Great books as life-teachers ; studies of character, real and ideal

Front matter

ly

USN i OR WHOEVER

; ° A AY 2 CIS) Bess IT WAS 0 INGS | | F

Foreword

For some reason our generation has closed its text-books on ethics and morals, and opened the great poems, essays, and novels. Doubtless for thoughtful persons this fact argues, not a decline of interest in the fundamental principles of right living, but a desire to study these principles as they are made flesh and embodied in living persons. The leaders in literature have their supremacy less through the charm of a faultless style than because they discuss problems old as life itself—problems of love friendship, and passion, problems of ambition and the desire for money, office, and good name, problems of temptation and sin, problems of the soul’s wreckage, and its recovery also. It is often said that literature is the greatest of the fine arts, and certainly it is of all the arts the wisest and most inspiring, serving at once as tutor, guide, and friend. In this era, when fiction is increasingly the medium of amusement and instruction, and when the great poets and essayists are becoming the prophets of a new social

Foreword order, it seems important to remember that the great novelists are consciously or unconsciously teachers of morals, while the most fascinating essays and poems are essentially books of aspiration and spiritual culture. Lest the scope of these studies be misunderstood, it should be said that the author approaches these volumes from the view-point of a pastor, interested in literature as a help in the religious life, and seeking to find in these writings bread for those who are hungry, light for those who are in darkness, and life for those who walk in the shadow of death. Leaving to others the problems of literary criticism, these studies emphasize the importance of right thinking in order to right conduct and character, and the uses of great books as aids and incentives to the higher Christian life.

Contents

I

The New Times, and the Poets and snare as Prophets of a New Era

II

John Ruskin’s <*Seven Lamps of Architecture’’ as Interpreters of the Seven Laws of Life —A Study of the ial of Character Building : : ;

Ill

George Eliot’s Tito, in «* Romola’’—A Study of the Peril of Tampering with Conscience and the Gradual Deterioration of Character

IV Hawthorne’s << Scarlet Letter’? and the Retributive Workings of Conscience—A Study of the Necessity and Nobility of Sia ance, and the Confession of Sin

V

Victor Hugo’s ‘¢ Les Miserables’? —The Battle of the Angels and the Demons for Man’s Soul. How Jean Valjean was Recovered from Passion and Sin to Christian Service and Self-sacrifice .

VI

Tennyson’s ‘‘Idylls of the King’’—An Outlook upon the Soul’s Epochs and Teachers

PAGE ney)

Vil The Tragedy of the Ten-Talent Men—A Study of Browning’s ‘<Saul’’ . : VIII The Memoirs of Henry Drummond, and the Dawn of an Era of Friendship . between Science and Religion IX The Opportunities of Leisure and Wealth— An Outlook upon the Life of Lord Shaftesbury xX The Biography of Frances Willard, and the Heroes of Social Reform—A Study of the Knights of the New Chivalry . ; XI Blaikie’s Life of David Livingstone —A Study of Nineteenth-Century Heroism XII

The Christian Scholar in Politics —A Study of the Life of William Ewart Gladstone

3°9

I

The New Times, and the Poets and Essayists as Prophets of a New Era

In inorganic and material nature there is an impulse, whatever it may be, by which things unfold and work steadily toward higher excellence. It is with immense waste, it is circuitous, slow, with something of retroaction; but the unfolding of nature by this mute and latent tendency to go toward a better future, leavens the world like yeast, and develops it as well, This is the spirit of the ages, the genius of the universe. All creation is on the march. The stars are revolving. The dead crust of the earth feels the necessity of moving. The whole vegetable kingdom is moving onward and upward. The animal kingdom, too, keeps step, unconscious of the impelling cause. Man, as if he heard the music drowsily and afar off, joins the strange procession, and struggles on and upward also.

