs of life, 
 and embitter all its enjoyments. 
 
 If our parents sin against us in our childhood, 
 how often do we sin against ourselves in youth 
 — that daring youth, which thinks it will always 
 last, and resents the slightest interference with 
 its whims or its privileges ? It will have what 
 it likes, at any cost. What an endless and 
 thankless task it is to represent to a young girl 
 the common-sense fact, that to put on her warm 
 jacket or waterproof cloak, a sensible hat for 
 her head, and a stout pair of boots for her feet, 
 and go cheerily out, even on the wettest or 
 coldest day, will do her no harm, but good — 
 bring the roses to her cheeks and the sunshine 
 to her spirit ; whereas to cower over the fire in 
 a warm woollen dress, and then undress herself 
 
5 6 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 for a ball — to dance till she is heated and 
 exhausted, and then go and sit on the stairs 
 or by an open window to cool herself — is more 
 than folly, it is insanity. But you, poor mother 
 or aunt, might talk yourself hoarse; she will 
 not listen. The one thing she likes, the other 
 she does not like ; and therefore she does the 
 first, and will not do the second. 
 
 Young men, also, they will go their own way ; 
 sow their wild oats — and reap them. I do not 
 speak of extreme cases of reckless dissipation, 
 upon which retribution follows only too swift 
 and sure, but of small dissipations, petty sins. 
 A young fellow will dance till four in the 
 morning several times a week, when he knows 
 that every day in the week he must be at his 
 office at nine — and is, being an honest fel- 
 low who wishes to get on in the world. But 
 he does not consider how much he takes out 
 of himself in life, and health, and strength ; and 
 sometimes out of his master's pocket too ; for, 
 with the best intentions, he cannot possibly do 
 his work as well as it ought to be done. But 
 he, too, does what he likes best to do, and 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 57 
 
 deludes himself that it is the best ; and all the 
 arguments in the world will never convince him 
 to the contrary. 
 
 No more will they convince those other sin- 
 ners — whose sin looks so like virtue — the clever 
 men who kill themselves with over-study ; — the 
 ambitious men who sacrifice everything to the 
 mad desire of getting on in the world ; of being 
 — not better, or wiser, or greater — but merely 
 richer than their neighbours. 
 
 To do work for work's sake, moderately, 
 levelly, rationally, so as to preserve the power 
 of doing it for the longest term that nature 
 allows — this, the noblest aim a man can start 
 with, becomes often swamped in the ignoble 
 one of working merely to be superior to some- 
 body else. Thus many a man who has earned, 
 or is earning, enough to live comfortably > and 
 bring up his children well — and sufficiently 
 well off, too, to begin with a fair start where 
 their father did — goes on slaving and toiling, 
 his wife aiding and abetting him, in order to 
 maintain them in the luxury to which he has 
 risen. A paternal devotion, which has its 
 
58 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 touching phase; and yet it is as blind as it 
 is foolish. The children would be much better 
 left to make their own way, and earn their own 
 bread, like their father before them. And the 
 father himself, by the time he has accumulated 
 the thirty, forty, or fifty thousand which he has 
 gradually learned to consider essential to hap- 
 piness — she, sly jade! has slipped away from 
 him. He catches her, but she is like the 
 crushed butterfly that his boys catch under their 
 caps ; all her beauty is gone. Utterly worn 
 out with work, he can neither enjoy life himself 
 nor give enjoyment to other people. The strain 
 of occupation gone, his weariness becomes in*- 
 tolerable. The irritability that an overtasked 
 body and mind superinduces in most men, 
 makes him, not a delight, but an actual 
 nuisance in his family. Those "often in- 
 firmities ' which he had once no time to 
 think much about, now rise up like murdered 
 ghosts to torment him wherever he goes. His 
 handsome house, his country leisure or town 
 pleasure, his abundance of friends, and his 
 flourishing family, are to him no comfort, no 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 59 
 
 resource. He has burnt the candle at both 
 ends, and now there is no light left in it ; it 
 just flickers awhile, and then — drops out. 
 
 I ask earnestly, Is this picture overdrawn ? 
 Do I not paint the likeness — not of one, but of 
 hundreds — of rich men among our acquaint- 
 ance in this " golden age " ? Midas himself 
 could not have more bitterly applied the word. 
 The old king of fable, whose touch turned 
 everything to gold, was not more wretched 
 than some of our would-be millionaires. 
 
 For what is the use of money ? Simply, to 
 be used ; to gain a certain amount of bodily 
 comfort, for which the poor failing body is, as 
 it gets older, only too thankful ; and an equal 
 share of intellectual pleasures and tastes, which 
 money only can fully supply. Beyond that no 
 man can spend, or ought to spend, upon him- 
 self. And even this, carefully employed, will 
 always leave a large margin for the keenest 
 pleasure of all — the money that is spent upon 
 other people. 
 
 Idleness may be a great folly, but overwork, 
 to no nobler end than to get rich, is a great 
 
60 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 crime. And the men who commit it, and the 
 women who encourage them in it, deserve all 
 they get, in the secret miseries that underlie all 
 their splendours. What these are they know. 
 The indigestions of their dinner-parties, the 
 weariness of their balls, the worry of their 
 servants, the rivalries of their neighbours. 
 Who that looks at them as sitting, pallid and 
 cross, in their grand carriages, or watches the 
 discontent into which their bland dinner-table 
 face falls the moment the smile is off it, or 
 notices the scarcely veiled relief of the polite 
 adieu with which such an entertainment is 
 ended — "and a good thing it's over," say both 
 host and guest in their secret hearts — who that 
 takes quiet heed of all this can help feeling that 
 such magnificence has cost very dear ? Le jeuj 
 ne vaut pas la chandelle. The paradise may be 
 fair enough outside, but u the trail of the 
 serpent is over it all." 
 
 This, without any complaints about " this 
 poor dying world," or the wickedness of the 
 people that are in it. It is a good world, a 
 happy world. God meant it to be happy. It 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 6r 
 
 is man only who makes it miserable. For one 
 half — perhaps nearly the whole — of these often 
 infirmities which torment us so, Nature is not 
 accountable ; Nature, always a wise and tender 
 mother to those who follow her dictates in the 
 simplest way. For instance, who will deny 
 that a number of those illnesses which we suffer 
 from year by year are absolutely preventible 
 illnesses ? 
 
 The common answer to that commonest of 
 moans, "I have such a bad cold," — "Dear me! 
 How did you catch it ? " — often makes us cross 
 enough. As if it could be any consolation in 
 our sufferings to investigate how we got them ! 
 But the remark is not so ridiculous as it seems. 
 It would be a curious and useful register of 
 personal statistics, if we were to count how 
 many of our illnesses we bring on ourselves by 
 neglect of those common sanitary laws, which 
 can never be broken with impunity. Men of 
 science, half of whom allege that nature is all 
 benign, the other half that she is wholly cruel, 
 seem to be both right and both wrong. She 
 is neither kind nor cruel ; she is only just. She 
 
62 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 ■ — or a higher Power through her — lays down 
 laws, which, so far as we see, are laws for 
 the general good; they must be obeyed, and 
 by all, or all suffer ; and neither God nor nature 
 can prevent this suffering. 
 
 Thus, some illnesses are not preventible. 
 They come to us apparently " by the visitation of 
 God," from no cause at all ; that is, from recon- 
 dite causes, too remote for us either to detect or 
 guard against, but no doubt also the result of 
 broken laws. We can but try to discover these 
 laws, so as to obey them better another time. 
 But a large number of our lesser ailments are 
 entirely our own fault. We can trace in them 
 cause and effect, as plainly as that two and two 
 make four. That severe bronchitis which at- 
 tacked us, because in the brilliant March sun- 
 shine, and fierce east wind, we put off our slightly 
 shabby winter jacket in favour of more spring- 
 like attire. That horrible sick headache, which 
 we know as well as possible will follow after 
 eating certain foods or drinking certain wines, 
 yet we can no more resist either, than our 
 infant boy can resist clutching at the lighted 
 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 63 
 
 candle, or our drunken cabman at the gin- 
 bottle. We call the child an " ignorant baby," 
 the drunkard "a fool ;" yet in what are we 
 better than they ? For the sake of petty vanity, 
 or still more petty table-indulgence, we have 
 punished ourselves, and tormented our whole 
 family. The sickness which comes direct from 
 heaven deserves ail sympathy and tenderness : 
 that brought on by a mere folly, or weak self- 
 indulgence, though it is obliged to be nursed 
 and cared for, is done so with a compassion 
 bordering on contempt. 
 
 Yes, even though we call our errors by grand 
 names, and almost boast of them, " I never 
 take care of myself;" "I can't be bothered 
 with my health ;" " What does it matter to me 
 if I am ill ? " are the remarks one constantly 
 hears, especially from the young, just old 
 enough to shirk authority and resent inter- 
 ference, but still seeing only in the dim distance 
 that dark time which must come, sooner or later, 
 when for every ill-usage it has received, the 
 body avenges itself tenfold. 
 
 Does it not matter indeed ? — the extra labour 
 
64 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 thrown on a whole family when one member 
 is ill ? the heart-ache of parents, the perplexity 
 and distress of friends, the serious annoyance — 
 to put no stronger word — that invalids always are 
 in a household ? If, as to our would-be suicides, 
 the law of the land, even when it saves them 
 from the river half drowned, or cuts them down 
 half hanged, sentences them to remorseless 
 punishment, should there not be found also 
 some fitting condemnation for those who com- 
 mit the slow suicide of ruined health, for no 
 cause but their own gratification r 
 
 One of the worst forms of these is so counte- 
 nanced by society that he is a bold man who 
 would lift his voice against it ; I mean the 
 present system of dinner-parties. And yet there 
 can be no doubt that, if it does not kill whole- 
 sale, it injures the average constitutions of what 
 we call the " better classes," and causes them 
 dyspeptic and other torments to an extent worse 
 perhaps than even the hunger, or the half- 
 feeding, which the poor have to fight against. 
 Nobody likes to be called a glutton or a gour- 
 mand, yet the ordinary dinner-giver or diner- 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 65 
 
 out of the present day will find considerable 
 difficulty in preventing himself from becoming 
 a little of both. 
 
 Now, a good dinner is an excellent thing. A 
 really elegant dinner, well cooked, well served, 
 with tasteful accompaniments of every kind, and 
 with a moderate number of pleasant people 
 to enjoy it, is a most delightful thing. It is 
 right that those who can afford it should give 
 such, replete with " every delicacy of the sea- 
 son ; " the best food, the best wine, the most 
 artistic and beautiful table arrangements, and 
 in sufficient quantity fully to satisfy the guests. 
 Sufficient time also should be allowed fairly 
 to enjoy the meal ; taking it leisurely, and 
 seasoning it with that cheerful conversation 
 which is said to help digestion. In truth, there 
 cannot be a pleasanter sight than an honest, 
 honourable man, at the head of his own hospi- 
 table board, looking down two lines of happy- 
 looking friends, whom he is sincerely glad 
 to welcome, and who are glad in return to 
 give him, according to the stereotyped phrase, 
 "the pleasure of their company," which really 
 
 F 
 
66 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 is a pleasure, and without which the grandest 
 banquets are weariness inexpressible. But the 
 dinner should be subservient to the guests, 
 not the guests to the dinner; and every meal, 
 be it simple or splendid, is worthless altogether 
 unless eaten, as a good Christian has it, "in 
 gladness and singleness of heart." Such a meal, 
 taken among friends and neighbours, with the 
 faces of those you love, or like, or even only 
 admire, gathered round you, not too many of 
 them, nor for too long a time, and moving early 
 into the drawing-room, to pass a social evening 
 in conversation or music, — such a feast is truly a 
 feast ; the ideal dinner-party, which does no harm 
 to any one, and to many a great deal of good. 
 
 But the ordinary " dinner-party " is, eighteen 
 or twenty people chosen at random without 
 any regard to their suiting one another, sitting 
 down to eat and drink without intermission 
 for from two to three hours, say from half-past 
 seven or eight till nearly ten. A "feed" lasting 
 so long that however small may be the bits 
 you put into the unhappy stomach, it is kept 
 working on at the process of digestion till its 
 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 67 
 
 powers are thoroughly exhausted. And, eating- 
 over, drinking begins. 
 
 I beg pardon, nobody ever " drinks " nowa- 
 days. And, of course, nobody is so vulgar as to 
 over-eat himself. That enormity is left to the 
 workhouse boy over his Christmas plum-pudr- 
 ding, or the charity girl at a school tea. Never- 
 theless, one sometimes sees, even in elegant 
 drawing-rooms, gentlemen enter with fishy eyes, 
 and talk, not too brilliantly, to ladies with 
 flushed cheeks and weary smiles. Sometimes 
 one would like to whisper, " My dear friends,, 
 you don't know it ; but have you not both eaten 
 and drunk a little more than was good for 
 you ? You would have felt much better and 
 happier after a simple, short dinner, which 
 — instead of the fifteen minutes that you stand 
 sipping your tea, and wondering if your 
 carriage is come — left you an hour or two to 
 spend a pleasant, sociable evening. Has it 
 been pleasant ? Have you really enjoyed your- 
 self ? How do you feel after it ? And how do 
 you think you will feel to-morrow morning ? ''' 
 
 Ah, that to-morrow morning ! especially to 
 
68 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 those who have to work with their brains, and 
 in London, apart from the wholesome country 
 life, which neutralises so many evils. " I can't 
 dine out," has said to me more than one learned 
 or literary man, or agreeable "homme de 
 societe," whom dinner-givers would give the 
 world to get. " It is absolute death to me — or 
 dyspepsia, which is only a slow death to all one's 
 faculties, and perhaps one's moral nature too, 
 for your dyspeptic is usually the most ill-tem- 
 pered and disagreeable fellow going. And 
 yet I am neither a glutton nor a wine-bibber. 
 I like a good dinner, and I like to eat it in 
 company with my fellow-creatures. But, accord- 
 ing to the present system of dinner-parties, I 
 can't do it without absolute injury to myself; 
 hindering my work, affecting my health, and 
 bringing on all sorts of infirmities, that a man 
 likes to steer clear of as long as he can." 
 
 Yes, if he has the strength of will to do it. 
 But not every man has, or woman either. Few 
 people practise that golden rule of health, I 
 think it was Luigi Cornaro's, "Always rise 
 from table feeling that you could take a little 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 69 
 
 bit more." Yet if we did practise it, with an- 
 other very simple rule, to eat always regularly, 
 at the same hour, and, as nearly as possible, the 
 same quantity of food — not doubling the quan- 
 tity because it happens to be " nice," — we should 
 soon lessen amazingly our often infirmities. 
 
 Prevention is better than cure, and in most 
 small ailments there cannot be a safer physic 
 than abstinence. Abstinence from over-food, 
 over-work. How persistently we shut our eyes 
 to the beginnings of disease, beginnings so 
 trifling that we hardly notice them, until they 
 end in that premature decay which seems now 
 only too common amongst our best and greatest 
 men, and those whom the world can least spare. 
 People rush to doctors to cure them ; they never 
 think of curing themselves, by putting a stop 
 to the exciting causes of ill-health. As a wise 
 old woman said to a very foolish young one, 
 who brought her a heap of feeble MSS. to look 
 over and try to sell, on the pitiful plea that 
 she must have money, in order to pay for her 
 medicine and her wine, " My dear, stop the 
 wine and stop the medicine, and then you will 
 
70 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 be able to stop the writing also, which will be 
 much the better for both yourself and the public." 
 
 The selfishness of people who will not stop, 
 who go on indulging their luxurious, careless, 
 or studious habits until they make themselves 
 confirmed invalids, an anxiety and a torment to 
 those about them, cannot be too strongly repro- 
 bated. Ay, even though it takes the form of 
 a noble indifference to self, in pursuit of know- 
 ledge, wealth, ambition ; any of the pretty dis- 
 guises in which we wrap up the thing we like 
 to do, and make believe to other people, often 
 almost to ourselves, that it is the very thing 
 we ought to do. 
 
 And here I must dwell a moment on a case 
 in point, the right and wrong of which is some- 
 times exceedingly difficult to define — how far it 
 is allowable to run risks of infectious diseases. 
 
 Formerly, very good people regarded plague 
 and pestilence as coming direct from the hand 
 of God, which it was useless, nay, worse, irre- 
 ligious, to fight against. I have heard sensible 
 and excellent persons say calmly, as a reason for 
 going, quite unnecessarily, into a fever-stricken 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 71 
 
 house, " Oh, I am not afraid : if it is the will of 
 the Lord for me to catch it, I shall catch it ; if 
 not, I am safe." 
 
 Most true ; in fact the merest truism, like 
 pious folks' habit of writing D.V., Deo volente, 
 about anything they intend to do, as if they 
 could possibly do it without the will of God ! 
 But is it the will of God that infection should 
 be spread from house to house by these well- 
 meaning individuals, who may indeed escape 
 themselves, but can never tell how much misery 
 they are bringing on other people ? 
 
 Modern science has found out that, like many 
 other physical woes, epidemic or contagious 
 diseases are principally owing to ourselves, our 
 own errors or carelessnesses, not the will of God 
 at all ; that He has provided certain antidotes 
 or remedies against them, and those who ne- 
 glect or refuse these lay themselves under the 
 lash of His righteous punishments, nor can they 
 complain of any suffering that follows. 
 
 Infectious diseases may be almost always 
 put under the category of preventible evils, and 
 it is the duty of all truly religious persons to 
 
72 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 help the Almighty, so to speak, that is to make 
 themselves His instruments in stamping out evil 
 wherever they find it. Ay, even though it may 
 be after His own mysterious way, as we some- 
 times see it, or fancy we do, of sacrificing the 
 few to the many. 
 
 Disease must "be stamped out, and its circle of 
 misery narrowed as much as possible, even at 
 cost of individual feeling. The primary thought 
 of every person attacked by an infectious illness 
 ought to be, " Let me harm as few people as I 
 can." There is something particularly heroic 
 in the story of the East-end clergyman, who, 
 discovering that he had caught small-pox, 
 resolutely refused to go home, would not even 
 enter a cab which was brought to take him to 
 the hospital, but, hailing a hearse passing by, 
 crept into that, and so was carried safely to the 
 safe hospital-door. 
 
 He was a noble instance, this man, of that 
 prudence which is compatible with the utmost 
 courage, the deepest self-devotion ; that benevo- 
 lent caution which sees other people's rights as 
 clearly as its own. How different from a certain 
 
 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 73 
 
 affectionate mother, who, when another mother 
 hesitated to enter a railway carriage full of chil- 
 dren because her little boy was recovering from 
 measles, answered, " Oh, how kind of you to tell 
 me ! for my little folks here have only just got 
 through scarlet fever, and suppose they had 
 caught measles on the top of that ? " But it 
 never occurred to her to prevent somebody 
 else's little boy from catching scarlet fever on 
 the top of measles. 
 
 Absolute justice, beyond even sympathy, and 
 far beyond sentimental feeling of any kind, 
 should be the rule of all who have to do with 
 infection ; their one prominent thought how to 
 narrow its fatal work within the smallest pos- 
 sible bounds. Doctors, nurses, and those friends 
 and relations who are naturally in charge of 
 the sick, must take their lives in their hands, 
 do their duty, and trust God for the rest. And 
 happily there is seldom any lack of such ; brave 
 physicians, who, having voluntarily entered a 
 profession which involves so much risk to them 
 and theirs, carry it out unflinchingly ; nurses, 
 who to their own people or to strangers, for 
 
7+ OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 love or for charity, which means for God, devote 
 themselves open-eyed to a righteous self-sacri- 
 fice. But there it should end. Every one who 
 heedlessly or unnecessarily, for bravado or 
 thoughtlessness, or even from mistaken pious 
 zeal, goes in the way of infection, or helps in the 
 spread of it, commits a crime against society, 
 which society cannot too strongly protect itself 
 from. 
 
 When I see rabid religionists carrying hand- 
 fuls of tracts into reeking, typhus-doomed cot- 
 tages, where they ought first to have carried 
 food and clothes, or, better still, have levelled 
 them with the ground and built up in their 
 stead wholesome dwellings ; when I hear 
 clergymen with young families, and going 
 daily into other families and schools, protest 
 that it is " their duty " to enter infected houses 
 in order to administer spiritual consolation to 
 people dying of small-pox or scarlet fever ; I 
 look upon them much as I would upon a man 
 who thought it "his duty" to carry a lighted 
 candle into a coal-mine. Nothing may happen ; 
 but if anything does happen, what of him who 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 75 
 
 caused the disaster by his fatal folly — misnamed 
 faith ? As if " salvation " did not mean a saving 
 from sin rather than from punishment ; and, 
 therefore, though men's souls may be in our hands 
 during life, they must be left solely in God's 
 when death comes — and after. These so-called 
 religious persons are apparently much more 
 bent upon doing their own will in their own 
 way than the Master's in His way. For the 
 will of God, so far as we can trace it through 
 His manifestation of himself in His Son, seems 
 to be the prevention and cure of not only moral 
 but physical evil by every possible means, prior 
 to its total extinction. 
 
 Either Christ's doctrine is true or it is not ; but 
 even those who aver that it is not true often mourn- 
 fully acknowledge that it ought to be — that we 
 should be better if it were true. And He did not 
 despise the body. He held it to be the " temple 
 of the Holy Spirit." Asceticism was as far from 
 Him as was luxurious living. He went about, not 
 only teaching but doing good — practical good. 
 Before He attempted to preach to the multitude, 
 He fed them, remembering that " divers of them 
 
7 6 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 
 came from far." When He raised from the dead 
 J aims' daughter, He "commanded that some- 
 thing should be given her to eat." And in 
 revisiting His forlorn disciples His first tender 
 words were, " Children, have ye any meat V In 
 no way, from beginning to end of His ministry, 
 does He disregard or despise those bodily infir- 
 mities which we may conclude He shared, though 
 how much or how little we never can know. 
 
 One fact, however, is noteworthy : He never 
 complained of them. At least, the only record 
 we have of any murmur from His lips was made 
 solely to His Father : — " Let this cup pass from 
 me " — followed quickly by the acceptation of it — 
 " Not my will, but Thine be done." A lesson to 
 us, who are so prone to grumble over the most 
 trifling of our infirmities, the least of our aches 
 and pains ; so ready to blame everybody for 
 them, except ourselves ; to rush for cure to 
 every doctor we hear of, instead of trusting to 
 our own common-sense, self-restraint, and, 
 when all else fails, that quiet patience which at 
 least never inflicts its own sufferings upon its 
 neighbours. 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 77 
 
 Christ did not — not to the very end. When 
 dying the most torturing of deaths, it was His 
 mother and His brethren that He thought of, not 
 Himself. And so it is with many a sick and 
 dying person, who in life has been a humble 
 follower of Him. 
 
 Strange, how in these sermons, professedly 
 " out of Church " — holding up the banner of no 
 set creed — appealing especially to those who say 
 they believe none, and refuse to accept any fore- 
 gone conclusions, or take anything granted in 
 the " science of theology " so called — as if any 
 finite being could learn the Infinite as he learns 
 astronomy or mathematics ! — it is strange, I say, 
 how continually I find myself recurring to Christ 
 and His teaching, which — whatever be the facts 
 or misrepresentations of His personal history — - 
 shines out clearly after the mists of nearly nine- 
 teen hundred years as the only perfect righteous- 
 ness the world ever saw ; a standard which, 
 consciously or unconsciously, all righteous souls 
 instinctively recognise. 
 
 It is easy for people to say they do not believe 
 in Christianity — that is, in its corruptions ; but 
 
78 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 the spirit of it has so permeated our modern world 
 that many a fierce sceptic is a good Christian 
 without knowing it. He can deny, but he can- 
 not get away from, the influence of that divine 
 morality which Christians recognise as their Sun 
 of Righteousness. It may not shine ; mists may 
 obscure it, so that one is prone to doubt its very 
 existence ; but, without it, daylight would not 
 be there. 
 
 I am wandering a little from my subject, and 
 yet not far ; since what comfort is there, except 
 in such thoughts as these, when the dark time 
 comes which must come to us all — when our in- 
 firmities are not " often," but continual ? How 
 shall we bear them ? How shall we meet that 
 heavy season, when — as, I lately heard one lady 
 answer to another who was saying she felt 
 better than she had done for years — "Ah, my 
 dear, but / shall never feel better any more " ? 
 
 Not very wonderful, considering the sufferer 
 was seventy-six ; yet she evidently felt it a great 
 hardship, a cruel wrong. Even then she could not 
 reconcile herself to old age, to the gradual slip- 
 ping off of the worn garment, meant tenderly, I 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 79 
 
 think, as nature's preparation for the putting of 
 it off altogether, and being clothed afresh with 
 something, we know not what, except that it 
 will be altogether new. 
 
 A hard time this to many ; when all the sins 
 they ever committed against their bodies — and 
 you may sin against your body just as fatally as 
 you sin against your soul — rise up in judgment 
 against them. The season, when we begin to 
 feel that we are really growing old, and that 
 everybody sees it, but is too polite to say so, or 
 tries to gloss it under the unmeaning remark, 
 " How young you look ! " — indicating that we 
 cannot reasonably be expected to look young 
 any longer. This is as painful a phase as any 
 our life goes through — more painful, I think, 
 than absolute old age, which gradually becomes 
 as conceited over its many years as youth is 
 over its few ones. 
 
 Still, I cannot believe but that it is possible, 
 by extra care at the beginning of decay, to avoid 
 its saddest infirmities, and to make senility 
 a comparatively painless thing — free from many 
 of those weaknesses and unpleasantnesses which 
 
8o OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 cause so many unselfish people to say honestly 
 they never wish to live to be old. 
 
