ARTHUR E. WILSON 
 Beneficent Church 
 Providence, R- l -
 
 LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 EEV. THOMAS GUAED, D.D. 
 
 WITH 
 
 MEMORIAL SERMON 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D. 
 
 COMPILED BY 
 
 "WILL J. GUARD. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PHILLIPS <& HUNT. 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 CRANSTON & STOWE. 
 
 1SS5.
 
 Copyright, 1883, by 
 PHILLIPS & HUNT, 
 
 New York.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 ABOUT eleven years ago the author of these Lect- 
 ures and Addresses made his first appearance 
 before an American audience in the city of New York. 
 The object of his visit to this land was that he might 
 help raise a building fund for the erection of a new 
 Methodist church in the city whence he had come 
 Port Elizabeth, Cape of Good Hope, where nearly 
 ten years of his life had been spent. The method he 
 adopted for the raising of this fund was the deliv- 
 ery of lectures in different cities of the United States 
 and Canada. He came, we might say, all but unan- 
 nounced, a stranger to a strange land ; but he had 
 not appeared many times as a public speaker before 
 his lectures were attended with no inconsiderable 
 success, being heard with evident interest at least by 
 that portion of the public forming the membership 
 of the Methodist Church. 
 
 Though he came without the anticipation of ever 
 finally making his home in America, it was not many 
 months before two or three congregations, recogniz- 
 ing his power as a preacher as well as a platform 
 speaker, extended invitations to him to become their 
 pastor. The invitation of Mount Yernon Place 
 Methodist Church, of Baltimore, he accepted ; of 
 which charge he was appointed pastor in March, 1872.
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 At this church he remained three years the limit 
 of the pastorate in this denomination leaving Balti- 
 more for San Francisco in 18Y5. He remained three 
 years at Howard Street Methodist Episcopal Church 
 in the latter city, leaving that charge to become the 
 pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of 
 Oakland the Brooklyn of San Francisco. A year 
 and a half was spent here ; until, in compliance with 
 an invitation by his former charge in that city, he re- 
 turned, in March, 1880, to Baltimore. 
 
 In March, 1883, he was to have become the pastor 
 of the Spring Garden Street Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, of Philadelphia. This expectation, however, 
 was not to be realized. On October 10, 1882, he 
 submitted to the operation of litholapaxy for relief from 
 a trouble of great severity and long continuance. The 
 operation in itself was quite successful. The follow- 
 ing day seemed to bring with it relief and marked 
 signs of improvement. But the shock was too much 
 for his nervous system, unprepared as he was for the 
 endurance of the anaesthetics under whose influence 
 he was during the lengthy instrumentation to which 
 he was necessarily subjected. The summer months 
 allotted him for rest and fortification against the com- 
 ing trial, were, instead, passed in lecturing, preaching, 
 and constant travel. So when the crucial hour ar- 
 rived his physique was in any thing but fit condition 
 for the painful operation. Toward the end of the 
 week (of the operation) his strength began to ebb, and 
 finally, on Sunday, October 15, at about one o'clock 
 in the morning, he passed away unconscious. Strange,
 
 PREFACE. v 
 
 it would seem, his first charge in his new home was 
 to be his last ! 
 
 Many of the friends who, in the author's life, had 
 listened with so much pleasure and profit to his 
 words, have most naturally expressed a desire that 
 some memento of him be preserved in a durable 
 form. To gratify this desire, as well as put it within 
 the reach of those who knew him only by reputation 
 to judge of him more fully from what he has left be- 
 hind him, and also because we think that many of 
 his manuscripts contain matter of literary merit and 
 of general interest, the editor has prepared for pub- 
 lication, as being among the most complete, the Lect- 
 ures and Addresses forming the contents of this 
 volume. 
 
 We may say here that, as far as the editor knows, 
 the author never entertained the idea of putting any 
 of the results of his thought before the public in the 
 form of a book. In fact, he shrank from publication 
 of lectures or sermons. To prepare for the press was 
 to him irksome, and an undertaking he heartily dis- 
 liked. His appreciation of literary finish was so keen, 
 his ideal of literary excellence so high, that he dreaded 
 the circulation of any thing coming from his pen in 
 a crude shape and devoid of originality. When urged 
 to publish he modestly excused himself with the plea 
 that in what he said there was nothing really new. 
 Besides this, as he has often said to the writer, he 
 considered whatever of power he possessed was to be 
 felt as the words came direct from his lips ; what he 
 had to say must, to be fully effective, come from the
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 pulpit or the platform rather than from the press. 
 Indeed, lie has even said he would have all his manu- 
 scripts burned should he feel his time to die had 
 come. However, in his last illness no reference was 
 made by him to this. Still, in issuing this volume 
 the editor does not feel that he is doing any thing to 
 bring discredit upon the memory of one so near and 
 dear to him. 
 
 As a matter of fact, three or four of these lectures 
 and addresses have already been in print. " Our Li- 
 brary" was printed in pamphlet form, in 1865, at 
 Cape Town, South Africa, " The Mental Activities 
 of the Age and the Bible" had been delivered as 
 one of a course of Monday Lectures in Boston, dur- 
 ing Rev. Joseph Cook's absence. This lecture, of 
 which the original manuscript, with the author's char- 
 acteristic indifference to such matters, had long since 
 become in part lost, and thus incomplete, was re-writ- 
 ten, after much hesitation, in the contracted form in 
 which it now appears, for the volume containing the 
 lectures of the series. That those who have not heard 
 the lecture as the author was in the habit of deliver- 
 ing it may imagine how different it must have been 
 when spoken, we may say that usually two hours were 
 consumed in its utterance; and with such rapidity 
 was it the custom of the author to speak as to all but 
 defy the attempt of a stenographer to follow him. 
 This lecture is now reprinted with the kind permis- 
 sion of the Committee of the Boston Monday 
 Lectureship. 
 
 The address on the " Sovereignty of Man," the
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 Masonic Oration, and the Young Men's Christian 
 Association Address, have also been printed, as well 
 as " Waste " and part of " Savonarola," these two 
 undergoing no revision by the author's hand. 
 
 The remaining Lectures and Addresses had never 
 even been thought of for publication. They were 
 mostly written hastily, to serve simply as the* bases of 
 what would come from his lips, inasmuch as it was 
 never the author's habit to memorize. Many of them 
 were written by piecemeal ; parts on one kind of pa- 
 per at one time other parts on another and different 
 kind of paper at intervals of weeks, months, at times 
 years. Indeed, nearly all of the lectures, which 
 proved so very effective as the author delivered them, 
 were growths. While he did not retouch the old 
 manuscript, he was continually jotting down on what- 
 ever slip of paper chanced to be at hand a new 
 thought or a new figure. These he wrought into the 
 original lecture in delivery, fusing, in his mind, the 
 whole into a unity. The lecture on " Wesley " and 
 that on the " Yosemite " both are illustrations of the 
 manner in which this growth took place. The germ 
 of " Wesley " was a lecture on the " Memories of 
 Methodism ; " then came a lecture. " The Three 
 Johns" one of them Wesley. These lectures be- 
 came disintegrated, and from their remains came 
 forth the present lecture. Part of the lecture on the 
 "Yosemite" was written in San Francisco, another 
 part in Oakland, a third part in Baltimore. And so, 
 also, with many others. 
 
 The editor has done the best in his power to insert,
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 in what seemed to him to be the fitting places in the 
 original manuscripts, these fugitive passages. Doubt- 
 less, were the author here, there are many passages he 
 would have pruned, and not a few sentences upon 
 which he would bestow a finer polish. But, in his 
 absence, we give these lectures just as they came from 
 his pen, taking it upon ourselves to arrange the dif- 
 ferent parts in as coherent order as possible. It may 
 be that a thought will be met with in more than one 
 place ; but even in this case we have hesitated eras- 
 ing it, because of its interdependence upon the con- 
 text in each instance. And, indeed, when it is re- 
 membered to how many different audiences he spoke 
 the words contained herein, as well as the fact that 
 they were written between the years 1864 and 1882, 
 in the Cape of Good Hope, in Ireland, in Baltimore, 
 and in California, the occasional recurrence of a figure 
 or thought may so it seems to us be pardoned. 
 
 The editor takes this opportunity to thank those 
 who have, by kindly encouragement and judicious 
 criticism amongst others, Rev. "W. H. M'Allister, of 
 Baltimore, and Rev. James Morrow and William C. 
 Webb, of Philadelphia, personal friends of the author 
 rendered him no little assistance in his undertaking. 
 The editor hopes before long to have ready for the 
 press a second volume, containing sermons, notes of 
 sermons, and other fragments among the literary re- 
 mains of the author ; also the lectures which had, of 
 late, proved so very popular, the " Replies to Colonel 
 Ingersoll." W. J. G. 
 
 BALTIMORE, December, 1882
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 MEMORIAL SERMON, by Rev. T. De Witt Talmage xiii 
 
 I. 
 
 THE MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE AND THE BI- 
 BLE. A lecture. Republished with the permission of 
 the Boston Monday Lectureship 13 
 
 II. 
 
 OUR LIBRARY. A lecture delivered on behalf of the Gra- 
 ham's Town (South Africa) Public Library, on Oct. 3, 1864. 35 
 
 III. 
 
 WASTE. A lecture written and first delivered at Mount 
 Vernon Place Methodist Episcopal Church, Baltimore, a few 
 weeks previous to the author's departure for San Francisco, 
 inApril, 1875 73 
 
 IV. 
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. A lecture... 95
 
 x CONTENTS. 
 
 V. 
 
 Page 
 
 SAVONAROLA, THE "MARTYR OF FLORENCE," AND 
 HIS TIMES. A lecture, partly written in South Africa, 
 partly in America 142 
 
 VI. 
 
 SAINT PATRICK, THE APOSTLE OF THE IRISH. A 
 lecture written, and delivered but twice in March, 1880, in 
 San Francisco, and Oakland, California, a few weeks previ- 
 ous to the author's return to Baltimore 180 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE PHYSICAL, MENTAL, 
 AND MORAL. A lecture written, with exception of a few 
 interpolations, in South Africa, a few months previous to 
 the author's visit to America in 1871 223 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE YOSEMITE AND ITS LESSONS. A lecture written, 
 part in 1877, part in 1879, and part in 1880 264 
 
 IX. 
 
 ADDRESS, delivered at the twenty-second anniversary of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association of San Francisco, Sept. 
 19, 1875 281 
 
 X. 
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN. An address delivered at the 
 opening of the Mechanic's Institute Fair, at San Francisco, 
 September, 1879 294
 
 CONTENTS. xi 
 
 XI. 
 
 Page 
 THE TRUE. THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD. An 
 
 address delivered on the occasion of the exhibition of Du 
 Boeuf's painting, " The Prodigal Son," at the Masonic Tem- 
 ple, Baltimore 311 
 
 XII. 
 
 ADDRESS, delivered before the Independent Order of Mechanics, 
 
 at Mount Vernon Church, Sunday evening, April 23, 1882 . 323 
 
 XIII. 
 
 EMERSON, DARWIN, AND LONGFELLOW. Notes of an 
 address delivered at Mount Vernon Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, Baltimore, on the occasion of their deaths, April, 
 1882 338 
 
 XIV. 
 
 MASONIC ORATION. Delivered before the Grand Lodge of 
 F. and A. M., of California, October 10, 1878 350 
 
 XV. 
 
 CENTENNIAL ADDRESS. Being fragmentary notes of an 
 oration delivered at Howard-street Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, San Francisco, on the centennial anniversary of the 
 Independence of the United States of America, July, 1876. 364
 
 MEMORIAL SERMON. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE. 
 
 " How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle ! " 1 SAM. i, 25. 
 
 AN outburst of grief and eulogium from David be- 
 cause of the death of his dearly-beloved friend 
 Jonathan at the battle of Gilboa, but as appropriate an 
 exclamation for all those who heard that, two weeks 
 ago, at six minutes of one o'clock, on Sabbath morn- 
 ing, the Rev. Thomas Guard, pastor of the Mount 
 Vernon Methodist Episcopal Church of Baltimore 
 breathed his last. Mighty in eloquence. Mighty in 
 sympathy. Mighty in influence. Mighty for God. 
 Mighty for the Church. Mighty for the world's better- 
 ment. " How are the mighty fallen in the midst of 
 the battle! " 
 
 The providence comes to me with the more solemnity 
 because he sent me a salutation of love, warmer and 
 more generous than I ever received from any Christian 
 minister a salutation which reached me a week after 
 his death, coming with the proposition that we ex- 
 change pulpits, he to preach here and I to go there. 
 O, how glad I would have been to have had him con- 
 front this assemblage, and on this platform unfurl the 
 crimson banner of the cross.
 
 xiv MEMORIAL SEKMON. 
 
 Who was this Thomas Guard ? I remark, in the first 
 place, he was a grand specimen of what the religion of 
 Jesus Christ can do for a man. Whether in Ireland, or 
 in South Africa, or in America, on the Atlantic coast, or 
 on the Pacific coast, or in the cities between, he was ever 
 busy trying to make the people good and happy. I chal- 
 lenge you, amid all the ranks of those who have despised 
 Christianity, during all the ages, to show me a soul so 
 unselfish, so self-sacrificing, nnd I will give you from now 
 until we meet at the bar of God in the day of eternal 
 judgment to fetch up your first specimen. It is only 
 the grace of God that can make a character like that. 
 
 Who was he? He was a contribution from Meth- 
 odism to Christianity. He was in that apostleship of 
 which John Wesley was the chief, and Alfred Cook- 
 man the modern, exponent. I warrant you that when 
 this man of God, two weeks ago, went up to the gate of 
 heaven, there was at that shining gate a group of the 
 chieftains of that heroic sect to greet him. How it 
 makes one feel for the helmet and the sword to give 
 reverential salute as I call the names of Asbury, and 
 Emory, and Coke, and Watson, and Fletcher, and 
 Whitefield,. and Bishops Janes and Scott. 
 
 But no fence of sectarianism could wall in Thomas 
 Guard, any more than you could fence in the fragrance 
 of a grove of magnolias in full bloom. He was with 
 us in the attempt to annihilate bitter sectarianism, a 
 work so nearly done that, while in all our denominations 
 there are narrow-souled bigots running around with 
 rail and post and shovel, trying to rebuild the un- 
 brotherly separation, the distinctions will soon all 
 vanish in the overwhelming answer to Christ's prayer, 
 "Father, that they all may be one." Who was he?
 
 MEMORIAL SERMON. xv 
 
 He was the contribution of foreign nationality to 
 America. Born in Galway, Ireland, in 1831. Died in 
 Maryland, United States, 1882. Take away from the 
 history of the American forum, the American labora- 
 tory, and the American pulpit all foreign talent, and 
 you have obliterated more than half of it. Scotland 
 grows great metaphysicians, England grows great 
 philosophers, Germany grows great dreamers, Italy 
 grows great painters, Sweden and Norway grow great 
 singers, and Ireland grows great orators. 
 
 Thomas Guard came from the land of Edmund 
 Burke and Robert Emmet and Daniel O'Connell, and 
 he showed it. The fire of eloquence was in his eye, in 
 his hand, in his foot, and quivered in his whole body. 
 With every tone, with every attitude, with every gesture, 
 he defied all the rules of rhetoric as laid down in the 
 books. He made his own laws. Unlike all others, he 
 was like himself. Electric, thunderbolted. Irish elo- 
 quence sanctified. When America has received for the 
 last half century such a large donation of great souls 
 from Ireland she can well afford to return her sym- 
 pathy. Bread when there is famine, and world-resound- 
 ing protest when there is political oppression. 
 
 Who was he? He was a preacher of the Gospel, 
 natural and untrammeled by the way other people did 
 their work. His church was thronged. A building 
 holding 1,500 or 2,000 people, and thronged. He did 
 not use what is called the pulpit tone. He spoke out 
 of a sympathetic heart to the hearts of the people. In 
 all denominations there is discussion about the decad- 
 ence of church going. I will tell you why people do 
 not go to church. They cannot stand the humdrum of 
 ministers resolved to preach like all their predecessors
 
 xvi MEMORIAL SEKMON. 
 
 and like every body else. The fact is that some of the 
 theological seminaries in this day take all the fire out 
 of a man, and send him into the pulpit cowed down. 
 They tell him how many heads he must have to his 
 discourse, and how long the introduction must be, and 
 what kind of an application must be fastened on at 
 the end, and ho\v he must plant his foot, and how he 
 must throw out his hand, and there are thousands of 
 Presbyterian and Methodist and Baptist and Congre- 
 gational churches to-day dying by inches through in- 
 tolerable humdrum. Thomas Guard threw body, mind, 
 and soul against these frigid conventionalities of the 
 Church, and they cracked and gave way under his holy 
 impetuosity. 
 
 Eloquence is not attitude, it is not gesture, it is not 
 voice ; it is being possessed with some important 
 thought and making others feel as you do. I wish 
 that the young men of our theological seminaries could 
 have heard Thomas Guard preach. The trouble is 
 that in many theological seminaries young men are 
 taught how to preach by professors who themselves 
 never could preach. You can no more get people to 
 come to church, doing things now as they did a century 
 ago, than you can get them to discard the limited ex- 
 press train to Washington and go with the stage-coach. 
 The old Gospel, the same Gospel from century to 
 century, but having its adaptation to each age. What 
 a farce is being enacted in many of the cities! A 
 church holding a thousand people with two hundred 
 and fifty folks in it, scattered around in great lone- 
 someness, and going there from year to year because it 
 has been decreed from all eternity that they should go, 
 and they somehow cannot help it.
 
 MEMORIAL SERMON. xvii 
 
 "Who was he ? He was a man of large sympathies. 
 The earth could not fill him; he took in heaven as well. 
 All time, all eternity, all heights, all depths, all lengths, 
 all breadths. Thorough manliness. No whining out 
 of the Gospel. No whimpering about the world as 
 going to destruction when it is going to redemption. 
 No patience with men inside or outside the ministry 
 bnilt on a small scale, five feet by three, trying to pull 
 others down, hoping out of the debris to build them- 
 selves up. Hating cant with as much emphasis as 
 Thomas Carlyle hated it, but for an opposite reason; 
 not as the tiger hates the calf, but as music hates dis- 
 cord and as sunshine hates darkness. He was full off 
 the gospel of good cheer, the gospel of geniality, the 
 gospel of practical help, the gospel of spring morning, 
 the gospel of carnation, rose, and pond lily. I think 
 that to him the blooming orchard was a burning censer 
 swinging before the throne. I think that to him the 
 sky was a gallery and the clouds were pictures done in 
 water-colors. Great soul, gentle soul, sympathetic 
 soul, suffering soul, triumphant soul, transcendent soul. 
 
 I do not know through which one of the twelve gates 
 in Heaven he entered when he ascended two weeks 
 ago; but if there be one gate with larger pearl than 
 another, and with hinges of more ponderous gold than 
 another, and with arch more triumphal than another, 
 and with waiting chariot of swifter wheel and snowier 
 coursers than another, I think that was the gate at 
 which Thomas Guard entered. 
 
