us ( ee: Teas = ey « ¥ Received by bequest from Albert H. Lybyer Professor of History University of Illinois 1916-1949 56 / CENTRAL CIRCULATION BOOKSTACKS The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its renewal or its return to the library from which it was borrowed on or before the Latest Date stamped below. You may be charged a minimum fee of $75.00 for each lost book. Theft, mutilation, ond underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. TO RENEW CALL TELEPHONE CENTER, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN APR 0 8 1998 MAR 3 0 1998 DEC 3 6 1899 APR 1 7 288] | { FER 9° 2 2092 4 - id riaee ,, Dg © ou When renewing by phone, write new due date below previous due date. L162 Great Books as Life- Teachers By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS. —— GREAT BOOKS AS LIFE~-TEACHERS STUDIES OF CHARACTER, REAL AND IDEAL r2mo, cloth, gilt top, Tenth Edition THE INVESTMENT OF INFLUENCE A STUDY OF SOCIAL SYMPATHY AND SERVICE 12mo, vellum, gilt top, $1.25 Sixteenth Edition A MAN’S VALUE TO SOCIETY STUDIES IN SELF-CULTURE AND CHARACTER 12mo, vellum, gilt top, $1.25 Sixth Edition FORETOKENS OF IMMORTALITY STUDIES FOR ‘* THE HOUR WHEN THE IMMORTAL HOPE BURNS LOW IN THE HEART” Long 16mo, 50 cents; art binding, gilt top, boxed, 75 cents Fourth Edition HOW THE INNER LIGHT FAILED A STUDY OF THE ATROPHY OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE Quiet Hour Series, 18mo, cloth, 25 cents oe BOOKLETS (In Press.) Each, 50 cents I. Ricut Livinc as a Fine Art. A study of Channing’s Symphony II. Rogsert Louis STEvENsoN’s CHRISTMAS SER- Mon. A Study of the Ideal Life. III. SHaAxkeEsPEARE’s CounsELs TO LAERTES. A Poet’s Rules for a Successful Life. IV. Joun Rusxin’s Ourtoox Upon Youtu as A Great OpporTUNITY Great Books as Life- Teachers Studies of Character Real and Ideal By Newell Dwight Hillis Author of ‘*The Investment of Influence,” ‘* Man’s Value to Society,” etc ‘‘Ideas are often poor ghosts; but sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at us with sad sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame,”’ Siras MARNER. Chicago New York Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company Mdccexcix AUER Re we iy it By FLE y FLEMIN i NG H.R mi pea, : L COMP -~ oY c~ c~ “J FOREWORD For some reason our generation has closed its text-books on ethics and morals, and opened the great poems, essays, and novels. Doubtless for thoughtful persons this fact argues, not a decline of interest in the funda- mental principles of right living, but a desire ».to study these principles as they are made flesh ~and embodied in living persons. The leaders in literature have their supremacy less through . the charm of a faultless style than because » they discuss problems old as life itself—prob- \ ems of love friendship, and passion, problems of ambition and the desire for money, office, © » and good name, problems of temptation and sin, problems of the soul’s wreckage, and its recovery also. It is often said that literature ' is the greatest of the fine arts, and certainly © it is of all the arts the wisest and most inspir- ing, serving at once as tutor, guide, and _ friend. In this era, when fiction is increas- “ingly the medium of amusement and instruc- tion, and when the great poets and essayists are becoming the prophets of a new social 5 Foreword order, it seems important to remember that the great novelists are consciously or uncon- sciously teachers of morals, while the most ‘fascinating essays and poems are essentially books. of aspiration and _ spiritual culture. Lest the scope of these studies be misunder- stood, it should be said that the author approaches these volumes from the view- point of a pastor, interested in literature as a help in the religious life, and seeking to find in these writings bread for those who are hungry, light for those who are in darkness, and life for those who walk in the shadow of death. Leaving to others the problems of literary criticism, these studies emphasize the importance of right thinking in order to right conduct and character, and the uses of great books as aids and incentives to the higher Christian life. NEWELL DwicuTt HILLIs. Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. October 25, 1899. CONTENTS I The New Times, and the Poets and 5 Gian as Prophets of a New Era IJ John Ruskin’s **Seven Lamps of Architecture’”’ as Interpreters of the Seven Laws of Life —A Study of the Tee of Character Building ; ; III George Eliot’s Tito, in ‘* Romola’?—A Study of the Peril of ‘Tampering with Conscience and the Gradual Deterioration of Character IV Hawthorne’s ‘‘ Scarlet Letter’’ and the Retrib- utive Workings of Conscience—A Study of the Necessity and Nobility of Repent- ance, and the Confession of Sin V Victor Hugo’s *¢ Les Miserables’>——-The Battle of the Angels and the Demons for Man’s Soul. How Jean Valjean was Recovered from Passion and Sin to Christian Service and Self-sacrifice . VI Tennyson’s ‘‘Idylls of the King’’—An Out- look upon the Soul’s Epochs and Teachers PAGE 15 shy 63 89 11g r53 Vil The Tragedy of the Ten-Talent Men—A Study of Browning’s ‘*Saul’’ . ; Vill The Memoirs of Henry Drummond, and the Dawn of an Era of Friendship between Science and Religion IX The Opportunities of Leisure and Wealth— An Outlook upon the Life of Lord Shaftesbury xX The Biography of Frances Willard, and the Heroes of Social Reform—A Study of the Knights of the New Chivalry . : XI Blaikie’s Life of David Livingstone—A Study of Nineteenth-Century Heroism : XII The Christian Scholar in Politics—A Study of the Life of William Ewart Gladstone 181 207 231 255 279 5°9 sta Times, and the Poets and Es- te os as Prophets of a New Era Meats Pik: > % i 7 ‘ s \ ye eit ' ' \ Hi shay } 1 be I ’ i ‘a ie i ; ’ i \ ' ; " Poly i ! A! a i ie * teod h i ‘ al ’ Ue hn iN oy Py tot In inorganic and material nature there is an im- pulse, whatever it may be, by which things unfold and work steadily toward higher excellence. It is with immense waste, it is circuitous, slow, with some- thing of retroaction; but the unfolding of nature by this mute and latent tendency to go toward a better future, leavens the world like yeast, and develops it as well. This is the spirit of the ages, the genius of the universe. All creation is on the march, The stars are revolving. The dead crust of the earth feels the necessity of moving. The whole vegetable kingdom is moving onward and upward. The animal kingdom, too, keeps step, unconscious of the impel- ling cause. Man, as if he heard the music drowsily and afar off, joins the strange procession, and strug- gles on and upward also. It is a strange march of creation, moving to unheard music, with unseen banners, to some great enterprise. When it shall finally encamp and hang out the ban- ners of victory, no one knoweth but He who liveth in eternity, before whom a thousand years are but as one day, and one day as a thousand years.—HENRY WARD BEECHER. I THE NEW TIMES, AND THE POETS AND ES- SAYISTS AS PROPHETS OF A NEW ERA The pledge of the ‘‘New Times’’ is the promise, ““In the last days I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.’ Therefore ‘‘Great Pan’’ is not dead, morals are not sta- tionary, inspiration is not ancient history, and the Bible is not closed. Men have been telling us that God once pitched His tents close beside the tents of Abraham and Moses. In those far-off days He made friends with each sage and seer. But it is said centuries have passed since the divine form withdrew from the earthly scene. And, lo, comes this divine overture! God’s wine is freshly poured. Each is to be a new-born bard. Inspiration is to speak in each voice, as song bubbles in the lark’s throat. Before the dullest eyes ‘‘the vision splendid’’ dawns. Each day is to be deluged with divinity. Rifts are made in the clouds, 15 Great Books as Life-Teachers signals are hung over the _ battlements, voices from the sky come and keep coming. © Each man is challenged to make ready fora divine invasion. And God is not ‘‘of old,’’ but is.as new as the last apple blossom, as fresh as the last bud or babe. The divine dew is not burned off the grass. The divine light has not faded from the sky. The rustle of divine garments is still in the ear. What God was, He is. What He did, He does. What He said, He says. It is little that of old He helped Moses, if He no longer helps men. The strength of our vineyards is not that once the sun warmed the Valentian hills. The clusters ripen be- cause the all-maturing sun comes to-day, and keeps coming. It is much that God spake to man centuries ago, but it is more, that while He still speaks, the poets and patriots muse, and the sacred fires burn. To our generation God comes, pouring out His heart in tidal waves, making each man a sage, each youth a seer, each handmaiden a prophet of better days and higher things. To-day men are saying God is ancient history. Gone forever the age of poetry and romance and heroism! No more 16 The Prophets of a New Era Shakespeares! No more Dantes! Genius has forsaken the temple. Hollow-eyed, she haunts the market-place. Science is cold and dead. Ours is the age of hum- drum and realism. At home the critics tell us Emerson and Lowell and Longfellow are gone, and have left no successors. Abroad men mourn for Browning, whose torch, falling, flickered out. Tennyson, rising in a heavenly chariot out of the temple of song, forgot to cast his mantle upon some waiting Elisha, but carried the divine garment into the realm beyond the clouds. In music, Wagner is dead, dust is thick upon his harp, and the new music does but re- echo the old melody. In fiction, the pes- simists tell us, the rosy tints of idealism have faded out, leaving only the old gray morn. ‘“‘It only remains for us,’’ adds the art critic, ‘‘to copy the nymphs and the madonnas of old.’’ ‘‘The age of great editors and the molding of communities has gone,’’ echoes the journalist. ‘‘Let us be content to report the dry-as-dust facts of life.’’ No more eloquence in statesmanship, for Webster and Gladstone and Lincoln have 17 Great Books as Life-Teachers passed away. No more oratory at the bar; henceforth only moldy precedents. No more passion in the pulpit, for Beecher and Brooks and Liddon and Spurgeon have no successors. No more liberty in theology, for saith some General Assembly: ‘‘In Wesley or Calvin God reached His limits. He is unequal to another Augustine. The book of theology is closed. Henceforth if any man adds unto or takes away from our Confession, let his name be taken out of our book of ecclesiastical life.’” No more creative work, only copying, annotating, and criticising. The divine resources, overgen- erous to men of yesterday, have no full tides for all flesh to-day. Reasoning thus, pessimism proclaims exhaustion in the infi- nite. Conservatism becomes atheistic. God is bound up in manuscripts, as Lazarus was wrapped in grave-clothes. But God is a seed, not a dying leaf. God isa rosy dawn, not a falling star. God is a flaming sun, not the astronomy that describes it. God _ is a living voice, not the creed that explains Him. God is flaming, eternal truth, not the manuscripts in which some sage once wrote. His outpoured spirit that began 18 The Prophets of a New Era as a trickling stream 1s become a river ‘‘deep enough to swim in.’’ In a world like ours it ought not to seem strange that God hath kept His best wine of civilization until the last of the feast. Everything in nature and history proclaims this as His working principle. Science tells us that our earth, now waving with harvests from Maine to Oregon, began its history as cold, dead rock. Slowly the scant soil grew deep. Huge billows of fire melted down the granite peaks; the glaciers ground down the bowlders; the summers and winters pulverized rock into soil that was shallow and poor. And when the scant plant life began, it carried forward this enriching work; the bush shook down its leaves, the tree gave its trunk to decay, the clouds gave rain, the snows gave their gases, until at last the soil became rich and deep, and earth was all glorious with fields and forests. And the animal life, too, began at nothing and increased in kind and dignity. After the snail that crawled came the bird that flew, the beast that walked, the deer that ran. Last of all came man, lord over all. Soci- ety also has moved from the little to the 19 Great Books as Life-Teachers large, and the poor to the rich. Slowly man’s hut journeyed toward the house, his forked stick toward the steam plow, his blundering speech toward the orator’s elo- quence, the whistler’s notes toward the deep-toned organ, the smoking altars toward the glorious temple, the reign of force toward the rule of right. So slow has the upward movement been, that man must needs pro- tect himself against pessimism by remem- bering that with God ‘‘a thousand years are as one day.’’ The individual life also re-emphasizes this principle. The youth begins indeed with rushing tides of hope and inspira- tion, but moving on toward his maturity the freshness and innocence of his earlier days do not die out, but the morning splendor strengthens into the richer, fuller noon. Surveying history, the scholar sees that the centuries have not been growing darker, drearier, and worse. Man’s march has been upward and forward until our earth is all’ afire with a glory that burns brighter and brighter. Society is not like Wordsworth’s child that came ‘‘ trailing clouds of glory’’ that died out into the light of common day. 20 The Prophets of a New Era Man did not begin with a great storehouse filled with treasure. Mankind began with scant resources, and slowly moved on tow- ard these days, when society’s granaries are well-nigh overflowing. Each new era brings new inspirations. God’s method always is to surprise men by bringing forth the best wine at the last of the feast. Each new century wins so many new tools, arts and industries that in contrast the preceding one seems like an age of darkness, even as the sun makes the electric light cast a shadow. Since God hath pledged to society new leaders for new emergencies, what are the signs of their coming? What go we out to see? If we ask history to instruct us, we shall see that every prophet foretelling new times has had three characteristics. He is a seer and sees clearly. He is a great heart and feels deeply. He is ahero and dares valiantly. But vision-power is the first and last gift. That vision and outlook God has given to every Moses and Elijah, to every John and Paul, and with instant skill they have laid the finger upon the diseased spot in the social life. But it is not enough that 21 Great Books as Life-Teachers the seer has the vision that sees. Zola can describe, Balzac can picture, James can photograph deeds and traits. But these shed notears. They feel no heartache. They paint, but do not pity. With solemn pag- eantry of words Gibbon caused the Roman centuries to pass before each reader. The mind of this great historian worked with the precision of a logic engine—cold, smooth, and faultless. But Carlyle’s eloquence is logic set on fire. What his mind saw his heart also felt. All the woe, and pathos, and tragedy of the French Revolution swept in billows over him, and broke his heart. Gibbon worked in cold, white light. Car- lyle dipped his pen in his heart’s blood. Therefore Carlyle’s history is a seething fire. But Gibbon’s is only the picture of a fire— mere canvas and paint. Moreover, the prophet who is guided of God adds to the great mind and the sym- pathetic heart a third quality. Every Paul and John, every Savonarola and Luther, has had a consuming passion for right- eousness. Purity has been the crowning quality of all the epoch-making men. For lack of righteousness Bacon lost his leader- 22 The Prophets of a New Era ship. While his head was in the clouds his feet were in the mire. So great was Goethe’s genius that he sometimes seems like one driving steeds of the sun, but self-indulgence took off his chariot wheels. Therefore the German poet has never been to his century all that Milton was to his age. During his life Goethe always kept two friends busy—the one weaving laurels for his brow, the other cleaning mud from his garments. But Paul, striding the earth like a moral Colossus, braving kings, daring armies, toppling down thrones, set- ting nations free, has dwelt apart from iniquity. John and Paul, Hampden and Pym, seem like white clouds floating above the sloughs from which they rise. Great was the intellectual genius of Moses and Paul! Wondrous, too, their sympathy for human woe and pain! But their supremacy was chiefly moral genius. In them reason and affection dwelt close beside conscience, and were bound up in one powerful person- ality, as light and heat are twisted together in each beam of the all-maturing sun. Heaven’s most precious gift to earth is ‘‘the soul of a man actually sent down from the 23 Great Books as Life-Teachers bf skies with a God’s-message to us’’; and these are his credentials: vision-power, sym- pathy, sincerity, and zeal for righteous- ness.