Gold-foil, hammered from popular proverbs

Preface To The First Edition

THE grass that grows upon the lawn elects and drinks from the juices of the earth the elements that compose its structure ; but if the lawn be cropped year after year, and have no return of the materials removed, it will cease to thrive. A wise husbandry will spread upon its surface the results of the life that has been taken away, and these will furnish its most healthful nourishment. So the vital truths relating to the common life of man, are elected and drawn from soils containing innumerable ingredients that may not be assimilated. Many of these ingredients, good and bad, are furnished by the schools and by the professional mind, and it may legitimately be the work of a layman to take the results of the life that has been lived — the truths that have been verified and vitalized by human experience — and give them vi Preface.

again to the soil that has produced them. With the records of popular experience in my hand, as they are embodied in popular proverbs, I aim to do this work in this book.

THE AUTHOR.

Springfield, Mass., 1859.

Preface To The Revised Edition

WHEN the author wrote this book he was a member of the editorial staff of a daily newspaper. In this newspaper these brief essays appeared, one by one, until they grew to the measure of a volume. I suppose that a consideration of the necessities of the vehicle which first bore them to the public had much to do with determining their scope and length. Brief essays upon popular topics, relating to morals and society, were deemed desirable on one day of the week, and especially desirable for the weekly edition ; and thus a whole series of books of this character was produced, the " Letters to the Young " growing out of the same policy.

Restriction in the matter of space, which would seem to militate against the competent treatment of important topics, has proved to be an element viii Preface.

in the popularity of this volume. It has compelled condensation and permitted variety to such an extent that readers have been able to take it up in the spare minutes, or half hours, of busy lives, and easily absorb an essay at a sitting. So it has become a kind of daily companion for a multitude of earnest people, to whom, and to those who are like them, this new edition is heartily dedicated.

New York, 1881.

Chapter I. An Exordial Essa Y

" Cold broth hot again, that loved I never ; Old love renewed again, that loved I ever."

" Get thy spindle and thy distaff ready, and God will send thee flax."

FOR the general public, I have written a preface, that the aims and character of my book may be comprehended at a glance, as it is lifted from the shelf of the bookseller ; but to those who read the book, I have something more that I wish to say by way of introduction.

It is not for the brilliant brace of initial sermons that we still admire the man whom we love to call " our minister.' ' The old love must be renewed again, from Sabbath to Sabbath, from month to month, and from year to year, by new exhibitions of his power and new demonstrations of his faculty to feed the motives of a large and luxuriant life within our souls. If he fail in this — if his power flinch through laziness, or flag through languor — and he resort to the too common process of heating again the old broth, his productions will grow insipid, and our hungering natures will turn uneasily to other sources for refreshment. It is not for the fresh cheek, the full lip, the fair forehead, the parted sweeps of sunny hair, and the girlish charm of form and features, that we love the wives who have walked hand in hand with us for years, but for new graces, opening each morning like flowers in the parterre, their predecessors having accomplished their beautiful mission and gone to seed. Old love renewed again, through new motives to love, is certainly a thing lovely in itself, and desirable by all whose ambition and happiness it is to sit supreme in a single heart, or to hold an honorable place in the affections of the people.

A few months ago, the pen that traced these lines commenced a series of letters to the young. The letters accumulated, and grew into a book ; and this book, with honest aims and modest pretensions, has a place to-day in many thousand homes, while it has been read by hundreds of thousands of men and women in every part of the country. More and better than this, it has become an inspiring, moving and directing power in a great aggregate of young life. I say this with that kind of gladness and gratitude which admits of little pride. I say it because it has been said to me — revealed to me in letters brimming with thankfulness and overflowing with friendliness ; expressed to me in silent pressures of the hand — pressures so full of meaning that I involuntarily looked at my palm to see if a jewel had not been left in it ; uttered to me by eyes full of interest and pleasure ; told to me in plain and homely words in the presence of tears that came unbidden. To say that all this makes me happy, would not be to say all that I feel. I account the honor of occupying a pure place in the popular heart — of being welcomed in God's name into the affectionate confidence of those for whom life has high meanings and high issues — of being recognized as among the beneficent forces of society — the greatest honor to be worked for and won under the stars. So much for that which is past, and that which is.