 While I consider this providence which affects all the 
 Christian Church, I am struck first with the mysteries and 
 then with the alleviations. Mystery the first: Why 
 
 should so good a man be called so terrifically to suffer? 
 2
 
 xviii MEMORIAL SERMON. 
 
 There came all those years of domestic anxiety because 
 of Ms wife's invalidism, moving from Ireland to South 
 Africa, for the same cause moving from the Atlantic- 
 coast to the Pacific coast, for the same cause moving 
 from San Francisco to Oakland. The honeymoon 
 lasted from the time when, at twenty-seven years of 
 his age, he took her hand at Dublin, on down until when, 
 four or five years ago, he put her away for the resur- 
 rection. Ah, that husbandly affection is of but poor 
 fiber which lasts only while the eye sparkles and the 
 cheek has in it the flush of the sunrise. He held that 
 hand as tenderly and as lovingly after it was wasted 
 and sick as when it was round and well and strong. 
 The ardor of affection increasing all the way from 
 Dublin to Oakland. 
 
 Then came those four or five years when, at any mo- 
 ment, he was liable to paroxysm of physical suffering ; 
 postponing the surgeon's knife until he could postpone 
 it no longer; with nervous horror approaching the 
 crisis until he had no strength to meet it; passing out 
 of life with physical agonies which anodyne and 
 hypodermic appliances only partially assuaged. Suffer- 
 ing, suffering. Tell me why. I cannot tell you. I 
 adjourn the mystery to the day when Ridley shall have 
 explained to him the fiery stake, and Hugh M'Kail shall 
 have explained to him the scaffold, and Margaret the 
 martyr Scotch girl shall have explained to her the 
 wave with which she was drowned, and James A. Gar- 
 field shall have explained to him the bullet, and that 
 suffering woman up the dark alley shall have explained 
 to her the cancer, and the rainbow of God's bright and 
 beautiful explanation shall be hung on all the departed 
 showers of earthly grif.
 
 MEMORIAL SERMON. xix 
 
 Mystery the second: Why should he be taken at 
 fifty-one years of age, and at the very height of his 
 power and influence ? Why not wait until he was worn 
 out with old age ? Why, after the batteries hnd been 
 loaded for a new campaign and were about to be un- 
 limbered, must a gunner drop? Why should he be 
 taken before this Austerlitz, this Sedan, this Waterloo 
 between Infidelity and Christianity is undisputedly set- 
 tled in behalf of Him who is the rider on the white 
 horse ? Why should this fearless and mounted captain 
 of the Lord's host be slain while the feet of many 
 weak Christians are by- terror being shaken out of 
 the stirrups? Why should this man die when to 
 rally the courage of the Christian Church we want 
 more plumed warriors at the front ? It is the last 
 part of my text that sounds like the roll of a funeral 
 drum. " How are the mighty fallen in the midst of 
 the battle ! " 
 
 It is as though Blucher had been slain while coming 
 up at nightfall with reinforcements. It is as though 
 Garnet Wolseley had fallen half-way between Alexan- 
 dria and Tel-el-Kebir. How demoralizing, to have the 
 riderless horse of a chieftain careering and snorting 
 across the battle plain. Why was it, when Thoma-? 
 Guard had gathered up so much knowledge, so much 
 experience, he should be taken away just as his best 
 work was about to be done ? Tell me. I cannot tell 
 you. I adjourn the mystery to that day when we shall 
 find out why Henry Kirk White expired at twenty-one 
 years of age, just as he was giving intimation to the 
 Christian church that he had in him the song power of 
 Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, writing with his 
 boyish hand :
 
 xx MEMORIAL SEEMON. 
 
 When marshaled on the nightly plain, 
 
 The glittering hosts bestud the sky; 
 One star alone of all the train 
 
 Can fix the sinner's wandering eye. 
 Hark, hark to God, the cliorus breaks, 
 
 From every host, from every gem, 
 But one alone the Saviour speaks, 
 
 It is the Star of Bethlehem. 
 
 I postpone this mystery of Thomas Guard's death to 
 the day when we shall find out why John Summertield, 
 the flaming evangel, expired at twenty-seven years of 
 age, just as his grandest work seemed opening before 
 him; and why John M'Clintock died before he had 
 , completed his cyclopedia of biblical, theological, and 
 ecclesiastical literature; and until the day when we 
 shall know why, last year, at fifty-seven years of age, 
 William Morley Punshon closed his lips forever, while 
 on his shoulder rested the interests of the English 
 Missionary Society, and there were yet so many words 
 of fire waiting for him to speak. Yea, until that day 
 when we shall find why Beethoven was struck with 
 complete deafness so that he could not hear the loudest 
 organ crash rendering his own music; and that day 
 when we shall find out why so many authors never 
 finished their manuscripts, and why so many artists 
 dropped their pencils just as they were making the 
 outline of a great masterpiece, and why so many poets 
 stopped midway the rhythm, and why so many bright 
 days halted at noon. 
 
 O, yes, it was with Thomas Guard twelve o'clock 
 meridian. The clock of his life struck one at Galway, 
 struck nine at South Africa, struck ten at San Fran- 
 cisco, struck eleven at Oakland, struck twelve at
 
 MEMORIAL SERMON. xxi 
 
 Baltimore. High noon, and the sun eclipsed. But 
 that last word, thank God, passes us out from the 
 shadows of mystery into the glorious alleviation of 
 this providence. 
 
 Eclipsed, not extinguished; something rolled between 
 us and him, doing no damage to him. When Jupiter 
 hides one of his satellites it is occultation. No one 
 has any idea that the satellite is destroyed. When 
 the earth casts its shadow on the moon, it is lunar 
 eclipse, but no one has any idea that the queen of night 
 is dethroned. When Mercury partially hides the face 
 of the sun, we call it a transit, but we have no idea 
 that any damage is done. When the moon hides the 
 sun, it is solar eclipse ; but no one has any idea that 
 the king of day is dead. I pronounce this departure 
 of Thomas Guard to be occultation, transit, eclipse. 
 
 When the sun was eclipsed in 1842 and in 1868 and 
 1869, all the astronomers gathered in the observatories 
 and all the telescopes were drawn heavenward; and 
 now, as this effulgent nature is eclipsed, we do well to 
 come up in the watchtowers of the Church and into the 
 observatory of Mount Zion, and stand like the men of 
 Galilee gazing into heaven. If you have any idea that 
 Thomas Guard lies lacerated in Green Mount Cemetery 
 I have no share in your wretched agnosticism. Alas 
 for that sepulcher which has a knob on the outside the 
 door to let us in, but no latch on the inside the door to 
 let us out! 
 
 This man of God has only moved on and moved up. 
 
 He passed out of a room where the air was luavy 
 with opiates into an atmosphere exhilarant, and from 
 a body painstruck into conditions rubicund with health 
 immortal. He has become one of the athletes of
 
 xxii MEMORIAL SERMON. 
 
 heaven deathless as God is deathless, never to know 
 pain or sickness or suffering or sorrow except as a vivid 
 reminiscence. His mission is widened out. He has 
 come to higher appointment, not to this church or to 
 that church, or this denomination or that denomina- 
 tion, or this city or that city, or this world or that 
 world. He has the universe to range in. What veloci- 
 ties ! What circuits ! What momentum ! What 
 orbits in which the stars shall be as silvery as before 
 the occultation, and the sun shall be :is radiant as be- 
 fore the eclipse. 
 
 You could not understand fully Thomas Guard here, 
 you cannot understand Thomas Guard there. More 
 difference than between an eagle in an iron cage and 
 an eagle pitching from Chimborazo toward the sun. 
 His work on earth is not done, it is not half done, it is 
 not a fourth done, it is not a thousandth part done. 
 He resumes it now under better auspices. How do I 
 know ? " Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth 
 to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation ? " 
 The lines of telegraphy and of rail track connect no 
 two earthly cities so well as earth is connected with 
 heaven. 
 
 Did Thomas Guard, after he was established in this 
 land, go to South Africa to get his family and bring 
 them to this better country ? and shall he not now 
 come back some time to that earthly home, and at the 
 right time take his loved ones to the still better coun- 
 try? But he shall not come alone. The twain shall 
 come, they who were side by side for so many years, 
 bending over the same eradle, weeping over the same 
 grave, now coming side by side, wing and wing, to 
 hover over those children when they sleep, and to es-
 
 MEMORIAL SKKMOX xxiii 
 
 cort them heavenward when they die. Father and 
 mother coming to help. Father nnd mother coming 
 down to comfort. Father and mother coming down to 
 defend. 
 
 The air this autumnal day is not so darkened with the 
 flocks of birds Hying southward seeking a summer 
 clime, not so full as the air is full of ministering spirits. 
 
 Angels are hovering around. Flocks of immortals 
 sweeping this way and that. Earth no more an or- 
 phaned world, but a suburb of heaven. Blessed is that 
 earthly home where Christian parents preside, but more 
 mightily defended is that home which a glorified an- 
 cestry canopy with their benediction. Elisha saw the 
 mountains full of horses and chariots of supernatural 
 aid, nnd so they are yet. Which way are they driving ? 
 The horses head this way. How the chariots rumble 
 down the sky steeps. Sent forth to minister. Is 
 yonder a soul in great excruciation of pain, and shall 
 Thomas Guard refuse the ministry when he knows 
 nbout suffering? Is yonder a soul awfully bereft? 
 Surely Thomas Guard cannot refuse his ministry, for 
 he knows what it is to be bereft. Shall we have re- 
 vivals of religion in our churches, and Thomas Guard 
 not join in the alleluia? Shall there come a great 
 Armageddon in which all the good are one side, and all 
 the bad on the other side ; earth and hell and heaven 
 drawn out in battle array, and the gallant spirit just as- 
 cended not mingle in the fight ? not draw his sword ? not 
 lift his battle shout ? 
 
 Passing on to fatigueless service. Perhaps he will 
 preach the Gospel to some other world that needs 
 a Saviour. Perhaps he will carry quick dispatch from 
 the throne of God to some empire of which the
 
 xxiv MEMORIAL SERMON. 
 
 strongest telescope has yet made no revelation. Perhaps 
 he will take a special part in the chorals before the throne. 
 Perhaps he will help compose some new doxology for the 
 blessed. Perhaps he will tell, while all the galleries of 
 light listen,of that grace which strengthened him through 
 all the earthly struggle, the closing words of his recital 
 drowned out by the outburst of ministrelsy that can halt 
 no longer, the surges dashing to the top of the throne, 
 while the archangel rising beats time with his scepter. 
 
 When a good man was dying, he said he saw written 
 on the sky three letters, and they were all alike. The 
 letter "V." Some one said to this man dying what he 
 thought the letter " V " was for. He said, " I think it 
 stands for victory." So over all this scene there is 
 written congratulation for the departed, comfort for 
 the bereft, and encouragement for us all. Three " Vs." 
 Victory ! Victory ! Victory ! Three " IPs." Heaven ! 
 Heaven ! Heaven ! 
 
 On a catafalque of flowers Thomas Guard lay under 
 architectural grandeurs hung with symbols of sadness, 
 the air throbbing with the " Dead March in Saul," and 
 beautiful, cultured, and queenly Baltimore breaking her 
 richest box of alabaster and pouring its contents on those 
 weary feet as they halted in the journey, and the 
 American Church, North, South, East, West, sobbing 
 out its sympathies over that great loving heart silenced 
 forever. But this day I open on all sides doors of con- 
 solation, doors of hope, doors of resurrection, doors of 
 reunion for his bereft sons and daughters, Reginald, 
 and William, and Percy, and Porter, and James, and 
 Charlotte, and Jessie, and for the Mount Vernon Church 
 that for two terms stood with him on the mount of 
 transfiguration, and for the denomination which still
 
 MEMORIAL SERMON. xxv 
 
 vibrates with his magnetic utterances, and for the 
 Church universal which now sits watching this wonder- 
 ful sunset. 
 
 Until we meet again, farewell, my dear brother. 
 Thou wast very pleasant to me. Thy salutation came so 
 late I could not return it. So to-day I throw thee this 
 kiss of warmest brotherly affection. Honored in life, 
 triumphant in death, blessed in eternity. I could not 
 be present to put even one flower on thy casket, but 
 to-day I sprinkle over thy new-made grave this hand- 
 ful of heather from the Scotch highlands, in the hymn 
 which the people in that land of Andrew Melville and 
 John Knox are apt to sing on their way to the grave of 
 some one greatly beloved : 
 
 Neighbor, accept our parting song, 
 
 The road is short, the rest is long ; 
 
 The Lord brought here, the Lord takes hence, 
 
 This is no house of permanence. 
 
 On bread of mirth and bread of tears 
 The pilgrim fed these checkered years: 
 Now, landlord world, shut to the door, 
 Thy guest is gone for evermore. 
 
 Gone to tlie land of sweet repose, 
 His comrades bless him as he goes: 
 Of toil and moil the day was full, 
 A good sleep now, the night is cool. 
 
 Yea, village bolls, ring softly, ring, 
 And in the blessed Sabbath bring; 
 Which from this weary work-day tryat 
 Awaits God's folk through Jesus Christ.
 
 GUARD'S 
 
 ^ECTUEES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 THE MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE AND 
 THE BIBLE.* 
 
 A GLANCE over the vacant vastness of this audi- 
 _/!_ ence chamber suffices to remind me of the ab- 
 sence, beyond the water, of the gifted founder of your 
 "Monday Lectureship." May he be preserved from 
 all perils while he travels, and return from his wan- 
 derings, laureled with fresh honors, to the scene of 
 his frequent triumphs ! 
 
 I am not here, I assure you, to attempt the task 
 for which he proved himself so signally equipped. 
 Who but himself could bend Ulysses' bow ? Never- 
 theless, the task assigned me is no light one. I have 
 asked myself, once and again, Why was I not requested 
 to compress the globe into an ultimate atom, ensphere 
 the sun in a dew-drop, or find for the most ancient 
 
 * Republislied by the permission of the Boston Monday Lecture- 
 ship.
 
 14 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 ocean a home within the compass of a scallop shell ? 
 For I am expected to discuss the relations of Chris- 
 tianity to the mental activities of our age, within 
 the limits of an hour! It is impossible! I shrink 
 from it. I cannot exhaust such a theme, I may be 
 permitted to hope, however, that I shall prove sug- 
 gestive. 
 
 Made in the image of the ever-living One, the 
 human mind u faints not, neither is weary," by reason 
 of activity ; and to think, is to act. Our age is peer- 
 less in the quantity of intellectual activity, whatever 
 may be said of the quality of that activity, or of its 
 issues. Never so much free thought, never so much 
 freedom of thought, as to-day. The schoolmaster 
 is abroad. The press is in untiring operation. The 
 spirit of inquiry is ubiquitous. History pores over 
 coins, cipher correspondence, antique customs, hoary 
 constitutions, dry-as-dust scrolls, acts of parliament, 
 alabaster slabs, street ballads, fugitive tracts, diaries 
 of lettered princesses and journals of court favorites ; 
 from such incongruous material extracting the sub- 
 stance wherewith to fashion those imperishable piles 
 of wisdom with which our grateful and instructed 
 hearts associate the names of Grote, Mommsen, 
 Merivale, Prescott, Motley, Macaulay, Bancroft, and 
 Carlyle. 
 
 Travelers haste over land and ocean without rest : 
 now plunging into the wonders of Central Africa, 
 now looking down upon the cradle of the Nile, now 
 tracking the footsteps of the pre-Adamite progenitors 
 of our race ; to-day resting beneath the columns of
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 15 
 
 Luxor, or, two weeks hence, within the shadows of the 
 mined temples, tombs, and theaters of Petra ; then 
 treading the sacred soil and climbing the sacred slopes 
 on which redemption's truths were uttered and re- 
 demption's price was paid ; then off and away to 
 the land where every dell enshrined a deity, every 
 fountain leaped to song whose breezes floated the 
 melodies of Plato or trembled to the thunder of 
 Demosthenes. 
 
 Scientists are heaving the lead in deep-sea sound- 
 ings ; foretelling the birth of the tornado ; weighing 
 the earth in scales ; interpreting the hieroglyphs 
 carved on mountain summit and on sandstone stratum ; 
 pursuing the comet over the plains of ether ; analyzing 
 the elements of the light-wave propelled by Sirius 
 across the amplitudes of space ; solving the mysteries 
 that lurk in frond and cell, in tinted sea-shells and in 
 coral bowers ; reckoning up the ages of the sun ; de- 
 fining the orbit of Neptune or ever its mass had 
 crossed the disk of aided or unaided eye ; in every 
 motion finding an idea, in every form a purpose, and 
 in every event the token of a plan and system ; 
 changing chaos and confusion into order and cosmos ; 
 and, in the unity impressed upon and interwoven 
 through the vast and varied whole, beholding the 
 reflected unity of Him "by whom are all things, 
 and for 'whom are all things God over all, blessed 
 forever" 
 
 And the results of such activities are within the 
 reach of every one desirous of copious and accurate 
 information. With the sage most profound, with the
 
 16 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 scholar most erudite, with the scientist most accom- 
 plished, with the poet most subtle minded, with the 
 products of pen and pencil, of microscope and tele- 
 scope, of scalpel and prism, the youth of eager 
 longing and quenchless thirst for truth may hold 
 communion, by reason of the prodigious triumphs of 
 the printing-press. 
 
 "What has Christianity to say to all this intellectual 
 movement? What emotions heave her bosom? Is 
 it with sentiments of envy, jealousy, and fear, or of 
 favoring sympathy that she gazes on the scene of 
 seething, surging, struggling spirit-life ? 
 
 The study of her inspired records and of her his- 
 toric chapters affords an answer ; and in that answer 
 we read amplest assurance of her friendship and aid. 
 
 1. To the understanding of man she ever appealed. 
 " By manifestation of the truth " she proposes to con- 
 quer. With a sublime audacity she ignores physical 
 force as an instrument of victory. " Ye shall know 
 the truth, and the truth shall make you free," were 
 the clarion tones which fell upon the ears of the en- 
 thralled victims of ignorance, superstition, priestcraft. 
 Above her hosts, as they marched to further triumphs, 
 her banner floated, and on its folds men read the 
 strange device, " Prove all things, hold fast that which 
 is good." Whenever permitted, she grappled with the 
 Jew, and " reasoned out of his Scripture ; " with the 
 Greek, and argued out of his sacred writings of nature, 
 conscience, history. Upon her converts she urged the 
 noble duty, " Be always ready to give a reason of the 
 hope that is in you." The divine Founder of our faith
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 17 
 
 gave no uncertain sound when he said, " For this cause 
 came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto 
 the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my 
 voice." To Christianity there is nothing ignoble and 
 nothing insignificant in aught that touches or apper- 
 tains to man. In her estimate he is of more value than 
 many sparrows. His return to moral sanity, we are 
 assured, moves the ranks of seraphim with strange 
 joy. For his eternal weal the counsels of the Infinite 
 planned when as yet nor light-ray traveled, nor force 
 electric thrilled, nor mountain soared, nor ocean tossed, } 
 nor tempest marched, nor forest waved, nor landscape \ 
 spread all dewy and all fragrant beneath the cloud- \ 
 less sun. To nothing human can Christianity be in- ) 
 different. Body, soul, and spirit have been redeemed 
 and provided for by this divine system. As the Sab- 
 bath, so Christianity " is made for man ; " and such 
 is man's relation thereto that we may say, as of the 
 sun in relation to our planet, " There is nothing hid 
 from the heat thereof." To all that is profoundest in 
 man the influence pierces ; over all that is amplest in 
 man the influence diffuses ; and on all that is loftiest 
 in man her inspiration breathes a benediction. Nor 
 this alone : there are depths of our nature reached 
 but by Christianity ; chords of our hearts that refuse 
 their harmonies to any touch but hers ; and magnanimi- 
 ties, heroisms, martyrdoms, in life and in death, de- 
 veloped but by her plenipotence of holy love and 
 blessed hope. 
 
