Conscience and Character

"There is a higher law than the constitution."—Seward.

"Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod,Man's conscience is the oracle of God."—Byron.

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."—Washington.

"Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything."—Sterne.

"If you can find a place between the throne of God and the dust to which man's body crumbles, where the fatal responsibilities of law do not weigh upon him, I will find a vacuum in nature. They press upon him from God out of eternity and from the earth out of nature, and from every department of life, as constant and all-surrounding as the pressure of the air."—Beecher.

Von Humboldt said that every man, however good, has a yet better man within him. When the outer man is unfaithful to his deeper convictions, the hidden man whispers a protest. The name of this whisper in the soul is conscience. And never had monarch aspect so magisterial as when conscience terrified King Herod into confession. The cruel, crafty despot had slain John the Baptist to gratify the revenge of the beautiful Jezebel, his wife, reproved of John for her outrageous sins. But soon passed from memory that hateful night when the blood of a good man mingled with the red wine of the feast. Luxury by day and revelry by night caused the hateful incident to be forgotten. Soon a full year had passed over the palace with its silken seclusion. One day, when the dead prophet had long been forgotten, a courtier at the king's table told the story of a strange carpenter, whose name and fame were ringing through the land.

Who is He? asked the feasters, pausing over their spiced wine. Who is He? asked the women, gossiping over the new sensation. Suddenly, conscience touched an old memory in Herod's heart. In terror the despot rose from the banquet. As in the legend, when the murderer's finger touched the gaping wound the blood began again to flow—a silent witness against the unsuspected but guilty friend, so Herod's conscience opened up again his guilty secret. Memory, thrusting a hooked pole into "the ocean of oblivion, brought up the pale and drowned deed." The long-forgotten sin was revealed in all its ghastly atrocity. It availed nothing that Herod was a Sadducee—the agnostic of antiquity. For, when conscience spake, all his doubts fell away. Immortality and responsibility were clear as noonday. Holding a thousand swords in her hand, conscience attacked the guilty king. Then were fulfilled Plato's words: "If we could examine the heart of a king, we would find it full of scars and black wounds." For no slave was ever marked by his master's scourge as Herod's heart was lashed by his conscience.

Socrates told his disciples that the facts of conscience must be reckoned with as certainly as the facts of fire or wood or water. None may deny the condemnation that weighed upon thesoul of Herod or Judas, or the approval of conscience that transfigured the face of the martyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only through peace with one's self, one's record, and one's God. All the great, from Æschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasized man's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Here is the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty to sentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before the astounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dock beside the prisoner. He stated that, thirty years before, in a distant province, he had taken the life and property of his master, and thereby gained his present position and influence. Though he had never been suspected of crime, he now begged his fellow Judges to condemn him to the death unto which his conscience had long urged him. Here is the student of man and things, Dr. Samuel Johnson: In his old and honored age he goes back to Litchfield to stand with uncovered head from morning till night in the market-place on the spot where fifteen years before he had refused to keep his father's book-stall. Despite the grotesque figure he made, midst the sneers and the rain, conscience bade him expiate hisbreach of filial piety. And here is Channing, the scholar and seer: A child of six years, he lifted his stick to strike the tortoise, as he had seen older boys do. But in that moment an inner voice whispered loud and clear: "It is wrong." In his fright the boy hastened home to fling himself into his mother's arms. "What was the voice?" he asked. To which his mother answered: "Men call the voice conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice of God. And always your happiness will depend upon obedience to that little voice."

Here also is the great Persian Sadi. One day he found a good man in the jungle, who had been attacked by a tiger and horribly mutilated. Despite his dreadful agony, the dying man's features were calm and serene. "Great God," said he, "I thank thee that I am only suffering from the fangs of the tiger and not of remorse." And here is Professor Webster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning he sent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "At midnight," he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the wall and whisper, 'Thou art a murderer.'" Now there were no prisoners in the next cell. The whispers were the echoes of a guilty conscience.

Daniel Webster also testifies: Once he was asked what was the greatest thought thathad ever occupied his mind. "Who are here?" "Only your friends." Then this colossal man answered: "There is no evil we can not face or flee from but the consequences of duty disregarded. A sense of obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We can not escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther on we shall find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty—to pain us forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as God has given us grace to perform it." Weighed against conscience the world itself is but a bubble. For God himself is in conscience lending it authority.

We also owe the great dramatists and novelists a debt, in that they have portrayed and analyzed the essential facts of man's moral life. That which Shakespeare does for us in "Macbeth," Victor Hugo does in his "LesMisérables." The latter work, always ranked as one of the seven great novels, exhibits happiness and character as fruits of obedience to the soul's inner circle. Jean Valjean was an escaped convict. Going into a distant province he assumed a new name and began life again. He invented a machine, amassed wealth, became mayor of the town, was honored and beloved by all. One evening the good mayor heard of an old man in another town who had been arrested for stealing fruit. The officer apprehending him perceived in the old man a striking resemblance to Jean Valjean. Despite his protests he was tried as Jean Valjean, and was about to be remanded to prison—this time for life. Unless some one cleared him he must go to the galleys. Only Jean Valjean himself can clear the stranger. How clear him? By confessing his identity and going himself.