 For instance, how few recognise the very 
 simple and obvious truth, that as the machinery 
 of digestion begins to wear out, it is advisable 
 to give it some little less work to do. A 
 meal from which a young man would rise up 
 hungry, is quite sufficient for the needs of a man 
 of seventy, and better for him than more. The 
 healthiest, most active, and most happy-minded 
 of old people I have always found to be those 
 who were exceedingly moderate in their food ; 
 eating less and less every year, instead of, accord- 
 ing to the common fallacy, more and more. And 
 they who have longest retained their hold on life 
 and its enjoyments, have been those who in all 
 their habits have gradually gone back to the 
 simplicity of childhood. Indeed, it seems as if 
 nature, when we do not foolishly resist her 
 or interfere with her, would fain bring us back 
 quietly to all the tastes, pleasures, and wants of 
 our earliest youth — its innocent interests, its 
 entire but not necessarily painful or humiliating 
 dependence ; would give us, in short, a little 
 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 8t 
 
 tender rock in our second cradle before she lays 
 us in the grave. 
 
 And this,, if we could only see it, is good for 
 us, and equally good for those that have to do 
 it for us. It is well for the younger generation to 
 see how contentedly we can loose our hold upon 
 that world which is slowly sliding from us.- 
 Though, unlike them, we can no longer work all 
 day and dance all night ; though we require every 
 year more care, more regularity of hours and 
 meals, more sleep — at all events more rest ; can 
 by no means play tricks with ourselves, for any 
 excuse either of amusement or labour ; are 
 perhaps obliged to spend one half the day in. 
 peaceful seclusion, or equally peaceful endur- 
 ance of pain, in order to qualify ourselves for 
 being cheerful with those we love for the other 
 half; — still life is not yet a burden to us, and we 
 try to be as little of a burden as possible to 
 those about us. We have had our day ; we will 
 not grudge them theirs. 
 
 I cannot imagine an old age like this to be a 
 sad or undesirable thing. Infirmities it may 
 have — must have ; but they need not be over- 
 
 G 
 
82 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 whelming ; if the failing body has been treated, 
 and is still treated, with that amount of respect 
 which is its due. And at worst, perhaps bodily 
 sufferings are not harder to bear than the hor- 
 rible mental struggles of youth, with its selfish 
 agony of passion and pain ; or than the vicarious 
 sufferings of middle age, when we groaned under 
 the weight of other people's cares, mourned over 
 sorrows that we were utterly powerless to cure, 
 and looked forward with endless anxiety into 
 an uncertain future, net considering how soon it 
 would become the harmless past. 
 
 Now all that is over. The old never grieve 
 much; at least, not over much. Why should 
 they ? It is strange to notice how, even after a 
 loss by death that a few years before would 
 have utterly crushed them, they seem to rise up 
 and go on their way — only a few steps more — ■ 
 quietly, even cheerfully ; troubling no one, com- 
 plaining to no one, probably because it is only a 
 few steps more. Suffering itself grows calm in 
 the near view of rest. 
 
 Thus it is with people of restful and patient 
 mind. For others there is still something left. "I 
 
 
OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 83 
 
 have had all I wanted," said to me one of the most 
 unquiet spirits I ever knew, keenly alive still, 
 even under the deadness of seventy odd years. 
 " Life has been a long puzzle to me, but I am 
 coming to the end of it now. There is one thing 
 more : I want to find out the great secret, and I 
 shall ; before long." 
 
 One can quite well imagine some people, to 
 whom the after life was neither a certainty nor 
 even a hope, looking forward to death as a 
 matter of at least curiosity. But for us, who 
 believe that death is the gate of life, it is quite a 
 different feeling. Putting it on the very lowest 
 ground, to have all our curiosity gratified, to 
 know even as we are known, to feel nearer and 
 nearer to our hands the key of the eternal 
 mystery, the satisfying of the infinite desire, — 
 this alone is consolation, in degree, for our own 
 failing powers and flagging spirits ; nay even 
 for the slowly emptying world around us — 
 emptying of the wise and the good, the pleasant 
 and the dear, whom one by one we see passing 
 " ad maj'ores." 
 
 " If I could only get rid of my body I should 
 
84 OUR OFTEN INFIRMITIES. 
 
 be all right," sighed once a great sufferer. And 
 there are times when even the most patient of 
 us feel rather glad that we do not live for 
 ever. Respect our mortal tabernacle as we may, 
 and treat it tenderly, as we ought to do, we 
 may one day be not so very sorry to lay it down, 
 not only with all its sins, but with its often 
 infirmities. 
 
&nmon BEE 
 
 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT IN 
 THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 
 
 
III. 
 
 HOW TO, TRAIN UP A PARENT IN THE WAY HE 
 
 SHOULD GO. 
 
 " f~\ H dear ! I'm afraid I shall never manage 
 to bring up my mother properly," was 
 the remark once made by a rather fast young 
 lady, to whom the old-fashioned institution of 
 " mothers " was no doubt a rather inconvenient 
 thing. 
 
 " My friend," said an old Quaker to a lady 
 who contemplated adopting a child, " I know 
 not how far thou wilt succeed in educating her, 
 but I am quite certain she will educate thee." 
 
 Often when I look round on the world of 
 parents and children, I think of those two con- 
 tradictory speeches, and of the truth that lies 
 between both. 
 
 The sentiment may be very heretical, but I 
 
•88 
 
 BOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 have often wondered how many out of the thou- 
 sands of children born annually in our England 
 alone, come to parents who at all deserve the 
 blessing ? Not one-half, certainly — even among 
 the mothers. Halve that again, and I believe 
 you will come to the right per-centage as re- 
 gards the fathers. 
 
 It is sometimes said that children of the pre- 
 sent day are made too much of. Perhaps so. 
 They but follow the fashion of the age — any- 
 thing but a heroic or ascetic age. No doubt 
 they are a little " spoiled." So are we all. But 
 the errors of the parents, from which theirs arise, 
 are a much more serious matter. How to train 
 up the parents in the way they should go, is a 
 necessity which, did it force itself upon the mind 
 of any school board, would be found quite as 
 important as the education of the children. 
 
 When we think of them, poor helpless little 
 creatures ! who never asked to be born, who from 
 birth upwards are so utterly dependent upon the 
 two other creatures to whom they owe their 
 existence — a debt for which it is supposed they 
 can never be sufficiently grateful — do not our 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 89 
 
 hearts yearn over them with pity, or grow hot 
 with indignation ? This even without need of 
 such stories as we are continually hearing — I 
 take three at random from to-day's newspaper — 
 of the drunken father who amused himself with 
 dashing his three-years- old child against the 
 table till he accidentally dashed out its brains ; 
 of the woman who thrice in one afternoon tried 
 to drop her baby among the horses and car- 
 riages in High Holborn ; of the boy of four and 
 a half flogged almost to death by a school-board 
 teacher for not doing his sums and not answer- 
 ing when spoken to ; which case the magistrate 
 — doubtless himself a father — curtly dismissed, 
 saying, "If discipline were not to be main- 
 tained, what was the education of boys to come 
 to ?" 
 
 However, putting aside these public facts, let 
 us come upon our own private experience, and 
 ask ourselves honestly, how many people we 
 know who are — or are likely to prove — really good 
 fathers and mothers ? wise, patient, judicious ; 
 firm^ watchful, careful, and loving ? Above all 
 things, just ; since, so deeply is implanted in the 
 
9 o HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 - 
 
 Iff 
 
 
 infant mind this heavenly instinct, that if I were 
 asked what was most important in the bringing 
 up of a child, love or justice, I think I should 
 say justice. 
 
 To be just is the very first lesson that a parent 
 requires to learn. The rights of the little soul, 
 which did not come into the world of its own 
 accord, nor indeed was taken into consideration 
 in the matter at all — for do any in marrying ever 
 think of the sort of fathers or mothers they are 
 giving to their offspring ? — the rights of this 
 offspring, physical, mental, and moral, are at 
 once most obvious and least regarded. The 
 new-born child is an interest, a delight, a pride ; 
 the parents exult over it, as over any other 
 luxury or amusement; but how seldom do they 
 take to heart the solemn responsibility of it, or 
 see a face divine, as it were, looking out at them 
 from the innocent baby-face, with the warning 
 of Christ Himself — " Whosoever shall offend one 
 of these little ones, it were better for him that a 
 mill-stone were hung about his neck, and that 
 he were cast into the sea." 
 
 There could hardly be a stronger expression 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO, 91 
 
 of the way in which God — the Christian God — 
 views the relation between parents and children. 
 Yet most young parents, who until now have 
 been accustomed to think only of themselves or 
 of one another, take the introduction of the 
 unconscious third as their natural possession, 
 never doubting that it is wholly theirs, to bring 
 up as they please, and that they are quite 
 capable of so doing. 
 
 Constantly one hears the remark, "Oh ! I would 
 not take the" responsibility of another person's 
 child." Does that imply that they feel at liberty 
 to do as they like with their own ? I fear it 
 does ; and that law and custom both appear to 
 sanction this delusion. Nobody must " interfere " 
 between parent and child, at least not till the 
 case comes within a degree or two of child- 
 murder. The slow destruction of soul and body 
 which, through ignorance or carelessness, goes 
 on among hundreds of children, not only in 
 humble, but in many respectable and well- 
 regulated households, society never notices. I 
 suppose even the most daring philanthropist 
 
 uld never venture to bring in a bill for claiming 
 
92 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 the children of unworthy parents, and snatch- 
 ing them from ruin by annihilating all parental 
 
 rights and making them children of the State. 
 Yet such a proceeding would benefit the new 
 generation to an incalculable degree. 
 
 " Train up a child in the way he should go," 
 is the advice in everybody's mouth, but who 
 thinks of training the parents r Does not every- 
 body strictly hold that the mere fact of pa- 
 renthood implies all that is necessary for the 
 upbringing of the child ? — all the love, all the 
 wisdom, all the self-denial ? Does it ever occur 
 to the average young man and young woman, 
 bending together over the cradle of their first- 
 born, that the little thing, whose teachers they 
 are proudly constituting themselves to be, is 
 much more likely to be the unconscious agent 
 in teaching them ? 
 
 And the education begins at once. How 
 amusing, and, at the same time, how satisfac- 
 tory it is, to see a young fellow, who throughout 
 his bachelor days has been a selfish egotist — 
 most young bachelors are — obliged now to think 
 of something and somebody besides himself; to 
 
 
IN THE WAV HE SHOULD GO. 93 
 
 give up not a few of his own personal comforts, 
 and find himself forced to play second fiddle in 
 his own home— '- where the one important object, 
 for the time being, is " the baby." 
 
 I have spoken of rights. This is the only 
 instance I know in which they are not mutual, 
 but entirely one-sided. The new-born babe 
 owes absolutely nothing to the parents beyond 
 the physical fact of existence. All moral claims 
 are on its side alone. The parents are respon- 
 sible for it, soul and body, for certainly the first 
 twenty years ; nor, even after that, is it easy to 
 imagine circumstances which could wholly set 
 them free. The most sorely tried father and 
 mother could hardly cast adrift their erring 
 offspring, without a lurking uneasiness of con- 
 science as to how far these errors were owing to 
 themselves and their upbringing. For,, save in 
 very rare cases, where far-back types crop out 
 again, and are most difficult to deal with, there 
 is seldom a u black sheep " in any family with- 
 out the parents having been to blame. 
 
 "Why, I brought up my children all alike," 
 moans some virtuous progenitor of such. " How 
 
94 
 
 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 does it happen that this one has turned out so 
 different from the rest ? " 
 
 Just, my good friend, because you did bring 
 them up all alike. You had not the sense to see 
 that the same training which makes one mars 
 another; or else that, in training them, it was 
 necessary to train yourself first. Meaning to be 
 a guide, you were only a finger-post, which 
 points the way to others, but stands still itself. 
 
 The very first lesson a parent has to learn is, 
 that whatever he attempts to teach, he must 
 himself first practise. Whatever he wishes his 
 child to avoid, he must make up his mind to 
 renounce ; and that from the very earliest 
 stage of existence, and down to the minutest 
 things. . In young children, the imitative faculty 
 is so enormous, the reasoning power so small, 
 that one cannot be too careful, even with infants, 
 to guard against indulging in a harsh tone, a 
 brusque manner, a sad or angry look. As far 
 as is possible, the tender bud should live in an 
 atmosphere of continual sunshine, under which 
 it may safely and happily unfold, hour by hour, 
 and day by day. To effect this there is required 
 
 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 95 
 
 from the parent, or those who stand in the 
 parent's stead, an amount of self-control and 
 self-denial which would be almost impossible, 
 had not Heaven implanted on the one side 
 maternal instinct, on the other that extraordi- 
 nary winning charm which there is about all 
 young creatures, making us put up with their 
 endless waywardness, and love them all the 
 better the more trouble they give us. 
 
 That is — mothers do. When I said " maternal 
 instinct," I spoke advisedly and intentionally. 
 Of paternal instinct there is almost none. A 
 man is proud of his sons and daughters because 
 they are his sons and daughters — bound to carry 
 down his name to posterity ; but he rarely takes 
 the slightest interest in anybody else's children, 
 and in his own only so far as they contribute 
 to his pleasure, amusement, or dignity. The 
 passionate love a woman often has for an- 
 other woman's children, and for the feeblest, 
 naughtiest, ugliest of her own, is to men a 
 thing entirely unknown. Two-thirds of paternal 
 love is pure pride, and the remaining third, not 
 seldorm pure egotism. 
 
96 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 Therefore,, for the first seven, nay ten years 
 of a child's life, it should in most cases be left as 
 much as possible to the care of women. Not 
 that every woman has the motherly heart ; but 
 the fatherly heart is a rarer thing still. 
 
 Besides, men's work in the world naturally 
 unfits them for the management of children. It 
 is very hard for a man, who has been worried 
 in business all day long, to come home and be 
 pestered by a crying child ; even though the 
 poor innocent cannot help itself — is probably 
 only tired, or sick, or hungry. But the father 
 will not see this ; he will only see that the 
 child annoys himself, and must therefore be 
 " naughty." 
 
 " And when naughty, of course it must be 
 punished," I heard a middle-aged father once 
 say with virtuous complacency.- "My boy is 
 only eleven months old — yet I assure you I 
 have whipped him three times." 
 
 Whipped him three times ! And the mother 
 allowed it, — the young mother who sat smiling 
 and beautifully dressed at the head of the table. 
 Why had she not the sense to lock her nursery 
 
 
 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 97 
 
 door against the brutal fool r But what is the 
 good of calling names ? the man was simply- 
 ignorant. For all his grand assumption of pa- 
 rental authority, he had not the wit to see that 
 for the first year, perhaps two years of our life, 
 there can be no such thing as moral " naughti- 
 ness." Existence is so purely physical that if 
 we only take care of the little body, the mind 
 will take care of itself; or, at worst, it is so 
 completely a piece of white paper, that it will 
 show nothing save what we write upon it. Any- 
 body who has had much to do with young 
 children must acknowledge that, in spite of 
 the doctrine of original sin, nearly every 
 childish fault is a reflected fault, the copy of 
 something seen in other people. If any one will 
 take the trouble to notice his own faults or 
 peculiarities — which we are all rather slow to 
 do — it may account for a good many " naughti- 
 nesses" which he punishes in his offspring. 
 
 It is often strange and sad to see how hard 
 grown-up people — especially men — are upon 
 children : expecting from five — or say ten years 
 old — an amount of patience, diligence, self- 
 
 H 
 
9 8 
 
 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 control and self-denial which they themselves, at 
 fifty odd, have never succeeded in attaining to. 
 But I repeat, so few men are by temperament, 
 circumstances, or habits in the least fitted for 
 the management of children, that the advice I 
 give to all sensible wives and capable mothers 
 concerning their little ones, is this — " Save their 
 fathers from them, and save them from their 
 fathers/' 
 
 Not but that there are fathers true and tender, 
 firm as a man ought to be, unselfish and patient 
 as, happily, most women are ; to whose breast 
 the youngest child runs to in any trouble, " Oh, 
 it's always papa who comforts us," and of whom 
 the elder ones say fondly, " We mind one look 
 of papa's more than twenty scoldings." But 
 such are the exceptions. The average of men 
 and fathers are, I solemnly believe, quite un- 
 fitted, both by nature or habit, for the upbring- 
 ing of children. Thus, necessarily the duty 
 falls on the mother. And why not ? What 
 higher destiny ? 
 
 There is a class of women who consider that 
 they have a higher destiny ; that to help in 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 99 
 
 the larger work of the world, to continue their 
 own mental culture, is far more important than 
 to bring up the next generation worthily. 
 
 Both duties are excellent in their way; but 
 there are plenty of unmarried childless women, 
 and women with no domestic instincts, to do 
 the former : mothers alone can do the latter. 
 True, it exacts the devotion of the entire life ; 
 a real mother has no time for gay society, nor 
 intellectual development, except such as she is 
 always gaining through her children ; she must 
 make up her mind to the fact that they and her 
 husband compose her world, and fill up her life. 
 
 And what better world ? what nobler life ? 
 Even if she is worn out, " like a rose-tree in full 
 bearing," and drops off when her destiny is 
 done. No matter, she has fulfilled it, and she is 
 and she will be blessed. 
 
 Not, however, unless she has thoroughly ful- 
 filled it. The mere fact of bringing eight or ten 
 children into the world does not in the least 
 imply true motherhood. If she leaves them to 
 nurses and governesses ; if she shirks any of 
 the anxious cares, perpetual small worries, and 
 
ioo HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 endless self-abnegations which are her natural 
 portion, the under-side to her infinite blessings, 
 she does not deserve these last. Not every 
 mother is born with the mother's heart : I have 
 known many an old maid who had it, and I 
 have heard of mothers of many children who 
 owned to " hating " every child as it came, and 
 only learning to love the. helpless innocent from 
 a sense of duty. But duty often teaches love, 
 and responsibility produces the capacity for it. 
 Many a light-minded, light-hearted girl, who 
 has danced and flirted and sentimentalised 
 through her happy spring-time, finds the sweet 
 compulsion of nature too strong for her : very 
 soon she forgets all her follies, and settles down 
 into a real mother, whom love instructs in all 
 things necessary ; who shrinks from no trouble, 
 is equal to all duties ; is to her children nurse, 
 companion, playfellow, as well as doctress, 
 sempstress, teacher, friend. Everything, in short. 
 The father may be more or less to the child, 
 as his occupation and his own peculiarities 
 allow ; but the mother must be all in all, or God 
 help the children ! 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 101 
 
 Granting that the mother-love is there, is 
 love sufficient ? Not always. It will not make 
 up for the lack of common sense, self-control, 
 accurate and orderly ways ; 
 
 " The reason firm, the temperate will ; 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill." 
 
 Nor does the mere fact of parenthood by a sort 
 of divine right constitute all parents infal- 
 lible, as they are so apt to suppose, and 
 by their conduct expect their children to be- 
 lieve it. 
 
 The child will not believe it, not after the very 
 first, unless the parent proves it; and this 
 by something stronger than bare assertion or 
 natural instinct. It may be a dangerous thing 
 to suggest, but I am afraid the idea of some 
 mysterious instinctive bond between parent and 
 child is a mere superstition. No doubt the feel- 
 ing is there, but it may be exercised equally with 
 or without the tie of blood. Suppose, unknown 
 to these tender young parents, another infant, a 
 " changeling child," were to be secretly popped 
 into the cradle over which they bend so fondly ? 
 They would feel towards it exactly the same 
 
io2 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 sensations. Also, if any aunt, grandmother, 
 or even ordinary stranger should fulfil towards 
 that child all the duties of a parent, the love 
 won, and deserved, would be a true filial 
 affection. The instinct of blood, as people call 
 it, acts admirably as a cement to other ties ; 
 but of itself, save in poetical fancy, it has no 
 existence whatever. Nothing but the wildest 
 imagination could have made George Eliot's 
 " Spanish Gipsy," tenderly reared and betrothed 
 to the man she loved, elope at once with her 
 Zingaro father, whom she had never seen in 
 her life before. And nothing but the most ex- 
 traordinary moral twist could make people 
 condemn, as I have heard condemned, Silas 
 Marner's beloved Eppie, because, placed be- 
 tween her adopted father, to whom she owed 
 everything, and her flesh-and-blood father, to 
 whom she owed nothing but her birth, she never 
 hesitated in choosing the former. 
 
 A parent, unlike a poet, is not born, he is 
 made. There are certain things which he has 
 at once to learn, or he will have no more in- 
 fluence over his child than if he were a common 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 103 
 
 stranger. First, he must institute between 
 himself and his child that which is as import- 
 ant between child and parent as between man 
 and God — the sense, not of absolute obedience, 
 as is so often preached, but of absolute reliance, 
 which produces obedience. To gain obedience, 
 you must first set yourself to deserve it. What- 
 ever you promise your little one, however small 
 the thing may seem to you, and whatever trouble 
 it costs you, perform it. Never let the doubt 
 once enter that innocent mind, that you say 
 what you do not mean, or will not act up to 
 what you say. Make as few prohibitory laws 
 as you possibly can, but once made, keep to 
 them. In what is granted, as in what is denied, 
 compel yourself, however weary, or worried, or 
 impatient, to administer always even-handed 
 justice. "Fiat justitia, ruat caelum," is a sys- 
 tem much more likely to secure your child's real 
 affection than all the petting and humouring so 
 generally indulged in, to give pleasure or save 
 trouble, not to your little ones, but to yourself. 
 
 A very wise woman once consoled an over- 
 tender mother, who was being blamed for 
 
io 4 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 " spoiling " her little girl, " Never mind. Love 
 never spoiled any child. It is the alternations, 
 the kiss on the one cheek and the blow on the 
 other, which ruin." 
 
 And this is what I often notice in ex- 
 tremely well-meaning parents ; their love is 
 not a steady love, but continually 
 
 " Roughened by those cataracts and breaks, 
 "Which humour interposed too often makes." 
 
 They cannot keep that sweet, level calm which 
 above all things is necessary for the govern- 
 ment of children. The same playful wiles 
 which amuse one day, irritate the next. Not 
 that the child is different, but they are in a 
 different mood themselves, which important fact 
 the poor little thing is expected at once to 
 recognise, and act accordingly. 
 
 And here the second great mistake is made. 
 We expect too much from our children. We 
 exact from them a perfection which we are far 
 from carrying out in ourselves ; we require of 
 them sacrifices much heavier, comparatively, 
 than those of any grown-up person. And they 
 soon find out that. A child's eyes are very sharp. 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 105 
 
 Any flaw in one's argument, any lapse in one's 
 conduct, is caught up by them and reproduced 
 with alarming accuracy. 
 
 " Mr. A. ; is that the Mr. A. whom papa dis- 
 likes so ?" said an innocent " enfant terrible " 
 before a whole dinner-table. And papa, who 
 had let his prejudices run away with him, so as 
 to speak a great deal more strongly than he 
 meant of harmless Mr. A., felt that after this 
 there would be some difficulty in teaching his 
 child to obey the ninth commandment and bear 
 no false witness against its neighbour. 
 
 The intense truthfulness and straight-for- 
 wardness of children, when not crushed by 
 fear, or corrupted by precocious deceit, is a per- 
 petual lesson to elder people, who have learnt 
 to disguise their feelings ; as, I suppose, we all 
 must, in degree. 
 
 "Mamma, I don't like that gentleman ; when is 
 he going away?" observed the same painfully 
 candid child, concerning a morning visitor, who 
 had the grace to say politely, " My dear, I am 
 going away directly," and disappear. But then 
 it was necessary to take the matter in hand. 
 
io6 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 And never, perhaps, did the mother feel so 
 strongly that courtesy is a Christian virtue, and 
 Christian charity the basis of all good-breeding, 
 than when she had to explain to her little 
 daughter that it was not "kind" to make such 
 a remark ; that whether we like people or not, 
 whether they are agreeable or disagreeable, we 
 are equally bound to show them civility, since by 
 incivility we disgrace not them, but ourselves. 
 And this without advocating any insincerity, 
 or hypocrisy, or even " company manners," 
 which no child is ever likely to assume, except 
 in imitation of its elders. 
 
 To be perfectly true, perfectly just, perfectly 
 loving to our children, is the only way of teach- 
 ing them to be the same to other people. The 
 very tone of voice, the turn of phrase, the trick 
 of manner of their elders and (so-called) su- 
 periors are often imitated by them with such 
 a frightful accuracy that it is necessary to be 
 continually on our guard. One sees one's 
 own reflection in these awful little people as 
 startlingly as if one were living in a room of 
 looking-glasses. And therein lies the continual 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 107 
 
 education which, whether or not the parent 
 gives to the child, the child unconsciously gives 
 to the parent. Happy he who is clear-sighted 
 enough to read the lesson, and wise enough to 
 profit thereby. 
 
 On this head let me suggest, that if the 
 children miss much, the parents miss more, by 
 the fashion — exacted, I suppose, by the ever- 
 growing luxuriousness of our middle classes — 
 of keeping children so much in the nursery, 
 and under an array of nursemaids. Yet I have 
 heard very sensible mothers advocate this ; 
 declaring that it " rests " the little brain to 
 be left to the company of servants. 
 
 Our neighbours across the Channel think 
 differently. In French domestic life — provincial 
 life, for France is even more distinct from Paris 
 than England from London — in that cheerful, 
 affectionate, happy home life which is, I believe, 
 far commoner with them than with us, one of 
 the brightest and most wholesome elements is 
 the children. They have no nursery, and, after 
 the very earliest infancy, they have no bonne. 
 The little people are always with the big people 
 
io8 
 
 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 — father and mother, grandfather and grand 
 mother — for the French household is often made 
 up of several generations. As soon as they can 
 sit at table, they take their place there ; in the 
 salon they are as welcome as in the salle-a- 
 manger ; and thus, unconsciously brought into 
 training by the good manners of those about 
 them, they learn to be little ladies and gentle- 
 men almost before they can speak. 
 