 2. Christianity provokes thought. That the power 
 of our holy religion may be experienced to the utter-
 
 18 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 most, faith is essential. Faith demands reason for its 
 exercise, ; And to meet this demand of our nature 
 Christianity presents credentials. Belief is impossible, 
 unless sufficient reason for belief be furnished. Here, 
 then, the scope for intellectual action appears. What 
 are the credentials accompanying Christianity ? Are 
 they such in quality and in number as to warrant 
 our faith ? The replies to those queries are given in 
 the sumless writings called " the Evidences of Chris- 
 tianity." Certainly these are products of thought, 
 scholarship, logic, philosophic investigation and dis- 
 cussion. Certainly these demonstrate the thought- 
 compelling might of the Christian faith. 
 
 To a man possessed of an honest heart and quick- 
 ened conscience, a system of truth and of religion 
 professing to come from the Supreme One, with whom 
 we have to do, cannot be treated with the slightest ap- 
 proach toward indifference. It may be true. If so, 
 there is a duty corresponding to the bare probability 
 of truthfulness that duty, attention, audience, inves- 
 tigation. At once the mind assumes an attitude of 
 earnest wakefulness. The substance of the message 
 shall be weighed, compared, judged. The evidences 
 attendant upon the message and messenger shall win 
 sober, courteous, brave, and honest investigation. 
 And thus, and only thus, shall the conscience of the 
 man approve of his conduct. But in all this see we not 
 the tremendous stimulus imparted to the intellectual 
 as well as the moral forces of the soul? Name a 
 mental faculty not called into play by such a pro- 
 fessedly divine communication. Memory, compari-
 
 ]\!EXTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 19 
 
 son, judgment, imagination, reason, all mental in- 
 stincts, intuitions, affinities, and proclivities, are in 
 succession, or combinedly, in utmost vigor of action. 
 A crisis in the intellectual life has arisen. The man 
 dates a new birth, as a thinker, from the advent hour 
 of such a system as our faith. Whether Christianity 
 made him a saint, or, by reason of his perverse 
 will failed in that great work, she made him a thinker. 
 He became a foe of that which extorted from him the 
 exclamation, " Hast thou found me, O mine enemy ? " 
 And because a foe, a thinker irritated into thinking 
 through hatred of Christianity. Therefore, compose 
 the treatise and the essay to prove it a myth ; visit 
 Orient lands to demonstrate it an imposture ; compile 
 a comparative theology to minify its rank in the 
 presence of other systems ! Therefore, see but its 
 difficulties and ignore the possible explanations of its 
 seeming contradictions with history or science ! Yet 
 in all this what see we but immense intellectual out- 
 going and energy, scholarship, science, philosophic 
 subtlety and lore, esthetic culture, literary creative- 
 ness? And inasmuch as for this intellectual action 
 Christianity is responsible, both as cause and occasion, 
 do we behold evidence of her power to arouse and 
 develop thought. 
 
 3. There is antagonism to Christianity in much of 
 the intellectual life of our age. This does not sur- 
 prise us. It was to have been anticipated. No stu- 
 dent of the mission of Christianity, at all familiar 
 with the moral condition of our race, should feel " as 
 though some strange thing happened M if Christianity
 
 20 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 developed hostility most bitter in the very ranks of 
 those whom it came to woo and to save. 
 
 For it was in this very antagonism to its Author 
 that the need for such a system obtained. But that 
 man was a sinner, and that his depravity expressed 
 itself in enmity to God, Christianity had been a su- 
 perfluity of appliances and agencies. Its existence 
 implies strife, and its career hitherto has been one of 
 aggrandizement through struggle. Early in the his- 
 tory of man as the object of redeeming mercy, it 
 was announced, " I will put enmity between thy 
 seed and her seed." Subsequent ages but illustrated 
 the truth of the announcement. The Founder him- 
 self gave utterance to the same great verity : " Think 
 not that I am come to send peace upon earth : I am 
 not come to send peace, but a sword." The last 
 prophet of inspiration depicts, in symbols the most 
 sublime and suggestive, the process of the struggle. 
 
 And to-day the battle waxes in vehemence of pur- 
 pose and of passion ; nor is there prospect of speedy 
 termination of the conflict. ' Possibly, ay, probably, 
 the future shall witness scenes of combat, compared 
 with which the fiercest of the past shall seem but 
 gala-day sports. Not with sound of clarion, or tramp 
 of war-horse, or rush of scythed chariot, or thunder 
 of ordnance, or with garments rolled in blood, shall 
 the battle rage or the fight be fought. The weapons 
 shall be of spiritual and ethereal temper and sub- 
 stance ; of ore drawn from the mines of spirit and 
 forged in the white heat of passion fires ; ( wielded by 
 the Titans of error, or dexterous and dc/ath-dealing
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 21 
 
 by reason of arms nerved with divine strength and 
 fingers taught to fight by none other than the great 
 Captain of. the hosts of light himself. 
 
 Nor shall the struggle close until all the foes' re-[ 
 sources shall have been drawn upon, applied, tested.] 
 Not until the last form and method of resistance to 
 good shall have had scope for their endeavors and 
 time for their display of skill and might, and shall 
 have proved as impotent as are the birds of night to 
 hinder the return of the daybreak and the noontide 
 splendor of the regal sun not until then shall dis- 
 comfiture cover the emissaries of falsehood, and a 
 ransomed world enter into " quietness and assurance 
 forever." And fear not, ye who read the times, and 
 whose hearts sometimes fail ! For He must reign 
 until he hath put down all that exalteth itself against 
 him. "And when he shall have put down all rule 
 and all authority, then cometh the end." 
 
 We confess our delight in this aspect of the age. 
 Nothing is more to be deprecated than intellectual 
 stolidity, than uninquiring acceptance of the Chris- 
 tian faith. This is a state not to be permitted, not to 
 be tolerated. Better strife than stupor. Christianity 
 can never win her way but as she compels or con- 
 strains men into moods of investigation. She courts 
 this. It is essential to her very existence. She is 
 willing to take all the risl arising from the awaken- 
 ing of thought and the scrutiny of thinkers. Doubt 
 may challenge her, skepticism may assail her. Slie 
 welcomes the Jtotx-xf doubter; she disdains not to de- 
 bate with him who, fearlessly searching after the true,
 
 22 GUARL s LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 sees not as yet evidence sufficient to warrant liis assent 
 and affiance. With tenderest solicitude she waits 
 upon and ministers to such. Priests may scowl upon 
 them, and churches threaten them with terror ; but 
 not so Christianity. Over the tortured toiler after 
 truth she bends, with infinite compassion in her eye 
 and solace on her lip ; bares her bosom, and invites 
 to shelter and repose there : " Come unto me, all 
 all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest." To the Master's treatment of Thomas 
 Christianity points the bewildered, wondering doubt- 
 ers of all ages, as to Simon Peter and his Lord's treat- 
 ment of the recreant apostle she points the penitent 
 though desponding gaze of all who, under dreadful 
 pressure, proved traitors to their divine Master's name 
 and cause ; and in his treatment of both proves that 
 " Wisdom is justified of her children." 
 
 4. The action of Christianity through the laws of 
 heredity deserves recognition and appreciation. Those 
 laws have their expounders and illustrators in Gal ton 
 and Ribot, in Herbert Spencer, Darwin, and Bain. 
 Darwin's " Descent of Man " is almost altogether de- 
 pendent upon the factor of heredity. .It is no less 
 potent in the philosophy of Spencer. By this " he- 
 redity " principle, " like produces like." Sometimes, 
 indeed, " like " seems capable of producing very 
 " unlike ; " but it is only seemingly so. The new- 
 born immortal is, therefore, " the very image of his 
 father," be the fact nattering to the parent or other- 
 wise. Physical characteristics are thus transmissible. 
 The past can be reproduced. Nothing is lost that can
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 23 
 
 serve the interests of the organization. Tendencies 
 are "fixed," vicious proclivities descend, and disease 
 becomes a legacy. Should " variety," by some in- 
 scrutable law, be introduced, and should that variety 
 tend to secure the survival of the fittest, heredity 
 seizes it, incorporates it, and secures its perpetuity 
 through successive generations. The law of continu- 
 ity sways it. To it, we are told, species owe their 
 origin ; and through it, we are assured, man has de- 
 rived his finest sensibilities and his loftiest sentiments. 
 From the dull oyster through the stupid donkey, up, 
 still up, the germ of the coming man has never failed 
 persistently to press, until at last the progression 
 culminates in the creature whose initial condition 
 proclaims him a little higher than the " missing link," 
 and whose perfectional condition shall proclaim him j 
 " a little lower than the angels." There is no doubt I 
 that according to the laws of heredity the Eternal 
 One has seen fit to act. The presence of the princi- 
 ple was not discovered yesterday. Jacob, in the days 
 of his service between the rivers, caught sight of it 
 and utilized it. To-day we have multiplied proof in 
 its favor, and are not in extreme danger of de- 
 preciating its potency as an element in our civ- 
 ilization. 
 
 Has not Christianity availed herself of this subtile 
 force? Are we not justified in attributing to her 
 incalculable influence upon the mental capacity of our 
 age along the lines of this authenticated principle 
 of our complex being \ For eighteen hundred years 
 has Christianity been working on, working with,
 
 24 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 working through, humanity. The physical nature of 
 the race has thus been improved, and the moral nature 
 has participated in the ennobling effects ; why not the 
 intellectual ? Why not the mental aptitudes why not 
 the affinities with, the capacity for, intellectual pur- 
 suits and attainments, ameliorated, strengthened, re- 
 fined, by reason of the action and interaction of the 
 manifold appliances of Christianity? 
 
 The greatest thinkers of our day (even when far 
 other than the friends of our faith) are her legitimate 
 intellectual offspring. John Stuart Mill came of 
 Scottish Presbyterian ancestry. George Eliot de- 
 scended from Christian parents, and grew up amid 
 Christian influences. Christianity flowered in the 
 genius of Walter' Scott, and fruitens in the products 
 of George Macdonald and William Black ; perme- 
 ated the being of Macaulay, and possessed the soul of 
 Thomas Carlyle ; inspired the splendid intellect of 
 Sir William Hamilton, glowed in the poetic fires of 
 Hugh Miller, and adorns the sanctified learning of 
 our President M'Cosh. Professor J. W. Draper is 
 the son of an English Wesleyan minister, and prob- 
 ably shared in the thorough training of a Wesleyan 
 college, either as a " Woodhouse-Grove " or " Kings- 
 wood " boy. Your own Charming calm, clear, com- 
 prehensive ; the philosopher, the humanitarian ; gen- 
 tle as he was strong, and steeped both in " sweetness 
 and light " owed he not his intellectual manhood to 
 Christianity ? Theodore Parker, the vehement icon- 
 oclast, the intense hater of injustice ; masculine in 
 thought as poetic in sympathy and in imagination ;
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 25 
 
 lie who speaks of the " iris that scarfs the shoul- 
 der of the thunder-cloud" did not he inherit thei 
 vigor of his mind and the energy of his athletic 
 Spiritual nature from Puritan forefathers ? And so 
 of that other, upon whose head the snows of time are 
 gathering, but all impotent to quench the fires of his 
 transcendent genius ; the old man eloquent ; the clair- 
 voyant of Concord ; the high dreamer whose thoughts 
 live, move, and have their being in the world of men 
 around you ; whose weird skill oft wove for him 
 webs of gossamer, and of these fashioned chariots in 
 which to float away and away into realms ethereal, 
 whither the tempests of life had not wing to follow 
 is not he the intellectual culmination of generations 
 of ancestors in the Christian faith and in the Chris- 
 tian ministry 2 The roots of these men's mental be- 
 ing are all in Christian soil, and thence drew nour- 
 ishment and flavor. The tree-like life of these think- 
 ers expanded in atmosphere surcharged with Chris- 
 tian ideas. Their ample and loaded branches ripened 
 into tropic fullness in the solar floods of Christian 
 culture and civilization ; and I am not extravagant 
 or unjust in pointing to them as splendid evidences 
 of the power of our faith as the generator of intellect- 
 ual life and activity. 
 
 Science tells me that all terrestrial light is from the 
 sun, and that, though absent, the sun is still our light 
 by night, be that night brief as midsummer's or pro- 
 longed as the six months' gloom of Arctic zones 
 light of pine-torch and of fire-fly, light of waxen 
 taper and of oil and gas lamp, light upon ocean's
 
 26 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 phosphorescent wave, and light of moonbeams braid- 
 ing Niagara's brow with iridescent wreath. Directly 
 and indirectly, the sun is the light of the world. 
 And I dare assert the same of Christianity and the in- 
 tellectual world of our age. I have tested this in 
 imagination by conceiving the annihilation of that 
 Book, so indissolubly, so essentially associated with 
 Christianity. The Bible triumphs when and where 
 Christianity triumphs. Let me be permitted to sup- 
 pose somewhat, at least, of an approach toward the 
 utter destruction of the Book. First, copies of the 
 volume itself, in all shapes and sizes, in all tongues 
 and versions, shall have been collected, heaped into 
 pyramidal piles, and fired, until but dust and ashes 
 remain. ~No Bible anywhere ! This is but a very 
 little thing, however, compared with that to be ac- 
 complished. Then all literature prose, poetic, tome 
 and folio, essay and sermon, drama and lyric, hymn 
 and idyl must be subjected to a process either of 
 utter destruction or of perfect, absolutely perfect, ex- 
 purgation, so that no grace of style, nor elegance of 
 allusion, nor aptness of quotation, nor felicity of meta- 
 phor, suggestive of or derived from the Book, shall 
 remain in such volumes. Then visit the galleries, 
 private and public, devoted to the exhibition of art. 
 Here are walls frescoed with the products of old mas- 
 ters and new ; here are pedestals and niches crowned 
 and crowded with the triumphs of the chisel and the 
 sculptor. Blot from that canvas the Last Supper, 
 the Transfiguration, the Ascension, the Light of the 
 World; pluck from that pedestal and from yonder
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 27 
 
 niches the Moses and the David of Angelo, or such 
 forms and expressions of majesty, tenderness, purity, 
 and grace as their creators learned and caught from 
 study of the teachings, or fellowship with the heroes 
 of the Book. Then haste to the baptismal registries 
 of the Church, and instead of Mary, write Cleopatra ; 
 of Rachel, Messalina ; of John, Nero ; and of Peter, 
 Caligula. Erase whatever there reminds one of the 
 Bible. 
 
 Then on to the libraries of law, and let all codes, 
 statutes, enactments, constitutions, in which shall 
 be found reverence for God, respect for liberty, 
 protection for reputation, life, and person, defense of 
 woman and of feebleness, and guarantee of equal and 
 impartial justice for meanest plebeian as for meanest 
 plutocrat; let all such as owe their humanity, their 
 justice, their impartiality, to the genius and the teach- 
 ings of the Book, vanish and be forgotten. Then, 
 away to the cemeteries, urban and suburban, civic and 
 rustic ; to the crypts and vaults ; to the stately min- 
 ster and to the humble chapel, where sleep the dead, 
 and on whose tombs Hope, Faith, and Love have 
 carved the blessed texts in which the widow found a 
 calm and the despairing consolation. See, see ! 'Tis 
 a November midnight. Nor star nor moon rides the 
 cloud-draped heavens. No light, save the fitful flash 
 from yonder moving form. That is one of the myr- 
 iad conspirators against the human race, who on this 
 grim night simultaneously visit the graveyards of the 
 Christian world, that from the slab and obelisk they 
 may blot out the Bible. See ! he bends, and with
 
 28 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 light of lantern reads : " I am the resurrection and the 
 life ; " " Blessed are the dead ; " " In my Father's 
 house are many mansions." Now he seizes chisel and 
 mallet, and begins. Chip ! chip ! chip ! The lone 
 night-winds as they travel o'er the spot take up upon 
 their dusky wings a burden sadder than they ever 
 bore, the sob, the sigh, the low-toned throb of heart- 
 chords snapping ; for, henceforth, the chamber of the 
 dying shall be one of horrors, death's rule a " reign of 
 terror," and the graveyard " the abomination of deso- 
 lation." 
 
 I need not imagine more, though" the half is not 
 yet pictured ; for the fruits of Christianity in man- 
 ners, in civilization, in treatment of criminals and 
 of the insane ; in homes for age, for orphans, for 
 widows, for idiots, for outcast women ; in popular ed- 
 ucation, and in kindred generous and gracious insti- 
 tutions, these all must also suffer destruction before 
 we shall have by any means attained unto the exter- 
 mination of either the Book or the Faith. 
 
 5. Is the mission of Christianity a superfluity by 
 reason of the results of our intellectual age? Let 
 human nature, let man, reply. Is there any change 
 such as to render the further existence of our faith 
 unnecessary? As generation after generation arises, 
 see we not the past repeated ? Hear we not the same 
 queries voiced by human hearts, human memories, 
 human consciences ? Amid vast changes, if we go deep 
 enough, shall we not find man unchanged ? 
 
 (1.) Listen to the old. old question, and know that 
 it is prompted by something in man other than acci-
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 29 
 
 dental in condition or circumstances. It is the ques- 
 tion of " a conscience of sins," a sense of wrong-doing, 
 and of guilt arising thence. You cannot bid down, 
 so as to keep down, that question : " How can man be 
 just with his Maker f " A homely question^ indeed]"" 
 ay^oW one that can with earthquake might thrill 
 the whole inner man, and in answering which man 
 has steeped the earth in -blood, bleached it with bones 
 of weary pilgrims, and wrapped it in smoke of count- 
 less sacrificial altars. It must be answered. What 
 hath modem science to say in response? Nothing 
 that commands for one moment the acceptance of in- 
 telligent conscience. What has matter, as it rolls 
 through space ; marbles, though veined with beauty ; 
 gems, though aglow with fiery splendor; corals, 
 though fashioned after the similitude of a palace ; life, , 
 death, force, what have they to do with a query 
 sighed forth by a self-conscious and self-convicted 
 spirit? u 'Tis not in us," the solemn heights reply. 
 " 'Tis not in us," the dark, mysterious caves of earth 
 respond. Christianity has proven her power to meet 
 the need. She owns that power to-day. 
 
