Men who missed the trail, by George Clarke Peck

Contents

Page I. The Man Who Spoiled a Good

Record 7

II. The Man Who Dodged Promotion 23

II The Man Who Dodged Promotion

Saul is a tantalizing study in contrasts. But I do not expect you to reprobate him for that reason. Where is the man who misses being a similar study? It is in geography only that Kipling's familiar lines hold good:

O, East is East, and West is West, And never the twain shall meet.

In human life they are constantly meeting. In each of us East elbows West and South crowds up against North. Savage and Christian, outlaw and good citizen, jungle and salon, jostle one another every day, and in every man that lives. You can no more describe a man in simple terms than you can "state" the climate of the so-called temperate zone, where we must occasionally consult the calendar in order to be sure how to classify a particular day — whether as summer or winter, spring or fall.

So, I repeat, I do not expect you to reprobate Saul at the very beginning of our study, chiefly because he is a man of contrasts. To say that the two leading portraits of him, furnished us in this album, do not agree is to say a superficial thing. No two portraits ever do agree, and for a profound reason — that no human being can be caught in the same mood two successive moments. In the famous gallery at Paris hang two portraits of Rembrandt — both done by his own hand. One shows him as a young man of twenty, perhaps, the wonderful eye aflame with the light of certain triumph and popular fame. The second canvas reveals a man prematurely old, the face bloated with sensuality, haggard, disillusioned, tragically sad, the eye muddied with sin. Between the two portraits, and explaining their contrast, lies the corrupt middle life of the master — its open shame and public scandal. It is said that when Leonardo da Vinci, toward completion of his wonderful "The Last Supper," came to need a model for Judas, he, by fearful irony, selected the subject who had posed for the figure of Jesus years before. Ponder it: the same man, within span of a few years of dissipation, furnishing competent clue to the looks of both Jesus and Judas !

But I instance the case not so much for the sake of proving how a life may run down hill as to remind you that upland and lowland, saint and scalawag, Jesus and Judas, are potentially present in the same man at the same time. Some day you submit yourself to the ordeal of being photographed. And the camera-artist, anxious for a satisfactory result, poses you several times and in due course sends home a half dozen proofs. And you? — well, you are naturally flattered or displeased, as the case may be. Probably you pass the proofs around, asking your intimates to help you select the "best likeness," and are somewhat chagrined if they chance to hit upon the least comely presentment. But the most arresting item in the whole proceeding is that you should look like a half dozen different folks. No two prints ever agree in the revelations of the subject before the camera: and for the profoundest of reasons. While the artist was changing plates, or readjusting the focus, or shifting the poise of your chin, you silently altered your mood. Who will deny that the same man may be a half dozen kinds of men in as many minutes? And the camera merely catches the mood which the subject of it hardly recognized.

So with divergent estimates of a man. It has been said that the story of Saul, as we have it recorded in the Bible, was penned by different hands — one admiring, the other scornful. Perhaps. Such things occur very often. Froude called Henry VIII a "patriot king." Macaulay gave him a very much less complimentary name. The New York Sun described Lincoln as a buffoon, whereas the New York Tribune sketched him of heroic size. Or, if you will have more modern instance, take the present incumbent of the White House and let this be open meeting. No two of you will probably agree as to his character or the value of his services. How can you? I do not believe that any President can fully agree with himself for an hour. The more sincere a man is the more trouble he will experience in naming his own grade. We are composites, all of us. We are strange creatures of contrast. Winter and summer, frost and sun, strive within us forever. Never mind that Saul's biographers failed to agree about him. He could not have agreed with respect to himself.

Let us look at him kindly. He was a big man who could be guilty of the smallest things. You will frequently hear it said of a child who has prematurely gone forward toward physical maturity that "it is unfortunate to be so big. People expect too much of such a child." And, for some reason or other, we seem to "expect more" from two hundred than from a hundred and twenty pounds ; from six feet than from five. Marshall P. Wilder's poor, twisted body might have been admirably adapted to his drollery on the platform. But you never would consider, offhand, selecting such a misshapen mortal to plead a great cause or welcome royalty. Knowing perfectly well that the size of a man's body is no more index of the size of his soul than the weight of a pearl is of its value, we continue to pay absurd homage to size. Even to Samuel's rather critical eyes Saul looked the king — just as George Washington looked the heroic role he played. You would have expected great things of him — as you never would from Caesar or Napoleon, both of them undersized. Saul was a marked man anywhere. His powerful shoulders and towering head singled him out. I can imagine how altogether proud his father was of him. And when Samuel picked him for the arduous honor of kingship it was not more than his father and mother had always dreamed.

