A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character

by Newell Dwight Hillis

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.