THE MIND OF WHITTIER 
 
The 
 
 Mind of Whittier 
 
 A STUDY OF U/HITTIER S FUNDAMENTAL 
 RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHAUNCEY J. HAWKINS 
 
 MINISTER OF FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH 
 SPENCER, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 On ocean or on shore " 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1904, 
 BY THOMAS WHITTAKER. 
 
TO 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 INTRODUCTION . 
 
 THE INNER LIGHT . 9 
 
 NATURE OF THE INNER LIGHT . . 28 
 
 JESUS CHRIST 3 8 
 
 OPTIMISM . . 5 2 
 
 RELIGION AND HUMANITY . 62 
 
 NATURE . 8o 
 
 FUTURE LIFE . . . 9 8 
 
THE 
 
 MIND OF WHITTIER 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 T)OETRY is the common man s text 
 book on religion. If we could ana 
 lyze the religious consciousness of men, 
 we might find that as many religious 
 ideas come from the poets as from the 
 Bible. More men get their conception 
 of heaven from Dr. Watts than from St. 
 John, and a crude conception of hell may 
 be traced to Dante and Milton rather 
 than to the New Testament. Whittier s 
 thoughts in " Eternal Goodness " have 
 been great forces in shaping our concep 
 tion of the nature of God, and such 
 poems as Lowell s " Vision of Sir Laun- 
 fal " and Wordsworth s " Old Cumber- 
 
2 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 land Beggar " have helped toward making 
 man love his neighbor as himself. In 
 Scotland the poetry of Burns stood 
 against the pitiless doctrines of Calvin 
 ism, adding a freshness and charm to 
 religion, while in an age of agnosticism 
 in England Tennyson did as much to 
 keep alive religious life as any preacher 
 of his time. 
 
 Poetry has also been one of the great 
 est forces in binding the religious world 
 together. Men will differ on creeds and 
 catechisms, they will fight over dogmas, 
 but through the words of the poet they 
 will come together. The Protestant can 
 use the hymn of the Catholic, the Ortho 
 dox the hymns of the Unitarian, and 
 Calvinist and Arminian in song sit down 
 together. When the religious world 
 philosophizes it falls apart ; when it wor 
 ships through the words of the poet it is 
 united. The poet goes beneath the form 
 and symbol and expresses that which is 
 eternal and unchanging. 
 
Introduction 
 
 Curtis says : " Not until we know why 
 the rose is sweet, the dewdrop pure, or 
 the rainbow beautiful, will we know 
 why the poet is the best benefactor of 
 society." The poet is an idealist ; he is 
 
 .iWfc*a* 
 
 a spiritualist. No materialist was ever 
 a great poet. The poet sees Infinite 
 Thought in the " flower in the crannied 
 wall," and he feels a " Presence which 
 disturbs him with the joy of elevated 
 thought." He does not analyze. When 
 he begins to use the knife he loses his 
 charm. He tells you what he sees with 
 his spiritual vision and leaves his vision 
 with the reader. He is the divinely 
 ordained teacher who harmonizes the 
 material and the spiritual ; who furnishes 
 the link between the seen and the un 
 seen ; who lifts the real into the realm of 
 the ideal, and makes the ide_al_ clearer by 
 clothing jit^ in^the_ substance of Jhejreal. 
 Hence the poet by necessity deals with 
 religion or subjects closely akin to reli 
 gion. 
 
4 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 It is, therefore, always helpful to study 
 religion through the poet. Especially is 
 this true of our age, for the expression 
 of religion today, as it was in the time of 
 Jesus, is poetic. No greater contrast 
 could be found in a single field of 
 thought than the contrast between old 
 and new treatises upon dogmatic theol 
 ogy. The older ones were hard, inflex 
 ible, and scholastic in style, while the 
 best modern writers on the subject are 
 easy, flowing, and poetic. Some of the 
 sermons of the older divines read like 
 books on logic, while such printed ser 
 mons as those by Phillips Brooks and 
 Frederick Robertson are as delightful 
 reading as the novels of Scott or the 
 essays of Emerson. 
 
 The reason for this is obvious. The 
 ology, today, is biblical. But the Bible 
 is largely a book of poetry either in form 
 or sentiment. The poetry of Job and of 
 some of the Psalms is of the highest 
 type, while the prophets and the four 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 evangelists have beautiful poetic touches 
 on every page. Religion must always 
 be poetical. Sometimes it will move 
 with the dignified and solemn step of the 
 epic, in moments of great joy it will 
 burst out in the lyric, but from its nature 
 it must always be closely united with 
 harmony and rhythm. Thus there can 
 be no better interpreter of the essential 
 spirit of Christianity than the poet. 
 
 John W. Chadwick, in speaking of the 
 religious influence of Bryant, Emerson, 
 Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Whit- 
 tier, says that the influence of Whittier 
 upon the religious world was greater 
 than that of any of the others. Mary B. 
 Chaflin wrote : " If the worth of a life 
 may be estimated by the number of 
 hearts comforted, the number of lives 
 uplifted and inspired, Mr. Whittier s 
 measure will exceed that of most men of 
 this or any other century." Some one 
 has said : " I would rather give a man 
 pr a woman on the verge of a great 
 
6 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 moral lapse a marked copy of Whittier, 
 than any other book in our language." 
 It is undoubtedly true that he is quoted 
 from the press and the pulpit more than 
 any other American poet. Such a man 
 must have a spiritual message that is 
 fitted to comfort and inspire human 
 hearts. It is the purpose of this book to 
 interpret that message. 
 
 Whittier will probably never be studied 
 as a great artist, but men will always 
 be interested in the lofty spirituality of 
 his thought. Tennyson was a consummate 
 artist, and many will be interested in the 
 form rather than the substance of his 
 thought. On the other hand, Whittier s 
 aim was always ethical. Indeed, much 
 of his verse can scarcely be called poetry ; 
 especially is this true of his " Anti-Slav 
 ery Poems." The great poet-reformer 
 sacrificed his place as a singer for a 
 nobler cause. He wrote not for art s 
 sake. There was only one motive behind 
 all his work, and that was the desire to 
 
Introduction 7 
 
 lift his fallen brother and to right human 
 wrongs. Some of these poems are little 
 more than invitations to some important 
 assembly of anti-slavery friends ; some 
 were composed and mailed almost before 
 the ink was dry, that they might appear 
 in print in time to call the attention of 
 men to an important cause where prompt 
 action was necessary ; some are rhetoric 
 on fire with emotion, having been written 
 to kindle indignation or sympathy. In 
 every case there was an immediate pur 
 pose before the writer. The cause was 
 so great that he forgot his art. 
 
 In the following pages we have 
 attempted to systematize the thoughts 
 of this great reformer. We have not 
 attempted to interpret, at length, Whit- 
 tier s thought. His lines are so trans 
 parent that there is little need of 
 interpretation. Neither is it our purpose 
 to study Whittier as an artist. We have 
 simply tried to gather into a condensed 
 statement his spiritual message. That it 
 
8 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 may minister to the lives of others as 
 much as it has to his own is the author s 
 earnest wish. 
 
 CHAUNCEY J. HAWKINS. 
 Spencer, Massachusetts. 
 
THE INNER LIGHT 
 
 CITTING one day under a pine tree 
 on the shore of Big Moose Lake in 
 the Adirondacks, I was reading Whittier. 
 Suddenly I was disturbed by an old man, 
 who approached and asked what I was 
 reading. "A little poem entitled Wor 
 ship, by Whittier," was my answer. 
 " Ah ! I wonder if thou hast found in 
 these solitudes the Inner Light," he 
 quickly replied. If we would under 
 stand the mind of our poet we must 
 know something of this Inner Light. 
 
 Whittier was a Quaker and the 
 Quakers are mystics. They stand 
 opposed to rationalists. ~Xh_ey_dprecate 
 
 all formal expression __o.f religion, such 
 
 as creed and ritual, and exalt the inner 
 and spiritual side of the religious life. 
 Whittier, in a letter to a friend, defines 
 
io The Mind of Whittier 
 
 the distinctive characteristic of Quaker 
 ism to be " the entire rejection of all 
 ceremonial, the total disbelief in the 
 power of pope, priest or elder to give a 
 ransom for the soul of another." He 
 says the time will come when " the world 
 will become weary and disgusted with 
 shams and shadows," and " Love will 
 take the place of fast, penance, long 
 prayers, and heathenish sacrifices ; altar, 
 church, priest, and ritual will pass away ; 
 but the human heart will be the Holy of 
 Holies, where worship will still be per 
 formed, not in set forms, and on particu 
 lar occasions, but daily and hourly, a 
 worship meet and acceptable to Him 
 who is not deceived by the pomp of out 
 ward ceremonial, and who loves mercy 
 better than sacrifice." Not the divine 
 life as expressed through form and insti 
 tutions, but as expressed in human lives; 
 the divine Spirit bearing witness in 
 human souls, is the starting point of their 
 faith. 
 
The Inner Light 1 1 
 
 It is with this simple faith that we 
 must start in our interpretation of the 
 mind of Whittier. In "First Day 
 Thoughts " we have a picture of a 
 Quaker Meeting-House. There " never 
 hymn is sung, nor deep-toned organ 
 blown, nor censer swung, nor dim light 
 falling through the pictured pane." To 
 this place Whittier goes, perchance to 
 hear no human tongue, but : 
 
 " There, syllabled by silence, let me hear 
 
 The still small voice that reached the prophets ear; 
 
 Read in my heart a still diviner law 
 
 Than Israel s leader on his tables saw." 
 
 Constantly he was dwelling upon this 
 thought of the " Immanence of the Holy 
 Spirit." He used many words to ex 
 press the thought, " the still small 
 voice," "the inward word," "the spirit of 
 Christ," " the spirit of God," but every 
 where he means the same thing, the 
 divine Spirit in communion with the 
 human soul. He makes no distinction 
 between the spiritual presence of God, 
 
1 2 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. They 
 are only different expressions for the 
 same eternal God. 
 
 In " Palestine " he recalls many famil 
 iar places and then writes : 
 
 " But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode, 
 Of Humanity clothed in the brightness of God ? 
 Were my spirit but turned from the outward and 
 
 dim, 
 I could gaze, even now, on the presence of Him ! 
 
 Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when, 
 In love and in meekness, He moved among men ; 
 And the voice which breathed peace to the waves 
 
 of the sea 
 In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me ! 
 
 Oh, the outward hath gone ! but in glory and 
 
 power, 
 
 The spirit surviveth the things of an hour ; 
 Unchanging, undecaying, its Pentecost flame 
 On the heart s secret altar is burning the same ! " 
 
 His revolt against all form and ritual 
 is expressed in " The Vision of Echard," 
 written at his home at " Oak Knoll," in 
 Danvers. Here is expressed his great 
 faith in the power of the living Christ : 
 
 " Ye bow to ghastly symbols, 
 To cross and scourge and thorn ; 
 
The Inner Light 13 
 
 Ye seek his Syrian manger 
 Who in the heart is born. 
 
 For the dead Christ, not the living, 
 
 Ye watch His empty grave, 
 Whose life alone within you 
 
 Has power to bless and save. 
 
 O blind ones, outward groping, 
 
 The idle quest forego ; 
 Who listens to His inward voice 
 
 Alone of Him shal/ know. 
 
 My Gerizim and Ebal 
 
 Are in each human soul, 
 The still, small voice of blessing, 
 
 And Sinai s thunder-roll. 
 
 The stern behest of duty, 
 
 The doom-book open thrown, 
 
 The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, 
 Are with yourselves alone." 
 
 One of the best illustrations we could 
 find to make this truth of the Inner 
 Light intelligible is the relation of the 
 soul to the body. The life is immanent 
 in every part of the physical frame. It 
 is more than the body. It transcends 
 the body, rules it, and shall continue 
 when the body returns to dust. Yet the 
 
14 The Mind of Wkittier 
 
 soul does not rule over the body but in 
 it. So God rules not over the world but 
 
 in itjtnot over men but in them. He is 
 
 more than the world. He transcends 
 the material world and man, yet He is 
 in all men and things. 
 
 This is not a new idea in Christian 
 thought but is the oldest thought of the 
 Christian Church. The foundation of 
 the Greek theology was the doctrine of 
 the immanence of God. Justin taught 
 that God revealed himself to the heathen 
 world as well as to the Jewish people, 
 that He had done this not only through 
 the glories of nature but through His 
 Son, who is the divine reason in every 
 human creature. Christ is the universal 
 spirit, the divine reason, who not only 
 dwells near men but is in all men, 
 " whose abiding presence in the soul 
 makes goodness possible." He is not 
 confined to any place or time but is the 
 Word in all races of men. There is a 
 spiritual Christ who is independent of 
 
The Inner Light 1 5 
 
 space or time, who lived in all races 
 before he was incarnated in the flesh. 
 Hence there were Christians long before 
 the birth of Jesus. Whosoever lived 
 according to the truth, in whatever land, 
 was Christian. There were Christians 
 among the Greeks such as Socrates, 
 Heraclitus, and kindred spirits ; among 
 the barbarians such as Abraham, Ana 
 nias, Azriah, and Elias. Some of these 
 Christians, like Socrates, were martyrs 
 for the truth. This teaching of the early 
 church father was only an expression of 
 St. John s words : " He was the light 
 that lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world." 
 