It is a strange march of creation, moving to unheard music, with unseen banners, to some great enterprise. When it shall finally encamp and hang out the banners of victory, no one knoweth but He who liveth in eternity, before whom a thousand years are but as one day, and one day as a thousand years.—HENRY WARD BEECHER,

I

THE NEW TIMES, AND THE POETS AND ES- SAYISTS AS PROPHETS OF A NEW ERA

The pledge of the ‘‘New Times’’ is the promise, ‘‘In the last days I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.’” Therefore ‘‘Great Pane iste nlot, dead,« morals, are not estationary, inspiration is not ancient history, and the Bible is not closed. Men have been telling us that God once pitched His tents close beside the tents of Abraham and Moses. In those far-off days He made friends with each sage and seer. But it is said centuries have passed since the divine form withdrew from the earthly scene. And, lo, comes this divine overture! God’s wine is freshly poured. Each is to be a new-born bard. Inspiration is to speak in each voice, as song bubbles in the lark’s throat. Before the dullest eyes ‘‘the vision splendid’ dawns. Each day is to be deluged with divinity. Rifts are made in the clouds, signals are hung over the battlements, voices from the sky come and keep coming. Each man is challenged to make ready fora divine invasion. And God is not ‘‘of old,”’ but is as new as the last apple blossom, as fresh as the last bud or babe. The divine dew is not burned off the grass. The divine light has not faded from the sky. The rustle of divine garments is still in the ear.

What God was, He is. What He did, He does. What He said, He says. It is little that of old He helped Moses, if He no longer helps men. The strength of our vineyards is not that once the sun warmed the Valentian hills. The clusters ripen because the all-maturing sun comes to-day, and keeps coming. It is much that God spake to man centuries ago, but it is more, that while He still speaks, the poets and patriots muse, and the sacred fires burn. To our generation God comes, pouring out His heart in tidal waves, making each man a sage, each youth a seer, each handmaiden a prophet of better days and higher things.

To-day men are saying God is ancient history. Gone forever the age of poetry and romance and heroism! No more

Shakespeares! No more Dantes! Genius has forsaken the temple. Hollow-eyed, she haunts the market-place. Science is cold and dead. Ours is the age of humdrum and realism. At home the critics tell us Emerson and Lowell and Longfellow are gone, and have left no successors. Abroad men mourn for Browning, whose torch, falling, flickered out. Tennyson, rising in a heavenly chariot out of the temple of song, forgot to cast his mantle upon some waiting Elisha, but carried the divine garment into the realm beyond the clouds. In music, Wagner is dead, dust is thick upon his harp, and the new music does but reecho the old melody. In fiction, the pessimists tell us, the rosy tints of idealism have faded out, leaving only the old gray morn. ‘‘It only remains for us,’’ adds the att critic, “‘to copy the nymphs and the madonnas of old.’ “The age of great editors and the molding of communities has gone,’’ echoes the journalist. ‘‘Let us be content to report the dry-as-dust facts of life,”

No more eloquence in statesmanship, for Webster and Gladstone and Lincoln have passed away. No more oratory at the bar; henceforth only moldy precedents. No more passion in the pulpit, for Beecher and Brooks and Liddon and Spurgeon have no successors. No more liberty in theology, for saith some General Assembly: ‘‘In Wesley or Calvin God reached His limits. He is unequal to another Augustine. The book of theology is closed. Henceforth if any man adds unto or takes away from our Confession, let his name be taken out of our book of ecclesiastical life.’’ No more creative work, only copying, annotating, and criticising. The divine resources, overgenerous to men of yesterday, have no full tides for all flesh to-day. Reasoning thus, pessimism proclaims exhaustion in the infinite. Conservatism becomes atheistic. God is bound up in manuscripts, as Lazarus was wrapped in grave-clothes. But God is a seed, not a dying leaf. God isa rosy dawn, not a falling star. God is a flaming sun, not the astronomy that describes it. God is a living voice, not the creed that explains Him. God is flaming, eternal truth, not the manuscripts in which some sage once wrote. His outpoured spirit that began 18 as a trickling stream is become a river “‘deep enough to swim in.’’

