CHAPTER XXIV.
It was the day before that fixed for the departure of the students, and all the town was gathered in the Square, now changed to an amphitheatre, and roofed with canvas. Professor Pearlstein was to give the young men a last charge, repeating admonitions which they had already heard, indeed, but which in these circumstances would make a deeper impression.
The speaker began gently:—
“When a father sends his child on a long journey in foreign lands, he first provides for his sustenance, furnishes him with suitable clothing, and tries to secure friends for him in those far-off countries. He tells him all that he knows, or can learn concerning them, warns him against such dangers as he can foresee.
“Having done all this, his anxious love is still unsatisfied. He follows to the threshold of that parting, and beyond, trying to discover some new service that he can render, looks again at the traveler’s equipments, repeats once more his admonitions, gives lingeringly his last blessing, his last caress; till, no longer able to postpone the dreaded moment, he loosens his hold upon the loved one, strains his eyes for the last glance, then sits down to weep.
“But even then, when the first irrepressible burst of grief is over, he forgets himself anew, and sends out his imagination in search of the wanderer—in what vigils! with what fears, what prayers for his well-being!
“While the child, amused and distracted by the novelties of this foreign life, forgets sometimes the parent he has left, those sad eyes at home gaze down the empty road by which he disappeared, or weep with longing to see him once more. Would the wanderer’s song and laugh displease him if he knew? Oh, no! He would rejoice in that happiness. The only inconsolable anguish that he could feel would be in knowing that the virtue with which he had labored to fortify that child’s soul was cast aside and forgotten.
“But I did not mean to make you weep. I wish you to think, resolve, remember, and persevere.
“Once more I warn you of the dangers of that life which you are about to enter. Let not your minds be swept away by the swift currents everywhere rushing they know not whither, all human society rising in great waves on some tidal throe which may land it on a higher plane, or may cast it into the abyss, one leader with a blazing torch striving in the name of Liberty to shut the gate of heaven, and the other, his unconscious accomplice, in the name of Order, setting wide the gates of hell.
“Trust not the visionary who will tell you that science everywhere diffused will bring an age ofgold. Trust not the bigot who will say that knowledge is for the few.
“Trust not those orators who, intoxicated by the sound of their own voices, proclaim that from the platform where they stand gesticulating they can see the promised land. Long since the Afghan heard just such a voice, and made his proverb on it: ‘The frog, mounted on a clod, said he had seen Kashmir.’
“Wait, and examine. Look at both sides of a question, before you form an opinion.
“See what children we were but yesterday. We thought that we knew the Earth. Complacently we told its age, and all its story. We told of a new world discovered four hundred years ago, of its primeval forests and virgin soil, of its unwritten pages on which we should inscribe the opening chapters of a new Genesis. And, lo! the new world, like the old, is but a palimpsest! Under the virgin soil is found a sculptured stone; through the unlettered seas rise the volcanic peaks of lost Atlantis. The insulted spirit of the past lifts everywhere a warning finger from the dust. It points to the satanic promise:Ye shall be as gods. It points us to the tower of Babel. It underlines the haughty Jewish boast:Against the children of Israel shall not a dog wag his tongue. Samples every one of arrogant pride followed by catastrophe sudden, utter, and inevitable.
“In the face of such a past, can we make sure of our stability? We cannot. Beware of pride.Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it.
“Hold yourselves aloof from any party that excludes your King. Bind yourselves by no oaths, and have no fellowship with him who has taken an oath.
“If a man sin, and hurt no other knowingly, be silent and save your own souls. If he sin in wronging another, speak for his victim, or bear the guilt of an accomplice. Do not sophisticate. You are your brother’s keeper, or his Cain.
“Do not bid a sufferer be calm, nor talk of reason to him while he writhes in anguish. The man of cold blood may be as unreasonable as the man in a passion. There is a reason of flame as well as a reason of snow.
“Remember that freedom means freedom from criticism as well as from force.
“Never allow yourselves to think or speak of the poor, of condemned criminals, or social outcasts as the dangerous classes. Your nativity forbids. Justice and mercy forbid. If there is a class which can truly be called dangerous to heavenly order and all that is noblest in life, it is that great stall-fed, sluggish, self-complacent mass which makes a god of its own ease and tranquillity, shuts its eyes to wrongs that it will not right, and cares not what power may rule as long as its own household is protected. It praises the hero of a thousand years ago, and is itself a skulking coward.It calls out a regiment if its sleeve is but brushed against, and steps upon a human neck to reach a flower. Seek not their friendships, nor their praises, and follow not their counsels. Be courteous, sincere, and inflexible. Be loyal, and fear not!
