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Visions That Disturb Contentment[ToC]
Every community holds a few happy and buoyant souls, that are so sustained by inner hope and outer prosperity as to seem the elect children of good fortune. These are they who are born only to the best things, for whom, as life goes on, the years do but increase happiness and success. For other men happiness is occasional, and life offers now and then a bright interval, even as an open glade is found here and there in the dark forest. Among these sunny souls, dwelling midst constant prosperity, let us hasten to include that youth to whom Christ made overtures of friendship. His was a frank and open nature, his a fresh and unsullied heart. He had also a certain grace and indescribable charm that clothed him with rare attraction. Wealth, too, was his, and all the advantages that go therewith. Yet ease had not enervated him, nor position made him proud. He had indeed passed through the fierce fires of temptation, but had come out with spotless garments.
Beholding him, Christ loved him; nor could it have been otherwise. Some men we force ourselves to like. For reasons of finance or social advantage, men ignore their faults, while cherishing a secret dislike. But others are so attractive, they compel our friendship by a certain sweet necessity. The eye must needs like the rich red rose, and the ear can not but enjoy the sweet song. And this youth stood forth clothed with such rare attraction that it is said Christ cast one long lingering look of affection upon him; then widening the circle of friendship, he offered the young ruler a place therein. It was an overture such as Socrates made to the boy Plato; it was a proffer such as Michael Angelo made to the poor young artist who knocked at his door. Recalling the day when he met Göethe, Schiller was accustomed to say his creative literary career began with Göethe's proffer of friendship.
Carlyle tells us that each new epoch in his life began with the acquaintance of some great man. For it is not given to books nor business, to landscapes nor clouds nor forests, to have full power over the living man. Only mind can quicken mind, only heart can quicken heart. What would the youth of genius not give for the friendship of some Bacon or Shakespeare? But when this youth won Christ's regard, it was as if all the children of genius had come together in Christ's single person, to proffer intimacy and companionship. His great soul overhung his friends as the harvests overarch the fields, "filling the flowers with heat by day, and cooling them with dews by night." His friendship is like a mother's, a lover's, a friend's, but larger than either, and deeper than all. The rising of a star, that glows and sparkles with ten thousand effects, can alone be compared to this Son of Man, who flamed forth upon his friends such majesty of beauty, such royalty of kindling influences.
For centuries scholars have spoken of this interview between Christ and the young ruler as "the great refusal." Dante, wandering with Virgil through the Inferno, thought he saw this young ruler searching for his lost opportunity. For this ruler was the Hamlet of the New Testament. Like the Prince of Denmark, he stood midway between his conscience and his task, and indecision slew him. It has been said that Hamlet could have been happy had he remained in ignorance of his duty, or had he boldly obeyed the vision which called him to action. It was because he knew more than he had the courage to do that a discord arose, which destroyed the symmetry and sanity of his mind. His madness grew out of the breach between his enlarged and haunting sense of right and his faltering ability to face and fulfill it. Thus also the tragedy of this young ruler's life grew out of the fact that the new aspiration made his old contentment impossible, and compelled him either to go on with boldness to better things, or to go back to emptiness and misery. Beholding him, Christ loved him for what he was, and pointed out what he might become. He knew that the better was a great enemy of the best. For Christ had the double vision of the sculptor.
Before him was the mass of marble, rude and shapeless. But the outer shapelessness concealed the inner symmetry. Only the flying chips could let loose the form of glowing beauty hidden within. And before that youth he lifted up a vision of still better things. He set the youth midway between the man he was and the man he might become. He had achieved so much that Christ would fain lead him on to perfection itself. When the husbandman beholds his vines entering into leafage and blossom, he nurtures them on into fruitage. When Arnold finds some young Stanley ready to graduate, he whispers: "One thing thou lackest; let all thy life become one eager pursuit of knowledge." And to this youth who had climbed so high came the vision of something fairer and better still.
Going on before, Christ lured him forward, even as of old the goddess lured the Grecian boy forward by rolling rosy apples along the path. But the interview ended with the "great refusal." And the youth went away, not angry nor rebellious, but sad and deeply grieved at himself. For now he knew how far his aspiration outran performance. Like Hamlet, indecision palsied action. Contentment perished, for the vision of perfection ever haunted him. At first Christ's words and look of earnest affection filled his heart with a tumult of joy: but having fallen back into the old sordid self, the very memory of his master's face became a curse and torture. And so the vision blighted that should have blessed.
