Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious, in the heavens immortal.—Chilo.
Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious, in the heavens immortal.—Chilo.
P
erhaps there is no man so well known and yet so little thought about in any one community as he who, in the universal opinion, bears a good name. Upon his brow he wears the modern laurel, the highest emblem of his worth, yet the simplest tribute of his fellow citizens.
There are certain exigencies in the histories of all groups of people when the ordinary machinery of life will not operate. The citizens require the utmost letter of the bond; they look with suspicion on all who have usually given satisfaction by their services. A great man is needed. It is then that the people, with one voice, cry out for succor from him of of whom, in days of greater prosperity, they had no imploring need; and it is then astonishing to what a degree the voice of the people at once becomes the voice of God.
A bank which, owing to its high-sounding title, had attracted the savings of the people, fell into the hands of a clique of scoundrels and was compelled to suddenly suspend, the President flying to a distant land to escape the penalties of his crimes. When thirteen thousand depositors were thus confronted with total or partial ruin, there was but one man in a great city whom they would trust to enter the desecrated temple of their hopes and set to rights the treasure yet unstolen. This man came
LIKE CINCINNATUS FROM HIS FARM—
like a father to his children—and from the hearts of plundered widows and orphans there breathed relief in every sigh. In peaceful times this great man was seldom heard of; rogues could be elected over him to places of usual trust; but, in a crisis, his whole biography seemed embossed upon the people's hearts, rising forth like muscles in an agony.
Again a city—itself an exhalation, rising like Milton's hall of Pandemonium—perished in a night. Where, in one week, there had been one hundred "leading candidates" for Mayor, in the next week there was none so rash as to offer himself. A stricken city—the pity of a Christlike world—cast its eyes upon one citizen; and he, as an act of supreme duty, took the perilous post of helmsman through a storm that unsettled the deeps of credit and prosperity all over the earth.
In each of these illustrations party politics played no part. Tall masts were needed for the great ships, and these two men, like red wood patriarchs, touched hard against the zenith of the people's vision. Admirable tributes! Magnificent rewards of life-times of virtue and high character!
THE SILENT GROWTH OF REPUTATION.
How does a man become so great that malice and envy and utter hatred cannot by their constant stings infect his blood? How can a man silently amass a capital of virtuous renown which, when the clear vision of adversity is given to the people, will show with unerring certainty his assets and liabilities of character? It is hard to say. Accidents and circumstances so surround us all that we are the clay, baked either in fair moulds or foul. When the mould is made we have the least judgment; yet when the clay is baked we must abide.
Josh Billings has said that, "after the age of forty, a man cannot form new habits; the best he can do is to learn to steer the old ones." Yoke, therefore, the ox you call Firmness with the one you call Contentment. When you come to drive them down the road the neighbors may laugh at the hawing and jeeing, and jee-hawing, but keep on until you break your oxen in. No man ever got so he could handle that team but had
A HIGH STANDING ON THE ROAD OF LIFE.
Never discuss other folks' affairs except with the common-sense view of doing the folks good. Never start out to do a thing which is impossible of execution. Never start back after you have started out. Never pay the slightest attention to the criticism of persons who are trying to do what you are trying to do. When he who has ever done you a kindness gets angry and addresses you angrily, ponder on every word he says. Pearls then drop from his mouth. Live in no great regard of the passing fashion; it may be a very foolish one, and people who are foolish have a surprising power of perception in pointing to folly in others. Owe no man other than your good office. Have no pride above your fellow mortal; he is essentially like you.
THE BAG OF THINGS
in which ye are alike (if each thing were a grain of wheat) would freight a ship; the things in which you are better than he could be put into your vest-pocket. Gold does not tarnish, and good names do not soil easily, though herein custom has something to do with the affair. "The soul's calm sunshine" however, should spread abroad. It often reflects hidden beauty in other faces. "Be just, and fear not." You may stand apparently without honor when you have it most. If you are the man of good name in your community, you are on the high hill where your people will gather in time of need, as did the ancients to the rocky acropolis.
worship
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,He wales a portion with judicious care;And "Let us worship God," he says, with solemn air.—Burns.