 "But," I have heard people argue, "how can 
 you possibly have children always beside you ? 
 As babies you might, if you could put up with 
 the trouble of them ; but when they grow older 
 it would be so very awkward. For their own 
 sakes even, you ought not to let them hear their 
 elders' conversation." 
 
 What an admission ! Does it occur to any of 
 these arguers that, except in very rare and 
 solemn instances, the talk which is unfit for the 
 ears of children ought never to be talked at all ? 
 For what does it usually consist of r Criticizing 
 one's neighbours ; sneering at one's friends ; 
 ridiculing behind their backs those whom we 
 praise to their faces ; telling secrets which 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 109 
 
 ought never to be told ; making bitter, or 
 equivocal, or ill-natured remarks, which we 
 are afraid to hear repeated. If so, to keep 
 our children always in the room would be a 
 very wholesome discipline, making us much 
 better folks than some of us are now. 
 
 Not that I by any means wish to take a 
 sentimental or picturesque view of the rising 
 generation. It is often a very aggravating 
 generation indeed. Without any actual naugh- 
 tiness, the restlessness which is natural to a 
 child — indeed, a portion of its daily growth — is 
 most trying to elder people, who have come to 
 feel the intense blessedness of mere rest. And 
 when it becomes worse than recklessness — 
 actual wilfulness and mischievousness — even 
 the strongest opponents, theoretically, of cor- 
 poral chastisement, will at times feel their 
 fingers tingling with an irresistible inclination 
 to box their darling's ears. 
 
 The more reason, therefore, that they should 
 restrain themselves, and not do it. For punish- 
 ment is not for the good of the punisher, but 
 the punished ; and no punishment inflicted in a 
 
no HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 moment of irritation can ever be of the small- 
 est good to either side. 
 
 And this brings us to a widely discussed 
 question ; — whether corporal punishment should 
 ever be inflicted on children. For me, I answer 
 decidedly, Never ! 
 
 My reasons are these. To the very young — 
 the eleven months' old infant, for instance — 
 such a chastisement is simply brutal ; to a child 
 old enough to understand the humiliation of it, 
 a whipping can rarely do good, and may do 
 incalculable harm. Besides, the degradation 
 rests not alone with the child. A big creature 
 beating a little one is always in a position very 
 undignified, to say the least of it. Also, there 
 is a certain difficulty in making the victim 
 comprehend, that the same line of conduct 
 which his parents exercise towards him is 
 utterly forbidden him to exercise towards his 
 younger brothers and sisters. 
 
 It is possible, I grant, that there may be 
 cases of actual moral turpitude — lying, theft, 
 and the like — when nothing short of physical 
 punishment will affect the culprit, and the 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. in 
 
 parent has to stand forth as the stern adminis- 
 trator of justice ; but it must be clearly shown 
 to be justice, not revenge. I have known men 
 so self-controlled, so tender, and withal so 
 unswervingly just, that the inevitable whipping 
 being inflicted, and submitted to, with a mourn- 
 ful solemnity, the instant it was over the boy's 
 arms were round the father's neck, and both 
 wept together. But such cases are so excep- 
 tional, that they cannot be taken as a guide. 
 The ordinary rule is, that when a child is bad 
 enough to deserve a whipping, the infliction of 
 it will likely only harden him ; and if he does 
 not deserve it, his whole nature will revolt in 
 fury at the punishment. 
 
 I shall never forget once seeing a small 
 boy of ten, the inheritor of his father's violent 
 temper, whom that father, for some trivial 
 fault, seized and struck. The little fellow raised 
 himself on tiptoe, and, doubling his small fist, 
 with all his might and main struck back again. 
 A proceeding which so astonished the father — 
 who, like all tyrants, was rather a coward — that 
 he shrank back, and retired from the field. He 
 
 j 
 

 ii2 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 hated his boy ever after, but he never more 
 attempted to thrash him. 
 
 You will perceive I hold that, in the trainin 
 of the young, example is everything, precept 
 almost nothing. Half the good advice we give, 
 certainly more than half of our scolding, just 
 "goes in at one ear and out at the other." 
 The continual reproach of, " You naughty 
 child!" the seldom-fulfilled threat of, "I'll 
 punish you ! " come in time to fall quite harm- 
 less upon hardened ears. But a child to whom 
 fear is absolutely unknown — as unknown as 
 punishment — whose naughtiness is met solely 
 by silence, feels this silence alone to be the 
 most terrible retribution for ill-doing. The 
 withdrawal of the parent's smile is to it like 
 the hiding of God's face. " Oh, mamma, don't 
 look so ! I can't bear it. It kills me ! " is 
 the cry of such a child, falling on its bended 
 knees in an agony of contrition and tears. 
 
 It is not the preaching, not the teaching, not 
 the continual worry of, " Don't do that ! " " Why 
 didn't you do this ?" which makes children what 
 we call " good " children ; that is, honest, truth- 
 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 113 
 
 ful, obedient ; troublesome, perhaps — all chil- 
 dren are troublesome — but guilty of no mean- 
 ness, deceitfulness, or wilful mischievousness. 
 It is the constant living example of those they 
 are with. They get into the habit of being 
 "good," which makes this line of conduct so 
 natural that they never think of any other. 
 
 And here we come upon another moot ques- 
 tion ; — whether or not there should be exacted 
 from children blind obedience ? Sometimes, 
 perhaps ; there may be cases where such is 
 the only safety. But ordinarily speaking, 
 while, as I have said, a child's first lesson 
 should be trained into that implicit reliance 
 on the parent which of necessity induces obe- 
 dience, I think the parent ought to be exceed- 
 ingly cautious how he exacts this obedience 
 without giving a sufficient reason for it. At 
 an incredibly early age the reasoning powers 
 of a child can be developed, if the parent will 
 take a little trouble to do it ; and how very- 
 much trouble it saves afterwards he will soon 
 find out. Three words of gentle explanation — 
 "Don't do that, my child, because," &c, &c. 
 
 I 
 
ir 4 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 — will give him a stronger influence, a com- 
 pleter authority, over the little mind than any 
 harshly iterated, unexplained prohibitions. And 
 the good of this works both ways ; while it 
 gives the child confidence in the parent, it 
 teaches the parent his most difficult part, to 
 exercise authority without tyranny. That bar- 
 baric dictum, "Do this, because I choose it," 
 becomes softened into the Christian command, 
 " Do this, because I wish it," or the still higher 
 law, "because it is right." I have never yet 
 known a child " naughty " enough deliberately 
 to refuse to do a thing, when asked to do it 
 simply on the ground " that it was right." 
 
 This, again, leads us to a point upon which I 
 think many, nay, most parents grievously err — 
 the system of rewards and punishments. It is 
 like bringing into innocent child-life that ter- 
 rible creed which makes religion consist, not in 
 the love of God, and the obeying Him because 
 we love Him, but in finding out the best and 
 easiest way to take care of ourselves — to keep 
 out of hell and get into heaven. 
 
 A principle which, put thus into plain English, 
 
 
 
IN THE WAV HE SHOULD GO. j 15 
 
 we start at, yet whether or not believing in it 
 ourselves, we practise it fatally with our children. 
 " Do this, and I'll give you such and such a 
 thing." "Dare to do that, and I will take from 
 you so and so, which you delight in." A method 
 which, like some forms of theology, may be con- 
 venient and effective at the time, but which after- 
 wards is most ruinous, inasmuch as it entirely 
 abrogates that doctrine upon which I base the 
 whole mutual training of parents and children 
 — the doctrine of absolute right for right's sake. 
 
 For how, if you have brought up young 
 creatures on the principle of " Behave well, and 
 you shall have a sweetie " — " Behave ill, and I'll 
 whip you or send you to bed," can you follow 
 it out by teaching your growing boy or girl to 
 " eschew evil and do good " purely for the love 
 of good and the hatred of evil ? How, above all, 
 can you put into their hearts the love of God, 
 when in after-life He hides His face in so many 
 dark ways — when His teachings seem often so 
 mysterious, nay, cruel — except by saying, " Love 
 Him because He is perfect Love — adore Him, 
 because He is absolute justice " ? 
 
n6 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 Next to that justice, which is, I believe, a 
 heavenly instinct with almost all young chil- 
 dren, their strongest need, and the most 
 powerful influence with them, is sympathy. 
 And this the wise parent will give at all times 
 and under all circumstances. A child accus- 
 tomed to find in the mother s bosom a perpetual 
 refuge, to bring there all its little woes — so 
 small to us, to it so large — to get answers to all 
 its questions, interest in all its discoveries, sym- 
 pathy in all its amusements ; over a child so 
 trained the influence of the mother is enormous, 
 nay, unlimited. What a safeguard to both ! not 
 only in childhood, but in after-years. To feel 
 that she is an absolute providence to her child — 
 that from babyhood it has clung to the simple 
 belief that mamma must be told everything, and 
 can right everything. What an incalculable 
 blessing ! lasting till death, and after — the re- 
 membrance of a mother from whom the child 
 has never received anything but love! 
 
 Love, the root of sympathy, is the most power- 
 ful agent in the bringing up of children. Not 
 mere caresses ; yet these are not to be despised, 
 
IN THE WAV HE SHOLLD GO. 111 
 
 as being "the outward and visible sign of an 
 inward and spiritual grace." The earliest develop- 
 ment of our nature is so entirely objective rather 
 than subjective, practical rather than ethical, 
 that a kiss or a cuddle at all times is a much 
 more potent agent in moral education than stern 
 elder folk believe. Love, not in word only, but 
 in action ; love, ever at hand to remove small 
 evils, to lessen great ones ; to answer all ques- 
 tions, and settle all difficulties ; to be a refuge in 
 trouble, a sharer in joy, and a court of appeal 
 where there is always certainty of sympathy 
 if not redress ; this is the sort of thing which 
 gives to parents their highest, noblest influence 
 — beginning with birth and ending only with 
 the grave. 
 
 An influence which alone can knit anew the 
 parental and filial tie at the time — and this time 
 comes in all lives — when it is so apt to loosen ; 
 I mean when the child, which at first had 
 seemed a mere mirror reflecting the objects 
 placed before it, develops into an individual 
 character, sometimes a character as different 
 as possible from both father and mother. 
 
n8 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 This is a hard crisis, common though it be. 
 Fathers who see their boys growing up without 
 a single habit or taste resembling their own, 
 mothers who perplexedly trace in their young 
 daughters some type of womanhood totally dis- 
 tinct from, and perhaps very distasteful to, them- 
 selves, are surely much to be pitied. But so are 
 the children, especially those who, with their 
 originality, impetuosity, and passionate impulses 
 after unknown good, have all the ignorance of 
 youth concerning the known good —the patience, 
 the wisdom, the long-suffering, which is, or 
 ought to be, the strongest characteristic of 
 parents. 
 
 It has been learned by them through years of 
 sore teaching. That perpetual self-denial, which, 
 as I have said, begins at the very cradle — that 
 habit of instinctively thinking, in all things 
 great and small, not of their own pleasure, not 
 even of their child's pleasure, but of that child's 
 ultimate good — has been in all parents who really 
 deserve the name a training they can never 
 forget. It helps them now, in this difficult time, 
 which, I repeat, comes soon or late in almost all 
 
IN THE WAF HE SHOULD GO. ng 
 
 families ; when there is a grand clashing of 
 rights and conflict of duties, occasionally ending 
 in a general upbreaking of both. 
 
 A child's first rights are, I have said, plain 
 enough ; as plain as the parent's duties. After- 
 wards they become less clear. The extent to 
 which a parent should put up with a child, or a 
 child withstand a parent, is most difficult to de- 
 cide. Equally difficult is it to say how far both 
 are right or both wrong, in the sad season when 
 one side becomes exacting and the other care- 
 less ; when, despite all outward show of respect 
 and affection, the father feels indignantly that 
 his influence over his boys is almost nothing, 
 and the mother, with a sharp pang at her heart, 
 which she vainly tries to hide, is conscious that 
 her young daughter, who for twenty years has 
 been the delight of her eyes, prefers being the 
 delight of other eyes, and, though very kind to 
 her, finds her — just a little uninteresting. 
 
 The time — it must come to us all — when we 
 cease to be a sort of lesser providence to our 
 children, who cease in their turn to look up to 
 us and lean all their troubles upon us ; when 
 
i2o HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 they begin to think and act for themselves, and, 
 quite unconsciously perhaps, put us a little on 
 one side as old, and odd, and out of date; un- 
 questionably this is a bitter climax to our years 
 of patient love. Yet it is but a portion of the 
 training — usually the highest and best training 
 we ever get — which God gives to us through 
 our children. And it is not impossible to be 
 passed through, and safely, too, on both sides ; 
 especially in families which have been brought 
 up on the principle I have before upheld — of 
 absolute right, to be followed without regard to 
 either benefit or injury, pleasure or pain. 
 
 The doctrine with which I started — of the 
 child's claims upon the parent being far 
 stronger than those of the parent upon the 
 child — teaches us, to the very last, at least tole- 
 rance. If our sons resist us in choosing a 
 career, or, still worse, in choosing companions 
 that we believe will ruin that career — if our 
 daughters will go and fall in love with the last 
 men in the world we would have desired for their 
 husbands — well, why is this r These young souls 
 were given to us apparently an absolute blank 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 121 
 
 page, upon which we might write what we chose. 
 We have written. It is we who have formed their 
 characters, guided their education, governed 
 their morals. Everything they are now we have 
 or are supposed to have made them ; at least, 
 we once thought we should be able to make 
 them. If they turn out well we shall assuredly 
 take the credit of it ; if they turn out ill — what 
 say we then ? That it is their fault, or ours ? 
 
 As a general rule, if, as soon as time has 
 enabled our sons and daughters to escape out of 
 our authority, they escape out of our influence 
 also — if, having ceased to rule, we have no power 
 to guide — there must be something wrong some- 
 where ; somebody has been to blame. Can it 
 possibly be ourselves ? 
 
 The system that prevention is better than 
 cure, is infallible with little children — no one 
 doubts that. Any parents who for want of 
 rational precaution allowed their children to fall 
 into the fire or the water, or to do one another 
 some serious bodily harm, would be stigmatized 
 as either wicked or insane. Yet, when the 
 young people are growing up — and just at the 
 
22 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 most critical point of their lives — how often do 
 these parents shut the stable door after the steed 
 is stolen ! 
 
 " Sir," said a shrewd old gentlemen, when 
 questioned as to the character of one of his 
 guests — " Sir, do you think I would ever let a 
 young man inside my doors who was not fit to 
 marry my daughter?" 
 
 And the same principle might apply to sons : 
 not only as to their marriage — which is a later 
 affair, and one which after all they must settle 
 for themselves — but as far as possible with regard 
 to their ordinary associates and associations. 
 Even as a wise mother makes her nursery one of 
 the cheerfullest rooms in the house, a wise father 
 will in after-years try to make his house one of the 
 pleasantest places in the world to his grown-up 
 sons — a home from which they will never care 
 long to stray, and to which they will look back, 
 amidst the storms of the world, as a happy 
 haven, where was neither dulness nor harsh- 
 ness ; where the reins of authority were 
 prudently and slowly relaxed, until nothing 
 remained of the necessary absolute control of 
 
IN THE WAV HE SHOULD GO. 123 
 
 childhood, save the tender reasoning — " for your 
 own good, my boy" — which boys so seldom 
 fully prize until they have it no longer. 
 
 Girls too, who may have lovers in plenty, but 
 have only one mother ; perhaps some of them 
 think, or have once thought, that a mother's 
 sympathy and advice is the most intolerable 
 thing imaginable in love-affairs, which gene- 
 rally between parents and children are one 
 long worry from beginning to end. This, even 
 when the end is happy marriage. But how often 
 do we see parents looking irritably or anxiously 
 upon a long string of unmarried daughters, won- 
 dering mournfully what in the world is to 
 become of them by-and-by ? 
 
 And here I must give utterance to another 
 heresy. I think we English parents do not take 
 half enough trouble to marry our children — that 
 is, to give them fair opportunity of marriage. 
 We are so apt to consider them exclusively our 
 own property, and to feel personally aggrieved 
 when they wish to strike into new ground, or 
 form new ties for themselves. Or else we are 
 weary and lazy ; life is not to us what it once 
 
124 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 was — what it now is to them ; we prefer to sit 
 at ease by the fireside ; visitors rather trouble 
 us; we grudge our young people the society they 
 naturally crave for, and in which, rationally 
 guided, they would find their best chance of 
 choice. 
 
 Consequently, our sons often make rash 
 mistakes in marriage — and our daughters not 
 unfrequently do not marry at all. This is no 
 dire misfortune. Anything less than a thoroughly 
 happy marriage is to women much worse than 
 celibacy ; but still it is a sad thing to parents to 
 watch a family of girls " withering on the virgin 
 thorn," with no natural outlet for their affec- 
 tions ; themselves a little soured and their elders 
 just a little disappointed j for no doubt there is a 
 certain dignity in "my married daughter," 
 perhaps as being an unconscious tribute from 
 the son-in-law to the parent of his wife, never 
 attained by the mother of unappreciated old 
 maids. 
 
 If foreign parents are to be blamed for the 
 "arranged" or compelled marriages which we in 
 free England so strongly condemn, I think we 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. .125 
 
 are also to blame when we either deliberately 
 stand in the way of our children's happiness, or 
 tacitly let it slip by, giving them no opportunity of 
 making a rational choice in marriage. Surely it is 
 the bounden duty of wise elders not to ignore 
 nature, but to accept the inevitable cares of 
 " pairing-time/' when the young birds, fully 
 fledged, will desire to leave the nest, however 
 soft it is made ; when that overpowering instinct 
 before which the warmest filial love sinks cold 
 and colourless, will assert itself, ay, and guide 
 itself too ; unless we have strength and self- 
 denial — ah, no end to parental self-denial ! — to 
 forget our personal pain, and throwing ourselves 
 heartily into the young folks' place, succeed in 
 guiding it a little also. 
 
 At best, this love-season is a sad one, since 
 few love-affairs are perfectly smooth and happy, 
 and to see our children suffer is sharper than to 
 suffer ourselves ; especially when we can no 
 longer help them. While they are babies, there 
 is a certain omnipotence about parenthood ; but 
 when the time comes that the child's unfailing 
 shelter is no longer the mother's heart, when 
 
iz6 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 the father's strong right arm of guidance and 
 protection sinks absolutely powerless — then 
 things grow hard. 
 
 Harder still, when, as sometimes happens, 
 the parents' will pulls one way and the child's 
 another. One side or other must yield. It is the 
 last and sorest lesson in the parents' training, to 
 feel that in most cases it is they who will have 
 to yield. 
 
 I do not uphold marriages against the consent 
 of parents. I believe they never happen with- 
 out something a little wrong on both sides ; and 
 when they do happen, they always bring with 
 them their punishment — to both. This, even 
 when things smooth down, as they most often 
 do. But the act itself remains, and the result of 
 it — even as I heard a young daughter lately 
 protest, when her lover was interdicted the 
 house — " Why do you blame me, mamma ? You 
 married papa in direct opposition to your 
 parents." 
 
 And this must sometimes be done. Both 
 the laws of our country, and the honest moral 
 sense thereof, allow it. Abroad, it is more 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 127 
 
 difficult. But here in England, after the age of 
 twenty-one, any young man or woman may 
 deliberately walk out of the father's house and 
 into the nearest church, and be married to 
 whom he or she pleases. But, I think, the only 
 permissible way of so doing lies in doing it 
 thus openly and deliberately, and after all 
 rational submission and persuasion have failed. 
 Such a marriage cannot be a happy thing ; it 
 will be a sore thing in many ways to all parties, 
 as long as they live. But it may be a necessary 
 and not unrighteous thing, and it may turn out 
 a portion of that salutary training which is given 
 us, not by our children, but by heaven, through 
 them. 
 
 Looking at things in this light, we can better 
 learn to bear the griefs and perplexities of 
 that troublous time to which I am referring. 
 It may be lightened, if we take care to keep for 
 our grown-up sons and daughters the same key 
 which unfailingly unlocked the baby-heart — sym- 
 pathy. A broken doll — a broken heart — has not 
 the mother's heart balm for both ? That is, if 
 we still have strength not to think of ourselves 
 
128 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 first, but of our children. Above all, not to be 
 vexed or irritated, as we sometimes are, even at 
 their happiness. For under the most favourable 
 circumstances, what son ever brought to his 
 mother a daughter whom she really considered 
 worthy of him ? And what father ever gave his 
 consent to the addresses of the most unexcep- 
 tionable of sons-in-law, without a secret wish 
 to shut the door in his face ? 
 
 Yes, there may be wounds — there must be ; 
 but they will not be poisoned wounds, if the 
 parents have done their duty. And by-and-by 
 the reward will come, if reward ever does come, 
 as a complete thing, or is ever meant to do so, 
 in this world. Certainly not parental reward. 
 If parents work for that they will fail. " Take 
 this child and nurse it for 'Me " — is God's com- 
 mand concerning every little soul put into life. 
 How few parents either hear, believe, or obey 
 it, He knows. 
 
 Yet the truth remains a truth still, and like- 
 wise a consolation. Even as a young mother 
 sees, and will often have to see, her little one 
 turn from her to some more amusing person, 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 129 
 
 who perhaps is less strict, less wise, merely 
 thinking of her or his own pleasure with the 
 child, and not the child's real good ; so many 
 a mother, well on in years, may have to be 
 taught the sad but wholesome lesson that her 
 children were not merely her children, made 
 exactly after her pattern, and bound to minister 
 solely to her comfort and carry out her wishes, 
 but were also meant to be, so to speak, the 
 children of heaven. If they continue such, liv- 
 ing out their life in righteous and honourable 
 fashion, even though it may not be her life, 
 nor carried out after her fashion — still, she will 
 accept the will of heaven, and learn to be 
 content. The mental training has been gone 
 through ; she has educated her children, and 
 they have educated her; all may not be perfectly 
 smooth and happy, but still all is well. 
 
 Every mother must be in degree a sort of 
 Hannah. She may bring her son his little 
 coat — she may come up to see him yearly in the 
 temple ; but with all that she must give him to 
 God. To give our children up to God, to end 
 with a training totally different from that with 
 
 K 
 
130 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 which we began, to be obliged to recognise 
 our own powerlessness, and learn to sit still 
 with folded hands, resigning them and their 
 fortunes into their own hands —or rather into 
 Higher hands than either theirs or ours — this is 
 no easy lesson for parents. And yet we must 
 learn it — the sharpest and the last. 
 
 No, not quite the last. As said a little girl 
 of six — whose only idea of death was of " going 
 up into the sky," and being made perfectly happy 
 and lovely and good — after being taken to see 
 an old woman of ninety-nine, " Oh, mamma, 
 please don't live to be ninety-nine. You '11 be 
 so ugly !" 
 
 Alas, there comes a time when we know we 
 must be " ugly," more or less ; physically, and 
 perhaps morally too ; when the worn-out body 
 will not respond to the mind, or, maybe, even 
 the mind is wearing out, so that by no pos- 
 sibility can we give pleasure, and may give 
 much pain, even to our best beloved. 
 
 This is a hard time ; nor is it wonderful that 
 parents and children sometimes succumb to 
 it, and the relation, once so sweet and easy, 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 131 
 
 becomes a heavy burden. But there are parents 
 who make it much heavier than it need to be, 
 by their extreme selfishness, their utter want of 
 recognition of the fact that the most duteous 
 child that ever was born cannot live for ever 
 in a sick-room or beside an arm-chair. The 
 younger life has to last long after the elder one 
 is ended. To blight it, even for a time, by any 
 unnecessary ^suffering is a cruelty, which not 
 even the sternest upholder of filial duty can ever 
 justify. 
 
 I have seen parents, not intentionally selfish, 
 who, when old age came upon them, grew so 
 exacting, fretful, irritable, compelled such con- 
 stant attendance, and insisted on such incessant 
 sacrifices, as literally to take the life — or at least 
 all that life was worth — out of their children, 
 whom everybody but themselves saw were being 
 " killed by inches," as the phrase is. Only 
 fancy ! living till one's best friends say with 
 bated breath, " If it would but come to an end " 
 — that is, our life ; as the only means of saving 
 other and more precious lives. 
 
 But this need not be — it ought never to be. 
 
132 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 A little self-control at the beginning, a steady, 
 persistent recognition of the fact that the young 
 are young, and we are old ; they blooming, we 
 fading ; they going up the hill, and we down it 
 — that this is God's will, to be accepted placidly 
 and cheerfully, and made as little trouble about 
 as possible, and we need not fear ever becoming 
 very " ugly." Especially since, as the mother 
 answered that little girl, we need not have much 
 fear of living till ninety-nine. 
 
 But before the " ugly " time there is another, 
 which must be rather sweet than sad — the silent 
 time " between the lights " — when the labour of 
 the day is over, and the rest of the night not 
 yet come ; when the house is empty of little 
 feet and noisy tumultuous voices, and the 
 parents, who once thought they would have 
 given anything in the world for quiet, now 
 have quiet enough ; only too much perhaps. All 
 the obstreperous young flock are grown up and 
 gone away, some into married homes, some into 
 the work of the busy world, some into a silenter 
 world, where earthly work is over. And these, 
 I think, are the only children parents keep for 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 133 
 
 ever. The others come and go, returning to the 
 old home merely for a little while ; but still it is 
 plain to see — often they allow it to be seen, a 
 little too plainly — that the parents' house is their 
 real home no more. 
 
 And so the two old folks — fortunate if there 
 are still two — must learn to sit tog-ether by 
 their silent fireside, remembering that they 
 have but gone the way which their parents 
 did before them, and their children must follow 
 after ; that all is quite natural, quite right, 
 and there is nothing to complain of: only, 
 sometimes, it feels just a little hard. 
 
