COUNSELS.
"Who shapes his Godhead out of flesh or stone, Knows not a God; but he who lives like one."
Know, that seeing you, I divine your gods also. Why name them then one by one so sentimentally and so often? Being yours individually, so unmistakably in your image, surely none needs question or desire them. A thousand thanks if you will lisp never a syllable more about them. As I treat them civilly by my silence, why persist thus pertinaciously in thrusting their claims upon my attention and then questioning my piety for not christening them? O! rare respecting silence, deep is the religion that fathoms thine; speaking most reverently when deepest, and divining mysteries that none names devoutly. What if the sacred name were the silent syllable in the saint's devotions, and he
"One of the few, who in his town Honors all preachers, is his own? Sermons ne'er hears, or not so many As leaves no time to practise any?— Hears, ponders reverently, and then His practice preaches o'er again. His parlor sermons rather are Those to the eye than to the ear; His prayers taking price and strength Not from their loudness nor their length: His murmurs have their music too, Ye mighty pipes, as well as you; Nor yields the noblest nest Of warbling seraphim to the ears of love A choicer lesson, than the joyful breast Of some poor panting turtle dove."
One sometimes thinks silence for a century were most worshipful since speech babbles so badly. Has not harlequin in bands and book played out his part the world over?—the drawl of sacred names been heard till sacred names seem profane, and it were devout to fall into silence about them more eloquent than any speeches about sanctity? If infidelity, indifference, scepticism, sweep secretly the breadth and depths of Christendom, 'tis but the binding spell of these superstitions about the name of One whom the love and admiration of all good men hold precious and will not let perish from love and remembrance.
What were Christ Jesus' life and gospel sweet, If not in loving hearts he fix his holy seat?
If one's life is not worshipful, no one cares for his professions. Piety is a sentiment: the more natural it is, the wholesomer. Nor is there piety where charity is wanting. "If one love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen." None are deceived as to the spirit of their acquaintances: the instinct of every village, every home, intimates true character. We recognize goodness wherever we find it. 'Tis the same helpful influence, beautifying the meanest as the greatest service by its manners, doing most when least conscious, as if it did it not.
"A man's best things are nearest him, Lie at his feet; It is the distant and the dim That we are sick to greet."
Let us have unspoken creeds and these quick and operative. I wish mine to be so, for though it embosoms doctrines fit to shine in words, it seems most becoming to publish truths thus vital by example rather, sentiments so private shrinking from the frost of distrust, the heat of controversy. Personal in their traits and colored with individual hues, they court the confidences of silence, and are unspeakable.
One needs but brighten his eyes to look deep into the depths of his heart and settle all disputes. Enlarge by a thought our view, exalt it by a sentiment, we find all men of our creed; or, far better, superior to party or creed. The uprise of an idea, perception of a principle, makes many one and inseparable. The liberal mind is of no sect; it shows to sects their departures from the ideal standard, and thus maintains pure religion in the world. But there are those whose minds, like the pupil of the eye, contract as the light increases. 'Tis a poor egotism that sees only its own image reflected in its vision. "Only as thou beest it thou seest it." How differently the different sects interpret the scriptures, each according to its light and training! I imagine our Bible is more loosely read, least understood of any book in the English tongue: conceive a fresh generation coming to its perusal as to a volume just issued in modern type from a popular bookstore and reviewed in the journals. How better acquit ourselves to the Bibles of the world than by fairly measuring our private convictions with their spirit and teachings? Let us first acquaint ourselves with these Records of Revelation before we claim for ours the merit of being the only inspired volume; ourselves the favored people—as if the Truth were a geographical resident dwelling in our neighborhood only.
When thou approachest to The One, Self from thyself thou first must free, Thy cloak duplicity cast clean aside, And in the Being's Being Be.
One does not like to disturb the faith of his neighbors, yet cannot speak truly on religious themes without touching the sensibilities of the weak, and sometimes wounding where he sought sympathy and support. It takes a good man to speak tenderly of matters of faith and practice in which good people have been bred, their hearts being prompt to feel and act without questioning the head. Precious souls, if not overwise, or strong for reform; the weak saints being as formidable impediments as the strong sinners, both blocking the ways to amendment. But temperament, inborn tendencies, predispositions, determine one's cast of thinking or no-thinking, and go far to shape his religious opinions. Our instincts, faithfully drawn out and cherished by purity of life, lead to Theism as their flower and fruit. If swayed by the senses we are natural Pantheists, at best idolaters and unbelievers in the Personal Mind. The passions prevailing, incline us to Atheism, or some superstition ending in scepticism, and indifference to all religious considerations.