In a world like ours it ought not to seem strange that God hath kept His best wine of civilization until the last of the feast. Everything in nature and history proclaims this as His working principle. Science tells us that our earth, now waving with harvests from Maine to Oregon, began its history as cold, dead rock. Slowly the scant soil grew deep. Huge billows of fire melted down the granite peaks; the glaciers ground down the bowlders; the summers and winters pulverized rock into soil that was shallow and poor. And when the scant plant life began, it carried forward this enriching work; the bush shook down its leaves, the tree gave its trunk to decay, the clouds gave rain, the snows gave their gases, until at last the soil became rich and deep, and earth was all glorious with fields and forests. And the animal life, too, began at nothing and increased in kind and dignity. After the snail that crawled came the bird that flew, the beast that walked, the deer that ran. Last of all came man, lord over all. Society also has moved from the little to the large, and the poor to the rich. Slowly man’s hut journeyed toward the house, his forked stick toward the steam plow, his blundering speech toward the orator’s eloquence, the whistler’s notes toward the deep-toned organ, the smoking altars toward the glorious temple, the reign of force toward the rule of right. So slow has the upward movement been, that man must needs protect himself against pessimism by remembering that with God ‘‘a thousand years are as one day.’’

The individual life also re-emphasizes this principle. The youth begins indeed with rushing tides of hope and _ inspiration, but moving on toward his maturity the freshness and innocence of his earlier days do not die out, but the morning splendor strengthens into the richer, fuller noon. Surveying history, the scholar sees that the centuries have not been growing darker, drearier, and worse. Man’s march has been upward and forward until our earth is all afire with a glory that burns brighter and brighter. Society is not like Wordsworth’s child that came ‘‘ trailing clouds of glory ’”’ that died out into the light of common day.

Man did not begin with a great storehouse filled with treasure. Mankind began with scant resources, and slowly moved on toward these days, when society’s granaries are well-nigh overflowing. Each new era brings new inspirations. God’s method always is to surprise men by bringing forth the best wine at the last of the feast. Each new century wins so many new tools, arts and industries that in contrast the preceding one seems like an age of darkness, even as the sun makes the electric light cast a shadow.

Since God hath pledged to society new leaders for new emergencies, what are the signs of their coming? What go we out to see? If we ask history to instruct us, we shall see that every prophet foretelling new times has had three characteristics. He is a seer and sees clearly. He isa great heart and feels deeply. He isa hero and dares valiantly. But vision-power is the first and last gift. That vision and outlook God has given to every Moses and Elijah, to every John and Paul, and with instant skill they have laid the finger upon the diseased spot in the social life. But it is not enough that the seer has the vision that sees. Zola can describe, Balzac can picture, James can photograph deeds and traits. But these shed notears. They feel no heartache. They paint, but do not pity. With solemn pageantry of words Gibbon caused the Roman centuries to pass before each reader. The mind of this great historian worked with the precision of a logic engine—cold, smooth, and faultless. But Carlyle’s eloquence is logic set on fire. What his mind saw his heart also felt. All the woe, and pathos, and tragedy of the French Revolution swept in billows over him, and broke his heart. Gibbon worked in cold, white light. Carlyle dipped his pen in his heart’s blood. Therefore Carlyle’s history is a seething fire. But Gibbon’s is only the picture of a fire— mere canvas and paint.

Moreover, the prophet who is guided of God adds to the great mind and the sympathetic heart a third quality. Every Paul and John, every Savonarola and Luther, has had a consuming passion for righteousness. Purity has been the crowning quality of all the epoch-making men. For lack of righteousness Bacon lost his leadership. | While his head was in the clouds his feet were in the mire. So great was Goethe’s genius that he sometimes seems like one driving steeds of the sun, but self-indulgence took off his chariot wheels. Therefore the German poet has never been to his century all that Milton was to his age. During his life Goethe always kept two friends busy—the one weaving laurels for his brow, the other cleaning mud from his garments. But Paul, striding the earth like a moral Colossus, braving kings, daring armies, toppling down thrones, setting nations free, has dwelt apart from iniquity. John and Paul, Hampden and Pym, seem like white clouds floating above the sloughs from which they rise. Great was the intellectual genius of Moses and Paul! Wondrous, too, their sympathy for human woe and pain! But their supremacy was chiefly moral genius. In them reason and affection dwelt close beside conscience, and were bound up in one powerful personality, as light and heat are twisted together in each beam of the all-maturing sun. Heaven’s most precious gift to earth is ‘‘the soul of a man actually sent down from the 23 skies with a God’s-message to us’’; and these are his credentials: vision-power, sympathy, sincerity, and zeal for righteousness.*