In that hour the mayor's brain reeled. He retired to his inner room. Then the tempest raged in his brain as a cyclone rages through the trees, twisting off the branches and pulling up the roots. Must he go back again to the galleys with their profanity and obscenity? Must he resign his mayoralty and his wealth? Must he give up his life, so useful and helpful, and all to save a possible year or two of life for this old man? Were not these two young wardswhom he was supporting more than this one old wreck? Fate had decided. Let the old man go to the galleys.

Then with muscles tense as steel, with jugular vein all swollen and purple, Jean Valjean took the two candlesticks given him by the Bishop, his thorn cane, the coin taken from the boy, and cast all upon the blazing coals. Soon the flames had licked all up. Then Victor Hugo says: "Jean Valjean heard a burst of internal laughter." What was it in him jeering and mocking? At midnight from sheer exhaustion the mayor slept. Dreaming, he seemed to be in a hall of justice where an old man was being tried. There were roses in the vase, only sin had bleached the crimson petals gray. The sunlight came through the window, only sin had washed the color from the sunbeam and left the golden rays ashen pale. All the people were silent. At length an officer touched the mayor and said: "Do you know you have been dead a long while? Your body lives, but you died when you slew your conscience." Suddenly a voice said: "Jean Valjean, you may melt the candlestick, burn your clothes, change your face, but God sees you." Afterward came a second burst of internal laughter. Then the mayor arose swiftly, took his horse, drove hard all night and reached thedistant village to enter the courtroom just as the old man was about to be sent to the galleys. Ascending the prisoner's dock, he confessed his identity. Victor Hugo tells us that in that hour the judge and the lawyer saw a strange light upon the mayor's face, and felt a light within dazzling their hearts. It was the same light that fell on the German monk's face when before the Emperor at Worms he said: "I cannot and will not recant!" and then boldly fronted death. Conscience shining through made Luther's face luminous, as it had made the face of Moses before him!

As obedience to the behests of conscience has always yielded happiness and formed character, so disobedience has always destroyed manhood. The great novelists have exhibited the deterioration of character in their hero as beginning with a sin against the sense of duty. In Romola, George Eliot exhibits Tito as a gifted and ideal youth. The orphan child was adopted by the Greek scholar, who lavished upon him all the gifts of affection, all the culture and embellishments of the schools, all the comforts of a beautiful home; and when the longing for foreign travel came upon the youth the foster-father could not deny him, but took passage for Tito and himself and sailed for Alexandria. But the motto of Tito'slife was, get all the pleasure you can, avoid all the pain. Soon the old scholar became a clog and a burden. One night, conscience battled for its life with Tito. At midnight the youth arose, unbuckled from his father's waist the leather belt stuffed with jewels, and fled into the night, leaving the gray-haired man among strangers whose language he could not speak.

Then this youth sailed away to Florence. There his handsome person, his Southern beauty, his grace of address, his aptitude for affairs, won him the admiration of the wisest statesmen and the heart of one of the noblest of women. But all the time we feel toward this beautiful youth that same loathing and contempt that we feel toward a beautiful young tiger. Tito had no conscience toward Romola, no conscience toward her father's priceless library, no conscience toward the patriots struggling for the city's liberty; he played the traitor toward all. His soul was, indeed, sheathed in a glowing and beautiful body; but it was the corpse sheathed over with flowers and vines; and so conscience becomes an avenger upon Tito. When the keystone goes from the arch, all must crash down in ruins. Unconsciously but surely the youth moved toward his destruction. The day of doom was delayed, but there came an hour whenconscience first drove Tito into the Arno's swift current, and then became a millstone, that sunk him into the deep abyss. For ours is a world in which nature and God cannot afford to permit sin to prosper. Conscience is God's avenger.

Open all the master books, and they portray the same truth. Three of the seven greatest novels deal with conscience. Seven of the world's greatest dramas are studies of conscience and of duty. The masterpieces of Sophocles and Æschylus, of Dante and Milton, of Göethe and Byron, are all studies of the soul's oracle, that, disobeyed, hurls man into the abyss, or, followed, becomes wings, lifting him into the open sky.

Demosthenes said that knowledge begins with definition. What, then, is conscience? Many misconceptions have prevailed. Multitudes suppose it to be a distinct faculty. The eye tests colors for beauty, the ear tests sounds for harmony, the reason tests arguments for truth, and there is a popular notion that conscience is a distinct faculty, testing deeds for morality. Many suppose that, when God made man, He implanted conscience as an automatic moral mechanism, a kind of inner mind, to act in his absence; but conscience is not a single faculty. It includes many faculties, and is complex innature. It has an intellectual element, and this is distinctly fallible and capable of education. Witness the Indians, believing it to be right to kill aged persons. Witness savages of old, sacrificing their children to appease the gods. Just as there has been an evolution in tools, in laws and in institutions, so has there been an evolution of the intellectual element in conscience. Thucydides tells us that the time was in Sparta when stealing was right. In that far-off time a boy was praised for exhibiting skill and dexterity in pilfering. Stealing was disgraceful and wrong only when it was found out, and, if the theft was large and skillfully done, it won honor—a condition of things that still prevails in some sections.