* Now, if these are indeed the signs of the prophets, then of a truth hath God sent seers unto our age and land. Consciously or un- consciously, the divine tides have been poured out upon our authors. Our writers are be- ‘ coming prophets. A new spirit like a summer atmosphere is sweetening all our literature. In reading the works of Cicero or Seneca one must glean and glean for single humanitarian sentiments. Their writings are exquisite in form and polished like statues, but they are without heart or humanity. Even English literature, from Fielding and Smollet down to Pope and Dryden, teems with scorn and sneers for the uneducated poor. The works of Sidney Smith are filled with contempt- uous allusions to the vulgar herd. Until recently the English poets purged their pages of all peasants, and the novelists will have for hero no man less than a squire, and deal chiefly with lords and ladies. But to-day the people, with their woes and *Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-Worship, page 274. 24 The Prophets of a New Era griefs, have found a standing in literature. A new spirit has been “‘poured out.’’ The new era began with ‘‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”’ when a slave stood forth as a candidate for hero-worship. Then Dickens became the knight errant of each ‘‘Oliver Twist,’’ and society began to hear “‘the bitter cry of the children.’’ All literature has become per- meated with sympathy for the under classes. Great authors no longer look with deri- sion upon those underneath them, and none dare insult ‘‘the common people.’’* A host of writers like Victor Hugo and George Eliot and Charles Kingsley and Walter Besant have come in to give their whole souls to softening the lot of human- ity. To-day all literature is working for the once despised and unbefriended classes. Moreover, books that have no enthusiasm for humanity are speedily sent to the garret. Society cares less and less for work of artistic finish and more and more for books filled with sympathy and enthusiasm for man. In modern literature the books that give promise of abiding are those that preach the *In another generation, the expression “the com- | mon people” will give place to “the people.” 25 Great Books as Life-Teachers gospel of humanity to the poor. Verily, our authors have become prophets! Our greatest thinkers also, like Ruskin and Carlyle, Emerson and Lowell, Brown- ing and Tennyson, have ceased to be poets and essayists, and have become seers. A divine something is making each lyre sacred. Our singers are giving themselves to lifting up those ‘‘fugitive ideals’’ the pursuit of which makes man’s progress. God has always stayed the ages upon some bard or singer, and breathed His purposes and provi- dences through parables and poems. And in our day He has caused Emerson to stand forth a veritable prophet, telling each indi- vidual that being is better than seeing; tell- ing the orator and publicist that it is good for a man to have a hearing, but better for him to deserve the hearing; telling the reformer that the single man, who indomi- tably plants himself upon his divine instincts and there abides, will find the whole world coming around to him. And Carlyle also | was God’s prophet—a seer stormy indeed and impetuous, with a great hatred for lies and laziness, and a mighty passion for truth and work; lashing our shams and hypoc- 26 The Prophets of a New Era risies; telling our materialistic age that it was going straight to the devil, and by a vulgar road at that; pointing out the abyss into which luxury and licentiousness have always plunged. Like Elijah of old, Car- lyle loved righteousness, hated cant, and did ever plead for justice, and mercy, and truth. If his every sentence was laden with intellect, it was still more heavily laden with character. To the great Scotchman God gave the prophet’s vision and the seer’s sympathy and scepter. Even our greatest art critic also has be- come a prophet. By acclamation we vote Ruskin the first prose writer of his century. But he has his fame because of his work as a social reformer, rather than as an art critic. The heart of Ruskin’s message is: life without industry is guilt; that industry without art is brutality; that men cannot eat stone nor drink steam; that the apples of Sodom and the grapes of Gomorrah, the daintiest of ashes and the nectar of asps will feed no man’s strength; that the making of self-sufficing men is a business worthy the ambition of cities and states; that ten-talent men returning to give an account of their a7 Great Books as Life-Teachers stewardship can never thrust gold into God’s hands; that man lives not alone by tending cattle and tending corn, but by the manna of God’s wondrous words and works; that justice and truth and love alone are able to turn this desert earth into the garden of God until all the valleys are covered with vine- yards and the shouts of the happy multi- tudes ring around the wine-press and the well. Here is Lowell, also, telling us that upon the open volume of the world, with a pen of sunshine and destroying fire, the inspired present is even now writing the annals of God, and that while ‘‘the old Sinai, silent now, is only a common moun- tain, stared at by elegant tourists and crawled over by hammering geologists,’’ there are tables of a new law among the factories and cities, where in this wilderness of sin each leader is a prophet of a new social order, and where New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. Lo, before us gleam her campfires! We ourselves must pilgrims be; 28 The Prophets of a New Era Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly through the desperate winter’s sea, Nor attempt the future’s portal with the past’s blood rusted key. If now we examine the tendency of inven- tion and the mechanical arts, we shall find that even tools have become evangelists and machines prophets of a new day. From every quarter come voices foretelling an age of wealth, and happiness, and comfort. Many feel that we are upon the threshold of new and wondrous mechanical discover- ies. Already science has fashioned