 When we turn to Clement of Alexan 
 dria, who has been called the father of 
 Greek theology, we find the same idea. 
 Christ is the indwelling Deity, immanent 
 in the world. He is in all nature and in 
 all men ; in Him humanity has its life. 
 It is not a small portion of the race that 
 is elected to this high privilege, but the 
 
1 6 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 race itself " is unified and consecrated by 
 the visible traces of divine revelation." 
 This indwelling Christ is the instructor 
 of men ; since the creation of the race 
 he has been superintending its education. 
 " It was He who spoke through Moses 
 and the Prophets, and it was He who 
 spoke in Greek philosophy. In the pro 
 gressive education of humanity He 
 gave the sun and moon to be wor 
 shipped, in order that men might not be 
 atheistical ; in order, also, that they 
 might rise through the lower worship to 
 something higher. He is not the teacher 
 of a few only, in some favored time or 
 place, but He comes to all, in all times 
 and everywhere." Because he believed 
 Christ to be in all men and the teacher 
 of all, Clement did not make any distinc 
 tion between natural and revealed religion. 
 Christ was the inspiration of the Hebrew 
 prophets but also of the Greek philoso 
 phers. Whatever was true and well said 
 was from the source of all reason, no 
 
The Inner Light 1 7 
 
 difference who said it or where his home. 
 This thought of the immanence of Christ 
 characterized the theology of the early 
 church down to the time of Augustine. 
 Origen learned it from the school of 
 Clement, and Athanasius made it the 
 corner stone of his theology, with which 
 he met and overcame the philosophies of 
 paganism. The same idea of the imma 
 nence of the Inner Light breathes through 
 all the religious poetry of Whittier. 
 
 " Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou knowest, 
 
 Wide as our need Thy favors fall ; 
 The white wings of the Holy Ghost 
 
 Stoop, seen or unseen, o er the heads of all." 
 
 God is the " Logos of the Greek and 
 Jew, the old sphere-music which the 
 Simian heard, truth which the sage and 
 prophets saw." He is with all " souls 
 that struggle and aspire." If God leaves 
 us it is only because we turn from Him. 
 Truly the All-Father has not forgotten 
 any of his children ! He works through 
 the religious consciousness of the race, 
 
1 8 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 never compelling men but leading them 
 as fast as they will follow. No religion 
 is godless. None of them are frauds. 
 They are good mixed with evil, truth 
 with error. They are all steps in the 
 evolution of the religious life of human 
 ity. 
 
 Because of this ever-present spirit of 
 God in worship, man does not need the 
 soulless breath of the organ, nor the 
 candle-lit altar, nor ornate rhetoric-play, 
 nor cold philosophy, nor the loud-assert 
 ing dogmatist in the pulpit. 
 
 " I know how well the fathers taught, 
 What work the later schoolmen wrought ; 
 I reverence old-time faith and men, 
 But God is near us now as then ; 
 His force of love is still unspent, 
 His hate of sin is imminent." 
 
 The Inner Light is the strength of the 
 discouraged and despairing soul. 
 
 ** Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the task 
 
 Thus set before thee. If it proves at length, 
 As well it may, beyond thy natural strength, 
 Faint not, despair not. As a child may ask 
 
The Inner Light 19 
 
 A father, pray the Everlasting Good 
 
 For light and guidance midst the subtle snares 
 Of sin thick planted in life s thorough-fares, 
 For spiritual strength and moral hardihood ; 
 Still listening, through the noise of time and 
 
 sense, 
 
 To the still whisper of the Inward Word ; 
 Bitter in blame, sweet in approval heard, 
 Itself its own confirming evidence : 
 To health of soul a voice to cheer and please, 
 To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides." 
 
 It was Whittier s conception of the 
 immanence of God in the human soul 
 which gave stability to his faith in times 
 of religious change. The passing of old 
 and established dogmas has always been 
 a source of skepticism. Whenever the 
 breaking up period comes in a theologi 
 cal system, many men lose their faith, 
 while others are disturbed for fear reli 
 gion will cease to exert any power over 
 the consciences of men. We are in 
 such a period. Some dogmas are passing 
 away and many others are being seriously 
 questioned. The Bible has been sub 
 jected to criticism until our traditional the- 
 
20 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 ories of inspiration are already shaken. 
 The theory of the atonement which was 
 the effective instrument in the hands of 
 the preachers of the last century, and 
 which was so fruitful of great revivals, is 
 never heard today in large numbers of 
 our pulpits, while in others it is pre 
 sented in greatly modified form. These 
 changes are the source of anxiety on the 
 part of many sincere souls, who sometimes 
 feel that nothing awaits us except dark 
 ness and spiritual chaos. But Whittier saw 
 in all this struggle something much bet 
 ter and in the noisy cry " Great Pan is 
 dead ! " he heard only the wail of error. 
 To him religious unrest was nothing 
 more than the disturbance of the waters, 
 caused by the angel sent from God. The 
 sands must drift ; the rocks alone will 
 remain. The storm clouds will pass and 
 as the mists disappear the permanent 
 stars will be left behind. The Inner 
 Light can never fail; creeds may be 
 outgrown, the legends and myths of 
 
The Inner Light 21 
 
 childhood may die, but God will never 
 fail, and His testimony will never pass 
 from the human heart. 
 
 " Therefore I trust, although the outward sense 
 Both true and false seems shaken ; I will hold 
 With newer light my reverence of the old 
 
 And calmly wait the births of Providence. 
 
 No gain is lost ; the clear-eyed saints look down 
 Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and 
 
 creeds ; 
 Love yet remains, its rosary of good deeds 
 
 Counting in task-field and o erpeopled town. 
 
 Truth has charmed life ; the Inward Word sur 
 vives, 
 
 And, day by day, its revelation brings ; 
 Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things 
 
 Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy lives 
 
 Reveal the Christ of whom the letter told, 
 
 And the new gospel verifies the old." 
 
 What if " old faiths, long outworn " be 
 thrown away and altars overturned, 
 
 " Have ye not still my witness 
 Within yourselves always ? " 
 
 Whittier held to the idea of the Inner 
 Light not only in theory but also in 
 practice. Once give him the conviction 
 that he was being led by it and nothing 
 
22 The Mind of Whit tier 
 
 could turn him aside. When once he 
 decided to do a thing and was convinced 
 that the spirit was leading him, nothing 
 could turn him from it. To him 
 
 " The one unpardonable sin 
 Is to deny the Word of God within." 
 
 The ultimate authority in religion is 
 the experience of God in the human 
 soul. This is the conclusion of the poem 
 on " Questions of Life." Whittier raised 
 some of the old questions that have 
 always been wrapped in mystery. 
 Whence came I ? Whither do I go ? 
 What place has man in this vast uni 
 verse ? Is he a part of this universal 
 life, which mounts the sap from forest 
 roots and makes green the native dells* 
 which gives life blood to the new-born 
 leaves and breathes in the wild bird s 
 song? Or is man imprisoned in a 
 separate consciousness ? The Sphinx 
 does not solve the question which she 
 propounds. The vaulted mystery throws 
 
The Inner Light 23 
 
 back in echo the question she receives. 
 If we turn to nature she mocks us in our 
 eager search. If we ask the prophets of 
 the Orient or consult the rolls buried in 
 the painted tombs and pyramids of 
 Egypt, still the mysteries are bolted. 
 Dust hath no answer from the dust. 
 We know what of life and death the 
 demon taught to Socrates, what the 
 solemn-thoughted Plato said, we read 
 the scroll of Hebrew seer and bard, yet 
 the truth is never known. We seek from 
 all these outward sources for an answer 
 but it is never found. We seek the clue 
 to find with groping fingers of the blind. 
 Is there then no answer? Yes, in the 
 inner silence of the heart. 
 
 " To Him, from wandering long and wild, 
 I come, an over-wearied child, 
 In cool and shade His peace to find, 
 Like dew-fall settling on my mind. 
 Assured that all I know is best, 
 And humbly trusting for the rest, 
 I turn from Fancy s cloud built scheme, 
 Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream 
 
24 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Of power, impersonal and cold, 
 
 Controlling all, itself controlled, 
 Maker and slave of iron laws, 
 Alike the subject and the cause ; 
 
 From vain philosophies, that try 
 
 The sevenfold gates of mystery, 
 And, baffled ever, babble still, 
 Word-prodigal of fate and will ; 
 
 From Nature, and her mockery, Art, 
 
 And book and speech of men apart, 
 
 To the still witness in my heart ; 
 With reverence waiting to behold 
 His Avatar of love untold, 
 The Eternal Beauty new and old." 
 
 We must not conclude from this lan 
 guage of mysticism that Whittier was an 
 impractical dreamer. We shall fail to 
 understand his message if we think that 
 he sat in meditation, passively waiting 
 for the spirit of Gorf fp ^r>m^ ; n f^ his 
 heart and make all truth plain. He had 
 nothing ot that oriental spirit which 
 waits in aimless silence, trying to lose 
 itself in the limitless ocean of spirit. 
 The Inner Light reveals truth only to 
 the active soul. Man finds truth only in 
 love and service. 
 
The Inner Light 25 
 
 Not to ease and aimless quiet 
 Doth that inward answer tend, 
 
 But to works of love and duty 
 As our being s end ; 
 
 Not to idle dreams and trances, 
 Length of face and solemn tone, 
 
 But to Faith, in daily striving 
 And performance shown." 
 
 Whittier s idea of the Bible must be 
 understood in connection with his 
 thought of the Inner Light. No poet 
 has known his Bible better, or been 
 more influenced by it. As Steadman 
 has said : " The Bible was rarely absent 
 from his verse, and its spirit, never." 
 When he was a boy he was able to tell 
 the Bible story, from Genesis to Revela 
 tion, and could quote the greater part of 
 it. His words in " Miriam " indicate 
 how much he valued the Sacred Book : 
 
 " We search the world for truth ; we cull 
 The good, the pure, the beautiful, 
 From graven stone and written scroll, 
 From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 
 
26 The Mind of Wkittier 
 
 And weary seekers of the best, 
 We come back ladened from our quest, 
 To find that all the sages said 
 Is in the Book our mothers read." 
 
 But while Whittier valued the Scrip 
 tures so much, they were not for him 
 11 the rule of faith and practice." That 
 was " none other than the living, omni 
 present spirit of God." The Scriptures 
 were subordinate and secondary to this 
 indwelling Spirit. Indeed the Scriptures 
 can be understood only as they are 
 interpreted by the divine Spirit. 
 
 " Only when on form and word obscure 
 
 Falls from above the white supernal light 
 We read the mystic characters aright, 
 And life informs the silent portraiture, 
 Until we pause at last, awe-held, before 
 The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore." 
 
 He believed in the Scriptures because 
 " we find in them the eternal precepts of 
 the divine spirit, declared and repeated, 
 to which our consciences bear witness. 
 They testify of Christ within. We 
 believe in the Scriptures because they 
 
The Inner Light 27 
 
 believe in us, because they repeat the 
 warnings and admonitions and promises 
 of the indwelling Light and Truth, 
 because we find the law and prophets in 
 our souls." Thus Whittier writes : 
 
 " I pray for faith, I long to trust ; 
 
 I listen with my heart, and hear 
 A voice without a sound : * Be just, 
 Be true, be merciful, revere 
 The Word within thee : God is near ! " 
 
NATURE OF THE INNER 
 LIGHT 
 
 I ^ H E nature of the Inner Light is 
 essential goodness. In the earlier 
 part of his life, Whittier was surrounded 
 by a Calvinistic conception of God, and 
 he rebelled against it. We find this 
 thought expressed in the " Minister s 
 Daughter." He tells of a minister who 
 in his morning sermon spoke of the fall, 
 of how henceforth the wrath of God 
 rested on every soul, and of how all were 
 doomed to eternal loss save a chosen 
 few. In the afternoon he went for a 
 walk with his daughter. It was in the 
 springtime, when the apple trees were in 
 blossom and the meadows were fresh and 
 green. On all this glory the minister 
 looked, and then he said to his daughter : 
 
Nature of the Inner Light 29 
 
 " How good is the Lord who gives us 
 
 These gifts from His hands, my child ! " 
 
 The child replied : 
 
 " O father ! these pretty blossoms 
 Are very wicked, I think. 
 
 Had there been no garden of Eden 
 
 There never had been a fall ; 
 And if never a tree had blossomed 
 
 God would have loved us all." 
 
 The minister rebukes his child : 
 
 " By His decree man fell : " 
 therefore whether to us comes 
 
 " Joy or pain, or light or shadow, 
 We must fear and love Him still." 
 
 " O, I fear Him," said the daughter, 
 
 " And I try to love Him too ; 
 But I wish He was good and gentle, 
 Kind and loving as you." 
 
 From these words of his little daughter 
 and from the beauty of nature, the 
 minister learned the lesson of love, and 
 after this 
 
 " The dread Ineffable Glory 
 
 Was infinite Goodness alone." 
 
