At the basis of reverence is respect; and reverence is respect amplified and sublimated. A boy must be either dull or heedless who can look at a bird sailing in the air for five minutes and not become surcharged with curiosity to know how it can do it. His curiosity must lead him to an examination of the wing of a bird, and his scrutiny will reveal it as a marvelous bit of mechanism. The adjustment and overlapping of the feathers will convince him that it presents a wonderful design and a no less wonderful adaptation of means to ends. He sees that when the bird is poised in the air the wing is essentially air-tight and that when the bird elects to ascend or descend the feathers open a free passage for the air. Even a cursory examination of the bird’s wing must persuade the boy that, with any skill he might attain, he could never fabricate anything so wonderful. This knowledge must, in the nature of things, beget a feeling of respect, and thereafter, whenever the boy sees a bird, he will experience a resurgence of this feeling.
Some one has said, “Everything is infinitely high that we can’t see over,” and because the boy comes to know that he cannot duplicate the bird’s wing it becomes infinitely high or great to him and so wins his respect. To the boy who has been taught to think seriously, the mode of locomotion of a worm or a snake is likewise a marvel, and he observes it with awe. The boy who treads a worm underfoot gives indisputable evidence that he has never given serious thought to its mode of travel. Had he done so, he would never commit so ruthless an act. The worm would have won his respect by its ability to do a thing at which he himself would certainly fail. He sees the worm scaling the trunk of a tree with the greatest ease, but when he essays the same task he finds it a very difficult matter. So he tips his cap figuratively to the worm and, in boyish fashion, admits that it is the better man of the two. And never again, unless inadvertently, will he crush a worm. Even a snake he will kill only in what he conceives to be self-defense.
An American was making his first trip to Europe. On the way between the Azores and Gibraltar the ship encountered a storm of great violence. For an hour or more the traveler stood on the forward deck, watching the titanic struggle, feeling the ship tremble at each impact of the waves, and hearing the roar that only a storm at sea can produce. Upon returning to his friends he said, “Never again can I speak flippantly of the ocean; never again can I use the expression, ‘crossing the pond.’ The sea is too vast and too sublime for that.” He had achieved reverence. Many a child in school can spell the name of the ocean and give a book definition rather glibly, who, nevertheless, has not the faintest conception of what an ocean really is. The tragedy of the matter is that the teacher gives him a perfect mark for his parrot-like definition and spelling and leaves him in crass ignorance of the reality. The boy deals only with the husk and misses the kernel. When he can spell and define, the work has only just begun, and not until the teacher has contrived to have him emotionalize the ocean will he enter into the heart of its greatness, and power, and utility in promoting life, and so come to experience a feeling of respect for it. When it has won his respect he can read Victor Hugo’s matchless description of the sea with understanding, measurable appreciation, and, certainly, a thrill of delight.
It is rare fun for children, and even for grown-ups, to locate the constellations, planets, and stars. Of course, the North Star is everybody’s favorite because it is so steady, so reliable, so dependable. We know just where to find it, and it never disappoints us. Two boys who once were crossing from New York to Naples found great delight in a star in the Southern sky that retained its relative position throughout the journey. At the conclusion of dinner in the evening the boys were wont to repair to the deck to find their star and receive its greetings. In their passage through the Mediterranean they became curious, wondering how it came about that the star failed to change its relative position in their journey of three thousand miles. When they realized that their star is the apex of a triangle whose base is three thousand miles but whose other legs are so long that the base is infinitesimally short by comparison, their amazement knew no bounds and for the first time in their lives they gained a profound respect for space.
This new concept of space was worth the trip across the ocean to those boys, and the wonder is that space had never before meant anything more or other than a word to be spelled. The school and the home had had boundless opportunities to inculcate in them a sense of space, yet this delightful task was left to a passenger on board the ship. But for his kindly offices those boys might have gone on for years conceiving of space as merely a word of five letters. It would have been easy for parent or teacher to engender in them some appreciation of space by explaining to them that if they were to travel thirty miles a day it would require twenty-two years to reach the moon,—which is, in reality, our next-door neighbor,—and that to reach the sun, at the same rate of travel, would require more than eight thousand years, or the added lifetimes of almost three hundred generations. But they were sent abroad to see the wonders of the Old World with no real conception of space and, therefore, no feeling of respect for it. Before their trip abroad they never could have read the last two verses of the eighth chapter of Romans with any real appreciation.