T
he good and holy custom of family prayers is, I fear, dropping into disuse. Our lives are so full of business that a season of God's service in the morning and in the evening is almost thought to be an excuse of sloth. But what a sad effect do we see on our youth! They have quick eyes for cant and hypocrisy. They follow us to church on Sunday less and less willingly, until finally there is rebellion in their hearts and irreligion in their souls. Family worship is a fount of piety pure enough for even the young, who are pure themselves. Into its depths they look and see only a chastity of spirit reflected. The machinery and the ambition that adulterate the true faith at the church have not had their birth at the fireside of a good man. At that fireside the child grows up religious, because he loves religion. It is kind and good to him. His shrine is at home. And where can we ever build
SO HOLY AN ALTAR
as at that sweet spot where life has come in upon us, and love been wrapped around us! Burns sees the humble cotter finish his family service in the presence of his little ones, and then, to show a further duteous regard for the souls intrusted to his care, kneel again with the wife:
The parent-pair their secret homage pay,And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,That he who stills the raven's clamorous nest,And decks the lily fair in flowery pride.Would in the way his wisdom sees the best,For them and for their little ones provide;But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside.
"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs," sings the sweet poet, and this very poem has touched a chord in the hearts of all humanity, in every clime, and nearly every tongue, that has almost doubled that Scotia's fame. "A house without family worship," says Mason, "has neither foundation nor covering." "Measure not men by Sundays," says Fuller, "without regarding what they do all the week after." "Educate men without religion," said the Duke of Wellington, "and you make them but clever devils."
THE IRON DUKE
was forced to fight one of the cleverest of this kind, and his victory was earned so hardly that he remembered it. "The dullest observer must be sensible," says Washington Irving, "of the order and serenity prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the key-note to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony." "It is for the sake of man, not of God," says Blair, "that worship and prayers are required; not that God may be rendered more glorious, but that men may be made better—that he may acquire those pious and virtuous dispositions in which his highest improvement consists." How can religion bear fruit so well as by daily instruction from God? How can the family bear its burdens more easily than with God's help?
HOW CAN THE BROOD BE GATHERED TOGETHER
at night so surely as when there is an engagement with the Creator at the hearth where life began? In all views, from all sides, this holy custom is seen to be founded in divine wisdom—and divine wisdom includes human wisdom "as the sea her waves."
I have prefaced this subject of worship with the matter of family services, on account of its vital importance. Without the reading of the Bible and the praise of God at home, worship appears to the young like the grinding of the corn, the shoeing of the horses, or the aid of the physician—a matter to be paid for rather than to be done by one's self.
SOME OF THE HAPPIEST AND BEST FAMILIES,
who have turned out into the world the strongest, bravest men, have not limited their worship to stated hours, even, but upon occasions of unusual peril or unusual gladness have poured out to God their prayers or their gratitude. Charnock, in his "Attributes," says: "As to private worship, let us lay hold of the most melting opportunities and frames. When we find our hearts in a more than ordinary spiritual frame, let us look upon it as a call from God to attend Him; such impressions and notions are God's voice, inviting us into communion with Him in some particular act of worship, and promising us some success in it. When the Psalmist had a secret notion
'TO SEEK GOD'S FACE'
and complied with it, the issue is the encouragement of his heart, which breaks out into an exhortation to others to be of good courage, and wait on the Lord: 'Wait on the Lord and be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.' One blow will do more on the iron when it is hot, than a hundred when it is cold; melted metals may be stamped with any impression; but once hardened, will, with difficulty, be brought into the figure we intend."
THE WISEST AND THE BEST.