30 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 In " Revelation " he sums up his 
 thought of the character of God : 
 
 " No picture to my aid I call, 
 
 I shape no image in my prayers ; 
 I only know in Him is all 
 Of life, light, beauty, everywhere, 
 Eternal Goodness here and there." 
 
 To be able to believe in the goodness 
 of God in the presence of so much 
 suffering is not an easy task for faith. 
 There are few writers who have been free 
 from the spirit of pessimism. Tennyson 
 could not carry forward the optimism of 
 " Locksley Hall." 
 
 " Lost the cry of Forward, Forward, lost within 
 a growing gloom ; 
 
 Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of 
 the tomb. 
 
 Forward sang the voices then, and of the many 
 mine was one, 
 
 Let us hush this cry of Forward till ten thou 
 sand years have gone." 
 
 The attempt to harmonize the facts of 
 evil and of human suffering with the 
 goodness and love of God has been one 
 of the greatest problems of Christian 
 
Nature of the Inner Light 31 
 
 thought. But the optimistic faith of 
 Whittier had no difficulty in harmoniz 
 ing the two thoughts. He saw the 
 wrong that existed about him, he heard 
 the groan and travail-cries, 
 
 " Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
 
 And tossed by storm and flood, 
 To one fixed trust my spirit clings 
 I know that God is good ! 
 
 And so beside the Silent Sea 
 
 I wait the muffled oar : 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 
 Beyond His love and care." 
 
 He had great faith in the ultimate 
 triumph of goodness. He said : " Surely 
 God would not permit His children to 
 suffer if it were not to work out for them 
 the highest good. For God never does, 
 nor surfers to be done, but that which 
 we would do if we could see the end of 
 all events as well as He. God s love is 
 
32 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 so infinitely greater than mine that I 
 cannot fear for His children, and when I 
 long to help some poor, suffering, erring 
 fellow-creature, I am consoled with the 
 thought that His great heart of love is 
 more than mine can be, and so I rest in 
 peace." 
 
 In " Revelation " he wrote : 
 
 " I know He is, and what He is, 
 
 Whose one great purpose is the good 
 Of all. I rest my soul on His 
 Immortal Love and Fatherhood ; 
 And trust Him as His children should. 
 
 I fear no more. The clouded face 
 Of nature smiles ; through all her things 
 
 Of time and space and sense I trace 
 The moving of the Spirit s wings, 
 And hear the song of hope she sings," 
 
 We are not to suppose that Whittier 
 never had a doubt concerning the great 
 problems of religion. He is constantly 
 raising questions which he confesses his 
 inability to solve. 
 
 " The same old baffling questions ! 
 O my friend, I cannot answer them," 
 
Nature of the Inner Light 33 
 
 Few men have ever wrestled in spirit 
 more than did this deeply religious soul. 
 He spent one entire winter discussing, 
 with his near friends about the fire at 
 his home in Danvers, the question of 
 immortality. Those who entered into 
 these discussions tell us of the struggles 
 through which he passed. But while 
 great doubts troubled his mind he was by 
 nature intensely religious and his religious 
 feelings always gained the ascendency. 
 Hence, confessing his inability to solve 
 the problems which disturbed him, he 
 would turn from them with childlike 
 trust to the faith learned at his mother s 
 knees. 
 
 "All is of God that is, and is to be ; 
 And God is good. Let this suffice us still, 
 Resting in childlike trust upon His will 
 Who moves to His great ends unth waited by 
 the ill!" 
 
 Augustine raised the old question of 
 the origin of evil. " What is evil, and 
 whence comes it, since God the Good 
 
34 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 hath created all things? Why made He 
 anything at all of evil, and not rather by 
 His Almightiness caused it not to be?" 
 This question Whittier is compelled to 
 confront but he cannot find an answer. 
 " From sea and earth comes no reply." 
 All we know is that from age to age 
 descends the sad bequest from sire to 
 son. Through everything this dark 
 thread runs. Reason cannot solve the 
 question. Faith alone can surmount the 
 difficulty. 
 
 "Oh, why and whither ? God knows all ; 
 
 I only know that He is good 
 And that whatever may befall 
 
 Or here or there, must be the best that could. 
 
 For He is merciful as just ; 
 
 And so, by faith correcting sight, 
 I bow before His will, and trust 
 
 Howe er they seem He doeth all things right. 
 
 And dare to hope that He will make 
 The rugged smooth, the doubtful plain ; 
 
 His mercy never quite forsake ; 
 
 His healing visit every realm of pain ; 
 
 That suffering is not His revenge 
 Upon His creatures weak and frail, 
 
Nature of the Inner Light 35 
 
 Sent on a pathway new and strange 
 With feet that wander and with eyes that fail ; 
 
 That o er the crucible of pain, 
 
 Watches the tender eye of Love, 
 The slow transmitting of the chain 
 
 Whose links are iron below to gold above ! " 
 
 The best explanation he could find of 
 the ways of Providence was in the train 
 ing and discipline which he received 
 from his mother. When a boy he could 
 not understand why his mother s hand 
 should restrain him in his selfish moods. 
 He complained bitterly of her chasten- 
 ings. But when he grew wiser and 
 looked across the years he saw that his 
 childhood s needs were best known by 
 his mother, and tTiat all her chastening 
 was with the hand of love. This inter- 
 preted for him the greater Providence. 
 
 u I wait, in His good time to see 
 That as my mother dealt with me 
 So with His children dealeth He. 
 
 I bow myself beneath His hand : 
 That pain itself was wisely planned 
 I feel, and partly understand." 
 
36 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 The nature of this Inner Light is 
 learned from the testimony of human 
 character. The divine nature can be 
 known only through human nature, and 
 must be expressed in terms of the 
 human. 
 
 " The riddle of the world is understood 
 
 Only by him who feels that God is good, 
 
 As only he can feel who makes his love 
 
 The ladder of his faith, and climbs above 
 
 On th rounds of his best instincts ; draws no line 
 
 Between mere human goodness and divine, 
 
 But, judging God by what in him is best, 
 
 With a child s trust leans on a Father s breast." 
 
 He depended, not on historical revela 
 tion, nor theology, nor creed, for a proof 
 of the divine Being. ^He knew God in 
 his experience and found the divine 
 nature to be like the best in his own 
 nature. The minister in " The Minister s 
 Daughter " found the true character of 
 God not in creed nor book ; following 
 these he had erred. It was through the 
 words of his daughter, " But I wish he 
 was good and gentle, kind and loving as 
 
Nature of the Inner Light 37 
 
 you " that he learned the nature of God. 
 Whittier tried to solve the mystery of 
 the divine nature as manifested in the 
 Trinity but his study of Aquinas or Cal 
 vin or Hippo s saint brought no light to 
 him. Discouraged in his search he says : 
 
 " I shut my grave Aquinas fast ; 
 The monkish gloss of ages past, 
 The schoolman s creed aside I cast, 
 
 And my heart answered, "Lord I see 
 How Three are One, and One is Three ; 
 The riddle hath been read to me ! " 
 
 In " The Friend s Burial " he says : 
 
 " The dear Lord s best interpreters 
 
 Are humble human souls ; 
 The Gospel of a life like hers 
 Is more than books or scrolls. 
 
 From scheme and creed the light goes out, 
 
 The saintly fact survives ; 
 The blessed Master none can doubt 
 
 Revealed in Holy lives." 
 
JESUS CHRIST 
 
 always maintained that 
 he was an orthodox Quaker. In 
 1834 he wrote to a friend concerning the 
 Hicksites, making a strong confession of 
 his orthodoxy. " What will it avail us if 
 while boasting of our soundness and of 
 our enmity to the delusion of Hicksism, 
 we neglect to make a practical applica 
 tion of our belief to ourselves ? I do 
 not claim to be any better for my ortho 
 dox principles." Hicksism was the uni- 
 tarian movement among the Quakers and 
 here Whittier positively declares that he 
 is not a follower of the Hicksites but is 
 orthodox. Later in life he wrote to 
 John Bright : " Some of us are still 
 Friends of the Fox and Penn and Bar 
 clay school." In his last will he used 
 words and made requests which imply 
 
Jesus Christ 39 
 
 that he was an orthodox Quaker. In 
 writing to Gail Hamilton about her book, 
 "What Think Ye of Christ?" he said: 
 " My own mind had, from the same evi 
 dence which thee aduce, become con 
 vinced of the Divinity of Christ, but I 
 cannot look upon Him as other than a 
 man like ourselves, through whom the 
 divine was made miraculously manifest. 
 Jesus of Nazareth was a man, the Christ 
 was a God, a new revelation of the 
 Eternal in time." He was the supreme 
 manifestation of God in our humanity 
 and in time. He is " Humanity clothed 
 in the brightness of God." It is in Him 
 that we see the essential character of 
 God: 
 
 " We know in thee the fatherhood 
 And heart of God revealed." 
 
 To another friend he wrote: " My ground 
 of hope for myself and for humanity is 
 that divine fulness of love which was 
 manifested in the life, teachings, and self- 
 sacrifice of Christ." Again he wrote : 
 
40 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 "God is One; just, holy, merciful, eter 
 nal, and almighty, Creator, Father of all 
 things; Christ, the same eternal One, 
 manifested in our Humanity and in 
 Time ; and the Holy Spirit, the same 
 Christ, manifested within us, the Divine 
 Teacher, the Living Word, the Light 
 that lighteth every man that comes into 
 the world." In the light of these words 
 we can better understand his verse : 
 
 " The homage that we render Thee 
 
 Is still our Father s own ; 
 No jealous claim or rivalry 
 Divides the cross and Throne," 
 
 Christ is : 
 
 " Most Human and yet most divine, 
 The flower of man and God." 
 
 Certainly no words could give a more 
 dignified place to Christ than these taken 
 from "The Crucifixion : " 
 
 " Well may the cavern-depths of Earth 
 Be shaken, and her mountains nod ; 
 Well may the sheeted dead come forth 
 To see the suffering son of God ! 
 
Jesus Christ 41 
 
 Well may the temple-shrine grow dim, 
 And shadows veil the Cherubim, 
 When He, the chosen one of heaven, 
 A sacrifice for guilt is given ! " 
 
 Some of the names which Whittier 
 applied to Christ give a key to the inter 
 pretation of his thought. He calls Him 
 "Christ of God, the Holy One," " Suffer 
 ing Son of God," "The Lowly and Just," 
 " Humanity clothed in the brightness of 
 God," "Loved of the Father," "When 
 the Holy One the garments of the flesh 
 put on," " Christ, the Rock of Ages," 
 "Elder Brother," "The World s Over- 
 comer," " Immortal Love," " Light Di 
 vine," and " Healer." From these titles, 
 which Whittier is constantly applying to 
 Christ, we may gather this poet s concep 
 tion of the nature and work of the heav 
 enly Master. 
 
 Whittier never tires of emphasizing 
 the presence and immanence of Christ in 
 the lives of all men. The Christ of his 
 tory is gone. He shall return no more in 
 
42 The Mind of Whit tier 
 
 the flesh. In vain through the centuries 
 have men looked for His return upon 
 the clouds of glory. " The world s long 
 hope is dim." The Christ of the system 
 maker has fallen again and again. The 
 letter fails and every symbol wanes but 
 
 " The Spirit over-brooding all, 
 Eternal Love remains. 
 
 In joy of inward peace, or sense 
 
 Of sorrow over sin, 
 He is His own best evidence, 
 
 His witness is within. 
 
 No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
 Nor dream of bards and seers, 
 
 No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 Of the oblivious years ; 
 
 But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 
 A present help is He ; 
 And faith has still its Olivet, 
 
 And love its Galilee." 
 
 The presence of Christ in our human 
 ity is also taught in " The Meeting : " 
 
 " That the dear Christ dwells not afar, 
 The king of some remoter star, 
 Listening, at times, with flattered ear 
 To homage wrung from selfish fear, 
 
Jesus Christ 43 
 
 But here, amidst the poor and blind, 
 The bound and suffering of our kind, 
 In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
 Life of our Life, He lives today." 
 
 Christ is such an One that still men 
 may commune with Him : 
 
 * Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near 
 To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here ; 
 And the voice of Thy love is the same even now 
 As at Bethany s tomb or on Olivet s brow." 
 
 The great example for human conduct 
 is Jesus of Nazareth. When we follow 
 " Him whose holy work was doing good," 
 then the wide earth will become our 
 Father s temple and each life will be a 
 " psalm of gratitude." 
 
 " Then shall all shackles fall ; the stormy clangor 
 Of wild war music o er the earth shall cease ; 
 Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, 
 And in its ashes plant the tree of peace ! " 
 
 Not only is Christ the example for 
 human conduct ; He is the ultimate stand 
 ard by which we must test our lives. 
 As there are a few great pictures by 
 which we approve or condemn all other 
 
44 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 works of the painter s brush, a few great 
 poems by which the worth of all poetry 
 is judged, so Christ is the divine ideal by 
 which all lives must be measured : 
 
 " Thou judgest us ; Thy purity 
 
 Doth all our lusts condemn ; 
 The love that draws us nearer Thee 
 Is hot with wrath to them. 
 
 Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight ; 
 
 And, naked to Thy glance, 
 Our secret sins are in the light 
 
 Of Thy pure countenance." 
 
 Constantly Whittier was dwelling 
 upon the thought that Christ was the 
 Saviour and Healer of men and nations. 
 It is only the Christ who can save 
 men from superstitions of the world. 
 Whittier looks over the nations of the 
 earth and sees man kneeling and trem 
 bling by his altars of stone, trying to 
 appease his God by the sprinkling of 
 blood. Such worship is only the " faith 
 lessness of fear." It rises from a picture 
 which man paints of a God of torment. 
 
Jes^ts Christ 45 
 
 " Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery 
 Wherewith mankind have deified 
 Their hate, and selfishness, and pride ! 
 Let the scared dreamer wake to see 
 The Christ of Nazareth at his side ! " 
 
 When this worship inspired by fear shall 
 disappear, then shall come the true wor 
 ship. Humanity shall learn to look to 
 Christ, the beautiful and good ; 
 
 " It yet shall touch His garment s fold, 
 And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
 Transform its very dust to gold." 
 
 Humanity can never reach its best 
 apart from Christ. Only as this heavenly 
 Vine strikes its roots deep into our 
 earthly sod can we ever expect to bring 
 forth the full fruit of our humanity. He 
 is Love ineffable, the fountain of love 
 and life. 
 
 " No pride of self Thy service hath, 
 
 No place for me and mine ; 
 Our human strength is weakness, death 
 Our life, apart from Thine. 
 
 Apart from Thee all gain is loss, 
 All labor vainly done ; 
 
46 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 The solemn shadow of Thy cross 
 Is better than the sun. 
 
 Alone, O Love ineffable ! 
 
 Thy saving name is given ; 
 To turn aside from Thee is hell, 
 
 To walk with Thee is heaven ! " 
 
 .* 
 
 Christ is still the healer of humanity s 
 ills: 
 
 " For lo ! in human hearts unseen 
 
 The Healer dwelleth still, 
 And they who make His temples clean 
 The best subserve His will." 
 
 A woman " dwarfed and wronged and 
 stained with ill," he bids rise in the name 
 of Christ and reclaim her lost soul. 
 
 " In His name, 
 
 Rise up, and break thy bonds of shame. 
 Art weak ? He s strong. Art fearful ? Hear 
 The world s O ercomer : Be of cheer ! 
 What lip shall judge when He approves ? 
 Who dare to scorn the child He loves ? " 
 
 Whittier found no satisfaction in the 
 orthodox views of the atonement. God 
 is not an eternal judge characterized only 
 by a sense of justice, who demands of 
 sinful humanity a full reparation for its 
 
Jesus Chris I 47 
 
 disobedience, but He is the good Father 
 who does all that can be done to lead 
 His erring children to a better life. 
 
 " Ye praise His justice ; even such 
 
 His pitying love I deem : 
 Ye seek a king ; I fain would touch 
 The robe that hath no seam. 
 
 Ye see the curse that overbroods 
 
 A world of pain and loss ; 
 I hear our Lord s beatitudes 
 
 And prayer upon the cross." 
 
 For the purpose of raising men to higher 
 life Jesus Christ came into human flesh, 
 and is the true redeemer of mankind. 
 While Whittier could not have subscribed 
 to the so-called New England doctrine of 
 the atonement, he could have subscribed 
 to the seventh chapter of Romans. 
 What Paul told here in the language of 
 experience, Whittier in the following 
 lines told in the words of a poet : 
 
 " Thou, O Elder Brother ! who 
 In Thy flesh our trial knew, 
 Thou, who hast been touched by these 
 Our most sad infirmities, 
 
48 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Thou alone the gulf canst span 
 
 In the dual heart of man, 
 
 And between the soul and sense 
 
 Reconcile all difference, 
 
 Change the dream of me and mine 
 
 For the truth of Thee and Thine, 
 
 And, through chaos, doubt, and strife, 
 
 Interfuse Thy calm of life. 
 
 God is not to be reconciled with man 
 but man is to be reconciled with himself 
 and the will of his Creator, the will 
 of his Creator being the very laws of 
 man s individual and social constitution. 
 Hence the redemptive forces must work 
 within man rather than externally upon 
 him. They must be forces which make 
 possible the triumph of the spiritual over 
 the animal nature, love over selfishness, 
 temperance over unregulated appetite 
 and passion, truth over ignorance, virtue 
 over vice. Christ in us is the hope of 
 glory. The victorious Christ in the 
 wilderness of temptation, the merciful 
 Christ in Galilee, the suffering Christ on 
 the cross, have redemptive value just 
 to the extent that they become forces 
 
Jesus Christ 49 
 
 working within our lives, and enable us 
 to live like Christ. 
 
 It is not a Christ who can satisfy God 
 because we have violated a law external 
 to our natures that we want, but a Christ 
 who can help us to overcome sin which 
 is waging a battle in our hearts. Every 
 life is a battle ground between the animal 
 and the spiritual, between selfishness, 
 and pride, and vanity on the one hand, 
 and on the other, those virtues which 
 belong to a son of God. The penalty 
 cannot be taken away unless the causes 
 of the conflict are removed. What we 
 want is a Christ who will give us more 
 life, more strength to attain virtue, wis 
 dom, purity, love ; a Christ who will be 
 a resident force in our lives, driving out 
 sensuality, pride, selfishness, and passion, 
 and filling us with life and life in its 
 abundance. It is of such a Christ that 
 Whittier constantly sings. 
 
 Phillips Brooks gave this definition of 
 salvation : " Its one idea is health. Not 
 
50 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 rescue from suffering, not plucking out of 
 the fire, not deportation to some strange, 
 beautiful region where the winds blow 
 with other influences and the skies drop 
 with other dews, but health, the cool, 
 calm vigor of the normal human life; 
 the making of the man to be himself ; 
 the calling up out of the depth of his 
 being and the filling with vitality of that 
 self which is truly he, this is salvation. 
 The Christian is nothing but the true 
 man. Human courage, human patience, 
 human trustiness, human humility, these 
 filled with the fire of God make the graces 
 of the Christian life. The Christian graces 
 are nothing but the natural virtues held 
 up into the light of Christ." How much 
 Brooks was influenced by the thought of 
 Whittier, we shall probably never know. 
 But this is certainly true, that it would 
 be difficult to give a better description 
 of Whittier s conception of salvation 
 than in these words of Phillips Brooks. 
 Whittier writes : 
 
Jesus Christ 51 
 
 " That to be saved is only this, 
 Salvation from our selfishness, 
 
 From more than elemental fire, 
 
 The soul s unsanctified desire, 
 From sin itself, and not the pain 
 That warns us of its chafing chain." 
 
 Christ, alone, is the great source of 
 strength for men and the Saviour from 
 sin. 
 
 " The healing of His seamless dress 
 
 Is by our beds of pain ; 
 We touch Him in life s throng and press, 
 And we are whole again." 
 
OPTIMISM 
 
 deadens action like unbe 
 lief. Once convince men that their 
 course of action is hopeless and inactivity 
 will follow. The spirit which gives utter 
 ance to the words, " It is useless to try," 
 is the greatest enemy which any reformer 
 has to meet. It was man s unbelief in 
 his power to free the slave that retarded 
 the cause of emancipation. But this 
 despair never possessed Whittier. Not 
 only was he sincere ; he was also cheer 
 ful. When others despaired of the 
 triumph of right, he sang as though the 
 dawn of the morning was at hand. He 
 could not be a pessimist because he 
 believed in man, in the right, and in God. 
 He was quick to see the insincerity of 
 society. After a visit to Washington, 
 
Optimism 53 
 
 he described the social life at the nation s 
 capitol. He imagines the dance : 
 
 " There tonight shall woman s glances, 
 
 Star-like, welcome give to them ; 
 Fawning fools with shy advances 
 
 Seek to touch their garment s hem, 
 With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds 
 Which God and Truth condemn." 
 
 What is it to these people of wealth 
 and fashion that the stars look down 
 upon a scene of human misery that earth 
 would fain hide ! " That the slave ship 
 lies in waiting, rocking on Potomac s 
 side ! " Vainly shall the slave in anguish 
 call, vainly shall the mourner go to these 
 children of fashion ! 
 
 Here would the pessimist stop and 
 weight the wind with his wailing. But 
 Whittier saw deeper. Underneath the 
 insincerity of men and the fickleness of 
 society, he saw something which filled 
 him with hope. Mankind at heart is 
 real and once its heart is touched by a 
 great cause it will give its warm blood 
 for the right. 
 
54 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 " Nay, my words are all too sweeping : 
 
 In this crowded human mart, 
 Feeling is not dead, but sleeping ; 
 
 Man s strong will and woman s heart 
 In the coming strife for freedom, yet shall 
 bear their generous part." 
 
 It was because of this belief in man 
 that he wrote many of his Anti-slavery 
 poems. He wrote to awaken these feel 
 ings, " not dead but sleeping," and to 
 make " man s strong will " bear its part. 
 
 He was strong, at times, almost bitter 
 in his criticism of the Christian Church. 
 He did not hesitate to call the Church, 
 as he saw it in many places, a Christless 
 Church. Yet he was not pessimistic 
 about the future of this Christian insti 
 tution. In the closing paragraph of a 
 poem in which all his indignation bursts 
 forth, he says : 
 
 " O heart of mine, keep patient ! Looking forth, 
 As from the Mount of Vision, I behold, 
 
 Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on earth ; 
 The martyr s dream, the golden age foretold." 
 
 Not only was he an optimist because 
 
Optimism 55 
 
 he believed that mankind would ulti 
 mately stand for the right ; he believed 
 that God was on the side of the right 
 and that wrong could not prevail. 
 When Texas was annexed to this coun 
 try, as Whittier believed, to strengthen 
 the cause of slavery, he appealed to Mass 
 achusetts to stand firm in its protest, 
 though forsaken by all save truth. 
 
 " Shrink not from the strife unequal ! 
 
 With the best is always hope ; 
 And ever in the sequel 
 
 God holds the right side up." 
 
 John C. Calhoun strongly urged the 
 annexation of Texas so that slave terri 
 tory might be increased, but opposed the 
 annexation of Oregon for fear that it 
 would enlarge the domain of freedom. 
 To him the Quaker poet writes : " The 
 fates are just ; they give us but our own ; 
 Nemesis ripens what our hands have 
 sown." 
 
 " So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee, 
 
 For God still overrules man s schemes and takes 
 
56 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes 
 The wrath of man to praise Him." 
 
 Let man never despair who is in the 
 battle for the right. He cannot meet 
 with ultimate defeat for all the powers 
 of nature and God are fighting on his 
 side. 
 
 " Not to the swift nor to the strong 
 The battles of the right belong ; 
 For he who strikes for Freedom wears 
 The armor of the captive s prayers, 
 And nature proffers to his cause 
 The strength of her eternal laws ; 
 While he whose arm essays to bind 
 And herd with common brutes his kind 
 Strives moreover at fearful odds 
 With Nature and the jealous gods, 
 And dares the dread recoil which late 
 Or soon their right shall vindicate." 
 
 A fugitive slave, Thomas Sims, was 
 arrested and returned to bondage. The 
 wealthiest and most respectable citizens 
 of Boston volunteered their services to 
 the marshal on this occasion. All the 
 forces of mammon, respectability, and 
 authority were arrayed against the cause 
 
Optimism 57 
 
 of freedom. But this could not make a 
 pessimist of Whittier. 
 
 " Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press, 
 
 Make gods of gold ; 
 Let honor, truth, and manliness 
 Like wares be sold. 
 
 Your hoards are great, your walls are strong, 
 
 But God is just; 
 The guilded chambers built by wrong 
 
 Invite the rust." 
 
 " Truth is stronger than a lie, 
 And righteousness than wrong." 
 
 On a June day when the sun shines 
 brightly and the air is filled with new 
 life, a strong body and perfect health 
 will make an optimist of any man. 
 When the night comes and the earth is 
 chilled by disappointment and shaken by 
 defeat, only a believer in God can be an 
 optimist. M. Laveleye truly remarks 
 that " an incurable sadness takes hold of 
 the man who has no hope of anything 
 better than this life." The optimist may 
 be conscious of pain and know the in 
 equalities and struggles which are a part 
 
58 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 of the human lot, but these things will 
 not discourage him because he believes 
 that a perfect Mind, a righteous Reason 
 ableness, rules in the mystery and night 
 of humanity. 
 
 " God s ways seem dark, but, soon or late, 
 
 They touch the shining hills of day ; 
 
 The evil cannot brook delay, 
 The good can well afford to wait, 
 
 Give ermined knaves their hour of crime ; 
 Ye have the future grand and great, 
 
 The safe appeal of Truth to Time." 
 
 When the awful war cloud hung over 
 our country, when cities were being 
 burned and the brave sons of North and 
 South were spilling their blood, a deep 
 despair took possession of many people. 
 The nation seemed to them as a ship 
 with her sails torn, her rudder lost, drift 
 ing at the mercy of the tempestuous sea. 
 Whittier came in this dark hour with his 
 brave words : 
 
 " But, courage, O ye mariners ! 
 