Now, if these are indeed the signs of the prophets, then of a truth hath God sent seers unto our age and land. Consciously or unconsciously, the divine tides have been poured out upon our authors. Our writers are becoming prophets. A new spirit like a summer atmosphere is sweetening all our literature. In reading the works of Cicero or Seneca one must glean and glean for single humanitarian sentiments. Their writings are exquisite in form and polished like statues, but they are without heart or humanity. Even English literature, from Fielding and Smollet down to Pope and Dryden, teems with scorn and sneers for the uneducated poor. The works of Sidney Smith are filled with contemptuous allusions to the vulgar herd.

Until recently the English poets purged their pages of all peasants, and the novelists will have for hero no man less than a squire, and deal chiefly with lords and ladies. But to-day the people, with their woes and

*Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-Worship, page 274. 24 griefs, have found a standing in literature. A new spirit has been ‘‘poured out.’’ The new era began with ‘‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’’ when a slave stood forth as a candidate for hero-worship. Then Dickens became the knight errant of each ‘‘Oliver Twist,’’ and society began to hear “‘the bitter cry of the children.’’ All literature has become permeated with sympathy for the under classes. Great authors no longer look with derision upon those underneath them, and none dare insult ‘‘the common people.’’* A host of writers like Victor Hugo and George Eliot and Charles Kingsley and Walter Besant have come in to give their whole souls to softening the lot of humanity. To-day all literature is working for the once despised and unbefriended classes. Moreover, books that have no enthusiasm for humanity are speedily sent to the garret. Society cares less and less for work of artistic finish and more and more for books filled with sympathy and enthusiasm for man. In modern literature the books that give promise of abiding are those that preach the

*In another generation, the expression “the common people” will give place to “the people.” 25 gospel of humanity to the poor. Verily, our authors have become prophets!

Our greatest thinkers also, like Ruskin and Carlyle, Emerson and Lowell, Browning and Tennyson, have ceased to be poets and essayists, and have become seers. A divine something is making each lyre sacred. Our singers are giving themselves to lifting up those ‘‘fugitive ideals’ the pursuit of which makes man’s progress. God has always stayed the ages upon some bard or singer, and breathed His purposes and providences through parables and poems. And in our day He has caused Emerson to stand forth a veritable prophet, telling each individual that being is better than seeing; telling the orator and publicist that it is good for a man to have a hearing, but better for him to deserve the hearing; telling the reformer that the single man, who indomitably plants himself upon his divine instincts and there abides, will find the whole world coming around to him. And Carlyle also was God’s prophet—a seer stormy indeed and impetuous, with a great hatred for lies and laziness, and a mighty passion for truth and work; lashing our shams and hypocrisies; telling our materialistic age that it was going straight to the devil, and bya vulgar road at that; pointing out the abyss into which luxury and licentiousness have always plunged. Like Elijah of old, Carlyle loved righteousness, hated cant, and did ever plead for justice, and mercy, and truth. If his every sentence was laden with intellect, it was still more heavily laden with character. To the great Scotchman God gave the prophet’s vision and the seer’s sympathy and scepter.

Even our greatest art critic also has become a prophet. By acclamation we vote Ruskin the first prose writer of his century. But he has his fame because of his work as a social reformer, rather than as an art critic. The heart of Ruskin’s message is: life without industry is guilt; that industry without art is brutality; that men cannot eat stone nor drink steam; that the apples of Sodom and the grapes of Gomorrah, the daintiest of ashes and the nectar of asps will feed no man’s strength; that the making of self-sufficing men is a business worthy the ambition of cities and states; that ten-talent men returning to give an account of their stewardship can never thrust gold into God’s hands; that man lives not alone by tending cattle and tending corn, but by the manna of God’s wondrous words and works; that justice and truth and love alone are able to turn this desert earth into the garden of God until all the valleys are covered with vineyards and the shouts of the happy multitudes ring around the wine-press and the well.

