There are few things we more admire in others than energy of character. Indolence is the weightiest of burdens. It has been well said, “People that have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.” Sluggishness is the paralysis of the mind, and the grave of physical health. The intellectual faculties of the sluggard are like pearls in the depths of the sea, or ingots of priceless ore in an undiscovered gold-field. They are a lost treasure. But they are more. Their loss entails life-long death. “Desires kill the slothful, for his hands have refused to work.”[127] The most miserable of men is the idler. Pleasure he cannot enjoy. Food without an appetite is worse than useless; it is positively noxious. A keen relish for delightful pastime is the fruit of healthy industry. But from this the sluggard revolts, as do children from ghosts and hobgoblins. For him there needs no demon to tempt; he is the direst of tempters to himself. Sloth is the couch of Lucifer. Moreover, it stifles self-respect, awakening in its stead a rancorous spirit of hostility to those of opposite character. The loudest grumblers are idlers. Being out of sorts with themselves, they can ill brook the conflicting influences of those who relish labor. When positive and negative electricity conflict, lightning is the result. And when the magic charms of ceaseless industry shine like sunbeams on the stagnant, marshy nature of the do-nothing, there is generated a brood of vipers which thrive by diffusing poison.
It is not wonderful that the saints should one and all have declared unceasing war against sloth. They were prodigies of industry. The mighty feats of labor which they successively undertook, and, in most instances, amid harassing embarrassment, carried to speedy completion, astonish the most energetic. It would seem as if their bodies had been recast in some unearthly mould, whence they came forth purged from all animal properties. It was not so much that they acted in harmonious concert with the will, as that they appear instinctively to have in some sort anticipated its behests, outrunning it in the race of industry. And as the sluggard, imperceptibly, becomes so besotted as to seem denaturalized, so, on the other hand, the quickened energies of the saints assumed an unflagging elasticity, second only to the miraculous gift of bilocation, whereby, at sundry intervals, they were empowered to be simultaneously present in different localities. If it be true that no great enterprise has ever been accomplished without sustained effort, and that before the levelling force of persistent determination the most appalling difficulties soon disappear, it is no less certain that by none more than by the saints has this cheering truth been realized. In a just appreciation of the value and dignity of labor, and the refreshing streams of pleasure that flow from it, their history shows them to have excelled: nor is it too much to say that on this one ground alone they would be entitled to the gratitude and veneration of mankind.
Hence the uniform cheerfulness which characterized them, and which they ungrudgingly seized every means of imparting to others. It is among the balmiest comforts which this shifting world can bestow to hold constant, or even frequent, intercourse with men of happy and contented minds. They make life a cloudless sunshine, beneath whose genial warmth the chilling shadows of sorrow and depression must needs melt rapidly away. The happiest of men were the saints. Descrying in nature’s tiniest product but a feebly reflected beam of uncreated beauty, they could sing with the Florentine bard:
“La gloria di colui che tutto muove
Per l’universo penetra, e risplende
In una parte più, e meno altrove.
*****
O gloriose stelle, o lume pregno
Di gran virtù, del quale io riconosco
Tutto, qual che si sia, il mio ingegno.”[128]
If to murmur or grumble was with them a sin, to be blithe and cheerful was the lightest of duties. Hours of sadness they indeed had, when their own and the world’s sins were present to their piercing minds. But through those passing eclipses there evermore shone out a radiant smile—glittering sparks, issuing from the glowing furnace of the heart within, where constantly burned the loving recollection of promises sure to be redeemed and favors graciously vouchsafed.
“Sweet intercourse
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow—
To brute denied, and are of love the food.”
There are, it seems to us, but few more desirable fortunes than a state of perpetual cheerfulness. It is one which is not to be purchased with gold. Its roots must be cast in the “eternal hills.” The saints understood this. They held not in fiefdom from men their changeless buoyancy of spirits. It was not with them a vortical flux and reflux. It was not a checkered alternation of rapturous mirth and gloomy dejection. Such is the ephemeral gladness of the shallow humorist or the surfeited bon vivant. The cheerfulness of the saints had nothing of the spasmodic. It was not a rushing avalanche of fitfully majestic grandeur. It was a calm, stilly lake of perennial transparency, lying in a hushed valley of mossy verdure, fringed by a redolent clustering of midsummer’s fairest flowers, reflecting the many-colored beauty of a rich autumnal foliage, and resounding to the blessed harmonies of nature’s feathered choristers. It was a fixed and permanent habit of mind, sustaining the faculties in even security, keeping the emotions of the will poised in rational equilibrium, dispelling all care, all discontent, all overweening solitude, and diffusing throughout their being a moral odor of sweet and undying fragrance.
One of the most evident results of such a state of mind is a spirit of disinterestedness. This rare gift is, we consider, the strongest proof of solid virtue. It is also the most winning attraction observable in Christian character; and this, doubtless, is why it is so frequently counterfeited, and employed as a subterfuge to disguise the petty artifices of selfishness. It was not from disinterestedness, but to be rid of the anxiety attendant upon wealth, that the Grecian philosopher cast his gold into the sea. He was the founder of a numerous school, whose adherents, lacking true greatness of soul, comfort themselves, and seek to hoodwink others, by aping excellence which they do not possess. Disinterestedness, if it implies not sacrifice in actu, at least supposes a readiness to submit, as often as need be, to the loss of private interest. It seeks to eradicate, root and branch, all narrow self-seeking. Herein lies the secret of its power in evoking sympathy. It subdues the sternest enemy, wins plaudits from the most callous observer, captivates all well-regulated minds, and goes straight to every true, tender, and impressible heart. Knaves are well aware of its popularity; conceal under its lambkin-like guilelessness their wolfish cunning; and frequently glide, upon its unerring prestige, into sudden and unmerited fortune. But only with the saints—except in instances so rare as but to confirm the rule—has disinterestedness attained its full growth. Riches, high position, the esteem of the great ones of this world, such things they deem it a luxury to be able to despise. But they stopped not here, for this is but the threshold of disinterestedness. A stilly and breathless contentment with the existing state of things; an ever-vigilant eagerness to keep self-interest in the background, giving due prominence to all things else; a prompt readiness to be ignored rather than exalted; to be tossed to and fro upon the sea of life, yet ever be buoyed to the surface by uncomplaining indifference; to be all to all and dead to self—such is the point they sedulously strove to reach. It was this beautiful quality which so much endeared St. Francis de Sales to all with whom he held intercourse. There went out from him that which distinctly assured them that they stood in the presence of a superior being. His sovereign once declared that there was more true nobility in Francis than in any king he had ever read of, and that he regarded his lofty virtue as something far more to be coveted than the throne and sceptre of France. Having been requested by a distinguished personage to accept a purse of gold, he declined for the memorable reason that “he really knew not what to do with it.” Centuries before, Saul of Tharsus spoke in similarly unselfish strains to the citizens of Corinth: “Behold now the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burthensome unto you. For I seek not the things that are yours, but you.”[129]