HOPE'S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.
"Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let Darkness keep her raven gloss;
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with Death to beat the ground!"—Tennyson.
"Soul, rule thyself. On passion, deed, desire,
Lay thou the laws of thy deliberate will.
Stand at thy chosen post. Faith's sentinel:
Though Hell's lost legions ring thee round with fire,
Learn to endure. Dark vigil hours shall tire
Thy wakeful eyes; regrets thy bosom thrill;
Slow years thy loveless flower of youth shall kill;
Yea, thou shalt yearn for lute and wanton lyre.
Yet is thy guerdon great; thine the reward
Of those elect, who, scorning Circe's lure,
Grown early wise, make living light their lord.
Clothed with celestial steel, these walk secure,
Masters, not slaves. Over their heads the pure
Heavens bow, and guardian seraphs wave God's sword."—V. A. Symonds.
CHAPTER XIV.
HOPE'S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.
The soul is monarch of three kingdoms. Man lives at once in the present, the past and the future. Memory presides over yesterday; to-day is ruled by reason; to-morrow is under the sway of hope. The ancient seer who stood by the historic vine reflecting how the rain of yesterday had disappeared to give its sweet liquors to the roots only to reappear to-morrow in purple clusters, gave us a beautiful image of himself. Each human life is like unto a vine—its trunk manifest in the present; its roots deeply buried in the past; its branches throwing themselves forward, ripening fruit for days to come. Life is a solid column of days all compacted together. To-day's usefulness is in the number of wise, happy and helpful yesterdays, whose accumulated treasures crowd forward the soul's present activities. But for his yesterdays stored up in memory man would be impotent for any heroic thought or deed. He would remain a perpetual infant. As the child journeys away from the cradle memory gathers up and carries forward faces, words, books, arts, sciences, literatures, and these recollections are embalmed and transmitted as soul-capital, legacies unspeakably precious.
Yesterday, therefore, is no mausoleum of dead deeds; no storehouse of mummies. Memory is a granary holding seed for to-morrow's sowing; memory is an armory holding weapons for to-morrow's battles, memory is a medicine-chest with balms for to-morrow's hurts; memory is a library with wisdom for to-morrow's emergency. Yesterday holds the full store of to-day's civilization, contains our tools, conveniences, knowledges; contains our battlefields and victories; above all gives us Bethlehem and Calvary. But alone man's yesterday is impotent; his to-morrow insufficient. The true man binds all his days together with an earnest, intense, passionate purpose. His yesterdays, to-days and to-morrows march together, one solid column, animated by one thought, constrained by one conspiracy of desire, energizing toward one holy and helpful purpose, to serve man and love God.
God governs man through the regency of hope. The reasons thereof are self-evident. Man is born a long way from home. No cradle rocks a full-orbed manhood. The babe begins a mere handful of germs; a bough of unblossomed buds. It is a weary climb from nothing to manhood, at its best. As things rise in the scale of being the distance between birth and maturity widens. Mollusks are born close up to their full estate, sandflies mature in two days, butterflies in two weeks, humming-birds in as many months. But let no man think the vast all-shadowing redwood trees of California grew in a mushroomic night. When the seed first thrust its rootlets down into the soil and its plumule up to the sunshine it entered upon a long career. Saved by hope after 800 years of growth it gives shade to myriads of birds; beams for lath and loom and ship in the service of industry; lends pen and pencil to poet and artist in the service of beauty; through desk and pew enters into man's intellectual and moral life; through instruments of convenience strengthens the sweet amenities of the home; working, it also waited and is saved by hope.
Man stands at the very summit of creation. He is at the head of all that creep and swim and walk and fly. Preparatory to his dominion he begins with the lowest and runs the whole gamut of experience of all living things below him. And hope alone can save him as he journeys upward through all the intermediate stages on his way to his throne and his God. Big with destiny, he is saved by hope. Not to-day and not yesterday can suffice. The present offers only standing room—four-and-twenty hours. Memory is a bin banked with snowdrifts, not the waving harvest-fields. Man's life is all in front of him. His large endowment asks for an extended period of time, asks seventy years for skill toward his body; asks an immortal destiny for mind and heart. He is saved by hope and futurity.
Consider the scope and functions of hope and aspiration. Man is governed from above and within; while rocks, birds, beasts are governed from below and without. Gravity holds the bowlder in its place. The channel saith to the river: "Thus far and no farther." The fawn that is struck, the lion that strikes, the eagle dwelling above both, are controlled by fear. The charioteer drives his steeds from behind and controls by rein and scourge. But man is controlled from within and in front. God does not scourge his children forward through whips of fear. Hopes moving on before him lure him onward. The Italian artist shows us the child passing near the precipice. Then drew near a gentle guardian spirit. The unseen friend rolled along the pathway apples of Paradise and the child, following after with shouts of glee, was lured from danger. To the beauty of the artist's thought Homer's story adds elements of instruction. When the Grecian boy was pursued by a giant whose breath was fire, whose hand held a huge club, two invisible beings lent help. One took the boy's hand and lifted him forward, the other casting an invisible cord over him flew before him until his speed was doubled and the palace gates gave shelter. Oh, beautiful story of God's gentle rule o'er men! When troubles sweep over the world like sheeted storms, when men fear exceedingly and strong men cower and shrink and little ones believe the next step to be the precipice, then God smiles. Striking some sweet bell he sends forth messengers to lure men forward; they hang stars in man's night; they whisper that the twilight is nothing, since it is morning twilight; that fears are bats and owls hooting at the dawn; that hope is a lark singing the new day; that God reigns and all is well. Then depart all fears and superstitions. The courage of the future comes; the columns begin a forward march. These upward movements of society are the yearnings of God's heart lifting his children forward by hope.