‘Non è il mondan rumor altro che un fiatoDi vento, che or vien quindi ed or vien quinci,E muta nome perchè muta lato.’
‘Non è il mondan rumor altro che un fiatoDi vento, che or vien quindi ed or vien quinci,E muta nome perchè muta lato.’
‘Non è il mondan rumor altro che un fiatoDi vento, che or vien quindi ed or vien quinci,E muta nome perchè muta lato.’
‘Non è il mondan rumor altro che un fiato
Di vento, che or vien quindi ed or vien quinci,
E muta nome perchè muta lato.’
“Do right, and trust in God. Remember that Christianity is heroism.We are not given the spirit of cowardice, says Saint Paul. An Arabian proverb goes farther. ‘There is no religion without courage,’ it says.
“This life of ours is woven as the weaver makes his tapestry. He stands behind the frame, seeing the wrong side only of his web, and having but a narrow strip of the pattern before him at a time. And with every strip the threads that it requires are given. It is all knots and ends there where he works; but he steadily follows the pattern. All the roughnesses that come toward him testify to the smoothness of the picture at the other side.
“So we see but a few steps in advance, and the rough side of our duty is ever before us. But weave on, weave faithfully on in the day that is given you. Be sure that when, your labor done, you pass to the other side, if you have been constant, you will find the most glowing and beautiful part of your picture to be just that part where the knots were thickest when you were weaving.
“I wish to tell you a little incident of to-day that clings to my mind. It is but a trifle; but you may find a thought in it.
“As I sat aloft at dawn, thinking of you and of what I would say to you, I saw an ant in the path at my feet carrying a stick much longer than himself. He ran lightly till he came to two small gravel stones, one at either side of his path. The stick struck on both stones and stopped him. He dropped it, and ran from side to side trying to drag it through.
“For a while I watched the little creature’s distress; then with a slender twig I carefully lifted the stick over the obstacles, and laid it down on the other side.
“The ant remained for a moment motionless, as if paralyzed with astonishment, then ran away as fast as he could run, leaving the stick where I had placed it; and I saw him no more.
“Can you not understand that I was grieved and disappointed? The labor, the loss, and the fear of that little insect were as great to him as ours are to us. I was so sorry for him that if I had had the power to change my shape, as fairy stories tell, and take it safely back again, I would have run after him as one of his own sort, yet with a tale marvelous to him, would have reassured him of my good-will, promised him a thousand timbers for his dwelling, and a store of food and downy lining for his nest, when I should have resumed my proper form and power.
“Oh! would the ants have caught and crucified me in the shape I took from love, and only to serve them!
“Children, it is at this very point that the world will fight with you its most demoniac battle.
“There have been, and there are, men and women whose lives shine like those pure flames in the long, dim corridors of our cemetery, making a circle of holy light about them, some tranquil and hidden, some in constant combat. But for the majority of the race, all the primal Christian truths have become as worn pebbles on the shores of time. It is not long since there was yet enough of public sanity and faith to compel a decent reverence; but now they utter their blasphemies, not only with toleration, but with applause. They have an infernal foolishness that sounds like wisdom to the ignorant unthinking mind. This spirit puts on the doctor’s cap and robe and reasons with you. It twists up a woman’s long hair, and breathes out brazen profanities and shameless mockeries.
“Or some being, half saint and half siren, will praise the beauties of our faith as you would praise a picture or a song, and smooth away its more austere commands, so covering all with glozes and with garlands that there would seem to be no other duty but to praise and poetize; and you might believe yourself floating painlessly toward the gates of Paradise when you are close to the gates of hell.
“I will tell you some of the arguments of these people.
“They say that Christ taught nothing new, that his moral lessons had been taught before, and even in heathen lands.
“He did not pretend to teach a new morality. He fulfilled the law already given by making Charity the consort of Justice.
“Is it to be believed that the Father of mankind left his children, all but a favored few, in total darkness during the ages that preceded Christ? ‘Teste David cum Sibylla,’ sings the ‘Dies Iræ.’
“They will tell you that the miraculous circumstances of Christ’s birth are but a parody on old heathen myths, that a woman with a Divine Child in her arms was worshiped by the Indus and the Nile, and that many an ancient hero claimed a divine paternity. They will go to the very root of revelation and tell you that Vishnu floated on primal seas even as God moved on the face of the waters; that while the Norse Ymir slept, a man and a woman grew out from under his left arm like Eve from sleeping Adam’s side. The fragmentary resemblances are countless.
