Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative

by George Wharton James

Is it not glorious to live in such a realm of high spiritual courage? To do unconsciously? To be unconsciously? Not to have to work your courage up to the daring point; to nerve yourself for the plunge, but to plunge anyhow, trusting, knowing that in doing the highest, the noblest, the best thing conceivable to you, you can never fail? What does starvation of the body mean to the man whose soul is uplifted into the presence of the Most High? Such an one can live for forty days or forty years, if necessary, without more food than would feed a sparrow. What does isolation from his fellows—preachers, doctors, lawyers, every-day men and women—mean to a man who communes daily with angels, archangels, and with God Himself? Does he feel slighted, hurt, neglected? Such a courage as this I myself desire, so that I may live it, radiate it every moment.

It was this courage that made John Brown march on that most quixotic of all marches—with a handful of men to free the slave. It was rebellion, anarchy, unlawful invasion, the breaking of man's law—of course it was. But he saw a higher vision than man's outlook, he felt a higher call than man's demand, and he knew no law of man in the obedience of his soul, body, life, his all, to the call of the Spirit. And though a rude Kansas pioneer and farmer, he had the soul-courage to obey. Forward! March! He marched to his death!

Did he? No! He marched to the death of his body, but he began a triumphant march in the heavens forever brilliantly illuminating the minds and souls of men, and lifting them up into a higher state of life, making them less sordid, less afraid of position, life, honor, less easily influenced by the keen censure and scorn of the blind world.

Talk about battlefields and batteries, forts and forlorn hopes and the courages of the Charge of the Light Brigade, or of the Stand of the Old Guards at Waterloo, or of Dewey sailing into Manila Harbor; what were those acts of physical courage compared with the moral heroism that leads a man to dare the stake, the cross, or the tortures of the bigot? Read Mark Twain's Life of Joan of Arc, and feel your heart throb to the high-souled, divinely inspired courage of that girl of eighteen; not only physical courage, as when she led, in person, the charges of the French army against the English, who had been victorious in France for almost a hundred years, but when she dared the great ecclesiastical courts that badgered and baited her, as she sat unaided, alone, unbefriended, undefended, unadvised by man, for weeks at a time, when the cowardly hounds were determined to send her to the stake. Where did her heroism and courage come from that she, a mere country peasant child, who had never even ridden a horse, or seen a battlefield, who never had read a book, or knew the first thing of guiding and controlling soldiers, or setting an army in battle array; I say, where did her courage come from, that she could dare to go into the proud presence of nobles and warriors and demand that they give her a guard to take her to the King of France, where she assured him that she would soon drive out the English and have him duly crowned king of his reconquered provinces? Here was the radiant life in actual, potent exercise. She radiated courage and faith, just as the sun radiates heat—in such abundance that men sweated with it, men were fired to the intense heat and fervor of new life and courage with it. So that, from a cowed, disheartened pack of whipped men, who fled from the mere sound of approach of a small body of English soldiers, raw recruits, as well as seasoned veterans, shouted to be led against the foe, and when once in the conflict hammered away regardless of wounds, even of death, until victory was theirs.

Whence came this radiant courage and power? It was simply because she dared to listen to the voices speaking to her soul, and nothing else counted. That's the life I want to get hold of. That is the courage and the life I wish to radiate. Afraid of men, of starvation, of opposition, of censure, of hatred, of ostracism? No! Why should we be afraid to lose a few cents, when our hands are filled with diamonds, and rubies, and pearls, and nuggets of gold? Why should we fear men, when we have the courage of our convictions?

Let us look not down, but up, and seek to draw from the heavens above the inspiration, the courage, the bravery, the heroism of the soul.

There has recently passed away in despotic Russia a man whose life for years has radiated moral courage throughout the world. Tolstoi had the courage of his convictions. He felt that social distinctions were wrong. Immediately he did the practical thing—put himself on the plane of every common laboring man by personally becoming a tiller of his own soil. "What a fool!" exclaimed the aristocratic world to which, by birth, he belonged. "Does he think he can change our opinions by that silly act?" they cried. No! He knew it would have little or no effect on them, but he was compelled to clear his own soul. So he braved their laughter and scorn, their contumely and contempt, that the world might know for certain what he really did think and feel.

He came to the conclusion that the Government of Russia, and the conduct of the ministers of the Greek Church—the established church of Russia—were neither in conformity with true religion nor true brotherhood. Though the former was despotic, and the latter as "hide-bound and dogmatic as rigid adherence to dead forms and creeds ever makes men," he fearlessly expressed his inmost convictions against both and called upon them to change, reform, amend their ways and actually become what they professed to be. The state threatened him with Siberian banishment unless he kept silence, but never till death silenced him did he heed the threatening command; the church cast him out, and then he wrote a book, My Religion, that gave newer and more exalted conceptions of religion to the world, even though possibly it would be hard to find a single man who accepts everything just as Tolstoi set it forth in that book.

He came to the decision that the fine clothes and luxurious surroundings of the rich and noble were neither Christian nor humane. They caused envy and bitterness in the hearts of those whose lives were one long struggle with poverty. So at once he cast off his gorgeous apparel, denuded his own rooms of all unnecessary and elaborate furnishings, and thus, again and further, placed himself where men could feel the truth and power of his utterances about human brotherhood.

When Russia declared war against Japan, Tolstoi wrote a letter to the Emperor, the state officials, and the Russian people that was a loud trumpet blast heard throughout the world calling upon them in the name of their Creator and down-trodden humanity to stop! and declare peace. Many a man had been sent to Siberia for life—nay, sent to be speedily tortured to death—for far less than this, but this fearless old man let his voice ring out with a power that convinced thousands as never before that war at its best was but a relic of barbarism and a disgrace to every professedly progressive nation.