Now, this is a mistake—the most fatal mistake for ourselves; for we thus tie down our faculties to commonplace life, and refuse to give them the wider scope that nature herself meant for their exercise; the most unfortunate mistake for religion, because in making her heroes inaccessible and almost unnatural, we deter others from laudable efforts, and attach to our faith the stigma of present sterility.
Not only can each one of us become a saint, and that by a simple and ordinary course of life, but the canonized saints themselves bear witness that they reached heaven in no other way, and attained their crowns by no other means. The saint, be assured of it, is the truest gentleman, the pleasantest companion, and most faithful friend.
He is no morose misanthrope, no disenchanted cynic; he is a man with all the natural feelings of humanity, all the amiable traits of good-fellowship, all the nameless graces of good society. There is no pleasing, amenity of human intercourse, no rational exchange of human sentiments, no harmless relaxation of a refined mind, that need be foreign to his nature, and a stranger to his heart.
All men prize honor and straight-forwardness; they welcome cheerfulness and vivacity; they admire a strong will; love of nature and art, sympathy with suffering and with poverty, zealousness in the cause of learning, are all passports to their favor, and incline them to seek the friendship and trust the advice of those in whom these qualities shine.
Now, if we show them that canonized saints and great men well known in the annals of the church have always been distinguished by these traits, will they refuse to admit that the more a man loves his God, the fitter he is to win human sympathy and command human imitation?
The saints have not seldom been unfairly treated, and chiefly by their overzealous biographers; for their holiness has been distilled into such ethereal and miraculous abstractions that we no more dream of grasping it as a means of encouragement than we do of seizing for nourishment upon the summer clouds whose lovely shapes entrance our eyes in the western heavens.
Every one of the saints had an individual character, touching weaknesses of disposition and innocent partialities of nature. Every one of them went to heaven by a separate road, and his specialty of human and natural character alone determined that road. Some were kings and emperors, princes and popes, and great men of the earth; they had to wear soft garments and ermine robes, and spend much time in the display their state required. Now, many sanctimonious persons would have us believe that such display is absolutely and in itself wrong, and can under no circumstances be allowable. The church thinks otherwise, and more generously, and has canonized these men.
Some were beggars or servants, mechanics or husbandmen; passed their days in menial pursuits, and apparently had their minds occupied only by the sordid necessities of their humble degree. Many presumptuous people like to tell us that servile work deteriorates the mind, that beggary is invariably a criminal state, that poverty dwarfs the understanding and hardens the heart. The church thinks otherwise, and more charitably, and these too she has canonized.
Again, some were statesmen and scholars, and the wranglings of courts, the tumult of embassies, the disputes of universities, were the daily atmosphere they breathed. Some officious persons tell us plainly that solitude is the only nurse of holiness, and that, with these surroundings, it is impossible to live unbewildered by the world's noise and untainted by the world's corruption. The church thinks otherwise, and more liberally, and has canonized these men also.
No station in life is too low or too high for God to look upon, and therefore not too low nor too high for God's saints to thrive in.