But to live up to one's reputation is quite another matter. In the issue Saul might easily have wished that he had been six or eight inches shorter, and that he had remained hidden when they were looking for him "among the stuff." To disappoint the world's expectation, to frustrate the dreams your friends have dreamed concerning you, to receive in advance pay for the noblest service and then not to deliver the goods — in other words, not to play one's part — is always solemn business. Has it ever occurred to you that you owe the world to be as good as it thinks you are? Grant that you never asked the honor, and that you distinctly remind men you are no better than they, does that let you off? One recalls the plaintive cry which a pair of broken-hearted disciples dropped into the ear of our Lord on the walk to Emmaus. "We trusted it had been he which should have redeemed Israel." Suppose it had not been he ? Suppose that Jesus had been unable or unwilling to fulfill such wistful dreams? Suppose that, after gathering to himself "the hopes and fears of all the years," and such passionate attachment as no other son of woman ever won, he had disappointed the ages?

O, I know what you will say — indeed, I have said it many times — that nobody else has right to set the gauge for your life or mine. I wonder. I wonder if what the world expects of us may not be the precise thing God is asking. I wonder if my mother could possibly fix the standard higher than God would fix it. Yes, yes, of course people are sometimes very unreasonable, far less reasonable than God is. But forget that for a moment. All I am saying is that oftentimes the world's hopes lay solemn obligation upon us. And then to disappoint those hopes, as Saul did; to play a part less kingly than the part you look fitted for. Poor Saul — how misplaced his big shoulders looked when he tried to hide "behind the stuff," on his coronation day ! Like a bashful schoolboy twisting the corners of his coat, like modern Englishmen begging off from military service in the hour of their country's need. For a big man Saul could be so pathetically small.

Next, he was a brave man whose prowess made him presumptuous. Success turned his head as it has done for so many of his posterity. The most intoxicating wine in the world is the wine of success. It goes straight to the brain. Overlooking the Hudson river in New York city is one of the palaces reared by modern money-kings. I remember the pride of the neighbors, how they always pointed it out to guests. But they might as well be proud of proximity to a cemetery. It is not even an honorable mausoleum — that mammoth pile. It is an open sepulcher within which lies the blasted reputation of its builder. For "when he was strong" — and he had come through many vicissitudes from poverty to wealth, from mechanic's apprentice to magnate — "when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction."

You can see the same thing happening anywhere. More souls, proportionately, have been hurt by success than by defeat. Now and again a defeated man commits suicide with poison or bullet. But the successful man may do even worse than that; he may murder his own soul.

O, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

I notice that a certain German prophet announced that within six months his countrymen would "dance on the grave of England." Indeed, that is the sort of fear some of us have with respect to the ultimate victor in this colossal conflict: that success may so madden it as to make it want to dance upon the grave of its defeated foe — as the Duke of Guise ground his heel into the face of the dead Coligny.

Honestly, who are the worst foes of American sanctities? Not the frank anarchists, not the embittered poor, but the defiant prosperous who scarcely hesitate to flaunt any law which bars their way: the men who wreck railroads and crush their fellow men, who bribe judges and smile patronizingly at God. More havoc, for example, has been done to the marriage altar by the divorces and double establishments of the rich than by the franker immoralities of the poor. More harm has been done to the Sabbath by well-groomed desecrators than by ragamuffins howling in vacant lots and by roistering foreigners. Sacrilege and lawlessness — these are peculiarly the sins which break out of success. You may see them both in Saul, sacrilege when he ventured to perform the priest's function in the absence of Samuel, lawlessness when he spared Agag in express defiance of divine command.

Weak, he would have dared neither;

strong, he became guilty of both. Sacrilege and lawlessness — these are the sins of the strong. And it is the strong who need pray oftenest one part of David's familiar petition: "Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me."

Again Saul was a man of generous impulses, but poisoned by suspiciousness. You would have liked him — until you discovered that he never thoroughly trusted you. He enjoyed the sensation of magnanimity, but he never quite let himself go. The record says that he loved David at first sight, yet soon turned bitter. He was fond of Samuel, but was easily persuaded that the prophet was plotting to undo him. What a host of good hearts are shrunken by suspicion! This is certainly a sad world for the man who is on the lookout for evil. Othello did not want to believe ill of his beautiful wife, but once the seed had dropped in his soul, the fruit was certain. I ago knew he needed only to insinuate. "Now let the poison work," he said. Othello's suspicious nature would complete the task.