 Ye shall not suffer wreck, 
 While up to God the freedman s prayers 
 Are rising from your deck. 
 
Optimism 59 
 
 Wait cheerily then, O mariners, 
 
 For daylight and for land ; 
 The breath of God is in your sail, 
 
 Your rudder in His hand." 
 
 Much of the pessimism of our day 
 may be traced to the loss of faith in a 
 divine Providence which cares for man 
 as for the lily. We have given so much 
 attention to natural law that we have 
 come to think of it as supreme rather 
 than as God s wayof doing things. Natu 
 ral law has become a very God to many 
 men rather than a wonderful manifesta 
 tion of the divine Will. We come to feel 
 that, rather than children of the heavenly 
 Father, we are prisoners in a great ma 
 chine from which tnere is no way of 
 escape. But the Quaker poet could not 
 believe that this was a cold and lifeless 
 world, abandoned to fate. 
 
 " Nothing can of chance befall : 
 Child and Seraph, mote and star, 
 Well Thou knowest what we are ! 
 Through Thy vast creative plan 
 Looking, from the worm to man, 
 There is pity in Thine eyes, 
 
60 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 But no hatred nor surprise. 
 
 Not in blind caprice of will, 
 
 Not in cunning sleight of skill, 
 
 Not for show of power, was wrought 
 
 Nature s marvel in Thy thought. 
 
 Never careless hand and vain 
 
 Smites these chords of joy and pain ; 
 
 No immortal selfishness 
 
 Plays the game of curse and bless : 
 
 Heaven and earth are witnesses 
 
 That Thy glory goodness is." 
 
 Only a soul with a large outlook upon 
 life and destiny can persevere in great 
 works of love for the uplifting of human 
 ity. The forces of evil are so strongly 
 organized, the very material with which 
 we labor is so imperfect, that defeat is 
 sure to follow defeat. No man in the 
 service of humanity has ever met with 
 constant success. Those who have per 
 severed under these circumstances have 
 been conscious of the larger service in 
 which they were engaged and of the co 
 operation which they had from higher 
 powers. When John Bright stood up in 
 the House of Commons he began his 
 
Optimism 61 
 
 address with these words : " Let us ex 
 amine the laws and principles under 
 which alone God has permitted nations 
 to become great." Charles Sumner 
 speaking in Congress said : " I desire to 
 speak about certain laws older than the 
 Constitution, older than the Declaration 
 of Independence, older than the Vedas. 
 I mean the laws of Almighty God." 
 Oliver Cromwell, Gladstone, and Lincoln 
 labored in the faith that God was on the 
 side of right and that the final triumph 
 of right was assured. Defeat was only 
 temporary. So long as God is in His 
 heavens all is right with the world. This 
 same faith filled Whittier with hope and 
 enabled him to work even though dark 
 ness was round about him. 
 
 " I have not seen, I may not see, 
 
 My hopes for man take form in fact, 
 But God will give the victory 
 
 In due time ; in that faith I act. 
 And he who sees the future sure, 
 The baffling present may endure, 
 And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand that leads 
 The heart s desire beyond the halting step of 
 deeds." 
 
RELIGION AND HUMANITY 
 
 QLOSELY related to Whittier s 
 thought of the love of God is that 
 of the love of man. Along the pathway 
 of these two principles his thought 
 traveled and by them his life was guided. 
 Late in his life he wrote : " More and 
 more the world is learning that the true 
 plan of salvation is love of God and love 
 to man." In a letter to Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes he said, " Love is the one essen 
 tial thing." 
 
 He labored not for fame nor to gain a 
 place among the immortals, but for the 
 benefit of the world about him. IH a 
 letter written to Lucy Hooper, in which 
 he was urging her to write a poem of 
 some length, speaking of the time which 
 would be required to write it he said : 
 " We shall perish and verily our works 
 
Religion and Humanity 63 
 
 shall follow us. The hearts which now 
 know us and love us will also soon cease to 
 beat and with them our very memories 
 will die. The utilitarian of the twen 
 tieth century will not heed whether, in 
 treading on our graves, he shakes the 
 dust of prose or poetry from his feet. 
 And after all what matters it? Who 
 cares for the opinions of the twentieth 
 century? Not I, for one ; but we do all 
 care for the opinions of the good and the 
 wise and the pure-hearted around us ! If 
 we strive for fame, or riches, or honor, it 
 is because we wish to share their smile 
 with the friends whom we love, and in 
 the matter of poetry, a poetical reputa 
 tion." A few days later he wrote her 
 again urging her to write a poem of some 
 length before she published her shorter 
 poems, but he added these words of 
 advice which he hoped she would con 
 sider before she undertook such a task : 
 " Unless consecrated to the sacred inter 
 ests of religion and humanity, it would 
 
64 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 be a criminal waste of life and abuse of 
 the powers which God has given for his 
 own glory and the welfare of the world." 
 In this way Whittier would have re 
 garded his own life had he spent it in any 
 other way than for the advancement of 
 the human race. The cause of his life 
 was the cause of his fallen brother, and 
 to break the shackles that bound him 
 and remove the snares that awaited him 
 was the purpose of all his labors. So 
 well did he live in accord with his pur 
 pose that he might have taken these 
 words for his own : 
 
 " Hand of want or soul in pain 
 Have not sought my door in vain ; 
 I have kept my fealty good 
 To the human brotherhood ; 
 Scarcely have I asked in prayer 
 That which others might not share." 
 
 His long fight against slavery, his ninety- 
 two anti-slavery poems, his espousal of 
 the cause of the oppressed in Italy 
 and elsewhere, all testify to the principle 
 
Religion and Humanity 65 
 
 which ruled his life. There are many 
 things which show the sympathy and 
 love which guided him. In a letter to 
 Elizabeth Stuart Phclps, he wrote: " I 
 love Beecher and believe in him. He 
 has done good to thousands. If he has 
 fallen into temptation I shall feel grieved, 
 but would be ashamed of myself were I 
 less his friend ! " The members of the 
 Society of Friends were troubled when 
 they found themselves in the midst of 
 war. He addressed these words to them : 
 "_Qur_mission is at this time to mitigate 
 the sufferings of our countrymen, to visit 
 and aid the sick and the wounded, to re 
 lieve the necessities of the widow and 
 the orphan, and to practise economy for 
 the sake of charity." 
 
 Whittier s greatest work was his em 
 phasis upon the human side of Christi 
 anity. Oliver Wendell Holmes believed 
 that theology had become chiefly dia- 
 bology and he worked with pen and 
 tongue to humanize religious thought. 
 
66 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 In " The Professor at the Breakfast 
 Table" he wrote: "By Jove, Sir, until 
 common sense is well mixed up with 
 medicine, and common manhood with 
 theology, and common honesty with law, 
 We, the People, Sir, some of us with nut 
 crackers, some of us with trip hammers, 
 and some of us with pile drivers, and 
 some of us coming with a whish ! like 
 air stones out of a lunar volcano, will 
 crash down upon lumps of nonsense in 
 all of them till we have made powder 
 with them like Aaron s calf." 
 
 What Holmes proposed to do, Whit- 
 tier did, at least in the realm of religion. 
 He made men understand that Jiiey 
 could show their love for God only by 
 acting in love toward men. If the pul 
 pits were dumb on the great theme of 
 human slavery, and Christianity had de 
 generated into mere pietism, he made 
 the dumb clergy ashamed of their silence 
 and never tired of telling men that apart 
 from the cup of cold water given to the 
 
Religion and Humanity 67 
 
 least of earth s children there could be 
 no Christianity. 
 
 A northern merchant in order to con 
 ciliate his Southern customers had an 
 edition of the Prayer Book printed with 
 certain portions, which were obnoxious 
 to the South, omitted. Before these 
 books, Whittier says, " sleek oppressors 
 kneel to pray." These men imagine that 
 heaven is moved by flattering tongues, 
 that in the scales of Eternal Justice, sel 
 fish prayers weigh more than generous 
 deeds, that " words intoned with graceful 
 unction move the Eternal Goodness more 
 than lives of truth and love." By them 
 the Lord, again, is crucified, Eternal 
 Goodness is clipped and shorn, his robe 
 of mercy is rent. The cry of the bond 
 man is " prayer-smothered," " anthem- 
 drowned." 
 
 " No falser idol man has bowed before, 
 In Indian groves or islands of the sea, 
 Than that which through the quaint-carved 
 
 Gothic door 
 Looks forth, a church without humanity." 
 
68 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Whittier saw a priesthood which had 
 lost its vision and had ceased to cry 
 " Holy, Holy, Holy ! " They waited for 
 the beck and nod of power ; with solemn 
 words they sanctified the fraud ; with 
 ghostly lips they blessed the manacles 
 and whips of slavery. " Not on them 
 the poor rely, not to them looks liberty." 
 What cant they proclaimed ! " Golden 
 streets for idle knaves, sabbath rest for 
 weary slave." What a substitute for the 
 message of the Nazarene, this life of 
 future bliss painted on the black and 
 hopeless present ! 
 
 " Not for words and works like these, 
 Priest of God, thy mission is ; 
 But to make earth s desert glad, 
 In its Eden greenness clad ; 
 And to level manhood bring 
 Lord and peasant, serf and king ; 
 And the Christ of God to find 
 In the humblest of thy kind." 
 
 Religion is always in danger of degen 
 erating into quackery. As the solemn 
 assembly, the noise of song and the 
 
Religion and Humanity 69 
 
 melody of viol satisfied the religious con 
 science of a corrupt Jewish nation, when 
 Amos spoke at Bethel, so a false piety is 
 always in danger of robbing religion of 
 its moral quality. But forms of worship 
 and confessions of faith, apart from the 
 Christian virtues, were nothing to this 
 simple Quaker. Of Doctor Neall, a 
 philanthropist and abolitionist, brave, 
 gentle, and tender, he wrote : 
 
 " He blew no trumpet in the market place, 
 Nor in the Church with hypocritic face 
 Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace ; 
 Loathing pretense, he did with cheerful will 
 What others talked of while their hands were still ; 
 And, while Lord, Lord ! the pious tyrant cried, 
 Who, in the poor, their Master crucified, 
 His daily prayer, far better understood 
 In acts than words, was simply doing good." 
 
 We forget the meek and retiring Whit- 
 tier and can picture in imagination none 
 other than a giant with a voice of thunder 
 when we read " The Christian Slave," 
 intense with emotion, bitter with irony, 
 and piercing in intellectual keenness. A 
 
70 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Southern newspaper gave a description 
 of the auction of a slave girl. On the 
 platform she was recommended as a 
 " good Christian." Whittier catches the 
 words of the auctioneer: 
 
 " A Christian ! going, gone ! 
 Who bids for God s own image ? for his grace 
 Which that poor victim of the market-place, 
 
 Hath in her suffering won ? 
 
 My God ! can such things be ? 
 Hast Thou not said that whatso er is done 
 Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one 
 
 Is even done to Thee ? 
 
 In that sad victim, then, 
 Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand ; 
 Once more the jest-word of a mocking band, 
 
 Bound, sold, and scourged again ! " 
 
 He was as strong in his condemnation 
 of certain phases of the commercial spirit 
 in New England as he was in his con 
 demnation of the church when it failed 
 in its duty. Men, as in every great 
 reform, said, " Don t interfere ; it will 
 affect trade. The market will become 
 unstable and prices will drop." Party 
 
Religion and Humanity 7 1 
 
 men said, " Stand by the party." But 
 Whittier cried, when the call was given 
 for a meeting of citizens in Faneuil Hall : 
 
 " Up, and tread beneath your feet 
 
 Every cord by party spun : 
 Let your hearts together beat 
 
 As the hearts of one. 
 Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade, 
 
 Let them rise or let them fall: 
 Freedom asks your common aid, 
 
 Up, to Faneuil Hall." 
 
 When he heard of the rejection of the 
 Anti-slavery Resolves by the Whig Con 
 vention in Faneuil Hall in 1846 he 
 wrote : 
 
 " Tell me not of banks and tariffs, cease your pal 
 try pedler cries ; 
 
 Shall the good State sink her honor that your 
 
 gambling stocks may rise ? 
 
 "Would you barter man for cotton? That your 
 gains may sum up higher, 
 
 Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our chil 
 dren through the fire ? 
 
 Is the dollar only real ? God and truth and right 
 a dream ? 
 
 Weighed against your lying ledgers must our 
 manhood kick the beam ? 
 
72 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 O my God ! for that free spirit, which of old in 
 
 Boston town 
 Smote the Province House with terror, struck the 
 
 crest of Andros down ! 
 For another strong-voiced Adams in the streets to 
 
 cry, 
 Up for God and Massachusetts ! Set your feet 
 
 on mammon s lie ! 
 Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton s 
 
 latest pound, 
 But in heaven s name keep your honor, keep the 
 
 heart o the Bay State sound ! 
 
 After the War of the Rebellion had 
 closed the greatest question before the 
 thirty-ninth Congress was that of recon 
 struction, and especially the question of 
 the standing of those who had taken 
 arms against the Union and their relation 
 to the freedmen. Whittier addressed a 
 poem to the Congress which is a forceful 
 plea for the manifestation of Christian 
 love, and reveals in every stanza the 
 beautiful spirit of the poet. 
 