Now, the lives of great men tell us that God has always used visions for disturbing contentment, destroying ease, and securing progress. Witness the life of that young patrician, Wendell Phillips. His college mates love to describe him as they first saw him in the halls of Cambridge. His elegant person, his accomplished manners, his refined scholarship, made him the idol of the Harvard boys. Even in his youthful days he excelled as an orator, and was the easy master of the platform. But to him came the sirens singing of leisure, of opulence, and ambition. Full oft he looked forward to the day when he would be the champion of "elegant repose and cultivated conservatism" of the patrician element in his patrician state. But suddenly the Christ, in the person of one of his little ones, crossed the young scholar's path. One golden October afternoon, while Wendell Phillips was sitting in his office, he heard the noise of a strange disturbance in the street. Looking out he saw the mob maltreating Garrison, as, with blows and kicks, they dragged him toward the jail. All that night young Phillips lay tossing on his couch, thinking ever of this man who had been mobbed in the city where Otis had said "Liberty of speech is inalienable."
All that night the vision of the slave, scarred and scorned and forsaken, stood before his mind, while ever he heard a voice whispering: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." In that vision hour perished forever all his dreams of opulence and ease. He decided to turn his back upon all preferment and ambition, all comfort and leisure, and follow his vision whithersoever it led. Soon the vision led him to the platform of Faneuil Hall, where an official was justifying the murderers of Lovejoy. "Mr. Chairman," he said, "when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which placed the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead." And that vision lent his words such burning eloquence that Wendell Phillips' speech in Faneuil Hall ranks with Patrick Henry's at Williamsburg and Abraham Lincoln's at Gettysburg—and there is no fourth. His vision led him unto obloquy also. What revilings were his! What bitter hatred! What insults and scoffs! At last the vision led him unto fame. The very city that would have slain him builded his monument, and men who once would not defile their lips with his name taught their children the pathway to his tomb. It was that vision splendid that saved Phillips from sodden contentment. Had Christ never crossed his path, his imagination would have lost its brightest picture, his life its noblest impulses, its most energetic forces.
And not only have visions power to shape young men's lives. To the mature and the great also come dreams of ideal excellence, smiting selfishness, rebuking sin, taking the sweetness out of sordid success, and urging men on to higher achievements. The biographers have never been able to fully account for the pathetic sadness and gloom of the closing days of Daniel Webster. Horace Greeley once said that "Webster's intellect is the greatest emanation from the Almighty mind now embodied." For picturesque majesty and overpowering mentality he is doubtless our most striking figure. That enormous and beautiful head, those wonderful eyes, that stately carriage, that Jove-like front, led men to call him "the godlike Daniel." When he appeared upon the Strand in London a great crowd followed him, and a British statesman described Webster as one describes a majestic landscape or the sublimity of a mountain. But during the last years of his life his face took on a strangely pathetic sorrow. With the language of a Dante his biographer has pictured for us an Inferno, in which we see one, sublime of reason, walking in the very prime and strength and grandeur of full manhood, yet walking in a round of night, in a realm of bitterness, ever gnawed by disappointment and consumed by fierce ambition. He sank into his grave, says the historian, "under a heart-crushing load of political despair."
But disappointed ambition cannot account for Daniel Webster's sadness and woe. Strength was his for supporting the loss of a nomination. He knew that his title, "Defender of the Constitution," was fully equal to the title of President. He was too great a man to have his heart broken by the loss of political honor. What was his woe? Let us remember the young ruler who was sad and grieved after he met Christ, and had refused to obey the heavenly vision. Let us remember the dream that came to Pilate, and how, afterward, the great Roman was uneasy and restless. And to Daniel Webster there came the memory of his speech in favor of a law compelling men in the North to send fugitive slaves back to their masters; and there also came the words of Christ, who said: "I am come to give deliverance to the captive." And looking forward, Webster anticipated the judgment of the generations upon the breach between his duty and his performance. That vision of higher things haunted him. Oft he heaved sighs of bitter regret. Daniel Webster was saddened and deeply grieved at what he himself had done. For the hope of the Presidency he sacrificed his convictions as to the slave. The heavenly vision bade him deliver the captives, not send them back into slavery. No political disappointment crushed Daniel Webster. The consciousness of duty performed would have sustained him under any sorrow. It was the consciousness of having sinned against the heavenly vision that broke his heart, and brought Webster's gray hairs down with sorrow to the grave!
