In the olden days, when the poisoner was in every palace, the Doge of Venice offered a reward for a crystal goblet that would break the moment a poison touched it. Perhaps the idea was suggested to the Prince because his soul already fulfilled the thought, for one drop of sin always shatters the cup of joy and wastes life's precious wine. How do events interpret this principle! One day Louis, King of France, was riding in the forest near his gorgeous and guilty palace of Versailles. He met a peasant carrying a coffin. "What did the man die of?" asked the King. "Of hunger," answered the peasant. But the sound of the hunt was in the King's ear, and he forgot the cry of want. Soon the day came when the King stood before the guillotine, and with mute appeals for mercy fronted a mob silent as statues, unyielding as stone, grimly waiting to dip the ends of their pikes in regal blood. He gave cold looks; he received cold steel.
Marie Antoinette, riding to Notre Dame for her bridal, bade her soldiers command all beggars, cripples and ragged people to leave the line of the procession. The Queen could not endure for a brief moment the sight of those miserable ones doomed to unceasing squalor and poverty. What she gave others she received herself, for soon, bound in an executioner's cart, she was riding toward the place of execution midst crowds who gazed upon her with hearts as cold as ice and hard as granite. When Foulon was asked how the starving populace was to live he answered: "Let them eat grass." Afterward, Carlyle says, the mob, maddened with rage, "caught him in the streets of Paris, hanged him, stuck his head upon a pike, filled his mouth with grass, amid shouts as of Tophet from a grass-eating people." What kings and princes gave they received. This is the voice of nature and conscience: "Behold, sin crouches at the door!"
This divine principle also explains man's attitude toward his fellows. The proverb says man makes his own world. Each sees what is in himself, not what is outside. The jaundiced eye yellows all it beholds. The chameleon takes its color from the bark on which it clings. Man gives his color to what his thought is fastened upon. The pessimist's darkness makes all things dingy. The youth disappointed with his European trip said he was a fool for going. He was, for the reason that he was a fool before he started. He saw nothing without, because he had no vision within. He gave no sight, he received no vision. An artist sees in each Madonna that which compels a rude mob to uncover in prayer, but the savage perceives only a colored canvas. Recently a foreign traveler, writing of his impressions of our city, described it to his fellows as a veritable hades. But his fellow countryman, in a similar volume, recorded his impressions of our art, architecture and interest in education. Each saw that for which he looked.
This principle explains man's attitude toward his God. God governs rocks by force, animals by fear, savage man by force and fear, true men by hope and love. Man can take God at whatsoever level he pleases. He who by beastliness turns his body into a log will be held by gravity in one spot like a log. He who lives on a level with the animals will receive fear and law and lightnings. He who approaches God through laws of light and heat and electricity will find the world-throne occupied by an infinite Agassiz. Some approach God through physical senses. They behold his storms sinking ships, his tornadoes mowing down forests. These find him a huge Hercules; yet the Judge who seems cruel to the wicked criminal may seem the embodiment of gentleness and kindness to his obedient children. Man determines what God shall be to him. Each paints his own picture of Deity. Macbeth sees him with forked lightnings without and volcanic fires within. The pure in heart see him as the face of all-clasping Love. Give him thy heart and he will give thee love, effulgent love, like the affection of mother or lover or friend, only dearer than either. Give him thy ways, and he will overarch life's path as the heavens overarch the flowers, filling them with heat by day and yielding cooling dews by night. Give him but a flickering aspiration and he will give thee balm for the bruised reed and flame for the smoking flax. Give him the publican's prayer and he will give thee mercy like the wideness of the sea. Give his little ones but a cup of cold water and he will give thee to drink of the water of the river of life and bring thee to the banquet hall in the house of many mansions.
[1] Mod. Ptrs., Vol. 5, Chap. 1. The Earth—Veil Star papers: A Walk Among Trees.
VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
"Only he that uses shall even so much as keep. Unemployed strength steadily diminishes. The sluggard's arm grows soft and flabby. So, even in this lowest sphere, the law is inexorable. Having is using. Not using is losing. Idleness is paralysis. New triumphs must only dictate new struggles. If it be Alexander of Macedon, the Orontes must suggest the Euphrates, and the Euphrates the Indus. Always it must be on and on. One night of rioting in Babylon may arrest the conquering march. Genius is essentially athletic, resolute, aggressive, persistent. Possession is grip, that tightens more and more. Ceasing to gain, we begin to lose. Ceasing to advance, we begin to retrograde. Brief was the interval between Roman conquest of Barbarians, and Barbarian conquest of Rome. Blessed is the man who keeps out of the hospital and holds his place in the ranks. Blessed the man, the last twang of whose bow-string is as sharp as any that went before, sending its arrow as surely to the mark."—Roswell W. Hitchcock.
CHAPTER IV.
VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has been called the picture-gallery of heroes. These patriots and martyrs who won our first battles for liberty and religion made nobleness epidemic. Oft stoned and mobbed in the cities they founded and loved, they fled into exile, where they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and slept in the holes of the earth. Falling at last in the wilderness, it may be said that no man knoweth their sepulcher and none their names. But joyfully let us confess that the institutions most eminent and excellent in our day represent the very principles for which these martyrs died and, dying, conquered. For those heroes were the first to dare earth's despots. They won the first victory over every form of vice and sin. They wove the first threads of the flag of liberty and made it indeed the banner of the morning, for they dyed it crimson in their heart's-blood. In all the history of freedom there is no chapter comparable for a moment to the glorious achievements of these men of oak and rock. Their deeds shine on the pages of history like stars blazing in the night and their achievements have long been celebrated in song and story. "The angels of martyrdom and victory," says Mazzini, "are brothers; both extend protecting wings over the cradle of the future life."