sixty steel slaves for every family. Edison thinks the time is rapidly approaching when this number is to be increased to two hundred. But each tool is ordained of God for the reinforcement of manhood. Every time a river is enslaved a thousand men are set free. Every time an iron wheel is mastered a thousand human muscles are emancipated. In nature God’s machines are called natural laws. Man’s natural laws are his machines. And while the new conveniences have brought an increase of happiness and com- fort to the rich, they have done a thousand- fold more for the poor. There never has been an age when the rich could not travel 29 Great Books as Life-Teachers rapidly. But steam enables the poorest man to travel rapidly. Always the rich could wear warm gar- ments, but the looms gives soft raiment to the poor. Always the rich could buy books. In the tenth century the Countess of Anjou gave two hundred sheep, one load of wheat, one load of rye, and one load of millet for a volume of sermons writ- ten bya German monk. Now our people buy the works of our greatest essayists, novel- ists, and poets for one penny, ortwo. The new printing presses have placed all the clas- sics within the reach of the poorest. Chiefly is invention refining the multitude through the diffusion of the beautiful. The time was when only the prince could afford a _ painting. Now photography multiplies “‘the masters,’’ and during the long winter even- ings, while the tired body rests, the illus- trated paper causes the pyramids and tem- ples and palaces and mountains and rivers of the earth to pass before the fascinated eye and mind. The sense of beauty once condensed in painting or statue or cathedral is now diffused. It is sprinkled upon the | floor; it hangs upon the walls; it adorns the 30 The Prophets of a New Era tables; it enriches the chambers of affection; it refines and sweetens the universal life. Indeed, the workingman of to-day enjoys comforts that were the despair of barons and princes of three hundred years ago. And each new discovery seems not so much to bring power to the strong and rich as to toil in the interests of the weak and help- less. As in the olden days Jesus Christ approved Himself by preaching the gospel to the poor, so now every convenience comes in, having this divine sanction. The poems of to-day are ships and engines and reapers. Tools free the mind for books, free the taste and imagination for beauty, free the affec- tion for social service. Thereby comes the day of universal happiness and civilization of which the poet dreams, toward which the philanthropist works. As once the prophets so now God is baptizing inventors and their tools with the spirit of service. Some Watt, perhaps, with a new method of transit, mak- ing it possible for the dwellers in tenements to journey into the country ten miles in ten minutes for half as many pence, will, through sunshine and fresh air, cleanse and gospelize the cellars and garrets of our slum 31 Great Books as Life-Teachers districts. Soon tools are to become evan- gelists of the higher life. It ought to go without saying that the preachers are prophets divine. It would be sad indeed if they, instead of being seers and living forces, should fade into emblematic figures at christenings, wed- dings, and funerals, or become mere guardi- .ans of theological dogmas. History tells 'us every new era has been created by a ' preacher. Guizot insists that Paul did more for liberty and free institutions than any man who ever stood on Western soil. Froude says it was not the scholar Erasmus, but the preacher Luther, who created the Reformation. It was a prophet of Florence that turned the city of art into the city of God. Those moral teachers named Cedmon, Bede, Bunyan, and the translators of King James’s version of the Bible opened up for us the springs of English literature. Cromwell’s letters tell us that the Puritan preachers destroyed the divine rights of kings, that citadel of falsehood and cruelty and crime. It was Robertson of Brighton that first said that man was never justified by faith until faith had made man just. It 32 The Prophets of a New Era was a preacher, Barnett, who went to live in Whitechapel Road, and in that wilder- ness of ignorance and misery founded a social settlement to which came students from Oxford and Cambridge to give them- selves to the poor. It was a preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, who, when men said that evolution would destroy the Bible, drove out fear and doubt, and showed us that the theory of theistic evolution insured the immortality of the Bible and the permanency of Christianity. The scholar returns from his survey, hav- ing seen that in every realm God is causing life to expand and take on increasing breadth and richness. Man’s religion, therefore, is assuming new proportions, greater reason-_ ableness, and higher ideals of service. For the church also, a new era has dawned. As our age journeys away from Bacon’s theft, but gladly carries forward his philos- ophy; as society has left behind the sins of Robert Burns, but joyfully carries forward his sweet songs; so the church is journeying away from the falsities of medizvalism, but carries forward the sweetness and light of Jesus Christ. Gone forever the hideous 33 Great Books as Life-Teachers dogmas that tortured our fathers! Gone forever the scholasticisms that confused Satan with God! Never again will the cross mean pacifying the wrath of an angry deity. Never again will a man be asked to debase his reason in order to exalt his heart. The church is exchanging the worship of the past for the heritage of the present, the old philosophies for the new living Christ. We have already seen the shapes of mental and moral beauty increase in number; we have seen our youth journeying