We have in religion the experience of the wisest and the best minds before us. Their guarantee in all else is of the very highest human standing and degree. We must, therefore, in reason, profit by their knowledge. In this, also, we are aided by our own development. Behold the truth of this from the mouth of Colton: "Philosophy is a bully that talks very loud when the danger is at a distance, but the moment she is hard pressed by the enemy she is not to be found at her post, but leaves the brunt of the battle to be borne by her humbler but steadier comrade Religion, whom, on most other occasions, she effects to despise." There died in Paris, not long ago, a man named Emile Littre, as well known in France for his infidelity as is Colonel Ingersoll in this country. Over there
THEY CALL ATHEISM POSITIVISM,
which is a good name. It signifies that a man is positive he knows more about the future state than God! Upon his death-bed this Monsieur Littre,—although he had been the means of sending thousands of other souls before their Maker, rebellious and unredeemed—this same Monsieur Littre dared not to meet God with his Positivism on his soul, and embraced the offices of the Church with great relief. Men, before entering upon a course which flings away the only hope a man has,
SHOULD LOOK WELL TO IT
that they know what they are doing. I wandered in the terror-stricken streets of burned Chicago. The multitudes—nearly two hundred thousand—were eating in gratitude; the mothers with babes were under shelter. Was the unburned temple of the atheist open? Oh, no! He had none. Who was cutting the meats and breaking the bread? The wives and daughters of the parishes which had been spared from the hot flames. It was a solemn lesson. I said: "I will not, Colonel Ingersoll, throw away the hope I have." By their works shall ye know them! 'Tis as true upon the field of blood as in the track of fire, but we must pass on. "When I was young," said
THE GREAT NEWTON,
the ornament of his race, "I was sure of many things; there are only two things of which I am sure now: one is that I am a miserable sinner; and the other, that Jesus Christ is an all-sufficient savior." The closing pages of Dr. Johnson's works are filled with simple little prayers to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. "I have lived long enough to know what I did not at one time believe—that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment of religion." This is the language of La Place, the author of "La Mecanique Celeste," one of the greatest books of the world. He spoke from real experience. He had seen religion "abolished by law." He had seen the "worship of Reason" established with the decapitation of seven thousand innocent citizens of France. He had heard one of the apostles of Reason arise in the Constituent Assembly and demand two hundred and ninety thousand corpses instead of seven thousand. Then this man who had grasped the machinery of the heavens, who had shown the absolute accuracy of Newton's great discovery, wrote, in the same spirit of absolute knowledge: "I have lived long enough to know what I did not once believe." Magnificent testimony! Almost as valuable as the teachings of our own hearts! The same statement comes from
THE ROCK OF ST. HELENA.
Victor Hugo, with a mind like that of Shakspeare, says: "I believe in the sublimity of prayer." "If we traverse the world," says Plutarch, "it is possible to find cities without walls, without letters, without Kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools, without theatres; but a city without a temple, or that practiceth not worship, prayers, and the like, no one ever saw." "Wonderful!" cries Montesquieu, "that the Christian religion, which seems to have no other object than the felicity of another life, should also constitute the happiness of this!"
SAYS GEORGE WASHINGTON:
"Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion." "Religion is a necessary, an indispensable element in any great human character," says Daniel Webster. "Nothing," says Gladstone, "can be hostile to religion which is agreeable to justice." "It is the property of the religious spirit," admits Emerson, "to be the most refining of all influences. The writers against religion," says Edmund Burke, "whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own." "I fear God," says Saadi, "and next to God, I chiefly fear him who fears him not." "Space is the statue of God," cries Joubert. "Truth is his body and light his shadow," says Plato.
There is almost a revelation of God in the cries upward to Him, of some of his human souls. Says Wordsworth:
Thou who didst wrap the cloudOf infancy around us, that Thyself,Therein with our simplicity awhileMightst hold on earth communion undisturbed;Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,
Or from its deathlike void, with punctual care,And touch as gentle as the morning light,Restor'st us daily—Thou, Thou alone.Art everlasting!
The poet Young, driven by sorrow to God's foot-stool, addresses his Creator in the same nobility of language:
Thou, who didst put to flightPrimeval silence, when the morning stars,Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball;O Thou! whose word from solid darkness struckThat spark the sun, strike wisdom from my soul;My soul which flies to Thee, her trust, her treasure,As misers to their gold, while others rest.
"Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Therefore, accept this boon. Take your own child by the hand, and pray, and pray:
The way is long, my Father! and my soulLongs for the rest and quiet of the goal;While yet I journey through this weary land,Keep me from wandering, Father, take my hand.
the atheist
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,Sailing on obscene wings, athwart the noon,Drops his blue-fringed lids and holds them close,And hooting at the glorious Sun in heaven,Cries out: "Where is it?"—Coleridge.
T
he laugh of the foolish infidel and the sneer of the solemn atheist are abroad in the land. The awful draught they hold to the lips of humanity is well honeyed with some of the adjuncts of religion itself, else the perilous cup would be rejected. Let us see how the atheist secures his victim, for he is never content to enjoy alone the extravagances of his folly. I have noticed that when a Democratic editor receives dispatches containing news of a Republican victory, he is frequently expert enough in the guile pertaining to his profession to put a displayed heading on those same dispatches which clearly saves the day for the Democrats—orvice versa. And I have also noticed that it takes true mental pluck to rightly scan, first, that rooster of roosters (invented during the last few years), then the ten lines of Democratic Io Paians which follow, and lastly, the small type containing the real facts.
