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YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 06097 0671 LINESS.

A SERMON

PREACHED TO THE

13th REGIMENT, N". G. S. 1ST. Y.,

BEOOKLYN, N. Y.

ON SABBATH EVENING, NOVEMBEE 12tf, 18G5,

BY ITS CHAPLAIN,

REV. EDWARD TAYLOR,

PASTOR OF THE SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.

NEW YORK:
OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES SERVICE MAGAZINE,
5 4 0 BROADWAY'. 1866.

CcS 92 St

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fir. the founding uf a. College uv this- Colony"

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E. S. Dodqi & Co., Steam Printers, Si John Street, New York.

At the monthly meeting of the Board of Officers of the
13th Regiment, N. G., held January 6th, 1866, on
motion of Col. Woodward, it was unanimously
Resolved, That our Chaplain be requested to furnish to this
Board a copy of the Sermon recently preached by him to this
Eegiment, for publication in pamphlet form, for the use of the
Regiment.
HENRY HEATH,
Clarence Stanley,
Secretary.

MANLINESS,

" Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong." — 1 Cor.,
xvi. . 13.

A robust, valorous soul can no more declare itself in
soft and feminine words, than a knight of old could lay
aside his two-handed sword and heavy coat of mail for
a feathery, wand and a robe of silk. A braver, stouter
spirit never animated human form — the Christ alone
excepted — than that possessed by that veteran soldier
of the cross, that scarred old captain in the sacramental
host, the apostle Paul. His spiritual imagery is bold;
his conceptions are grand ; he does not lead us plod
ding over alluvial flats, but invites us with him to scale
rock-ribbed Lookout mountains. He clothes many of
his sublimest thoughts in language drawn from military
scenes ; to him life seems a warfare in which we are to
be clad in full gospel panoply, and at the close of the
conflict the crown of victory is awarded amidst the
acclamations of legions of the Heavenly Host.
Our text is a characteristically worded injunction to
MANLINESS.
" Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men,
be strong." Nervous thoughts in nervous diction, they

ring through the soul like bugle-blasts on the eve of
battle. Men of the Thirteenth Regiment !
Having been, through the partiality of your Com
mander, appointed to the post of Chaplain of your regi
ment, I have accepted the position. My heart had pre
viously been drawn to you from reports of your gen
erous charities ; through your gifts of $900 to the Fe
male Employment Society, and of more than $4,000 at
one time to the Sanitary Commission, and of other
sums at various times to other charities, you have won
the sympathies of the humane. But that deed which
most of all warms my heart to you is your adoption of
the child, who most appropriately is present with you
to-night, and who, in person, at the sheltering side of
your Colonel, is, in spirit, nestled in all your hearts.
What some other Regiments have in name — " The
daughter of the regiment" — you have in fact. De
prived first of her mother, and then of her father, your
former comrade, who, a Captain in the United States
Army, fell bravely fighting for his country at that fatal
mine before Petersburgh, this orphan girl of twelve
years you have adopted and are educating to honor
and to usefulness. In such an hallowed work you are
to be congratulated.
Yours is an old, an honorable and honored military
organization, whose rolls bear the names of many worthy
men, from whose ranks have been furnished many officers
to other regiments in the prosecution of the fearful strife

now happily terminated, — whose elegant colors, wor
thily presented to you by approving citizens, bear the
patriotic motto, " Pro P atria Arrnamus," which you
have evinced to be more than words, by leaving your
regular avocations three times, at no small sacrifice, for
the defence of your country. This night repose in sol
diers' sepulchres the bodies of men who were once
trained in your ranks, whence they were laid costly
sacrifices upon the altar of our beloved land ; no beat of
drum at reveille or tattoo will disturb their slumberSj
no peal of trumpet, until the call to judgment shall
sound from the trump of the archangel of God.
It means something, then, to be your Chaplain, and
because I feel it, you have been invited on this holy
evening to this sacred place. You will expect from
your Chaplain, not what does not belong to his office,
but what does. He cannot add to the vigor and accu
racy of your drill, to the brilliancy of your parade, or to
the laudable pride and symmetry of your march ; but
it will be his to be a Christian friend and comrade, to
perform professional duties with a fraternal heart over
the remains of any to whom you may give the honors
of a military burial ; from time to time to address you
upon themes that ennoble character, and to sympathize
with you in every endeavor to promote the advance
ment of the regiment through the moral and intellectual
advancement of those composing it. In the discharge
of these duties I will not weary you by the gift of con
tinuance ; unable to promise always to be interesting, I
do pledge myself not to be tedious.

