History is full of these transformations wrought by the heart. It was a new enthusiasm that changed Augustine the epicurean into Augustine the church father. It was a new enthusiasm that turned Howard the pleasure-lover into Howard the prison-reformer. It was a glowing heart that lent power to Mazzini and Garibaldi and gave Italy her new hope and liberty. Indeed, the history of each life is the history of its new loves. The enthusiasms are beacon lights that glow in the highway along which the soul journeys forward. When the hero's ships were becalmed Virgil tells us that Aeolus struck the hollow mountain with his staff and straightway, released from their caves, the winds went forth to stir the waves and smite upon the sails and sweep the becalmed ship on toward its harbor. Oh, beautiful story, telling us how Christ touches the heart with his regenerating hand to release the soul's deeper convictions, to sweep man forward to the heavenly haven!
If sentiment working in sound can make music; if working in colors, etc., it can fill galleries with statues and pictures; if sentiment working in literature can produce poems, it should not seem strange that the heart, with its affections, furnishes the key of knowledge and wisdom. The time was when authors were supposed to think out their truths; now we know that the greatest truths are felt out. Matthew Arnold said that mere knowledge is cold as an icicle, but once experienced and touched with noble feelings truth becomes sweetness and light. This author thought that the first requisite for a good writer was a sensitive and sympathetic heart.
Even in Shakespeare the springs of genius were not in the mind. The heart of our greatest poet was so sensitive that he could not see an apple blossom without hoping that no untimely frost would nip it; could not see the clusters turn purple under the autumn sun without hoping that hailstones would not pound off the rich clusters; could not see a youth leave his home to seek his fortune without praying that he would return to his mother laden with rich treasures; could not see a bride go down the aisle of the church without sending up a petition that many years might intervene before death's hand should touch her white brow. Sympathy in the heart so fed the springs of thought in the mind that it was easy for the poet to put himself in another's place. And so, while his pen wrote, his heart felt itself to be the king and also his servant, to be the merchant and also his clerk, to be the general and also his soldier. He saw the assassin drawing near the throne with a dagger beneath his cloak; he went forth with King Lear to shiver beneath the wintry blasts; he rejoiced with Rosalind and wept with Hamlet, and there was no joy or grief or woe or wrong that ever touched a human heart that he did not perfectly feel and, therefore, perfectly describe. For depth of mind begins with depth of heart. The greatest writers are primarily seers and only incidentally thinkers. As of old, so now, for a thousand thinkers there is only one great seer.
Having affirmed the influence of the heart upon the intellect and scholarship, let us hasten to confess that the heart determines the religious belief and creed. It is often said that belief is a matter of pure reason determined wholly by evidence. And doubtless it is true that in approaching mathematical proofs man is to discharge his mind of all color. That two and two are four is true for the poet and the miser, for the peaceable man not less than the litigious. But of the other truths of life it is a fact that with the heart man believes. We approach wheat with scales, we measure silk with a yardstick; we test the painting with taste and imagination, and the symphony with the sense of melody; motives and actions are tested by conscience; we approach the stars with a telescope, while purity of heart is the glass by which we see God. The scales that are useful in the laboratory are utterly valueless in the art gallery. The scientific faculty that fits Spencer for studying nature unfits him for studying art. In his old age Huxley, the scientist, wrote an essay forty pages long to prove that man was more beautiful than woman. Imagine some Tyndall approaching the transfiguration of Raphael to scrape off the colors and test them with acid and alkali for finding out the proportion of blue and crimson and gold. These are the methods that would give the village paint-grinder precedency above genius itself.
In 1837 two boys entered Faneuil hall and heard Wendell Phillips' defense of Lovejoy. One youth was an English visitor who saw the portraits of Otis and Hancock, yet saw them not; heard the words of Phillips, yet heard them not, and because his heart was in London believed not unto patriotism. But the blood of Adams was in the veins of the other youth. He thought of Samuel Adams, who heard the firing at Lexington and exclaimed; "What a glorious morning this is!" He thought of John Adams and his love of liberty. He thought of the old man eloquent, John Quincy Adams, in the Halls of Congress, and as he listened to the burning words of the speaker, tears filled his eyes and pride filled his soul. It was his native land. With his heart he believed unto patriotism.
What the man is determines largely what his intellect thinks about God. When the heart is narrow, harsh, and rigorous its theology is despotic and cruel. When the heart grows kindly, sympathetic and of autumnal richness, it emphasizes the sympathy and love of God. Each man paints his own picture of God. The heart lends the pigments. Souls full of sweetness and light fill the divine portrait with the lineaments of love. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.
Happy, indeed, our age, in that the heart is now beginning to color our civilization. Vast, indeed, the influence of library and lecture-hall, of gallery and store and market-place, but the most significant fact of our day is that sympathy is baptizing our industries and institutions with new effort. Intellect has lent the modern youth instruments many and powerful. Inventive thought has lent fire to man's forge, tools for his hands, books for his reading, has lent arts, sciences, institutions. The modern youth stands forth in the aspect of the Roman conqueror to whom the citizens went forth to bestow gifts, one taking his chariot, one leading a steed, the children scattering flowers in the way, young men and maidens taking the hero's name upon their lips. Unfortunately multitudes have declined those high gifts, turning away from the open door of the schoolhouse and college; many young feet have crossed the threshold of the saloon. Having entered our museum or art-gallery, multitudes enter places of evil resort.
Despising the opportunity offered by music or eloquence, by book or newspaper, by trade and profession, many choose sloth and self-indulgence. These needy millions, blinded with sin and ignorance, stand forth as a great opportunity for loving hearts. Sympathy is making beautiful the pathway of knowledge, that young hearts may be allured along the shining way. By a thousand arts and devices young people of refinement and culture are founding centers of light among the poor. The opportunity that William the Silent found in the starving millions of Holland; that Garrison found in the miserable slaves of the South; that Livingstone found in Africa, the modern hero is finding in the tenement-house district. Through sympathy a new hope is entering into all classes of society.
The heart is also coloring industry. This year it is said that more than a score of great industrial institutions in our country have, to the factory, added gymnasium, recreation-hall, schoolroom, library, free musicals and lectures. The intellect has failed to solve the social problems by giving allopathic doses from Poor Richard's Almanac. Impotent also those dreamers who have insisted that society must have socialism—either God's or the devil's. Impotent those who, during the past week, have proposed to cure economic ills by spitting the heads of tyrants upon bayonets. But what force and law cannot do is slowly being done by sympathy and good-will. The heart is taking the rigor out of toil, the drudgery out of service, the cruelty out of laws, harshness out of theology, injustice out of politics. Love has done much. The social gains of the future are to be to the gradual progress of sympathy and love.
Unto man who goes through life working, weeping, laughing, loving, comes the heart believing unto immortality. For reason oft the immortal hope burns low and the stars dim and disappear, but for the heart, never! Scientists tell us matter is indestructible. And the heart nourishes an immortal hope that no doubt can quench, no argument destroy, no misfortune annihilate. Comforting, indeed, for reasons, the arguments of Socrates that life survives death. After the death of his beloved daughter Tullia, Cicero outlined arguments which have consoled the mind of multitudes. But in the hour of darkness and blackness, for a man to put out upon Death's dark sea, upon the argument of Cicero, is like some Columbus committing himself to a single plank in the hope of discovering an unseen continent.