MAN IS SO MUCH LIKE A FISH
that certain bait is sure to catch him. The morning after the election the most astute Republican or Democrat in the country trembles before the terrors of a ten-line Democratic or Republican displayed heading, as the case may be. Now the crafty atheist has a way of laying down fallacies which often terrifies one into involuntarily believing that those fallacies are facts, until one stops to think that the atheist is but a man, after all, and that there is an appeal from his findings. It is, therefore, in the defense of humanity that I advance against him,
HOPING TO HIT HIM BECAUSE HE IS SO BIG,
and to escape his blows because I am so small. "What though the day be lost, all is not lost!" Though man have glaring faults, he is still a problem far beyond the fiat of any atheist. He still has a destiny. The atheist lays down dogma after dogma. In this changing world, where even the little balance-wheel of a watch must be "compensated," it is clearly as impossible for any atheist to lay down an undeviating dogma as it was for the Cretan to truly say that all Cretans were liars! "Broadly, an unselfish deed is impossible. There never was a human thought that reached beyond the human body." Let us capture those two atheistic dogmas and take off their displayed headings.
AWAY BACK ON THE PLAINS OF CHALDÆA,
in the youth of the world, there lived men who watched their flocks by day and the hosts of heaven by night. Their study of the heavens lifted them out of themselves, in my belief, and their observations of celestial phenomena led them to the discovery of the fact that eclipses of the great heavenly lights happened in a regular rotation of eighteen years and ten days. This discovery has been very useful in purging the idolatry from eclipses—as, had it not been for the Chaldæans, perhaps the mother of the atheist might have offered him as an oblation in
THE FIRST TOTAL ECLIPSE
after his birth! Again, Proctor and Airy have been for ten years mapping stars for the use of humanity 25,868 years after the map is done—that is, that period will furnish the first opportunity for the utilization of a truly laborious task. There is no glory in it. The difference between glory and hard work in astronomy is just the difference between Ptolemy and Hipparchus. The one made a great noise in the world and got up an atheistic solar system which put science back a thousand years, while the other stayed on his island and mapped stars to the best of his ability, rendering possible some of
THE GODLIKE DEDUCTIONS
of Kepler, Halley, and Newton. The affairs of this world are managed in the light of history. It is technically called precedent. There is yet no history of astronomy. In the desired actual placing of the present positions of the stars there would be a record which, 25,868 years hence, would enable the observer of those times to accurately measure movements of the earth now beyond mortal ken for lack of history. By the character of those movements, the force, speed, heat, and
OTHER QUALITIES OF GRAVITATION
might possibly be determined. Now I cannot connect the idea of selfishness with this view of the aspirations of humanity. Proctor and Airy absolutely know that they will be forgotten so far out in on-coming time, but still they drudge away, in the belief that man can only acquire knowledge of God's works as the coral reef attains continental proportions—that is, by the infinitesimal contributions of countless unselfish individualities. They are desirous that man should some day know the truth. Is there any unselfishness in the aspiration?
THE ATHEIST
says: "First and last of all, we have no idea of anything beyond, above, or superior to these curious bodies of ours. The highest flight of genius in art, religion, or invention has never reached beyond the body of man." These statements are false. They should not be accepted by anybody as true, for they tend to a lower grade of existence. They lead the pardoned convict back to his hatching-house of crime. Philosophy of this kind forgets the "still small voice."
THE NOBLE "IT BEHOOVETH ME!"
rings in every intelligent mind. "I have not done that which I ought to have done; I therefore am disturbed and in unrest." Where does this thought come from? Why do I sit in judgment on myself? The atheist says it is selfishness. A peculiar selfishness is that voice of duty which cries to those whom we rightly call good to go forth to the bedside of the distressed, is it not? At the corner of Lake and Paulina streets, in Chicago, a man, his wife, and his child were nearly burned to death. The child died, and perhaps they all died. They were taken to the hospital. The next day a thrifty landlord tumbled their goods down-stairs to the sidewalk.
WHAT WAS IT IN MY SOUL
which, when I saw the young barbarians all at play tearing and destroying those meagre comforts, cried out so sharply: "O, ignoble! you do not lift your finger to succor this poor man! Have shame upon you!" Why is it that that voice still sounds in my ears? Surely it is not selfishness. Listen to a short colloquy:
Immanuel Kant—Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, nor flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law to the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel; whence thy original?