And now, I would have the old love renewed. I would come to the hearts to which the letters have given me access with another gift — with food for appetites quickened and natures craving further inspiration. I would bring new thoughts to be incorporated into individual and social life, which shall strengthen their vital processes, and add to their growth. I would continue and perpetuate the communion of my own with the popular heart. To do this successfully, I know that I must draw directly upon the world's experience, and upon the results of my own individual thinking, acting, living. I know that no truth can be uttered by a soul that has not realized it in some way, with hope to be heard. Preceptive wisdom that has not been vivified by life has in itself no affinity for life.

It is a blessed thing that the heart has an instinct which tells it without fail who has the right to teach it. The stricken mother, sitting by the side of the lifeless form of her first-born, will hear unmoved the words of consolation and the persuasions to resignation which are urged by one who has not suffered, even though he eloquently draw motives from the highest heaven ; while the silent pressure of her hand by some humble creature who has hidden her treasure under the daisies, will inspire her with calmness and strength. The world cares little for theorists and theories, — little for schools and schoolmen, — little for anything a man has to utter that has not previously been distilled in the alembic of his life. It is the life in literature that acts upon life. The pilgrim who knocks at the door of the human heart with gloved hands and attire borrowed for the occasion, will meet with tardy welcome and sorry entertainment ; but he who comes with shoes worn and dusty with the walk upon life's highway — with face bronzed by fierce suns and muscles knit by conflict with the evils of the passage, will find abundant entrance and hospitable service.

The machinery which I propose to adopt for my purpose is simple enough. It is the habit of the mind to condense into diminutive, agreeable, and striking forms the results of experience and observation in all the departments of life. As the carbon, disengaged by fire in its multitudinous offices, crystallizes into a diamond that flashes fire from every facet, and bears at every angle the solvent power of the mother flame ; so great clouds of truth are evolved by human experience, which are crystallized at last into proverbs, that flash with the lights of history, and illuminate the darkness which rests upon the track of the future. The proverbs of a nation furnish the index to its spirit and the results of its civilization. As this spirit was kind or unkind — as this civilization was Christian or unchristian — are the proverbs valuable or worthless to us. I know of no more unworthy sentiments, no more dangerous heresies, and no more mischievous lies than are to be found among the proverbs that have received currency, and a permanent record in the world ; but here and there among the ignoble paste shine noble gems, and these, as they may seem worthy, I propose to use as textual titles for these new essays of mine. I choose them because they are the offspring of experience — because they are instinct with blood and breath and vitality. They have no likeness to the unverified deductions of reason. They are not propositions, conceived in the understanding and addressed to life, but propositions born of life itself, and addressed to the heart. They were not conceived in the minds of the great few, but they sprang from the life of the people. I give the people their own.

Precisely what these essays of mine are to be, I cannot tell, because I do not know. I only know that there is an inexhaustible realm of practical truth around me waiting for revelation. There are multitudinous thoughts, now trailing upon the ground, that point their tendrils tipped with instinct toward this pen of mine, striving to reach and twine themselves around it that they may be lifted into the sunlight of popular^ recognition. I have my spindle and my distaff ready — my pen and mind — never doubting for an instant that God will send me flax. Toward the soul which places itself in the attitude Of reception, all things flow. For such a soul are all good gifts fashioned in heaven. The sun shines for it ; the birds sing for it ; up toward it the flowers swing their censers and waft their odors. Into it in golden streams flows the beauty of star-sprinkled rivers. The roar of waters and the plash of waterfalls give healthful pulse to its atmosphere. Into its open windows come the notes of human joy and woe in the triumphs and the struggles of the passing time. Past its open door Memory leads the long procession of its precious dead, who look in with sweet faces and whispers of peace. In front of it, Imagination marshals the forces of the future, and it thrills with the bugle-blast and trembles with the drum-beat of the thundering host. For perception were all things made, and to the door of perception all things tend ; so that the soul that throws itself wide open to all that is made for it shall find itself full.

When a soul thus receptive places itself in the attitude of expression, it has but to move its lips and the words will flow. The mind that has become a treasurehouse of truth and beauty speaks a world into existence with every utterance. Expression is its instinct and its necessity. This expression may not always seek the shape of language, but it will assert itself in some form. The patriot reveals the secret of his soul when he gladly dies for his country, and sacrifices his life upon the altar of his inspiration. The Sister of Mercy tells the story of her love and her devotion, unseen and unheard of the world, in midnight ministrations to the comfort of the sick and the dying. The modest mother expresses the love and life she has received from God and the things of God in the tutelage of the young spirits born of her, and the creation of a bright and graceful home for them. We give what we have received — that which is within us will out of us. Expression is the necessity of possession.

