Part 30

When Nelson told the King of Naples, in plain terms, that he had his choice—either to advance, trusting to God for His blessing on a just cause, and prepared to die sword in hand; or to remain quiet, and be kicked out of his kingdom; the king made answer that he would go on, and trust in God and Nelson. Of the same stuff as Nelson, but his superiors in moral character and in practical recognition of Him that is Holy, Holy, Holy, as well as Lord God Almighty, were those early English navigators, characterized by a modern pen as “indomitable God-fearing men, whose life was one great liturgy.” “The ice was strong, but God was stronger,” says one of Frobisher’s men, after grinding a night and a day among the icebergs; not waiting for God to come down and split them, but toiling through the long hours, himself and the rest fending off the vessel with poles and planks, with death glaring at them out of the rocks, and so saving themselves and it. We read in Turell’s Life of Dr. Benjamin Colman, “that reverend father in our New England Israel,” as Mr. Lowell calls him, that when the vessel in which he had taken passage for England was attacked by a French privateer, he “fought like a philosopher and a Christian, ... and prayed all the while he charged and fired.” His the practice was, if not on his lips the maxim, to pray to God and keep his powder dry. It is expressly noted of the Maid of Orleans, in the _Procès_ on record, that while she rather evaded the question of resorting to miraculous aids and appliances, and of affecting supernatural power, she “used the Gallic proverb, _Ayde-toi, Dieu te aydera_.”

“In daily toil, in deadly fight, God’s chosen found their time to pray; And still He loves the brave and strong, Who scorn to starve, and strive with wrong, To mend it, if they may.”

Forcible is the portrait drawn in a recent work of fiction, of a man now steeped in moral degradation, who had once tried to be honest, and prayed to God to prosper his honesty; but then he only tried to do right in a spasmodic, fitful kind of way, and expected his prayers to be granted as soon as uttered, and was indignant with a Providence that seemed regardless of his entreaties.

Bentley is held to have happily ridiculed the helpless Chorus of Greek tragedy, who, when a deed of violence was to be acted, instead of interfering to prevent the atrocity to which the perpetrator had made them privy, could only, by the rules of the theatre, exhaust their sorrow and surprise in dithyrambics. He burlesqued this characteristic by introducing into “The Wishes” a Chorus after the manner of the ancient Greeks, who are informed by one of the _dramatis personæ_, that a madman with a firebrand has just entered the vaults beneath the place which they occupy, and which contain a magazine of gunpowder. The Chorus, instead of stirring from the dangerous vicinity, immediately commence a long complaint of the hardship of their fate, exclaiming pathetically, “O unhappy madman—or rather unhappy we, the victims of this madman’s fury—or thrice, thrice unhappy the friends of the madman, who did not secure him, and restrain him from the perpetration of such deeds of frenzy—or three and four times hapless the keeper of the magazine, who forgot the keys in the door,” etc., etc.

The cry of Charles and his Paladins at Arles, “Help us, oh blessed martyr St. Trophimus!” is thus disposed of by Torfrid, Hereward’s forefather, in the story of the Wake, “What use in crying to St. Trophimus? A tough arm is worth a score of martyrs here,” in the thick of the fight for dear life.

When Lord Rea, in 1630, as recorded in a well-known passage from Rushworth, uttered the pious conventionalism or devout platitude, “Well, God mend all!” his companion, Sir David Ramsay, impatiently exclaimed, “Nay,” with an undevout expletive, “Nay, Donald, we must help him to mend it!” One is reminded of what Mr. Froude says of the Protestant leaders in Scotland, during the autumn of 1559, when the Queen Regent returned to Holyrood, once more absolutely victorious: “Notwithstanding all their talk about God, it had come to this. God had as much interest in them as they had themselves courage, energy, capacity, understanding, and perseverance—so much precisely, and not more.” Or again of that homely thrust in the “Biglow Papers,” where one of the interlocutors, on a critical occasion, avowing a wish to know where and when to strike, is thus answered by his plain-spoken mate:—

“‘Strike soon,’ sez he, ‘or you’ll be deadly ailin’,— Folks thet’s afear’d to fail are sure o’ failin’; God hates your sneakin’ creturs thet believe He’ll settle things they run away an’ leave.’”