The Atheist—I am glad to inform you that selfishness is the original you seek!
FURTHER FALLACIES.
In the interest of an advancing Christian humanity, I call attention to still further fallacies as I hear them in the mouth of atheism: "While we cannot quite hold that the idea expressed by the modern word 'selfishness' is new to mankind, we can safely say that it is only recently that selfishness came to be held a very sin. In the day of lance, and fort, and mailed right hand, the Knight took what he could, and held what he could, and there were no mealy-mouthed words about the rights of others, and a broad Christian charity, either. To-day, all of society has the precise motive of the old Robber-Barons."
LET US LOOK DOWN BROADWAY
some Saturday forenoon. Myriads of vehicles confuse the common mind with their din and their movement. A horse comes along, walking on a hoof that is no longer a hoof. What stops every team within two blocks for twenty minutes? Why, an officer has rushed into that torrent of traffic, has grasped that poor beast by the bridle, and has sent a bullet on a mission of mercy through its brain. How is it that the frightful objurgations of the high-charioted host fall so lightly on that officer? Why does he not get killed himself? Because he is in the second largest aggregation of human beings in the world, where the voice of religion is strongest, and where that voice cries in unmistakable tones,
"WELL DONE!"
It could not be done in Leadville! It could not be done even in Chicago! Not enough religious education; not enough development; not enough of the voice of duty! Let not the atheist say that there is a child in the back alley dying. So there is, but society will get there in time. Let not the atheist criticise society; it is too big an affair. Inside of a thousand years it will be a necessity of society as well as it now is of religion, to be kind to humanity as well as to the brute creation. Society will then attend to it. When a victim fell before Achilles or Diomedes, that victim begged for mercy. The spear then went through his bowels. The times demanded it. They knew no mercy. There is no mercy in the Iliad. The Barons, also, were a crowd of thugs. To-day, in New York, or London, or Paris, they would each get twenty years on general principles. We have no sluggers who are not their superiors. The atheist should know it, and does. The world moves.
THERE MUST BE THOUGHTS
which reach beyond the human body. I remember well a day of serious mental depression which I once suffered. But out of my sadness came peace. Points in our memory lose their coloring rapidly, of course, yet the feelings of that day and night still cause a thrill of pleasure in my mind. I had been for days convinced that there were no real joys in life. As my peace came, I began laboriously to pick out some chords on a piano from the opera of "Lucretia Borgia"—the finale of the second act. My labor was rewarded by the most pleasing sounds I had ever made with my own fingers, and there was a general ebullition of pleasure and expectation of future harmonies through my whole body for many hours afterward. That night I went to hear a great scientist lecture on astronomy.
THE SUBLIMITY OF HIS SUBJECT,
the idea of a universe of stars as yet unbounded, the higher idea of an infinitude of such universes, each but a handful of mist in the greatest telescope, raised me to a point of feeling which made life an ineffable delight. I went to my bed, and thanked a Creator out of a boundless thankfulness. I have thought that the twenty-third Psalm (beginning, "The Lord is my shepherd)" is a hymn of thanksgiving inspired with the same high quality of satisfaction. Surely,
MAN IS NOT THE VICIOUS LUMP OF CLAY
which the atheist would have him when he is able to command that picture of Faith which Wordsworth wrote:
I have seenA curious child, who dwelt upon a tractOf inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;To which in silence hushed, his very soulListened intensely, and his countenance soonBrightened with joy,—for murmurings from withinWere heard, sonorous cadences! whereby,To his belief the monitor expressedMysterious union with its native sea.Even such a shell the universe itselfIs to the ear of Faith; and there are timesI doubt not, when to you it doth impartAuthentic tidings of invisible things.
No! No! To found the problem or the actions of man on any one agent, and to cut him off from God, is peurile! The reason of man necessitated the discovery of gravitation, and it is to-day the best-established physical fact before our view. The reason of man also demands a Creator, to endow us with motives above our own development, and that reason, in the soul of every man, atheist and Christian alike, must and will, secretly or openly, have divine satisfaction.
The atheist, in these days, is the champion and the leader of a scrubby lot of social and religious ideas. He should not "march them through Coventry that's flat."
the bible
Those holy fieldsOver whose acres walked those blessed feetWhich, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailedFor our advantage on the bitter cross.—Shakspeare.