Never since man stepped foot upon this planet has there been a time when conscience, the judge, has praised a David when sinning against what he believed to be the law of right; never once has it condemned a Daniel in doing what he believed to be right. In this sense conscience is, indeed, infallible and is the very voice and regent of God.

Since, therefore, conscience partakes of this divine nature and speaks as an oracle, what are its uses and functions? Primarily, the moral sense furnishes a standard and tests actions for righteousness or iniquity. To itsjudgment-seat comes reason, with its purposes and ambitions. When his color sense is jaded the artist uses the sapphire or ruby to bring his tints up to perfection. And when contact with selfishness or sordidness has soiled the soul's garments, dulled its instruments, and lowered its standards, then conscience comes in to freshen the ideals and to smite vice and vulgarity. In these luminous hours when conscience causes the deeper convictions to prevail, how beautiful seem truth and purity and justice! How does the soul revolt from iniquity, even as the eye revolts from the slough or the nostril from filth!

Conscience has also relations to judgment. It pronounces upon the inner motive that colors the deeds, for it is the motive within that makes the actions without right or wrong. When Coleridge, the schoolboy, was going along the street thinking of the story of Hero and Leander and imagining himself to be swimming the Hellespont, he threw wide his arms as though breasting the waves. Unfortunately, his hand struck the pocket of a passer-by and knocked out a purse. The outer deed was that of a pickpocket and could have sent the youth to jail. The inner motive was that of an imaginative youth deeply impressed by the story he was translating from the Greek, and that inner motive made the owner of the purse his friendand sent young Coleridge to college. Thus, the philosopher tells us, the motive made what was outwardly wrong to be inwardly right.

Memory, too, is influenced by the moral Faculty. Memory gathers up all our yesterdays. Often her writing is invisible, like that of a penman writing with lemon juice, taking note of each transgression and recording words that will appear when held up to the heat of fire. Very strangely does conscience bring out the processes of memory. Sir William Hamilton tells of a little child brought to England at four years of age. When a few brief summers and winters had passed over his head, the language of far-off Russia had passed completely out of the child's mind. Seventy years afterward, stricken with his last illness, in his delirium the man spoke with perfect ease in the language of childhood. In moments of extreme excitement, when ships go down or death is imminent, conscience doth so quicken the mind that all the deeds and thoughts of an entire career are reviewed within a few minutes. Scholars have been deeply impressed with this unique fact. Seeking to interpret it, Walter Scott takes us into the castle where a foul murder was committed. So deeply did the red current stain the floor that, though the servants scrubbed and scrubbed and planed and planed,still the dull red stains oozed up through the oaken planks. This is the great Scotchman's way of saying that our deeds stain through the very fiber and substance of the soul.

Looking backward, we see only here and there a peak of remembrance standing out midst the sea of forgetfulness, even as the islands in the West Indies stand out midst the ocean. But each of these island peaks represents a submerged continent. Drain off the sea, and the mountains ease off toward the foothills and the hills toward the great plains that make up the hidden land. Thus the isolated memories of the past are all united, and will at length stand forth in perfect revelation. Verily, conscience is a witness, secretly taking notes, even as good Latimer in his cell overheard the scratching of the pen in the chimney behind the curtain. Conscience is a judge, and, though juries nod and witnesses may be bribed, conscience never slumbers and never sleeps. Conscience is a monarch, and, though to-day the soul's king be deposed from its throne, to-morrow it will ascend to the judgment-seat and lift the scepter. For conscience represents God and acts in His stead.

Consider the workings of conscience in daily life. The ideal man is he who is equally conscientious toward intellect and affection,toward plan and purpose. But in practical life men are Christian only in spots and departments. The soul may be likened unto a house, and conscience is the furnace thereof. Sometimes the householder turns the heat into the sitting-room and parlor, but in the other rooms he turns off the warm currents of air. Sometimes heat is turned into the upper rooms, while the lower rooms are cold. Thus conscience, that should govern all faculties alike, is largely departmental in its workings. Some men are conscientious toward Sunday, but not toward the week days. On Sunday they sing like saints, on Monday they act like demons. On the morning of St. Bartholomew's massacre, Charles IX was conscientious toward the cathedral and attended mass during three hours; in the evening he filled the streets of Paris with rivers of blood. John Calvin was conscientious toward his logical system. He was very faithful to his theology, but he had no conscience toward his fellows, and burned Servetus without a sympathetic throb.

