Chapter 7

The passionate man perceives that his ungoverned temper causes him trouble, and occasions him to commit acts of injustice, and to say things for which he is afterwards ashamed; and he exclaims, "I wish I could acquire self-control; but alas! a hasty temper is natural to me, and I cannot overcome it." Tell such a man that he is just what he loves to be, and he will deny it without hesitation; and yet the love of combating and of overcoming by force are the darling loves of his heart; and when he fancies that he is wishing to overcome these propensities, he is thinking only of the worldly injury his temper may occasion him, and not of the hatefulness of anger in itself. So soon as we begin to hate anger for its own sake we begin to put it away; but while we only hate the bad consequences of anger we cleave to its indulgence. So it is with indolence. We know, perhaps, that we are indolent, and we perceive that this vice stands in the way of our attaining to many things that we desire, and we believe that we wish to become diligent, when we are steadfastly loving a life of indolence, and wishing not for diligence, but for its rewards. What we suppose to be dislike of indolence is only dislike of the consequences that indolence brings in its train. So the drunkard sometimes goes to his grave cheating himself with the idea that the lust of the flesh binds and enslaves him; and that he really loves the virtue of temperance, while in truth he is loving sensual indulgence with all his heart. Possibly temperance reformers might be more successful in reclaiming such slaves from their sin if they would talk less of the punishments the drunkard brings upon himself in the shape of poverty, and disease, and shame, and enlarge more upon the moral degradation to his own soul which he fastens upon himself both for this life and the life to come.

We are all of us perpetually liable to gross self-deception by thus transferring in fancy our love or our hate for the consequences of vices or virtues to the vices or virtues themselves. If we made this transfer in fact, we should at once set about gaining the one and putting away the other; but so long as we believe that sin dwells within us without our consent and approval we become daily more and more the servants of sin.

We not unfrequently see a very poor family having an intense desire for education, and their poverty, instead of putting its acquisition out of their reach, seems only to stimulate their ardor of pursuit. One half of their time will perhaps be spent in the most arduous labor in order to procure the means of obtaining the aid of books and teachers to enrich the other half; and no self-denial in dress or physical indulgence seems painful, when weighed against the pleasure of increasing the means of education. Here is genuine love of learning, and the result of its efforts will prove the truth of the old adage, "Where there is a will there is a way." This family is acting out its life's love understandingly and with fixed purpose.

Perhaps in the very next house to this is another family of not nearly so small property. They too profess great love of and desire for education; but there is no corresponding effort. They must dress with a certain degree of gentility, and they must not make an effort to earn money by any means that would seem to lower their standing in society; and, moreover, they are indolent, and the effort that the denial of physical indulgences requires seems insupportable to them. The parents of this family will often be heard lamenting that their children cannot have an education; and if one should venture to indicate the possibility of their obtaining one for themselves as their neighbors are doing, they will reply that their children have not strength to struggle along in that way, or that they are too proud to get an education in a way that would seem to place them in point of social rank below any of their fellow-students. This family are acting out their life's love just as thoroughly, though not as understandingly, as the other. They do not desire education from love for it, but because it would give them a certain standing in society, and not having the means of indulging vanity in this direction, they turn to dress and idleness, as easier signs of what is vulgarly called gentility. Still these persons would deem you unjust and unkind if you told them they were living in ignorance because they had no true love for education; and they would hardly deem you sane should you tell them that the Character of every human being is the sum and continent and expression of all that he best loves.

We cannot truly love anything that we do not understand,--anything that has not a distinct existence in our thoughts and imaginations; and all of Character that we love and can clearly image to ourselves we can bring out into life. The Affections are the children of the Will, and if the Will be determined and steadfast, there is no limit but the finiteness of humanity to the progress in whatever is undertaken. When we love ardently, all effort seems light compared with the good we expect to derive from the possession of that which we love. If we become weary and faint by the way, it is because we lack intensity of love.