Y
our little child, on Christmas day, may give you a beautiful copy of the history of "those holy fields." But a few hundred years ago, it might have cost a throne. To-day we may have either Testament printed in our daily newspaper and put upon our table before breakfast. So free is the word of God that only the mere wish to have it is necessary to secure at once the greatest of spiritual boons and the most perfect piece of writing in our language, or in any other tongue. The beauties of the Bible have charmed the critical of all ages. The young have departed from its simplicity of speech only to return in riper years for rapt tuition. The wise have lingered over its perfect sentences, striving to catch the art which was showered upon those unassuming translators who gave its pages to the English-speaking world. One of the brightest wits of his time was Sidney Smith. His love of the Bible, not only as his guide and his strength, but as the greatest of all literary works, was passionate. He once impressed a circle of friends very deeply with this noble veneration: "What," said he, "is so beautiful as
THE STYLE OF THE BIBLE?
what poetry in its language and ideas!" and taking it down from the book-case he read, with his clear, manly voice, and in his most affecting manner, several of his favorite passages; among others: "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of an old man;" and part of that most beautiful of Psalms, the 139th: "O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there; if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me; yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike unto thee." And thus he would charm his hearers, visiting their ears, perhaps, with the first true knowledge of Biblical beauty which had ever sounded upon them. Listen to
THE MERITED EULOGY
of a Roman Catholic, in the DublinReview, of June, 1853: "Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvelous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. Nay, it is worshiped with a positive idolatry, in extenuation of whose gross fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it The potent traditions of childhood are
STEREOTYPED IN ITS PHRASES.
The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath the words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. It has been to him all along as the silent, but oh! how intelligible voice of his guardian angel; and in the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."
WHAT A PANEGYRIC
from an avowed opponent of this translation! And to whom are we principally indebted for this lovely poem of God? To William Tyndale. Says Froude, the historian: "The peculiar genius, if such a word may be permitted, which breathes through the Bible, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern scholars—all are here, and bear the impress of one man, and that man William Tyndale."
AND WHO WAS WILLIAM TYNDALE?
He was a gentle clergyman of great piety and learning. He was born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1477. He endured great persecution and was forced to quit England. He visited Luther in Germany. He printed his New Testament at Antwerp. Its beauties were at once recognized in England, although to read it was illegal and punishable with death. Cardinal Wolsely did his best to entice the translator to England, to destroy him. An assistant in the work, named John Frith, was lured back and burned to death. Finally Henry the Eighth of England procured Tyndale's arrest at Antwerp. He was given a "trial," at Vilvoorden, near Antwerp, and pronounced guilty. In September, 1536,
THEY STRANGLED THIS INSPIRED SERVANT
of God, and then burned his body. At the stake he cried: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" Upon Tyndale's version of the Bible the King James translation is solidly based. "It is astonishing," says Dr. Geddes, a profound scholar, "how little obsolete the language of it is, even at this day; and, in point of perspicuity and noble simplicity, propriety of idiom, and purity of style, no English version has yet surpassed it." Of course our language has changed greatly in 400 years. Yet
THE LORD'S PRAYER
does not contain, in Tyndale's exact language, one unrecognizable word. It ran as follows: "Oure Father which arte in heven, halowed be thy name. Let thy kingdom come. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth, as hit ys in heven. Geve vs this daye oure dayly breade. And forgeve vs oure treaspases, even as we forgeve them which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into temptacion, but delyvre vs from yvell. Amen."
THE MARKED POETICAL SUPERIORITY
of the Protestant over the Catholic Bible may be shown in the twenty-third Psalm, and elsewhere. The first says: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want;" the second: "The Lord ruleth me; and I shall want nothing." The first says: "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul;" the second: "He hath set me in a place of pasture; he hath brought me up on the water of refreshment; he hath converted my soul" (thus completely losing the original metaphor of the shepherd). The first says: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;" the second: "For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils." In Job v. 7, the first says: "Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward;" the second: "Man is born to labor, and the bird to fly." In Job xiv. 1, the first says: "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble;" the second: "Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries." These examples will suffice to show the differences which pervade the two translations.