In the Middle Ages conscience worked toward outer forms. In those days the baron and priest made a contract. The general led his peasants forth to burn and pillage and kill, and the priest absolved the murderers for five per cent of the profits. Men were veryconscientious toward absolution, but not at all toward the neighbor's flocks and barns. In others conscience is largely superstition. Recently an officer of our army found himself sitting beside his host at a table containing thirteen guests. The soldier, who perhaps would have braved death on the battle-field, was pricked by his conscience for sitting at table where the guests numbered thirteen. But he was afraid to die at the dinner-table. He believed that the great God who makes suns and stars and blazing planets to fly from His hand as sparks beneath the hammer of a smith, the god of Sirius and Orion, always stopped his work at six o'clock to count the guests around each table, and if he found perchance there were thirteen, then would lift his arrow to the bow to let fly the deadly shaft upon these awful sinners against the law of twelve chairs or fourteen.

Singularly enough, now and then an individual is conscientious toward some charm, as in the case of a merchant who presently discovered that he had left his buckeye at home. He had carried this for twenty years. Had he forgotten to pray he would not have gone home to fall upon his knees. Nature and God were in the merchant's counting-room, but not the buckeye. So he hurriedly left his office to bring back the agent that secured all his success and prosperity.

Then, there is a commercial conscience. Some men feel that the law of right is chiefly binding upon a man in his business relations. They exile themselves from home, break the laws of love and companionship with the wife whom they have engaged to cherish and love, until they become strangers to her. But conscience does not prick them. Home, friends, music, culture, all these may be neglected—but the business, never. Others there are whose consciences work largely toward the home. When they cross their own thresholds they are genial, kind and delightful. As hosts they are famed for their companionship. Dying, their fame is gathered up by the expressions, "good husband, good father, good provider." But they have no conscience toward the street. They count other men their prey, being grasping, greedy and avaricious. They feel about their fellows just as men do about the timber in the forest. When a man wants timber for his house, he says, "That is the tree I want," and the woodsman fells it and squares it for the sill. Does he want stone for his foundations or marble for his finishings? There are the rocks; quarry them. Men go into inanimate nature and get the materials they need. Nor is it very different in the great world of business and ambition. Thegiant takes one man for the foundation and cuts him down and builds him into the walls; he selects another man and uses him up, building his substance into the structure; he looks upon his fellows as the shepherd upon his flocks—so much wool to be sheared.

Nor is the work of conscience very different in the moral and spiritual realm. Here is one man who is conscientious toward yesterday. Ten years ago, he says, "while kneeling in the field light broke through the clouds" and he obtained "a hope." And every Sunday since that day he has not failed to recall that scene. He is not conscientious about having a new, fresh, crisp, vital experience for to-day, but he is conscientiously faithful in recalling that old experience. It is all as foolish as if he should say that ten years ago he had a bath, or ten years ago he drank at the bubbling spring, or ten years ago he met a friend. What about to-day's purity, to-day's loaf and to-day's friendships? The heart should count no manna good that is not gathered fresh each morning. Others there are whose conscience works largely toward doctrine and intellectual statements. With them Christianity is a function of thought in the brain. These are they who want every sermon to consist of linked arguments. The good deacon sits inhis pew and listens to the unfolding of proofs of election or foreordination. When the arguments have been piled up to sixteen or eighteen, the good man begins to chuckle with delight, saying, "Verily, this is a high day in Israel; my soul feasts on fat things." Other men want some flesh on their skeletons, but he is fed on the dry bones of logic.

Sometimes conscience affects only the feelings. Fifty years ago there was a type numbering hundreds of thousands of persons whose religion was largely emotional. In great camp-meetings filled with a warm atmosphere men showed at their best. The sunny spot of all the year was the month of revival meetings. Then they experienced the luxury of spiritual enjoyment. They lived on the top of some Mount of Transfiguration, while the world below was thundering with wickedness and tormented with passion. Men became drunk with emotions. Religion was an exquisite form of spiritual selfishness. Afterward came an era when men learned to transmute feelings into thoughts and fidelities toward friendships and business and duty. At other times conscience has had unique manifestations in fidelity toward creeds. Now one denomination and now another, forgetting to be conscientious in meeting together for days and weeks to plan in theinterests of the pauper, the orphans, the tenement house or the foreign district in the great city, will through months of excitement exhibit conscience toward some doctrinal symbol. Witness the recent upheaval about inspiration. As water bubbling up through the spring was once rain that fell from the sky, so the truth coming through the lips of poet or prophet was first breathed into the heart by God. Recently a good professor thought more emphasis should be laid upon the human spring. But his opponents thought the emphasis should be placed upon the sky, from which the rain fell. In the broil about the nature of the water, the spring itself was soiled, much mud stirred up, until multitudes wholly forgot the spring, and many knew not whether there was any water of life.

But conscience in some, means fidelity to what man and God did—not what God is doing or will do. When the flowing sap under the stimulus of the sun causes the tree to grow and splits the bark, men rejoice that the bark is rent and that new and larger growths must be inserted. Sometimes a child, long feeble and sickly, enters upon a period of very rapid growth. Soon the boy's old clothes are too small, and so is his hat. But what if the parents should remember only thatthe clothes and hat came from some famous pattern? What if in their zeal to preserve the hat they should put an iron band about the boy's forehead and never permit it to increase so that the hat would not fit? What if they should put a strait-jacket about the chest to restrain the stature? This would show great zeal toward the hat and the coat, but meanwhile what is to become of the boy? Strange that men should be so conscientious toward an intellectual symbol, but forget to give liberty to other men's consciences who day and night seek to please God and be true to their beliefs. Thus in a thousand ways conscience is partial and fragmentary in its workings. Only one full-orbed man has ever trod our earth!