“Our God be thanked that not the Israelite alone, but even those step-children of the Light had some sense of his coming footsteps! They had caught an echo of the promise, for it was made for all. It was moulded into the clay that made their bodies. It aspired in the spark that kindled their souls.
“I have seen the nest of a swallow all straightly built of parallel woven twigs, except in one corner. In that corner, in a shoal perspective, was an uprightend of pale brown stick shaped like an antique altar. Two tiny twigs were laid on top as for a fire, and from them rose a point of bright yellow leaf for a flame. A pencil could not draw the shapes in better proportion, nor color them more perfectly.
“Above the leaf-flame was hung a cross like a letter X, which is a rising or a falling cross. This, floating in the air above the altar, seemed a veiled interpretation of the sacrifice. Larger, inclosing all, was an upright cross, the beam of which formed one side of a triangle, the figure of the Trinity.
“These figures were laid, one over the other, increasing in size from the altar outward, the victim announced, the mode of his sacrifice hinted, and his divinity proclaimed,—all the emblems of Christianity plainly and chronologically set. What breath of the great all-pervading harmony blew these symbols to the beak of a nesting bird!
“From the first records that we possess of human life, a divine legend or a divine expectation looms before the souls of men, vague as to time, sometimes confused in outline, but ever striking some harmonious chord with their own needs and aspirations, and with the visible world about them.
“See those southern mountain-tops half hidden in a fleet of clouds just sailing over! Even we who know those heights from infancy can scarce be certain what is rock and what is mist in all those outlines. A cliff runs up in shadow, and masses of frowning vapors catch and carry its profile almostto the zenith. There is a rounded mountain where the snow never lingered; and a pile of snowy cumuli has settled on its grayness, and sharpened itself to a fairy pinnacle to mock our ice-peaks, and sifted its white drifts into crevices downward, and set its alabaster buttresses to confuse our knowledge of the old familiar height. Yonder where the White Lady has stood during all the years of our lives, pure and stainless against the blue southwest, a dazzling whirl of sun-bleached mists has usurped her place, leaving visible only her pedestal wreathed about with olive-trees.
“But if you watch awhile the slowly moving veil, gathering with care each glimpse of an unchanging outline, you can build up again the solid mountain wall.
“So the heathen, yes! and the Jew also, saw the coming Christ. Anubis, Isis, Osiris, Buddha, Thor,—they had each some inch-long outline, some divine hand-breadth of truth running off into fantastic myth.
“Were they content with their gods, those puzzled but reverent souls? No; for they were ever seeking new ones, or adding some new feature to the old. Their Sphinx, combining in herself the forms of woman and lion, dog, serpent, and bird, seemed set there to ask, What form will the Divine One choose? Are these creatures all the children of one primal mother? Of what mysterious syllogism is the brute creation the mystical conclusion?
“The German Lessing has well said that ‘thefirst and oldest opinion in matters of speculation is always the most probable, because common sense immediately hit upon it.’ And, converging to the same conclusion, an English writer, borrowing, however, from the Greek, has said that ‘both Philosophy and Romance take their origin in wonder;’ and that ‘sometimes Romance, in the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries, conducts its votaries toward the same goal to which Philosophy leads the illuminated student.’
“The early ages of the world were ages of romance.
“In this supreme case, Imagination, with her wings of a butterfly and her wings of an eagle, soared till her strength failed at a height that was half heaven, half earth. To this same point philosophy climbed her slow and cautious way. They found Faith already there, waiting from the beginning of time at the feet of the God made Man.
“Again, these apostles of skepticism will tell you that the superstitions of the time, and the prophesies concerning Christ, favored his pretensions.
“If Christ had been an impostor, or self-deceived,—the King’s Majesty pardon me the supposition!—in either case he would have striven to conform as much as possible to the prejudices of that expectation; and he would have taken advantage of the popular enthusiasm, as impostors and visionaries do. Instead of that, he set up a pure spiritual system and acted on it consistently,obedient(the Scripture says)unto death. He flattered no one. He boldly reproved the very ones whose support he might naturally have desired. In the height of his fame he predicted his martyrdom.
“Nor was that time more superstitious than the present, nor the followers of Christ more credulous than people of to-day, and not among the ignorant alone. It is, in fact, notable how many proofs they required. I should say that the Apostles were hard to convince, considering the wonders they had seen. How many times had Jesus to say to them,O ye of little faith!