Here is Lowell, also, telling us that upon the open volume of the world, with a pen of sunshine and destroying fire, the inspired present is even now writing the annals of God, and that while ‘‘the old Sinai, silent now, is only a common mountain, stared at by elegant tourists and crawled over by hammering geologists,’’ there are tables of a new law among the factories and cities, where in this wilderness of sin each leader is a prophet of a new social order, and where New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient

good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Lo, before us gleam her campfires! We ourselves must pilgrims be; 28

Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly through the desperate winter’s sea, Nor attempt the future’s portal with the past’s blood rusted key.

If now we examine the tendency of invention and the mechanical arts, we shall find that even tools have become evangelists and machines prophets of a new day. From every quarter come voices foretelling an age of wealth, and happiness, and comfort. Many feel that we are upon the threshold of new and wondrous mechanical discoveries. Already science has fashioned sixty steel slaves for every family. Edison thinks the time is rapidly approaching when this number is to be increased to two hundred. But each tool is ordained of God for the reinforcement of manhood. Every time a river is enslaved a thousand men are set free. Every time an iron wheel is mastered a thousand human muscles are emancipated. In nature God’s machines are called natural laws. Man’s natural laws are his machines. And while the new conveniences have brought an increase of happiness and comfort to the rich, they have done a thousand-fold more for the poor. There never has been an age when the rich could not travel rapidly. But steam enables the poorest man to travel rapidly.

Always the rich could wear warm garments, but the looms gives soft raiment to the poor. Always the rich could buy books. In the tenth century the Countess of Anjou gave two hundred sheep, one load of wheat, one load of rye, and one load of millet for a volume of sermons written bya German monk. Now our people buy the works of our greatest essayists, novelists, and poets for one penny, ortwo. The new printing presses have placed all the classics within the reach of the poorest. Chiefly is invention refining the multitude through the diffusion of the beautiful. The time was when only the prince could afford a painting. Now photography multiplies ‘“‘the masters,’’ and during the long winter evenings, while the tired body rests, the illustrated paper causes the pyramids and temples and palaces and mountains and rivers of the earth to pass before the fascinated eye and mind. The sense of beauty once condensed in painting or statue or cathedral is now diffused. It is sprinkled upon the floor; it hangs upon the walls; it adorns the tables; it enriches the chambers of affection; it refines and sweetens the universal life. Indeed, the workingman of to-day enjoys comforts that were the despair of barons and princes of three hundred years ago. And each new discovery seems not so much to bring power to the strong and rich as to toil in the interests of the weak and helpless. As in the olden days Jesus Christ approved Himself by preaching the gospel to the poor, so now every convenience comes in, having this divine sanction. The poems of to-day are ships and engines and reapers. Tools free the mind for books, free the taste and imagination for beauty, free the affection for social service. Thereby comes the day of universal happiness and civilization of which the poet. dreams, toward which the philanthropist works. As once the prophets so now God is baptizing inventors and their tools with the spirit of service. Some Watt, perhaps, with a new method of transit, making it possible for the dwellers in tenements to journey into the country ten miles in ten minutes for half as many pence, will, through sunshine and fresh air, cleanse and gospelize the cellars and garrets of our slum 31 districts. Soon tools are to become evangelists of the higher life.

It ought to go without saying that the preachers are prophets divine. It would be sad indeed if they, instead of being seers and living forces, should fade into emblematic figures at christenings, weddings, and funerals, or become mere guardians of theological dogmas. History tells us every new era has been created by a preacher. Guizot insists that Paul did more> for liberty and free institutions than any man who ever stood on Western soil. Froude says it was not the scholar Erasmus, but the preacher Luther, who created the Reformation. It was a prophet of Florence that turned the city of art into the city of God. Those moral teachers named Cedmon, Bede, Bunyan, and the translators of King James’s version of the Bible opened up for us the springs of English literature.