God's crowning gift to man is the gift of conscience. Reason is a noble and kingly faculty, turning reveries into orations and conversations into books. Imagination is a stately and divine gift, turning thoughts into poems and blocks of stone into statues. Great is the power of an eloquent tongue instructing men, restraining, inspiring, stimulating vast multitudes. Great are the joys of memory, that gallery stored with pictures of the past. But there is no genius of mind or heart comparable to a vigorous conscience, magisterial,clear-eyed, wide-looking. He who gave all-comprehending reason, all-judging reason, reserved his best gift to the last—then gave the gift of conscience.

Man is a pilgrim and conscience is the guide, leading him safely through forests and thickets, restraining from the paths of wrong, pointing out the ways of right. Man is a voyager and conscience is his compass. The sails may be swept away, and the engines stopped, but the voyager yet may be saved if only the compass is kept. In time of danger man may be careless about his garments, but not about his hand or foot or eye. It is possible to sustain the loss of wealth, friends and outer honors, but no man can sustain the loss of conscience. It is the soul's eye. Afar off it sees the face of God. Instructed, guided, loved, and redeemed by Jesus Christ, he who while living is at peace with his Master and with his conscience will, when dying, find himself at peace with his God.

"Like other gently nurtured Boston boys, Wendell Phillipsbegan the study of law. Doubtless the sirens sang to him, as to the noble youth of every country and time. Musing over Coke and Blackstone, perhaps he saw himself succeeding Ames and Otis and Webster, the idol of society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion of the elegant ease, and the cultivated conservatism of Massachusetts.* * *But one October day he saw an American citizen assailed by a furious mob in the city of James Otis for saying with James Otis that a man's right to liberty is inherent and inalienable. As the jail doors closed upon Garrison to save his life, Garrison and his cause had won their most powerful and renowned ally. With the setting of that October sun, vanished forever the career of prosperous ease, the gratification of ordinary ambition, which the genius and the accomplishments of Wendell Phillips had seemed to foretell. Yes, the long-awaited client had come at last. Scarred, scorned and forsaken, that cowering and friendless client was wronged and degraded humanity. The great soul saw and understood."—Oration on Wendell Phillips by George Wm. Curtis.

Every community holds a few happy and buoyant souls, that are so sustained by inner hope and outer prosperity as to seem the elect children of good fortune. These are they who are born only to the best things, for whom, as life goes on, the years do but increase happiness and success. For other men happiness is occasional, and life offers now and then a bright interval, even as an open glade is found here and there in the dark forest. Among these sunny souls, dwelling midst constant prosperity, let us hasten to include that youth to whom Christ made overtures of friendship. His was a frank and open nature, his a fresh and unsullied heart. He had also a certain grace and indescribable charm that clothed him with rare attraction. Wealth, too, was his, and all the advantages that go therewith. Yet ease had not enervated him, nor position made him proud. He had indeed passed through the fierce fires oftemptation, but had come out with spotless garments.

Beholding him, Christ loved him; nor could it have been otherwise. Some men we force ourselves to like. For reasons of finance or social advantage, men ignore their faults, while cherishing a secret dislike. But others are so attractive, they compel our friendship by a certain sweet necessity. The eye must needs like the rich red rose, and the ear can not but enjoy the sweet song. And this youth stood forth clothed with such rare attraction that it is said Christ cast one long lingering look of affection upon him; then widening the circle of friendship, he offered the young ruler a place therein. It was an overture such as Socrates made to the boy Plato; it was a proffer such as Michael Angelo made to the poor young artist who knocked at his door. Recalling the day when he met Göethe, Schiller was accustomed to say his creative literary career began with Göethe's proffer of friendship.

Carlyle tells us that each new epoch in his life began with the acquaintance of some great man. For it is not given to books nor business, to landscapes nor clouds nor forests, to have full power over the living man. Only mind can quicken mind, only heart can quicken heart.What would the youth of genius not give for the friendship of some Bacon or Shakespeare? But when this youth won Christ's regard, it was as if all the children of genius had come together in Christ's single person, to proffer intimacy and companionship. His great soul overhung his friends as the harvests overarch the fields, "filling the flowers with heat by day, and cooling them with dews by night." His friendship is like a mother's, a lover's, a friend's, but larger than either, and deeper than all. The rising of a star, that glows and sparkles with ten thousand effects, can alone be compared to this Son of Man, who flamed forth upon his friends such majesty of beauty, such royalty of kindling influences.