Now to the theme suggested by our text :
MANLINESS.
All who are called men are not manly men ; some
who in physiques are sons of Anak, whose ribs are like
bars of iron, whose sinews are as steel, whose ponder
ous fists are like the rail-splitters' iron-hooped mauls,
are not manly men. There must be something more
than ability to turn the scale-beam, or to overcome by
lifting the gravity of other bodies. Manliness often ex
ists in its highest forms where there is hardly enough
of a body to so clothe the intellect that it shall not be
indecently exposed ; and in its lowest forms where there
is hardly enough of spiritual power to work through the
ponderous form in which it is enveloped ; and the great
body and the great soul may go together, constituting
the finest type of a man. A man may occupy much
room in a street car, much cloth may be required to
clothe him, he may get obsequious attentions from hire
lings, may have his name on a house door, his vote may
as surely count one as ever John Hancock's did, and yet
he may be devoid of manliness. Some men are boyish
men, toyish men — I urge you to be manly men.
There are two views of life ; one, that we are placed
here merely to enjoy ourselves. It was placarded
through our streets last summer at the head of the an
nouncement of some excursion, in the words, " Pleasure
not profit ;" as if the being, made only a little lower
than the angels, and crowned by his Creator with glorj'
and honor, had any right to make even his amusements
not conducive to his profit. The other view is, that we

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are placed here to grow noble and strong, and thus ac
quire the will and the ability to quit ourselves like men.
The former is epicurean, gross, coarse, degrading : the
latter is truly philosophical, refined, and elevating ; the
one is sensuous, the other is sensible. The man will be
no loftier than his idea ; if his idea of manliness be low,
he will be low ; if exalted, he will be exalted. So we
must start with the sensible idea of the great end of life
here, and that is the Christian idea of watchfulness and
growth in the right directions.
Among the indispensable constituents of Manliness,
subordinate to this one sensible idea of Ufe, are
I. Modesty. By this I mean here the suppression of
an offensive egoism. A man is bound to be fair with
everybody ; which, of course, implies that he be fair to
himself. Yet let it be fairness and not an over-estimate.
Bombast mildews manliness ; Self-sufficiency inflates :
there is a difference between bloat and adipose. Man
liness is not chronically jealous lest it shall not be made
enough of. I admire the reply of a Captain, who, wea
ried with the loquacity of a boastful fellow-officer, when
asked to recite his own exploits, replied, " other men
can tell you of them" There are times when it is
modest to tell of our own doings, — but let the tale be
modestly told. Boasters are taken at a discount.
" That spoke in the wheel which creaketh most does
not bear the greatest burden in the cart." It is not
egoism for a dollar treasury note to bear a dollar mark
upon its face ; but it is egoism for a dollar treasury note
to carry a ten dollar mark. Manliness will not mark

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itself up or down, but just right. It will make no
money for the speculator who proposed to become a
second Croesus by buying men for what they are worth,
and selling them for what they think, they are worth.
II. Self-respect. This is entirely consistent with
modesty. The union of genuine modesty and self-
assertion is well expressed in the old proverb — " Sit in
your own place and none can make you rise." What
is respect 1 It is the esteem or honor wdth which we
view those who evince the possession of substantial good
qualities, and who act worthily. The basis of respect
is worth — rightness. The man who does a mean thing
loses our respect ; and this proves true of ourselves as
well as of other people. We cannot respect ourselves
unless we do worthily ; hence the young man who does
a mean thing or speaks a mean word — who scoffs at
sacred things, who defiles his tongue with foul or pro
fane language, who stoops to low tricks and consorts
with disreputable company — looks meanly to himself.
He thinks of himself — " In this respect I am a mean
man;" and he cannot respect a mean man, even if
called by his own name. We put choice articles to
only choice uses, and so long as a man feels that he is
worth taking care of, he will be careful of himself ; but
when he says of himself as of some torn, worn, soiled
garment — " Who cares for you 1" — down he goes into
the mud. But no man can be compelled by others to
feel thus of himself ; he makes himself feel it. Others
cannot make us wicked and mean — this is reserved to
us. No man's condition is hopeless so long as any self-
respect remains ; but when that departs, no place re-