In reading the lives of distinguished men, we find that, in the pursuit of whatever has raised them above the mass of men, they knew no discouragement, acknowledged no impossibility. We read of travellers who, to satisfy a burning curiosity for discovery, pass through peril and fatigue that is fearful for us even to think of; and yet they, so intense was their love for what they sought, encountered all with a determination that made suffering and danger indifferent, nay, almost acceptable to them. So the inventor labors, year after year, through poverty and privation, compensated for all by the anticipation of the satisfaction that will be his when his darling object is attained. So the student, the philanthropist, the statesman, labors in like manner, lighted by thought, cheered by imagination, warmed by love. Needful as may be the light and the cheer, it is the warmth only that can give life. We may know and imagine, and yet perform nothing; but when love is wakened, performance becomes a necessity of our being; and every sacrifice of momentary pleasure we make in order to obtain the fruition of our desires is not only without pain, but it is sweet as self-denial to a lover, if perchance he may give pleasure thereby to the object of his passion. It is the merest self-delusion for any one to sit still and say, "I love this or I love that trait of Character; but it is not in my powder to gain it." They who love do not sit still and lament. Love is ever up and doing and striving. They who sit still and lament, love the indulgence of their own indolence better than aught else, and what they love they attain. .

It is of course impossible that all should become distinguished by the efforts they may make in life; and this is not what we should aim at in the training of Character. To be distinguished implies something comparative,--implies, if we aim after becoming so, that we seek to be superior to others. This is not an aim that can be admitted in Christian training. Character is something between us and our God, and every thought we admit that savors of rivalry or emulation in our efforts degrades them, and takes from them the sanctity that can alone insure success. The moment that finds us saying, "I am glad that I am better than my neighbor," or even, "I desire to be better than I wish to see him," that moment finds us destitute of a true conception of Christian charity. We cannot attain to a healthy growth of Character until, smitten by the beauty of excellence, we worship its perfection in our Lord and Saviour, and with hearts fixed on him, strive, trusting in his aid, to be perfect even as he is perfect. In this effort we must shut out from our hearts every emotion that cannot be admitted into our prayers to him for light and strength. Are we sorrowful that our neighbor is gaining upon the way faster than ourselves, let us remember that this emotion is virtually a prayer that his strength may be lessened for our sake; and let us change it as quickly as we can to a more earnest longing after our own growth, without comparing ourselves with any human being. Elation, if we think we have passed another in the race, is a vice of the same character as envy at another for surpassing us. Such envy and such elation are children of that pride of heart that shuts the door on all brotherly love. It is that vice by which Cain fell, and so far as we admit it into our bosoms we voluntarily become the children of Cain.

The Lord tells us to seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and that all other good things shall be added unto us. We cannot suppose he meant by this that the reward of virtue was to be found in houses and lands, or worldly wealth of any kind, although he enumerated these things in the promise; for we know that these are, perhaps, as often possessed in abundance by the basest of men as by the most virtuous. How, then, are we to understand this promise? To seek the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness is to serve the Lord with all the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength; and the rewards appropriate to such service surely cannot be counted in silver and gold. These may adorn the happiness that virtue gives; but they cannot constitute it. He who labors simply for the love of wealth is content if he obtain the reward he seeks; but he who labors to obtain the fully developed character of a man,--the image and likeness of God,--if he attain nothing beyond wealth, would feel such reward to be only a mockery of his desires. Such labor lifts us above the happiness external possessions can give, and bestows upon us a wealth that the world cannot take away. He who wishes to serve God acceptably, cultivates all his capacities to the best of his ability, in order to increase his power of leading a useful life, and is therefore constantly adding to himself possessions that can never leave him;--rational and spiritual possessions which, in relation to our internal life, correspond to worldly possessions in relation to our external life, and were therefore signified in the parabolic language of the Lord.

When the philosopher of old lost the library he had been all his life-long collecting, he exclaimed, "My books have done me little service if they have not taught me to live happily without them." He had made their contents his own by diligent study, and no power could take this from him, and they had made him wise by their instructions, so that he could possess his soul in patience under external losses of any kind. The man who studies books, though he may not own a volume, makes them his own far more completely than the bibliomaniac who spends a fortune in filling his library with choice editions of works life is not long enough to read. So it is with works of art. He who can most truly appreciate them is he who really owns them. One man will fill his house with pictures and statues and all beautiful works of art, because the possession of such things gives distinction in society. He collects them, not because he loves art, but because he loves himself; and values them precisely in proportion to the sums of money they have cost him. Those among his visitors who love art for its own sake, and have learned to appreciate such things justly, have a pleasure incomparably more interior and profound in gazing upon them than he who rejoices in having paid large sums of money for them; and surely no one of such visitors would exchange his power of appreciation for the others external possession of them. Who, then, is the true owner, if not he who feels most delight in contemplating them, and who has the most delicate perception of all their shades of beauty?