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul — Let me not name it to you, yon chaste stars. It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood ; Nor mar that whiter skin of hers than alabaster. Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.

O, balmy breath that doth almost persuade Justice to break her sword.

Well enough for Caesar to insist that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," but neither Caesar's wife nor Caesar's friend nor Caesar's butler can keep "above suspicion" when Caesar's mind is poisoned. Not even Jesus escaped. What his critics failed to see, they still gave him credit for. O, the pity of reading into the souls of people malignances that may never have been there ! And O the shame of discovering, too late for remedy, that the fault we imputed had no existence except in our own brain. Better that a dozen guilty folks escape their just deserts than that a single innocent should be branded by our suspicion. Jealousy makes us see black as well as green.

But again: Saul is a striking instance of fine tastes and violent outbursts, in juxtaposition. He loved music passionately.

Offhand, you might say that a man who loved harmony of sound or color so dearly could hardly be guilty of discord in his own life. At least that is what we frequently affirm to-day. We talk as if lovers of painting and flowers and music were already possessors of the Kingdom. If it were only true ! Alas, that some of the most dreadful passions the world records have broken out of souls that loved the beautiful. I doubt if all poetry of motion, all musical raptures, together with all sculpture and painting, ever redeemed one life from destruction. ^Esthetics are one thing, ethics are another. To Oscar Wilde beauty was everything; disharmony hurt him like a slap in the face. If aesthetics could save anybody, Oscar Wilde offered a good opportunity. But the man to whom beauty was god sank so low that an English prison swallowed him for a season. Did you read his De Profundis? — the ghastly confession of the apostle of beauty? Thank God for all refinement, but remember that the finer the nature the more terrible disharmony you may evoke if the instrument be out of tune. See Saul rousing from the sensuous spell of David's music to hurl a javelin at the musician's head.

I should like to speak at length upon one further paradox in Saul. He was naturally religious. He became so enthusiastic at one time that his friends sneered about his "turning preacher." Yet read again the tense story of his visit to the witch of Endor, and see this favored man hanging breathless over the magic brew, crying for Samuel. What do you worship, the altar or its Lord? Is it the Sabbath concerns you or the Lord of the Sabbath? Have you more confidence in God than in palmists, and thirteen at table, and Friday terrors? If you really wanted to know the way, would you pray, or would you consult a clairvoyant? Like any other beautiful power this highest power of all may be perverted, and the man of religion may become easily the man of superstition.

But Saul. He died as he had lived — a man of contrasts. With a flaring up of the old imperial spirit which made his soldiers love him, he declined to live beyond the defeat of his army. He ordered his armor-bearer to make an end of a defeated king. And when the armor-bearer shrank back from such treason Saul pitched forward hungrily upon his own sword. O, Saul, if thou hadst lived up to thy beginnings!

Ill

THE MAN WHO MEANT NO HARM

On the floor of a certain famous chamber, in Holyrood Castle, is a sinister-looking stain. Frankly, one may need to use his imagination as well as his eyes in order to recognize it. Whatever it may have been once, to-day it is not much of a stain. Nevertheless, it serves to recall one of the many love affairs of Scotland's best-loved queen; and, in particular, it reminds you of the lover, her secretary, whose blood is said to have reddened the floor of his lady's room. At the scene of his sacrilege he made forfeit of his life. By the desecration of an altar he got himself remembered who otherwise might, long ago, have been forgotten — an immortality of remembrance if not of praise.

Somewhat similarly Uzzah made certain of being remembered. By the loss of his own life at the side of the ark, toward which he stretched out an eager, if unwise, hand, he saved himself from oblivion. Apart from the tragedy we should not know his name. He might have lived a good life and done many a graceful act and, so far as historic mention goes, succeeded in being as completely forgotten as the flowers that once bloomed in Nero's garden. But, by a single deed and the price he paid, he wrote his name among the immortals. In proof of which immortality of remembrance we are studying him now — the man who meant no harm.