toward the schoolhouse; our homes growing beautiful and happy; our workers moving in the morning hours toward shop and store, car- rying in their hands the emblems of knowl- edge; new and nobler forms of literature coming from the rapid press, and now it is given us to behold Christianity moving for- ward with increasing breadth, and having the might and majesty of a river of God. Already that divine teacher, Christ, hath touched poverty and clothed it with power; hath touched marriage and surrounded it with romance and love; hath touched the soldier and turned him into a hero and patriot. And now He is here to touch work 34 The Prophets of a New Era and wages, making them sacraments of human fellowship. Christ is also here to enrich each life with new and impressive forms of mental and moral beauty. He offers man new powers and new impulses. The force of the ship is in the trade wind that sweeps it on, and the joy of the sailor is in the harbor toward which he moves. Not otherwise the dignity and majesty of life are in the divine motives that sweep the soul upward and in the sublime destiny to- ward which the soul moves. In days gone by this divine Teacher put justice into law, ethics into politics, love into religion, and planted immortal hopes upon our graves. Having girded the heroes of old for their tasks, He steps into the new era, to continue the line of prophets and heroes. He offers to make apostolic succession a sublime fact. He bids each youth stand in the line of heroes and seers, with Paul and Socrates and Savonarola; with Hampden, Washington and Lincoln. He bids each maiden strike hands of noble friendship with Augusta Stan- ley and Florence Nightingale and Frances Willard. He bids the patriot of to-day emu- late and surpass the heroes of yesterday. 35 bap Ay. 4 ee ah } Be fi ican IJ bt tecture”’ as "pica of the Seven ; Laws of Life—A Study of the Princi- ples of aa Building } I know well the common censure by which objec- tions to such futilities of so-called education are met by the men who have been ruined by them—the com- mon plea that anything does to “exercise the mind upon.” It is an utterly false one. The human soul, in youth, is zo¢ a machine of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or brick-dust near at hand; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, and oiled serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive at twenty-five years old, or thirty, express from the Strait Gate, on the Narrow Road. The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction—I use the words with their weight in them—in taking of stores; establishment in vital habits, hopes, and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies—not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the fur- nace, and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover faz to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God’s presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him—at least in this world.—Modern Painters, Vol. LLL, p. 430. I] JOHN RUSKIN’S ‘‘SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHI- TECTURE’ AS INTERPRETERS OF THE SEVEN LAWS OF LIFE—A STUDY OF THE PRINCIPLES OF CHARACTER BUILDING Among the heroic souls who have sought to recover the lost paradise and recapture the glory of an undefiled and blessed world stands John Ruskin, oft an apostle of gentle words that heal like medicines, and some- times a prophet of Elijah-like sternness and grandeur, consuming man’s sins with words of flame. ‘‘There is nothing going on among us,’” wrote Carlyle to Emerson, ‘‘as notable as those fierce lightning bolts Rus- kin is copiously and desperately pouring into the black world of anarchy around him. No other man has in him the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, and baseness that Ruskin has, and every man ought to have.”’ Full fifty years have passed since this glori- ous youth entered the arena, his face glow- ae Great Books as Life-Teachers ing with hope, the heroic flame of the martyrs burning within his breast, his mes- sage a plea for a return to the simplicities of virtue. During all these years he has been pouring forth prose of a purity and beauty that have never been surpassed. Over against the brocaded pages of Gibbon and the pomposity of Dr. Johnson’s style stands Ruskin’s prose, every page embodied simplicity, every sentence clear asa cube of solid sunshine. Effects that Keats pro- duced only through the music and magic of verse, John Ruskin has easily achieved through the plainness of prose. What Leigh Hunt said of Shelley we may say of Ruskin—he needs only the green sod be- neath his feet to make him a kind of human lark, pouring forth songs of unearthly sweet- ness. But if the critics vote him by acclamation the first prose writer of the century, it must be remembered that his fame does not rest upon his skill as a literary artist. An apostle of beauty and truth, indeed, Ruskin is pri- marily an apostle of righteousness. Unlike Burns and Byron, Shelley and Goethe, no passion ever poisoned his purposes and 40 Ruskin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture”’ no vice ever disturbed the working of his genius. What he taught in theory he first was in character and did in practice. Rich with great wealth, inherited and acquired, he refused interest upon his loans, and hav- ing begun with giving away his income, he ended by giving away much of his capital. Unlike that rich young man who went away from Christ sorrowful, John Ruskin gladly forsook all his possessions to follow Jesus. The child of leisure, he chose to earn to- morrow’s bread by to-day’s labor and toil. Going every whither seeking for pictures and marbles that represented ideal beauty, he used these art treasures not so much for enriching his own life and