 " The torch of vengeance in your hands 
 He quenches ; unto Him belong 
 The solemn recompense of wrongs. 
 
Religion and Humanity 73 
 
 Alas ! no victor s pride is ours ; 
 We bend above our triumphs won 
 Like David o er his rebel son." 
 
 The breadth of his sympathy is indi 
 cated by his attitude toward men of 
 other sects than his own. As we have 
 seen, he was an orthodox Quaker, but he 
 was quick to recognize a Christian wher 
 ever he saw him, whether in the ranks 
 of Unitarians or trinitarians. The life 
 which a man lived, not the creed to 
 which he subscribed, was to this Quaker 
 the measure of a Christian. He read a 
 poem at the anniversary of the Friend s 
 school in Providence in which he eulo 
 gized the great work which the Quakers 
 had accomplished, and then adds : 
 
 " Enough and too much of the sect and the name. 
 What matters our label, so truth be our aim ? 
 The creed may be wrong, but the life may be true, 
 And hearts beat the same under drab coats or 
 blue." 
 
 In a poem read at Brown University 
 the same thought is expressed : 
 
74 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 " So love of God and man wax stronger, 
 Let sect and creecl be lesser. 
 
 And slowly learns the world the truth 
 
 That makes us all thy debtor, 
 That holy life is more than rite, 
 
 And spirit more than letter ; 
 
 That they who differ pole-wide serve 
 
 Perchance the common Master, 
 And other sheep He hath than they 
 
 Who graze one narrow pasture ! " 
 
 Whittier was a strong advocate of 
 universal peace. War is the fruit of 
 human selfishness and greed and it could 
 have no place in his thought which was 
 so dominated by love. In 1873 in his 
 " Christmas Carmen " he wrote : 
 
 " Sing the bridal of nations ! with chorals of love 
 Sing out the war-vulture and sing in the dove, 
 Till the hearts of the people keep time in accord, 
 And the voice of the world is the voice of the 
 Lord! 
 
 Clasp hands of the nations 
 In strong gratulations : 
 
 The dark night is ending and dawn has begun ; 
 Rise, hope of the ages, rise like the sun, 
 All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! 
 Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace ; 
 
Religion and Humanity 75 
 
 East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel 
 
 cease : 
 
 Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, 
 Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man ! 
 Hark ! joining in chorus 
 The heavens bend o er us ! 
 The dark night is ending and dawn has begun ; 
 Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, 
 All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! " 
 
 He also raised a protest against the cruel 
 practice of heresy trials. Our Puritan 
 fathers made the mistake of regard 
 ing man chiefly as an intellectual being, 
 and religion as a philosophical system of 
 thought to which men must give assent 
 to obtain salvation. They forgot that 
 man had affections, and imagination, and 
 will, and that he gained more knowledge 
 through these faculties of his soul than 
 through his logical reason. They could 
 not conceive of religion as a life but only 
 as a dogma which was to gain the assent 
 of man s intellect. To dissent, therefore, 
 from the accepted theological dogmas 
 was heresy, and heresy was one of the 
 greatest human sins, indeed it was very 
 
76 The Mind of Wkittier 
 
 anti-Christ, because it shook the founda 
 tions of man s hope in eternal life. But 
 Whittier had a larger conception of the 
 nature of religion than had the Puritan. 
 Religion is a life to be lived rather than 
 a. dogma to be believed. Love is greater 
 than knowledge and therefore it is more 
 Christ-like to bear with the heretic than 
 it is to persecute him. In " The Vision 
 of Echard " he makes God say : 
 
 " I loathe your wrangling councils, 
 
 I tread upon your creeds ; 
 Who made ye mine avengers, 
 Or told ye of my needs ; 
 
 T bless men and ye curse them, 
 
 I love them and ye hate ; 
 Ye bite and tear each other, 
 
 I suffer long and wait." 
 
 Indeed who is the heretic ? 
 
 " Call him not heretic whose words attest 
 His faith in goodness by no creed confessed. 
 Whatever in love s name is truly done 
 To free the bound and lift the fallen one 
 Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word 
 Is not against Him labors for our Lord. 
 When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore 
 
Religion and Humanity 77 
 
 For love s sweet service, sought the sisters door, 
 One saw the heavenly, one the human guest, 
 But who shall say which loved the Master best ? " 
 
 Faith is too often made a matter of 
 intellectual assent to a creed but this is 
 not faith at all. Faith is trust in the 
 God who is good, and trust that brings 
 us into such vital relation with Him that 
 we manifest His goodness in our lives. 
 
 " We live by Faith ; but Faith is not the slave 
 Of text and legend. Reason s voice and God s, 
 Nature s and Duty s, never are at odds. 
 
 What asks our Father of His children, save 
 
 Justice and mercy and humility, 
 
 A reasonable service of good deeds, 
 Pure living, tenderness of human needs, 
 
 Reverence and truth, and prayer for light to see 
 
 The Master s footprints in our daily ways ? 
 No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, 
 But the calm beauty of an ordered life 
 
 Whose very breathing is unworded praise ! 
 A life that stands as all true lives have stood, 
 Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good." 
 
 Closely connected with the thought of 
 love is Whittier s thought of worship. 
 While so plain, so devoid of everything 
 which would appeal to the eye or the 
 
78 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 ear, his conception is beautiful. It is 
 the thought expressed by St. James : 
 " Pure religion and undefiled before God 
 and the Father is this, to visit the 
 fatherless and the widows in their 
 affliction and to keep himself unspotted 
 from the world." When these words 
 are rightly understood they embody 
 Whittier s thought of worship. They 
 mean pure worship rather than pure 
 religion. The word " religion " in the 
 seventeenth century meant mainly " out 
 ward service," or what we sometimes 
 express in the words " religious service 
 and worship." Religion then was mainly 
 ritual of ceremonies and ablutions, but 
 the true ritual, says St. James, is purity, 
 love, and service. 
 
 " He asks no taper lights on high, surrounding 
 The priestly altar and the saintly grave, 
 
 No dolorous chants nor organ music sounding 
 Nor incense clouding up the twilight nave. 
 
 O brother man ! fold to thy heart thy brother ; 
 Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there : 
 
Religion and Humanity 79 
 
 To worship rightly is to love each other, 
 Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer." 
 
 The same thought is found in " Our 
 Master: " 
 
 " He serves the best who loveth most 
 His brothers and thy own, 
 Thy litanies, sweet offices 
 Of love and gratitude ; 
 Thy sacramental liturgies 
 The joy of doing good." 
 
 In " The Over-Heart " he writes : 
 
 " What doth the holy guide require ? 
 No rite of pain, nor gift of blood, 
 But man a kindly brotherhood. 
 Looking, where duty is desire, 
 To Him, the beautiful and good." 
 
 In love and service is to be found the 
 highest worship. 
 
 " For he who sings the love of man 
 The love of God hath sung." 
 
NATURE 
 
 "DICHARD HENRY STODDARD, 
 writing of Whittier s poems on 
 Nature, marks them as " characterized 
 by poetic elements which are not 
 common among descriptive poets. They 
 are not enumerative like the landscapes 
 that form the backgrounds of Scott s 
 metrical romances, but suggestive ; for 
 though there is an abundance of form 
 and color in them, their value does not 
 depend upon these qualities so much as 
 upon the luminous atmosphere in which 
 they are steeped. They are more than 
 picturesque in that they reveal the 
 personality of the poet, a personality 
 that, changing with the moods they 
 awaken, is always tender and thoughtful, 
 grateful for the glimpses of loveliness 
 they disclose, and consoled by the 
 spiritual truth they teach." 
 
Nature 8 1 
 
 Whittier was not a Greek in spirit. 
 He did not love nature for its simple 
 beauty of form and color. The thing of 
 supreme interest to him was life and he 
 was attracted to nature because it helped 
 him to interpret himself, his brother, and 
 his God. Nature was dwarfed to insignifi 
 cance before a human soul. The poet 
 visited a farm and heard the bleating of 
 sheep among the hills, the old bucket 
 splashing in the well, the clatter of the 
 pasture-bars as they fell, the creaking of 
 the barn-yard gate as the children upon 
 it swung back and forth, the clear tink 
 ling of the cow bell as the evening 
 brought in the herd from the pasture. 
 The scene broadened until he saw the 
 " lake tinted with sunset," " the wavy 
 lines of the receding hills/ and still 
 farther away 
 
 " Monadnock lifting from his night of pines 
 
 His rosy forehead to the evening star. 
 Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid 
 His head against the West, whose warm light 
 made 
 
82 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 His aureole ; and o er him, sharp and clear, 
 Like a shaft of lightening in mid-launching stayed, 
 A single level cloud-line, shone upon 
 By the fierce glances of the sunken sun, 
 Menaced the darkness with its golden spear! " 
 
 Truly this is a picture which would make 
 a Greek of any man ! What more could 
 man desire? But as Whittier looks on 
 this picture, so beautiful, the farmer, 
 walking by his side, speaks of his sainted 
 mother, and immediately Whittier sees 
 something still more beautiful than this 
 nature-picture. 
 
 " The warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill, 
 The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and 
 
 dim 
 Before the saintly soul, whose human will 
 
 Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod, 
 Making her homely toil and household ways 
 An earthly echo of the song of praise 
 
 Swelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim." 
 
 It was because Whittier saw all nature 
 in terms of life that his nature poetry 
 differs from that of any other descriptive 
 poet. He was not a philosophical inter 
 preter of nature as was Wordsworth but 
 
Nat lire 83 
 
 nature was constantly interpreting for 
 him the great realities of life. Nature 
 always spoke to him on those great 
 themes of love, immortality, and God. 
 It was always making clear to him some 
 human emotion, or hope, or fear. It is 
 true that at times he delighted to go 
 into the presence of nature and forget 
 " the dusty land and noisy town." He 
 often went into the forests or to the sea 
 shore, and let nature s calm pour into his 
 soul. At Hampton Beach he said : 
 
 " Good-by to Pain and Care ! I take 
 
 Mine ease to-day : 
 
 Here where these sunny waters break, 
 And ripples this keen breeze, I shake 
 All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts 
 away. 
 
 I draw a freer breath, I seem 
 
 Like all I see 
 
 Waves in the sun, the white-winged gleam 
 Of sea-birds in the slanting beam, 
 And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind 
 free." 
 
 But he found this rest and peace in 
 nature because all nature had for him a 
 
84 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 deep, sacred significance. It was more 
 than sticks, and rocks, and clods, and 
 flowers, and hills. It was the garment of 
 Spirit ever present in man and things. 
 It was a symbol of spiritual facts which 
 enabled him to hear in nature a living 
 voice. 
 
 The religious significance of Whittier s 
 nature poetry is found in three uses 
 which he makes of nature. First, he 
 finds in nature a text for his sermon ; 
 second, nature gives him the opportunity 
 for " thoughtful hours of musing;" and 
 finally, nature has a deeper spiritual 
 significance which speaks of God. 
 
 Whittier was a natural preacher and 
 he could not resist the temptation to 
 preach. Tennyson was seldom if ever a 
 preacher. He always had a moral view 
 in his writings. He did not write for 
 art s sake alone. The substance of his 
 message was as important as its form. 
 But he never used his material as does 
 the preacher. The story of life which he 
 
Nature 85 
 
 related, or the picture of nature which 
 he drew, was so clear that the moral 
 truth was always felt. He never attached 
 a moral to the end of his writings. 
 Whittier, on the other hand, was not 
 satisfied to draw a picture and let it 
 teach its own lesson. To him the illus 
 tration was incomplete until he made 
 the application. 
 
 He wrote of the Mayflower and the 
 origin of its name. The Pilgrim went 
 into the forest at the opening of spring 
 after that first hard winter at Plymouth 
 and finding this flower lifting its head 
 above the leaves, named it after the ship 
 which had brought him across the sea. 
 The flower has come to us with the same 
 beautiful blossom which welcomed the 
 Pilgrim. So Whittier would have the 
 Pilgrim s character come down to us and 
 be repeated in our sons. 
 
 " O sacred flower of faith and hope, 
 
 As sweetly now as then 
 Ye bloom on many a birchen slope, 
 In many a pine-dark glen. 
 
86 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Behind the sea-wall s rugged length, 
 Unchanged, your leaves unfold, 
 
 Like love behind the manly strength 
 Of the brave hearts of old. 
 
 So like the fathers in their sons, 
 
 Their sturdy faith be ours, 
 And ours the love that overruns 
 
 Its rocky strength with flowers." 
 
 He stood looking at the mountain of 
 Franconia. The lightning was playing 
 about its brow, the clouds were wrapping 
 their black mantles about its sides, and 
 the roar of thunder was echoing down 
 its deep, dark canyons. Tongues of fire 
 broke the great trees and the rain fell in 
 torrents. After the storm the mists 
 cleared, the winds paused in the pines, 
 and the deer went forth to feed. The 
 rain set in play a thousand waterfalls, 
 whose laughter made the woods glad, 
 and filling the dry streams in the valley, 
 made them " sing to the freshened mea 
 dow-lands again." This was a picture 
 drawn by Whittier in 1862, when an 
 awful storm had swept over our land ; 
 
Nature 87 
 
 when everything was dark and sad. The 
 blessings that followed the storm about 
 the mountain filled him with a larger 
 hope for the nation. 
 