“When the women went to the sepulchre, it was not to meet a risen Lord, but to embalm and mourn over a dead one. When Mary Magdalen went to tell the Apostles that Jesus had risen, her wordsseemed to them an idle tale, and they believed it not. But Peter went to see.He ran, Saint Luke says. He saw the empty grave, the linen cloths laid by; and he went awaywondering, not yet believing, though Magdalen had testified to having seen and spoken with Jesus, and had given them a message from him, though he had predicted his own resurrection, and though Lazarus and the ruler’s daughter were still among them. Does this look like credulity?
“It is not for the present to reproach the past with superstition, now when every wildest fantasy flourishes unchecked. Some turn their longing eyes back to the old mythologies. Like the early Christian gnostics, they like to flatter themselvesby professing an occult worship which the vulgar cannot understand, and building an inner sanctuary of belief where chosen ones may gather, veiled from the multitude. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the day may not be far distant when, in lands called Christian, temples and altars may again be erected to Jove, Cybele, Diana, Osiris, and the rest.
“The mind, like the body, may, perhaps, feel from time to time a need to change its position. But the body, in all its movements, seeks instinctively to keep its equilibrium. The equilibrium of the soul is in its position toward its Creator.
“The paganism of to-day has this evil which the earlier had not: it is a step in a descending scale. In those other days mankind seemed to be rising from the abyss of some immemorial disaster, of which all nations have some fragmentary tradition. In Christ the human race reached its climax. He was the height of an epoch which now, perhaps, declines to a new cataclysm.
“Again, the skeptic tells you that there were and are no miracles. Presumptuous tongue that utters such denial! How do they know that there are no miracles?
“But what is a miracle? Is it necessary to set aside a law of nature in order to perform a miracle? Was not he who made the law wise enough to so frame it that without infringement he could perform wonders? The miracle of one age is the science of the next. Men do to-day without excitingwonder what a few centuries ago would have consigned them to the stake as magicians.
“The miracles of Christ were the acts of one having a perfect knowledge of the laws of the universe, and are a stronger proof of his divinity than any invasion of those laws could be. It was miraculous that a seeming man should have such knowledge.
“Another criticism of religious teachers in both the old and the new law is their ignorance of physical science, evident by commission as well as by omission. Whether they knew or not, common sense alone should teach us that if any one announcing a new religious truth should disturb the preconceptions of his hearers regarding physical truths he would in so much distract their attention from that which he wished to teach them; and their credulity, under this double attack, might fail to accept anything.
“Juvenal’s dictum, ‘bread and games,’ for the government of a people, is true of all mankind in a higher sense. Physical science is man’scircenses. It exercises his intellect, amuses him and his kind, and every new discovery should excite in him a higher admiration of the Creator. It was not necessary that the Son of God should become man, or rise from the dead in order to teach the movements of the starry spheres, or the secret workings of terrestrial powers.Circenses!
“What matters it to the interests of man’s immortal soul if the earth is a stationary platform, ora globe rolling through space with a double, perhaps a triple motion! What cares the dying man for the powers of steam, or electricity, or the laws of the ways of the wind!Circenses! Circenses!
“Christ came to bring the bread of life, the heavenlyPanem, without which there is no life nor growth for the spirit.
“My children, you are counseled to patience and gentleness. But listen not in silence when any one reviles your King. Say little to them of the God, lest they blaspheme the more; but say,Behold the man!It is not pious people alone who have lauded him, nor theologians only who have borne testimony to him.
“Napoleon I., a warrior, an eagle among men, said of Jesus Christ: ‘I know man, and I tell you that Christ was not a man. Everything about Christ astonishes me. His spirit overwhelms and confounds me. There is no comparison between him and any other being. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires; but on what rests the creation of our genius? On force. Jesus alone founded his empire on love.’
“You will find no peer of Napoleon I. among those who can see no greatness in Jesus Christ.
“Carlyle says of Christ that he was ‘the highest soul that ever was on earth.’
“Such names will more impress the mocker than will the name of saint or apostle.
“Bid them look at his humility when he was personally criticised, and at his sublime assumptionwhen proclaiming his mission.I am the Light of the world. I am the resurrection and the life. All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth.
“Did any other teacher of men ever utter such words? See him with the scourge in his hand! See him with the lily in his hand!
“O happy blossom! to be so looked at, touched and spoken of. Did it fade away as other blossoms do? Does its seed yet live upon the earth? Does the Syrian sunshine of to-day still paint the petals of its almost nineteen hundredth generation?