There is something to be said—indeed in our present sense there is more to be said, for the farmer than for the clergyman in the story of the latter congratulating the former on the state of his crops, and finding him not free from apprehensions, in regard of former bad years—“My friend,” urged the rector, “trust in Providence.” “Providence! Yes, yes,” replied the other; “that’s all very well: but give me the doong cart.” Dr. John Brown relates with zest how one of his faculty was attending a poor woman in labour—a desperate case, that required a cool head and a firm will, while the good man, “for he _was_ good,” had neither of these,—and losing his presence of mind, gave up the poor woman as lost, and retired into the next room to pray for her. “Another doctor, who perhaps wanted what the first one had, and certainly had what he wanted, brains and courage, meanwhile arrived, and called out, ‘Where is Dr. ⸺?’ ‘Oh, he has gone into the next room to pray.’ ‘Pray! Tell him to come here this instant, and help me; he can work and pray too;’” and by the new-comer’s, the _snell_ working doctor’s, assistance the woman’s life was saved.

Sir Robert Peel, in his reply to certain suggestions offered by Lord Kenyon in reference to the potato-disease, coupled with the recommendation of a “special public acknowledgment of our dependence on God’s mercy in our present distressed state,” was mildly sarcastic on the seeming inconsistency of making such an acknowledgment, while at the same time leaving “in full operation the restraints which man has imposed on the import of provisions.”

Not likely to be soon forgotten, on either side the Tweed, is Lord Palmerston’s reply as Home Secretary, to the Presbytery of Edinburgh, touching the national attitude pending a visitation of Asiatic cholera. He advised them that it was better to cleanse than to fast. Let them see to purifying the foul wynds and overcrowded flats tenanted by the poor, and so get rid of “those causes and sources of contagion which, if allowed to remain, will infallibly breed pestilence, and be fruitful in death, in spite of all the prayers and fastings of a united, but inactive nation.” To apply what a north country bishop says in Shakspeare:—

“The means that Heaven yields must be embraced, And not neglected; else, if Heaven would, And we will not, Heaven’s offer we refuse; The proffered means of succour and redress.”

A recent apologist for the captain of a lost steamship submitted that the destruction of that fine vessel was what is called in the old-fashioned language of a charter-party, “the act of God.” Less partial critics, on the other hand, affirmed it to be the act of the folly and madness of man,—the term quoted belonging to an age when they who go down to the sea in ships had not learned the irreverent practice of imputing to the Deity the direct consequences of human rashness. “Let us, if we can, amend this folly; or, if we will persist in it, let us at least take the blame upon ourselves.” They that go down to the sea in ships have, however, in all ages, though not so much one people as another (English for instance as Italians), been prone to waste in wailing outcries to patron saints the energy that, in peril of wreck, they might have expended to better purpose. The “Colloquies” of Erasmus give a lively sample of this run-to-waste invocation. The last of the heroes of La Vendée, Charette, while still a youth, sailed from Brest in a cutter which lost its mast, and was in imminent jeopardy of going down; the sailors, on their knees, were praying to the Virgin, and had entirely given up all notion of exertion, “till Charette, by killing one, succeeded in bringing the others to a sense of their duty, and thereby saved the vessel.” Lord Broughton describes a scene of the kind, in a Turkish ship of war: the Greeks on board called on all the saints, the Mussulmans on Allah; the captain burst into tears and ran below deck, telling his passengers to call on God: he rung his hands, and wept aloud, and being asked what he could do, said he could do nothing. “Could he get back to the main land?” “If God chooses,” was his answer. “Could he make Corfu?” “If God chooses.” One thinks of the testy old patrician’s rejoinder in “Coriolanus” to the tribune’s exclaimer, “The gods be good unto us!” “No; in such a case the gods will not be good unto us.” In Scott’s tale of the Crusaders, “I will vow a golden candlestick to the Holy Sepulchre—a shrine of silver to our Lady of Engaddi—a pall, worth one hundred bezants to Saint Thomas of Orthez,” cries the Queen in extremity.—“Up, up, madam,” says Edith; “call on the saints an you list, but be your own best saint.” In “Ivanhoe,” again, when the Grand Master forbodes the contingent extinction of his order (the Templars), “Now may God avert such a calamity!” says the Preceptor. “Amen!” rejoins the Grand Master, with solemnity, “but we must deserve His aid.”

It is all in keeping with the practical character of the man, the prayer which on one critical occasion Benvenuto Cellini records his offering: “Almighty God, favour my cause, for Thou knowest it is a just one, and that I am not on my part wanting in my utmost efforts to make it succeed.” On another he tells us how he “told Lionardo, who was incessantly crying out, ‘Jesus, Jesus!’ that Jesus would assist him, if he strove to help himself.” Elsewhere again Cellini emphatically asserts his systematic habit of “always exerting his utmost efforts to extricate” himself from difficulty, as well as of devoutly recommending himself to God, by whom alone those efforts could achieve success, and who so often had delivered him when the best of these had clearly and entirely failed.