The form which expression takes depends upon natural tendencies and aptitudes, and habits imposed by circumstances and opportunities. I suppose that to every man who writes a book, or is in the habit of writing books, there comes at the conclusion of each effort a sense of exhaustion. Then, through days, and weeks, and months, he walks contentedly, taking in new food — without method, without design — any thing, every thing — regaling his sensibilities, ministering to his appetite for knowledge, exercising his sympathies, absorbing greedily all the influences evolved by the life around him, till there steals upon him, insensibly, the desire for another instalment of expression in the habitual way. He finds himself organizing the truth he has received into harmonious and striking forms. He is arrested in fits of abstraction into which he has fallen unawares. He will not be content until the pen is in his hand, and his mind has applied itself to the work demanded by its condition.

But about the flax that God sends to such a man : this would all seem to be pulled from the earth, softened by sun and rain, and broken and hackled by natural and mechanical processes. True : and yet I imagine there are few thinking minds in the world that are not aware of a double process by which expression is arrived at — one entirely involuntary, lying deep down in the consciousness, and operated independently of volition ; and another, voluntary, lying upon the surface, and mostly engaged in the invention of forms — dependent for materials upon the process beneath it. This is the reason why millions of men undertake to do what they never can do. The involuntary — the divine process — working profoundly in their natures, throws up materials which they have no power to clothe in language, or present in forms of art which the mind will recognize as appropriate. Such men are misled. They strive to write essays, and fail. They struggle to produce poems, but cannot. They have abundant materials for essays and epics in them, but they are incapable of combining and expressing them. Many men and women spend their lives in unsuccessful efforts to spin the flax God sends them upon a wheel they can never use. The trouble with these people is that they have made a mistake in their spindle. It is with the human mind as with the plant. Deep down under ground there is a process of selection going on, by which salts and juices are drawn by a million roots and rootlets into the stem — drawn from masses of mould and sand and gravel — and sent upward to be acted upon again — flax sent up by God to be spun. Every tree and shrub is a distaff for holding, and every twig a spindle for spinning the material with which God invests it. One twig, by a power of its own, will make an apple, another a peach, another a pear, another will spin through long weeks upon a round, green bud, and then weave into it starbeams and moonbeams and sunbeams, and burst into a rose. The man full of juices and rich with life, who was made simply to bear Roxbury Russets, and yet undertakes to bear roses or magnolia blossoms, will always fail. Blessed is that man who knows his own distaff, and has found his own spindle.

It is with the conviction that this pen which I hold is

my particular spindle that I begin upon the flax God

sends me, through a process entirely independent of

my will, and undertake to spin a series of essays, kind

i* readers, for you. That I may be able to contribute a worthy thread to the warp of your lives, or at least to furnish a portion of their woof — contributing to their substance, if not to their beauty — is my warmest wish and my most earnest prayer.

Chapter II. The Bible

" He that leaves Certainty and sticks to Chance, When fools pipe, he may dance."

" Better ride an ass that carries us than a horse that throws us."

WE live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires. We lie all our invalid lives by the side of our Bethesda, watching the uneasy quicksand upon its bottom, in its silvery eruptions, and listening to the murmuring gurgle of the retiring streamlet, yet waiting evermore for the angel to come and stir the waters that we may be blest. The angel comes, and the waters are stirred, but not for us ; and, though others grasp the blessing which we may not, we look for the angel still, and in this sweet looking fall happily asleep at last, and waken possibly in the angel's arms ; — possibly, where ? As the future holds our happiness and hopes, so does it also hold our fears and our apprehensions ; and the mind is on a constant outlook for that upon which it can best rely to avoid the evils which it dreads, and secure the good which it desires. It reaches in all directions with its hands, and tries in all directions with its feet, for a solid basis of calculation and expectation, with reference to its future pleasure and pain. As the future is inscrutable, it reads carefully the lessons of experience, studies the nature and tendency of things having relation to its life, erects theories and institutes schemes of good, and bends its energies to the achievement and security of protection, necessary ministry, and all desirable possession. All this it does with reference to the few years of mortal life which remain to it.