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mains on which to plant the lever for his elevation.
Self-respect is the spinal column of manliness ; a mean
man cannot be a manly man : but self-respect cannot
fully exist save by right being and right doing.
III. Self-reliance. By this, young gentlemen, you
will not understand me to signify the absence of a sense
of dependence upon God. Without Him we are as wa
ter-logged ships. The most truly self-reliant men are the
most truly trusting men. The thought that God is our
helper is the most powerful stimulus to endeavor. I
mean, that, under God, you must make or mar your
own fortunes ; that your destinies are in your own
hands ; that to be a mere shadow or echo of others is
destructive of manliness. When Daniel Webster was
wronged out of the valedictory at Dartmouth, he
entered a group of class-mates on the College campus
and tore up his diploma, saying, " My industry can
make me a great man, but this miserable parchment
cannot." You may have helps, but your main reliance
must be upon yourselves. " Don't wait for something
to turn up, but go to work and turn up something."
Be in the active and not in the passive voice. " Far
off water will never quench near fire." Others have
enough of their own work to do without bearing our
burdens. If disasters have overtaken you, keep up
heart ; " The sun of all days has not set." How man
ful a lesson is contained in the Persian proverb, " A
¦stone that is fit for the wall is not left in the way."
" Only be fit for the wall ; square, polish, prepare thy
self for it, and it is certain thy turn will come. Thou
wilt not be left in the way ; sooner or later the builder

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will be glad of thee ; the wall will need thee to fill up
a place in it, quite as much as thou needest a place to
occupy in the wall."
IV. Self-control. Self-control is the barrier between
freedom and serfdom. A man is called a slave when
another controls him. If a passion be the ruling
power, he is a slave to the passion, and every time he
bows before it he feels the weaker and stands less high
in the esteem of himself and others. If a habit con
trols a man, he is its servant ; and when he finds him
self doubting if he can break up some evil habit, it is
time for him to try titles with it. You cannot be a
manly man unless you are a self-controlling man, and
this implies prudence and circumspection, that you be
careful, and that you do not under-estimate an oppo
nent's strength. A good many of the gossamer hairs
of the Lilliputs bound the giant ; the Philistine cham
pion was slain by the shepherd boy's smooth stone.
V. Honor is essential to manliness.
The epaulets, the blue coat, the brass buttons, do not
make the soldier ; a man may have all these, and be a
craven. It is the heart and not the harness that con
stitutes a soldier. So the soul of honor is essential to
manliness. It is not honor to sink a duelist's bullet
into an opponent's brain, or to test truth by fisticuffs.
Often the most truculent are the least brave. Some
are ever talking in great swelling words of their
" honor." They do not know what honor means; they
have not a homeopathic particle of it in their bloated
beings. Honor is nobleness of mind ; it is moral rec
titude. The honorable man is the upright man. Wrong

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doing is in its very nature dishonorable doing ; nothing
can be honorable that is not right. The manly man,
then, is he who hews his life to the chalk-mark of truth
and righteousness.
VI. Another constituent of manliness is the deter
mination to make the most and the best we can of our
selves. Out State motto is an expression of this sentiment,
— " HlxceUior." It is a good motto for young men —
"Excelsior" — higher — onward and upward. At the
table of a College President the conversation was with
respect to self-made men. After all others had spoken,
Bishop Morris was requested by the host to speak, re
marking " All at this table are self-made men unless
the Bishop is an exception." The Bishop quickly re
plied — " I am not made yet." Do not settle down upon
the idea that you have chosen your business and finish
ed your school going and gotten as far as you can, —
you are not made yet. No man knows what latent
values culture may develop. It is said that a bar of
iron worth five dollars, worked into horse-shoes, is
worth ten dollars ; made into needles, it is worth three
hundred dollars ; made into pen-knife blades, it is
worth over three thousand dollars ; made into balance-
springs of watches, it is worth two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. To reach this immense value, the
bar undergoes drilling and hammering and beating and
pounding and rolling and rubbing and polishing ; it
sees hard times, but they bring out its value. So in
man are values inestimable, are latent possibilities be
yond compute, and do not shrink from the training that