"Some whom we call virtuous, are not so In their whole substance, but their virtues grow But in their humors, and at seasons show.
For when through tasteless, flat humility, In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see, 'Tis but his phlegm that's virtuous and not he.
So is the blood sometimes: whoever ran To danger unimportuned, he was then No better than a sanguine, virtuous man.
So cloistered men, who, on pretence of fear All contributions to this world forbear, Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.
Spiritual, choleric critics, who in all Religions find fault, and forgive no fall, Have through their zeal virtue but in their gall.
We're thus but parcel gilt, to gold we're grown When virtue is our soul's complexion— Who knows his virtue's name or place has none."
Persist in being yourself, and against fate and yourself. Faith and persistency are life's architects, while doubt and despair bury all under the ruins of any endeavor. You may pull all your paradises about your ears save your earliest; that is to be yours sometime. Strive and have; still striving till striving is having. We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes. Nor need we turn sour if we fail to draw the prizes in life's lottery. It were the speck in the fruit, the falling of our manliness into decay. These blanks were all prizes had we the equanimity to take them without whimpering or discontent. The calamities we suffer arise not from circumstances chiefly, but from ourselves. If the dose is nauseous or bitter, 'tis because we are, else it were not drank off with the disgust we manifest. Sweet, bitter or sour,—we taste one thing in everything tasted, and that is ourselves. Could each once be clean delivered of himself how salutary were all things and sufficing. "'Tis in morals as in dietetics, one cannot see his fault till he has got rid of it."
Only virtue is fame; nor is it forward in sounding its own praises, being sure that merit never sleeps untold, nor dies without honors. It cannot: once lived and whispered ever so faintly in private places, it publishes itself in spite of every concealment and sometime blazes its fame abroad by myriads of trumpets. The light trembling in the socket of bashfulness, or hidden under the bushel of misapprehension, or inopportunity, flames forth at fitting moment, irradiates the world thereafter forever, streaks the dawn, as a visitation of the day-spring from on high.
It is as ignoble to go begging conditions as to go begging bread. If too feeble, too proud or unapt to create these, one may make up his mind to dispense with any advantage that power on that side of life confers. Not a circumstance, like the animal whose place in nature is determined, but a creator of circumstances, man brings to his help freedom, opportunity, art, to build a world out of the world in harmony with his wants. If his occupation is spoiling him 'tis the dictate of virtue as of prudence, to quit it for one that in maintaining shall enrich him also. He must be a bad economist who squanders himself on his maintenance; wasting both his days and himself. His gifts are too costly for such cheap improvidence. One's character is the task allotted him to form, his faculties the implements, his genius the workman, life the engagement, and with these gifts of nature and of God, shall he fail to quarry forth from his opportunities a man for his heavenly task-master? "The wise man does not submit to employments which he may undertake, but accommodates and lends himself to them only."
Nor is any man greatest standing apart in his individualism; his strength and dignity come by sympathy with the aims of the best men of the community of which he is a member. Yet whoever seeks the crowd, craving popularity for propping repute, forfeits his claim to reverence and expires in the incense he inhales. The truly great stand upright as columns of the temple whose dome covers all, against whose pillared sides multitudes lean; at whose base they kneel in times of trouble. Stand fast by your convictions and there maintain yourself against every odds. One with yourself, you are one with Almighty God, and a majority against all the world:
Vox priva, vox Dei.
"To God, thy country, and thyself be true, If priest and people change, keep thou thy guard."
Both conformity and nonconformity are alike impracticable. When the conformist can stay clean in his conformity, the nonconformist come clean out of his nonconformity, it will be time to plead self-consistency. Nor let any stay to make proselytes. I have never known the followers of either to come clean out of themselves even, but casting their tributes to expediency or authority, surrender unreservedly to party or sect and sink the man. Born free into free institutions, it behooves all to preserve that freedom unimpaired, neither intimidated nor bribed by persons or parties: see that these take nothing of theirs with consent, least of all that which gives consent its dignity and worth,—one's integrity. Good men should not obey bad laws too well, lest bad men taking courage from the precedent, disobey good ones.