 Or, it would feel hard, had we not strength 
 to take in that consolation which I have spoken 
 of — that our children are God's children as much 
 as ours — lent, and not given. "Inasmuch as ye 
 have done it unto the least of these, ye have 
 done it unto Me." 
 
 And He never denies us the reward. It 
 comes, in a certain degree, from the very first ; 
 for amidst the endless trouble they give, the 
 almost unbearable trials to patience and 
 temper that they bring, every child brings its 
 
i34 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT 
 
 own blessing likewise. A daily blessing — re- 
 freshing, soothing, cheering — for the com- 
 panionship of an ordinarily good and intelli- 
 gent boy or girl is often better than that of 
 any grown-up person. And the love of a 
 child, its absolute unshaken trust — when it 
 has always met trust for trust, and love for 
 love — how sweet both are ! How perfect is the 
 delight, the perfection of all human delights, 
 of those years when parents have their little 
 flock around them, and watch them grow up 
 day by day, like the Holy Child of Nazareth — 
 " in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with 
 God and man." 
 
 There i°^ a joy, greater than even the joy of 
 a mother over her first-born, or the exultation 
 of a man over the baby-son to whom he hopes 
 to bequeath his honour, his worldly goods, and 
 his unblemished name ; and that is, to have 
 arrived at old age and seen this child, from its 
 own day of birth to its parents' death-day, liv- 
 ing the life they would have it live, carrying 
 out the principles they taught it, and being in 
 every way what I have called "the child of 
 
IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO. 135 
 
 heaven " — God's child as well as theirs. Then, 
 
 all the training, bitter and sweet, which they 
 
 have undergone, and made their child undergo 
 
 — for no parents are worth the name who have 
 
 not strength sometimes to wring their own 
 
 hearts, and. their child's too, for a good end — 
 
 will have been softened down into permanent 
 
 peace. A peace, enduring even amidst all the 
 
 trying weaknesses of old age, all the probable 
 
 sufferings of the failing body and worn-out 
 
 mind ; lasting even to the supreme moment, 
 
 when the aged, dying head rests on the still 
 
 young breast, and the child kisses the closed 
 
 eyes, which, through all anxiety, pain, even 
 
 displeasure, never lost their look of love — never 
 
 till now. And now it is all ended. — No, not 
 
 ended — God forbid. 
 
 There was a parent I knew — one who had 
 been both father and mother to his children 
 (as some fathers can be, and are, thank God !) 
 for nearly half a century. Passing away, in the 
 ripe perfectness of a most noble life, he was 
 heard to whisper feebly, " Adieu, ma fille ! " 
 She sobbed out, " Non, non, mon pere ! " He 
 
136 HOW TO TRAIN UP A PARENT, ETC. 
 
 lifted himself up in the bed, and with the old 
 gleam in his eyes, the old force in his voice, 
 to an extent of which those present had hardly 
 believed a dying man capable, exclaimed, 
 " Non, non. Pas adieu ! — Au revoir ! ' 
 
 And surely if there are any meetings, any 
 reunions granted in the other world, they will 
 be granted to parents and children. 
 
 ****** 
 
 " Train up a parent in the way he should go," 
 was the queer title I gave to this sermon. 
 You may have begun it with a smile ; perhaps 
 you will have ended it, as I do, with something 
 more like a tear. That is just what I meant. 
 Farewell. 
 
Sermon W. 
 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE ? 
 
IV. 
 
 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE ? 
 
 T DO believe that one half the so-called 
 
 * charity' going is, in its results, worse 
 
 than an error — an actual crime. Suppose you 
 
 were to write an essay upon 'The Crime of 
 
 Benevolence ! ' " 
 
 The arch-heretic who suggested this had been 
 spurred on thereto by a recent visit to a very 
 " benevolent ' parish, probably one of the 
 richest and most charitable parishes in the 
 kingdom. It possessed — possesses still, for 
 aught I know — within a very moderate area, 
 not too densely populated, three churches, one 
 chapel, and two iron rooms for mission ser- 
 vices. It had clothing clubs, coal clubs, 
 blanket clubs, provident and work societies. 
 At its parish school an admirable education 
 
Ho BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 could be got for threepence a week. Its penny- 
 readings for the men, its mothers' meetings for 
 the women, gave every opportunity of mental 
 and moral improvement to that class which 
 we patronisingly term " our poorer brethren." 
 In short, everything was done that could be 
 done to make poverty unnecessary and vice 
 impossible. 
 
 Yet, my informant confessed, both abounded. 
 Public-houses stared you in the face at every 
 corner, and were always full — of women as 
 well as men. Consequently, wretched homes, 
 neglected children, young women whom no 
 wise mistress of a house ever thought of 
 taking into her service, middle-aged women 
 whom to employ as laundresses, sempstresses, 
 or even charwomen was hopeless — their cha- 
 racters were so bad. Even the long-suffering 
 clergymen's wives and district visitors, trying 
 continually to do good, were as continually 
 baffled. Nobody having once employed the 
 objects of their hopeless compassion, ever did it 
 again. Charity these people were always open 
 to receive, but the best kind of charity — work — 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 141 
 
 it was useless to give, if the giver wished it to 
 be anything better than a disguised form of 
 almsgiving. 
 
 And yet this place was an El Dorado of 
 benevolence ; where the poor not only got 
 their daily bread, but got it buttered on both 
 sides. An opportune death, or fortunate acci- 
 dent, would bring to the spot half-a-dozen 
 clergymen with prayers and purses, half-a- 
 dozen ladies following with tracts and clothes ; 
 until the sufferers, becoming quite important 
 people, realised fully the advantage of being 
 " afflicted," and continuing to be. One story I 
 heard of a labourer's household, which, deprived 
 suddenly of its drunken head, found itself 
 " assisted" so much, that when it went to church 
 next Sunday in its new clothes, a shrewd neigh- 
 bour declared it reminded her of Mrs. Holland's 
 tale, "The Clergyman's widow, and her young 
 family." And the youngest child being met 
 afterwards, "Yes, ma'am," said the mother, in 
 a whining tone, " I've just been taking Bobby 
 to the doctor, and he orders him wine," with 
 a glance that, meeting no response, dropped 
 

 1 42 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 immediately. But the habit of begging was 
 too strong to be resisted. " Do you think, 
 ma'am," with an additional whine of humility, 
 " you've got such a thing as a pot of strawberry 
 jam for Bobby to take his physic in:' 3 
 
 It is these sort of people who harden one's 
 heart, and incline one to rank our benevolent 
 friends with two other classes, equally injurious 
 — I was going to write obnoxious — the folk who 
 pride themselves on the fact that if they have 
 a fault, it is being too " tender-hearted ;" and 
 those weak fools, the scourge and torment of 
 society, who are politely said to be "nobody's 
 enemy but their own." 
 
 To call benevolence a crime ! To say that 
 benevolent people actually injure those they 
 attempt to aid ! It seems a curious paradox ; 
 but does not experience prove it to be very 
 near the truth ? And why r 
 
 This question is best answered by another. 
 What is benevolence ? Literally, the word 
 means "wishing well," and I suppose we must 
 take for granted that all benevolence really 
 wishes well to its object ; that is, it would 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 143 
 
 rather do good than not, provided the thing 
 costs little trouble. Beyond that — well, let 
 any one of us try honestly, as honestly as if 
 we all lived in the Palace of Truth, to analyze 
 the motive of his next act of charity ; say, the 
 next sixpence he gives to a street-beggar. 
 
 Why does he give it ? First, probably, to 
 save himself pain. It is decidedly painful to look 
 upon distress, and troublesome to be followed 
 down the street with whining petitions for aid. 
 Also, a kind action gratifies our self-love, and 
 makes us generally comfortable ; and to be 
 thanked is more than comfortable — agreeable. 
 So he extracts the coin from his pocket, throws 
 it to the beggar, and goes his way ; but of the 
 various complex motives for this benevolent 
 action, almost all concern not the object of it, 
 but his own self. Except, indeed, the natural 
 motive of all benevolence, for which we ought 
 in justice to give all benevolent people the 
 credit, a- general kindly feeling to their species, 
 and a wish to benefit them rather than do 
 them harm. But the question — just as I argued 
 in relation to self-sacrifice — whether the im- 
 
H4 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 portant element in a gift is the advantage of 
 the donor or the recipient, does not occur to 
 them. 
 
 Not, when the good deed is private and small, 
 like the eleemosynary sixpence referred to : still 
 less when the benevolence is public ; say, a 
 church collection when the churchwarden, our 
 neighbour and friend, is holding the plate ; or 
 a subscription to a charity, in which every- 
 body will see our name, and the sum appended 
 thereto. 
 
 Now I do not mean to be severe upon the 
 many rich people in our rich England, whose 
 purses are always open to public or private 
 charity. They do their duty. Society expects 
 it of them, and they know it does. Besides, they 
 really like to do good, and the easiest w T ay of 
 doing it is through their pockets. Any other 
 way takes such a world of trouble ; and they 
 dislike trouble, — most people do. They give — 
 to anybody or anything — of what costs them 
 nothing, and which they never miss. They 
 enjoy all the credit of doing a generous action, 
 and the burden of really doing it falls upon 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE ? 145 
 
 other people. What matter ? they argue ; it is 
 only division of labour. So others do the work, 
 and they the magnificence. It is so easy to 
 be magnificent, when one is either a spend- 
 thrift or a millionaire. The difference looks 
 very small; only a word, or a few letters in a 
 word ; yet, if we examine it, it is enormous. 
 It is the difference between Benevolence and 
 Beneficence. 
 
 An extravagant person may be as extravagant 
 in his charities as he is in his luxuries ; for 
 charity is, in truth, a sort of luxury. Many 
 a man called benevolent is simply wasteful, 
 and the cause of waste in others ; for to give 
 away money without considering how far the 
 recipient has a right to it, or will benefit by 
 it, is no more an act of benevolence than is 
 throwing down a handful of coppers to be 
 scrambled for in the street. 
 
 Another of the most dangerous and difficult 
 sort of benevolent people are those who are 
 always willing to do everything for everybody, 
 who go about with a long string of proteges whom 
 they are ready to foist upon us on the smallest 
 
 L 
 
i 4 6 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 excuse. These general accepters and protectors 
 of waifs and strays are very troublesome folk. 
 In the first place, because so evenly is desert 
 and deserving apportioned, even in this life, that 
 I believe few people remain waifs and strays 
 permanently, without there being some inherent 
 cause for that condition. Trouble comes g alike 
 to all ; but some deserve it — others do not. 
 Some rise out of it — have the faculty to rise 
 out of it ; others never rise, and apparently have 
 no care or wish to rise- And your carelessly 
 benevolent people refuse to draw the distinction. 
 Even if you draw it for them, they meet you 
 with an avalanche of texts, such as, " He maketh 
 his sun to shine upon the just and the unjust," 
 &c, &c. 
 
 They forget that they are not Providence. 
 Besides, according to them, their proteges are 
 never bad, only unfortunate. Their geese are 
 always swans — in their eyes, simply because they 
 patronise them. Patronage is so pleasant, and to 
 be followed by a little crowd of admirers is so 
 soothing to the benevolent mind. So they annoy 
 us unbenevolent people at their pleasure, by 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 147 
 
 supplying the best of characters to incompetent 
 servants, offering as candidates for important 
 situations persons who have no recommendation 
 whatever for the position, except the need of it, 
 and so on. These are they who entreat us to 
 get published feeble MSS., on the feebler plea 
 that the authors " wish to add a little to their 
 income/' or have experienced reverses, or would 
 like to earn something for a benevolent pur- 
 pose. As if these were any reasons for trying 
 to do what they cannot do, or for others aiding 
 them therein ; since, as a rule, good work de- 
 serves good pay, and will get it ; bad work should 
 get nothing, however great the need of the doer 
 of it. 
 
 But our short-sighted, kindly meaning friends 
 cannot see this. They still keep urging us to 
 employ unsuitable servants, who want our 
 place so badly ; to send our children to a par- 
 ticular school, or to deal at some special shop, 
 not because it is the best school or the best 
 shop, but because "the poor things are so ill off, 
 you see ; it is quite a charity." 
 
 Why are they so ill off? Is there not a cause 
 
148 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE) 
 
 for it r Accidental misfortune will happen to all ; 
 but, as I have said, and the observation of life 
 forces me to believe it more firmly every year, 
 no one ever remains unfortunate, without there 
 being, generally speaking, some recondite reason, 
 some " screw loose " somewhere, accounting for 
 the fact. It may be a hard saying, but I fear it 
 is only too true, that nobody ever becomes a 
 permanent "object of charity/ 5 without having 
 ceased to deserve it. 
 
 This rule especially applies to the large class 
 of which all of us know so many, who are said 
 to live " from hand to mouth," the mouth being 
 usually their own, and the hand that of their 
 friends ; or rather the acquaintances who succes- 
 sively acquire and renounce the title. 
 
 " Neither a borrower nor a lender be, 
 For debt oft loses both itself and friend." 
 
 Itself, because the borrower seldom becomes 
 such till he is in circumstances which make 
 repayment at least doubtful ; the friend, because 
 two friends who have been placed in that posi- 
 tion together rarely recover the old relation 
 entirely. A gift, out and out, is often a real 
 
BENEVOLENCE—OR BENEFICENCE? 149 
 
 pleasure, an exceeding boon ; but a loan, if ever 
 repaid, or very long of repayment, always places 
 both parties in a false position. There is a sense 
 of humiliation on the one side, of being made 
 use of on the other, which creates reserve at any 
 rate, even between sincere friends ; and, if there 
 has been in the transaction the slightest insin- 
 cerity, is fatal in its results. You pity, you 
 pardon ; you regret, you apologize ; but you two 
 are never quite as you were before. Of course 
 there is no rule without exceptions ; still, ordi- 
 narily speaking, they are the wisest people who 
 follow Polonius's advice, and as long as possible 
 preserve themselves from being either borrowers 
 or lenders. 
 
 But there is a form of borrowing and lending 
 which becomes, on both sides, an error so great 
 as to be little short of an actual crime : in the 
 borrower, who borrows without hope or inten- 
 tion of repayment ; in the lender, who does 
 what he is asked to do from no sense of kind- 
 ness, or justice, or even charity, but just " to get 
 rid of the fellow," or from being himself " a 
 fellow that can't say No." Worse sometimes, 
 
150 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 a fellow who, from some business or worldly 
 reason concerning the borrower and himself, is 
 afraid of the consequences of saying No. There- 
 fore he allows himself to pay a sort of black 
 mail to the unworthy levier thereof; hating and 
 grudging, but still paying it, and flattering him- 
 self that it looks like benevolence. 
 
 The cowardice of such conduct is only equalled 
 by its folly. If my friend, so called, writes to 
 me again and again, " Lend me five pounds to 
 save me from ruin," the only rational reply is, 
 " If only five pounds stands between you and 
 ruin, you had better be ruined, and have done 
 with it." To be perpetually stopping up a hole, 
 which yawns the next day wider than ever, is 
 the act not of generosity but of stupidity. Many 
 a man has gone to ruin, the real ruin he first 
 made a pretence of, because some weak, foolish 
 relative or friend to whom he applied for money 
 had not the sense to refuse it at once ; absolutely, 
 remorselessly, at all cost of pain and wounded 
 feeling between himself and his would-be debtor. 
 Better a passing coolness than an enmity for 
 life. 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 151 
 
 They who, for any of the motives here named — 
 motives, you will observe, which affect their own 
 personality more than the borrower's — continue 
 lending to unfortunate people, simply because 
 they are unfortunate, are guilty on three counts : 
 first, towards themselves, for a pretence of 
 generosity which is only egotistic selfishness ; 
 secondly, towards the person they attempt to 
 benefit, whom they do not benefit but rather 
 injure ; thirdly, towards other and worthier 
 persons, whom they lose the power of helping, 
 by having helped unworthy ones. 
 
 For the really deserving neither beg nor 
 borrow — they suffer silently ; while the loud- 
 complaining, ever-greedy applicants for aid, 
 always get the best of what charity is going. 
 I often think that much of the benevolence in 
 this world is poured out like pig- wash : the pig 
 who makes most noise, or who succeeds in 
 getting his two feet in the trough while the 
 others have but one, is the animal who swallows 
 most and fattens fastest. 
 
 That before-mentioned sixpence thrown to a 
 mendicant, only to be converted into gin or beer, 
 
152 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 that five pounds lent to a needy acquaintance, 
 who always has been needy and always will be, 
 because he has not the slightest sense of the 
 value of money, nor the least conscience in 
 obtaining it, or spending it, — these, with a 
 hundred similar cases, are specimens of what 
 I call the crime of benevolence. The donors 
 err, not only in what they do, but in what they 
 leave undone. They may be benevolent in 
 vague intention, but of true beneficence they 
 have not the slightest idea. 
 
 The difference is this. Benevolence consists 
 in mere kind feeling ; doing good certainly 
 sometimes, but in a vague and careless way, 
 and more for its own pleasure than for another's 
 benefit ; giving, because to give is agreeable, 
 but taking little pains to ascertain what has 
 been the result of the gift. The donor has 
 done his part, and that is enough. It may 
 be another heresy, but I am afraid the reason 
 that our charitable institutions are so numerous, 
 and our subscription lists so easy to fill up, is 
 because, of all modes of benevolence, giving of 
 money is the one which involves least trouble. 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 153 
 
 But beneficence does cost trouble. It requires 
 in the individual some rather rare qualities ; 
 powers of administration and patient investi- 
 gation ; clear judgment and capacity for work ; 
 a kind heart, and a cool head, ay, and a hard 
 head, too. The power of saying No, and the 
 will to say it, with a steady, strong, unvarying 
 justice, are as necessary as quick sympathy and 
 ready help. 
 
 Though, in the main, true beneficence aims 
 less at helping people than at enabling them 
 to help themselves, there will always be in the 
 world a large amount of those who cannot 
 possibly help themselves : the sick, the aged, 
 the young, the hopelessly feeble and incapable. 
 It is the more necessary that anybody who can 
 do anything should be left to do it, or taught to 
 do it, for Beneficence is always more of a teacher 
 than a preacher. She would be more prone to 
 set up a cookery-school than a soup-kitchen ; 
 and would consider the building of a row of 
 workmen's cottages, well arranged, well drained, 
 well ventilated, of rather more importance than 
 the erection of the finest church imaginable. 
 
154 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 I think it is an open question how far real 
 beneficence has to do with charity, i.e. giving 
 of money, at all. Secondarily, of course, it must, 
 but primarily. I was once talking with a lady 
 whose name is sufficiently well known, though I 
 will not give it here, and who has done more 
 good in ameliorating the condition of the London 
 poor than all the philanthropists, religious and 
 otherwise, who have flooded the metropolis with 
 their bounty, and left it, people say, especially 
 at the East end, rather worse than they found 
 it, in a condition of expectant pauperism, which 
 is for ever crying, " Give, give, give. 5 ' Now, 
 this lady told me, that during all the years of 
 her dealings with the poor — the very poor — 
 whom she has slowly lifted from the condition of 
 savages, the savagery of London courts and 
 alleys, into intelligent human beings — during 
 all these years, she said, she had never given, in 
 mere charity, one single shilling. Fair pay- 
 ment for fair work, was the principle she in- 
 variably went upon. She planned houses, 
 with every comfort that a working man's 
 family could require, but she exacted from her 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 155 
 
 tenants the weekly rent, and when they did not 
 pay she turned them out ; she found employ- 
 ment for all that would do it, but if not done it 
 was not paid for ; she assisted the women in 
 their efforts to become good housewives, taught 
 them to cook, to sew, to make clothes ; she went 
 from house to house, leaving behind her plenty 
 of good advice and kindly sympathy, but never 
 either a tract or a half-penny. She took endless 
 trouble, ran no end of risks, and exerted an 
 influence, almost miraculous, over her rough 
 community ; but from first to last, she said, her 
 experience was this, " Help the poor to help 
 themselves. Give them advice, instruction, work 
 — mixed with plenty of sympathy. Sometimes, 
 in very hard cases, money's worth, such as 
 clothes or food, but never under any circum- 
 stances give them money." 
 
 Yet this lady is one of the very few philan- 
 thropists who have really met their reward, and 
 seen the work of their hands prosper. Her 
 little kingdom, which she rules with a kindly 
 though most firm hand, is full of subjects who 
 not only obey but love her. She enters fear- 
 
156 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE ? 
 
 lessly into courts and alleys of the lowest class, 
 known hitherto only to the inspector of nui- 
 sances and the police detective ; she commences 
 her reforms, and by-and-by the wild inhabitants 
 are found as decent folk, living in decent dwell- 
 ings, amenable to law, common sense, and 
 kindly feeling. 
 
 Moreover, she succeeds in what almost all 
 charities fail in — she actually makes it pay. 
 She has gained a small per-centage on the 
 money employed, of which she has been so 
 long the wise administrator. And this fact is 
 confirmatory of another axiom of hers, proved 
 by her own experience, that no charity effects 
 so much permanent good as one which is, or 
 soon can be made, self-supporting. In short, 
 such is the necessary mutual relation between 
 the helped and the helpers, the poor and the 
 rich, that the former cease to value what they 
 can get for nothing, and the latter soon find 
 that while they think they are assisting the 
 poor, they are only sinking them from honest 
 independence to weak dependence, from mere 
 poverty into absolute pauperdom. 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 157 
 
 I cannot more clearly describe what I mean 
 by benevolence and beneficence than by putting 
 this lady's work — the work of a lifetime — side 
 by side with that in the "charitable" parish 
 I have mentioned — also anonymously — where 
 money was poured out like water, and the 
 needy had but to ask and to have. Here, on 
 the contrary, nothing was done from charity, 
 everything from justice : the common justice 
 between man and man which makes the la- 
 bourer worthy of his hire, the rentpayer de- 
 serving of a decent house to live in — as good 
 a house of its kind for a mechanic as for a 
 gentleman ; but at the same time exacting 
 from the poor man, in proportion to his means, 
 precisely the same honesty, sobriety, and con- 
 scientiousness that is exacted in the class above 
 him. 
 
 Until " gentlefolk " believe this, and cease to 
 regard their servants, clerks, &c., as inferior 
 beings, from whom nothing is to be expected 
 but a hand-to-hand struggle between rich and 
 poor, employer and employed, as to who shall 
 have the best of it ; until chey give up the system 
 
r 5 8 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 of treating" their dependants as mere machines, 
 out of whom as much work is to be got as pos- 
 sible ; or as brute beasts, for whom no training 
 answers but whipping or feeding, and to whom 
 they may throw their charity as they would 
 throw a bone at a dog, with as little care 
 for the result of it ; — until this state of things 
 ends, there must be always that secret enmity 
 between class and class, that half-concealed, 
 half-acknowledged difference in morals, feel- 
 ings, and principles, which constitute the main 
 difficulty of those who would fain have but one 
 law of right for all, and look upon every man 
 who fulfilled it as " a man and a brother." 
 
 There is another phase of the crime of bene- 
 volence, unconnected with money, which ought 
 not to be passed over; that is the leniency 
 with which some very well disposed people get 
 to look on moral turpitude. Some do it through 
 mere laziness or indifference. " It is not my 
 business ; why should I give myself any trouble 
 about it?" So they shut their eyes to wicked- 
 ness — in their rich neighbour, whom they ask 
 to dinner, though they are not quite sure he 
 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 159 
 
 was too honest in that business transaction of 
 last week ; in their poor domestic, say, their 
 coachman, who they know gets drunk every 
 Saturday night, and beats his wife ; but the 
 lodge is too far off to hear her cries, and, 
 the carriage not being out of Sundays, John 
 cannot drive his master into a ditch. So, since 
 John is a good servant, and knows his business 
 well, the master ignores the whole matter of 
 the drunkenness : to notice it would be so very 
 inconvenient. And Mr. Blank, whose acquaint- 
 ance it would be so awkward to give up, is 
 smiled upon blandly ; until some day he happens 
 to be taken up for forgery. 
 
 Others take their stand upon the divine say- 
 ing, " I came not to call the righteous but 
 sinners to repentance ; " and obeying it in their 
 imperfect, finite way, gradually cease to take in- 
 terest in any except sinners. All the drunkards 
 of the parish, the unwived mothers, the scape- 
 grace children, come to them, and by cant- 
 ing phrases of oft-repeated contrition, and 
 voluble promises of never-fulfilled amendment, 
 coax them out of the benefits that honest people 
 
i6o BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 never get. The greater the sinner the greater 
 the saint is, either really or ostensibly, their 
 permanent creed. They take up with all the 
 scamps in the parish, while the respectable 
 working man — thank heaven, there is still many 
 a one in our England, as honourable as any 
 working gentleman, and often as true a gen- 
 tleman at heart! — has with them no chance 
 at all. 
 
 True, these so-called Christians have always 
 plenty of arguments on their side ; especially 
 the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the "joy 
 in heaven over one sinner that repenteth." But 
 they forget that the prodigal when his father 
 met him was no longer a prodigal; he had 
 forsaken his evil ways, never to return to them 
 more. Also, that the "joy" is supposed to be 
 over a repentant sinner, not a sinner who still 
 remains in sin. Christ, in His divinest charity, 
 never does more for offenders than to pardon 
 them, until they cease to offend. "Go," He 
 says ; " go and sin no more, lest a worse thing 
 happen unto thee." But for those who continue 
 to sin there is, even according to the quoters of 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 161 
 
 Holy Writ — often so egregiously twisted and 
 misapplied — a worse thing ; even as in the par- 
 able of the fig-tree : " Cut it down ; why cum- 
 bereth it the ground ? " And sometimes the 
 kindest, wisest, most Christian act is — to let it 
 be cut down. 
 