Plutarch tells us that the finest culture comes from the study of men in their best moods. But always life's best moods come through these heavenly visions. George Eliot makes the destiny of each hero or heroine to turn upon the use of those critical hours when some ideal fronts the soul for acceptance or rejection. To Maggie Tulliver came a delicious moment when her lover offered her honorable marriage, and would have led her into a perfumed garden of perfect happiness. But just in that hour when joy bubbled like a little spring in her heart, there came the memory of the crippled boy, to whom years before in her childhood she had plighted her troth. And the vision of her duty and the thought of his disappointment led her to refuse pleasure's spiced cup, and choose self-renunciation and a life for others. That heavenly vision saved her from plunging into the abyss of selfishness, even as the lightning's flash in the dark night reveals the precipice to the startled traveler.
And when the visions divine have rebuked selfishness, they go on to conquer sin. Hawthorne uses the vision for redeeming his hero. To Arthur Dimmesdale, pursued by his enemy, came the dream of freedom, when, journeying to a foreign land with Hester and Pearl, he might regain health and happiness and find peace again in walking in the dear old paths of wisdom and study. But the day before his ship sailed came the vision splendid, bidding him mount the scaffold, confess his wrong, and free his conscience of its guilt. And it was obedience thereto that redeemed his life from hypocrisy.
And, having saved men from wrong, the vision goes on to secure their service for the right. Here is that colored woman, Harriet Tubman, whom John Brown introduced to Wendell Phillips as the best and bravest person upon our continent. If Frederick Douglass wrought in the day, Harriet Tubman toiled at night; for when the man had praise and honor, the black woman had only obscurity and neglect. When this bravest of her race escaped from slavery in 1850 and reached Canada she exclaimed exultingly, "I have only one more journey to make—the journey to heaven." But in that hour when the tides of joy rose highest there came the vision calling her back to danger and service. She was not disobedient thereto, but turned her face again toward the cotton fields. Between 1850 and 1860 she made nineteen trips into the South, and rescued over three hundred slaves. One day while lying in a swamp with her band of fugitives, a black man brought her word that a reward of $40,000 had been offered by the slave dealers of Virginia for her apprehension. Hard pressed by her pursuers, she sent her fugitives on by a secret route and went herself to the train. But when she saw in the car advertisements for her arrest she left the Northern train and took the next one going south, thinking by her fearlessness to escape detection, and also to collect a new band of fugitives. And so her people came to call Harriet Tubman the Moses of the black race. And, following on, the vision lifted her to a place among those whom the world will not willingly let die.
When the vision has redeemed bad men to good deeds it goes on to redeem good ones unto perfection. Here is Channing, with his cultured scholarship, his refined manners, his gentle goodness. So heavy were the drafts study made upon his strength that at length came a day when the mere delivery of his sermons and orations left him physically exhausted. But he went smilingly and forever from the pulpit, and gave up also the use of his pen. In that hour, when sorrow and gloom rested heavily upon those who loved him, the vision shone clearly for Channing. He determined to turn his whole life into a sermon and poem. With pathetic eloquence he said, "It is, indeed, forbidden me to write or speak, but not to aspire and be. To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to do all cheerfully, bear all bravely; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard, think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never—in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common—this is to be my symphony."
Into our nation also has come the disturbing vision. Ours is called an age of unrest. We hear much about social discontent. Beneath all the outer activity and bustle there is an undertone of profound sadness. Neither wealth, pleasure, nor politics has availed to conceal the world's weariness. Strangely enough, just at a time when prosperity is greatly increased, when our homes are full of comforts and conveniences, when all the forces of land and sea and sky have lent themselves to man as willing servants, to carry his messages, run his errands, reap his harvests, pull his trains, and push his ships; in an age when a thousand instruments that make for refinement and culture have been invented, just at this time, strangely enough, unrest and disquietude have fallen upon our people. Why is our age so sad? Has Schopenhauer carried the judgment of mankind by his favorite motto, "It is safer to trust fear than faith?" Is it because our age has lost faith in God? Have doubt and skepticism burned the divine dew off the grass, and left it sere and brown? Nay, a thousand times nay!
The world is sad because it has found God, not lost him. Man is weary in the midst of his wealth and pleasures for the same reason that the young ruler was grieved and sad in the midst of his great possessions. Our age has seen the vision splendid, but halts undecided, being yet unwilling to go on and fulfill its new ideals. For those who have eyes to see, Jesus Christ stands again in the market and the street. He has given society a new vision of the earth as a possible paradise, filled with the fruits of peace and plenty where none know surfeit, and none know want. He has given a vision of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, and that vision has destroyed the old contentment. Our fathers were happy because what they did kept pace with what they saw. And we are unhappy because we are unwilling to do what we see.