 (2.) And there is the demand for inner rectification 
 of nature. There is a deep-seated sore within. The 
 ideal of right is there. The endeavor to realize it is 
 made, but the failure is total. And this involves con- 
 flict the most stern and anguish the most bitter. 
 " When I would do good, evil is present with me ; the 
 evil I would not, that I do." I pay a visit to the 
 sages of physical and of transcendental wisdom, and 
 with impassioned earnestness ask of their chief,
 
 30 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Can'st them not minister to a mind diseased, 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
 Eaze out the written troubles of the brain, 
 And by some sweet oblivious antidote 
 Cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff, 
 Which weighs upon the heart ? 
 
 - 
 
 Perhaps he will tell me that sin is a necessary stage 
 in my moral development ; and that wherever man 
 is in the brothel, in the gin-mill, on the gallows he 
 is on the way to God ; and that the only possible 
 error that can arise is this, that by lack of effort 
 the man remains a little longer than he might in 
 either one of the above-named localities. From such 
 my inner being turns, as it utters, "Miserable com- 
 forters are ye all ! " Christianity meets the want. It 
 offers, and it has yes, it has effected thorough renewal 
 of the " hidden man of the heart." It has brought 
 a clean thing out of an unclean. It is doing so to-day : 
 in some one spot of this old globe, day by day, it is 
 transforming and emancipating and harmonizing the 
 inner principles and powers of man ; for it is the power 
 of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. 
 
 (3.) And man asks as he looks up into the vastness 
 of creation, and round upon the strangely checkered 
 aspect of life, and on through the dim, trackless fu- 
 ture ; when woes fill his cup of life, and disaster 
 crashes upon disaster, and helplessness is the o'ermas- 
 tering feeling of his sinking heart Is there One above 
 all others to whom I may carry my load, pour forth 
 my tale of desolation ? Or is it indeed true that he 
 heeds not, neither can help as helpless as
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGE. 31 
 
 The gods who haunt 
 Tlie lucid interspace of world and world, 
 Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, 
 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 
 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 
 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 
 Their sacred, everlasting calm ! 
 
 Vain to lead me to " an altar with this inscription, 
 ' To an unknown God.' ' : Ay, and as vain to tell 
 me of a " power that makes for righteousness." I 
 want " the living God." I am a person, and my God 
 must be a person. Out of the light, ye sages, Spen- 
 cer, Arnold ! Let me to His side in whom resides wis- 
 dom at least as great as yours, that in answer to my 
 heart's longing cry, " Show me the Father ! " I may 
 from his own lips catch the words of strength and 
 solace : " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 
 
 (4.) And, once again, man asks for light. It is as 
 he sits yonder in darkened chamber beside his dead. 
 To her, in youth's jocund days, his heart went out, 
 and round here twined its tendrils. They were lovely 
 and beautiful as they grew in wisdom, confidence, and 
 love. But the ruthless blast swept o'er her, and in 
 the very pride of motherhood she gave up the ghost : 
 her sun went down while it was yet noon. And soon 
 he must " bury his dead out of his sight." What is 
 thy mission and what thy meaning, O Death? Dost 
 thou, indeed, end all ? or through thee pass we back 
 again, as raindrops, into the vast immensity of THE 
 ALL individuality, personality, forever lost ? or shall 
 we live again ? It is not sentimentalism that thus 
 speaks. Strongest minds have heaved the lead in these
 
 32 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDKESSES". 
 
 mysterious depths. Mightiest hearts have quaked 
 with strange terror in presence of these problems. He 
 who is Christianity himself replies. In word he an- 
 swered ; better far, in work he responded ; best of 
 all, in his own person he grappled with, wrested the 
 scepter from, the king of terrors, and o'er his prostrate 
 form marched forth from death's dominion with the 
 note of triumph on his lip: "I am the resurrection 
 and the life." " He brought back, not the shadow, 
 but the substance of immortal man," as said Robert 
 Hall. " For now is Christ risen from the dead, and 
 become the first-fruits of them that sleep." 
 
 Friends, these are the truisms of our faith. Through 
 these, attended by the grace of the Lord and Giver of 
 life, Christianity hath won her way hitherto. Nor 
 is there trace of feebleness or of age in her fair form 
 to-day, nor hectic flush on her cheek, nor halt in her 
 gait, nor haze in her eye. She is mighty as when she 
 went forth to vanquish the Vandal, civilize the Celt, 
 hallow the Hun, gather in the Goth, and win the wor- 
 shipers of Woden from the fierceness of their temple 
 worship and their forest sports. She is entering new 
 regions, and intends to conquer ; and they feel this, 
 and are troubled. Hoary creeds and gory supersti- 
 tions tremble at her approach. She comes to make 
 men think, and thus to overturn. Revolutionist, in- 
 deed, she is ! Monopoly of power, of thought, of joy 
 in life, she comes to overturn. Her mission is race 
 wide and is full of mercy, without partiality and with- 
 out hypocrisy ; knowing no man after the flesh, nor 
 giving flattering titles unto any ; her smile is hope,
 
 MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF THE AGP:. 33 
 
 her presence a benediction. Judging from former 
 victories, and studying her in the light of prophecy, 
 we look forward with assured confidence of ultimate, 
 universal supremacy. Her Head "ascended that he 
 might fill all things" And he is achieving his in- 
 tent. His ideas, principles, are silently but surely 
 permeating society in commerce, honesty ; in law, 
 justice; in government, liberty; in art, purity; in 
 society, gentleness, tenderness, mutual helpfulness, 
 world- wide charity. As she advances in her career, 
 
 Flowers laugh before her on their beds, 
 And fragrance in her footing treads : 
 
 for 
 
 She doth wear 
 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
 Nor know we any thing so f;iir 
 As is the smile upon her face. 
 
 With full assurance of faith we anticipate the time 
 when through her influences her Founder shall fulfill 
 the glowing prophecy, " And on his head were many 
 crowns." I see the grand procession gathering to the 
 coronation. Yonder are Herschel and Kepler and 
 Copernicus and Galileo, at the head of the astronomic 
 pages. They draw nigh to crown him ; and as he 
 stoops to receive the gift I hear them exclaim : " The 
 heavens are the work of thy hands, the moon and thfi 
 stars which thou hast ordained." And yonder I see 
 the great chiefs of geologic science, and their sumless 
 followers : there are Hugh Miller and Buckland and 
 Dana ; and as he stoops to receive their offering thus 
 they declare : " Of old didst thou lay the foundations
 
 3i GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 of the earth ; the strength of the hills is thine also." 
 And, see, yonder the great old masters lead up their 
 ranks Angelico, Angelo, Da Vinci ; and as they pre- 
 sent their tribute, I hear them say : "Blessed are our 
 eyes, for we have seen the King in his beauty." And 
 there is another, surpassing far all these in power to 
 touch his heart. It is woman, "redeemed, regener- 
 ated, disenthralled " woman ; and at the head of the 
 illustrious throng there is the first mother of us all, 
 and by her side his own. To them he stoops is 
 there not haze in his eye? and as their gentle hands 
 place in his their choicest diadem, thus they exclaim : 
 " When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou 
 didst not abhor the virgin's womb." It is enough. 
 Let us conclude by chanting, in harmony with such a 
 prospect, 
 
 All hail the power of Jesus' name I 
 
 Let angels prostrate full ; 
 Bring forth the royal diadem, 
 
 And crown him Lord of alL
 
 LIBRARY." 35 
 
 II. 
 " OUR LIBRARY."* 
 
 T CONGRATULATE the friends of this Institution 
 _L upon the success which has marked the past year, 
 and most sincerely do I pray that the coming year 
 may prove the permanency of the revived interest 
 taken in " Our Library." In choosing the theme an- 
 nounced for this evening's address, it is not from the 
 slightest belief that it can receive from me the treat- 
 ment to which it is justly entitled ; for no one here 
 can be more alive than am I to the wealth and splen- 
 dor of the literary realms included in such a topic as 
 " Our Library." If my address have any merit, that 
 consists in its suggestiveness ; and if it have any spe- 
 cial claim upon your acceptance, that shall rest upon 
 the heartiness with which it is offered as an expres- 
 sion of my desire to aid in any effort the aim of which 
 is the mental recreation and moral advance of our 
 community. The subject chosen gives an opportunity 
 for stringing together a few thoughts respecting books 
 and their readers, what and how to read ; the relation 
 existing between mind and books ; and our obligations 
 to those who have transmitted through their writings 
 their life thoughts to us and to all succeeding genera- 
 tions. 
 
 * A lecture delivered on behalf of the Graham's TOWM (South 
 Africa) Public Library on Oct. 3, 1864. 
 
 4
 
 36 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 The relation which books sustain to the human mind 
 must be the first thought suggested by " Our Library." 
 Books supply the mind with material for thought. 
 They are a necessity. As the mind is constituted it 
 comes into existence with capacities, forms of thought, 
 and laws of mental action. Its great sources of knowl- 
 edge are twofold : observation through the senses, and 
 reflection upon the sensations awakened and the facts 
 obtained through observation. Sensation and reflec- 
 tion are the two chief fountains of ideas. The mind is 
 qualified to receive from without, and fitted to elab- 
 orate, from what is thus received, systems and sciences 
 in accordance with the immutable laws of its own con- 
 stitution and the equally immutable laws of the outer 
 world. That the mind may work, it must have ma- 
 terial on which to work. If it grow, it must have 
 food on which to banquet. If the mind be a field, it 
 must have seed with which to sow it. If it be an 
 artist's studio, it must have the block from which to 
 strike out its statues and images, whose combined 
 beauties call forth portraitures of all that can subli. 
 mate the taste, enchant the heart, and purify the 
 life. If the mind may be compared to a silkworm, 
 then books are its mulberry leaves, and " Our Li- 
 brary " a mulberry grove whereon, feeding, the work- 
 ing spirit may coil its cocoons and spin its silk ; or if 
 the mind may be deemed a manufactory, then books 
 are the silkworm cocoons, with whose countless threads 
 the mind-loom may weave its tapestry of poesy, of 
 narrative, of history, or romance. Or if tl e mind be 
 a builder and architect, then books supply the stones
 
 "OuR LIBRARY." 37 
 
 from which to fashion a palace-temple within the 
 spirit, truthfully transparent as a Crystal Palace, lux- 
 uriantly lovely as an Alhambra, and beautifully holy 
 as Zion's sacred and God-honored fane. A palace 
 and shrine like that of which the gifted but erring 
 genius sang : 
 
 In the greenest of our valleys, by good angels tenanted, 
 
 Once a fair and steady palace, radiant palace, reared its head. 
 
 In the monarch Thought's dominion it stood there ; 
 
 Never seraph spread a pinion over fabric half so fair ! 
 
 Banners yellow, glorious, golden on its roof did float and glow. 
 
 This, all this, was in the olden time Long ago; 
 
 And every gentle air that dallied in that sweet day, 
 
 Along the ramparts, plumed and pallid a winged odor went away. 
 
 Wanderers in that happy valley, through two luminous windows saw 
 
 Spirits moving musically, to a lute's well-tuned law ; 
 
 And all witli pearl and ruby glowing was the fair palace door 
 
 Through wliicli came Mowing, flowing, and sparkling evermore, 
 
 A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty was but to sing, 
 
 In voices of surpassing beauty, the wit and wisdom of their King. 
 
 Books are useless unless they provoke and stimulate 
 thought. They give material for thought, for think- 
 ing. But of what good, what use, what bliss, unless 
 we think ? Books were not written that we might 
 think by proxy. The writers never dreamed of sav- 
 ing their readers the trouble of thinking. They should 
 have felt saddened at the thought of such abuse of 
 their labors and creations. They were sustained in 
 their arduous, toilsome pleasure of conceiving and 
 composing their productions by the knowledge of the 
 fitness of their writings to generate ideas in future 
 minds. Proportioned to the number of the ideas they 
 felt they were capable of evoking did they exult in
 
 38 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 their lamplight cogitations, and count it all joy to plod 
 along the steep and flinty cliffs of literary discovery 
 and conquest. Books are valueless if, with all their 
 pregnant forces, they elicit no reproductive results 
 within your spirit. They look for their own ideas, 
 but with usury. They hold you responsible for the 
 multiplication by your own exercise of mind of the 
 original dowry they bestow. They would have you 
 put their thoughts into the bank of your meditation, 
 and into the exchequers of your manifold thinking 
 faculties, fancy, attention, judgment, and analysis. 
 Failing in this, they, as far as you are concerned, exist 
 in vain. That is the most valuable book which con- 
 tains the greatest number of the greatest ideas ; and 
 that book which has enkindled the strongest and stead- 
 iest flame of independent and truthful thinking is to 
 the reader thereof the most estimable volume. 
 
 True, thinking in reading is but co-operative labor. 
 The best author is he who enlists the deepest sympathy 
 of his reader, and obtains the heartiest mental .con- 
 verse with him. The book should be 'read somewhat 
 as we would converse with its author. We shall listen 
 to him, we shall question him, we shall suggest to 
 him, we shall contradict him, we shall supplement 
 him, and we shall bring our personal contribution of 
 knowledge to illustrate, confirm, or enlarge his offer- 
 ing. So shall we reap the wealthiest return from both 
 the talker and the author. 
 
 That book is most valued which most frequently 
 compels the reader to shut it, and shut his eyes and 
 his ears as well, while in meditative posture, and in a
 
 "OuE LIBRARY." 39 
 
 very raptnre of wonder and delight, the roused and 
 stimulated soul traverses the new light-bathed fields 
 of earth and vaults of heaven, called out of gloom 
 and non-existence into veritable loveliness by the 
 touch of some thought-wand, as wielded by regal and 
 cultured genius. 
 
 The best book invariably tasks the reader, challen- 
 ges liis attention, and calls out his force of concentrated 
 application. The best book demands, as I have said, 
 the action of the law of division and co-operation of 
 labor, and having performed a certain amount of 
 thinking leaves a margin for the exercise of the read- 
 er's powers. It hints, and tempts us to unfold the 
 hint. It throws up a thought, and points to the hiding-, 
 place of ore, and dares us to the work of exploration. 
 It moves in a region higher than our own, but to which 
 it beckons us, and helps us as we strive with it. It 
 moves the object into hazy visions, and bids us, by the 
 force of our study, breathe on and disperse the mist 
 which folds it, and heave it into luminous distinctness 
 and measurable orbit. 
 
 Thinking is to truth what digestion is to food. 
 Without the former you might as well hope to add 
 mental power, or multiply intellectual manhood, as 
 without the latter build up your wasted body and knit 
 your loosely hung bony fabric, or nervous structure, 
 into vigorous and graceful elasticity. To aid in thisf 
 it were well to have a companion with whom to con- 1 
 verse. The act of communicating invariably augments/ 
 the original strength of the mind. Xor this alone 
 it must insensibly, even with the lowest order of mind,
 
 40 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 develop some measure of its creative ability. It aids 
 in mastication ; it helps in digestion ; it facilitates an 
 assimilation to the soul's life. AVhen we undertake 
 to tell to another the results of our reading, some 
 solitary, original thought must start into life the 
 very effort put forth in so remembering or conceiving 
 of the author's thought, or argument, or plan, as to 
 impart it luminously to another, brings into play a new 
 order of faculties, gives a firmer grasp of the writer's 
 meaning, condenses what had been but gaseous or neb- 
 ulous haze into spherical solidity ; and in some de- 
 gree, by such use of the author, a man stamping it with 
 his own originality of mind, in his attempt to give it 
 to another, passes from the meanness and dishonesty 
 of plagiarism into the aristocracy of mental creatorship. 
 In this light we behold the value of clubs, or asso- 
 ciations, or institutes, where essays, oral or written, 
 are delivered by the members. This, certainly, if a 
 pendant to " Our Library," must contribute vastly to 
 its beneficial power. If young men were urged, not 
 merely to read, but to produce the results of their 
 reading, either in debating or essay writing, and if 
 there were any thing resembling brains, there must be 
 a large acquisition to their souls' strength by such a 
 system of mental gymnastics. There would then be 
 defmiteness of object in reading. There would be a 
 centralization of thought upon a given topic. There 
 would be a completeness of investigation induced, there 
 would be a transmutation of dead knowledge into 
 pulsing, radiant, active thought ; and our future should 
 be filled with men, in depth of refined sympathy,
 
 "OrR LIBRARY." 41 
 
 breadth of sound information, refinement of taste, 
 and aspiration after good more substantial and joys 
 more exalted than can be gauged by draper's yard- 
 stick, or weighed in banker's balance, or locked within 
 invulnerable or inconsumable Clmbb's safes or Bramah 
 locks. The law of co-operatiou pervades human life 
 and penetrates the universe. Deity demands it, and 
 we are urged by nature, Providence, and grace to be- 
 come workers together with Him. Man demands it. 
 Thus has he conquered nature, mastered science, 
 multiplied comforts, vanquished despotism, diffused 
 knowledge, and pressed forward his valorous cohorts 
 of philanthropy upon the domains of misery, super- 
 stition, and heathendom. Steam, electricity, manu- 
 factures, all testify to the power of co-operation. The 
 speaker, the orator, the teacher, all appeal to and are 
 dependent for their sovereignty over mind upon co- 
 operation. The author appeals to it, and without it 
 flings his seed thoughts as upon the sea-sands' furrows ; 
 with it, casts his bread upon the peaceful flood, and 
 comes again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. 
 Let this Library be deemed an intellectual gasometer 
 our invaluable Librarian the trusty keeper of the 
 works, our Committee caterers of the fuel, and our 
 subscribers the householders to whose apartments the 
 pipes are laid down and the invisible fluid transmitted. 
 But of what avail this furnace glow, and the conduits 
 carrying their latent streams of fiery light, unless we 
 strike the match and apply the taper of our own per- 
 sonal and studious application ? There must be co- 
 operation, else the mechanism and organization pro-
 
 42 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 long their being but to perpetuate " a mockery, a 
 delusion, and a snare." 
 
 How this links us with Time past, and tells us of 
 the indissoluble connection existing between the suc- 
 cessive generations of the human race. 
 
 For us of to-day the students of the past toiled, 
 explored, remembered, and constructed. We are the 
 heirs of all departed generations. Men have pro- 
 duced for us, but through what variety of processes 
 and influences were they enabled to produce and pro- 
 vide for us! How manifold the education and the 
 educational agencies conspiring to this result ! Through 
 poverty, through pain, amid scorn, and despite in- 
 gratitude ; while sorrow shadowed their features, and 
 solitude gloomed their hearts; though not an eye 
 glanced sympathy, and not a lip whispered hope, or 
 breathed " Well done ! " Schooled by adversity, tu- 
 tored by friendship, taught by disappointment, chas- 
 tened by self-sacrifice, they became endowed with 
 maturity of thought and tenderness of feeling and 
 opulence of experience, whereby, " not unto them- 
 selves, but unto us," they might "minister of their 
 royal benefactions." From the cold heights of the 
 stellar heavens, and from the fiery depths of their 
 impassioned hearts ; from the walks of quiet life, and 
 the broad highways of imperial struggle and advance- 
 ment ; from the mystic realms of mind, and the 
 broad, bright regions of material law and order ; from 
 the traditions of vagrant tribes, and the storied chron- 
 icles graved on stone, or vellum, or pappus; chanted 
 by chorus, scald, or troubadour ; clashed by cymbal,
 
 "OUR LIBRARY." 43 
 
 pealed by tramp, swelling from the cords of Celtic or 
 Druidic harps ! Here Egypt's wisdom, and Persia's ^ 6 ' 
 lore, and Chaldean science. Here the speculation of ' 
 Greece, and the legislation of Rome, and the chivalry 
 of Norsemen. Homer's immortal melodies, and De- 
 mosthenes" musical thunder still murmur or rever- 
 berate. Here Plato theorizes, and Socrates cross- 
 questions, and Aristotle propounds his science of man, 
 of government, and of nature. Here are preserved 
 the sp'oils of Saracenic sage and Mediaeval sophist. 
 Bacon is green with amarynth, and Shakspeare is wet 
 with garlanded dew, and Milton's magnificent mantle 
 waxes not old, and wears not out its sumptuous colors 
 by rush of many generations. But the time would 
 fail me to speak of those to whom we are indebted j 
 for our inheritance. Verily we dwell in a large and! 
 a wealthy place ! 
 