 For instance, every one who gives money to 
 a confirmed drunkard or profligate, thereby 
 encouraging him in his vices ; every one who, 
 for any reason, however compassionate, speaks 
 what is called "a good word' 3 for a person 
 whom he knows to be bad, condones sin, and 
 is guilty of the result that follows. His lazy 
 laxity allows these cumberers of the ground to 
 take the life from wholesome trees. And, even 
 as a man who sits with his hands folded, and 
 allows his humble neighbours to wallow in 
 dirt like pigs, saying, "I can't help it; it 
 is not my affair," may one day have to 
 see ghastly fever, bred in those backslums, 
 stalk in at his own front door, and carry off 
 his best-beloved child ; so any one who laughs 
 at error as mere "folly," and puts a plaister 
 upon ugly sin, connives dangerously at both. 
 
 M 
 
i6z BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE* 
 
 He has shirked what was unpleasant ; he has 
 been too lazy to take trouble; he has done 
 his benevolence in the easiest way. He may 
 yet have to pay for his mistaken mercy by 
 being ground under the ever-moving wheel of 
 an unerring justice; justice which, though it 
 does not always reward, assuredly knows the 
 way to punish. 
 
 He is punished, this pseudo-benevolent 
 person. He is eaten up by grasping, needy, 
 ravenous dependants. He has often to stand 
 helplessly by, and watch the widening spread 
 of evils, which he might have stopped at once 
 if he had only had the courage to take hold 
 of vice and slay it with a strong, firm hand. 
 He thinks himself bitterly wronged, and ac- 
 cuses the world of shameful ingratitude : it does 
 not strike him that the world really owes him 
 nothing, since what he did was done to please 
 himself. 
 
 This especially applies to certain people, who 
 for a time may gain much outside credit, which 
 is indeed the thing they most desire, — those 
 who delight in what they call " magnificence/* 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 163 
 
 They it is who always give a cabman half-a- 
 crown when a shilling is his right fare ; who 
 distribute money right and left in gratuities to 
 servants ; who always make the handsomest 
 of presents (especially to their rich friends), and 
 like to head every subscription-list far above the 
 rest. They never think that the cabman they 
 over-pay will grumble at the next person who 
 pays him his right fare, and no more ; that 
 nothing so degrades, or even offends a good 
 servant as to be requited in money for a 
 simple kindness ; that the worth of a gift is 
 nothing — the spirit of it everything ; and that 
 to see your neighbours name down in a charity- 
 list for a larger sum than either he or you 
 can afford, is much more apt to make you close 
 your purse-strings than to open them. 
 
 Your "magnificent" people are in some things 
 worse than the merely lavish, who give reck- 
 lessly of that which costs them nothing ; they 
 give deliberately, for the mere credit of giving, 
 and for their own glorification. The praise of 
 men is mostly their sole aim.. That " cup of cold 
 water ** which the Divine Master named so ten- 
 
1 64 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 derly, would be a drink quite too mean, too dis- 
 creditable (to themselves), to offer unto anybody. 
 It must be the best of wine, in a jewelled goblet, 
 or must not be offered at all. 
 
 Their notions of a present, too (and they give a 
 good many of them), is the handsomest thing that 
 money can purchase. A much handsomer thing 
 than anybody else has given, and something 
 that will make people cry out, "Whose gift is 
 that ? What a very generous person he must 
 be ! " But the suitableness of the present, and 
 whether the recipient needed it or wished for it, 
 is quite another thing. And unless the said 
 recipient, whether pleased or not, pretends to 
 be so, and overwhelms him with gratitude 
 and delight, our " magnificent " friend is exceed- 
 ingly offended. 
 
 Speaking of this matter of giving presents, it 
 is curious how few know how to bestow or to 
 accept one, whether it be a kindly benefaction, 
 from him who does not need to him who does, 
 or a cadeau as the French term it, in their nice 
 distinction of language — a " keepsake " between 
 two people who are equals, if not friends. 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 165 
 
 I remember being much astonished (it was in 
 the simple days of youth, when a good deal 
 astonished one that does not astonish now), by 
 hearing a conversation between a husband and 
 wife, who had just received a present from a near 
 relative whom they did not very much care for. 
 They criticized it, they found fault with it ; they 
 speculated as to what was the person's intention 
 in sending it, and what was to be sent back in 
 return. 
 
 " Of course we must send something, and 
 immediately," said the gentleman, who was of 
 the " magnificent " order ; " I wish we could find 
 out exactly what it cost, and then we could give 
 them back one worth as much and a little over." 
 "Just as much will do, I think, my dear," 
 added the wife, who, like most wives of " mag- 
 nificent " men, was obliged to think of economy. 
 " But we must give something ; they will ex- 
 pect it." 
 
 This expecting something in return for a pre- 
 sent is surely one of the meanest of feelings; 
 yet it is at the root of half the gifts given. 
 Marriage, christening, birthday presents are 
 
1 66 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 made, not because people wish to give, but 
 because they think they ought, and that other 
 people will expect it of them. Gifts irksome 
 to receive, and sometimes actually wrong to 
 offer, as either draining purses already too 
 slender, or irritating those who can afford it 
 hj a kind of feeling that, as everybody knows 
 they can afford it, they must give more than 
 anybody else. If the " happy pair " who exhibit 
 a roomful of such offerings could know all that 
 they subject their friends to, or their friends 
 foolishly subject themselves to, in this matter, 
 they would turn with disgust from most of the 
 presents they receive. I am not sure that it is 
 not the truest kindness as well as wisdom to 
 say point-blank, "I never give anything to 
 anybody." 
 
 Yet a gift is a pleasant thing, rightly given ; 
 most pleasant and dear and sacred, whether its 
 value be much or little, if only it is offered with 
 the heart, and chosen from the heart. Chosen 
 with care and pains, and a tender anxiety that 
 it should be exactly the thing we liked and 
 wanted. It is so sweet to be remembered and 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE ? 167 
 
 taken trouble over, even in the smallest things. 
 But gifts carelessly given— merely to gratify a 
 love of giving, which some people have even to 
 a disease — given without thought of whether 
 they will be useful or not, whether the receiver 
 will care for them or not, are, between friends, 
 often a great vexation ; between strangers, or 
 any who are not exactly equals, a burden of 
 obligation simply intolerable. 
 
 The child, with its innocent sudden kiss, and 
 its earnest, " Thank you so much ! " for a doll's 
 sash, or a penny toy, which it really wanted, 
 comes much nearer the true theory of giving 
 and receiving than hundreds of people who 
 weary themselves in choosing handsome pre- 
 sents, or in returning equivalents for the same — 
 presents which, the instant after they are made, 
 become, like stopped cheques, "of no value to 
 anybody," not even to the possessor. 
 
 These — like the charity which is indifferent to 
 error, and ready to overlook every sin that is 
 not personally inconvenient to itself, as well as 
 the generosity which looks not to the advantage 
 of its object, but its own — these three may all 
 
1 68 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE ? 
 
 go under the head of that sort of benevolence 
 which, if not an actual crime, is a very great 
 mistake and an egregious folly. 
 
 Why? 
 
 Here, again, we come to the root of things. 
 Why ? Because it is content with wishing well, 
 instead of doing well. Because whatever good 
 it does is done, not for duty's sake, for righte- 
 ousness' sake, for God's sake, but merely for its 
 own sake ; to gratify its vanity, to ease its con- 
 science, to heal up its wounded self-esteem with 
 the smooth cataplasm of gratitude. 
 
 But true beneficence never looks for gratitude 
 at all. What it does is not done with a view to 
 itself, but solely for the sake of that other whom 
 it desires to benefit ; and above all for His sake 
 who is the source of all charity. There is a 
 deep truth in the passionate pleading of the 
 Irish beggar : " Shure, sir, ye '11 do it ; not for 
 the love o' me — for the love o' God." Therefore 
 real beneficence, which does all its good deeds 
 for the love of God, is neither vainglorious 
 nor exacting; not easily wounded, and never 
 offended. It goes straight on, doing what 
 
BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 169 
 
 it believes to be right and best, without 
 any reference to what people may say of it, 
 and whether the recipients of its bounty are 
 grateful or not. 
 
 A word about gratitude, which some people 
 seem to think the natural result and reward of 
 benevolence — to follow as unerringly as day 
 follows night. Alas ! they had much better say 
 as night follows day ; for kindly deeds as often 
 end in darkness as in light — at least what 
 seems like darkness to our human eyes. Unless 
 benevolence, like virtue, can be its own reward, 
 it must often rest satisfied with no reward 
 at all. 
 
 What matter ? Of course, gratitude is a 
 welcome thing ; in this weary world a most 
 refreshing thing ; but it is not an indispensable 
 thing. It warms the heart and cheers the spirit, 
 but it has nothing to do with either benevo- 
 lence or beneficence, nor is it the origin or end 
 of either. The wisest people are they, who, 
 though happy to get thanks, never expect them, 
 and can do without them. Such may be de- 
 ceived and disappointed, but they are never em- 
 
170 BENEVOLENCE— OR BENEFICENCE? 
 
 bittered ; because their motive lay deeper, and is 
 higher, than anything belonging to this world. 
 The truly benevolent man is he who, looking on 
 all his charities great or small, says only — in 
 devout repetition of his Master's words — " I have 
 finished the work which Thou gavest me to do," 
 — not that which I gave myself to do, and not 
 that which I did for myself, but that which 
 Thou gavest me and I have done for Thee. To 
 such the answer comes, even as in Lowell's 
 touching ballad of " Sir Launfal :" 
 
 " The Holy Supper is kept indeed 
 In what we share with another's need ; 
 Not what we give, but what we share, 
 For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
 Who gives himself with his alms, feeds three : 
 Himself — his hungering neighbour — and ME." 
 
Sermon IT- 
 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 A RE we, or are we not — our brother's 
 keeper ? That is, to what extent are we 
 responsible for those beneath us, or dependent 
 upon us, or connected with us by any link which 
 gives us power with regard to them or influence 
 over them ? 
 
 This is, I think, the point at issue between 
 those who are called philanthropists, and those 
 others — well, I suppose no one would voluntarily 
 dub himself misanthropist — but those who refuse 
 to " bother ' ] themselves with their brother's 
 affairs ; to whom the question, " Who is my 
 neighbour ? " is as indifferent as the naturally 
 succeeding one, " What have I to do for him ? " 
 — in fact, people who, though they would 
 be much offended if you said so, are of the 
 
174 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 same type as the most respectable priest and 
 Levite who preceded the good Samaritan in 
 passing by him who " fell among thieves." 
 
 A parable often misapplied, since many of 
 the way-laid sufferers for whom our sympathy is 
 demanded are very often thieves themselves ; 
 the weak, the selfish, the unprincipled ; who live 
 by robbing honest people, and by laying on 
 others the burden of their self-created woes. 
 But it is not of them I have now to speak, but 
 of those designated by the word " brother." 
 
 In the first place, who is our brother ? 
 
 There are those who will tell us it is the 
 negro, the South-Sea Islander — the " heathen 
 Chinee ; " whom, as the first of moral duties, 
 we must try to convert — (of course, to our own 
 special form of Christianity, any other being 
 worse than none, which a little complicates 
 matters). Nevertheless, it must be done. And 
 conversion gained, all else will follow. 
 
 Be it so. Let those go proselyting who feel 
 themselves thereto called. There is work 
 enough in the world for all ; innumerable 
 " brothers " — and very few who are fit, in any 
 
MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 
 
 *75 
 
 sense, to be their "keepers." But let not this 
 interesting black or brown brother far away 
 shut out from our sight the white brother who 
 stands at our very door. Stand, did I say ? — He 
 crawls — he grovels — not only outside but 
 actually within our doors. We can scarcely 
 take a step without treading upon him — even 
 though we may shut our eyes to the sight of him. 
 And we do shut our eyes, either intentionally 
 or unintentionally. We prefer looking a long way 
 off — upon objects picturesque and heroic. The 
 " noble savage " running wild in his " native 
 woods " is a much more interesting subject of 
 civilisation than Billy the washerwoman's boy, 
 especially when entering our family as William 
 the boy in buttons. Yet, perhaps, he no less 
 needs the care, and could be developed into at 
 least as good a Christian, and at a somewhat 
 cheaper rate. And the feminine hearts who 
 yearn over the " condition of women in India " 
 would find as worthy an object for their reforma- 
 tory sympathy in Jane the gardener's wife, with 
 six children, living in two rooms upon a pound 
 a week, — or Emma the housemaid, insanely 
 
176 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 spending all her large wages upon dress, and 
 leaving herself not a half-penny for sickness or 
 old age. 
 
 " Charity begins at home " — the old-fashioned 
 proverb used to say. But the peculiarity of our 
 large-minded modern society is that " home " 
 either does not exist, or that it is the last place 
 in the world about which charity ever troubles 
 itself. 
 
 I have been led to this train of thought by 
 two articles which appeared lately in a well- 
 known Magazine, on the much-vexed question of 
 domestic servants. The writers took opposite 
 sides : one defended the lower class against the 
 upper ; protested against the extreme ill-usage 
 sustained by servants in general, and contended 
 for their " privileges," averring that they ought 
 to be allowed full time to cultivate their intel- 
 lects — and that among other refinements there 
 should be a library in every pantry, and a piano- 
 forte in every kitchen. The opposing paper 
 took the mistresses' side — the much-tried, 
 much-enduring mistresses ; and, so far from 
 allowing our domestics any rights would fain 
 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 177 
 
 have reduced servitude to its original mean- 
 ing, and considered servants somewhat as the 
 ancients considered their slaves — an altogether 
 different order of beings from themselves. The 
 first protested loudly that we were all brothers ; 
 though the great point — which of us was to be 
 "our brother's keeper" — was left untouched. 
 The second, so far as I remember, almost denied 
 that there was a common human nature between 
 the kitchen and the parlour. 
 
 Both meant well, I verily believe ; and both 
 had a certain justice in their arguments. But 
 the real truth, as in most contests, lay between 
 the two. Let us consider it a little. 
 
 Few will deny the melancholy fact that the 
 servant question is growing more difficult year 
 by year. Perhaps, naturally so, since every 
 class is rising and trying to force itself into the 
 class above it — a not ignoble aim, if it at the 
 same time educates and fits itself to enter that 
 class ; but it mostly does not do this. Therefore, 
 a continual struggle goes on — a continual push- 
 ing up of heterogeneous elements into the 
 already wildly seething mass — and the result is 
 
 N 
 
178 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 
 — chaos ? Let us hope not. Let us trust that all 
 will settle in time. Providence knows its own 
 business much better than we do. 
 
 Still we must do our business, too, and do it 
 our very best. Anything short of our best is 
 setting ourselves in opposition — oh, how futile ! 
 — to Providence, and consequently to our own 
 selves. He only who works with God, so far 
 as he sees, works for God, and for himself at the 
 same time. 
 
 Those who remember the servants of even 
 twenty-five years ago cannot fail to discover a 
 great change in the whole class — as a class. 
 Far less work is done by each individual ; 
 and far more wages expected. The most faith- 
 ful, intelligent, and clever servant I ever knew 
 began life at thirteen years old, as maid-of-all- 
 work in the family of a gentleman — a poor one 
 certainly, still it was " a gentleman's family," 
 — consisting of himself, his wife, and three chil- 
 dren. Her wages the first year were three 
 pounds per annum. What would be thought of 
 such a "place" nowadays? Yet it turned out 
 not a bad one. The girl was taken literally as 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 179 
 
 " one of the family." The mistress trained her ; 
 the little ones loved her; the eldest daughter 
 educated her — ay, up to a point that even the 
 aforesaid article would approve, for she could 
 read and understand Shakspere, and write as 
 good a letter as most young ladies when they 
 leave school and marry. She never married, 
 but she remained faithful to the family in weal 
 and woe — far more woe than weal, alas ! — until 
 she died, but not until she had served two gene- 
 rations. Her grave has been green now for 
 many a year, yet the last remnant of that family 
 never hears the sound of her name — a very com- 
 mon one, " Bessy " — without a throb of remem- 
 brance too sweet for tears. 
 
 This is what servants used to be, as many an 
 old family tradition will prove. What are they 
 now? 
 
 As an answer I could put forward two illus- 
 trative anecdotes ; of the butler who threw up 
 his place because he had " always been accus- 
 tomed to have a sofa in his pantry," and the 
 parlour-maid who, having accepted a situation, 
 declined to go because she and her luggage were 
 
180 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 to be fetched from the station in a spring-cart, 
 whereas in her last place they had sent the 
 carriage and a footman to meet her. These are, 
 I hope, exceptional instances, but we all know 
 what our own and our friends' servants are, in 
 the main. 
 
 As to dress, for instance. If extravagant folly 
 of toilette were not becoming so common in all 
 ranks, we should be absolutely startled by the 
 attire of our cooks and parlour-maids — on Sun- 
 days especially. And it is so utterly out of pro- 
 portion to their means. Fancy our grandmothers 
 giving Jenny the housemaid to Thomas the 
 gardener to settle down in holy matrimony upon 
 — say a pound a week ; and they are seen walk- 
 ing to church — he in a fine black suit, and she in 
 a light silk gown, tulle bonnet and veil, and a 
 wreath of orange blossom ! Yet such has been 
 the costume at more than one wedding which 
 has lately come under my notice ; and I believe 
 it is the usual style of such, in that class. 
 
 Then as to eating and drinking ; the extent 
 to which this goes on in large and wealthy 
 families is something incredible. Stout footmen, 
 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 181 
 
 dainty ladies' maids, and under servants of all 
 kinds expect to be fed with the fat of the land, 
 and to drink in proportion. It is not enough to 
 say that they live as well as their masters and 
 mistresses — they often live much better ; the 
 kind of fare that satisfied twenty or forty years 
 ago would be intolerable now. Expense and 
 waste they never think of ; they are only comers 
 and goers according to their own convenience, 
 and the more they get out of their "places'' 
 during their temporary stay the better. 
 
 This, too, is another sad change. A house 
 where the servants remain is becoming such an 
 exception as to be quite notable in the neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 "Why did I come after your place, ma'am r '* 
 answered a decent elderly man, applying for a 
 situation as gardener. " To tell you the truth, I 
 heard yours was a place where the servants 
 stayed ; so I thought it would suit me, and my 
 wife too, and I came after it." Of course, he 
 was taken, and will probably end his days 
 there. 
 
 But most servants are rolling stones which 
 
i8z 
 
 MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 
 
 gather no moss. Nor wish it even ; they prefer 
 moving about. They change their mistresses as 
 easily as their caps. The idea of considering 
 themselves as members of the family — to stick 
 to it, as it to them, through all difficulties not 
 absolutely overwhelming— would be held as 
 simply ridiculous. To them "master" is merely 
 the man who pays ; and " missis," the woman 
 who " worrits." That between these and them- 
 selves there could be any common interest, or 
 deep sympathy of any kind, never enters their 
 imagination. Nor, alas ! does it into that of the 
 upper half of the household. If the mistress, 
 with a child dangerously ill up-stairs, is shocked 
 to hear the unchecked merriment in the ser- 
 vants' hall, why does she forget that not long 
 ago she refused to let her cook away to see a 
 dying sister because of that day's dinner-party ? 
 " It would have been so very inconvenient, you 
 know. Afterwards, I let her go immediately." 
 Yes, but — the sister was dead. 
 
 This may be a sharply drawn picture, but I ask, 
 is it overdrawn ? Is it not the average state of the 
 relation nowadays between masters and servants? 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 183 
 
 There may be strict uprightness, liberality, even 
 kindness on the one side, and duty satisfactorily 
 done on the other ; but of sympathy — the com- 
 mon human bond between man and man, or 
 woman and woman — there is almost none. No- 
 body gives it, and nobody expects to find it. 
 
 Why is this ? Or can it be the reason — there 
 ' must be a reason — that everybody declares it is 
 almost impossible to get good servants ? 
 
 May I suggest that perhaps this may arise 
 from the fact of servants finding it so exceed- 
 ingly difficult to get good masters and mis- 
 tresses ? 
 
 By good I mean not merely good-natured, 
 well-meaning people, but those who have a 
 deeply rooted conscientious sense of responsi- 
 bility — who believe themselves to be, as supe- 
 riors, constituted by God, not merely the rulers, 
 but the guide and guard of their inferiors ; and 
 whose life is spent in finding out the best way 
 in which that solemn duty can be fulfilled. 
 
 In every age, evil as well as good takes root 
 downwards and bears fruit upwards. All re- 
 formations, as well as all corruptions, begin 
 
1 84 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 with the upper class and descend to the lower. 
 Even as there is seldom an irredeemable naughty 
 child without the parents being in some way to 
 blame, so we rarely hear of a household tor- 
 mented by a long succession of bad servants 
 without suspecting that possibly the master and 
 mistress may not be altogether such innocent 
 victims as they imagine themselves. 
 
 For it is from them, the heads of the house, 
 that the house necessarily takes its tone. If a 
 lady spends a large proportion of her income on 
 milliners and dressmakers, how can she issue 
 sumptuary laws to her cook and housemaid ? If 
 a gentleman habitually consumes as much wine 
 as he can safely drink — perhaps a little more, 
 though he is never so ungenteel as actually to 
 get " drunk" — how can he blame John the coach- 
 man, or William the gardener, that they do get 
 drunk — they who have nothing else to amuse 
 themselves with ? For their master takes no 
 care to supply anything that they rationally 
 can amuse themselves with, being as indifferent 
 to their minds as he is to their bodies. So that 
 both are kept going like machinery, ready to do 
 
MV BROTHER'S KEEPER. 185 
 
 their necessary work, nothing else is needed, 
 and nothing ever inquired into. They, the 
 master and mistress, are not their " brother's " 
 keepers, — they are only his employers. They 
 use him, criticize him, control him, are even 
 kind to him in a sort of way, but they have no 
 sympathy with him whatever. 
 
 This is apparently the weak point — the small 
 wheel broken — which produces most of the jar- 
 ring in the present machinery of society. The 
 tie between upper and lower classes has be- 
 come loosened — has sunk into a mere matter 
 of convenience. Not that the superior is in- 
 tentionally unkind ; in fact, he bestows on his 
 inferiors many a benefit ; but he does not give 
 it, or exchange it; he throws it at him much 
 as you would throw a bone at a dog, with the 
 quiet conviction, " Take it — it is for your good ; 
 but you are the dog, and I am the man, for all 
 that." 
 
 Is this right — or necessary ? That there 
 should be distinctions of classes is necessary. 
 Rich and poor, masters and servants, must 
 always exist ; but need they be pitted against 
 
1 86 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 each other — the one ruling, the other resisting ; 
 the one exacting, the other denying, to the 
 utmost of their mutual power ? That mys- 
 terious link, which can bind together the most 
 opposite elements, and which, in default of a 
 better term, I have called sympathy — though 
 using it more in the French than English 
 meaning of the word — is altogether wanting. 
 
 Was it always so ? In olden times, when the 
 primitive institution of rude slavery softened 
 into feudal servitude — the weak hiding together 
 under shelter of the strong, and the ignorant 
 putting themselves under the guidance of the 
 educated — undoubtedly the relation was very 
 different. The line of division between class 
 and class was drawn as distinctly as now, and 
 yet the bond was much closer and tenderer. 
 The feudal lord had his retainers, the lady her 
 serving-maids. These she instructed in. all 
 domestic duties, even as he trained his men in 
 the field. The root of the relationship was, of 
 course, mutual advantage ; but it blossomed 
 into mutual kindliness, and bore fruit in that 
 fidelity which is not lessened but increased by 
 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 187 
 
 the consciousness of mutual dependence. The 
 difference of rank was, so far as we can dis- 
 cover, maintained in these old days as strongly 
 as now ; but it was like the difference between 
 parent and child — where the one exercises, and 
 the other submits to, an authority which is not 
 mere arbitrary rule, but wise control and gene- 
 rous protection. 
 
 This, I think, is the point which all shoot 
 wide of nowadays ; the magic charm which 
 nobody can find. They will not recognise that 
 the kingly relation — for every head of a house- 
 hold must be a king therein, nay, an autocrat, 
 since a wise autocracy is the safest and simplest 
 form of government — the regal relation also in- 
 cludes the parental. The Romans understood 
 this in the words " paterfamilias," " mater- 
 familias ; " " familias " implying not only the 
 children but the servants. Is it too startling 
 a theory to assert that the heads of a large 
 household are nearly as responsible for their 
 servants as they are for their children ? and 
 that the servants owe them the same kind of 
 duty — faithfulness, gratitude, loving obedience I 
 
1 88 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 Not blind obedience, but a clear-sighted sub- 
 mission ; which must be won, not compelled ; 
 and can only be won by the exercise of those 
 qualities — the only qualities which justify one 
 human being in being the master of another. 
 This, I believe, is the principle upon which 
 we are constituted "our brother's keeper/' 
 A principle which modern masters and mis- 
 tresses, who take their servants from the nearest 
 register office, and return them thence when 
 they have done with them, will call perfectly 
 Utopian. Did they ever try to put it in 
 practice r 
 
 In the first place, what is their definition of 
 a servant ? A person who will do the pre- 
 scribed work in the most satisfactory manner, 
 for reasonable wages, and, beyond that, give 
 as little trouble as possible. Somebody who 
 comes when convenient, is treated as con- 
 venient, and got rid of also when convenient, 
 to the establishment. If servants " suit " the 
 place, or the place suits them, they stay ; if not, 
 they go ; and there is an end of it. The idea 
 that they "enter a family," as the phrase is, 
 
MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 1 89 
 
 to become from that day an integral portion 
 of it, to share its joys and sorrows, labours 
 and cares, and to receive from it a corre- 
 sponding amount of interest and sympathy, 
 thereby commencing and cementing a per- 
 manent tie not to be broken except by serious 
 misconduct or misfortune, or any of those in- 
 evitables which no one can guard against — 
 this old-fashioned notion never occurs to any- 
 body. 
 