In the highest of all enjoyments of the eye, that which we derive from the contemplation of external nature, the man whose soul is most deeply thrilled by its beauty, whose heart rises in worship as he gazes upon the mountains in their calm sublimity, and remembers how the Lord frequented such heights for prayer, and who wanders beneath, the shadows of the woods, feeling that "the groves were God's first temples," this man surely has the kingdoms of the earth in closer possession than he who holds thousands of acres in fee.

Whatever possessions we can name, whether external or internal, whether of the heart, the head, or the hand, it is love by which we truly hold them. Nothing is ours that we do not love, and through love we obtain possession of all that our hearts crave.

The love, however, that is so strong to obtain must be no superficial sentiment, but an inward passion of the heart. So long as we live in thought and imagination we are very apt to mistake mere sentiment for love; but the difference will show itself so soon as we begin to act. Sentiment is soon wearied by labor and difficulty in its pursuit of mental attainment, soon disgusted by squalor or offended by ingratitude in its attempts at benevolence, soon discouraged by the hardness of its own heart when it endeavors to acquire self-control, or to gain such virtues as seem in the abstract lovely and delightful. In short, sentiment wants a royal road to whatever it strives to reach. Love, on the contrary, is too much in earnest to be dismayed by any impediment. It will not stop half-way and make excuses for its short-comings. It rests not in its course until it has gained what it seeks; and then it rests not long, for all true love "grows by what it feeds on," and every height of excellence we reach does but enlarge the field of vision and show us new countries to be won.

Admitting love to be, indeed, this intense and all-pervading power, and the very life of our souls, the importance of training ourselves to love only that which is pure and true at once becomes manifest. The heights of heaven are not farther from the depths of hell than are the results that come to us if we seek the pure and the true from those which inevitably occur when the choice falls upon the impure and the false. Let no one think to dwell in safety because he has not deliberately said to himself, "I choose the impure and the false"; for if the pure and the true be not deliberately and voluntarily chosen, the heart out of its own inherent selfishness and worldliness will unconsciously sink gradually, but surely, into the impure and the false. There is no half-way resting-place for humanity between good and evil. We are always sinking, unless we are rising; going backward, unless we are pressing forward.

Much is said of the truth and purity of childhood, and they are very beautiful, for the angels that care for children do continually behold the face of the Heavenly Father,--do stand perpetually within the sphere of absolute truth and purity. But soon the child slips the leading-strings of its guardian spirit, and comes into its own liberty; and now, unless it freely chooses to follow with willing and constant step in the same path wherein it has thus far been led, it will wander from side to side, increasing at each turning the distance that separates it from the way of life, until at last it may wander so far that it loses the desire and even the memory which might lead it to return. Vicious propensities will, perhaps, begin to show themselves; and in the hardened and shameless youth it will be hard to recognize any trace of the innocence of infancy. But, perhaps, instead of viciousness, carelessness is developed, and youth is brightened by gayety, amiability, and ready generosity. Occasional derelictions from truth and honor find ready apologists among friends, because the boy or the girl is so "good-hearted"; but a closer inspection readily shows that the goodness of heart is very superficial, that the left hand is often unjust while the right is generous, that a lie is no offence to the conscience, if it be a good-natured one, and in short that very little dependence can be placed on the uprightness that has no firmer base than good-heartedness. Young persons of this sort are sometimes led away to commit some act so base that their eyes are opened to the dangers that beset the path in which they are travelling, and in sorrow and dismay they turn to seek the way of innocence whence they had wandered. Too often, however, the carelessness of youth passes into the indifference of adult life and the callousness of old age. What can be more revolting than an old age cold, hard, and selfish? Yet this is the natural and almost unavoidable result of a youth that does not fix its heart in unwavering love upon truth and purity,--whose aspirations are not for those things which cannot grow old, and which the world can neither give nor take away. A heart filled with love for excellence can never grow old; for it will go on increasing in all that is lovely and gracious so long as it lives; and where there is perpetual growth of the faculties there can be no decay. We grow old, not by wear, but by rust; and we can never become the prey of rust while our faculties are kept bright by the power and the exercise of earnest love. The fleshly body must grow old and die, for it is of the earth earthy; but it is by our own weakness and indolence if our spiritual body ever gathers a wrinkle on its brow. When the fleshly body drops from us, what must be our shame and our despair if we rise in a spiritual body deformed with evil passions, or corrupt with the leprosy of sin. Too many, alas! spend all their energies in feeding and clothing and sheltering the natural body, leaving the spiritual body hungry and naked and cold. We sometimes hear wonder expressed that a mind thus starved has become super-annuated and doating, while the body still carries on its functions with vigor; but had the body been treated with a similar neglect, it would have long before returned to the dust. The growth of the spiritual body should be continuous from the cradle through eternity; and seldom can any other reason, than our own neglect, be assigned for its disease or decay. The bread of life is perpetually offered for its support, and if it refuses to eat, its death is on its own head.