But there is a God above the soul, and there is something within it which prophesies of another life. The body is to die ; so much is certain. What lies beyond ? No one who passes the charmed boundary comes back to tell. The imagination visits the realm of shadows— * sent out from some window of the soul over life's restless waters — but wings its way wearily back with no oliveleaf in its beak as a token of emerging life beyond the closely bending horizon. The great sun comes and goes in heaven, yet breathes no secret of the ethereal wildernesses. The crescent moon cleaves her nightly passage across the upper deep, but tosses overboard no message, and displays no signals. The sentinel stars challenge each other as they walk their nightly rounds, but we catch no syllable of the countersign which gives passage to the heavenly camp. Shut in ! Shut in ! Between this life and the other life there is a great gulf fixed, across which neither eye nor foot can travel. The gentle friend whose eyes we closed in their last sleep long years ago, died with rapture in her wonder-stricken eyes, a smile of ineffable joy upon her lips, and hands folded over a triumphant heart ; but her lips were past speech, and intimated nothing of the vision that enthralled her.

So, in the lack of all demonstration, we have but one resort, and that is to faith. Faith must build a bridge for us ; faith must weave wings for us ; and that faith must find materials for its fabrics brought from the other side of the gulf, and not produced on this. We cannot enter the spirit land to explore, record, and report ; so all we get must be revealed to us. We may talk never so loudly of the intimations of the immortality within us, of the light of reason and of conscience, of the godlike human soul ; we may speculate with marvellous ingenuity upon the future development and destiny of powers that seem angelic even to ourselves, but it is all conjecture — it is all as unsubstantial as the dreams that haunt our slumbers. Unless God teach us of the things of God, or delegate some occupant of a heavenly seat to tell us of the things of heaven and of the destiny of the great family of intelligences to which we belong, we shall know nothing upon these subjects. Briefly, all knowledge concerning the future condition of men must come from the other world to this, and not through any agency initi-

H Gold- Foil.

ated in this. We are thus helplessly, inevitably, left to revelation. We cannot help ourselves. We may flutter and flounder under this conviction as much as we choose, but fluttering and floundering avail nothing. If the fact that we are immortal be not revealed to us by a Being who knows, and cannot lie ; if the way to make our immortality a happy one be not pointed out to us by one who has the right to direct, then are we in darkness that may be felt — then are we afloat upon a wide sea, without rudder or compass.

Now, there can be no faith in any revelation concerning the future state, and no faith in the things revealed, without a thorough conviction on the part of the soul exercising it that the source from which these revelations come is trustworthy. They must also be authoritative, and fully received as such into the convictions, or they are nothing. A revelation from any source, touching whose authority the soul admits a doubt, is absolutely valueless as an inspirer of faith. It is for this reason that all the unsettled mind in Christendom is drifting either towards an infallible Bible, or an infallible church, or an infallible atheism — infallible because denying everything — shutting God and the future out of existence. With many the drifting process is done with, and the journey is completed in rest and satisfaction. Many can say, with the Bible upon the heart — " This is God's word. It is my rule of life. I believe in the God and the immortality which it reveals. I trust in it, and am happy." Others, educated to believe in an infallible church, or struggling through frightful years of skepticism, have taken refuge in Rome, and tied up to the element of infallibility which they imagine they find there. Others still are either practically or professedly atheists and infidels, discarding Bible and church, and resting, or trying to rest, in the infallibility of a broad negation.

It is not for me to prove the infallibility of the Bible, in part or in whole. I have not undertaken the task in this article, nor do I propose to undertake it in any future article. Neither do I undertake to show that an infallible church cannot be made out of fallible materials. Still less do I undertake to prove the existence of a God and a future life. I take it for granted that the question of a future life is one of great interest to all minds, and the question of its happiness or misery, of the greatest, to most. I assume that the Bible communicates a correct knowledge of God and human duty and destiny, or that nothing whatever is known of them. I assert that in the degree in which this Bible has, been received, as a whole and in particulars, as the rule of faith and duty, have those thus receiving it found rest, peace, fearlessness of the future, and hope of everlasting happiness. I affirm that in the degree in which men have wandered away from this Bible into skepticism, or taken it into their hands to cheapen the character of its inspiration — to cut, and cull, and criticise — have they made themselves and others unhappy. All that has been done to weaken the foundation of an implicit faith in the Bible, as a whole, has been at the expense of the sense of religious obligation, and at the cost of human happiness.