"INTENSE STUDY OF THE BIBLE
will keep any one from being vulgar in point of style," says Coleridge. "There are no songs," says Milton, "comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the scriptures teach." "The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified simplicity of language," says Pope, "is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer." "I use the Scriptures," says Boyle, "not as an arsenal to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as
A MATCHLESS TEMPLE,
where I delight to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored." "There never was found, in any age of the world," says Bacon, "either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible." "It is the window in this prison of hope," says Dwight, "through which we look into eternity." "How admirable and beautiful," says Racine, "is the simplicity of the Evangelists! They never speak injuriously of the enemies of Jesus Christ, of his judges, nor of his executioners. They speak the facts without a single reflection. They comment neither on their Master's mildness, nor on his constancy in the hour of his ignominious death, which they thus describe: 'And they crucified Jesus.'" "Men cannot be well educated without the Bible," says Dr. Nott. "It ought, therefore, to hold a chief place in every situation of learning throughout Christendom." "I am of the opinion," says Sir William Jones, "that the Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they have been written." "I will answer for it," says Romaine,
"THE LONGER YOU READ THE BIBLE
the more you will like it; it will grow sweeter and sweeter; and the more you get into the spirit of it, the more you will get into the spirit of Christ." "The greatest pleasures the imagination can be entertained with," says Sir Richard Steele, "are to be found in the Bible; and even the style of the Scriptures is more than human."
THE BIBLE IS AUTHENTIC.
It is old. It is beautiful. It is the only hope we have. If we cast it away we become as the brutes of the field, both in spirit and in body. The strong take from the weak and perish into nothing—this is all that is offered us by those who reject and revile the Bible. Such have exceeding deep ignorance, exceeding ill manners, exceeding bad taste, and exceeding great folly. "I find more sure marks of the authenticity of the Bible," says Sir Isaac Newton, "than in any profane history whatever." We use the word "secular" nowadays where "profane" was formerly written. "Profane" meant "before" or "outside" the "fane," or "temple."
THE BOOK OF JOB
is older than any other writing on earth. It antedates the Chinese Empire. It is lost in the mist of years. The histories of Moses are as old as the pyramids, and the pyramids and obelisks proclaim the integrity of the Hebrew leader and chronicler. So let us prize this greatest gift of God to man. Let us humbly thank Him for the liberties and comforts it has brought us—for even the Atheist himself refrains from robbing us of our property through the influence of the Christian religion. Let us thank God for the schools, and the hospitals, and the charities which have
THE BIBLE AT THEIR FOUNDATION,
and which, without it, it is fair to say, would not be in existence to-day. Those who are the best are guided by its precepts. Those who are the wisest have implicit confidence in it. Those who are the most eloquent have studied it intensely. Those who are powerful in narration of events have imitated its divine simplicity. Have it at your bedside. Your mind will broaden faster under its influence than under that of the daily newspaper. If you have not time to read both, sacrifice the paper. The paper is trash. The Bible is solid gold. If you fill your mind with grand thoughts, your mind will be noble. You will have principle.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND AS GRAND LANGUAGE
in any politician's speech?—"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thundereth; deep calleth unto deep; the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness." Where can you find as graceful speech?—"He shall come down as rain upon the mown grass; mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." The day is now dawning in this Western world when taste and poetic feeling are to flourish. We have got the dollars. We must now get something for the dollars. Now will the Bible, as ever at such epochs in the past, shine out anew, the criterion, not only of the soul, but of the sentiments—the book that is first under the scholar's lamp and alone in his bedchamber.
picture
the evening of life
Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nighA melancholy slave;But an old age serene and bright,And lovely as a Lapland night,Shall lead thee to thy grave.—Wordsworth.
A
ge is the outer shore against which dashes an eternity. The mysterious ocean is either tempestuous or tranquil, just as we view it. If we look hard down the cliff of death we are appalled with the force of the waves; we are frightened by the din and shock of collision. But if we gaze afar off we see no great disturbance. All is moving with the true poetry of motion, in the fitness of God's plan, even as viewed by one of His works. "The more we sink into the infirmities of age," says Jeremy Collier, "the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now, to pass from midnight into noon on the sudden; to be decrepit one minute and all spirit and activity the next, must be a desirable change. To call this dying is an abuse of language." Death to the aged is natural, therefore as pleasant and easy as any other natural office of the body. Indeed, it is far easier than the operation by which we even get our teeth in youth. If we, then, are able to forget that greatest shock of pain so quickly as we do, why shall we dread a little sinking of the breath, and the unwilling battle of a body that is tired and
LITERALLY WILLING AT HEART
to surrender? "In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life," says Sir Thomas Browne, "yet in my best meditations do I often desire death. For a pagan there may be some motive to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma—that he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come." We are now of the earth; but all the high reason which has taught us to master fire, and water, and the thunderbolts themselves, has also instructed us that we are only sojourners on this little planet.