For centuries scholars have spoken of this interview between Christ and the young ruler as "the great refusal." Dante, wandering with Virgil through the Inferno, thought he saw this young ruler searching for his lost opportunity. For this ruler was the Hamlet of the New Testament. Like the Prince of Denmark, he stood midway between his conscience and his task, and indecision slew him. It has been said that Hamlet could have been happy had he remained in ignorance of his duty, or had he boldly obeyed the vision which called him to action. It was because he knewmore than he had the courage to do that a discord arose, which destroyed the symmetry and sanity of his mind. His madness grew out of the breach between his enlarged and haunting sense of right and his faltering ability to face and fulfill it. Thus also the tragedy of this young ruler's life grew out of the fact that the new aspiration made his old contentment impossible, and compelled him either to go on with boldness to better things, or to go back to emptiness and misery. Beholding him, Christ loved him for what he was, and pointed out what he might become. He knew that the better was a great enemy of the best. For Christ had the double vision of the sculptor.

Before him was the mass of marble, rude and shapeless. But the outer shapelessness concealed the inner symmetry. Only the flying chips could let loose the form of glowing beauty hidden within. And before that youth he lifted up a vision of still better things. He set the youth midway between the man he was and the man he might become. He had achieved so much that Christ would fain lead him on to perfection itself. When the husbandman beholds his vines entering into leafage and blossom, he nurtures them on into fruitage. When Arnold finds some youngStanley ready to graduate, he whispers: "One thing thou lackest; let all thy life become one eager pursuit of knowledge." And to this youth who had climbed so high came the vision of something fairer and better still.

Going on before, Christ lured him forward, even as of old the goddess lured the Grecian boy forward by rolling rosy apples along the path. But the interview ended with the "great refusal." And the youth went away, not angry nor rebellious, but sad and deeply grieved at himself. For now he knew how far his aspiration outran performance. Like Hamlet, indecision palsied action. Contentment perished, for the vision of perfection ever haunted him. At first Christ's words and look of earnest affection filled his heart with a tumult of joy: but having fallen back into the old sordid self, the very memory of his master's face became a curse and torture. And so the vision blighted that should have blessed.

Now, the lives of great men tell us that God has always used visions for disturbing contentment, destroying ease, and securing progress. Witness the life of that young patrician, Wendell Phillips. His college mates love to describe him as they first saw him in the halls of Cambridge. His elegant person, his accomplished manners, his refined scholarship, madehim the idol of the Harvard boys. Even in his youthful days he excelled as an orator, and was the easy master of the platform. But to him came the sirens singing of leisure, of opulence, and ambition. Full oft he looked forward to the day when he would be the champion of "elegant repose and cultivated conservatism" of the patrician element in his patrician state. But suddenly the Christ, in the person of one of his little ones, crossed the young scholar's path. One golden October afternoon, while Wendell Phillips was sitting in his office, he heard the noise of a strange disturbance in the street. Looking out he saw the mob maltreating Garrison, as, with blows and kicks, they dragged him toward the jail. All that night young Phillips lay tossing on his couch, thinking ever of this man who had been mobbed in the city where Otis had said "Liberty of speech is inalienable."

All that night the vision of the slave, scarred and scorned and forsaken, stood before his mind, while ever he heard a voice whispering: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." In that vision hour perished forever all his dreams of opulence and ease. He decided to turn his back upon all preferment and ambition, all comfort and leisure, andfollow his vision whithersoever it led. Soon the vision led him to the platform of Faneuil Hall, where an official was justifying the murderers of Lovejoy. "Mr. Chairman," he said, "when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which placed the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead." And that vision lent his words such burning eloquence that Wendell Phillips' speech in Faneuil Hall ranks with Patrick Henry's at Williamsburg and Abraham Lincoln's at Gettysburg—and there is no fourth. His vision led him unto obloquy also. What revilings were his! What bitter hatred! What insults and scoffs! At last the vision led him unto fame. The very city that would have slain him builded his monument, and men who once would not defile their lips with his name taught their children the pathway to his tomb. It was that vision splendid that saved Phillips from sodden contentment. Had Christ never crossed his path, his imagination would have lost its brightest picture, his life its noblest impulses, its most energetic forces.

And not only have visions power to shape young men's lives. To the mature and the greatalso come dreams of ideal excellence, smiting selfishness, rebuking sin, taking the sweetness out of sordid success, and urging men on to higher achievements. The biographers have never been able to fully account for the pathetic sadness and gloom of the closing days of Daniel Webster. Horace Greeley once said that "Webster's intellect is the greatest emanation from the Almighty mind now embodied." For picturesque majesty and overpowering mentality he is doubtless our most striking figure. That enormous and beautiful head, those wonderful eyes, that stately carriage, that Jove-like front, led men to call him "the godlike Daniel." When he appeared upon the Strand in London a great crowd followed him, and a British statesman described Webster as one describes a majestic landscape or the sublimity of a mountain. But during the last years of his life his face took on a strangely pathetic sorrow. With the language of a Dante his biographer has pictured for us an Inferno, in which we see one, sublime of reason, walking in the very prime and strength and grandeur of full manhood, yet walking in a round of night, in a realm of bitterness, ever gnawed by disappointment and consumed by fierce ambition. He sank into his grave, says the historian, "under a heart-crushing load of political despair."