 " So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats 
 The land with hail and fire may pass away 
 With its spent thunders at the break of day, 
 Like last night s clouds, and leave, as it retreats, 
 A greener earth and fairer sky behind, 
 Blown crystal-clear by Freedom s Northern 
 wind ! " 
 
 In the sunset, " the miracle play of 
 night and day," Whittier found thought 
 for a sermon on immortality. The last 
 rays of the summer s sun fell on the river 
 making " a gold fringe on the purpling 
 hem of hills." A light touched the sky 
 and mountain filling them with a glory 
 of which no poet has ever sung. The 
 summit of the mountains " melt in rosy 
 mist," and the granite rocks seem softer 
 than the clouds. No leaf stirs. The 
 silence of eternity has fallen over the 
 land. The poet stands dumb before 
 the scene. But soon it begins to fade. The 
 
88 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 golden waters grow pale and a gray- 
 winged mist sweeps over the valley, shut 
 ting from view the purple hills. The 
 day is lost in the night. 
 
 " I go the common way of all ; 
 
 The sunset fires will burn, 
 The flowers will blow, the river flow, 
 
 When I no more return. 
 No whisper from the mountain pine 
 
 Nor lapsing stream shall tell 
 The stranger, treading where I tread, 
 
 Of him who loved them well. 
 
 But beauty seen is never lost, 
 
 God s colors all are fast ; 
 The glory of the sunset heaven 
 
 Into my soul has passed, 
 A sense of gladness unconfined 
 
 To mortal date or clime ; 
 As the soul liveth, it shall live 
 
 Beyond the years of time. 
 Beside the mystic asphodels 
 
 Shall bloom the home-born flowers, 
 And new horizons flush and glow 
 
 With sunset hues of ours." 
 
 Whittier could not even contemplate a 
 simple Christmas scene without finding 
 in it the deeper meaning of human life. 
 A traveler passed by his home at Christ- 
 
Nature 89 
 
 mas time and saw dimly through the 
 frosted window pane a flower. To the 
 traveler it had no beauty because he could 
 not see its perfect grace. It turned its 
 face from the " frosty breath of autumn " 
 to the warm tropic air of the room, so 
 that only those within the home could 
 see the real beauty of the flower. 
 
 " So from the trodden ways of earth, 
 Seem some sweet souls who veil their worth, 
 And offer to the careless glance 
 The clouding gray of circumstance. 
 They blossom best where hearth-fires burn, 
 To loving eyes alone they turn 
 The flowers of inward grace that hide 
 Their beauty from the world outside. 
 
 But deeper meanings come to me, 
 My half-immortal flower, from thee ! 
 Man judges from a partial view, 
 None ever yet his brother knew ; 
 The Eternal Eye that sees the whole 
 May better read the darkened soul, 
 And find, to outward sense denied, 
 The flower upon its inmost side ! " 
 
 Whittier s use of nature as a text for a 
 sermon was not, however, his highest 
 
9 o The Mind of Whittier 
 
 thought of nature. He tells us that he 
 went to nature for " thoughtful hours of 
 musing." We are fortunate in having so 
 many poets who have lived in com 
 munion with nature. From Bryant s 
 " Thanatopsis " to Woodberry s "North 
 Shore Watch," our poets have gone to 
 nature for some of their deepest and 
 most spiritual lessons. So Whittier 
 went into the forest and by the sea 
 shore, not so much for the purpose of 
 finding sermons, as to commune with 
 nature in her various moods. 
 
 There was a lonely spot in the forest 
 where the trailing arbutus grew. It was 
 a place shut in by the barricade of pines. 
 Amid dry leaves and mosses, under dead 
 boughs, these little spring flowers lifted 
 their heads in glad surprise. Musing on 
 this little flower which tried to gladden 
 the lonely dell, Whittier was led to think 
 of lonely lives, " clogged and pent," cold 
 and cumbered with care, which still find 
 room 
 
Nature 91 
 
 " To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day, 
 
 And make the sad earth happier for their bloom. " 
 
 In the heart of winter he found things 
 which were prophecies of summer. Then 
 the winter noon seemed " warm as sum 
 mer s day," the ice thawed, the mossy 
 earth looked forth, the streams gushed 
 clear, the fox left his cell, and the blue 
 bird sang with the brook. All these 
 things the poet saw and felt as the sum 
 mer prophecy of winter days. 
 
 " So, in those winters of the soul, 
 
 By bitter blasts and drear 
 O erswept from Memory s frozen pole, 
 
 Will sunny days appear. 
 Reviving Hope and Faith, they show 
 
 The soul its living powers, 
 And how beneath the winter s snow 
 
 Lie germs of summer flowers ! 
 
 The Night is mother of the Day, 
 
 The Winter of the Spring, 
 And ever upon old Decay 
 
 The greenest mosses cling. 
 Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, 
 
 Through showers the sunbeams fall ; 
 For God, who loveth all His works, 
 
 Has left His hope with all." 
 
9 2 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 As lie went into the fields and the 
 gentle west wind fell upon his cheek, 
 and he saw the fair meadows kept green 
 by the constant streams, the cool, blue 
 mountains rising in the distance, the 
 moist dells where the purple orchis 
 blooms, he found a prophecy of the land 
 which is to bring rest to every soul and 
 cool every pilgrim s brow : 
 
 " So the o erwearied pilgrim, as he fares 
 
 Along life s summer waste, at times is fanned, 
 
 Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs 
 Of a serener and a holier land, 
 Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland. 
 
 Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray, 
 
 Blow from the eternal hills ! make glad our earthly 
 way ! " 
 
 In the spring time he found the type 
 of the resurrection. He saw in it the 
 yearly evangel from God, bearing his glad 
 message of life over the grave. 
 
 " O soul of the spring-time, its light and its breath, 
 Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this 
 
 death ; 
 
 Renew the great miracle ; let us behold 
 The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled, 
 
Nature 93 
 
 And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old ! 
 
 Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has 
 
 lain, 
 
 Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, 
 And in blooming of flower and budding of tree 
 The symbols and types of our destiny see ; 
 The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole, 
 And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul ! " 
 
 If nature spoke such a varied language 
 to Whittier it was because he saw the 
 " Giver in the given." To him nature s 
 phases were " God s great pictures," and 
 in contemplating the picture he never 
 forgot the Artist. Thus when he went 
 to the hills he saw them crowned with 
 " unseen altars," when he walked through 
 the fields he was conscious that a " Pres 
 ence from the heavenly heights to those 
 of earth stoops down." By the side of 
 Lake Winnipesaukee, looking in the 
 " dark, still wood," and " upon the stiller 
 sea and greener land," he found rest for 
 his spirit. Here even conscience slum 
 bered, the voice of duty was still, the 
 shadows of life melted away. But this 
 
94 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 restful spirit came because nature was the 
 voice of the Inner Light which spoke 
 peace to the soul. 
 
 " Rocked on her breast, these pines and I 
 Alike on Nature s love rely ; 
 And equal seems to live or die. 
 
 Assured that He whose presence fills 
 With light the spaces of these hills 
 No evil to His creatures wills, 
 
 The simple faith remains, that He 
 Will do, whatever that may be, 
 The best alike for man and tree. 
 
 What mosses over one shall grow, 
 What life and light the other know, 
 Unanxious, leaving Him to show." 
 
 The quiet lake is the " mirror of 
 God s love/ and while sitting by it 
 with its wooded isles, beholding the sun 
 setting behind its purple mountains, Whit- 
 tier felt a calm repose stealing into his 
 life of suffering, which led him to rest in 
 faith on the divine Goodness. 
 
 "Still waits kind Nature to impart 
 
 Her choicest gifts to such as gain 
 An entrance to her loving heart 
 
 Through the sharp discipline of pain. 
 
Nature 95 
 
 Forever from the hand that takes 
 One blessing from us, others fall ; 
 
 And, soon or late, our Father makes 
 His perfect recompense to all ! " 
 
 The Indian wandering in the forest 
 looked out " upon the smile of God." 
 He found in nature the great Spirit. He 
 knew not the language of the skeptic, 
 but, in the simplicity of his life, he felt 
 a Power which carried conviction to his 
 soul. As the primitive mind found in 
 the wind, the sunset, and the tranquil 
 deep, an ever-present spirit, so there 
 Whittier found his ever-present God. 
 
 " God near him seemed ; from earth and skies 
 
 His loving voice he heard, 
 As, face to face, in Paradise, 
 Man stood before the Lord. 
 
 Thanks, O our Father ! that, like him, 
 
 Thy tender love I see, 
 In radiant hill and woodland dim, 
 
 And tinted sunset sea. 
 For not in mockery dost Thou fill 
 
 Our earth with light and grace ; 
 Thou hid st no dark and cruel will 
 
 Behind Thy smiling face ! " 
 
96 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Whittier seems to sum up his entire 
 conception of nature in the poem en 
 titled " The Meeting : " 
 
 " But nature is not solitude : 
 She crowds us with her thronging wood ; 
 Her many hands reach out to us, 
 Her many tongues are garrulous ; 
 Perpetual riddles of surprise 
 She offers to our ears and eyes ; 
 She will not leave our senses still, 
 But drags them captive at her will : 
 And, making earth too great for heaven, 
 She hides the Giver in the given." 
 
 Nature was a " perpetual riddle of sur 
 prise " because it was more than form and 
 beauty. It was steeped in a spiritual 
 atmosphere which gave to it meaning 
 and was the reason for its constant ap 
 peal to human thought and sentiment. 
 
 As man understands man because of 
 kindred spirit, so man understands and 
 communes with nature because there is 
 in nature a spirit like his own. 
 
 Some may feel the necessity of kneel 
 ing before saintly shrines and breathing 
 the air of holy places. " Cowled and tur- 
 
Nature 97 
 
 baned pilgrims " may bathe in sacred 
 rivers. Whittier, too, felt the necessity 
 of going to a holy place for worship to 
 lose his cares and ills, but he preferred to 
 go to " the strong uplifting hills " and 
 there, 
 
 " Calm as the hour, methinks I feel 
 A sense of worship o er me steal ; 
 Not that of satyr-charming Pan, 
 No cult to Nature shaming man, 
 Not Beauty s self, but that which lives 
 And shines through all the veils it weaves, 
 Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood, 
 Their witness to the Eternal Good 1 " 
 
FUTURE LIFE 
 
 \X7HITTIER was not one who would 
 say, if there is no heaven then 
 life is not worth living. He, probably, 
 would not have been a pessimist had he 
 believed that death ended all. Man 
 might find many things which would fill 
 him with regret as he looked upon a 
 misspent past. There might be much to 
 make him feel that he had been a poor, 
 blind, miserable servant. Yet 
 
 " If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in 
 A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin ; 
 
 If he hath lent 
 
 Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of need, 
 Over the suffering, mindless of his creed 
 
 Or home, hath bent ; 
 He hath not lived in vain." 
 
 Such a life is ample reward in itself. 
 Still Whittier did have a strong faith in 
 the immortality of the soul. " The little 
 
Future Life 99 
 
 circumstance of death," he wrote, " will 
 make no difference with me." After the 
 death of his sister, who had been his con 
 stant companion and great helper, he 
 wrote in " Snow-Bound : " 
 
 " I cannot feel that thou art far 
 Since near at hand the angels are ; 
 And when the sunset gates unbar, 
 Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
 And, white against the evening star, 
 The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? " 
 
 The same hope is expressed in another 
 part of the poem : 
 
 " Yet love will dream and faith will trust, 
 (Since He who knows our needs is just), 
 That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
 Alas for him who never sees 
 The stars shine through his cypress trees ! 
 Who, hopeless lays his dead away, 
 Nor looks to see the breaking day 
 Across the mournful marbles play ! 
 Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
 
 The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
 That Life is ever Lord of Death, 
 
 And Love can never lose its own." 
 
 Whittier had no vague, indefinite faith 
 in the future life. He expected to re- 
 
ioo The Mind of Whittier 
 
 tain his individuality in the next life so 
 that he might be recognized by his 
 friends and recognize them. " I shall 
 have the same loves, and aspirations, 
 and occupations. If it were not so I 
 should not be myself, and surely I shall 
 not lose my identity." 
 
 The thought of annihilation was intol 
 erable to him. There are at least two 
 forms of this doctrine. One teaches that 
 man is a spark from the central light, 
 and that death is simply the return of 
 the spark into the great flame. Or to use 
 a more familiar figure, the soul is like a 
 drop of water out of the great ocean of 
 spirit, and death is the return of the 
 drop into the limitless expanse. The 
 
 other form of this doctrine has nothino- 
 
 t> 
 
 to say about the origin of the soul. It 
 speaks only of its destiny, declaring that 
 death ends all. Whichever form we con 
 sider, the end is the same, the destruc 
 tion of personality. Whittier could not 
 believe such a doctrine. Nothing less 
 
Future Life 101 
 
 than the survival of personality, so that 
 it might be recognized in the future 
 state, could satisfy his faith. 
 