 The past still lives. Not merely in their own 
 
 ^- -* ^ v 
 
 writings do the old masters live, but as certainly they 
 have their being perpetuated in the influences of their 
 thoughts upon the literary processes of following 
 ages. Not a singer since Homer but has owned his 
 spell. Not a science since the days of Moses in Egypt 
 but feels the potency of those who piled the Pyramids 
 and carved the Sphinx Not a painter since the great 
 Apelles but has breathed his inspiration. Not a 
 metaphysician since Zeno who has not been guided 
 through the labyrinth of study by his torch. Not an 
 orator in forum or in hall since Cicero who has not 
 acknowledged the spell with which he thralled his 
 hearers.
 
 41: GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 ^or is it thus alone that the thinkers of the past live 
 in the present. They failed ; we shun their perils. 
 They guessed ; we seize their clue and thread our 
 maze the more securely. They scented the secret; 
 we have been saved the trouble of aught save the ex- 
 citement and success of the pursuit. They proved 
 the usefulness of certain methods of discovery and 
 forms of speculation. They have saved us the waste 
 of time and delay of acquisition by their exemplary 
 experience. They live in their sons, and are sure of 
 immortality through their seed royal among the chil- 
 dren of men. Thus it is that we think as we dwell 
 within " Our Library." 
 
 Here, in the softly flowing waters of " Our Library," 
 we read the story of the streams that have poured 
 their tributaries therein. Look at some majestic river, 
 and begin to trace its travel. Up its banks pursue 
 your voyage ; on either hand trickling drops melt into 
 its floods ; overhanging branches distil their dews ; 
 above, the weeping cloudlet floats its tears ; cascades 
 flash with rainbow beauty into the torrent ; rivulets 
 glide softly into the great arterial flood ; branch 
 rivers stretching on either hand far out into interior 
 realms have collected from countless sources the waters 
 of fountain and rivulet ; down shallows and through 
 gloomy dells, from dark tarn-lakes and ever-bubbling 
 mountain wells, along the course of a million-acred 
 basin land, has the imperial stream obtained its trib- 
 ute. Snows have melted to feed it, and glaciers dis- 
 solved to charge its channels, and thunderstorms burst 
 to fill its beds ; within its sea-like waters, wherein the
 
 "OlIR LlBRAKY." 45 
 
 sun glasses his cloudless form, and whereon argosies 
 float in swanlike grace and beauty, we behold the con- 
 summated results of a myriad different agencies in cease- 
 less operation, amid the mystic stillness, solitude, and 
 sublimity of earth and heaven, of mountain and of vale. 
 
 Then a fourth idea is suggested. "Our Library" 
 is a representative of the highest form of power 
 Mind Power. 
 
 The highest power resides in mind. It is the parent 
 of all power. The mightiest instruments of force are 
 thoughts. / Thoughts are mighty in essence and) 
 quality in proportion to their rank in the moralv 
 world, in proportion to their fitness to beget the \ 
 highest moral principles, and to produce the wortliiest 
 moral character and conduct.) The invisibility, the j 
 intangibleness of mind power may with some eclipse 
 its glory and rob it of its meed of appreciation. We 
 are so accustomed to measure might by palpable and 
 material standards, and to deny it to aught not subject 
 to this mode of estimate, that some degree of reflec- 
 tion is necessary ere we apprehend the majesty of 
 force inherent in thought. 
 
 And yet nature's study ought to teach us another 
 lesson ; for the substances most potent in nature are 
 those which defy our sense of sight, as wind ; or our 
 sense of touch, as attraction ; or our sense of taste, 
 as light ; or our sense of hearing, as heat, magnetism, 
 and electricity. The imponderables are the most ex- 
 alted in the scale of nature's forces. The birth and 
 growth power of life insect, plant, or beast who 
 shall tell its magnitude ? For what so resistless as,
 
 46 GUARD'S LECTURES AXD ADDRESSES. 
 
 when winter's womb quickens, spring gives birth to 
 being, and summer suns look down upon hosts called 
 from slumber and stupor into active and exulting 
 bliss by the life-spirit of the revolving seasons ; 
 transforming a sterile hemisphere into laughing ver- 
 dure, and peopling a vacant and somber atmosphere 
 with -tribes of swimming, soaring, and rejoicing life. 
 The more a man is advanced in the path of civiliza- 
 tion, the more will he seek companionship with and 
 be prepared to render reverence to the " unseen and 
 the eternal." 
 
 The might of thought may be inferred as that of 
 wind from its effects. The history of man is 
 crowded with evidence and illustration. Sometimes 
 we behold its might embodied in conquering expedi- 
 tions, again in political revolutions, again in moral 
 reformations, again in social transformations. It is 
 seen in sculpture, it is heard in eloquence, it is wit- 
 nessed in architecture, it is incarnated in legislation, 
 it is enthroned in state-craft. The sea has felt, the 
 sun owns, and the winds acknowledge it. It has 
 riven rocks, and ransacked forests, and tunneled 
 mountains, and bridged gulfs. It has beaten back the 
 ocean, raced with time, wrestled with gravitation, 
 chained the lightning to its throne, and equipped it 
 for missions of mercy, wisdom, and wealth. It has 
 created, but it has conquered, hoary superstition ; it 
 has consolidated, but it has overthrown, despotism ; it 
 has entered the lists with priestcraft, Oriental and 
 Western, and taken it by the throat and thrown it, 
 and planted its foot upon the monster's neck ; nor
 
 "OuR LIBRARY." 47 
 
 shall it be withdrawn until " the light Ithuriel lance 
 of truth " shall have pierced it and hurled its carcass 
 to its own place. It wrung Magna Charta from King 
 John, and chased the crooked-minded Stuart from the 
 British throne ; it struck the fetters from a million 
 slaves ; secured emancipation for five million Irish 
 Catholics ; called forth and clasped to its warm heart 
 the Reform Bill of 1830 ; reasoned and debated with 
 statesmen until the corn laws and other monopolies 
 melted into nonentity ; and cannot, will not, tarry or 
 weary or repose until, wherever ignorance broods, 
 knowledge shall flourish ; wherever a wrong reigns, 
 right shall rule ; wherever a slave cringes a freeman 
 shall rise erect beneath God's generous and impartial 
 heavens, and from a soil prolific of lies it shall be 
 said, from pole to pole, there " truth springs out of 
 the earth" and there " righteousness dwelleth" 
 
 Mean in birth, ignoble in person, and uncouth of 
 speech may be the author and utterer of thought. 
 These but create the deeper contrast and ennoble the 
 triumph of the thinker ; for, stripped of all that is ad- 
 ventitious and sensuously imposing, thought has but 
 the more developed her native and inherent might, 
 and while the body wastes, the thought-life waxes ; 
 and while the sensuous oldens, the thought-power 
 reaches its youth ; and when the material encasement 
 crumbles into native dust, the thought-energy but 
 then begins to reveal the " hidings of its power," 
 and from the grassy grave or the marble cenotaph 
 " goes forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber," 
 and as a strong man to run his race, bathed in the
 
 48 GUARD'S LECTUEES AND ADDBESSES. 
 
 dews of immortality and clad in the garments of 
 eternal worth ; nor time nor change nor empires' 
 dissolution nor death's fell swoop can bind its action 
 or destroy its rule. Of it, as of the Father of lights, 
 it must be chanted, " Thy throne is for ever and ever, 
 and of the increase of thy power there bhall be no 
 end." 
 
 " While the earth was resounding with Alexander's 
 exploits, Aristotle, his tutor, was silently achieving 
 the mightier conquest of the human mind. The 
 Macedonian Empire was soon dismembered and ex- 
 tinct ; but the mental empire of the philosopher con- 
 tinued vigorous and entire for more than two thou- 
 sand years, molding opinions, affecting creeds, and 
 indirectly guiding the popular intellect ; nor is it any 
 thing like destroyed yet." 
 
 Nay, here have we preserved for us the mind of de- 
 parted days. Here have we the fossil thoughts of the 
 different eras and ages of the world's mental and 
 moral history. Here may we read the prominent 
 features of each cycle of the literary and religious 
 past. Here may we learn the degree of growth- 
 power, the quantity and quality of light-power, under 
 which thinkers were developed. Think of some of 
 those masses of mind-power! What evidences of 
 their forces in evoking passion, in calming fear, in 
 rousing to courage ! What mastery over imagination 
 by Byron ! What spell thrown around a wondering 
 nation by the earliest novels of Scott, while he yet re- 
 mained " The Great Unknown ! " What superb 
 specimens of the range of human thought, the
 
 "OUR LIBRARY." 49 
 
 resources of human imagination, of the royalty of hu- 
 man speech, in those volumes of British eloquence 
 enrolling the names of Fox and Sheridan, of Burke 
 and Chatham ! What tales of intellectual prowess 
 the story of Sir Isaac Newton hints ; or of educational 
 advancement "Arnold's life narrates ! what surging 
 of feeling, what tension of thought, what play of 
 fancy, what patience in application, what perseverance 
 in peering, what concentration of faculties, before 
 which darkness trembled into light, and mystery 
 started in to simplicity, and withered facts heaved with 
 flushed and purpled life, and chaos put on shapes of 
 comeliness, and Anarchy stooped from her ebon 
 throne but to reveal Law reposing in serene and regal 
 ease, as worlds revolved in homage and every thing 
 breathed forth its adoration in melody of praise ! The 
 power which clrew out the secret from matter and 
 extorted the principle from mind ; which subdued the 
 weakness of flesh and defled the difficulties of friend- 
 less investigation ; which, as it passed through the \ 
 hand, seizing the stylus or the pen, stamped its image ) 
 upon the caligraphy of the writer in lines of hurried, ] 
 blurred, and ragged contour; power, which damped 
 the author's brow with brain dew, and drew tears 
 from many a reader's eye and sighs from many a stu- 
 dent's heart ; power, which shook the prince beneath 
 his robes and blanched the cheek of pontiff amid his 
 parasites and palace pomps; power, which roused 
 peoples from lethargy into the frenzy of crusading 
 zeal, chiseled the boulders of Vandal and Gothic 
 ignorance into edifices of freedom and homes of
 
 50 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 honesty and honor, and established and matured the 
 grandest civil constitution that ever spread its pro- 
 tecting shadow over the races of men at once the 
 pride of Englishmen, the glory of time, and the 
 wonder of the world ! 
 
 May we not, then, look upon the Library as the 
 concentration of power ? Here we seem as if in a 
 well-seamed coal mine. Look at that coal mine. 
 Black, dead, inert, unsightly as it is, it once lived, it 
 once grew, it once brought forth after its kind ; in 
 swamp and river-bed, in forest and morass, on moor 
 and fen, in shapes of gracefulness, in forms of infi- 
 nitely varied stature, structure, color that dead thing 
 lived. Fern, moss, and grass, stunted and stately, 
 stout and stalwart of brief existence, of prolonged 
 duration. Vegetation lies there, untouched ; but not 
 less certainly POWER lies there: power, higher than 
 mechanical, higher than chemical even LIFE POWER 
 to which the former two are inferior or subservient. 
 Power, claiming life from the rain-drop and from the 
 air vesicle and from the earth and from the sun- 
 beam ; power, changing death into life and dullness 
 into motion and the servile atom into a 'seed-cell ; 
 power, to which gravitation bowed and electricity paid 
 tribute and heat returned an unfailing response. And 
 through cycles and voiceless ages this force-agent 
 Life ruled. Plant and stalk and tree flourished, 
 while the saurian plunged, swam, and crawled, and the 
 lizard and the tortoise, the fish and the fowl, ex- 
 hausted their plenitude of capacities. There convul- 
 sions upheaved and displaced and submerged ; there
 
 e " OUK LIBRARY." 51 
 
 torrents rushed and streams overflowed their banks. 
 The dynasty of death became a reality, and forest and 
 grove and copse sank o'erwhelmed by earthquake, or 
 cut off by torrent or ocean's inroad. Or gradually 
 decay and death and subsidence took place ; and lay- 
 ers spread the soft covering over decimated vegeta- 
 tion, forming the soil the soil whereon new life 
 should flourish and in turn decay. It is no figure of 
 speech to say, therefore, that not only have we vege- 
 tation heaped in coal beds, but we have therein a light 
 or sun-strength slumbering not one ounce of power 
 wasted, not one pound of leverage unreckonable. 
 f There it lies, confined, imprisoned, the sleeping giant 
 ^- of the enchanted castle of the earth. \ Science has 
 stormed the stronghold and pealed the blast whose 
 resurrection breath has called from its sepulchral 
 vaults the Titan of the coal-fields ; for not only is the 
 power demonstrably existing, but it is power avail- 
 able. It can be recalled to action ; it can be restored 
 to veritable use. It lives again it works right vig- 
 orously. It has gained by death. The law of prog- 
 ress is illustrated by its transformation. In vegetation 
 power had a natural body. In gas, light, and steam 
 it claims a spiritual body. The grossness first, the 
 ethereality second nevertheless, unaltered POWER. 
 
 The engineer Stephenson asked "Buckland, u What 
 drives that engine ? " The doctor replied, " Of 
 course, steam." " Nay," said George, " it is the light 
 of the sun, first in plants, then in coal, then in heat, 
 now in steam." That bucket of coals can be meas- 
 ured ; it can by steam perform the work of twenty 
 5
 
 52 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 o 
 
 men. That stone of hay and those four pounds of 
 oats can be measured they represent power. They 
 will feed a horse for a day, and supply him with nerve 
 and muscle-strength for one day's labor. That ration, 
 of meat three pounds, of bread two pounds, can be 
 measured ; it represents POWER. Eaten by a Kafir, it 
 passes through his system into LABOR not all, per- 
 haps, for, lazy fellow as he is, he may adopt other 
 safety-valves through which to pass off, without toil, 
 his meat-power. But the beef and bread represent 
 POWER, and may, through a human being, pass into 
 literal STRENGTH. 
 
 That waterfall can be measured ; it represents 
 POWER. Falling a given distance it generates .a cer- 
 tain heat. Measure the quantity of water, and meas- 
 ure the space through which it falls, and you arrive 
 at the weight it can elevate and the distance whither 
 it shall raise it. And men are busy to-day developing 
 latent power either into ox-muscle, man-muscle, or 
 engine-muscle. And if the coal-fields, as the treasure- 
 house of sun-power and vegetation-power in years 
 past, countless as the stars, represent the mind-force 
 of departed writers as calmly reclining upon the 
 shelves of " Our Library," so may we behold, in the de- 
 velopment of the latent physical force by the use of 
 coal, in factory and printing-press and locomotion, an 
 illustration of our relation to the spiritual strength 
 enthralled within the pages of " Our Library." That 
 Library is to us our coal-mine ; your subscription en- 
 titles you to sink a shaft, to work a mine. 
 
 But it rests not here there must be such a use
 
 "OuR LIBRARY." 53 
 
 made of the thought-substance obtained as that there 
 shall be a production of POWER. The power of mind 
 inclosed within the walls of " Our Library " is meas- 
 ureless. Yet it is available it is transferable. 
 
 The problem to be practically solved by readers 
 is, how they may transmute that force into soul-life 
 how draw out the imperishable vitality of great 
 authors. That will lead to the formation of the most 
 prudent and efficient plan for the employment of the 
 mental material. In three ways may a man make 
 use of such material. He may speak it in conversa- 
 tion ; he may write it on paper or canvas or stone ; he 
 may act it in a life which shall be itself a poem in its 
 beauty and an anthem in its rhythm and concord. 
 There must be study consecutive, concentrated, and 
 continuous. There must be memory of facts, persons, 
 principles. There must be distinct apprehension of 
 the gist of the author, the purport of the theme, the 
 completeness of the structure. There must be the 
 actual power to use this and render it into original 
 and apprehensible ideas to yourself or to others. 
 
 Not the mere capacity of memory which can give 
 out verbatim what has been absorbed ; that is not the 
 evidence of well-used mental resources. Such per- 
 formance is as though what one had eaten, having 
 passed through the crypts of his intestines, instead of 
 living flesh and blood and bone, reappeared in its 
 original form. Be it remembered that it is not by 
 the act of acquisition that we most economically em- 
 ploy thoughts ; but principally and pre-eminently 
 ay, and in accordance with the far-reaching law, " it
 
 54 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 is more blessed to give than to receive " bj impart- 
 ing. The book which asks us to give most of our- 
 selves in order to possess what it offers is that which 
 is the most valuable educator. 
 
 This idea suggests another principal thought, that a 
 library should be endowed with material suited to every 
 department of the complex natures of its students and 
 patrons. 
 
 Should a youth ask me what books he ought to 
 read, what selection he should make from a gathering 
 so heterogeneous, I should reply, Act in the same man- 
 ner as you would in selecting a friend or a number of 
 companions. Let there be a high aim in view. It is 
 to be supposed that you will choose moral, at least, 
 and, at best, godly companions. 
 
 Then let your personal taste direct you. One with 
 whom you can sympathize ; one who perhaps has all 
 you possess, and more ; one who can reciprocate your 
 individuality of genius, of reading, and pursuits, and 
 who can bring his own independent contribution to 
 supply that wherein by constitution or culture you 
 may be wanting in order to full-orbed perfectness. 
 
 As there is in a man's companionship an index to 
 his mental as well as moral and social habitudes, so 
 in a man's books. The librarian has in the books 
 chosen an infallible touch-stone, whereby to test the 
 constituents of your soul and character. Near as the 
 needle to the pole will your proclivities of taste move 
 you to the department of the book be it narrative, 
 science, poetry, or fiction be it trivial or solid be it 
 abstruse or superficial be it enlarging to the mind's
 
 "OUB LlBKAKY." 55 
 
 grasp, or pampering to the emotion's morbid craving. 
 As manifold as are the great divisions of the intellect- 
 ual world should be the books in their classifications 
 selected and mastered. Ever remember there are 
 some to be tasted and laid down, some to be taken up 
 in hours of idleness, and gome to be the specific 
 themes of most earnest and conscientious mastery. 
 
 History is well represented in " Our Library," and 
 cannot be omitted by the intelligent self-cultivator, 
 especially the history of your own country. Of that 
 you should be an earnest and an enthusiastic student. 
 You cannot cherish affection too hi tense, veneration 
 too profound, for your beloved mother-country. 
 