 Hence the rashness with which such engage- 
 ments are formed. The carelessness manifested 
 by most people in engaging their servants is 
 almost inconceivable. The "place" is applied 
 for ; or the mistress applies at a register office. 
 Out of numerous candidates she selects those 
 she thinks most likely ; the " character " is 
 sought and supplied ; if that is satisfactory, 
 all is settled ; and a man or woman, whom 
 nobody knows anything of, is thereupon brought 
 into the family, to hold in it the most intimate 
 relation possible. Of course, such an arrange- 
 ment may succeed ; but the chances that it 
 will not succeed are enormous. 
 
r 9 o MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 This formality of "getting a character" has 
 often seemed to me one of the most curious 
 delusions that sensible people labour under. 
 When written it is almost valueless ; anybody 
 can forge it, or, even giving it bond fide, may 
 express it in such a way as to convey anything 
 but the real truth. Besides, is that truth the 
 real truth ? When we consider the prejudices, 
 the vexations, on both sides, which often arise 
 in parting with a servant, can we always de- 
 pend upon a faithful statement, or upon those 
 who make it ? I have often thought that, instead 
 of inquiring any servant's character, we ought 
 rather to inquire the character of the late mistress. 
 
 Besides, as a rule, a really efficient servant 
 needs no character at all. Such a one on 
 leaving a situation is sure to have half-a-dozen 
 families eager to secure so rare and valuable 
 a possession. A good servant never lacks a 
 place ; a good master or mistress rarely finds 
 any want of good servants. Temporary diffi- 
 culties may befall both ; but in the long run it 
 is thus. Even as — if one carefully notices the 
 course of the world — every man, be he religious 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 19 1 
 
 or irreligious, will come, at the middle or end 
 of life, to the same conclusion as David : — " I 
 have been young, and now am old ; yet never 
 saw I the righteous forsaken, nor his seed 
 begging their bread." Not that all is smooth, 
 or easy, or fortunate ; on the contrary, " Many 
 are the troubles of the righteous ;" but " the 
 Lord delivereth him out of them all." 
 
 And so, to measure small things by great, 
 I believe that, though accidental difficulties may 
 arise, a good servant may drift into a bad 
 place, a conscientious master or mistress may 
 be cheated here and there by unfaithful ser- 
 vants, still, in the long run, things right 
 themselves. No law is more certain in its 
 ultimate working than that which affirms that 
 all people find their own level, and reap their 
 own deservings. 
 
 But to come to practicalities — and yet I believe 
 no practical work is ever done so well as when 
 it has a strong spiritual sense at the core of it — 
 what is the first thing to be considered in 
 choosing one's servants ? I answer, unhesi- 
 tatingly — their moral nature. 
 
1 92 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 "What!" I hear some fashionable mistress 
 exclaim, " trouble myself about the moral 
 nature of John the footman, or Sarah the cook 
 — or even, though they cOme closer in contact 
 with me, of my housemaid, nurse, or lady's 
 maid ? Impossible ! simply ridiculous ! So 
 that they do their work well, and don't trouble 
 me, that is all I require." 
 
 Is it all? You are then content to have 
 about you continually mere machines, the mo- 
 tive power of whose existence you are utterly 
 ignorant of ? What hold have you upon them ? 
 what guard against them ? what guarantee for 
 virtue, or preservative from vice ? Vice which, 
 say what you like, must affect you and yours, 
 sometimes in the very closest way. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the ex- 
 treme foolhardiness, to say the least of it, 
 with which respectable families put themselves 
 at the mercy of strange servants, of whose 
 antecedents they know nothing, or know only 
 that they are capable of doing their allotted 
 work, are " trained parlour-maids," " good plain 
 cooks," and so on. But of their moral charac- 
 
MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 1 93 
 
 teristics, their tempers, principles, habits — all 
 that constitutes the difference between bad 
 people and good, those who are a comfort and 
 help, or else an absolute torment and curse 
 in a household, the heads of that household 
 are in entire ignorance. Yet they expect, 
 besides efficiency in work, all the fidelity, con- 
 scientiousness, and other good qualities which 
 they would have found in a person whom they 
 had known all their lives, who was trained in 
 all their ways, and accustomed to all their pecu- 
 liarities. 
 
 Do they never consider that in this, as in 
 most things, we only get what we earn, and 
 can get nothing without earning it ? That if 
 we want really good servants, we must make 
 them such ? We must bring them up, even as 
 we bring up our children, with the same care 
 and patience, making allowance for the nice 
 distinctions of character in every human being ; 
 and, above all, having the same sense of respon- 
 sibility, though in a lesser degree, that we have 
 concerning our own family. 
 
 To this end it is advisable to take young 
 
 o 
 
194 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 servants, which most people object to. They 
 prefer domestics ready made, that is, made by 
 other people, who have had all the trouble of 
 training them. But these can never suit us so 
 well, or have the same personal attachment 
 for us, as those we have trained ourselves. 
 
 For I hold — strange doctrine nowadays ! — 
 that personal attachment is the real pivot upon 
 which all domestic service turns. It may sound 
 very ridiculous that a lady should try to win 
 the hearts of her cooks and housemaids, and a 
 gentleman trouble himself as to whether his 
 coachman or gardener had a respectful regard 
 for " master." Yet otherwise little real good is 
 effected on either side. 
 
 Without love, all service becomes mere eye- 
 service, or at best a cold matter-of-fact doing 
 one's duty : any attempts at training are al- 
 most useless ; and with already trained and 
 efficient servants, their very efficiency is, the 
 heart being wanting, an unsatisfactory thing, 
 — like being served by the two hands, which 
 waited upon the Prince in the fairy tale of the 
 White Cat. Admirably competent hands, no 
 
I 
 
 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 195 
 
 doubt, but a poor exchange for the bright face 
 and pleasant voice of what children call "a 
 person," and a person that loves us. 
 
 I am bold enough to say that, in a really 
 happy and well-arranged househould, it is abso- 
 lutely indispensable that the servants should 
 really love "the family," and be loved by them. 
 Under no other conditions can the duty which 
 is laid upon us of being our brother's keeper 
 be thoroughly fulfilled. And how is this to 
 be done ? 
 
 " I can't imagine why it is that my servants 
 never take to me," said a very kind but reserved 
 mistress, complaining to another who was more 
 happily circumstanced • " I am sure I mean them 
 well — would do all I could for them, only some- 
 how I never know how to talk to them." 
 
 That is the very reason. Most people never 
 talk to their servants at all. They " speak ' : 
 to them with patronising benignity, they order 
 them, find fault with them, or sharply scold 
 them ; but anything beyond that, anything that 
 brings the two human beings face to face as 
 human beings, such as cordial praise for well- 
 
ig6 
 
 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 doing ; quiet, serious, sorrowful rebuke for ill- 
 doing* ; sympathy in trouble ; and last, not 
 least, an equally quick sympathy in their 
 pleasures and amusements — is a thing un- 
 thought of on either side. Class and class go 
 on their parallel lines, close together, yet 
 eternally apart. 
 
 It is sad as strange sometimes to notice the 
 way in which presumably good people speak to 
 servants, either with a cold, repellent reserve, or 
 a furious unreserve, such as they would never 
 use towards any other. Now he who flies into a 
 rage and insults an equal may be a fool, but he 
 who insults an inferior is worse — he is a coward. 
 Many a gentleman in his stable, and many a 
 lady in her kitchen or nursery, would do well to 
 pause before condemning themselves as such. 
 
 Nevertheless, to " spoil" a servant is as dan- 
 gerous as spoiling a child. In both cases, dis- 
 cipline must be kept up. The head of a house- 
 hold is justified in laying down for it the strictest 
 laws, and insisting that they shall not be broken. 
 Mistresses might with advantage be very much 
 severer than many now take the trouble to be, 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 197 
 
 against waste, over-dressing, over-feeding ; per- 
 quisites, visitors, and all the luxurious items 
 which make servants so expensive — to the 
 family's injury and their own. And, laws once 
 laid down, no alternative must be accepted. 
 " Obey, or you leave my service," is the only 
 safe rule. 
 
 But this strictness is compatible with the ut- 
 most kindliness, nay, even familiarity. A mis- 
 tress who is sure of her own position, and safely 
 entrenched in her own quiet dignity, may be 
 almost a mother to her servants without fearing 
 from them the slightest over-familiarity. Nay, 
 she will not lose their respect by actually helping 
 in their work, or at least showing them that she 
 knows how the work should be done, as was 
 the habit with the ladies of olden time. A 
 cook will not think the worse of her mistress 
 if, instead of ringing the bell and scolding 
 violently over an ill-cooked dinner, she descends 
 to the kitchen and takes the pains to explain all 
 the deficiencies of to-day, showing how they 
 may be remedied to-morrow. And if this is 
 done carefully and kindly, the chances are 
 
198 
 
 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 that they will be remedied ; and a little tem- 
 porary trouble will avoid endless trouble after- 
 wards. 
 
 Fault-finding is inevitable ; reproof, sharp and 
 unmistakable, is sometimes necessary, nay, 
 saluta^ ; dismission, instant and sudden, with- 
 out hope of reprieve or forgiveness, may occa- 
 sionally be the only course possible ; but no head 
 of a household is justified in using towards any 
 of its members one rough, or harsh, or con- 
 temptuous word. The mistress who scolds, and 
 the master who swears at a servant, at once put 
 themselves in a false position, sink from their 
 true dignity, and deserve any impertinence they 
 get. 
 
 " Impertinence ! " I once heard remarked by a 
 lady, a house-mother for many years, "why, I 
 never had an impertinent word from a servant 
 in my life." 
 
 Of course not, because in all her dealings with 
 them she herself was scrupulously courteous — as 
 courteous as she would have been to any of her 
 equals, friends, or acquaintances. She had 
 sense to see that, putting aside the duty of it, 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. i 9y 
 
 one of the chief differences between class and 
 class, superior and inferior, educated and un- 
 educated, is this unvarying politeness. I shall 
 never forget watching an altercation between two 
 London omnibus drivers — the one heaping on 
 the other every opprobrious name he could think 
 of; while his rival, sitting calmly on the box, 
 listened in silence, then turned round to reply, 
 "And you — you're a" — he paused, "you're a 
 gentleman ! ' ; The satire cut sharp. Omnibus 
 No. i drove away amidst shouts of laughter, 
 mingled with hisses ; omnibus No. 2 remained 
 master of the field. 
 
 So, whatever may be the conduct of her ser- 
 vants, the " missis " loses her last hold over them 
 if, however provoked, she allows them by any 
 word or deed of hers to doubt that she is a 
 lady. 
 
 And servants have a far keener appreciation 
 of a " real lady," as they call it, than we give 
 them credit for. They seldom fail to distinguish 
 between the born gentlewoman, however poor, 
 and the nouveau riche, whom only her riches 
 make different from themselves. They are 
 
200 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 sharp enough to see that, as a rule, the born or 
 educated gentlewoman, sure of herself and her 
 position, will treat them much more familiarly 
 and kindly than the other. And this kindness, 
 even unaccompanied by tangible benefactions, 
 what a powerful agent it is ! 
 
 Of course, there are those whom we may em- 
 phatically term " the lower classes/' who seem 
 to consider the upper class not only their 
 keepers, but their legitimate prey. But there 
 are others, over whom gentleness of speech, 
 thoughtfulness in word and act, a desire to save 
 them trouble, a little pains taken to procure 
 them some innocent pleasure, have a thousand 
 times more influence than gifts, or even great 
 benefits carelessly bestowed. 
 
 And here, among the duties of heads of families 
 I would include one, too often overlooked, that 
 of giving their servants a fair amount of actual 
 pleasure. "All work and no play make Jack 
 a dull boy," and the kitchen requires relaxation 
 as well as the parlour. Not an occasional " day 
 out," grudgingly given, and with a complete 
 indifference as to where and how it is spent, 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 201 
 
 but a certain amount of variety and amusement 
 regularly provided. 
 
 The question is, what this should be ; and there 
 each individual family must decide for itself. I 
 differ from that eloquent defender of servants' 
 rights, who would put the pianoforte side by 
 side with the dresser, and mix elegant literature 
 with the cleaning of saucepans ; but I do think 
 that any servant with an ear for music or a taste 
 for reading should be encouraged in every 
 possible way that does not interfere with daily 
 duty. " Work first, pleasure afterwards," should 
 be the mistress's creed, for herself, her children, 
 her servants ; and she will generally find the 
 work all the better done for not forgetting the 
 pleasure. 
 
 Ignorance is at the root of half the errors of 
 this world; errors which soon develop into 
 actual sins. In spite of the not unfrequently 
 given opinion that it is a mistake to educate our 
 inferiors, and that the march of intellect of late 
 years has been the cause of most of the evils 
 from which we now suffer, I think it will 
 always be found that the cleverer and better 
 
202 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 educated servants are, the greater help and 
 comfort they prove in a household. 
 
 And oh, what a help, what a comfort ! " Bet- 
 ter is a friend that is near than a brother afar off," 
 says Solomon. And often, in the cares, worries, 
 and hard experiences of life, far better than even 
 the friends outside the house are the faithful 
 servants within it, who offer us no obtrusive 
 sympathy, no well-meant yet utterly useless 
 and troublesome advice, but simply do what we 
 tell them, or know us well enough to do what 
 we want without our telling ; and by their re- 
 gular mechanical ways make things smooth and 
 comfortable about us, thereby creating an un- 
 conscious sense of repose amidst the sharpest 
 trials. If I were to name the greatest domestic 
 blessing that the mother of the family can have, 
 next to a good and dutiful child, it is a faithful 
 servant. 
 
 But, as I have said before, the blessing must 
 be earned. And even in these days, it is in 
 every one's power to earn it. Even if the present 
 generation has so greatly deteriorated that a 
 satisfactorily trained servant is almost impos- 
 
MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 203 
 
 sible to find, there is always the raw material, 
 the new generation, to work upon. Every mis- 
 tress of a household, every clergyman of a 
 parish, with other responsible agents who form 
 the centre of a circle of dependants, may with a 
 little pains keep their eyes upon all the growing- 
 up girls and boys around them, catch them 
 early, and guide them for good, in all sorts of 
 practical ways. Of course this gives trouble — 
 everything in life gives trouble ; it requires 
 common sense and patience — qualities not too 
 abundant in this world. But the thing can be 
 done, and those who do it will rarely fail to 
 reap the benefit. For it is one of those forms 
 of charity which pays itself — "small profits and 
 quick returns." And though this may be a mean 
 reason to urge, just like the maxim that 
 honesty is the best policy, still there are 
 people in this world who will not be the less 
 charitable for knowing that charity is a good 
 investment. 
 
 It is especially so, when beginning at home 
 it goes on to widen into the circles nearest home. 
 There is a subject which has been well talked 
 
204 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 over in public meetings, well discussed in news- 
 papers, for the last few years, yet remains pretty 
 nearly where it stood, when well-to-do people first 
 began to open their eyes to it — the condition of 
 the poor at their gates. 
 
 The question, Am I my brother s keeper ? is 
 as serious to the rich man with regard to the 
 dependants outside his doors as within them. 
 This, setting aside the question of their spiritual 
 state. I do not hold with those who administer 
 tracts first and food aftenvards ; and I incline 
 to believe that the washing of the soul is very 
 useless until the body has been well treated with 
 soap and water. Each earnest man has his own 
 pet theory for dealing with the spiritual condi- 
 tion of those about him ; but for their physical 
 state, so far as he can affect it, every man is 
 answerable. 
 
 Not in a large way. The great error of be- 
 nevolent people nowadays is that they will 
 do everything largely. They begin far off, 
 instead of near at hand. They will subscribe 
 thousands of pounds for the famine in India, 
 the widows and orphans of a shipwreck or a 
 
MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 205 
 
 colliery accident, the presenting of a testimonial 
 to the widow and children of some notable man, 
 who in most cases ought to have himself pro- 
 vided for his belongings ; but the duty of seeing 
 that the two or three families who depend on 
 them have enough wages to live upon, a decent 
 house to live in, and some kindly supervision 
 and instruction to help them to live a sanitary 
 and virtuous life, is far too small a thing for 
 your great philanthropists. 
 
 Yet if they would manage to do this, and 
 only this — just as every one in a large city is 
 compelled to sweep the snow from his own 
 doorstep — what an aggregate of advantage 
 would be reached ! Each large household is 
 a nucleus, round which gather, of necessity, 
 several smaller ones. Coachman, groom, gar- 
 dener, labourer, outdoor servants of every sort, 
 must all trust for their subsistence to the great 
 family. Thus, every man with an income of 
 from one thousand to indefinite thousands per 
 annum has inevitably a certain number, more 
 or less, of human souls and bodies dependent on 
 him for their well-being. Is he conscious of the 
 
206 MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 
 
 responsibility ? Does he recognise that in this, 
 at least, he is his brother's keeper ? 
 
 In large towns things are different. Though 
 the poor hang festering upon the very robe's 
 hem of the rich, and scarcely any grand street 
 or square but has a wretched mews or back alley 
 behind it, still the gulf between the two is so 
 great that it is difficult to pass it. Then, too, the 
 population is so migratory — here to-day, gone 
 to-morrow — that any lasting influence is almost 
 impossible. The evils only too possible — and 
 rich neighbours would do well for their own 
 sakes not to forget this — are the crimes that 
 lurk, the diseases that breed, in these miserable, 
 homeless homes. 
 
 Some people have been bold enough to attempt 
 a remedy. Some noble, self-denying souls have 
 gone from end to end of these courts and alleys, 
 cleansing and reviving, pouring through them 
 a wholesome stream of beneficence, which God 
 grant may never run dry. For in our large 
 cities this melancholy condition of things is 
 inevitable. All honour be to them who attempt 
 — not a cure, alas ! but even an amelioration. 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 207 
 
 However in the country our landowners and 
 large householders have no excuse for their sins. 
 For years, ever since Charles Kingsley wrote 
 his " Yeast," in which the noble girl, Argemone, 
 dies of a fever caught at the miserable cottages 
 which had been left year after year undrained, 
 unrepaired, a hotbed of disease and contagion, 
 the same thing has been going on in country 
 villages, lovely and picturesque to the eye, but, 
 if you look further, full of all things foul and 
 vile. It is as bad or worse in new-built sub- 
 urban neighbourhoods, where wealthy residents 
 have been so anxious to drive uncomfortable 
 neighbours away that there are literally no cot- 
 tages. The mechanic has to go to his work, 
 or the outdoor servant to his daily calling, miles 
 and miles ; and even then house accommodation 
 is as wretched as it is limited ; several families 
 — not of the very poor, but of people able to 
 pay for decent accommodation, if they could 
 only get it — are huddled together in some ill- 
 drained, ill-ventilated, and worse-built house, 
 subdivided and sub-let to the last possibility. 
 
 As the neighbourhood increases, and with it 
 
208 MF BROTHER'S KEEPER. 
 
 the absolute necessity for a certain number of 
 the poor to serve the rich, their need of house- 
 room increases too. So great is the press of 
 tenants, that rents rise ; grasping builders run 
 up, on speculation, wretched strings of cottages, 
 bran new and taking on the outside — quite 
 " genteel residences " to look at — but within, 
 every conceivable want and abomination. 
 However bad great towns may be, anybody 
 who examines the dwelling-houses of — I will 
 not say the poor, but the working classes — in 
 the country, has good need to turn to all their 
 "brethren" who have money in hand, and ask 
 why, when building " palatial mansions " for 
 themselves, or even stately churches for — is it 
 for Him who expressly says He " dwells not in 
 houses made with hands " ? — they cannot spare 
 a few hundred pounds to build a few decent cot- 
 tages for their humbler neighbours ? Simple, solid 
 cottages, where the wind does not whistle through 
 one-brick walls, nor the rain soak through 
 leaky windows, and the gaudy papering drop 
 off with damp ; where water supply and house 
 drainage do not mingle — even as the respect- 
 
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 209 
 
 able and the vile, the provident and the impro- 
 vident, the sober and the drunkard, are often 
 forced to mingle in these wretched homes. Con- 
 sequently the best-intentioned helper, the most 
 judicious friend, finds it difficult to choose be- 
 tween the bad and the good, the careful and 
 the untidy, those who deserve to be aided and 
 encouraged, and those whom any assistance 
 makes only more helpless and more unde- 
 serving. 
 
 Nevertheless, we are still our brother's keeper. 
 Not our seventeenth cousin — black, olive, or 
 brown — but our brother who lives next door to 
 us, and for whom we ought to do our very best 
 before we go further. Therefore, I say, let 
 every man sweep his own doorstep clean. Let 
 him take a little trouble to use among his 
 immediate dependants all the influence his 
 position gives him. Let him try to make them 
 good, if he can ; but at any rate let him do his 
 utmost to make them comfortable. I have heard 
 it said that a thief is not half so likely to steal 
 when he has got a clean shirt on ; and I believe 
 the master who takes pains to provide his ser- 
 
 P 
 
2 1 o MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 
 
 vants with decent houses, safe from malaria, 
 free from overcrowding — nay, who even con- 
 descends to look in and see that everything is 
 neat and convenient, taking an interest in the 
 papers on the walls and the flowers in the 
 gardens — would soon cease to complain that 
 they wasted or peculated his substance, or 
 spent their own in the skittle-ground and the 
 taproom. 
 
 But in this matter no absolute laws can be 
 laid down, no minutiae particularised. The sub- 
 ject is so wide, and each case must be judged 
 on its own merits. Every man and woman 
 must decide individually how far fortune has 
 constituted them their brother's keeper, and to 
 what extent they are fulfilling that trust. How 
 it should be fulfilled they alone can tell. It 
 lies between them and their consciences ; or, to 
 speak more solemnly, between them and their 
 God. 
 
 " Those whom Thou hast given Me," said 
 the divinest Master that ever walked this earth, 
 of the men who instinctively called Him by that 
 name. And though in this cynical generation it 
 
MY BROTHER 'S KEEPER. 1 1 1 
 
 may provoke a smile, the mere notion that our 
 hired servants, our followers and dependants, 
 are given to us by God that we may be His 
 agents in guiding and helping them, still 
 the fact, if it be a fact, remains the same, 
 whether we believe it or not. And I think it 
 would be a consolation at many a deathbed — 
 deathbeds watched and soothed by some long- 
 tried, faithful servant, and oftentimes only a 
 servant — to look back through the nearly ended 
 life upon a few waifs and strays rescued, a 
 few young souls guided in the right way, suf- 
 ferers saved from worse suffering, honest " bro- 
 thers" and sisters helped, strengthened, and 
 rewarded. The world may never know it, for 
 it is a kind of beneficence which does not show 
 outside ; but I can imagine such a man or 
 woman — master or mistress — echoing without 
 any pride, but with a sort of thankful gladness, 
 the momentous words, " Those that Thou gavest 
 me I have kept : and none of them is lost." 
 
^etmon F£ an* Hast. 
 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
VI. 
 
 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 T SHOULD premise of this sermon, that it is 
 not a very cheerful one, nor meant for the 
 very young. They, to whom joy seems as inter- 
 minable as sorrow, at the time, will neither 
 listen to it nor believe it. But their elders, who 
 may have experienced its truth, and had 
 strength to accept it as such, may find a certain 
 calm even in its sadness. For these I write ; 
 not those, until in their turn they have proved 
 the same. 
 
 " Gather up the fragments which remain, that 
 nothing be lost." So once said the Divine Mas- 
 ter, after feeding His hungering five thousand. 
 How often, even without relation to the circum- 
 stances under which they were first uttered, 
 do the mere words flash across one's mind, 
 
216 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 in various crises of life ; words full of deep 
 meaning — solemn with pathetic warning. 
 
 For to how few has existence been anything 
 like perfect, leaving no fragments to be gathered 
 up ? Who can say he has attained all his 
 desires, fulfilled all his youth's promises ? looks 
 back on nothing he regrets, nor desires to add 
 anything to what he has accomplished ? 
 
 How many lives are, so to speak, mere relics 
 of an ended feast, fragments which may be either 
 left to waste, or be taken up and made the most 
 of. For we cannot die just when we wish it, 
 and because we wish it. The fact may be very 
 unromantic, but it is a fact, that a too large 
 dinner or a false step on the stairs kills much 
 more easily than a great sorrow. Nature com- 
 pels us to live on, even with broken hearts, as 
 with lopped-off members. True, we are never 
 quite the same again ; never the complete 
 human being ; but we may still be a very re- 
 spectable, healthy human being, capable of 
 living out our threescore years and ten with 
 tolerable comfort after all. 
 
 Of course this is very uninteresting. It is 
 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 217 
 
 not the creed of novels and romances. There 
 everybody is happy and married, or unhappy 
 and dies. A cynic might question whether, in 
 his grand solution of all mundane difficulties, to 
 transpose the adjectives, retaining the verbs, 
 would not be much nearer the truth ; since death 
 ends our afflictions, and marriage very often 
 begins them. But your cynics are the most 
 narrow- vision ed of all philosophers. Let them 
 pass ! Safer and better is it to believe that 
 every one may, if he chooses, attain to a cer- 
 tain amount of happiness, enough to brighten 
 life and make it, not only endurable, but nobly 
 useful, until the end. But entire felicity is the 
 lot of none, and moreover was never meant 
 to be. 
 
 Until we have learnt to accept this fact 
 reverently, humbly, not asking the why and 
 wherefore, which we can never by any possi- 
 bility find out ; until then, our soul's education, 
 the great purpose of our being in the body at 
 all, is not even begun. We are still in the 
 A B C of existence, and many a bitter tear 
 shall we have to shed, many an angry fit of 
 
2 1 8 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS, 
 
 resistance to both lessons and Teacher, many a 
 cruel craving after sunshiny play and deli- 
 cious laziness, will be our portion, till we are 
 advanced enough to understand why we are 
 thus taught. 
 
