The World is Growing Poor.—Darwin the naturalist, the observer, the philosopher, is dead. Wagner the greatest composer the world has produced, is silent. Hugo the poet, patriot and philanthropist, is at rest. Three mighty rivers have ceased to flow. The smallest insect was made interesting by Darwin's glance; the poor blind worm became the farmer's friend—the maker of the farm,—and even weeds began to dream and hope.
But if we live beyond life's day and reach the dusk, and slowly travel in the shadows of the night, the way seems long, and being weary we ask for rest, and then, as in our youth, we chide the loitering hours. When eyes are dim and memory fails to keep a record of events; when ears are dull and muscles fail to obey the will; when the pulse is low and the tired heart is weak, and the poor brain has hardly power to think, then comes the dream, the hope of rest, the longing for the peace of dreamless sleep.
SAINTS.—The saints have poisoned life with piety. They have soured the mother's milk. They have insisted that joy is crime—that beauty is a bait with which the Devil captures the souls of men—that laughter leads to sin—that pleasure, in its every form, degrades, and that love itself is but the loathsome serpent of unclean desire. They have tried to compel men to love shadows rather than women—phantoms rather than people.
The saints have been the assassins of sunshine,—the skeletons at feasts. They have been the enemies of happiness. They have hated the singing birds, the blossoming plants. They have loved the barren and the desolate—the croaking raven and the hooting owl—tombstones, rather than statues.
And yet, with a strange inconsistency, happiness was to be enjoyed forever, in another world. There, pleasure, with all its corrupting influences, was to be eternal. No one pretended that heaven was to be filled with self-denial, with fastings and scourgings, with weepings and regrets, with solemn and emaciated angels, with sad-eyed seraphim, with lonely parsons, with mumbling monks, with shriveled nuns, with days of penance and with nights of prayer.
Yet all this self-denial on the part of the saints was founded in the purest selfishness. They were to be paid for all their sufferings in another world. They were "laying up treasures in heaven." They had made a bargain with God. He had offered eternal joy to those who would make themselves miserable here. The saints gladly and cheerfully accepted the terms. They expected pay for every pang of hunger, for every groan, for every tear, for every temptation resisted; and this pay was to bean eternity of joy. The selfishness of the saints was equaled only by the stupidity of the saints.
It is not true that character is the aim of life. Happiness should be the aim—and as a matter of fact is and always has been the aim, not only of sinners, but of saints. The saints seemed to think that happiness was better in another world than here, and they expected this happiness beyond the clouds. They looked upon the sinner as foolish to enjoy himself for the moment here, and in consequence thereof to suffer forever. Character is not an end, it is a means to an end. The object of the saint is happiness hereafter—the means, to make himself miserable here. The object of the philosopher is happiness here and now, and hereafter,—if there be another world.
If struggle and temptation, misery and misfortune, are essential to the formation of what you call character, how do you account for the perfection of your angels, or for the goodness of your God? Were the angels perfected through misfortune? If happiness is the only good in heaven, why should it not be considered the only good here?