The Life Thoughts of Michael Henry corresponded to his life. Their cheery optimism was part of the man’s self. Their philosophy is not profound, their learning is not conspicuous. But they make for happiness. Michael Henry was happy when he made others happy, and he succeeded in his genial ambition. He was only forty-five when his career ended, but he had crowded in that short space many a momentous service, especially to the boys and girls whom he loved as though an elder brother to all of them. It was the Jewish boys and girls who in 1876 presented the first “Michael Henry” to the Royal National Life-boat Institution. The boat was twice replaced by other “Michael Henrys,” and the three boats named after “the scholars’ friend” have saved 136 lives. From time to time appeals are certain to be made for funds to enable further “Michael Henrys” to be launched.
If to bring joy into a life is to save it, then the man Michael Henry saved more lives than all the boats named, or to be named, after him. I have already spoken of his geniality. A word must be added as to his piety. Religion to him was the spring of conduct. Here, again, his optimism reigned supreme. Judaism was the road to good, on earth and in heaven. In his Gossip with Boys he exclaims: “You may be very good Jews and yet very happy ones. Virtue and enjoyment are not incompatible. It is not unmanly to be good. Your right arm will fling a cricket-ball none the less deftly because your left arm has worn the tephillin an hour before you went into the play-ground. Your heart will beat none the less bravely, because it throbs against the four-cornered band of the tsitsith.” These sentences crystallize Michael Henry’s appeal to the young for manliness and confidence.
Virtue is happiness, duty is manliness—these axioms sum up his creed. “The smile of hope” he perceives in the “Psalms of David.” He hears music, he smells perfume in “Home worship.” He tells the “Barmitzvah” that “by imitation of good, great and true men, the work shall be done and triumph crown the toil.” The law and the life which “Moses” proclaimed and led are “both glorious and gracious gifts of heaven to earth.” “Happy we,” he cries in his Elijah, “if when we pass away we leave behind us, like Elijah, a twofold portion of the spirit which those whom we love have every reason to desire of us!” From “Josiah” young and old may learn that “the most manly king of Judah was also the most religious”; so, too, the character of “Nehemiah” was a “combination of manliness and holiness.” “Moses Mendelssohn” enables us to learn to be “good and happy,” and, adds Michael Henry, “it is refreshing to turn from the troubled stories of kings, warriors, and statesmen, to the record of this calm, pure life, in which, as in the religion he followed, peace, love and wisdom are harmoniously combined.” In his Message of Love (Leviticus 19. 18), he quotes with a croon of delight the poet’s thought Seid umschlungen, Millionen (“Millions! be locked in one embrace”).
In his paper on “Peace” he enumerates the practical means by which that end may be advanced, and he continues: “Thus we can promote peace outwardly in the world, and by that effort promote peace inwardly in our hearts; we can spread around us a peace of earth like a sun-picture of the spiritual peace we ask from Heaven for ourselves.” Then, in his paper on “Heaven upon Earth,” he argues that Judaism does not tell us “to strive against the very nature of our being.” There is a not very thickly veiled controversialism in the sentences that follow: “We need not turn the left cheek when stricken on the right, nor impoverish ourselves to enrich the poor, nor let the guilty go free because we are not righteous enough to punish, nor leave the holy charms of family delights to follow the standard of fanatical self-denial. But what we have to do is this: True to the teachings of our faith, we have to take our nature as it is; with all its aims, its passions, its impulses; and, beating the evil from it as the thresher strikes the chaff from the grain, or the smelter frees the dross from the gold, we must shape and trim the pure material into its best form, and work it to its best purpose, drawing from it all that it has of good; giving to all its strength an upward tendency.” But Michael Henry is not at his best when he is arguing. We enjoy him in his unreasoning but fascinating optimism, as when, in The Everlasting Light, after describing the troubles and clouds of life and destiny, he comfortably assures us: “Have faith, and it all seems easy.” We see the real Michael Henry in the three stories or rather parables with which the volume ends, “How we Spoilt our Holiday,” the “Schoolboy and the Angel,” and the “Everlasting Rose.” These three chapters at least would bear reprinting. They express Michael Henry in his most charming aspects of sincerity, clean-heartedness, and unconquerable belief in the ideal.
But there is one chapter missing from the Life Thoughts of Michael Henry. It is a strange omission. No man ever excelled the subject of this article in his power to harmonize his religion with his life. Michael Henry as pietist, as lover of children, as editor of the Jewish Chronicle (from 1868), as agent for patents—under all these aspects the man was one and the same. His Life Thoughts are a torso, unless we draw on his writings as a mechanician. To restrict the selection to his contribution to the “Sabbath Readings” was to misunderstand him. And what a notable chapter could have been added from the source indicated. I have read his Defence of the Present Patent Law (1866). It is an able plea, but though it deals with a severely commercial topic in a business-like spirit, the whole pamphlet is lit up by the writer’s spiritual personality. Another fact revealed is this: It shows Michael Henry to have been possessed of a ready wit, a keen sense of humor. This note is missing from the volume of Life Thoughts.
Even more characteristic is the Inventor’s Almanac, the annual issue of which was begun in 1858. To comprehend Michael Henry it is absolutely necessary to turn over these sheets, a fine set of which (as continued also by Mr. Ernest de Pass) may be seen in the British Museum. Each Almanac consists of a single page, on which are crowded masses of technical information—statistical, practical, and historical. The artistic design is clever. Now, the reason why I am referring to these almanacs is this: From 1862 onwards, the sheets are adorned by quotations as well as pictures. In 1864 Michael Henry quotes from Disraeli: “You have disenthroned force, and placed on her high seat intelligence.” Then the compiler must have been struck by the fact that Disraeli’s remark had a scriptural analogue. In 1865, and in every subsequent year, the Almanac is surmounted by the maxim: “Wisdom is better than strength” (Ecclesiastes). The reference is to chapter 9 verse 16. In 1866 he quotes Gladstone: “There is no honourable, no useful place, upon this busy, teeming earth, for the idle man.” In another issue he uses a passage from that once popular versifier Mackay; union had often been tried by man for purposes of war, why not try it for purposes of peace, so that “construction, industry, and mutual aid,” may “lead from darkness into light.” Naturally enough he revels in Tennyson:
Men our brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new,
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.
He used that couplet in 1872. Of course, he presents in due course the same poet’s
Let Knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell!
Quite obvious all this, no doubt. Michael Henry was, one must admit, given to the cult of the obvious. Therein lies not blame but praise. Many of us just fail because we do not see what lies simply before us. Tennyson was the incarnation of obviousness, hence he helped his generation to see. Michael Henry had no very keen or far vision. But he saw straight, he saw true. He was not an ocean goer, he hugged the shore within a dozen miles or so. Very like a life-boat, after all! Clearly a “Michael Henry” in good working order will always be the best monument to his memory! And he belongs to the type which ought to be remembered.