But disappointed ambition cannot account for Daniel Webster's sadness and woe. Strength was his for supporting the loss of a nomination. He knew that his title, "Defender of the Constitution," was fully equal to the title of President. He was too great a man to have his heart broken by the loss of political honor. What was his woe? Let us remember the young ruler who was sad and grieved after he met Christ, and had refused to obey the heavenly vision. Let us remember the dream that came to Pilate, and how, afterward, the great Roman was uneasy and restless. And to Daniel Webster there came the memory of his speech in favor of a law compelling men in the North to send fugitive slaves back to their masters; and there also came the words of Christ, who said: "I am come to give deliverance to the captive." And looking forward, Webster anticipated the judgment of the generations upon the breach between his duty and his performance. That vision of higher things haunted him. Oft he heaved sighs of bitter regret. Daniel Webster was saddened and deeply grieved at what he himself had done. For the hope of the Presidency he sacrificed his convictions as to the slave. The heavenly vision bade him deliver the captives, not send them back intoslavery. No political disappointment crushed Daniel Webster. The consciousness of duty performed would have sustained him under any sorrow. It was the consciousness of having sinned against the heavenly vision that broke his heart, and brought Webster's gray hairs down with sorrow to the grave!

Plutarch tells us that the finest culture comes from the study of men in their best moods. But always life's best moods come through these heavenly visions. George Eliot makes the destiny of each hero or heroine to turn upon the use of those critical hours when some ideal fronts the soul for acceptance or rejection. To Maggie Tulliver came a delicious moment when her lover offered her honorable marriage, and would have led her into a perfumed garden of perfect happiness. But just in that hour when joy bubbled like a little spring in her heart, there came the memory of the crippled boy, to whom years before in her childhood she had plighted her troth. And the vision of her duty and the thought of his disappointment led her to refuse pleasure's spiced cup, and choose self-renunciation and a life for others. That heavenly vision saved her from plunging into the abyss of selfishness, even as the lightning's flash in the dark night reveals the precipice to the startled traveler.

And when the visions divine have rebuked selfishness, they go on to conquer sin. Hawthorne uses the vision for redeeming his hero. To Arthur Dimmesdale, pursued by his enemy, came the dream of freedom, when, journeying to a foreign land with Hester and Pearl, he might regain health and happiness and find peace again in walking in the dear old paths of wisdom and study. But the day before his ship sailed came the vision splendid, bidding him mount the scaffold, confess his wrong, and free his conscience of its guilt. And it was obedience thereto that redeemed his life from hypocrisy.

And, having saved men from wrong, the vision goes on to secure their service for the right. Here is that colored woman, Harriet Tubman, whom John Brown introduced to Wendell Phillips as the best and bravest person upon our continent. If Frederick Douglass wrought in the day, Harriet Tubman toiled at night; for when the man had praise and honor, the black woman had only obscurity and neglect. When this bravest of her race escaped from slavery in 1850 and reached Canada she exclaimed exultingly, "I have only one more journey to make—the journey to heaven." But in that hour when the tides of joy rose highest there came the vision callingher back to danger and service. She was not disobedient thereto, but turned her face again toward the cotton fields. Between 1850 and 1860 she made nineteen trips into the South, and rescued over three hundred slaves. One day while lying in a swamp with her band of fugitives, a black man brought her word that a reward of $40,000 had been offered by the slave dealers of Virginia for her apprehension. Hard pressed by her pursuers, she sent her fugitives on by a secret route and went herself to the train. But when she saw in the car advertisements for her arrest she left the Northern train and took the next one going south, thinking by her fearlessness to escape detection, and also to collect a new band of fugitives. And so her people came to call Harriet Tubman the Moses of the black race. And, following on, the vision lifted her to a place among those whom the world will not willingly let die.

When the vision has redeemed bad men to good deeds it goes on to redeem good ones unto perfection. Here is Channing, with his cultured scholarship, his refined manners, his gentle goodness. So heavy were the drafts study made upon his strength that at length came a day when the mere delivery of his sermons and orations left him physicallyexhausted. But he went smilingly and forever from the pulpit, and gave up also the use of his pen. In that hour, when sorrow and gloom rested heavily upon those who loved him, the vision shone clearly for Channing. He determined to turn his whole life into a sermon and poem. With pathetic eloquence he said, "It is, indeed, forbidden me to write or speak, but not to aspire and be. To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to do all cheerfully, bear all bravely; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard, think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never—in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common—this is to be my symphony."

Into our nation also has come the disturbing vision. Ours is called an age of unrest. We hear much about social discontent. Beneath all the outer activity and bustle there is an undertone of profound sadness. Neither wealth, pleasure, nor politics has availed to conceal the world's weariness. Strangely enough, just at a time when prosperity is greatly increased, when our homes are full ofcomforts and conveniences, when all the forces of land and sea and sky have lent themselves to man as willing servants, to carry his messages, run his errands, reap his harvests, pull his trains, and push his ships; in an age when a thousand instruments that make for refinement and culture have been invented, just at this time, strangely enough, unrest and disquietude have fallen upon our people. Why is our age so sad? Has Schopenhauer carried the judgment of mankind by his favorite motto, "It is safer to trust fear than faith?" Is it because our age has lost faith in God? Have doubt and skepticism burned the divine dew off the grass, and left it sere and brown? Nay, a thousand times nay!