the evening of life
THE EVENING OF LIFE
OUR MINDS ARE AS BROAD
as the range of stellar systems. We are not as large as a horse or an elephant. Are we, therefore, inferior? We are inhabiting bodies which thrive but a few years, on a planet remarkable for its smallness. But we stretch our knowledge over mighty distances; we construct triangles which have for one side the whole sweep of the earth, over 180 millions of miles; we measure the distance of other worlds by this side of a triangle, and the nearest star is thus found to be 103,000 of our measures away from us—103,000 times 180,000,000 miles! Young has well said that
THE UNDEVOUT ASTRONOMER IS MAD.
So did Napoleon die. Was he not the mightiest man of his time? Did not the whole world sigh with relief when the final end came? Yet he was on a tiny rock in the great ocean? On a map of the world that rock has no title even to a dot. Yet it would be foolish to say he belonged simply to that rock. No. He had come from other human worlds. He was as broad as the earth. We, too, have come from other worlds. We are as broad as the universe. Even our minds, clad in clay, betray the high character of our souls.
DOES THE BEAST PEER INTO THE STARS?
Do the birds that pass so easily into the air go on voyages of discovery past Sirius? And yet the air refuses to bear us, and wafts them gently on its lightest zephyrs! We have sublime faculties—the fit companions of a soul. It is not our self-conceit. The Milky Way is not our conceit. The eclipses are not our conceit. The awful sweep of our whole family of planets, moons, and sun, onward in celestial space, is not a conceit. Therefore we possess our souls, flashing within caskets which have not been altogether unworthy of their priceless treasures.
AS THE CASKET DULLS
and grows to its decay, we cannot weep greatly over its loss, for will it not reveal the splendors all within?
"It is worthy the observing," says Lord Bacon, "wisest of men," "that there is no passion in the mind of men so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death; and, therefore, death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat from him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear pre-occupateth it; nay, we read, after Otho the Emperor had slain himself,
PITY (WHICH IS THE TENDEREST OF AFFECTIONS)
provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over again." We all must die, sooner or later. It is easier to die than to live again our stormy and tempestuous lives. Few would re-embark at the cradle, suffer the pains of childhood, the hurts which the feelings of youth get, the pangs of love, the shock of loneliness coming from the departure of those we cling to, the vicissitudes of fortune, the stings of penury, the journeys into the lands of strangers, the flight of summer friends, the alienation of children, and the fevers and the wounds which human nature crosses on its way to the kind haven of a good old age. Jesus stands near. When death comes, his voice will sound, just at the brink: "It is I; be not afraid." "When I look at the tombs of the great," said Joseph Addison, on
HIS VISIT TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY,
"every motion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see Kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great judgment day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."
THE AGED MAN
who has "walked with God" is always ready for the Master's call. His loins are girded about and his lights burning. He "lies down with the Kings of the earth," and that leveling process which is thus intimated and begun in death he feels is the order of a higher plane of life to come, when all the abuses and incongruities of human government will be swept away, and the light of omniscient wisdom will shine on all alike. There will he meet the little child who strayed from the fold into the snows of death early in the married life, and there will he sit beside that fond old heart who heard his first piteous wail in this cold world, and nestled him to her bosom all warm with a mother's love.
IT IS THE ONE POSSIBLE CHANCE
of happiness, and only death stands in the way. Nature carries the soul gently over the river, where those who have gone before stand waiting in glad expectation. Shall we doubt either the goodness of God or the perfection of nature? Shall we hesitate to weave the silk of death around our bodies when we know that we may thence issue a being worthy of a celestial sphere of action?
APOSTROPHE.
Venerable sir, thou hast borne the burdens of the world to the last mile-post. Thy companions have fallen by the wayside, and even some of them may have gone unbidden to their Judge. But thou, having in view the dignity of the human mind and the will of God, hast labored while the light was given thee, and hast journeyed while thy strength remained. Thy destiny is now but opening to thy sight. Thou lookest through the inner doors and seest that infinite cathedral which openeth beyond the vestibule of death.
"The stars shall fade away, the sun himselfGrow dim with age, and nature sink in years;But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,Unhurt amidst the war of elements,The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds."
the future life
Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,This longing after immortality?Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soulBack on herself, and startles at destruction?'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,And intimates eternity to man.Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!—Addison.