"Know there's on earth a yet auguster thing, Veiled though it be, than President or King."
The honorable man prefers his privilege of standing uncommitted to parties when these fail to represent the whole of honor and justice for the state. But when politics become attractive by being principled, senates and cabinets the legislators and executives of justice and common rights, servants of the High Laws, then, as an honorable man and faithful citizen, he is won to the polls to cast a pious and patriotic suffrage for having affairs administered through the best men, whom best men promote to offices to which their virtues give dignity and distinction. There are times nevertheless in one's history when abstinence from this first privilege of a freeman and republican, seems a duty best performed in its non-performance, the true means of preserving self-respect, by standing magnanimously as a protest for the right against the wrong—a vote less on the wrong side of a mixed issue, being as two cast on the right side, the silent significance of a name known as the representative of honor and justice, showing where lies the wrong and the shame—the blush of a defeat on the cheek of an ill-gotten victory. Of no party properly, a good man votes by his virtues for mankind, too just to be claimed by any unless to save it from dishonor.
At best the state's polity is deliberative, ruling the right as far as is practicable under the circumstances. Of mixed elements, it contents itself with mixed results,—the best permitted under the mixed conditions. But the statesman may not compromise principle for the sake of accommodating legislation to suit the interests of party. If he ride that horse too fearlessly, he is sure to be overthrown. General intelligence interposes the effective check upon political ambition and carries forward state affairs. But if, unequal to self-government, the people have attained to that sense of freedom and no more, which renders liberty a snare, then the state stumbles towards a despotism, call the rule by any fine name you please. No greater calamity can befall a people than that of deliberating long on issues imperilling liberty; any impotency of indecision betraying a lapse into slavery from which the gravest deliberative wisdom cannot rescue them. Knowingly to put on the yoke and wear it restively meanwhile, were a servitude that only slavery itself can cure.
Where sleep the gods There mob-rule sways the state, Treason hath plots and fell debate, Brother doth brother darkly brand, Few faithful midst sedition's storm do stand, The whole of virtue theirs to stay the reeling land.
"States are destroyed, not so much from want of courage as for want of virtue, and the most pernicious of all ignorance is, when men do not love what they approve; written laws being but images of, or substitutes for those true laws which ought to be present in every human soul through a perfect insight into good."
"Go, Soul, the Body's guest, Upon a thankless errand; Fear not to touch the best, The truth shall be thy warrant; Go, since all else must die, And give all else the lie.
Go tell the Court it glows And shines like rotten wood; Go tell the Church it shows What's good, but does not good: If Court and Church reply, Give Court and Church the lie.
Tell Potentates they live Acting, but base their actions; Not loved, unless they give, Nor strong, save by their factions: If Potentates reply, Give Potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition, That rule affairs of state, Their purpose is ambition, Their practice chiefly hate: And if they do reply, Then give them all the lie.
Tell those that brave it most, They beg for more by spending; Who, in their greatest cost, Seek nothing but commending: And if they make reply, Spare not to give the lie.
Tell Zeal it lacks devotion; Tell Love it is but lust; Tell Time it is but motion; Tell Help it is but dust: And wish them no reply, For thou must give the lie.
Tell Age it daily wasteth; Tell Honor how it alters; Tell Beauty that it blasteth; Tell Favor that she falters: And as they do reply, Give every one the lie.
Tell Wit how much she wrangles In fickle points of niceness; Tell Wisdom she entangles Herself in over niceness; And if they do reply Then give them both the lie.
Tell Physic of her boldness; Tell Skill it is pretension; Tell Charity of coldness; Tell Law it is contention; And if they yield reply, Then give them all the lie.
Tell Fortune of her blindness; Tell Nature of decay; Tell Friendship of unkindness; Tell Justice of delay; And if they do reply, Then give them still the lie.
Tell Arts they have no soundness, But vary by esteeming; Tell Schools they lack profoundness And stand too much on seeming: If Arts and Schools reply, Give Arts and Schools the lie.
Tell Faith it's fled the city; Tell how the country erreth; Tell manhood, shakes off pity, Tell Virtue least preferreth; And if they do reply, Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blabbing; Although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing; Yet stab at thee who will, No stab the soul can kill."