That poor, crumpled heap of a man by the side of the ark he tried to steady — I scarcely need ask if you approve of the fate which won him his age-long remembrance. Normally, you approve very tamely. Find the story in any book except the Bible, and you would disapprove most heartily. Indeed, God has to constantly put up with our disapproval. We do not approve of the present war, nor of the premature loss of a mother, nor of grippe germs, and what not. A list of our disapprovals would cover a good deal of stationery. And so far as God is responsible for the tragedies against which our hearts cry out, we withhold approval of God himself. O, if we dared to phrase the faults we find with the divine administration! As a matter of fact, many of the criticisms we pass against this and that are but thinly veiled tilts at God himself. And God holds his way undismayed, unswerved, unrevengeful, but, as I sometimes fancy, with a great pain at his heart because his children lay up so many things against him. He "lets the lifted thunder drop" and, in a sense very different from that the poet intended in our familiar hymn, on smiling fields and tall cedars.

Word came to me recently of the tragic death of a whilom parishioner. He was on the roof of his new building, and he misstepped, and God failed to abrogate the law of gravitation — and the aged father is breaking his heart. Colonel Waring took a chance when he went to Cuba to clean out its pests of disease. I am sure that God honored the spirit of the man, yet the man's life paid forfeit for exposure to the deadly germs.

Humanly speaking, that "beautiful boy Keats," as one described him, ought not to have died so young. But God has certain laws which may not be trifled with, even by so rare a soul as John Keats. And here are men working at high pressure against the dictates of sanity and the warnings of physicians, playing with fire in hope of snatching, unscathed, a few extra luxuries for their loved ones. Some day the flame catches them. We call it apoplexy, or Bright's disease, or what we may: 'tis the fire men play with. And shall we then use hard names upon the heavenly Father for letting the fire do its work?

Every law of the good God is a "holy" law. Laws of health, laws of physics, laws of conservation — as truly as laws of chastity and honor and truth — are holy laws. We break none of them with impunity. Upon every one of them is fixed a price for transgression. And for every piece of sacrilege — whether against the ark of health, or the ark of friendship or justice or domestic honor — there is a penalty which somebody pays, soon or late. Else God were less than

God. So this man who meant no harm dropped by the side of the outraged shrine. Not even his sincerity of intention saved him. His affair was not to speculate as to what might happen to the ark when the oxen stumbled, his duty was to keep his hands off the ark.

But of that later. Meantime, I wonder if, tumbling beside the ark, Uzzah lived long enough to wish he had never been promoted. Time was when you and I could not grow up fast enough. We were avid of the privileges of maturity. We saw grown men doing the things we lusted to do — driving their own teams, smoking big cigars, taking holidays when they pleased, and staying up all night if thus it suited them. We saw women with the luxury of seats at the opera, and their own establishments, and children in their arms. And then we also grew up. We came into possession of some of the joys for which once we sighed. Our dreams came true. And how often have we looked into the faces of our privileges, wondering if they were worth what they cost!

Every square foot you add to your dooryard means more weeds, possibly, as well as flowers. Every addition to the domain of our country has brought us fresh problems and perils. And every blessing which the good God can drop into a soul carries seeds of bitter harvesting. Even the sanctities, for intrustment with which we ought to fall on our knees every day, thanking God, furnish new opportunities for sacrilege. Suppose that God enriched you with the gift of a glorious voice, like Jenny Lind's; would you treat it as a sanctity as she did, and "sing to God" — even more than to the audience ? Or would you put a price upon it and sell it ? Let God grant you a friend as Jonathan to David, as Hallam to Tennyson. What then? Friendship is a shrine before which the irreverent soul may play the wanton more tragically than a recluse could possibly play it.

Let God give you a home, with the love of husband or wife and the clinging arms of children. But when God gives that he sets an ark of the covenant within the walls of the place you call "home." 'Tis the ark makes the home. And the sacrileges perpetuated against the ark of the home are less excusable than all the ribaldries of Bohemianism. Or, let Jesus Christ cross our path, as he crossed Peter's and Matthew's and Nathanael's. Much has been made of the beauty he brought to his friends. But what about Judas and Pilate and the soldiers who platted the crown of thorns ? Jesus came to them also. The sanctity was at their gate. But for the ark within reach they might have been spared the greater infamy connected with their names. To be called out of any sort of obscurity by any voice of God, to be set to walking beside an ark, as Uzzah was, and to realize the possible sacrilege of an unguarded moment is enough to hush our step as in a temple.