 History widens our survey of man ; enriches our 
 experience of the fundamental elements of human 
 passion and motives ; teaches philosophy by example ; 
 reveals the immutability of moral law ; confirms our 
 confidence in the existence and in the equity of provi- 
 dential government; assures us of the infallible con- 
 nection between sin and suffering, between falsehood 
 and anarchy, between virtue and permanent political 
 well-being; from the failures and successes of the 
 past derives warning and inspiriting counsel for the 
 present ; gives ns confidence in the ultimate triumph 
 of the right; and warrants us in the belief of the 
 gradual elevation of our race, and the final beautitnde 
 awaiting our vexed world, even a millennium of right- 
 eousness, wherein justice shall spread its palladium- 
 over all men, and charity, founded upon truth, bind 
 up a torn and heal a bleeding world. Of Gibbon's 
 magnificent story you cannot remain ignorant ; Grote's
 
 56 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Grecian history shall soon enrich our stores ; Ban- 
 croft's America has the fascination of a romance ; the 
 same must be said of Prescott ; and one's soul must be 
 dead to all that, from a brave and sturdy people strug- 
 gling for religious and civil freedom, appeals to his 
 deep-throned attachment to liberty, if Motley's Dutch 
 Republic and Rise of the Netherlands fail to win 
 his entranced study. 
 
 But O, let the story of Britain's history become 
 your special occupation ! Happily you are affluent in 
 material. Each cycle in her chronicles has found a 
 fitting scribe, drawn to it, I doubt not, by specialty 
 of task. The Anglo-Saxons have Turner. The Nor- 
 mans have Palgrave. The Tudors have found their 
 gifted painter in Froude. The Stuarts in Foster 
 and Macaulay. The Georges in Lord Mahon and 
 Massey. And then there is the equally beautiful 
 and valuable history by Knight, where, far from 
 partiality and with the labors of others at his com- 
 mand, he has added the sister art of engraving to 
 textual narrative in the illustrations of the annals of 
 our wondrous and wonder-working empire. From 
 ballad-singer and from letter-writer, from state rec- 
 ords and Parliamentary Acts from monastic cell, 
 and from ambassadorial correspondence from na- 
 tional and foreign archives from play of dramatist 
 and journal of court sycophant from gallery of por- 
 traits and cloister of university with a patience that 
 has never nagged, and a fervency of excitement ever 
 at white heat, our historians have placed within our 
 possession materials for a masterly and comprehensive
 
 "OuR LIBRARY." 57 
 
 acquaintance with our own dear land our lovely En- 
 gland, whose rights are firm as her rocks, whose liber- 
 ties are sacred as her altars, whose throne is as firmly 
 planted in a nation's heart as the noted cliffs which 
 beat back the foam and spray and defy the tempests of 
 revolving centuries. 
 
 The true historian will generalize from his facts. 
 His science is an inductive one. His feet should rest 
 upon a hill of vision sufficiently exalted to free him 
 from the mists of prejudice and party, sufficiently ex- 
 alted to survey the connection between the multitudi- 
 nous facts which he has marshaled, and to trace the 
 principle of the facts as they are successively and co- 
 existeutly associated. He will seize epochs and mark 
 the crises of principles. He will ponder profoundly 
 upon the results of confluent streams of mental and 
 moral influences, trace them to their fountains, and 
 follow them to their united volume, reading the feat- 
 ures of their compound actions upon human develop- 
 ment and destiny with an acute and philosophic eye. 
 He will recognize the variety of original temperament 
 and of successive training upon nations. He will 
 mark the action of climate and calling upon character. 
 He will weigh the force of material laws, as well as 
 mental, in the individuality of peoples. He will de- 
 tect the impress their religions take from their dwell- 
 ing-places. He will measure the power of the poet as 
 of the philosopher, of the atmosphere as of the arts, 
 of the landscapes as of the literature, in that mo- 
 mentous production, a Grecian or English nation. He 
 will read the operations of commingled bloods in
 
 58 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 refreshing and invigorating the material that men are 
 made of ; he will mark the part that each has played 
 in the advancement of the race; how some have de- 
 veloped the physical, others the mental, others the 
 moral, others the commercial, and others the ruling 
 and obeying interests of humanity, and how each, ere 
 it vanished, contributed some appreciable aid to the 
 progress of the great family of man. He will discover 
 the influence of war, the results of scientific discover, 
 ies, the consequences of colonization and of conquests, 
 of the voyages and travels of explorers, of the birth 
 of printing, the manufacture of paper and of gun- 
 powder, the disuse of pike and bow, the employment 
 of musket and cannon, as agents in the elevation of 
 the race and the progress of nations. Above all, he 
 will exult in beholding any and every proof of the 
 growth of a capacity for liberty, and a power to wrest 
 it from potentate and baron ; he will rejoice in the 
 rise of free cities, in the struggle of shackled men for 
 freedom, and in the general assertion of the repre- 
 sentation in government by the masses of mankind, 
 and he shall become enthralled by the story of the 
 battles fought and gained by all who have risen 
 against the oppressor, whether he have been cased in 
 knightly steel or folded in soft-ermined ecclesiastical 
 garb. Then, if ever, we shall have eloquence in fiery 
 torrent or in cataract sublimity. 
 
 Nor can the true student of history overlook the 
 government of God over all that is permitted, pre- 
 vented, and perpetuated in nations. His presence- in 
 the punishment of evil, in the checks placed around
 
 "OuE LIBRARY." 59 
 
 its growth, and the certainty of its destruction by the 
 action of its own properties. And the presence of 
 the greatest event of time cannot be omitted without 
 absolute confusion. The Christ who has come and 
 will come again in the fullness of the future must 
 be deemed the keystone to the arch of history, span- 
 ning the roaring and dark waters of time. The 
 cross alone can shed light upon the mysteries of hu- 
 manity, and the cross alone is the master-key where- 
 by the else impenetrable darkness of life, personal 
 or imperial, can be unlocked and opened to the in- 
 vigorating and harmonizing light of philosophy. 
 Poetry is represented in " Our Library." 
 Poetry meets a want of our nature. It has ever in 
 spirit, and for ages in body, co-existed with the hu- 
 man race. It has never lacked themes to sing of, nor 
 an audience before whom to chant. Its range is lofty 
 as the throne of deity, profound as the depths of the 
 unplummeted human spirit, and broad as the planet 
 tenanted by civilized or savage men. The raptures 
 and the martyrdoms of faith the confidence and the 
 tenderness of love the charm of infancy and the 
 promise of boyhood the chivalry of youth and the 
 autumnal glories, mellow and subdued, of hoary- 
 headed goodness are themes for poetry. Nature in 
 all her voices, moods, and tenses in all her concords, 
 variations, and harmonies when daylight dies and 
 when morn is born when spring-life bursts and sum- 
 mer ripens storms in their terror and their decadence 
 flowers in their buds and blossoms forests in mazy 
 wanderings and cathedral melodies sublimities of
 
 G.1 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 night and her plentiturle of stellar mysteries and 
 beauties pensive and melancholy eve brilliant, glar- 
 ing, and busy noon ocean, in calmness and in storm, 
 howling its hoarse chorus or booming its deep bass of 
 alleluias light, painting its ever-varying cartoon, 
 calling forth a gladsome infinitude of life, and robing 
 rugged and riven landscapes in a purple and aerial 
 misty mantle darkness, symbol of inner sorrow, of 
 moral desolation and drear abandonment, of self-in- 
 flicted tortures and wild, bewildering imagination are 
 the themes for poetry. 
 
 Poetry ! Frenzy in her eye beauty on her brow 
 truth on her lip grace in her movements rhythm in 
 her cadences wealth in her conceptions she holds a 
 passport scroll from the lover of concord to all realms 
 of past and present, all realms of mind, of matter, of 
 morals she makes her home amid " the precious things 
 of the lasting hills and of the deep beneath," of the 
 moon and of the sisterhood of planets. It is her mis- 
 sion to soothe the unhappy and revive the hopeless 
 to brace the flagging and beatify the victorious in the 
 battle of the true to add elixir to the daily cup of 
 troubled households to welcome the babe into being, 
 sing at her marriage festals, and on its lucent and 
 mellifluous wave to float the dying spirit within the 
 choral circles of the sons of God. 
 
 Man is poetry's grand theme central and all-related 
 man, in his own changing feelings and moods of pas- 
 sion. When peace enfolds her wings within the tem- 
 pled spirit, and when revenge broods in sullen and 
 gloomy horror ; when love spreads her pavilion of
 
 "OuK LIBRARY." 61- 
 
 satisfaction, and when grief sits shrouded amid sepul- 
 chral solitudes of a widowed heart. Hope, in its 
 bright-visioned and vivacious fancyings, and despair, 
 with torn and tortured visage, rent by the convulsive 
 throes of memory and conscience, of good abandoned, 
 virtue wildly cast away; heaven's starless arch the 
 porch within and beyond which the suicidal spirit 
 sweeps to outer darkness. Man, in all his relations to 
 his fellow and his species individual man collective 
 man the home the nation the tribe the race 
 wherever there is beauty in form or faith ; wherever 
 there is sublimity in heroism, in self-sacrifice, in mar- 
 tyrdom; wherever there is food for laughter or for 
 tears ; life in its exuberance, and death in its victory 
 of faith, its termination of conflict and trial, and its 
 introduction into scenes which painters may not de- 
 lineate and even poetry attempts in vain to echo or 
 transcribe. These are the poet's lawful subjects and 
 inherited domain. From these, by his description, 
 to produce harmonious and unconscious repose of 
 spirit, which is but another name for happiness, is 
 the prerogative and destiny of the God -gifted 
 singer. 
 
 To the universe he himself is but a real, living 
 Memnon, from whose many-chambered soul the light- 
 beam of nature falling and striking draws out the 
 melodies which tremble o'er and travel down the liv- 
 ing waters of the Nile floods of successive generations, 
 thence borne out into the infinite ocean of angelic 
 and glorified intelligence ; while to the human heart 
 the poet is but as the ever-varying wind, blowing as
 
 62 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 it listeth, but passing over the inner soul and evoking 
 from its seolian depths the sweet, soft echoes, whereby 
 life's toil is eased, and life's purpose is carried to its 
 consummated bliss. 
 
 Man is an imitative being. From the cradle to the 
 tomb he bows to this principle and is molded by it. 
 Speech and habit are but its creatures. Piety is helped 
 by it, and nobleness of character springs forth and 
 flourishes under its protection. The child is thus 
 fashioned by his parent, while the saint thus rises into 
 and reflects the likeness of his Saviour. Its spell is 
 thrown around the studious scholar and the stripling 
 soldier. The lisping school-boy feels its potency 
 while declaiming ; nor is there an artist, be he singer 
 or sculptor, from whose soul the charm hath been 
 utterly expelled. 
 
 Hence there should be provision for this in the 
 complete library. Here we may learn how to emulate 
 the good, and tread the footsteps of the great. The 
 tutor of youth may study Arnold, and the pastor or 
 preacher Chalmers ; the military cadet may breathe 
 the duty-loving spirit of the Iron Duke from his dis- 
 patches, and the lawyer secure high notions of the 
 dignity of his calling while conning Lord Jeffrey's 
 life, or soaring through regions ruled by England's 
 chancellors and judges. Statesmen yet to be may sit 
 at the feet of Peel ; and engineers learn how to 
 vanquish poverty, ignorance, and low birth, as well as 
 to subdue matter and Jevy tribute from the laws, of 
 nature, by Stephenson's career ; and if the soul would 
 rise and sing and soar in holy living and in heavenly
 
 "OuR LIBRARY." 63 
 
 mindedness, then Henry Martyn's "Journal " furnishes 
 the suitable provisions for so high and laudable a 
 calling. And if our ladies would behold how possible 
 a thing it is to blend all that may become a woman 
 gentleness, and purity, and reticence with all that is 
 broad in thought and beautiful in taste, and subtle in 
 philosophic study and converse, they have it all in 
 Mrs. Schimmelpeninck's fascinating life. 
 
 This class of reading must minister richly to the 
 energy of the soul, the hopefulness of the heart, and 
 essayings of the life after the just, the honest, and the 
 lovely. These lives surprise us by their attainments ; 
 they shame us by their diligence ; they stimulate us 
 by their conquest of the foes which beleaguer us. 
 They proclaim the possible, and point the pathway to 
 its realization. They become " fire-pillars " to guide 
 our journeys through peril and difficulty into the 
 promised land of self-contained and self-supplied 
 satisfaction and repose. They disabuse our minds of 
 the fallacy of feeling by which so many gifted spirits 
 have been deterred from progress, by proving that 
 there is no royal road to knowledge no charmed 
 secrets whereby mysteries yield up their burdens no 
 need for patronage or birth in order to true greatness 
 that the true man is fashioned and benefited by 
 reason of difficulties, rises in power as he sinks in 
 humility, gains in influence as he sacrifices self, reaches 
 to sovereignty over mind and conscience not alone by 
 greatness of intellect but by greatness of heart that 
 diligence makes rich in thought, and perseverance 
 removes mountains of ignorance that prudence, and
 
 64 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 foresight, and prayer have hitherto failed never to 
 turn the base into the beautiful, and the mean into 
 the noble, and the vile and despaired of into the 
 cleansed and clothed and Christ-like " children of the 
 light " " and that no one can have shrines erected to 
 his memory in the hearts of men of distant generations, 
 unless his own heart was an altar on which daily 
 sacrifices of fervent devotion and magnanimous self- 
 denial were offered to the only true object of human 
 worship." * 
 
 Again, man is related to nature to the outer 
 region of matter and to the inner realm of mind. 
 The senses conduct to the one, and consciousness and 
 reflection to the other. Both have been deemed 
 legitimate fields of investigation, and over both the 
 wing of speculative science has swept for many a 
 generation. 
 
 Physical, mental, and moral sciences have tempted 
 adventurers by the difficulties and the mysteries en- 
 shrouding them. Who can reckon up a fourth part 
 of the results secured? From the hyssop and the 
 moss, from the invisibles that brood in flower-cup 
 and quaff honey- dew, from the tiny atom whirling 
 through sunlight and that knows not rest nor 
 weariness of motion, on through ascending ranks of 
 moving, living, thinking being, has science urged her 
 researches. 
 
 She has stayed the comet courier and heard his 
 message placed mind upon the rack and drawn forth 
 its secrets ; she hath dived beneath ocean's surface 
 
 * Sir J. Stephen,
 
 "OuB LIBRARY." 65 
 
 and returned with pearl wonders from coral palace 
 and sea-grove bowers ; she hath peopled the dust of 
 the earth with busy tribes, and turned the star-power 
 of the heavens into revolving and resplendent worlds 
 and systems. She has lit her lamp and descended to 
 the catacombs of earth's old crust, and wandered 
 through cities of the dead, and studied their histories, 
 and marked the presence of our Lawgiver, both in 
 their plentitude of life and in their laws of dissolution. 
 Science ! She stands like the angel of the Revelation 
 one foot on sea, one on solid land her head cinctured 
 with a star turban, while her eye of flame pierces the 
 past, reads the future, and scans the seed-soil of the 
 wondrous present. Scholars are her servants, and 
 the occupants of thrones are numbered among her 
 devoted subjects. She scatters her benefactions with 
 impartial hand, and shares her favors with the humblest 
 homesteads as with the haughtiest ; and draws forth 
 gratitude from toiler and from thinker, from diseased 
 and deformed humanity. And though to her myster- 
 ies the many must remain strangers, and to but a 
 scanty circle of anointed and consecrated ones has it 
 been given to guard and feed the altar-fires in nature's 
 temple; nevertheless, by a beneficent arrangement, 
 there are those who, if not qualified for the duties of 
 high-priesthood, are dowered with a fitness to act as 
 mediators between the highest thinkers and the low- 
 est artisans men capable of apprehending, though 
 not of discovering, and capable also of translating 
 into the vernacular of daily action the sublimest con- 
 ceptions caught by direct contact with the universe.
 
 66 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Thus it is that the loftiest share with the lowliest. 
 As the debris of the mountain range, though inaccessi- 
 ble and useless in its Himalayan heights, when tritu- 
 rated and commingled by the streams which bear it 
 down into the valleys, is destined to form the fertile 
 plains on whose produce nations .live, so from the 
 lone, bold peaks of speculation and study, by laws of 
 social and mental might as certain in their action as 
 material laws, the results of the most prolix calcula- 
 tions and the most profound analyses reach the lowest 
 strata of life, if not in theorem and formula, certainly 
 in their embodied and palpable form of science wedded- 
 to art wielding the sledge, pointing the needle, print 
 ing the page, flinging the shuttle, battering the pile, 
 heaving the granite, and propelling the engine of fac- 
 tory or locomotive. 
 
 To this study we are invited by the scientific volumer 
 of "Our Library," to which we have had a most valuable 
 addition in the works of Darwin, Tyndall, and Grove, 
 in physical sciences ; and the noble and thought- enrich- 
 ing volumes of Sir William Hamilton, confessedly the 
 greatest metaphysician of Great Britain since John 
 Locke. Let there be a union of the practical with 
 the theoretic ; from Nichols and Herschel to the actual 
 firmament ; from Hugh Miller, and Lyell, and Mur- 
 chison to the veritable strata of the hills ; and from 
 the subtleties of Hamilton to the workings of your own 
 spirit. Thus take witli your own eyes and genius 
 from Nature's cabinet of treasures. See God in all 
 in wisdom blending with goodness ; and beauty mar- 
 ried to the bliss of being. And from the multiform
 
 "OuR LIBRARY." 67 
 
 interweavings of the sciences, each playing into each, 
 each explaining and supporting the other, ascend some- 
 what nigher to Him who has embodied His unity in 
 the diversified but harmonious whole. 
 
 There is another department of " Our Library " 
 which may not be omitted that of "light litera- 
 ture." 
 
 The mass of this article is indeed huge and hetero- 
 geneous, and looks as if it had been frequently re- 
 sorted to. The volumes composing it have been well 
 thumbed and well soiled. Are we to infer that this 
 literature supplies a want of our mental nature ? That 
 there is a craving in man for something resembling 
 the novel, cannot. I think, be denied. 
 
 The wide-spread presence of the novel its antiquity 
 its perpetuity are not to be overlooked. Arabian 
 Tales are novels ; " Henry, Earl of Moreland " is a 
 novel ; " Don Quixote " is a novel. The style of the 
 novel is found in Holy Scripture. Bunyan used it, De 
 Foe's immortal Crusoe owes his renown and charm to 
 the same principle. Truth taught through the imagi- 
 nation what is novel literature but this ? The heart 
 reached through fictional tuition human nature de- 
 lineated by means of characters and individuals brought 
 into such juxtaposition as to develop passion and sen- 
 timent is not this the aim of the novelist ? 
 
