Complete Prose Works / Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy

by Walt Whitman

I don't want to express a great many words; but I want you to be
call'd home to the substance. For the Scriptures, and all the
books in the world, can do no more; Jesus could do no more than to
recommend to this Comforter, which was the light in him. "God is
light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if we walk in the
light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another."
Because the light is one in all, and therefore it binds us together
in the bonds of love; for it is not only light, but love—that love
which casts out all fear. So that they who dwell in God dwell in
love, and they are constrain'd to walk in it; and if they "walk in
it, they have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."
But what blood, my friends? Did Jesus Christ, the Saviour, ever have
any material blood? Not a drop of it, my friends—not a drop of it.
That blood which cleanseth from the life of all sin, was the life of
the soul of Jesus. The soul of man has no material blood; but as the
outward material blood, created from the dust of the earth, is the
life of these bodies of flesh, so with respect to the soul, the
immortal and invisible spirit, its blood is that life which God
breath'd into it.
As we read, in the beginning, that "God form'd man of the dust of
the ground, and breath'd into him the breath of life, and man became
a living soul." He breath'd into that soul, and it became alive to
God.

Then, from one of his many letters, for he seems to have delighted in correspondence:

Some may query, What is the cross of Christ? To these I answer, It
is the perfect law of God, written on the tablet of the hear
and in the heart of every rational creature, in such indelible
characters that all the power of mortals cannot erase nor obliterate
it. Neither is there any power or means given or dispens'd to the
children of men, but this inward law and light, by which the true
and saving knowledge of God can be obtain' d. And by this inward law
and light, all will be either justified or condemn'd, and all made
to know God for themselves, and be left without excuse, agreeably to
the prophecy of Jeremiah, and the corroborating testimony of Jesus
in his last counsel and command to his disciples, not to depart from
Jerusalem till they should receive power from on high; assuring them
that they should receive power, when they had receiv'd the pouring
forth of the spirit upon them, which would qualify them to bear
witness of him in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the uttermost
parts of the earth; which was verified in a marvellous manner on the
day of Pentecost, when thousands were converted to the Christian
faith in one day.
By which it is evident that nothing but this inward light and law,
as it is heeded and obey'd, ever did, or ever can, make a true
and real Christian and child of God. And until the professors
of Christianity agree to lay aside all their non-essentials in
religion, and rally to this unchangeable foundation and standard of
truth, wars and fightings, confusion and error, will prevail, and
the angelic song cannot be heard in our land—that of "glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men."
But when all nations are made willing to make this inward law and
light the rule and standard of all their faith and works, then we
shall be brought to know and believe alike, that there is but one
Lord, one faith, and but one baptism; one God and Father, that is
above all, through all, and in all.
And then will all those glorious and consoling prophecies recorded
in the scriptures of truth be fulfill'd—"He," the Lord, "shall
judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up the sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell
with the lamb; and the cow and the bear shall feed; and the lion
shall eat straw like the ox; and the sucking child shall play
the hole of the asp, and the wean'd child put his hand on the
cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain; for the earth," that is our earthly tabernacle, "shall be
full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

The exposition in the last sentence, that the terms of the texts are not to be taken in their literal meaning, but in their spiritual one, and allude to a certain wondrous exaltation of the body, through religious influences, is significant, and is but one of a great number of instances of much that is obscure, to "the world's people," in the preachings of this remarkable man.

Then a word about his physical oratory, connected with the preceding. If there is, as doubtless there is, an unnameable something behind oratory, a fund within or atmosphere without, deeper than art, deeper even than proof, that unnameable constitutional something Elias Hicks emanated from his very heart to the hearts of his audience, or carried with him, or probed into, and shook and arous'd in them—a sympathetic germ, probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility, which no book, no rule, no statement has given or can give inherent knowledge, intuition—not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launch'd out only by powerful human magnetism:

Unheard by sharpest ear—unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest
mind,
Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth,
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world,
incessantly,
Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss;
Open, but still a secret—the real of the real—an illusion;
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner;
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme——historians in prose;
Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted;
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter' d.

That remorse, too, for a mere worldly life—that aspiration towards the ideal, which, however overlaid, lies folded latent, hidden, in perhaps every character. More definitely, as near as I remember (aided by my dear mother long afterward,) Elias Hicks's discourse there in the Brooklyn ball-room, was one of his old never-remitted appeals to that moral mystical portion of human nature, the inner light. But it is mainly for the scene itself, and Elias's personnel, that I recall the incident.

Soon afterward the old man died:

On first day morning, the 14th of 2d month (February, 1830,) he was
engaged in his room, writing to a friend, until a little after ten
o'clock, when he return'd to that occupied by the family, apparently
just attack'd by a paralytic affection, which nearly deprived h
of the use of his right side, and of the power of speech. Being
assisted to a chair near the fire, he manifested by signs, that the
letter which he had just finish'd, and which had been dropp'd
the way, should be taken care of; and on its being brought to him,
appear'd satisfied, and manifested a desire that all should sit down
and be still, seemingly sensible that his labours were brought to a
close, and only desirous of quietly waiting the final change. The
solemn composure at this time manifest in his countenance, w
very impressive, indicating that he was sensible the time of his
departure was at hand, and that the prospect of death brought no
terrors with it. During his last illness, his mental faculti
were occasionally obscured, yet he was at times enabled to give
satisfactory evidence to those around him, that all was well, and
that he felt nothing in his way.
His funeral took place on fourth day, the 3rd of 3rd month. It was
attended by a large concourse of Friends and others, and a solid
meeting was held on the occasion; after which, his remains were
interr'd in Friends' burial-ground at this place (Jericho, Queens
county, New York.)

I have thought (even presented so incompletely, with such fearful hiatuses, and in my own feebleness and waning life) one might well memorize this life of Elias Hicks. Though not eminent in literature or politics or inventions or business, it is a token of not a few, and is significant. Such men do not cope with statesmen or soldiers—but I have thought they deserve to be recorded and kept up as a sample—that this one specially does. I have already compared it to a little flowing liquid rill of Nature's life, maintaining freshness. As if, indeed, under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and the madness of contending hosts—the screams of passion, the groans of the suffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell's heat and noise and competition above and around—should come melting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God's hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along among us low in the ground, at men's very feet, a curious little brook of clear and cool, and ever-healthy, ever-living water.