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may be necessary to develop them. Do not be content
to remain an iron bar worth five dollars when you may
become balance-springs worth a quarter of a million.
Be persistent ; manliness is not the product of a year.
Some things are made for us ; other things we make for
ourselves. We are to make our own manliness. Some
good fabrics are spoiled in the making up. Do good
work in the making up of your own manliness. If you
spoil that in the making up, it will be by far the worst
job that you ever did. Build up a thorough, generous,
full-rounded manliness. Goethe used to say of some
whom he admired — " There is no halfness about them ;
they are complete men." Young gentlemen, let there
be no halfness about you ; be complete.
Lastly. The most essential element in manliness is
Moral Courage.
Moral courage is the courage to do right; to say
" No." Many half apologize for wrong doing by say
ing — "I knew I ought not to do it, but I got drawn in
to the crowd, and could not get out." Why not be
honest and say — " After I was foolish enough to allow
myself to be drawn into such associations, I was too
cowardly to take myself out of them 1" Some, who
can face the cannon's mouth, shrink from a sneer, a leer,
a word of scorn. They possess physical courage, the
lower, but not moral courage, the higher. If steel-faced
hammers were not used in the quarries, the hammers
and not the rocks would be crushed ; and men are
marred and broken by contact with wickedness because
they present to it putty faces and not steel faces. That
little monosyllable " No " gives the face of steel by

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which we break and are not broken. A child can easily
learn it, but a man needs often to summon every energy
to practise it, — and the man will do it, for on that little
word are pivoted a life's import, an eternity's weal or
woe. Carlyle says that " Life begins with renuncia
tions." The will power is the magistrate of a man's
life, and he has not attained to this power who lacks
the courage to say to all manner of sensual indulgence
and tempting beings, " I can and will do without thee.''
We say of a man who has no will mastery — " He is
governed by his passions and by companions for whom
he has little or no respect." They govern him, not he
them ; that is craven-souled, that is cowardice, not man
liness. He alone quits himself like a man who dares to
do right. The other qualities enumerated are the ribs
and the muscles, but moral courage is the back -bone of
manliness. Once more listen to the clarion peal of the
manly apostle, " Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit
you like men, be strong." Do you ask for a guide-book
to this path of manliness 1 Receive the Bible ; Bible
honor is the noblest honor, Bible common sense the best
common sense, and Bible manliness the highest form of
of manliness. Do you seek a model 1 You have it in
Jesus Christ, as perfect as an exemplar as he is perfect
as a Saviour. In Him behold all that is good and lofty.
By the flood of his own heroic and love-inspired will he
conquered dangers, difficulties, sin and death. " What
ever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never
be surpassed." Follow Him, and you can never go
wrong ; be inspired by His spirit, and guided and
moulded by His precepts, and you will be manly men.
After the battle of the Wilderness there lay upon a

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stretcher a noble looking man shot through the head.
He could neither see, nor hear, nor understand ; he only
breathed. He was watched for hours in the belief that
each hour would be his last. All night he lay there
motionless, save as his massive chest heaved up and
down. In the morning he was no better, but he began
to move his feet. He seemed to be marching, and he
marched till he died — tramp, tramp, tramp — died, but
marching on. So let the life that is in Jesus Christ be
come your life, and you shall learn the secret of living
after the world shall call you dead. Though all that is
mortal of you shall have passed awa}', you shall go down
through the generations in mighty, holy influences,
moulding minds to manliness and hearts to heaven.
The brave and manly Gen. Birney died in the de
lirium of fever. Rising suddenly in bed, his eyes flam
ing with the fire that consumed him, he cried with a
trumpet voice, "Boys, keep your eye on that flag," and
fell back dead.
Men of the Thirteenth ! High above your own ele
gant colors, high above the beautiful flag of our own
dear country, I raise the only colors entitled to a supe
rior altitude, the olive-wreathed, cross-crowned banner
of the redeemed sacramental host, a name on whose
ever enlarging muster rolls is also a name in the Lamb's
book of life, and cry to your ears and to your hearts, —
" Boys, as you pass through this earthly life, keep your
eye on that flag" and, though the tents of your mortal
bodies shall be struck and folded and laid aside, their
tenants, your immortal souls, shall find more glorious
tabernacles, and live forever.

Caylord Bros;
C9A|OLq nioa
Caylord Bros,

Caylord Bros.
Makers
Syracuse, N Y.
PAT. JAN. 21, 1908

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