Saintly as well as Saint Francis of Sales bids his brethren, “En toutes vos affaires, appuyez-vous totalement sur la providence de Dieu, par laquelle seule tous vos desseins doivent réussir; travaillez néanmoins de votre côté tout doucement pour co-opérer avec icelle.” The counsel is at one, _au fond_, with that of the heathen stoic in the old play:—

“I am plain, fathers. Here you look about One at another, doubting what to do, With faces, as you trusted to the gods, That still have saved you; and they can do it: but They are not wishings, or base womanish prayers, Can draw their aids; but vigilance, counsel, action; Which they will be ashamed to forsake. ’Tis sloth they hate, and cowardice.”

_CO-OPERANT UNITS._

EPHESIANS iv. 16.

The universal Church is designated by the apostle a body, which whole body is fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part. And every part in its measure, and according to its imparted power. Very little are some of the joints and fibres; but every little helps. Who shall despise the whole of small things? But for the accumulated atoms, the aggregated littles, where were the body?

“Let me not deem that I was made in vain, Or that my Being was an accident, Which Fate, in working its sublime intent, Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign. _Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain_ _Hath its own mission_, and is duly sent To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent ’Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main. The very shadow of an insect’s wing, For which the violet cared not while it stayed, Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing, Proved that the sun was shining by its shade: Then can a drop of the eternal spring, Shadow of living lights, in vain be made?”[38]

As the author of “Felix Holt” says, we see human heroism broken into units, and are apt to imagine, this unit did little—might as well not have been. But in this way we might break up a great army into units; in this way we might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the other might be cheaply parted with. “Let us rather raise a monument to the soldiers whose brave hearts only kept the ranks unbroken, and met death—a monument to the faithful who were not famous, and who are precious as the continuity of the sunbeams is precious, though some of them fall unseen and on barrenness.” Suppose but a solution of that continuity; the sequel is, darkness that may be felt.

There is a latter-day apologue of a gimlet that grew exceedingly discontented with its vocation, envying all the other tools in the carpenter’s basket, and thinking scorn of its own mean duty of perpetually boring and picking holes everywhere. “The saw and the axe had grand work to do; and the plane got praise always; so did the chisel for its carving; and the happy hammer was always ringing merrily upon the clenching nail.” But for _it_, a wretched, poking, paltry, gimlet, its work was hidden away, and very little seemed its recognised use. But the gimlet is assured, on the best authority, that nothing could compensate for its absence, and is therefore bidden be content, nay happy; for though its work seems mean and secret, it is indispensable. To its good offices, the workman is said to look chiefly for coherence without splitting; and to its quiet influences, the neatness, the solidity, the comfort of his structure may greatly be ascribed. The apologue has, of course, its practical application. “Are there not many pining gimlets in society, ambitious of the honour given to the greater-seeming tools of our Architect, but unconscious that in His hands they are quite as useful? The loving little child, the gentle woman, the patience of many a moral martyr, the diligence of many a duteous drudge, though their works may be unseen and their virtues operate in obscurity, yet are these main helpers to the very joints and bands of our body corporate, the quiet home influences whereby the great edifice, Society, is so nicely wainscoted and floored without split-boards.”

To recognise one’s being entrusted with but one talent, after all, and not with five or with ten, as one’s vanity had previously taken for granted, has even been hailed as, in some sort, a soothing sensation. When one of us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flattery, says Dr. Holmes, to think himself or herself possessed of talent, arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal’s mind: “All our failures, our short-comings, our strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts, are lifted from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian’s pack, at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gifts of high intelligence,—with which one look may overflow us in some wider sphere of being.” That the one talent be employed, is the one thing needful. So feels the girl in one of Charlotte Brontè’s tales, whose exclamation is, “Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account. The tea-pot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen, will yield up their barren deposit in many a house: suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master’s coming to pay His own with usury.” A man is accepted according to that he hath, not condemned in respect of what he never had. Whatsoever his hand findeth to do, that is what a man is to do with his might, to do with a will,—be it to govern a nation, or to dust a warehouse. To apply a passage in Ben Jonson’s “Catiline,”

“They are no less part of the commonwealth That do obey, than those that do command.”