The mind, in such a matter as this, seeks for something reliable, and will have it. If it cannot find it, it will make it. If it will not accept the Bible as such, it will make an infallible church, or deify and enthrone the human reason. One of the most interesting developments of modern spiritualism is the illustration which it gives us of this fact. Tired with the puerile and contradictory revelations which it gets, or supposes it gets, from the spirit world, it has, in multitudes of instances, sunk into a cold rationalism, or thrown itself, disgusted and discouraged, upon the bosom of the Catholic Church, by a very necessity. Now there is no logical tendency of spiritualism into systems so diverse as these. It is the instinctive leap of a soul, misled by its intellect, yet true to its wants, out of a jargon of demoniacal whims into something which has, or assumes to have, infallibility. The rush of atheists and infidels into spiritualism — atheists and infidels practical and theoretical — is the rush of a class of minds that find it hard to believe without demonstration, and seek among these necromantical manifestations for something better than its reason, and more readily evident to it than the revelations of the Bible.

I say that toward a trustworthy Bible, or a church that claims to be infallible, or an atheism and infidelity growing out of the deification of the human reason, the mind of all unsettled Christendom is drifting, by a necessity of its nature. It will have something upon which it can rely. It cannot abide uncertainty; it must have faith. History will teach us something of the different results thrown up by these three currents of life. It is hardly necessary to allude to the paralysis of spiritual life that befalls a soul which places itself in the keeping of a church — which surrenders itself to the mortifications and irrational impositions of an irresponsible hierarchy. The abuses, outrages, corruptions, wars, and awful immoralities that have grown out of a church like this, are matters which almost monopolize the pages of history, and sufficiently prove that it has its basis in error and its authority in arrogant assumption. When the people of France pulled down both God and the church, and set up reason in their place, all the infernal elements of human nature held their brief high carnival. That one terrific experiment should be enough for a thousand worlds, through countless years.

So, cut off in all other directions, we come back to the Bible. If that be not authoritative, nothing is. If that be not infallible, as a revelation from God of his own character, the nature of the coming life, and the relations of this life to it, then nothing is infallible, and the faith, without which earth is a cheat and life a sorryjest, is impossible. What do we find to be the fruits of a living, practical faith in the Bible ? The most prominent, or that which appears most prominent, in the eyes of the world, is a missionary spirit in contradistinction to a proselyting spirit. The really missionary work of the world has been done in the past, and is now being effected, by those who receive the Bible unmutilated as God's word to men. The noblest heroisms that illustrate the history of the race have their inspiration in implicit faith in the Bible. Men in whom life was fresh and strong, and women who were the impersonations of gentleness and delicacy, have died for it the martyr's death of fire, singing until the red-tongued flames licked up their breath. Out of it have come all pure moralities. Forth from it have sprung all sweet charities. It has been the motive power of regeneration and reformation to millions of men. It has comforted the humble, consoled the mourning, sustained the suffering, and given trust and triumph to the dying. The wise old man has fallen asleep with it folded to his breast. The simple cottager has used it for his dying pillow ; and even the innocent child has breathed his last happy sigh with his fingers between its promisefreighted leaves.

Suppose it could be proved that this Bible is all a fable : in what would the demonstration benefit us ? It is all we have. If it do not teach us the truth concerning the future life, and instruct us in the way of making that future life a happy one, then there is nothing that does. Suppose it could be proved that parts of this Bible are fabulous, and that those portions which are not so were inspired in a kind of general way, like the writings of all genius which is both great and good : who would be the better or the happier for it ? I believe it to be demonstrable that no greater calamity could befall the human race than either the general loosening up, or the entire destruction, of faith in the Bible, even were the whole of it a cunning invention of the brain of man. Better an ass that carries us than a horse that throws us. Better faith in a fable which inspires to good deeds, conducts our powers to noble ends, make us loving, gentle and heroic, eradicates our selfishness, establishes within us the principle of benevolence and enables us to meet death with equanimity if not with triumph, in the hope of a glorious resurrection and a happy immortality, than the skepticism of kingly reason, which only needs to be carried to its legitimate issues to bestialize the human race, and drape the earth in the blackness of Tartarus.