But Uzzah. He was evidently an ordinary human being, with normal religious impulses. I do not know that he would have sought his post of honor behind the ark. Possibly he would have preferred plowing or fishing. But, be that as it may, he had toward the ark of the covenant the usual sentiments of a normal man. He was religious. And when the oxen stumbled he flung out a quick hand to save the ark. You will often hear men classify themselves as religious or irreligious. There are no "irreligious" men, save as freaks of nature — like a man with one kidney, or the heart on the wrong side. Men everywhere are religious. As Sabatier puts it, "Man is incurably religious." Some of the most religious people I ever knew shunned prayer meetings and never opened the Bible and rendered scant homage to Jesus Christ. Yet were they religious. God creates no other kind of folks. Catch them unaware, strike them deep enough, and you evoke the religious response.

As I was leaving a certain home recently the man of the house said this, half in derision, perhaps: "No, I don't come to church often, but I suppose that Billy Sunday will get me." Such is the warm hope many are cherishing in their hearts, concerning husbands and friends, that Billy Sunday will "get" them. This is the real animus of the long-planned campaign: we hope that in spite of his absurdities and contortions Billy

Sunday will "get" the men and women our churches are failing to reach. And if he does? It will not be by making men and women religious. They will be that before he comes and they will be that after he goes, whether or not he "gets" them, as we say. They cannot help being that.

Not even Jesus came to make people religious. They were religious already, after an ingrowing, painful fashion. He came to evoke melody, not to put it in. Have you had an accomplished musician sit down at your piano — the same piano on which you laboriously pick out hymns, and the children practice ? Not a very large portion of the scale of the average piano is ever used: just an octave or two near "middle C." The rest of the keyboard might as well be in Iceland. Then the musician sits down at your piano. For a moment his fingers wander coaxingly over the keys, as if he were calling to some spirit within the case. Then he plays, and deep thunders roll up from the lower octaves, and brooks seem to laugh from the upper register. Shouts and songs, prayers and love calls, storms and zephyrs — all from the instrument which had so often stood ornamental and voiceless in your parlor. You had scarcely dreamed it held so much potential wonder. Yet, as a matter of fact, the musician at the keyboard had not added a single string to the piano's equipment. He had not lengthened the keyboard an inch. He had merely brought out what was in.

And that is the genius of Jesus Christ and all his coadjutors. They bring out what was in man from the beginning. We do not make men and women religious. At our best we simply play upon hitherto unused portions of the keyboard. We call forth the harmonies which have lain slumbering in the strings. We let men discover how much it means to be sons of God. Surely we cannot expect Billy Sunday to do a diviner thing than that. All he can hope to do is to play upon the instrument God made.

But Uzzah — the man who meant no harm. I am sure that my topic well describes him. Even when he reached out an impious hand to steady the tottering ark he intended well. His tragic fate by the side of the ark argues nothing against the purity of his motive. He died because, while intending well, he was guilty of grievous harm. Sometimes I think that the Recording Angel must keep two sets of books : one for our motives, the other for our deeds. What we actually accomplish is so different from what we intend. Seriously, I believe that most of us mean well most of the days. Even in our worst moods we still require a clean bill of health for our motives.

In one of the hospitals of our city lies a woman battling with death which she herself invited to her door. Easy enough to reprobate her wild act. Statute law in most of the States declares it is a crime for a human being to attempt to shorten his own journey. But that is not to say the suicide means wrong. On the contrary, he means right, as he sees it. And the woman who swallowed the dose which she supposed would end all was choosing, as between two evils, that which seemed to her the lesser.

So it is commonly with us. We do not intend to do wrong. We first reassure ourselves that the wrong we want to do is right.

We mean no real harm. The thief probably finds it easy to believe he needs what he takes more than the owner needs it. David did not mean any harm to Bathsheba. Perhaps he went so far as to convince himself that it would be better for her to have Uriah out of the way. O, the endless sophistications of the soul! Lay open the heartcloister of the gayest destroyer and you will find him salving conscience with the plea that he does not mean any harm. And the revenges we practice, what of them? Why, we do not call them revenges at all. We are merely defending ourselves; collecting our just dues, giving truth a chance to prevail. Any harm we may do is purely incidental to a righteous campaign.

"What fools these mortals be!" I suppose the Kaiser had the purest motives imaginable: and so had all the others who helped bring on the war. Yet a continent is reeking with blood. Do you think the final Judgment for this colossal crime will be according to motive?