[SYSTEMS OF BELIEF.—Rev. W. H. Milburn, 1860.]
Pleasure is right, and right is pleasure; and hence comes the system of Epicurus. Epicurus fasted because it gave him an exquisite taste and enjoyment of his meal; Epicurus slept not unduly because with his waking he found his intellect balanced and his physique refreshed. He awaked and remained awake, in order that his slumber might bring him quiet and repose. Thus starting from his condition we come very naturally to the luxury of the Sybarite, where the crimson wine sparkles and obscenity riots, and where the forms of vice and beastly debauchery flourish, in the saloons, the gambling-houses, and drinking-shops of this city. In all the forms of impurity and sensuality you have the practical life of this Epicurean philosophy: virtue is pleasure; therefore, pleasure is virtue, and wherever there is wrong done to our nature, by the gratification of our animal passions; wherever God's law is degraded and man's nature reduced to the level of the brute—you have the practical exposition of the tenets of the system.
Upon the other hand, the system of Zeno seems to stand in direct opposition, in antipodal relations to that of Epicurus. Virtue sufficeth, says Zeno. Virtue is the law of the universe; the universe is law, law and law only. Dead, mechanical force, iron necessity; the sweep of fatalism in its terrific circle; this, and nothing more. No pulse of pity; no heart of tenderness; no thought of God in all the sweep of imagination or circle of reason. I, man, am a microcosm, a synopsis of all the laws and facts of the universe; I am not only part and parcel of it, but an image and reflection of it; virtue is resident in the mind, and has nothing to do with pain or pleasure. Pain and pleasure are of the senses and are wholly alien to the understanding, says Zeno. I am to be master of all suffering. What care I for infirmity? I stand here the noblest being in the whole creation; may I not be master of that creation? The brutes may writhe in their ecstasy of pain, they may shriek in the fearful spasms of their suffering; but I, a man, that seem to be a mirror of creation, may I not be master of these agonies, and stand, with folded arms, disdainful of every sort of sorrow, of all pangs of pity, or tenderness, or affection? of what is called friendship, love? These things are the whimpering sentimentalities of women and children, and I have nothing to do with them. The folded arms, the clenched fist, the tightly drawn lips, be mine; and if pain become too strong for suffering there is a portal which my own hand can open; it swings apart obedient to my poignard, and suicide is my resort; therefore apathy is the perfection of human character; a deadness of sentiment, a hardihood of courage, a noble daring, a port of pride, a disdainful mien—these are what become the intellect as the master of the earth. Therefore, my brain is to be all crystal, my heart of adamant. Such is the Stoical system. In both there was much of beauty and ingenuity, of philosophical insight and depth, largeness of conception, fullness and admirableness of treatment. But they both, in common with all other systems, aside and apart from our holy faith, lacked one master-power; the great power of the heart, which appeals to the heart of the whole earth.
I might convince your understanding of the propriety of Epicureanism, of the grandeur and nobleness of Stoicism; I might warm you in this direction; I might chill you in that; but when I speak to that part of your nature which is deeper and nobler than the intellect; when I come to ask the suffrage of a simple human nature, I must be armed with a sublimer word than the language of either. Take Christianity in comparison with them; it teaches that there is consistency and coherency between virtue and pleasure, but that I am to be loyal to virtue. It unites the opposite systems of Epicurus and Zeno; it takes their half-truths and solidifies and unites them in one complete full-orbed and rounded whole.
[THE INDIAN CHIEF.]
[The following poem is founded on a traditionary story which is common on the borders of the great Falls of Niagara, although differing in some unimportant particulars.]
The rain fell in torrents, the thunder roll'd deep,
And silenced the cataract's roar;
But neither the night, nor the tempest could keep
The warrior chieftain on shore.
The war-shout has sounded, the stream must be cross'd
Why lingers the leader afar?
'Twere better his life than his glory be lost;
He never came late to the war.