 " Nor mine the hope of Indra s son, 
 Of slumbering in oblivious rest, 
 
 Life s myriads blending into one, 
 In blank annihilation blest ; 
 
 Dust-atoms of the infinite, 
 
 Sparks scattered from the central light, 
 And winning back through mortal pain 
 Their old unconsciousness again. 
 
 No ! I have friends in Spirit Land, 
 
 Not shadows in a shadowy band, 
 Not others, but themselves are they." 
 
 He could not think that the noblest 
 work of God would be destroyed while 
 material things remain forever. There is 
 the law of the conservation of energy 
 and the indestructibility of matter. 
 Surely there must be a spiritual law 
 which will assure the indestructibility of 
 personality. We cannot think that God 
 cares more for physical force and 
 material atoms than he does for spiritual 
 beings. 
 
102 The Mind of Whit tier 
 
 " The waves which lull thy body s rest, 
 The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod, 
 Unwasted, through each change, attest 
 The fixed economy of God. 
 
 Shall these poor elements outlive 
 
 The mind whose kingly will they wrought ? 
 Their gross unconsciousness survive 
 
 Thy godlike energy of thought ? " 
 
 While Whittier speaks these assuring 
 words concerning the immortal life, we 
 must not conclude that he accepted this 
 truth as an intellectual certainty. We 
 have seen that his supreme trust in the 
 goodness of God was an act of his re 
 ligious nature rather than a proposition 
 accepted by his reason. His faith in im 
 mortality was a reasonable hope rather 
 than a certainty of the intellect. He 
 found nothing outside of his religious 
 nature which strengthened his faith in 
 the continuance of life after death. At a 
 meeting of the Radical Club, Robert 
 Dale Owen related many of his experi 
 ences of spirit manifestations and then 
 asked Whittier, " What would you do 
 
Future Life 103 
 
 if you should see such things?" "I 
 would cut and run," said Whittier. Such 
 things added nothing to his faith. With 
 Mrs. Child he discussed these things. 
 
 " Of many a hint of life beyond the veil, 
 
 And many a ghostly tale 
 Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf between 
 
 The seen and the unseen, 
 Seeking from omen, trance, and dream to gain 
 
 Solace to doubtful pain, 
 And touch with groping hands, the garment hem 
 
 Of truth sufficing them, 
 We talked." 
 
 But these conversations, even with a 
 woman whom he so much admired, did 
 not strengthen his faith. To him life 
 was its own best testimony to immortal 
 ity. That, in the divine economy, any 
 life of love, and tfuth~ and self-sacrifice 
 could finally be lost, was a thing which 
 he found himself unable to believe. 
 
 " Turning from the sore unrest 
 
 Of an all-baffling quest, 
 
 We thought of holy lives that from us passed 
 Hopeful unto the last, 
 
104 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 As if they saw beyond the river of death, 
 
 Like Him of Nazareth, 
 The many mansions of the Eternal days 
 
 Lift up their gates of praise. 
 
 And hushed to silence by a reverent awe, 
 
 Methought, O friend, I saw 
 In thy true life of word, and work, and thought, 
 
 The proof of all we sought." 
 
 Often Whittier s heart and head, his 
 faith and reason, came into conflict. 
 When reason was in the ascendency, he 
 was in confusion about the future life. 
 When faith was in the ascendency, he 
 rested serenely in the hope of immortal 
 ity. When he tried to picture what the 
 future life would be, the influence of the 
 present life upon that to come, he felt 
 the solemn mystery and could speak 
 only in the language of the agnostic. 
 All we know is that our friends have 
 been borne on by the returnless tide and 
 that we too must some day be carried 
 into the unknown. 
 
 " But be the prying vision veiled, 
 And let the seeking lips be dumb, 
 
Future Life 105 
 
 Where even seraph eyes have failed 
 Shall mortal blindness seek to come ? 
 
 We only knew that thou hast gone, 
 And that the same returnless tide 
 
 Which bore thee from us still glides on, 
 And we who mourn thee with it glide." 
 
 Love, however, is greater than knowl 
 edge, and faith is greater than logic. 
 When these voices of the heart are 
 heard, the questions of the head are 
 silenced and hope returns. 
 
 " We leave thee with a trust serene, 
 
 Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move, 
 While with a childlike faith we lean 
 
 On Him whose dearest name is Love ! " 
 
 He was constantly emphasizing the 
 thought that the immortal life does not 
 begin beyond the grave but is now. 
 Death is only an incident, not a change, 
 in the process of life. Man divides time 
 into the past, the present, and the future, 
 and between the present and the future 
 there is a thick veil drawn, beyond which 
 no eye can look. But with God there are 
 
io6 The Mind of Whit tier 
 
 no such divisions, there is no veil which 
 divides one time from another. 
 
 " What to thee is shadow, to Him is day 
 
 And the end He knoweth, 
 And not on a blind and aimless way 
 The spirit goeth." 
 
 So to the soul that believes in God, there 
 is no division of time into the present 
 and the future life. "The past and the 
 time to be are one, and both are now." 
 To the believing soul the immortal life is 
 lived on the earth. The future life is a 
 present fact and heaven and hell are 
 present realities. 
 
 " O restless spirit ! wherefore strain 
 
 Beyond thy sphere ? 
 
 Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain, 
 Are now and here. 
 
 Back to thyself is measured well 
 
 All thou hast given ; 
 Thy neighbor s wrong is thy present hell, 
 
 His bliss thy heaven. 
 
 And in life, in death, in dark and light, 
 
 All are in God s care : 
 Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep night, 
 
 And He is there." 
 
Future Life 107 
 
 Emphasizing the goodness of God as 
 did Whittier, we might expect that he 
 would have a very large hope for the 
 future life. He did not believe that 
 death closed to man all possibilities of 
 turning to God ; neither did he believe 
 that all men would finally be brought to 
 God. The first of these thoughts is 
 found in " The Cry of a Lost Soul." On 
 the Amazon is a bird which has a pecu 
 liar cry ; the Indians call it the cry of a 
 lost soul. A guide rowing a traveler on 
 this river hears the cry and describes it 
 as the cry of some infidel or heretic, 
 coming from hell. Some soul has sinned 
 unto death so that the " Holy Mother 
 hath no prayer for him." The traveler 
 listens to the story, meditates for a 
 moment, and then comes to him a larger 
 hope. 
 
 " Father of all ! he urges his strong plea, 
 
 * Thou lovest all : Thy erring child may be 
 
 Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee ! 
 
 All souls are Thine ; the wings of morning bear 
 
 None from that Presence which is everywhere, 
 
loS The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there. 
 Wilt thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal ! 
 In Thy long years, life s broken circle whole, 
 And change to praise the cry of a lost soul ? 
 
 Expressing the same thought in " Eter 
 nal Goodness," he says : 
 
 " I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care." 
 
 This large hope for the race which 
 Whittier held led some to the conclusion 
 that he was a Universalist. In reply to 
 this he wrote to a friend : " I am not a 
 Universalist, for I believe in the possi 
 bility of the perpetual loss of the soul 
 that persistently turns away from God, 
 in the next life as in this. But I do be 
 lieve that the divine love and compassion 
 follows us in all worlds and the Heavenly 
 Father will do the best that is possible 
 for every creature He has made." 
 
 When he turned from the godward to 
 the manward side of the question his hope 
 was not so bright ; indeed here he knew 
 not what to think. 
 
Future Life 109 
 
 " Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me 
 What the future life may be. 
 Other lips may well be bold ; 
 Like the publican of old, 
 I can only urge the plea, 
 Lord, be merciful to me ! " 
 
 God will never desert a soul, but man 
 may turn from God and remain away 
 from Him. " Thou leavest us because 
 we turn from Thee." 
 
 " Though God be good and free be heaven, 
 
 No force divine can love compel ; 
 And, though the songs of sin forgiven 
 May sound through lowest hell, 
 
 The sweet persuasion of His voice 
 
 Respects thy sanctity of will. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Forever round the Mercy-seat 
 
 The guiding lights of love shall burn, 
 
 But what if habit bound, thy feet 
 Shall lack the will to turn ? 
 
 What if thine eyes refuse to see, 
 
 Thine ear of Heaven s free welcome fail, 
 
 And thou a willing captive be, 
 Thyself thy own dark jail ? " 
 
 As the present life is a part of the 
 eternal life, our conduct here must influ- 
 
1 10 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 ence our future destiny. We shape here 
 the character of the life to come ; by 
 our present conduct we " fill our future s 
 atmosphere with sunshine or with shade." 
 
 " The tissue of the life to be 
 
 We weave with colors all our own, 
 And in the field of Destiny 
 We reap as we have sown. 
 
 Still shall the soul around it call 
 
 The shadows which it gathered here, 
 
 And painted on the eternal wall, 
 The Past shall reappear. 
 
 Think ye the notes of holy song 
 On Milton s tuneful ear have died ? 
 
 Think ye that Raphael s angel throng 
 Has vanished from his side ? 
 
 Oh no ! We live our life again ; 
 
 Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, 
 The pictures of the Past remain, 
 
 Man s works shall follow him ! " 
 
 Still, if the future world were divided 
 into two distinct realms, if there were a 
 separation between the good and the 
 bad, between the obedient and the dis 
 obedient, Whittier could not believe that 
 it would be impossible to pass from one 
 
Future Life 1 1 1 
 
 to the other. So long as sin remains and 
 souls dwell in darkness, heaven could not 
 be heaven and " look unmoved on hell." 
 A peace with a selfish unconcern about 
 those writhing in the pain of remorse, 
 a saintly ease which has no pitying 
 care, a love which has no prayer for 
 the sinner s forgiveness, can be no part 
 of the heavenly life. 
 
 "Is heaven so high 
 That pity cannot breathe its air ? 
 Its happy eyes forever dry, 
 
 Its holy lips without a prayer ! 
 My God ! my God ! if thither led 
 
 By thy free grace unmerited, 
 No crown nor palm be mine, but let me keep 
 A heart that still can feel, and eyes that still can 
 weep." 
 
 The same thought is further developed 
 in " The Two Angels." God called two 
 angels, one was Pity and the other was 
 Love, and sent them on an errand of 
 mercy into the under world. A wail 
 of sin and woe came through the gates of 
 heaven and saddened those within. The 
 smoke of torment darkened heaven s 
 
1 1 2 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 bright light. The divine compassion 
 could not rest satisfied with such sights 
 and sent the angels with this command : 
 
 " Fly downward to that under world and on its 
 
 souls of pain 
 Let Love drop smiles like sunshine, and Pity tears 
 
 like rain ! " 
 
 Swiftly they made their flight through 
 the long, strange way until they came to 
 the " lost and nether world, red-wrapped 
 in rayless flame." 
 
 " There Pity, shuddering, wept ; but Love with 
 
 faith too strong for fear, 
 
 Took heart from God s almightiness and smiled 
 a smile of cheer. 
 
 And lo ! that tear of Pity quenched the flame 
 
 whereon it fell, 
 And, with the sunshine of that smile, hope 
 
 entered into hell ! " 
 
 Not only did this act bring hope into 
 hell ; it also brought joy into heaven. 
 The Father said to the returning angels ; 
 
 4 Welcome, my angels! ye have brought a holier 
 
 joy to heaven ; 
 
 Henceforth its sweetest song shall be the song 
 of sin forgiven ! " 
 
Future Life 113 
 
 With this calm, peaceful faith in the 
 future life, and childlike trust in the 
 Eternal Goodness, Whittier closed his 
 life on the seventh of September, 1892. 
 As the end approached one of the little 
 group of relatives who stood by his bed 
 side recited his poem " At Last : " 
 
 " When on my day of life the night is falling, 
 
 And, in the winds from unsunned spaces 
 
 blown, 
 
 I hear voices out of darkness calling 
 My feet to paths unknown, 
 
 Thou who hast made my home of life so pleas 
 ant, 
 Leave not its tenant when its walls decay ; 
 
 Love Divine, O Helper ever present, 
 Be thou my strength and stay ! 
 
 Be near me when all else is from me drifting ; 
 
 Earth, sky, home s pictures, days of shade 
 
 and shine, 
 And kindly faces to my own uplifting 
 
 The love which answers mine. 
 
 1 have but Thee, my Father ! let Thy spirit 
 
 Be with me then to comfort and uphold ; 
 No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, 
 Nor street of shining gold. 
 
1 1 4 The Mind of Whittier 
 
 Suffice it if my good and ill unreckoned, 
 
 And both forgiven through Thy abounding 
 grace 
 
 I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
 Unto my fitting place. 
 
 Some humble door among Thy many mansions, 
 Some sheltering shade where sin and striving 
 
 cease, 
 
 And flows forever through heaven s green ex 
 pansions 
 The river of Thy peace. 
 
 There, from the music round about me stealing, 
 I fain would learn the new and holy song, 
 
 And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing, 
 The life for which I long." 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the 
 
 date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 LIBRARY USE 
 
 NOV 14 1954 
 
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