John Newton said that if two angels came down from heaven to execute a Divine command, and one was appointed to conduct an empire, and the other to sweep a street in it, they would feel no inclination to change employments. So again, the same robust divine affirmed that a Christian should never plead spirituality for being a sloven; “if he be but a shoe-cleaner, he should be the best in the parish.” As the old servant tells Ruth, in Mrs. Gaskell’s story, “There’s a right and a wrong way of setting about everything—and to my thinking, the right way is to take a thing up heartily, if it is only making a bed. Why, dear ah me! making a bed may be done after a Christian fashion, I take it, or else what’s to come of such as me in heaven, who’ve had little enough time on earth for clapping ourselves down on our knees for set prayers?” This quaint speaker had laid to heart the lesson once for all enforced upon her, to do her duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her; her station was that of a servant, and, looked at aright, as honourable as a king’s: she was to help and serve others in one way, just as a king is in another. Her parting counsel to Ruth runs thus: “Just try for a day to think of all the odd jobs as to be done well and truly in God’s sight, not just slurred over any how, and you’ll go through them twice as cheerfully,” besides doing them more efficiently. John Brown, of Haddington, being waited on by a lad of excitable temperament, who informed him of his desire to become a preacher, and whom the shrewd pastor saw to be as weak in intellect as he was strong in conceit, advised him to continue in his present vocation. The young man said, “But I wish to preach and glorify God.” The old commentator replied, “My young friend, a man may glorify God making broom besoms; stick to your trade, and glorify God by your life and conversation.” As it was said of Bossuet, in the seventeenth century, that he could not walk, or sit down, or even pluck a currant, without your recognising in him the great bishop (so asserts a modern French divine, not of Bossuet’s church), just so the workman and the domestic servant who are animated by their Master’s spirit, distinguish themselves among their fellows by a certain air of nobility; under their blouse or their livery may be seen to shine the signal light of their _aristocratie spirituelle_, the image of the Most High Himself. However mean their employment, they go about it with neither disgust nor indifference; but with an intelligent interest, because, in the sight of God, and indeed in their own eyes, their occupation is on a level with that of king or emperor. What constitutes the difference between man and man, is not, urges M. Colani, the wielding a sceptre or plying a needle, but the being loyal to the trust, be it great or small, committed to us. This, he contends, is the only true point of view from which men and women should regard their occupations,—they should consider themselves as _collaborateurs du Tout-Puissant_. If their work seem the reverse of noble, let them ennoble it by this thought, in Wordsworth’s phrase,—

“And with the lofty sanctify the low.”

A Christian nursemaid is pictured, forgetting the thousand _désagréments_ of her humble functions, and reminding herself that in reality she is in charge of souls, as much as pastor or preacher is, and this _grande conviction_ suffices to save her from servile dejection. So, again, the artisan and day labourer may be sustained by the Spirit from on high, and taught to magnify their calling, in a deep and a wide sense, because it is what they are called to, and because they respond to the call, in the spirit of it. They are toilers co-operant to an end; and the end, the result, is with God. “They also serve who only stand and wait.” But the whole sonnet of Milton’s which closes with that grand line, is too germane to the matter, and too largely suggestive in its main issue, to be omitted here; the sonnet which the blind poet wrote touching his blindness:—

“When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide; ‘Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?’ I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, ‘God doth not need Either man’s work, or His own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, And post o’er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.”

_SUBORDINATE, NOT SUPERFLUOUS; OR, DEPRECIATED MEMBERSHIP._

1 CORINTHIANS xii. 22.

Strenuously St. Paul insists on the importance of not overlooking the feebler members of the body—be it physical, politic, or ecclesiastical,—and of upholding their rights to due consideration, on the mere score of membership. Subordinate they may be, but superfluous they are not. The body would not be a body without them. “Nay, much more, those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary.” “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” If all were one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, but one body. And one member differeth from another in honour; yet, without the seeming minor and meaner ones, for all the abundant honour of the greater ones, where were the body?

* * * * *

Human society, it has been said, is a vast and intricate machine, composed of innumerable wheels and pulleys:—every one has his special handle to grind at; some with great and obvious effects, others with little or no assignable result; but if the object ultimately produced by the combined efforts of all is in itself a good one, it is not to be denied that whatever is essential to its production is good also. Human society is thus regarded as a body corporate, made up of different members, each of which has its own special function: one class tilling the ground, another combining and distributing its produce, a third making, and a fourth executing laws, and so on, through every class of society. “If all these functions are properly discharged, the whole body corporate is in a healthy condition; and thence it follows that whoever contributes to the full and proper discharge of any one of these functions, is contributing to the general good of the whole body; so that a person occupied in them is doing good in the strictest sense of the words.” An able discourser on social subjects, arguing against a current crotchet, utterly denies that a girl in a respectable family does not earn the honourable title of a worker, though she be only employed in assisting in house-keeping and at the family work-table, just as fairly and as completely as if she walked to a solicitor’s office for an eight hours’ daily task of copying briefs and making out bills of costs.

“They work in spirit who for service wait.”