 It is curious, if it were not so sad, to 
 notice how many years of fruitful youth we 
 spend less in learning than in wondering why 
 we are compelled to learn, why we cannot 
 be left to do just as we like, having every- 
 thing to enjoy and nothing to suffer. For, 
 whether we confess it or not, most of us start 
 in life with the conviction that Providence 
 somehow owes us a great debt of felicity, and 
 if He does not pay it, there must be something 
 radically wrong, not with ourselves, of course — 
 in youth the last person we doubt is ourself — 
 but with the whole management of the universe. 
 " Here I am/' the young man or maiden soli- 
 loquises. " I wish to be happy ; it is Heaven's 
 business to make me happy — me individually, 
 without reference to the rest of the world, and 
 whether or not I choose to obey the laws laid 
 down for the general good. I am I : every 
 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 219 
 
 blessing sent me I take as my right; every 
 misfortune that befalls me is a cruelty or an 
 injustice." 
 
 Odd as this reads, put so plainly, still I be- 
 lieve it is, if they will seriously examine them- 
 selves, the attitude that most young people take 
 towards Providence, and the world in general, 
 while they are still young. 
 
 A comfortable doctrine, but having one fault, 
 in common with many other doctrines conceived 
 out of the arrogant egotism of the human heart 
 — it is not true. 
 
 " This God is our God," exclaims the Psalmist, 
 adding, joyfully, " He will be our guide unto 
 death/' Ay, but He will also be the guide of 
 millions more, equally His children, with whom 
 we must take our lot ; every minute portion of 
 His creation being liable to be made subservient 
 to the working of the whole. A working which, 
 if not entirely by chance and for evil, must 
 necessarily be by design, and for the general 
 good of the whole. Any other theory of happi- 
 ness strikes a blow at the root of all religious 
 faith — the sense of a Divine Fatherhood, not 
 
220 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 limited or personal, but unlimited and uni- 
 versal. 
 
 For it is God's relation to us, not ours to Him, 
 which is the vital question. The great craving 
 of humanity is — we want a God to believe in. 
 What He wants with us, or does with us, is a 
 secondary thing; being God, He is sure to do 
 right. I have sometimes smiled to hear deeply 
 religious people bless the Lord " for saving my 
 poor soul." Why, that is the very last thing 
 a creature, with a spark of His nature dwelling 
 in it, would dream of blessing Him for ; or that 
 He would accept as a fit thanksgiving. Espe- 
 cially if that salvation involved, as it usually 
 does, the supposed condemnation of unknown 
 millions, including many dear friends of the 
 devout thanksgiver. That all religion should 
 consist merely in the saving of one's own indivi- 
 dual soul ! Such a creed is simply the carrying 
 out spiritually of that much-despised sentiment, 
 "self-preservation is the first law of nature;" 
 and the followers of it are as purely selfish as 
 the wrecked sailor, who, seizing for himself a 
 spar or a hencoop — -nay, let us say at once, a 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 221 
 
 comfortable boat — calmly watches all his mates 
 go down. For this, plainly put, is the position 
 of many an earnest worshipper towards his self- 
 invented God. But what a worshipper ! and 
 oh, not to speak it profanely, what a God ! 
 
 You will perceive, this sermon is clearly " out 
 of church/' and would put me outside the pale of 
 many churches. Not, I trust, outside that of 
 the church invisible, spread silently over the 
 whole visible world. Because " Gather up the 
 fragments" is a text which it is useless for me to 
 preach upon, or you to listen to, unless we both 
 have a strong spiritual sense — a conviction of the 
 nothingness of all things human, except those 
 which bind the soul to its Maker, which we 
 call religious faith. And though I am far from 
 believing that the present world is nothing, and 
 the world to come everything; that we are to 
 console ourselves for every grief, and repay our- 
 selves for every resignation, by the idea that 
 thereby we somehow or other make God our 
 debtor, ready to requite us in another existence 
 for all we have lost, or wilfully thrown away, 
 in this ; still, it is hopeless either to teach or 
 
222 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 learn the difficult lesson, which, in plain words, 
 I may call " making the best of things/' with- 
 out a firm trust, first in His love who bids us do 
 it, secondly in our own duty of obedience to His 
 paramount will, in great things and small, 
 simply because it is His will, whether we under- 
 stand it or not. 
 
 Therefore, I am no heretic, though I may say 
 things that make orthodoxy shudder; perhaps 
 because it has a secret fear that they may be 
 true after all. 
 
 These " fragments " of lives — how they strew 
 our daily path on every side ! Not a house do 
 we enter, not a company do we mix with, but 
 we more than guess — we know — that these our 
 friends, men and women, who go about the 
 world, doing their work and taking their plea- 
 sure therein, all carry about with them a secret 
 burden — of bitter disappointments, vanished 
 hopes, unfulfilled ambitions, lost loves. Pro- 
 bably every one of them, when his or her smiling 
 face vanishes from the circle, will change it into 
 another, serious, anxious, sad — happy, if it be 
 only sad, with no mingling of either bitterness 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 223 
 
 or badness. That complete felicity, which the 
 young believe in, and expect almost as a matter 
 of certainty to come, never does come. Soon 
 or late, we have to make up our minds to do 
 without it ; to take up the fragments of our 
 blessings, thankful that we have what we have, 
 and are what we are ; above all that we have 
 our own burden to bear, and not our neigh- 
 bour's. But, whatever it is, we must bear it 
 alone ; and this gathering-up of fragments, 
 which I am so earnestly advising, is also a thing 
 which must be done alone. 
 
 The lesson is sometimes learnt very early. 
 It is shrewdly said, "At three we love our 
 mothers, at six our fathers, at twelve our holi- 
 days, at twenty our sweethearts, at thirty our 
 wives, at forty our children, at fifty ourselves." 
 Still, in one form or other, love is the ground- 
 work of our existence. 
 
 So, at least, thinks the passionate boy or 
 sentimental girl who has fallen under its in- 
 fluence. For I suppose we must all concede 
 the everyday fact that most people fall in 
 love some time or other, and that a good many 
 
2 24 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 do it even in their teens. You may call it 
 " calf-love," and so it often is ; and comes to 
 the salutary end of such a passion — 
 
 " Which does at once like paper set on fire, 
 Burn — and expire." 
 
 But it gives a certain amount of pain and 
 discomfort during the conflagration, and often 
 leaves an ugly little heap of ashes behind. 
 
 Also, it is well to be cautious ; as the fool- 
 ishest of fancies may develop into a real love 
 — the blessing or curse of a lifetime. 
 
 " Fond of her," I heard an old man once an- 
 swer, as he stood watching his wife move slowly 
 down their beautiful but rather lonely garden ; 
 they had buried eight of their nine children, 
 and the ninth was going to be married that 
 spring. " Fond of her ? " with a gentle smile, 
 " Why, I've been fond of her these fifty years ! ' 
 
 But such cases are very exceptional. It is so 
 seldom that one love — a happy love — runs like a 
 golden thread through the life of either man or 
 woman, that we ought to be patient even with 
 the most frantic boy, or forlorn girl, who has 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS 225 
 
 " fallen in love," and is enduring its first sharp 
 pleasure — or pain— for both are much alike. 
 
 When they come and tell you that their hearts 
 are broken, it is best not to laugh at them, but 
 to help them to " gather up the fragments " as 
 soon as possible. At first, of course, they will 
 not agree that it is possible. " This or nothing ! ' 
 is the despairing cry ; and though we may hint 
 that the world is wide, and there may be in it 
 other people, at least as good as the one par- 
 ticular idol, still we cannot expect them to 
 believe it. Disappointed lovers would think it 
 treason against love to suppose that life is to 
 be henceforward anything than a total blank. 
 It is so, sometimes ; heaven knows ! I con- 
 fess to being one of those few who, in this age, 
 dare still to believe in love, and in its awful 
 influence, for good or for evil, at the very 
 outset of life. But it is not the whole of life : 
 nor ought to be. 
 
 The prevention of a so-called " imprudent " 
 marriage — namely, an impecunious one — and 
 the forcing on of another, which had nothing 
 in the world to recommend it except money, 
 
 Q 
 
226 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 has often been the ultimate ruin of a young 
 man, who would have been a good man, 
 had he been a happy man; had he married 
 the girl he loved. And in instances too nume- 
 rous to count, have girls — through the common 
 but contemptible weakness of not knowing their 
 own minds, or the worse than weakness of being 
 governed by the minds of others in so exclu- 
 sively a personal matter as marriage — driven 
 honest fellows into vice. Or else, into some 
 reckless, hasty union, whereby both the man 
 himself and the poor wife, whom he never 
 loved but only married, were made miserable 
 for life. 
 
 Generally speaking, men get over their love- 
 sorrows much easier than women. Naturally ; 
 because life has for them many other things 
 besides love ; for women, almost nothing. But 
 still one does find occasionally a man, pros- 
 perous and happy, kind to his wife, and de- 
 voted to his children, in whom the indelible 
 trace of some early disappointment is, that one 
 name is never mentioned, one set of associa- 
 tions entirely put aside. He is a good fellow 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 227 
 
 — a cheerful fellow too ; he has taken up the 
 fragments of his life and made the very best 
 of them. Yet, sometimes, you feel that the 
 life would have been more complete, the cha- 
 racter more nobly developed, if the man had 
 had his heart's desire, and married his first 
 love. 
 
 Which nobody does, they say ; certainly, 
 almost nobody ; ■ yet the world wags on ; and 
 everybody seems satisfied — at least, in public. 
 Nay, possibly, in private too ; for time has 
 such infinite power of healing or hiding. There 
 is nothing harder than a lava stream grown 
 cold. 
 
 Those of us who have reached middle age 
 without dropping — who would ever drop ? — the 
 ties of our youth, move about encircled by 
 dozens of such secret histories, forgotten by 
 the outside world — half forgotten, perhaps, by 
 the very actors therein — with whom we, the 
 spectators, had once such deep sympathy. Now, 
 we sometimes turn and look at a face which 
 we remember as a young face, alive with all 
 the passion of youth — and we marvel to see 
 
228 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 how commonplace it has grown ; reddening 
 cosily over a good dinner, or sharp and eager 
 over business greed ; worn and wrinkled with 
 nursery cares, or sweetly smiling in a grand 
 drawing-room, ready to play its 
 
 " Petty part, 
 With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart." 
 
 A sort of gathering-up of fragments which 
 those who are weak enough, or strong enough, 
 still to believe in love, will think far worse 
 than any scattering. 
 
 The young will not believe us when we tell 
 them that their broken hearts may be mended ; 
 ought to be ; since life is too precious a thing 
 to be wasted over any one woman, or man 
 either. It is given us to be made the most of; 
 and this, whether we ourselves are happy or 
 miserable. The misery will not last — the 
 happiness will ; if only in remembrance. No 
 pure joy, however fleeting, contains any real 
 bitterness, even when it is gone by. 
 
 But time only will teach this. At first there 
 is nothing so overwhelming as the despair of 
 youth, which sees neither before it nor behind ; 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 229 
 
 refuses to be laughed out of, or preached out 
 of, its cherished woe, which it deems a matter 
 of conscience to believe eternal. 
 
 It will not be eternal ; but best not to say so 
 to the sufferer. Best to attempt neither argu- 
 ment nor consolation, only substitution. Hard 
 work, close study, a sudden plunge into the 
 serious business of life, that the victim may 
 find the world contains other things besides 
 love, is the wisest course to be suggested 
 by those long-suffering, much-abused beings, 
 parents and guardians. Love is the best 
 thing — few deny that ; but life contains many 
 supplementary blessings too : honourable am- 
 bition, leading to a success well earned and 
 well used; to say nothing of that calm strength 
 which comes into a young man's heart when 
 he has fought with and conquered fate, by 
 first conquering himself, the most fatal fate 
 of all. 
 
 Commonplace preaching this ! Everybody 
 has heard it. Strange, how seldom anybody 
 thinks of acting upon it. In the temporary 
 madness of disappointment a poor fellow will 
 
2 3 o GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 go and wreck his whole future ; and when after- 
 wards he would fain build up a new life — alas ! 
 there is no material left to build with. 
 
 Therefore, it is the duty of those older and 
 wiser, who, perhaps, themselves .have waded 
 through the black river and landed safe on the 
 opposite shore, to show him that it is not as deep 
 as it seems, and that it has an opposite shore. 
 He may swim through ; with the aid of a stout 
 heart and an honest self-respect; self-respect, 
 not selfishness — for the most selfish creature 
 alive is a young man in love, except towards 
 the young woman he happens to be in love 
 with. Not seldom, the very best lesson of life — 
 bitter but wholesome — is taught to a young man 
 by a love-disappointment. 
 
 Not so with women ; they being in this matter 
 passive, not active agents. So few girls are " in 
 love " nowadays ; so many set upon merely 
 getting married, that I confess to a secret re- 
 spect for any heart which has in it the capacity 
 of being " broken." Not that it does break, un- 
 less the victim is too feeble physically to fight 
 against her mental suffering ; but the anguish is 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 231 
 
 sore at the time. There is no cure for it, except 
 one, suggested by a little girl I know, who with 
 the innocent passion of six and a half adored a 
 certain " beautiful Charlie " of nineteen. Some 
 one suggested that Charlie would marry and 
 cease to care for her. "Then I should be so 
 unhappy/' sighed the sad little voice. — " What, 
 if he married a wife he was very fond of, and 
 who made him quite happy — would you be 
 unhappy then ?" — " No !" was the answer, given 
 after a slight pause, which showed this conclu- 
 sion was not come to without thought. "No! 
 I would love his wife, that's all." 
 
 The poor little maid had jumped by instinct — 
 womanly instinct — to the true secret of faithful 
 love — the love which desires, above all, the 
 good of the beloved, and therefore learns to be 
 brave enough to look at happiness through 
 another's eyes. 
 
 This is the only way by which any girl can 
 take up the fragments of a lost or unrequited 
 affection ; by teaching herself, not to forget it — 
 that is impossible — but to rise above it ; until the 
 sting is taken out of her sorrow, and it becomes 
 
232 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 gradually transformed from a slow poison into 
 a bitter but wholesome food. 
 
 Besides, though the suggestion may seem far 
 below the attention of poetical people, there are 
 such things as fathers and mothers, brothers and 
 sisters, and other not undeserving relations, to 
 whom a tithe of the affection wasted upon some 
 (possibly) only half-deserving young man would 
 be a priceless boon. And so long as the world 
 endures there will always be abundance of 
 helpless, sick, and sorrowful people calling on 
 the sorrow-stricken one for aid, and ready to 
 pay her back for all she condescends to give 
 with that grateful affection which heals a 
 wounded heart better than anything — except 
 work. 
 
 Work, work, work ! That is the grand pa- 
 nacea for sorrow ; and, mercifully, there is no end 
 of work to be done in this world, if anybody will 
 do it. Few households are so perfect in their 
 happy self-containedness that they are not glad 
 oftentimes of the help of some lonely woman, to 
 whom they also supply the sacred consolation of 
 being able to help somebody, and thus perhaps 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 233 
 
 save her from throwing herself blindly into some 
 foolish career for which she has no real voca- 
 tion, except that forced upon her by the sickly 
 fancy of sorrow. For neither art, nor science, 
 nor religion will really repay its votaries, if they 
 take to it, like opium-eaters, merely to deaden 
 despair. 
 
 And here I must own to a certain sympathy 
 with those sisterhoods — yes, even Roman Ca- 
 tholic sisterhoods — who hold out pitying arms 
 to sufferers like these ; disappointed maidens, 
 unhappy wives, childless widows ; struck by 
 some one of the many forms of incurable grief 
 which are so common among women, whose 
 destiny generally seems less to conquer than to 
 endure. Of course, the natural duties, those 
 which lie close at hand, are safest and best ; but 
 such do not come to all, and any duties are 
 better than none ; any work, even the painful 
 and often revolting toil of a sister of charity, is 
 safer than idleness. 
 
 For, say what you will, and pity them as 
 you may, these broken hearts are exceedingly 
 troublesome to the rest of the world. We do 
 
23+ GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 not like to see our relatives and friends going 
 about with melancholy faces, perpetually weep- 
 ing over the unburied corpse of some hopeless 
 grief or unpardonable wrong. We had much 
 rather they buried it quietly, and allowed us 
 J after a due season of sympathy to go on our 
 way. Most of us prefer to be comfortable if we 
 can. I have always found those the best liked 
 people who have strength to bear their sorrows 
 themselves, without troubling their neighbours. 
 And the sight of all others most touching, most 
 ennobling, is that of a man or woman whom we 
 know to have suffered, perhaps to be suffering 
 still, yet who still carries a cheerful face, is a 
 burden to no friend, nor casts a shadow over 
 any household — perhaps quite the contrary. 
 Those whose own light is quenched are often 
 the light -bringers. 
 
 To accept the inevitable ; neither to struggle 
 against it nor murmur at it, simply to bear it — 
 this is the great lesson of life — above all to a 
 woman. It may come late or early, and the 
 learning of it is sure to be hard, but she will 
 never be a really happy woman until she has 
 
 , 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 235 
 
 learnt it. I have always thought two of the 
 most pathetic pictures of women's lives ever 
 given are Tennyson's "Dora" — 
 
 "As time 
 Went onwards, Mary took another mate : 
 But Dora lived unmarried to her death," 
 
 and Jeanie, in " Auld Robin Gray," who says, 
 with the grave simplicity of a God-fearing Scots- 
 woman — 
 
 " I daurna think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin ; 
 So I will do my best a gude wife to be, 
 For Auld Robin Gray is vera kind to me." 
 
 Besides lost loves, common to both men and 
 women, there are griefs which belong perhaps 
 to men only — lost ambitions. It is very sore for a 
 man just touching, or having just pased, middle 
 age, slowly to find out that he has failed in the 
 promise of his youth ; failed in everything — 
 aspirations, hopes, actions — a man of ' whom 
 strangers charitably say, " Poor fellow, there's a 
 screw loose somewhere ; he'll never get on in 
 the world." And even his nearest friends begin 
 mournfully to believe this ; they cease to hope, 
 and content themselves in finding palliatives for 
 
236 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 a sort of patient despair. That "loose screw " 
 — heaven knows what it is, or whether he him- 
 self is aware of it or not — always seems to pre- 
 vent his succeeding in anything ; or else, with- 
 out any fault of his own, circumstances have 
 made him the wrong man in the wrong place, 
 and it is too late now to get out of it. Pride and 
 shame alike keep him silent ; yet he knows — 
 and his friends know, and he knows they know 
 it — that his career has been, and always will be, 
 a dead failure ; that the only thing left for him is 
 to gather up the fragments of his vanished 
 dreams, his lost ambitions, his wasted labours, 
 and go on patiently to the end. He does so, 
 working away at a business which he hates, or 
 pursuing an art which he is conscious he has no 
 talent for, or bound hand and foot in a mesh of 
 circumstances against which he has not energy 
 enough to struggle. Whatever form of destiny 
 may have swamped him, he is swamped, and for 
 life. 
 
 Yet even in a case like this, and there are few 
 sadder, lies a certain consolation. People prate 
 about heroes, but one sometimes sees a simple, 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 237 
 
 commonplace man, with nothing either grand 
 or clever about him, who, did we only know it, 
 is more worthy the name of hero than many a 
 conqueror of a city. Ay, though all the dream- 
 palaces of his youth may have crumbled down ; 
 or, like the Arabs, he may have had to build 
 and live in a poor little hut under the ruins of 
 temples that might have been. But One beyond 
 us all knows the story of this pathetic " might- 
 have-been," and has pity upon it — the pity that, 
 unlike man's, wounds not, only strengthens and 
 heals. 
 
 For, after all, patience is very strong. Making 
 a mistake in the outset of life is like beginning 
 to wind a skein of silk at the wrong end. It 
 gives us infinite trouble, and perhaps is in a 
 tangle half through, but it often gets smooth 
 and straight before the close. Thus, many a 
 man has so conquered himself, for duty's sake, 
 that the work he originally hated, and therefore 
 did ill, he gets in time to do well, and conse- 
 quently to like. In the catalogue of success and 
 failure, could such be ever truthfully written, it 
 would be curious to note those who had sue- 
 
2 3 8 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 ceeded in what they had no mind to, and failed 
 in that which they considered their especial 
 vocation. A man's vocation is that to which 
 he is." called ; " only sometimes he mistakes the 
 voice calling. But the voice of duty there is 
 no mistaking, nor its response ; in the strong 
 heart, the patient mind, the contented spirit, — 
 especially the latter, which, while striving to 
 the utmost against what is not inevitable, when 
 once it is proved to be inevitable, accepts it as 
 such, and struggles no more. Still, to do this 
 requires not only human courage, but super- 
 human faith ; the acknowledgment of a Will 
 diviner than ours, to which we must submit, 
 and in the mere act of submission find consola- 
 tion and reparation. 
 
 This is above all necessary in the most irre- 
 parable shattering of any lot — an unhappy mar- 
 riage. A subject so difficult, so delicate, that I 
 would shrink from touching on it, were it not 
 so terribly common, so mournfully true. 
 
 Yes ; optimists may deny, and pessimists 
 exult in, the fact ; but I am afraid it is a fact — 
 that few marriages are entirely happy. As 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 239 
 
 few, perhaps, as those single lives which are 
 proverbially supposed to be so miserable. This, 
 because the average of people are, voluntarily or 
 unvoluntarily, only too prone to be miserable; 
 and those that are unhappy single, will not 
 be cured by marriage, but will rather have the 
 power of making two people wretched instead ot 
 one. Add to this, the exceeding rashness with 
 which people plunge into a " state" which, as 
 Juliet says — 
 
 "Well thou knowest is full of doubt and fear." 
 
 The wonder is, not that some married people 
 are less happy than they hoped to be, but that 
 any married people, out of the honeymoon, 
 or even in it, are ever happy at all. 
 
 Also, it is curious to observe how many per- 
 sons seem actually to enjoy misery ; to throw 
 away their good things, and fasten deliberately 
 on their evil things ; so that each day — instead 
 of being a rejoicing over blessings that, possibly, 
 are, like daily bread, only for the day — is wasted 
 in dreary complainings ; regrets for what is not, 
 rather than thanksgivings for what is. It all 
 springs from the strange idea before adverted 
 
2 4 o GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 to, that heaven is somehow our debtor for end- 
 less felicity, which if we do not get, or, getting, 
 waste and lose, we cry like Jonah over his 
 withered gourd, " I do well to be angry." 
 
 As men do — no, not men ; they are mostly 
 silent, either from honour or pride — but women, 
 when, having made a rash or loveless marriage, 
 they wake up to find themselves utterly miser- 
 able, and causing misery — all the sharper because 
 it is irretrievable. 
 
 And yet that very irretrievableness is its best 
 hope. Heretical as the doctrine may seem, I 
 believe if one-half of the ordinary marriages 
 one sees could have been broken without public 
 scandal, they would have been broken, some- 
 times even within the first twelve months. But 
 the absolute inevitableness of the bond, at least 
 in our English eyes, makes it fix itself like an 
 iron band round a tree trunk — the very bark 
 which it pierces grows over it in time. With 
 the woman, at least ; the man is rather different. 
 But with both, if truly honourable men and 
 women, having made a mistake in marriage, 
 which was presumably a voluntary act, they 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 241 
 
 must abide by it till death. Death, that re- 
 morseless breaker of bonds — alike awful to con- 
 template by love or by hate. Since, I suppose, 
 the most brutally treated wife, the most heavily 
 bound and sorely tried husband, would never 
 contemplate that release without sensations 
 little short of those of a murderer. 
 
 You perceive I am not one of those who uphold 
 divorce. I believe that from no cause, except 
 that which the New Testament gives as a 
 reason for a man's, putting away his wife, or a 
 woman her husband, should the tie be al- 
 lowed to be broken ; at least, not so as to admit 
 of either party marrying another. The Catholic 
 Church is not far wrong in holding marriage 
 to be a sacrament, and its dissolution impos- 
 sible ; though there are cases in which we must 
 admit the right — nay the necessity — of total 
 and life-long separation. But only in extreme 
 cases, and when to go on enduring hopeless 
 misery would sacrifice others beside the parties 
 themselves. These two, undoubtedly, alas ! fall 
 under the lash of that grim truth, " If you make 
 your own bed, you must lie upon it." 
 
 R 
 
24-2 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 And is it not sad — if it were not often so 
 heroic — the way people do lie on it ? with the 
 iron spikes eating into their very flesh ; making 
 no complaint, keeping a fair outside to the 
 world, and telling heaps of innocent lies, which 
 deceive nobody, except perhaps those who tell 
 them. 
 
 A perfect marriage is as rare as a perfect 
 love. Could it be otherwise, when both men 
 and women are so imperfect ? Could aught else 
 be expected ? Yet all do expect it. Does not 
 every young couple married believe they are 
 stepping from the church door into entire feli- 
 city, to end only with their lives ? Yet, look 
 at them ten, fifteen, twenty years after, and 
 how have those lives turned out ? Should some 
 old friend pay them a visit, will he or she 
 return, envying their felicity, as perhaps on 
 that wedding morning ; or hugging themselves 
 in their own independent old-bachelorship, or 
 peaceful old-maidism, thinking happiness is, 
 after all, a much more equally spread thing 
 than they once supposed ? 
 