The world is sad because it has found God, not lost him. Man is weary in the midst of his wealth and pleasures for the same reason that the young ruler was grieved and sad in the midst of his great possessions. Our age has seen the vision splendid, but halts undecided, being yet unwilling to go on and fulfill its new ideals. For those who have eyes to see, Jesus Christ stands again in the market and the street. He has given society a new vision of the earth as a possible paradise, filled with the fruits of peace and plenty where none know surfeit, and none knowwant. He has given a vision of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, and that vision has destroyed the old contentment. Our fathers were happy because what they did kept pace with what they saw. And we are unhappy because we are unwilling to do what we see.

This vision of possible excellence will continue to haunt our generation until performance shall have overtaken the ideal promise. All the processes of buying and selling without must be carried up to meet the requirements of the vision within. Just as in Luther's day the vision divine disturbed Germany and filled the land with unrest until the people achieved spiritual freedom; just as in Cromwell's day the vision of freedom in political relations came to England and gave disturbance until the doctrine of the divine right of kings was overthrown; just as in our own day the vision of liberty for all, without regard to race or color, disturbed our land and filled our council chambers with conflict and strife, and turned the South into one immense battle-field, until the laws of the Nation matched the ideals of God—so to-day, the vision of the brotherhood of man in Jesus Christ has fallen upon the home, the market, and the forum, and brought restlessness and discontent to our people.

Our colleges are restless, and by the university extension plans are seeking to fulfill their vision of wisdom for all. The church hath seen the heavenly vision, and, restless and grieved at its own failures, is rewriting its creeds, inventing new methods of social sympathy and social help, and is seeking eagerly to fulfill its vision. Wealth too, is discontented, and by manifold gifts is becoming the almoner of universal bounty toward school and college, and gallery and church. Looking toward the council chamber, society is becoming restless, and feeling that the council chamber should be as sacred as a temple, and that as of old so now evil men have turned the temple into a place for money-changing, and made the house of God a den of thieves. Good men are again lifting the scourge of small cords. The discontent is becoming universal. This vision of a new order will continue to haunt and disturb men, until at length society will make all its activities without correspond to the heavenly vision within.

The tradition tells us that when the young ruler who made the "great refusal" had returned home he found the old zest of life had gone. Gone forever his contentment in fields and flocks, in houses and horses and goods; in books and pictures! He himselfseemed but a shadow moving through a phantom world. Struggle as he would, he could not forget the new vision, nor find the old joy. At last he ceased struggling, and, fulfilling his vision, he found the cross was the magic key that opened the door of happiness.

And to the youth of this far-off day, the vision splendid doth come again. In strange ways come these luminous hours and exalted moods. Sometimes they come through memory, and then the tones of a voice long still fall softly upon the ear like celestial bells calling us heavenward. Sometimes these luminous hours come through the affections, when anticipations of joy are so bright that it seems as if the youth reaching forward had plucked beforehand the fruit from the very tree of life. For some they come through sorrow, when the soul stands dissolved in tears, even as some perfumed shrub stands in the June morning making the very ground wet with falling raindrops. Then the soul wanders here and there, all dumb with grief, seeking comfort, yet finding none. Then sitting near the much-loved grave, the soul hears the night winds whispering, "Not here, not here!" to which the murmuring sea replies, "Not here," while the weeping vines and the mournful pines ever answer, "Not here, not here!" But softly falling throughthe pathless air comes a voice murmuring, "Here! Here! Come up hither!"

Oh, these luminous hours! These hours of deeper conviction are life's real hours! Summer is sunshine and beauty, not storm and snow. There are dark and wintry days in March, when spring seems a delusion. There are days in April so cold that summer seems a snare. But between the storms there are brief warm intervals when the sun falls soft on the south hillsides, and the roots begin to stir and the seeds to ache with harvests, and all the air is vocal. The fitful snows in April are but reminders of what the dying winter was; but these occasional sunny days are prophecies of what summer hath accomplished in its full ministry upon the fields and forests.

And after long periods of sodden selfishness and clouded sin, suddenly the vision of better things breaks through the cloud and storm. Then the vision strikes clarity into reason, memory and imagination. In these hours the soul scoffs at sordid things. As the flower climbs upward to escape from the slough, as the foot turns away from the mire, as the nostril avoids the filth, as the ear hates discord, so in these hours the soul scoffs at selfishness and sin. Oh, how beautiful seem purity and gentleness, and sympathy and truth! Andthese hours are big with prophecy. They tell us what the soul shall be when time and God's resources have wrought their will upon man. They are to be cherished as the mariner cherishes the guiding star that stands upon the horizon; they are to be cherished as some traveler, lost in a close, dark forest, cherishes the moment when the sun breaks through a rift in the clouds and he takes his bearings out of the swamp and toward his home. Visions are God within the soul. They come to lead man away from sin and sorrow. They come to guide him to his heavenly home.

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