This vision of possible excellence will continue to haunt our generation until performance shall have overtaken the ideal promise. All the processes of buying and selling without must be carried up to meet the requirements of the vision within. Just as in Luther's day the vision divine disturbed Germany and filled the land with unrest until the people achieved spiritual freedom; just as in Cromwell's day the vision of freedom in political relations came to England and gave disturbance until the doctrine of the divine right of kings was overthrown; just as in our own day the vision of liberty for all, without regard to race or color, disturbed our land and filled our council chambers with conflict and strife, and turned the South into one immense battle-field, until the laws of the Nation matched the ideals of God—so to-day, the vision of the brotherhood of man in Jesus Christ has fallen upon the home, the market, and the forum, and brought restlessness and discontent to our people.
Our colleges are restless, and by the university extension plans are seeking to fulfill their vision of wisdom for all. The church hath seen the heavenly vision, and, restless and grieved at its own failures, is rewriting its creeds, inventing new methods of social sympathy and social help, and is seeking eagerly to fulfill its vision. Wealth too, is discontented, and by manifold gifts is becoming the almoner of universal bounty toward school and college, and gallery and church. Looking toward the council chamber, society is becoming restless, and feeling that the council chamber should be as sacred as a temple, and that as of old so now evil men have turned the temple into a place for money-changing, and made the house of God a den of thieves. Good men are again lifting the scourge of small cords. The discontent is becoming universal. This vision of a new order will continue to haunt and disturb men, until at length society will make all its activities without correspond to the heavenly vision within.
The tradition tells us that when the young ruler who made the "great refusal" had returned home he found the old zest of life had gone. Gone forever his contentment in fields and flocks, in houses and horses and goods; in books and pictures! He himself seemed but a shadow moving through a phantom world. Struggle as he would, he could not forget the new vision, nor find the old joy. At last he ceased struggling, and, fulfilling his vision, he found the cross was the magic key that opened the door of happiness.
And to the youth of this far-off day, the vision splendid doth come again. In strange ways come these luminous hours and exalted moods. Sometimes they come through memory, and then the tones of a voice long still fall softly upon the ear like celestial bells calling us heavenward. Sometimes these luminous hours come through the affections, when anticipations of joy are so bright that it seems as if the youth reaching forward had plucked beforehand the fruit from the very tree of life. For some they come through sorrow, when the soul stands dissolved in tears, even as some perfumed shrub stands in the June morning making the very ground wet with falling raindrops. Then the soul wanders here and there, all dumb with grief, seeking comfort, yet finding none. Then sitting near the much-loved grave, the soul hears the night winds whispering, "Not here, not here!" to which the murmuring sea replies, "Not here," while the weeping vines and the mournful pines ever answer, "Not here, not here!" But softly falling through the pathless air comes a voice murmuring, "Here! Here! Come up hither!"
Oh, these luminous hours! These hours of deeper conviction are life's real hours! Summer is sunshine and beauty, not storm and snow. There are dark and wintry days in March, when spring seems a delusion. There are days in April so cold that summer seems a snare. But between the storms there are brief warm intervals when the sun falls soft on the south hillsides, and the roots begin to stir and the seeds to ache with harvests, and all the air is vocal. The fitful snows in April are but reminders of what the dying winter was; but these occasional sunny days are prophecies of what summer hath accomplished in its full ministry upon the fields and forests.
And after long periods of sodden selfishness and clouded sin, suddenly the vision of better things breaks through the cloud and storm. Then the vision strikes clarity into reason, memory and imagination. In these hours the soul scoffs at sordid things. As the flower climbs upward to escape from the slough, as the foot turns away from the mire, as the nostril avoids the filth, as the ear hates discord, so in these hours the soul scoffs at selfishness and sin. Oh, how beautiful seem purity and gentleness, and sympathy and truth! And these hours are big with prophecy. They tell us what the soul shall be when time and God's resources have wrought their will upon man. They are to be cherished as the mariner cherishes the guiding star that stands upon the horizon; they are to be cherished as some traveler, lost in a close, dark forest, cherishes the moment when the sun breaks through a rift in the clouds and he takes his bearings out of the swamp and toward his home. Visions are God within the soul. They come to lead man away from sin and sorrow. They come to guide him to his heavenly home.