 Between the novel and novel reading there is a dis- 
 tinction. The one refers to the style of instruction, 
 the other to a habit mental. That there is that in our 
 nature which demands truth presented in some such 
 
 form as that of a work of fiction I should be the last 
 6
 
 68 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 to deny ; that it is not, absolutely and intrinsically, 
 and under all forms, wrong, sinful, or immoral, or men- 
 tally injurious to read a novel or to study a drama, who 
 with any common sense will attempt to deny ? John 
 Wesley recommended Moreland, and had Shakspeare. 
 Unfortunately one of his executors burned the latter, 
 though enriched with many of the sage's criticisms and 
 notes ; while Chalmers' favorite study was " The Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream." Dr. Clarke acknowledges 
 his debt to the " Arabian Nights' Entertainment," and 
 evidently admired Scott's historical novels. 
 
 The novel, as a mode of presenting truth or ex- 
 hibiting human nature, cannot, therefore, upon relig- 
 ious grounds, be condemned. But the habit of novel 
 reading is, of course, another thing. The surrender 
 of the mind and of the life to this is what every mor- 
 alist and Christian must condemn. There is an in- 
 fallible softening of the brain and ossification of the 
 heart attendant on novel reading. There is but little 
 attention demanded, and thus mind is dwarfed. There 
 is a perpetual appeal to emotion, which, as it expends 
 itself in luxurious tears, produces no virtuous action. 
 Is there no higher end for which to live ? Is there no 
 more remunerative employment for mind and time ? 
 Are self-respect, self-government, and self-improve- 
 ment growing with the habit ? When " the Master " 
 demands an account, what shall be the response for 
 such a use of immortal energies and opportunities? 
 I deny not the might of the spell. To many, indeed, 
 the novelist is a magician, and the novel a cup of sor- 
 cery ; the effort demanded to break loose from the
 
 "OUR LIBRARY." 69 
 
 spell grows with each act of self-surrender to the 
 familiar spirit, until at length the novel reader, intel- 
 lectually and emotionally considered, is found as im- 
 becile in will and emasculate in thought as ever opium- 
 eater or serf of alcohol. " Temperance in all things " 
 I would recommend, and this applied to " light litera- 
 ture." 
 
 Ought not the well-established term which distin- 
 guishes the species lead to serious reflection upon the 
 amount of mind devoted to communion with it? 
 From " light literature " may we hope to gather 
 strong thought ? or, as men, weight of character ? or 
 acquire might of moral muscle ? or grow more massive 
 in principles of public and human importance? I 
 trow not ! Levity of life, of motive and feeling, must, 
 by a natural and inflexible law, result therefrom ; and 
 what can proceed from this but a character, a manhood 
 of which it shall be proclaimed, " Thou art weighed 
 in the balance and found wanting." It fits not for 
 life. If life demand labor and toil and well-girded 
 loins, then another class of mind-food must be par- 
 taken ; but if life be a mere voyage through the air, 
 and the man a mere aeronaut, then, of course, it is 
 fitting that he should balloon it. If life be a vigor- 
 ous pulling up the stream against tide, wind, and cur- 
 rent, then other bone and nerve and flesh producing 
 pabulum must be provided ; but if it be unconscious, 
 floating on the river and along the odorous banks of 
 sentimentalism, then, of course, let us eat our lotus 
 leaves, and dreamily, lazily glide on until startled by 
 the rapids of approaching death, or fully roused by
 
 70 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the swift aud arrowy plunge beyond the Niagara of 
 the grave. 
 
 That truth has been taught by novel writers we re- 
 joice to remember ; that evils have been lashed out of 
 existence by the scourge of novel satirists, and tickled 
 to death by the feathers and straws of humorists, we 
 are bound to remember. a Punch " proves this so 
 does " Fun." Thackeray confirms this and so does 
 the genial humorist, Dickens. That scenes of history 
 have been grouped and painted with grandeur and 
 truth is sustained by " Ivanhoe," that gorgeous canvas 
 of mediaeval Crusades ; and by Kingsley in his thrill- 
 ing tales of Queen Bess and of the early Christian 
 Church the one in his " Westward Ho ! " and the 
 other in his "Hypatia." And that taste should be 
 regaled, and emotions moved, and imagination ren- 
 dered auxiliary to recreative pleasures, both bracing 
 and unbinding, we dare not question. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is now less need than ever of 
 such modes of reading history or acquiring amuse- 
 ment. Why, is not the romance of natural history, 
 the poetry of science, and the truth of chemistry 
 and geology, "stranger" than all the records of 
 grotesque fiction and Orient fable ? Froude is a rival 
 of Scott, and Faraday challenges George Eliot. Miller 
 is a fit compeer for even Miss Braddon or Mrs. Norton. 
 
 But not to further trespass on your attention, I may 
 conclude by reminding you of your accountability for 
 the mental gifts bestowed, and the literary advan- 
 tages available. 
 
 There is another division of our nature for which
 
 " OUR LIBRARY." 71 
 
 provision has been made religion. This once oc- 
 cupied a large proportionate position in " Our Library," 
 doubtless the produce of many generous donors as 
 evidencing their sympathies with the institution. The 
 greatest thing in mind is not knowledge, but love. 
 That is the Great Spirit's glory, his goodness'. 
 
 There is one book in your Library surpassing far 
 all others in its authorship, its substance, its history. 
 Its age is hoary, its history checkered, its preservatiuo 
 miraculous. Its range of subjects sweeps back to the 
 world's birth, and on to its hour of doom. It is an 
 inimitably varied composition, and includes all grades 
 of social ranks within its circle of authorship. The 
 plowman and the prince, the priest and the historian, 
 the physician and the tax-gatherer, have clasped hands 
 in its authorship. It sheds light on human nature 
 and destiny, snatches fragments from superhuman 
 and miraculous story. It sings in poetry and speaks 
 in drama. It has healed hearts and hallowed lives by 
 its presence and purity. It has aided other writers, 
 and enriched others' lore, and diffused its influence 
 through such a mass of literature that if it were 
 annihilated it could be reproduced again, and not one 
 thought would be missing. Its entrance among the 
 nations has inaugurated the reign of mercy, peace, 
 and truth. It has outlived dynasties and migrated 
 with nations, and takes up its abode in marble city 
 and in hut of straw. It has hushed the tempest of 
 the heart, purged the pools of appetite, emancipated 
 the captive will, and winged for higher soaring the 
 eagle power of intellect.
 
 72 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Men by it have entered upon new paths of well 
 being and well doing they have blessed where they 
 had blasted ; they have beautified where they had 
 deformed ; and, dying, instead of Achan's epitaph, 
 " This man perished not alone in his iniquity," have 
 gained the good man's in memoriam, " He rests from 
 his labors, and his works follow him." 
 
 It has charmed childhood, it has been shield and 
 scimiter for safety and defense in middle-aged perils, 
 it has been lamp-light for the valley of the shadow 
 of death, and staff of strength to tottering and de- 
 parting age. With purposes of mercy for the world, 
 and a mission divine in its origin and sanctions, this 
 volume pants for race-wide propagation, and yearns 
 to witness the exalting virtue of its truths proven by 
 all kindreds and tongues. To it we owe our civil free- 
 dom and our mental liberty and wealth. To it we 
 owe our Bethesdas and asylums, our homes in this 
 life and our " Father's house " in that which is to 
 come. 
 
 To the throne of mind lift up that monarch volume ; 
 bow allegiance to its precepts and loyalty to its laws ; 
 help it in diffusing its influence by a daily exhibition 
 ' of its beauty of holiness. In life realize its peace 
 in sorrow its solace in bereavement its hope in 
 death its full assurance of faith and while immor- 
 tality endures, prove, by the deathlessness of its 
 power to glorify, that " the "Word of our God en- 
 dureth forever."
 
 "WASTE." 73 
 
 TT-T 
 
 "WASTE."* 
 
 AMID the multitude of laws pervading creation 
 there is not one more prominent or more emphatic 
 in its expression, or more constant in its operation, or 
 more widespread in its range, than the law of utility. 
 The more intimate our acquaintance with the plan of 
 creation, the more clear our perception of the relation 
 of its many parts to each other, the loftier the hill of 
 vision from which we look out upon the immensity 
 of being, the longer the periods of time through 
 which we mark the process of the great purpose of 
 the Creator, the more are we impressed with the con- 
 viction of the truth, that utility underlies and is in- 
 terwoven with all to which the Eternal has given 
 existence. 
 
 This thought is found in the realm of metaphysical 
 philosophy. For of those who have attempted to de- 
 fine virtue, while some say it is the fitness of things, 
 some the nature of things, some the beauty of things, 
 some the equity of things, not a few most profound 
 thinkers trace virtue up to usefulness. And although, 
 by the force of an innate instinct, men perceive and 
 feel the obligation of the virtue of gratitude and of 
 
 * A lecture first delivered at Mt. Vernon Place Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, Baltimore, a few weeks previous to the author's de- 
 parture tor San Fraucisco in April, 1875.
 
 74 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 veracity and of reverence to parents, apart altogether 
 from the consequences thereof in the shape of utility, 
 nevertheless, when traced to its highest issue, such 
 virtue is embraced in utility. 
 
 There is no reason to believe that below and out- 
 side the sphere in which free beings move and operate 
 there is such a thing as waste. Waste, as a possibility, 
 begins with WILL, created. Waste, as a fact, is met 
 with only in the natures of corrupt, perverted liberty. 
 Hunt elsewhere widely as you choose, investigate 
 carefully and observe accurately, as you progress in 
 your march, you find every-where one fiat fulfilled, 
 " Let nothing be lost" The forces of nature march 
 to that music. The laws of being conserve, combine, 
 and control in accord with that intent. Sunbeams 
 never forget it, winds never omit it, atoms never re- 
 fuse it homage, planets incessantly obey it, comets 
 tirelessly embody it, fountains flash to its music, rain- 
 drops patter to its melody, rivulets flow on forever, 
 glancing, prattling, moving responsive to its far- 
 reaching whisper. Seasons hear and reverence it. 
 Lightnings gleam and quiver with its vivid potency. 
 Clouds float propelled by its mandate and the snow- 
 flake falls and melts before the soft breathing of this 
 august behest. The insect and the vulture, the parasitic 
 moss and the architectural ant the crumbling granite 
 of the hoary hill and the ceaseless evolutions of the 
 unseen air, wafting vapor and winging fruitful seeds 
 to fitting habitations of growth all proclaim the 
 sovereignty of this divine law 1 No waste of force 
 no waste of matter no waste of life around, below
 
 "WASTE." 75 
 
 man. The end proposed fails not, whether in the 
 spaces where systems revolve, where life swarms, where 
 energies incessant play. Beauty adorns ; bounty pro- 
 vides ; strength upholds; skill guards; bliss over- 
 flows ; being is wedded to well being ; order is linked 
 to obedience. 
 
 Just at this season * what an impression of profu- 
 sion seizes our minds as we look forth upon creation ! 
 What an unlocking of her forces ! What an unseal- 
 ing of her springs! What an overflowing of her 
 treasures! What throngs of moving, living things, 
 above in the night air, below in the upturned and in- 
 cense-breathing soil, around in the gleam of fairy 
 wings, the dancings of enameled and many-colored 
 insects ! Hedge-rows ablaze gardens aglow ! Myriad 
 leaves welcome the sunlight myriad flowers unfold 
 their petals. Life throngs upon us, carols around us. 
 Every spot is a home ; every blade a pasture-ground ; 
 every drop a palace of life and all so gladsome. 
 Care, there is none ; sigh heaves not ; tear falls not ; 
 nor fretfulness chafes. Motion is grace, and func- 
 tion is fullness of joy. Waters swarm ; rivers and 
 pools, lakes and oceans are tenanted by populations as 
 vast in their numbers as they are varied in their forms 
 and colors and habits and periods of growth, maturity, 
 and decay. 
 
 Space is full. Bounds stretch beyond bounds. 
 Mighty glasses swell the pomp of midnight skies. 
 Stars move in double groups or binary. They move 
 in masses defying sight to number them. Their beams 
 
 * April
 
 76 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 stain the dome and steep it in light. They still re- 
 cede, they yet ascend ! How they blaze ! how they 
 wheel! how they maintain their balance and sustain 
 their flights! Now I am encompassed by, O how 
 great a " cloud of witnesses ! " Now I sail past a 
 solitary islet in that vast ocean of space. Now I 
 am in the midst of an archipelago of suns. Their 
 splendors blind me. Their pomp oppresses me ! And 
 they are the abodes of life. They teem with life. 
 Hark ! they are glad with life. What is the thought, 
 the overmastering thought, pressed in upon my spirit 
 by all this? Profusion, sumptuousness, munificence, 
 opulence of resources. His riches in glory. 
 
 There is opulence of odor and of sound. There 
 is opulence of color and of bliss. There is opulence 
 of energy and of vitality. There is opulence of com- 
 plex forms and conditions of existence. No stint 
 shocks us no parsimony stares upon us. Amplitude ! 
 Affluence ! These confront us " behind and before." 
 These compass our path and our " lying down." " The 
 wings of the morning " cannot bear me where they are 
 not. And " to the uttermost parts of the sea," behold 
 their royalty and rapturous rule. No eye created 
 ever swept the whole ; no ear created ever choired 
 with the many-voiced acclaim ascending from them ; 
 no heart created ever heaved responsive to the mag- 
 nificence of their great argument. Yet we dare not 
 mention waste. Though no human eye caught the 
 splendor, the divine one did. Though no human 
 spirit exulted in the contemplation, the divine is re- 
 joiced in His handiwork. He looked upon the modest
 
 " WASTE." 77 
 
 flower with complaisant delight. He marked the 
 power of the sunbeam as it suffused the cloudlet with 
 sapphire hue. He drank in the melody of brooklet 
 and of bulbul as they floated and echoed through 
 tangled and interlacing foliage and branchlet. And 
 as in the beauty wherein the whole reposed He beheld 
 the shadow of His own eternal delectation, even to 
 His heart, " behold it was very good ! " 
 
 There is no waste in the realm of the beautiful. 
 That there is beauty in this fair world who denies ? 
 That there is beauty every-where closer acquaintance 
 with nature but confirms. It is found in places most 
 unlikely. It is found in objects most unpromising. 
 It is found in stem and leaf. It is found in shell and 
 in insect. It is found in creeping and winged life. 
 It is found in limb and in feather. It is found in 
 form and in color. It is seen in motion and in mass. 
 It is heard in the hum of the bee and in murmur of 
 dove. It breathes in the zephyr and speaks in the 
 flashing fountain. It sighs through the forest and it 
 claps its hands in exhilarant billow. It looks out from 
 the eyelids of the morning and globes its form in the 
 mellow starlight of the evening. It molds the un- 
 dulations of the landscape and weaves the many-tinted 
 robes wherewith the seasons vesture the old earth. It , 
 lurks in the eye of the gazelle and in the graceful 
 contour of the antelope. Its footfalls are heard in 
 the echo, and its footprints impressed upon the fields 
 where daisies cluster and the hills where eagles nurse 
 their callow broods. Children feel its spell. Maidens 
 inhale its inspiration. Sorrow forgets to weep in its
 
 78 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 presence. Age renews its youth amid its sweet sere- 
 nities. It refines the vulgar. It spiritualizes the 
 gross. Painters reflect it from the canvas. Poets 
 are but interpreters of its mystery and meaning. All 
 beings yield it homage, and all true hearts long to 
 wear its livery ! 
 
 Let us now talk of, first, waste intellect. The quan- 
 tity of this order of waste will not at once strike us. 
 But the longer we investigate the more depressing 
 must be the impression made by the reality. I talk 
 not now of deficient education of half-developed 
 minds of inharmoniously unfolded minds of stunted, 
 shriveled minds of minds whose memory has been 
 cultivated at the expense of their judgment; whose 
 sense of the beautiful has never been wooed into the 
 service of the perception of the true ; whose sympathies 
 have never been enlisted in the service of their reason ; 
 who have no knowledge of the intellectual tools where- 
 with they are to quarry and carve for themselves the 
 solid blocks of truth out of which they are to fashion 
 a temple of truth within their deathless souls. 
 
 I talk rather of that other education with which a 
 man has himself personally to do. Every educated 
 man is a debtor to his tutors, and much more a debtor 
 to himself, after having passed from the guardianship 
 of such masters. It is what we do with ourselves in 
 the years revolving subsequent to our school life. It 
 is this which solicits our notice. Having found out 
 the number of our senses and powers their duties, 
 relations, and functions ; having laid in a fair store of 
 the first principles the rudiments of knowledge;
 
 "WASTE." 79 
 
 then, in the noble exercise of self-reliance, to move 
 forth fronting life, man, nature, and from all learn- 
 ing, and by all gaining truth, wisdom, power this 
 is the problem of life. 
 
 The books which form my library are to become 
 the chief educators of my mental being. Reading is 
 to be my great chief factor. What I am may be as 
 speedily inferred from my books as from my com- 
 panions. My mental tastes incline me dispose me 
 control me in the one as in the other. 
 
 The reading of the day is not very much more than 
 waste ! No reading is worthy of a man which does not 
 command attention, compel earnestness, and constrain 
 to persevering fixedness of thought. The majority 
 of books to-day are but " thinking-made-easy " vol- 
 umes. Their authors perform the vicarious work of 
 thinking for us. They chew the food which we then 
 masticate. They dilute the milk of life. Coming 
 from them it is such milk of thought as Tom Sheri- 
 dan wrote about to his mother that the London lodging- 
 house keepers had furnished him, " thrice-skimmed and 
 sky-blue." Over these volumes no brow is corrugated 
 with thought. Reading these pages you are never 
 compelled to close the book upon your finger and 
 thumb wliile you engage in carrying out the thought 
 suggested by the writer to some of his wider and re- 
 moter issues and ultimates. He digs not in gold 
 mines. No, he merely remelts old, worn-out, clipped 
 and sweated coin, and remolds and restamps it, after 
 having sadly deteriorated its value by alloy of baser 
 metal. The newspaper has emasculated thought. The
 
 SO GUAKD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 magazine lias enervated mind. Feebleness, superficial- 
 ity, and enormous pretentiousness of universal knowl- 
 edge prevail. Men have no time to think. Youths 
 are' impatient of the sobriety of truth. Glitter and 
 glare, blaze and brilliancy, sparkling antithesis and 
 startling asseveration these win attention, bear their 
 producer high to fame, and speed on the decomposi- 
 tion of the mental life of the age. Every man must 
 know every thing. No one ever confesses ignorance 
 upon any theme or topic. Each man is a locomotive 
 "Appleton's Encyclopedia." Who could survive the 
 disgrace of confessing non-acquaintance with the last 
 utterances of Spencer, and the final result of Tyndall's 
 most recent analysis? ~No one is hero enough to 
 acknowledge that he does'not know every tiling. And 
 thus the multitude walk in a vain show. They are 
 fed on ashes and banquet on husks. 
 
 Read the best books. Read them until you have 
 mastered them. Read them until you can give an 
 outline or analysis of their argument. Read them 
 until they have become incorporated with your soul's 
 essence, so that, if you could bleed soul, from the 
 lance-wound there should leap out the distilled quint- 
 essence of the mastered volume. 
 
 Select a topic for study and reading. Fix yourself 
 upon it. Talk about it ; write about it. Concentrate 
 all available light of information upon it. Make it 
 your own by such processes. Not till then turn from 
 it to another. Thus you win ample territory in the 
 immense domain of knowledge, and climb to right 
 royal rank in the noblest of all sovereignties.
 