Still our schools go on their complacent way, teaching words, words, words that are utterly devoid of meaning to the pupils, and, sad to relate, seem to think their mission accomplished. The pupils are required to spell words, define words, write words, and parse words day after day as if these words were lifeless and meaningless blocks of wood to be merely tossed up and down and moved hither and thither. So soon as a word becomes instinct with life and meaning, it kindles the child’s interest at its every recurrence and it becomes as truly an entity as a person. It is then endowed with attributes that distinguish it clearly from its fellows and becomes, to the child, a vivid reality in the scheme of life. To our two boys every star that meets their gaze conjures up a host of memories and helps to renew their spiritual experience and widen their horizon. Space is a reality, to them, a mighty reality, and they cannot think of it without a deep sense of respect.
There are people of mature years who have never given to their hands a close examination. Such an examination will disclose the fact that the hand is an instrument of marvelous design. It will be seen that the fingers all differ in length but, when they grasp an orange or a ball, it will be noted that they are conterminous—that the ends form a straight line. This gives them added purchase and far greater power of resistance. Were they of equal length the pressure upon the ball would be distributed and it could be wrested from the grasp far more readily. No mechanical contrivance has ever been designed that is comparable to the hand in flexibility, deftness, adaptability, or power of prehension. It can pick up a needle or a cannon-ball at will. Its touch is as light as a feather or as stark as a catapult. It can be as gentle as mercy or as harsh as battle. It can soothe to repose or rouse to fury. It can express itself in the gentle zephyr or in the devastating whirlwind. Its versatility is altogether worthy of notice, and we may well hold the lesson in history in abeyance, for the nonce, while we inculcate due respect for the hand. For no one can contemplate his hand for five minutes and not gain for it a feeling of profound respect.
What is true of the hand is true of the whole human body. This is the very acme of created things; this is God’s masterpiece. How any one can fail to respect such a wonderful piece of work is beyond explanation. The process of walking or of breathing must hold the thoughtful person enthralled and enchanted. But, strange as it may seem, there are those who seem not to realize in what a marvelous abode their spirits have their home. Such scant respect do they have for their bodies that they defile them and treat them with shameless ignominy. They saturate them with poisons and vulgarize them with unseemly practices. They seem to regard them as mere property to be used or abused at pleasure and not temples to be honored. The man who does not respect his own body can feel no respect or reverence for its Creator nor for the soul that dwells within it. Such a man lacks self-respect and self-respect is the fertile soil in which many virtues flourish. The teaching of physiology that fails to generate a feeling of deep respect for the human body is not the sort of teaching that should obtain in our schools.
Again, a person who is possessed of fine sensibilities sees in the apple tree in full bloom a creation of transcendant beauty and charm. The poet cannot describe it, nor can the artist reproduce it. It is both a mystery and a miracle. Into this miracle nature has poured her lavish treasures of fertility, of rain, of sunshine, and of zephyrs, and from it at the zenith of its beauty the full-throated robin pours forth his heart in melodious greeting. It may be well to dismiss the school to see the circus parade, but even more fitting is it to dismiss the school to see this burst of splendor. In its glorious presence silence is the only language that is befitting. In such a presence sound is discord, for such enchantment as it begets cannot be made articulate. Its influence steals into the senses and lifts the spirit up. To defile or despoil such beauty would be to desecrate a shrine. But the sordid man sees in this symphony of color nothing else than a promise of fruit. His response is wholly physical, not spiritual at all. His spiritual sense seems atrophied and he can do nothing but estimate the bushels of fruit. He feels no respect for the beauty before him and it is evident that somewhere along the line his spiritual education was neglected. He excites our sympathy and our hope that his children may not share his fate.