Cromwell’s letters tell us that the Puritan preachers destroyed the divine rights of kings, that citadel of falsehood and cruelty and crime. It was Robertson of Brighton that first said that man was never justified by faith until faith had made man just. It was a preacher, Barnett, who went to live in Whitechapel Road, and in that wilderness of ignorance and misery founded a social settlement to which came students from Oxford and Cambridge to give themselves to the poor. It was a preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, who, when men said that evolution would destroy the Bible, drove out fear and doubt, and showed us that the theory of theistic evolution insured the, immortality of the Bible and the permanency of Christianity.

The scholar returns from his survey, having seen that in every realm God is causing life to expand and take on increasing breadth and richness. Man’s religion, therefore, is assuming new proportions, greater reasonableness, and higher ideals of service. For the church also, a new era has dawned. As our age journeys away from Bacon’s theft, but gladly carries forward his philosophy; as society has left behind the sins of Robert Burns, but joyfully carries forward his sweet songs; so the church is journeying away from the falsities of medievalism, but carries forward the sweetness and light of Jesus Christ. Gone forever the hideous dogmas that tortured our fathers! Gone forever the scholasticisms that confused Satan with God! Never again will the cross mean pacifying the wrath of an angry deity. Never again will a man be asked to debase his reason in order to exalt his heart. The church is exchanging the worship of the past for the heritage of the present, the old philosophies for the new living Christ. We have already seen the shapes of mental and moral beauty increase in number; we have seen our youth journeying toward the schoolhouse; our homes growing beautiful and happy; our workers moving in the morning hours toward shop and store, carrying in their hands the emblems of knowledge; new and nobler forms of literature coming from the rapid press, and now it is given us to behold Christianity moving forward with increasing breadth, and having the might and majesty of a river of God.

Already that divine teacher, Christ, hath touched poverty and clothed it with power; hath touched marriage and surrounded it with romance and love; hath touched the soldier and turned him into a hero and patriot. And now He is here to touch work and wages, making them sacraments of human fellowship. Christ is also here to enrich each life with new and impressive forms of mental and moral beauty. He offers man new powers and new impulses. The force of the ship is in the trade wind that sweeps it on, and the joy of the sailor is in the harbor toward which he moves. Not otherwise the dignity and majesty of life are in the divine motives that sweep the soul upward and in the sublime destiny toward which the soul moves. In days gone by this divine Teacher put justice into law, ethics into politics, love into religion, and planted immortal hopes upon our graves. Having girded the heroes of old for their tasks, He steps into the new era, to continue the line of prophets and heroes. He offers to make apostolic succession a sublime fact. He bids each youth stand in the line of heroes and seers, with Paul and Socrates and Savonarola; with Hampden, Washington and Lincoln. He bids each maiden strike hands of noble friendship with Augusta Stanley and Florence Nightingale and Frances Willard. He bids the patriot of to-day emulate and surpass the heroes of yesterday. 35 n) eM Ni 4 Hil A PAY fi Me or, a Eime a Ls + ai ye + a aX re Cran i Law .ra aa! or r eo oe : yy i el a Sie « x t » i xf ort ma ® fie oe mJ 7 g j oi my oY od fl. r 9 . eal MP a) ac u

II John Ruskin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture”’ as Interpreters of the Seven Laws of Life—A Study of the Principles of Character Building

I know well the common censure by which objections to such futilities of so-called education are met by the men who have been ruined by them—the common plea that anything does to “exercise the mind upon.” It is an utterly false one. The human soul, in youth, is zof a machine of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or brick-dust near at hand; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, and oiled serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive at twenty-five years old, or thirty, express from the Strait Gate, on the Narrow Road. The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction—I use the words with their weight in them—in taking of stores; establishment in vital habits, hopes, and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies—not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the furnace, and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover ¢hat to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God’s presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him—at least in this world.—/odern Painters, Vol. ITI, Dp. 430.