happiness as for diffusing the beautiful and furnishing models to laborers who worked in iron, steel, and stone. If other rich men have given money to found workingmen’s clubs, Ruskin gave himself also, and lent the toilers indepen- dence and self-reliance. It is said that through his favorite pupil, Arnold Toynbee, he developed the germ of the social settle- ments. But his fame rests neither upon his work as an art critic, nor his skill as a prose author, nor his work as a social reformer; it 41 Great Books as Life-Teachers rests rather upon his unceasing emphasis of individual worth as the secret of hap- piness and progress. If Mazzini preached the gospel of social rights, and Carlyle the gospel of honest work, and Matthew Arnold the gospel of culture, and Emerson the gos- pel of sanity and optimism, John Ruskin’s message, repeated in a thousand forms, is one message—never altered and never re- treated from—goodness is more than gold, and character outweighs intellect. Because he stood for a fine, high, heroic regimen, he conquered confidence, and has his place among the immortals. If we search out the fascination of Rus- kin’s later works, we shall find the secret in their intense humanity. Loving nature, Ruskin’s earliest, latest, deepest enthusiasm was for man. With eager and passionate delight, in ‘‘Modern Painters’’ he sets forth the claim of rock and wave, of herb and shrub, upon man’s higher life. But the white clouds, the perfumed winds, the val- leys covered with tended corn and cattle, the mountains robed in pine as with the garments of God, seemed as nothing com- pared to man, who goes weeping, laughing, 42 Ruskin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture” loving, through his pathetic career. One morning, crossing the field toward Matter- horn, he met a suffering peasant, and in that hour the mountain became as nothing in the presence of his brother man. In all ‘his later books, therefore, he is a light- bearer, seeking to guide men into happiness and virtue. He reminds the weary king and the tormented slave alike that the secrets of happiness are in “‘drawing hard breath over chisel, or spade, or plow, in watching the corn grow and the blossom set, and, after toil, in reading, thinking, in hoping and praying.’’ Would any man be strong, let him work; or wise, let him observe and think; or happy, let him help; or influential, . let him sacrifice and serve. Does some youth deny beauty to the eye, books to the mind, and friendship to the heart, that he may gather gold and daily eat stalled ox in a palace? Such a one is a prince who hath voluntarily entered a dungeon to spend his time gathering the rotting straw from the damp stones to twist it into a filthy wreath for his forehead. Does some Samson of industry use his superior wisdom to gather into his hands all the lines of some branch 43 Great Books as Life-Teachers of trade while others starve? He is like unto a wrecker, who lures some good ship upon the rocks that he may clothe himself with garments and possess purses unwrapped from the bodies of brave men slain by deceit. Wealth, he asserts, is like any other natural power in nature—divine if divinely used. In the hands of a miserly man wealth is clogged by selfishness and becomes like rivers that ‘‘overwhelm the plains, poison- ing the winds, their breath pestilence, their work famine,’’ while honest and benevolent wealth is like those rivers that pass softly from field to field, moistening the soil, puri- fying the air, giving food to man and beast, bearing up fleets of war and peace. For John Ruskin the modern Pharisee was the man who prayed, ‘‘God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are; I feast seven days a week, while I have made other men fast.’’ And against every form of selfishness and injustice he toiled, ever seek- ing to overthrow the kingdoms of Mammon and Belial, laboring to make his land a ‘land of royal thrones for kings, a sceptered isle for all the world, a realm of light, a center of peace, a mistress of arts, a faithful 44, Ruskin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture” guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverence and ephemeral visions.’’ But from the first volume of ‘Modern Painters’’ to the last pages of the ‘‘Preterita’’ his one message is, Doing is better than seeming, giving is better than getting, and stooping to serve better than climbing toward the throne to wear an outer crown and scepter. Over against these books dealing with man’s ambitions, strifes, defeats, and sins stands Ruskin’s ‘“Lamps of Architecture,’’ a book written at an hour when the sense of life’s sins, sorrows, and wrongs swept through his heart with the might of a de- stroying storm. Inthat hour when the pen dropped from his hand and hope departed from his heart, one problem distracted his mind by day and disturbed his sleep by night—‘‘Why is the fruit shaken to the earth before its ripeness, the glowing life and the goodly purpose dissolved away in sudden death, the words half spoken chilled upon the lips touched into clay forever, the whole majesty of humanity raised to its fullness, with every gift and power neces- sary for a given purpose at a given moment centered in one man, and all this perfected 45 Great Books as Life-Teachers blessing permitted to be refused, perverted, crushed, and cast aside by those who need it most—the city which is zot set upona hill, the candle that giveth light to none enthroned in the candlestick?’’ The world’s ingratitude to its best men rested like a black cloud upon his spirit. In that hour when the iron entered his soul and ingrati- tude blighted the blossoms of the heart, Ruskin turned from the baseness of man to the white statue that lifts no mailed hand to strike, and exchanged the coarse curses of the market-place for the sacred silence of the cathedral. He knew that if wholesome labor wearies at first, afterward it lends pleasure; that if the frosty air now chills the peasant’s cheek, afterward it will make his blood the warmer. But he also knew that ‘‘labor may be carried toa point of utter exhaustion from which there is no recovery; that cold passing to a certain point will cause the arm to molder in its socket,’’ and that heart-sickness through ingratitude may cause the soul to lose its life forever. Leaving behind the tumult of the street and the din of the market-place, he entered 46 Ruskin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture” the cathedral, hoping in its silence and peace to find healing for life’s hurts. Standing beneath the vast dome, in vision hour he saw Von Rile or Angelo stretching out hands upon the stones of the field and rearing them into some awful pile with vast springing arches and intrepid pinnacles that go leaping toward Him whose home is above the clouds and beyond them. He saw walls all glorious with lustrous beauty, and knew that artists had taken the flower girls from the streets and turned them into angels for the ceiling; had taken the shrunken beggar, hobbling homeward, and made him to reap- pear upon the canvas as an Apollo of beauty. He saw chapels once the scene of rubbish, plaster, and litter become chapels of peace, glowing with angels and prophets and sibyls. One day, crossing the square of Venice, he saw St. Mark’s rising like a vision out of the ground, its front one vast forest of clustered pillars of white and gold and rose, upon which rested domes glorious enough to have been let down from heaven; a pile made partly of mother-of-pearl, partly of opal, partly of marble, every tower sur- mounted by a golden cross flinging wide its 47 Great Books as Life-Teachers arms to uplift the world, every niche hold- ing some angel upon whose lips trembled words of mercy and healing. Lingering there, slowly the fever passed from his heart and the fret from his mind. Studying the laws by which foundations were made firm, by which towers were made secure and domes perfect, he completed a volume in which he forgot man, and remembered only the problems of stone and steel and wood; and yet as we analyze these chapters we find that these seven lamps of architecture are in reality the seven laws of life and happiness. For the soul is atemple more majestic than any cathedral—a temple in which principles are foundation stones, and habits are col- umns and pillars, and faculties are master builders, every thought driving a nail and every deed weakening or making strong some timber, every holy aspiration lending beauty to the ceiling, as every unclean thing lends defilement—the whole standing forth at last builded either of passions, worthless as wood, hay, and stubble, or builded of thoughts and purposes more pre- cious than gold and flashing gems. Lingering long in the cities of Italy, Rus- 48 Ruskin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture”’ kin found some temples in the full pride of their strength and the perfection of their beauty, having passed unharmed through the snows of a thousand winters and the storms of a thousand summers. But other temples he found that were mere shells of their former loveliness, bare skeletons. of pierced walls, here a tower and there an arch. Studying these deserted temples through which the sea wind moaned and murmured, and the ruins that time was plowing into dust, he discovered that no robber’s hand had wrought this ruin, that no fire had consumed the arch or overthrown the column. In Venice the roof of the great church had fallen because the architect had put lying stones in the foundation. In Verona the people had deserted the cathe- dral because the architect had built columns of plaster and painted them to look like veined marble, forgetting that time would soon expose the ugly, naked lie. One day, entering a church ina heavy rainstorm, he found buckets placed to catch the rain that was dripping from the priceless frescoes of Tintoretto because a builder had put lying tiles upon the roof. He saw ships cast 49 Great Books as Life-Teachers upon the rocks because some smith had put a lying link in the anchor’s cable. He saw the members of a household burning up with a fatal fever because the plumber had used lying lead in the drainage. He saw the captain deceiving himself about the leaks in his boat and taking sailors forth to a cer- tain death. | And in that hour his whole soul revolted from ‘‘the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself.’”’ For if untruth is fatal to the permanency of buildings, much more is it fatal to excel- lence in the soul. For man the beginning of lies is ruin, and the end thereof death. Therefore in John’s vision of the city of God he saw there no sorcerer, no murderer, and no man ‘‘who loveth and maketh a lie.”’ For life’s deadliest enemy, and its most despicable one, is falseness. In the last analysis, untruth is inferiority and weakness. When the teacher lifts the rod, the child without other defense lifts up the lie as a shield against the blow. When the dying man asks his friends as to his condition, the 50 Ruskin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture” strong man, conscious of his resources to make his friend victorious over death, speaks the instant truth, while the weak man, unwilling to confess his poverty of resource, tells this soft and glistening lie, **To-morrow you will be better.’’ In the realm of traffic, also, the wise merchant can afford to sell his goods for what they are, but the weak one feels that he must sell lying threads, lying foods, and lying drinks. But nature hates lies. She makes each law a detective. Sooner or later she runs down every false- hood.