“How dare these preachers of destruction try to rob the human race of such a teacher? What have they to give in exchange for him? Who among them all has a message that can gild the clouds of life, and make of pain and of obscurity a promise and a crown? Never in our era as now has there been such temporal need of the softening influences of Christianity. The poor and the oppressed of all the world, maddened by suffering and insult, outraged by hypocrisy and deceit, are rising everywhere with the desperate motto almost on their lips,Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. A Samson mocked at by fools and fiends, their arms grope blindly out, searching for the pillars of a corrupted state.
“And this is the moment chosen to dethrone the Peacemaker of the universe! Verily, whom the gods would destroy they first make mad!
“Will teachers like these incite men to heroic deeds? They destroy honor and heroism from off the face of the earth! They forge their chains and lay their traps for anarchy; yet there is no preacher of anarchy so dangerous, even for this life, as he who seeks to dethrone in the hearts of men their martyred Lover, Jesus of Nazareth!”
The old man paused, and, with his eyes fixed far away over the heads of the audience to where the sky and mountains met, lifted his arms in silent invocation. Then, drooping, he came feebly down from the pulpit.
The boys for whom his address had been especially meant pressed forward to receive him, and conduct him to a seat.
Then the chimes began softly, and they all sang their last hymn together:
“Let veiling shadows, O Almighty One,Hide from thy sight the dust wherein we lie!Look, we beseech thee, on thine only Son:No other name but Jesus lift we on high!“Fallen and alien, only him we boastStrong to defend from Satan’s bonds of shame:Jesus our sword and buckler, Jesus our host,—No other name, Creator, no other name!“No other name, O Holy One and Just,Call we to stand between us and thy blame:Jesus our ransom, our advocate and trust,—No other name, Dread Justice, no other name!“No other name, O God of gods, can risePure and accepted on thine altar’s flame:Jesus our perfumed incense and our sacrifice,—No other name, Most Holy, no other name!“No other soul-light while on earth we grope,Only through him eternal light we claim:Jesus our heavenly brother, Jesus our hope,—No other name, Our Father, no other name!”
“Let veiling shadows, O Almighty One,Hide from thy sight the dust wherein we lie!Look, we beseech thee, on thine only Son:No other name but Jesus lift we on high!“Fallen and alien, only him we boastStrong to defend from Satan’s bonds of shame:Jesus our sword and buckler, Jesus our host,—No other name, Creator, no other name!“No other name, O Holy One and Just,Call we to stand between us and thy blame:Jesus our ransom, our advocate and trust,—No other name, Dread Justice, no other name!“No other name, O God of gods, can risePure and accepted on thine altar’s flame:Jesus our perfumed incense and our sacrifice,—No other name, Most Holy, no other name!“No other soul-light while on earth we grope,Only through him eternal light we claim:Jesus our heavenly brother, Jesus our hope,—No other name, Our Father, no other name!”
“Let veiling shadows, O Almighty One,Hide from thy sight the dust wherein we lie!Look, we beseech thee, on thine only Son:No other name but Jesus lift we on high!
“Let veiling shadows, O Almighty One,
Hide from thy sight the dust wherein we lie!
Look, we beseech thee, on thine only Son:
No other name but Jesus lift we on high!
“Fallen and alien, only him we boastStrong to defend from Satan’s bonds of shame:Jesus our sword and buckler, Jesus our host,—No other name, Creator, no other name!
“Fallen and alien, only him we boast
Strong to defend from Satan’s bonds of shame:
Jesus our sword and buckler, Jesus our host,—
No other name, Creator, no other name!
“No other name, O Holy One and Just,Call we to stand between us and thy blame:Jesus our ransom, our advocate and trust,—No other name, Dread Justice, no other name!
“No other name, O Holy One and Just,
Call we to stand between us and thy blame:
Jesus our ransom, our advocate and trust,—
No other name, Dread Justice, no other name!
“No other name, O God of gods, can risePure and accepted on thine altar’s flame:Jesus our perfumed incense and our sacrifice,—No other name, Most Holy, no other name!
“No other name, O God of gods, can rise
Pure and accepted on thine altar’s flame:
Jesus our perfumed incense and our sacrifice,—
No other name, Most Holy, no other name!
“No other soul-light while on earth we grope,Only through him eternal light we claim:Jesus our heavenly brother, Jesus our hope,—No other name, Our Father, no other name!”
“No other soul-light while on earth we grope,
Only through him eternal light we claim:
Jesus our heavenly brother, Jesus our hope,—
No other name, Our Father, no other name!”