 So it is. Though, according to the old joke, 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 243 
 
 married people are often like little boys bathing, 
 who cry with chattering teeth to the boys on 
 the shore, "Do come in, it's so warm/' — it is 
 not always warm. There is no sadder picture — 
 if it were not such an everyday picture — than 
 two young people, married perhaps for love, 
 at any rate for liking, but married in haste, to 
 repent at leisure ; which they piteously do. 
 Knowing little or nothing of each other's tem- 
 per, taste, character, they slowly wake up to 
 find these so diverse, that it was morally im- 
 possible they could have been happy, for very 
 long ; and here they are, tied together, in the 
 most intimate union that life allows, for ever. 
 A thought absolutely maddening ;— at first, and 
 with people of sensitive or impulsive natures. 
 I fear, if we could look into our neighbours' 
 hearts, the catalogue of suicides never com- 
 mitted, of elopements unaccomplished, even 
 of unperpetrated murders, would be, to those 
 who see no difference between the thought and 
 the act — something startling, nay, appalling. 
 
 But these tragedies do not happen — at least, 
 not often. They drop into "genteel comedy." 
 
2+4 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 " Can two walk together, unless they be agreed?" 
 Very many couples are not " agreed," far from 
 it ; yet seeing they must walk together some- 
 how, they make up their minds to do it, and 
 they do do it. Ay, in spite of good-natured 
 friends, who cannot help observing how unhappy 
 they are, and perhaps how happy they might both 
 have been if each had been married to a dif- 
 ferent sort of person. But this is not the case : 
 they are married to the person whom they 
 themselves chose, or fate chose for them. The 
 thing is done, and there is no undoing it. 
 
 None ; for the unavoidable bigamies and inno- 
 cent adulteries so popular nowadays are to all 
 right-minded, I will not even say Christian 
 people, actual sin ; simple, absolute, inexcusable 
 sin. No nonsense about " elective affinities " 
 and " platonic friendships " can excuse the small- 
 est trifling with the sanctity of the marriage bond. 
 The empty heart must remain empty for ever. 
 
 Yet it is pitiful — most pitiful ! especially if 
 the couple are not bad, only ill-assorted, and 
 young still ; young enough to make a pos- 
 sible future of twenty or thirty years look so 
 
 e 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 245 
 
 black in the distance ! haunted by the pale 
 phantom of dead love, the wretched will-o'- 
 the-wisp of a lost happiness. God help them, 
 poor souls ! No wonder such a lot should drive 
 men wicked, and women mad ; as it does, oftener 
 perhaps than the world knows. 
 
 For such a grief is of necessity a secret one. 
 The husband pays all outward respect to his 
 silly, bad-tempered wife ; the wife hides all her 
 husband's faults and exalts his virtues. Both do 
 their best to take up the fragments that remain, 
 pretending all is exactly as they desire ; throw- 
 ing dust in their neighbours' eyes ; and, partly 
 from pride, partly from shame, sometimes from 
 mere worldly prudence, keeping up appearances 
 before the world. Whatever the motive, it 
 answers the purpose — a righteous purpose too. 
 Society is not scandalized, the home is not 
 broken up, friends and kindred are not troubled. 
 They only guess ; they really know nothing. 
 And if guessing something, they look on in 
 compassionate sympathy : they attempt no help 
 or advice, for none is asked ; it would be rather 
 resented than not. The fragments must be 
 
246 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 gathered up alone, by each forlorn sufferer, out 
 of the depths of the suffering heart. And 
 how ? 
 
 It is a curious opposite picture to our 
 vaunted English " love " marriages that the 
 French "arranged" marriages often turn out so 
 well. The reason is apparent. Two people 
 cannot live long together in indifference. The 
 tie between a married pair, howsoever married, 
 must be one of either love or hate ; and, being 
 an indissoluble tie — also, few people being wholly 
 wicked or entirely detestable — the chances are 
 that in time it becomes the former. One by one 
 they discover each other's virtues, and learn to 
 be tender over each other's faults. Having, un- 
 like lovers, only the future to deal with, no dead 
 past to bury out of sight, they are kinder to one 
 another even than those who were once much 
 more than kind. For there is no injustice deeper 
 than the conscience-stricken injustice of a wan- 
 ing love — no cruelty sharper than that of apo- 
 states to a forsaken idol. And it might be a nice 
 question for some modern Court of Love to 
 decide — which is the bitterest lot, to cling 
 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 247 
 
 through life to a love unfulfilled, or to have 
 attained one's heart's desire, and found the object 
 not worth possessing ? 
 
 Nevertheless, the saving fact which I have 
 acknowledged and accounted for concerning 
 these "manages de convenance," which we in 
 England condemn so much, gives a hope for 
 those almost more hopeless "love" marriages, 
 which, beginning so brightly, sink slowly 
 into permanent gloom, and end — who knows 
 how ? — unless there come to the rescue that 
 "stern daughter of the voice of God" — Duty — 
 which is still " loved of love," and has often- 
 times the power to revive love, even when to all 
 outward eyes it is dead for ever. 
 
 Duty — pure duty — without any thought of 
 personal reward or personal happiness — is the 
 strongest, sweetest, most sacred force that do- 
 mestic life possesses. And it brings with it its 
 own consolations ; not perhaps the consolation it 
 craves — it is strange how seldom heaven gives 
 us poor mortals exactly what we desire — but 
 something else, in substitution. How many a 
 sorrowful woman heals her bruised heart beside 
 
248 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 • 
 
 her baby's cradle ! How many a disappointed, 
 lonely man — to whom his wife is no companion 
 and no helpmeet — takes comfort in his baby 
 daughter, and looks forward hopefully to the 
 time when she will be a grown woman ; his 
 friend and solace, the sharer of his tastes and 
 humourer of his innocent hobbies —all, in short, 
 that her mother might have been, but is not ! 
 Yet he will not love her mother the less, but 
 rather the more, for the child's sake. 
 
 He is right, and the forlorn woman is right, 
 who, having missed the highest bliss, has 
 strength to take up the fragments of a secondary 
 one ; so that, in the divine and comforting words 
 before referred to, "nothing be lost." If she 
 has children, she loves them, often passionately ; 
 not alas ! for the father's sake ; but they teach 
 her to be patient with the father for the sake of 
 his children. "While the man who, however in- 
 ferior his wife may be — and, the glamour of 
 passion ended, he knows her to be, and knows 
 that all the world knows it too — never allows 
 her to suffer for his own rash mistake, but pays 
 her all tender respect as the mistress of his 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 249 
 
 house and the mother of his offspring — that 
 man, who, whatever his inward sufferings, be- 
 trays nothing, and makes no one miserable but 
 himself, will have at least the peace of a quiet 
 conscience. As he goes about the world, doing 
 his duty therein, with a calm brow and a reti- 
 cent tongue — whatever people suspect, be sure 
 they will say nothing. He has accepted his lot, 
 taken up his burden ; and will carry it through 
 life, steadily, nobly, uncomplainingly. There- 
 fore, man will honour him, and God will sustain 
 him — to the end. 
 
 Also, burdens lighten — or else the back gets 
 used to them by degrees. How many a house 
 do we enter, and witnessing its secret cares, 
 think — not without thankfulness — that we can 
 bear our own troubles, but we could not bear 
 theirs. Yet we see they are borne, even with 
 apparent unconsciousness, by those accustomed 
 to them. The endless snarling and pitiless 
 fault-finding of a bad-tempered man passes harm- 
 lessly over his placid, brave-hearted wife; the 
 intolerable silliness, or churlishness, or selfish- 
 ness of one member of a family is perhaps 
 
2 5 o GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 hardly noticed by the rest. We have all so 
 much to put up with from other people — and 
 other people the same, or worse, from us — 
 that even love itself will not stand upright, 
 unless it has the strong backbone of duty to 
 keep it upright. That is (if I can put it clearly 
 without falling into cant phraseology) unless in 
 great things and small we are guided by a 
 motive below and above ourselves and our per- 
 sonal interests ; unless, in short, every love we 
 have is made subservient to the love of God. 
 
 If this be so, surely it is possible, even after 
 shipwrecks like these, not to let ourselves drift 
 away into a sea of despair. The vessel has 
 gone down, but there may be a little boat some- 
 where ; our sail may be torn to ribbons, but we 
 have oars still ; if we cannot row, perhaps we 
 can swim. Somehow or other we may touch 
 land. 
 
 But there is one wreck in which the sufferers 
 can never touch land, unless it be the Land 
 Eternal — I mean the fate of those who find 
 themselves smitten with incurable disease, or 
 doomed to hopeless invalidism. It may be 
 
 50 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 251 
 
 exalting matter over mind, placing the physical 
 above the spiritual, but I think to be imprisoned 
 for life in a miserable body which hampers and 
 paralyzes the soul is as sad a lot as any of the 
 sentimental sorrows which are here chronicled. 
 The more so as it is such an every-day occur- 
 rence that it excites little compassion. 
 
 We lavish great sympathy upon sudden, acci- 
 dental illnesses ; but the chronic sufferers, those 
 who carry about with them some perpetual 
 pain, for which there is no ease but death ; or 
 even the mere valetudinarians, who " never feel 
 quite well," cannot do things which other people 
 do, and have continually to give up things they 
 would like to do, for fear of being a trouble to 
 others — these we get so used to that we often 
 cease to pity them, or to consider what a heavy 
 burden they have to bear, and how much courage 
 they need in order to sustain it at all. 
 
 For it is such an essentially solitary burden. 
 No healthy person can understand even the small 
 misery of feeling " always tired ;'-' and when it 
 comes to worse than this, when one has to sit 
 still and gaze into long years of helplessness, 
 
25 2 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 perhaps acute pain, and, though it is still noon 
 day, face the certainty that no genial sun will 
 ever burst into that dim twilight — then life grows 
 very difficult, very dark. To most, the future is 
 so obscure that they can build it up in any 
 fanciful way they please ; but to these it is like a 
 blank wall with nothing beyond. To sit down and 
 face it, knowing that our small round of interests, 
 pleasures, or labours can never be wider than 
 now, nay, will probably narrow day by day ; 
 that we can give no pleasure to anybody, and 
 receive little from anybody ; that, somehow or 
 other, we know not why, God has made us 
 separate from our kind ; to invent a poor 
 fragmentary life for ourselves, and bear it by 
 ourselves, until death comes to untie the knot 
 and lift off the burden — this, I think, is as sad a 
 fate as can befall any human being. 
 
 The only way to meet it is that which I have 
 already counselled in other but scarcely sharper 
 sorrows. Accept it. Cease trying to get well, 
 and worrying about each small symptom of 
 being worse or better. Remember Hezekiah, 
 who " sought not the Lord, but the physicians." 
 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 253 
 
 Not that I defend the Peculiar People, who hold 
 that prayers are to supersede mustard plais- 
 ters, and esteem anointing with oil a substitute 
 for good food and wholesome water. Still I do 
 think there is something in the solemn peace of 
 a soul that has ceased to struggle with its 
 body, but takes cheerfully the modicum of health 
 allowed it, which actually conduces to that very 
 health which is resigned. 
 
 When once an invalid has strength to say, 
 " It does not much matter ; at worst I can but 
 die," sickness and death itself lose their terrors. 
 An old man, a cruel sufferer, once said to me, 
 " If my pain is tolerable, I must bear it ; if it is 
 intolerable, I shall not have to bear it long." 
 Nor had he ; and when, not many days after, 
 I stood looking down on the peaceful face, so 
 grand in its everlasting calm, with the wrinkles 
 all smoothed out, and the irritable contractions 
 of pain for ever gone, I wished that to the end 
 of my days I might have strength to remember 
 those words. 
 
 Remember them, too, you whose life is but the 
 fragments of what it might have been, either in 
 
254 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 mind or body — for the mind is so strangely 
 affected by the body. Yet try to gather up these 
 fragments : they may be worth something stilL 
 Try to separate the spiritual from the physical 
 as much as you can, and when you grow irri- 
 table, exacting, prone to see everything in an 
 exaggerated light, and to think that never was 
 any one so afflicted as you, say to yourself, " It 
 is only my body ; I, the real me, must not let it 
 conquer me. This flesh is my temporary dun- 
 geon, yet— 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars a cage " — 
 
 the * mind innocent and quiet ' may abide with 
 me still." 
 
 Ay, and so it often is. Are not some of the 
 very sweetest faces we know, faces that memory 
 falls back upon and recalls in the tumult of life 
 with a sense of rest and peace, those of con- 
 firmed invalids, who may have spent years of 
 such imprisoment, perhaps only moving from 
 bed to sofa, and back to bed ; well aware that 
 they never will move elsewhere except to the 
 one narrow couch where we all must lie, yet 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 255 
 
 never complaining, never craving after the outside 
 world, which circles noisily round their perpetual 
 silence ; exacting no sympathy, — on the contrary, 
 giving it to all and any who need. 
 
 "I have no troubles," said, smiling, one of 
 those sweet saints, whom most people would 
 have considered " a great martyr." " It is you 
 others who come to me with all yours." 
 
 So we do, we who are still in the thick of the 
 fight ; to these, who seem as if their battle were 
 done for ever. How often do we find counsel 
 and comfort by the couch of some dear woman 
 — it is generally a woman — whom the world 
 calls u a terrible sufferer," but whose sufferings 
 are the last thing she talks about. She has 
 let herself go, and is absorbed in the inte- 
 rests of other people. The fragments of her 
 life that remain to her she has made so beauti- 
 ful, that you almost forget it was ever meant to 
 be, like other lives, a perfect whole ; that the 
 wasted frame before you was ever a merry baby, 
 a happy girl, a young woman looking forward 
 to woman's natural destiny. All that is over, yet 
 she is not unhappy ; nay, she is actually happy, 
 
256 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 in her own way ; no one could look in her face 
 and doubt it. But it is a happiness quite 
 different from and beyond ours ; something 
 which naught earthly can either give or take 
 away. 
 
 This is a bright picture, which I would fain 
 place opposite to the dark pictures I have drawn, 
 compromising nothing and denying nothing ; 
 yet saying after all, "Take courage. God 
 never leaves Himself without a witness. In the 
 deepest darkness is a possibility of light." 
 
 For there is that in the human soul which will 
 nol die. Neither mental nor physical suffering 
 will kill it before its time. And neither will 
 extinguish in it the germ of possible happiness, 
 in this world at least ; whether or not in other 
 worlds, God knows. But He has said enough 
 to prove to us two things — that here on earth 
 sin is the only absolute death, and " Deliver us 
 from evil " the only true salvation. 
 
 Therefore, mere pain, in all forms, becomes a 
 temporary and endurable thing, if we will only 
 try to see it as such, accustoming our eyes to 
 behold the good rather than the bad ; choosing 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 257 
 
 in our daily life to eat the food and reject the 
 poison. 
 
 Easy enough, one would say, yet nobody does 
 it, People sit and mourn over the fragments 
 of their scattered joys, blind to the blessings they 
 have, seeking madly for blessings denied. The 
 rich complain of their responsibilities, the poor 
 of their renunciations. The single think they 
 would have been happy married; the married 
 reply warningly, " Keep as you are." Many- 
 childed parents groan under the burden of that 
 bright troop of boys and girls, whom some 
 empty household longs enviously for, with an 
 angry protest against Providence, whose gifts 
 are so unequally divided. Nobody will see his 
 own blessings, or open his heart to enjoy them, 
 till the golden hour has gone by for ever, and he 
 finds out too late all that he might have had 
 and might have been. 
 
 A discovery, made sometimes in an empty 
 room or by a graveside, knowing that all the 
 tears in the world will never lift that stone or 
 fill that vacant chair; that all our ceaseless 
 complainings, our angry fault-findings, even our 
 
25 8 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 real wrongs, sink into nothing before the re- 
 morseless stillness of death. Even if life were 
 not the absolute whole we expected it to be, if 
 our friends were not perfect, nor ourselves either, 
 why did we fall into despair, instead of quietly 
 setting to work to gather up the fragments that 
 remained, suffering nothing to be lost ? Now, 
 we never can gather them up any more. The 
 great Destroyer has passed by, and there they 
 lie — must lie — for ever. 
 
 Gather up the fragments. In every human 
 life there are sure to be some. Every one of 
 us has a secret chamber somewhere, filled with 
 inhabitants whom none but himself can see ; 
 it rests with himself alone whether they shall be 
 decaying corpses or only beautiful ghosts. 
 
 " God made me what I am, and made my lot 
 what He willed it to be," is a truth not incon- 
 sistent with the other truth, that He gives us the 
 materials to work with, but leaves the workman- 
 ship in our own hands. Every man can make 
 or mar his own life ; at any rate, it appears so. 
 The fact that we know nothing of the results 
 of our acts, makes them, as regards ourselves, 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 259 
 
 absolutely independent ; and the impossibility 
 of gazing one inch into the impenetrable 
 future comes to the same thing as if we beheld 
 it all. 
 
 " Lead Thou me on : I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene : one step 's enough for me." 
 
 But that one step must be taken steadily, firmly, 
 religiously. There must be no looking back, no 
 mourning over the inexorable past. Each day 
 — such a little day, and every one circling round 
 so quietly that they mount into weeks, and 
 months, and years, before we know what we 
 have lost or gained ! — each day must be filled 
 up, minute by minute, with those duties which 
 are in themselves joys, or grow to be. If among 
 them ever rises the spectral face of the never- 
 forgotten might-have-been — beautiful in its 
 eternal youth, perfect in its unattained felicity — 
 why fear ? It is but a ghost, and life is a 
 reality. 
 
 Ay, a useful, useable, noble reality. Happy, 
 too, when once the grim idol Self has been de- 
 throned for ever. For it is a truth which we all 
 have to learn — oftentimes through many a bitter 
 
260 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 lesson — that we never can be happy until we 
 cease trying to make ourselves so. 
 
 I said that this would be a rather sad sermon, 
 to the young ; but it is not so sad as it seems. 
 There comes a time — -to some earlier, to others 
 later — when faith has to take the place of hope, 
 and better even than bliss is consolation. Surely, 
 then, it is something to know, on looking round 
 on those about us, men and women, that the 
 lives which seem the most complete — that is, 
 have most perfectly fulfilled the end for which 
 they were given — are very seldom what we call 
 "fortunate" lives. Few have been carried out 
 exactly as they began ; fewer still have attained 
 the felicity they expected. Some — and those 
 often the noblest and highest — have been sad- 
 dened by one or other of those secret, silent 
 tragedies which are always happening around 
 us, which we all know, or at least guess at, but 
 never speak of; nor do they. 
 
 I once knew a dear old lady — so sweet, so 
 bright, so clever ; wearing her eighty years " as 
 lightly as a flower." When you talked with 
 her you would have thought her a woman of 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 261 
 
 thirty, so full was she of all the quick sympathy 
 of youth, the wise tenderness of middle age. 
 Of the weaknesses of old age she had absolutely 
 none. Her interest in all those about her was 
 such that she never seemed to think of herself 
 at all. No complaint, no murmur at her own 
 ailments — and she had ailments, and sorrows 
 too— ever fell from her lips ; her only anxiety 
 was about the cares of other people, and how she 
 could lighten them, in great things and small. 
 Her bounty knew no limits except her means, 
 which were not great; "but," she once said, 
 smiling, " I need so little ; and then you see, my 
 dear, I always pay my bills every week, so as to 
 give no trouble to anybody afterwards/' Thus 
 she kept house, with the utmost order, yet with 
 ceaseless hospitality. It was indeed the House 
 Beautiful, to whose gates all who came departed 
 refreshed and strengthened, and whence no 
 creature who came in want or grief was ever 
 sent empty away. 
 
 I need not name it; many now living will 
 remember it ; and none who were familiar 
 there could ever forget it, or her, as she sat in 
 
262 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 her quiet corner, with her sweet old face, and 
 her lovely little ringed hands — peaceful, idle 
 hands ; since for some years before she died she 
 was nearly blind. Yet her blindness, though, 
 coming so late in life, it made her very helpless, 
 never made her sad or dull ; she could still 
 listen to and join in conversation, and she 
 greatly liked society, especially that of the 
 young. There was always a tribe of young 
 people coming about her, telling her all their 
 doings and plannings, their amusements and 
 their troubles. She was fond of them, and they 
 — they adored her! One girl in particular, 
 owned that the first time this dear old lady 
 voluntarily kissed her, she felt "as if she had 
 been kissed by her first love." 
 
 When she died — at over eighty, certainly, but 
 her executors had to guess at the date, for she 
 was an old maid, without any near relations, 
 and had often said she did not even know her 
 own age, it was so long since she was born — 
 when she died there was found among her 
 private papers a portrait of a young man in a 
 foreign military dress. No one could guess who 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 263 
 
 it was ; the name — there was a name — no one 
 had ever heard of. At last some old acquaint- 
 ance recalled a far-away tradition of her having 
 been once about to be married ; somehow the 
 marriage was broken off, but the two remained 
 friends, and, it was believed, corresponded and 
 occasionally met, till his death, which happened 
 when she was about fifty years old. For his 
 nephew — and heir, he having died unmarried — 
 had then been to see her ; somebody recollected 
 having met the young man at her house, and her 
 introducing him by name. After that name on 
 the miniature all was silence. She was never 
 heard to name the name again. Yet she lived 
 on for thirty more years. 
 
 "What do you do when you are quite 
 alone?" was once asked anxiously of her, when 
 she was too blind either to write, or sew, or 
 read. 
 
 " What do I do ? My dear, I sit and 
 think. I have so much to think about — and so 
 many." 
 
 " And are you never dull ?" 
 
 "Dull ? Oh, no ! I am quite happy." 
 
264 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 She was, I am sure. You could see it in her 
 face ; the peaceful happiness of a soul which has 
 ceased to " bother itself " about itself at all, and 
 is absorbed in kindly cares for other people. 
 Her last act — the last time she ever crossed her 
 threshold — was, I remember, a visit of kindness, 
 partly as an excuse to take for a drive a person 
 who was too feeble to walk much. She was then 
 extremely feeble herself; and, climbing a steep 
 stair, one who assisted her said anxiously, " I 
 fear you are very tired ? ': " Yes," she replied, 
 "I am always tired now. But," turning sud- 
 denly round with the brightest of smiles, "never 
 mind ; it will be all right soon." Four weeks 
 after she lay in her final rest, looking so young, 
 so pretty, so content ; that those who best loved 
 her choked down their sobs and smiled, saying, 
 " It was like putting a baby to sleep." 
 
 This is but one story out of many which I 
 could tell, even out of my own knowledge, to 
 prove that the fragments of a broken life can be 
 so gathered up as to make a noble and even a 
 happy life unto the end. Many a time, as we go 
 on our troublous way through the world, are we 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 265 
 
 cheered and encouraged by the sight of such ; 
 old men who have done their work, and for 
 whom is come the time of rest ; the " blind man's 
 holiday " between the lights, when they do 
 nothing, and nobody expects them to do any- 
 thing but look back on the fruits of their labour 
 and rejoice ; old women who have their children 
 around them, and grandchildren, in whom they 
 take over again all a mother's delight freed from 
 a mother's anxiety. Lastly — and these are not 
 the least numerous, and perhaps the most touch- 
 ing of all — unmarried women, whose lives must 
 necessarily have been incomplete, barren of joy, 
 or clouded with incurable grief ; yet one has but 
 to look on their faces, sweet and saintly, to per- 
 ceive that their evil has brought forth good — 
 that, whatever their own lot may have been, to 
 others they have proved a continual blessing. 
 How can those fail to be blessed, who are every- 
 body's comfort and everybody's help ? 
 
 Occasionally, too, we meet persons, still in 
 middle age, for whom, it is easy to see, the sun 
 has gone down at noon. Something has hap- 
 pened — we know not what, or perhaps we do 
 
266 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 know, but never mention it — something which 
 will make their future like that of a tree with its 
 " leader" broken ; it may not die, it may grow 
 up green and strong, but it will never grow tall, 
 it will never be a perfect tree. With them, 
 too, life in its highest sense is over ; the play 
 is played out — the feast is ended ; there is 
 nothing left but to gather up the fragments and 
 endure. 
 
 And they are gathered. Slowly, painfully 
 may be, but it is done. Nothing is lost. No- 
 thing remains to cumber, corrupt, or decay. 
 Everything available to use still, is used — 
 strength, talents, energies, affections ; all that 
 God gave has been given back to Him ; not 
 perhaps in the way the offerer once desired 
 to give it, but nevertheless in the right way, as 
 the final result proves. And He has accepted 
 the sacrifice ; and requited it, too. Not perhaps 
 with earthly felicity ; not at all with the sort of 
 felicity longed for; but with something better 
 than happiness — peace • that peace which one 
 sees sometimes on very suffering faces — it was 
 seen continually on the dear old face I have 
 
GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 267 
 
 spoken of — " the peace of God which passeth all 
 understanding/' 
 
 There is a psalm of David — poor King David, 
 who paid so dearly in sorrow for every sin he 
 committed, yet who had strength over and over 
 again to gather up the fragments of his piteous 
 errorful life, and live on — ay, and to die in faith, 
 and in hope of his never-builded temple ; there 
 is a psalm, I say, in which he speaks of those 
 who " have their portion in this life." He never 
 blames them ; he envies them not. Neither does 
 he murmur at the will of God, who sees fit to fill 
 them with His " hid treasure," and to give them 
 the Jew's crowning blessing, " children at their 
 desire ; " that they may " leave the rest of their 
 substance for their babes." 
 
 " But as for me," he continues, and you can 
 almost hear the ringing of the triumphant harp 
 — "David's harp of solemn sound" — "as for me, 
 I will behold Thy presence in righteousness ; and 
 when I awake up after Thy likeness I shall be 
 satisfied with it." 
 
 Thoroughly " satisfied." Nothing lost. No- 
 thing scattered or wasted. No fragments to be 
 
268 GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS. 
 
 gathered up ; everything perfect and complete 
 in Him — in the fulness of Him which filleth all 
 in all. 
 
 May it one day be so with us, my brethren 
 
 and sisters ! Amen. 
 
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