Infants who pass into the spiritual world before they are touched by a taint of earth are, probably, through the absence of all evil in those who are suffered to approach them, trained into a purity of Affection that fills their whole being with its genial warmth, descending, or raying out, into all the imaginations of the soul and all the thoughts of the mind. Thus they serve God in the order which the Saviour commanded, with all the heart, and soul, and mind. They, however, who remain long on earth, almost without exception, have the order of their nature so reversed, that their powers must be converted to the right, in the order of St. Paul, ascending from the lowest to the highest; or, which is the same thing, passing from the outmost to the inmost. The lowest and most external part of the being must be made obedient to the laws of Divine Order, and on this as a foundation must the higher and internal nature be built up, until it forms a sanctuary; and upon its altar shall fire from heaven descend so often as a gift is offered.

The practice of external vice, just in proportion to its grossness, incapacitates us for perceiving what is true or loving what is good. By vice is not meant crime such as exposes us to punishment by the law of the land, but sins against the laws of God, that bring their own punishment with them, by defacing the image of God in the soul. There is always need of searching the heart to find if we have committed crimes against the soul; for the laws of the land deal only with the excessive derelictions from right which we cannot ignorantly commit. We may, however, go on unconsciously in the commission of great sins until our hearts become hardened against all emotions of heavenly affection, and our eyes blinded so that we cannot distinguish the difference between darkness and light. If we would avoid this fearful condition, we must often go to the Gospels, and place the words of the Lord, in their various teachings, especially as they come to us from the Mount, as it were in judgment over against us, and reading verse by verse, fathom the depths of our hearts, and confess whether we are guilty or no. Would we escape such guilt, we must study these instructions again and again, until, as Moses commanded of the laws of the elder Scripture, "they shall be with us when we sit in our homes, or walk by the way, or lie down, or rise up. And we shall bind them for a sign upon our hands, and they shall be as frontlets between our eyes. And we shall write them upon the posts of our houses, and upon our gates."

When we place the words of the Lord in judgment over against us, and feel compelled to acknowledge our unfaithfulness to their requirements, there is danger of our falling into despair through the consciousness that is thus forced upon us of our want of love for the law of the Lord. The indulgence of our own wills is so sweet to us, that we cannot see how it is possible that the yoke of the Lord can ever become easy to our stiffened necks. We feel as though an obedience that did not spring from true love could not be called obedience, nay, was almost a sin; for it seems to savor of hypocrisy. In this state of mind, our only refuge is in that faith which St. Paul tells us "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen"; and then, unless this faith be strong enough to make us obey, though not from love, yet from a simple belief that at any rate obedience is better than disobedience, our state is wretched indeed. Our rationality tells us that obedience is naught unless we love to obey, but an inward conviction of the soul--may we not call it the voice of God?--entreats us, saying, "this do, and thou shalt live." If, in the ardor of our faith, we can forget our rationality, and cry, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief"; and if we force ourselves to do that which we are commanded, though at first it may appear to us an act purely external and dead, we shall soon find, that, if planted in darkness, it is still a living seed, and the Lord will water it till it shall spring into a growth of beauty that our hearts will cleave to with delight.

The first obedience of the soul that has entered upon the way of regeneration is hardly less ignorant than that of the little child who obeys his parent without comprehending the use or propriety of his commands; and, like that of the little child, it consists in abstaining from doing that which is wrong, rather than in doing that which is right. As the child grows older, he can look back upon those commands and understand them; and then he is filled with gratitude and love towards his parent for putting them upon him. So he who seeks to love the Lord must obey first, and understand afterward,--must keep the commandments ere he can know the doctrines,--must abstain from doing wrong before the Lord can implant in his heart the love of doing right.