 "WASTE." 81 
 
 v 
 
 Aim at perfect mastery over your faculties of think- 
 ing. Seek accuracy of observation, clearness of con- 
 ception. Bring the fancy into complete obedience to 
 the reason, and prove ambitious of the might of ab- 
 straction by whose magic influence you may think on 
 without distraction, though winds howl and lightnings 
 gleam, and servants sweep, and children tumble and 
 toss and scream and yell around your blissfully serene 
 spirit. 
 
 One great cause of waste intellect is to be found in 
 desultory reading. Reading whatever comes up the 
 scrap of gossip, the paragraph of fashion, the essay 
 on base-ball, the article upon culture of fish, the last 
 new novel or tale. Nothing of this sort can stir the 
 spirit, challenge its forces, bid forth its sinewy energies, 
 or nurture other than a flabby, flimsy and filmy false- 
 hood in the shape of man. 
 
 There is waste in the realm of emotion. Man is 
 not solely intellect, nor purely will. He is as rich in 
 emotion as in either of the former endowments. 
 Feeling finds its center in his heart as intellect in his 
 head. In popular language, feeling lies midway be- 
 tween thought and will. Thought is to arouse 
 feeling. Feeling is to move will. The truly great- 
 est men in the broadest sense have ever been opulent 
 in feeling. High as their intellects soared, so ample 
 and profound their hearts dispread out and beneath. 
 The emotions are varied, complex. They are forces, 
 but ever subject to the bidding of intellect and 
 conscience. 
 
 Doubtless there is not an emotion of the heart for
 
 82 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 
 
 whose gratification there is not an object in nature, or 
 a principle and property in God. From gratitude up 
 to reverence, from pity up to admiration, from fear 
 up to the love which casteth out fear, from tender- 
 ness to terror, from beauty to sublimity, from pen- 
 sive resignation up to exultant and triumphant fruition 
 " where there are pleasures for evermore," from for- 
 giveness down to never-dying revenge ; and o'er the 
 dread and dreary range of the malignant and vin- 
 dictive and retaliative and avenging passions, what a 
 mysterious region is all this of our wonder-breeding 
 nature ! 
 
 Our emotions exist in us as latent potentialities. 
 They are the great levers and motive forces of our 
 being. They are not in us merely as susceptibilities 
 of and capacities for luxurious living. To excite feel- 
 ing is not the ultimate end of truth of any truth ; 
 but to move will into vigorous action through the 
 intervention of emotion. For this end truth appeals 
 to the heart. Rarely are men impelled to any action, 
 borne into any enterprise, by the force or impetus of 
 pure logic. Enthusiasm there must be to effect any 
 noble work. Perhaps there are beings so superbly lofty 
 in their loyalty to truth and duty and God, that on their 
 tranquil spirits no rushing, mighty wind need play to 
 impel them to the discharge of duty the most ardu- 
 ous and enterprises the most heroic. Certainly such 
 is not the nature we call human. Both wind and 
 wave must help us on the great main of honorable 
 and holy toil. 
 
 Who can estimate the mechanical energy latent in
 
 "WASTE." 83 
 
 the rivulets and rivers, in the cataracts and cascades, 
 in the currents and Gulf Streams of our globe ? What 
 engines could be propelled what levers plied what 
 hammers heaved what blocks hurled what spindles 
 whirled, by the developed and applied force now lurk- 
 ing in every pool and pond in every lake and tor- 
 rent, in every estuary and bog, in every billow that 
 breaks, and in every foam-bubble that bursts within the 
 circumference of the waters of our planet ! All that 
 but symbolizes the unwrought might reposing in the 
 emotion depths of human hearts. 
 
 The countless activities of the human world to-day 
 are all attributable immediately to the force of feel- 
 ing. The activities of the scientist in his scrutiny of 
 nature ; the activities of the philosopher in his search 
 after first principles ; the activities of the artist in his 
 reach after ideal perfection in sound, form, color; 
 the activities of the merchant in his pursuit of wealth ; 
 the activities of the traveler in his explorations of 
 untracked forests and north-west passages ; the activi- 
 ties of the warrior in his quest of empire ; the activi- 
 ties of the philanthropist in his search after and miti- 
 gation of woe; the activities of statesmen in their 
 endeavor to uplift nations and conserve peace and 
 freedom ; the activities of the missionary in his pur- 
 suit of the weary wanderers from God ; the activities 
 of the saint in his panting after fuller love and riper 
 fitness for the eternal services of heaven all these, 
 and more, are to-day the immediate results of emotion. 
 Sometimes it is gentle ; sometimes torrent-like ; now 
 
 without a ripple ; now impetuous as the dash of cata- 
 
 7
 
 S-4 GUARD'S LECTUEES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 ract -here vast in volume, yonder narrow, shallow 
 in channel and in bed. 
 
 And yet there is an untold quantity of feeling- 
 force running to waste, evaporated or dissipated. 
 
 The emotion which works not to wise ends is wasted. 
 The emotion evoked in the presence of wrong-doing, 
 and which expends itself rather in terms of denuncia- 
 tion around the coffee-urn than in prompt effort to 
 uproot the wrong, is " waste." The emotion which 
 dims the eye and flushes the cheek, and makes tremu- 
 lous the voice while a tale of veritable social woe is 
 read or repeated, and expends itself in tears of com- 
 miseration or feeble resolution to alleviate the distress ; 
 yet pays DO visit to the house of sorrow, nor sacrifices 
 a single luxury to allay the agony, is " waste," and 
 something worse. 
 
 The emotion which floods to overflowing the heart 
 of the parent who has heard of the initiatory steps of 
 his son in ways of evil, and leads but to a simpering 
 expression and a vacillating exercise of parental 
 authority in checking the incipient vices of his boy 
 like old Eli's is not merely waste, but is sure to re- 
 sult in disaster of fortune to the child, and perhaps 
 ignoble and untimely death by broken-heartedness to 
 the weak-willed father. 
 
 The emotion aroused by faithful, pungent, loving 
 appeal from Christian pulpit and pastors, confronting 
 the soul with its own sins, and encompassing the spirit 
 witli the consequences of its own iniquities here and 
 hereafter ; emotions of dread and of remorse, of self 
 recrimination and deep contrition ; emotions awakened
 
 " WASTE." 85 
 
 by a sense of ingratitude, meanness, baseness, wrong- 
 doing, but which lead not to instant separation from 
 the accursed thing and accursed companions, and 
 prompt and persevering pursuit after that mercy which 
 abundantly pardons and that grace which gives do- 
 minion over every damning habit, reaching no further 
 than to temporary change of conduct and transient 
 abstinence from forbidden ground, is waste, and more 
 than waste. 
 
 That emotion which, under varied appliances ' of 
 religion, leaps forth and runs over in means of grace 
 and grand gatherings of religion, when noble views 
 of truth are presented, and lofty types of goodness 
 set forth, and worthy possibilities of holiness are held 
 out, and mighty appeals are pressed home upon reason, 
 heart, and conscience, but which reach no further 
 than an alleluia shout, is waste. I fear the alleluia 
 shout too often, instead of turning the steam upon the 
 engine to move it forward, merely like the letting 
 off of steam from the steam-pipe of .a locomotive lets 
 loose into thin air the struggling, pent-up, but evanes- 
 cent energy, and by so much expends for nought the 
 water and the fuel employed for generating the force. 
 
 And alas ! to-day too much of this form of " waste " 
 meets our eye. 
 
 Sentimentalism is an utterable curse. It strangles 
 no vice, chastens no haughtiness, curbs no desire, 
 breeds no charity, infuses no gentleness, makes no 
 sacrifices, lifts.no heavy burdens, binds up no broken 
 hearts, plucks up no root of bitterness, cheers no deso- 
 late life, distills no anodyne over fretted and chafed
 
 86 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 spirits, endures no hardness in battling with wrong, 
 risks no delicate sensibility in contact with coarse selfish- 
 ness feeds on sighs, exhausts itself in the tears with 
 which its perfumed handkerchief is slightly, delicately 
 moistened, and leaves the world to wail its dirges to the 
 stars, and forget its anguish in the oblivion of the tomb. 
 
 To work up feeling into fixed habits of earnest, 
 vigorous, self-denying goodness, so that, whether the 
 commiseration be strong or feeble, the known suffer- 
 ing shall win regard and secure relief so that whether 
 there be rapture and ecstasy of experience in Chris- 
 tian life, the enthroned force of settled principles of 
 duty shall impel the humble one, without faltering, 
 without fainting, up the steep cliffs of duty and o'er 
 the hot sands and through the stern and threatening 
 defiles of self-conquering endeavor after all that may 
 become a follower of Christ ; until to see the right is 
 to do it ; to know the wrong is to crush it ; to hear the 
 call for help is to respond to it without delay, hesita- 
 tion, or langiiidness this is the end to be sought 
 after by all such as would not, in the realm of motion, 
 suffer waste. 
 
 That very brilliant expositor of science, that very 
 successful discoverer of not a few of nature's secrets 
 that very daring knight in the tournament so character- 
 istic of our age the conflict between science and re- 
 ligion Dr. Tyndall, in his now celebrated address 
 before the Association for the Promotion of Science, 
 has declared it to be his opinion that the fitting region 
 in which religion should expatiate and dispense its 
 benefactions is the realm of the feelings.
 
 "WASTE." 87 
 
 One would like to know from my brilliant fellow- 
 countryman what he means by religion, so that we 
 may test the soundness or the fallacy of his statement. 
 That religion has to do with the feelings every one 
 knows. That our holy religion has to do with the 
 feelings needs not to be demonstrated to you. Its 
 central virtue is love, both God ward and manward; 
 and love is the noblest of the feelings. But one would 
 like to know from Dr. Tyndall how can love exist and 
 act except in the presence of a known object fitted to 
 beget the emotion ? How love that of which you are 
 ignorant, of whose qualities of character you are igno- 
 rant, of whose deeds of goodness you are ignorant? 
 But if to love we must know, then at once religion is 
 seen embracing the region of the understanding as 
 certainly as the region of the feelings. 
 
 Religion is reverence and adoration. But how feel 
 reverence for Him of whose existence I am ignorant, 
 or of whose sublime perfections I am ignorant, or of 
 whose operations as creator, ruler, I am ignorant ? 
 And if there be no religion where there is no reverence 
 and no reverence where there is no perception of peer- 
 less perfection, and no perception of excellence where 
 there is no exercise of the understanding in searching 
 after and studying God, then once more do we per- 
 ceive that religion of necessity embraces the realm of 
 reason as certainly as that of the feelings. 
 
 Religion is profound resignation and submission to 
 and acquiescence in the rule and dispensation of God. 
 But how submit or acquiesce, except as I perceive the 
 rectitude of the character, the wisdom of the rule, and
 
 83 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the beneficence and faithfulness of Deity concerning 
 and over me ? How perceive all this except as I shall 
 have studied his character, pondered his plans, sur- 
 veyed his method of rule as it extends over the domain 
 of human history ? Without these my very action is 
 fatalism, my submission is stolid stupidity, my tran- 
 quillity the repose of mental stagnancy. If, then, there 
 cannot be religion where there is not submission, nor 
 submission where there is not intelligent knowledge 
 of the will and purpose of Jehovah, and if this de- 
 mands the utmost exercise of mental might, then once 
 more do we see how religion must of necessity em- 
 brace the vast region of the reason as entirely as that of 
 feeling. And hence our religion is as certainly truth 
 as it is love / and what God hath joined together let 
 no man put asunder. 
 
 Dr. Tyndall is more at home in descanting upon the 
 laws of light, the formation of glaciers, the action of 
 water, the properties of gases, the principles of sound, 
 heat, and motion, in fact more at home in the regions 
 of mere matter than in those of spirit ; and were he 
 as feeble an expounder of these as of the elements of 
 man's inner life and nobler being, then his name would 
 never have been caligraphed upon the scroll of modern 
 science. 
 
 Human life, apart from immortality, is waste. Look 
 at humanity in this light : Man starts from a low level. 
 He begins life a very feeble thing. He enters upon 
 life with but a minimum capital. He is the extreme 
 of helplessness. His instincts are few and they are 
 narrow in their range. Upon others he is largely de-
 
 < k WASTE." 89 
 
 pendent. He is to acquire the use of his bodily pow- 
 ers and gain the first elements of knowledge through 
 experiment and toil. Gradually his mind unfolds and 
 his faculties quicken. He fails and learns from failure. 
 He wins and moves forth to fairer acquisitions. Na- 
 ture woos him to study her. Art invites him to sit at 
 her feet. Virtue persuades him to accept her friend- 
 ship and her guardianship. Habits of goodness are 
 contracted. Elements of nobleness are amassed. Char- 
 acter assumes definiteness of shape and begins its all- 
 coutrolh'ng operations. Sorrows chasten and refine it. 
 Joys expand and enrich it. Struggle nerves and con- 
 solidates it. Temptation develops and compacts it. 
 Time sees it grow in unity, in symmetry, in perma- 
 nence. Trials but prove it strong. Assaults, human 
 and demoniac, declare it likely to become one of the 
 immutabilities of the universe. And with this intel- 
 lect grows as well. Truth is loved and gained, knowl- 
 edge accumulates, and wisdom grows. The inner eye 
 waxes keen, the inner ear acute, to detect subtle beau- 
 ties of color and of sound. The mysteries of being 
 are explored, the problems of life grappled with ; great 
 principles are grasped ; vast glimpses of the domain of 
 science are attained ; the hidden springs of philosophic 
 thought are touched. The soul expatiates in the 
 boundless realm of reab'ty and feels the nobleness, the 
 glory of life. Bolder speculation is dared ; fresh 
 schemes are sketched ; profounder possibilities are dis- 
 covered. The crust and shell of things are broken ; 
 the deep places of existence are looked down into and 
 shall give up their secrets. Mind is stronger in limb
 
 90 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 to climb, in wing to soar, in vision to scan, in vigor to 
 utilize, in susceptibility to enjoy. Virtue aids on the 
 intellect in its endeavors. Crudity is becoming ma- 
 ture. Dimness is yielding to vividness of conception. 
 The soul knows and can control its powers. Fickle- 
 ness of thought gives ways to fixedness. Vaster gen- 
 eralizations become facilities of thinking. The basis 
 is laid for an edifice superb in its proportion, magni- 
 tude, and embellishments. The man lives in every 
 nerve, lives in every pore, lives in every atom, lives 
 in every cell of his complex being. Life is his in its 
 intensity and avidity. Deep is the craving of the 
 spirit. From every banqueting board it retires hungry. 
 All gained has but enlarged its capacity. Never did 
 it seem an object of such ambition to live as now. 
 And lo ! when the lesson has been mastered, and the 
 training and drill have gained completeness, and the 
 man is fittingly equipped for virtuous career and in- 
 tellectual enterprise in the prime of his manhood 
 when at the starting-post for an unlimited race ho ! 
 he falters, faints, falls! Life is no more. With a 
 breath he enters the dusky realms of non-existence. 
 
 "Bury the dust. Scatter the lilies. Heap high the 
 marble. Carve the epitaph. Record the tale of his 
 achievements. But stoop lower, and in deeper, darker 
 lines write upon the marble, less perishable than he, 
 
 WASTE. 
 "Wherefore hast thou, God. made all men in vain ? 
 
 Why endow man with such a prodigious capacity? 
 Why give him such a range of emotions ? Why plant
 
 WASTE." 91 
 
 in him such instinctive, insatiate cravings ? "Why be- 
 stow on him such a reach of imagination ? Why make 
 him capable of such a measure of progressiveness ? 
 Why sow in his soul the seed-thought of immor- 
 tality ? Why haunt him with the august visions of 
 immortality? Why permit the glamour of such a 
 splendid myth to enwrap him ? Why dig within his 
 nature fountain-like possibilities but to deceive him ? 
 In every other department of being we behold con- 
 gruity, becomingness, adaptation. Wherefore meet 
 we here, O great eternal One, the only terrible re- 
 versal of all this fitness and proportion ? 
 
 It cannot be ! 2s o ; we will not believe it. Man 
 shall live forever ; not the race but the person, the 
 individual. He shall live longer than the ancient 
 hills and the old heavens. He shall live beyond the 
 ages of those stars and globes of aged splendor. He 
 shall outlive the hoary ocean. Time is but his infancy. 
 Death but ushers him into broader, fuller, freer life. 
 Eternity claims him as her chief joy, her solemn care. 
 On he shall grow. Up he shall press. Out he shall 
 expand. Forever young, he shall feel himself to 
 dwell in immortal youth. For with him God, his 
 father, has shared his own immortality of being. 
 
 I see. the more carefully I examine, that every detail 
 of life is part of a plan that plan none other than the 
 formation and education of moral character. The 
 moral is the ultimate end and aim of all things. It is 
 rightly so. If we accept the existence of a God, his 
 pre-eminence must be not that he is the strong God, 
 the wise God, the bountiful God, the governing God,
 
 92 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 but the righteous God. Hence, then, the ultimate 
 end of all things must be perfect morality, perfect 
 holiness. And all life is ordained to this end not to 
 cultivate man as an animal, though he need not starve 
 nor perish by nakedness in this fair world ; not 
 to cultivate man as an intellectuality, though there 
 is affluent provision for the nourishment and delecta- 
 tion of the understanding in the world ; not for the 
 education of his aesthetic being, though he need not 
 perish for lack of whatsoever things are lovely in this 
 world ; but life \$ pre-eminently moral. This is its aim. 
 This is its mission. This is its glory. All things are 
 so ordered, balanced, measured, weighed, that if any 
 man desires a place and sphere the best fitted to aid 
 him in educating himself into the very loftiest rank of 
 moral greatness, he will find it in the daily round, the 
 common task, the normal responsibilities of his physi- 
 cal and mental nature. Here, then, is the world 
 wherein he may safely graduate, and from whose uni- 
 versity go forth fitted for any service, ready for any 
 office, worthy of any society whose prime demand 
 shall be moral excellence. 
 
 Whatever can train, whatever can test, moral prin- 
 ciple, whatever can knit it into hardihood, is here. 
 The malice and the meanness of men, the purity and 
 the faithfulness of friendship, the competition and the 
 rivalries of life, the disasters and the victories of en- 
 deavor, the honor and the scorn of partisans, the pinch- 
 ings of penury and the relaxing felicities of opulence, 
 the burdens of domestic care and the soft amenities of 
 chosen and cultivated society ; the mighty struggle
 
 " WASTE." 93 
 
 between flesh and spirit, between sense and faith, 
 between present gratification and future delectation, 
 between personal aggrandizement and public, patriotic 
 good these all bear a commission from the great 
 God to " help the good, counsel the loving, uphold 
 the battle for the right, camp about him, waft invigor- 
 ating breezes o'er him, nerve him with sudden gush of 
 inspiration, pour balm into his wounds, whisper ' Well 
 done ! ' into his lonely spirit, impel him, inspire him, 
 make him strong, make him gentle, make him true, 
 make him noble, make him humble in one word, 
 educate him as becomes a son an heir of God ! " 
 
 Arid when I see a man ushered into such a world 
 and such a state of things as obtains here, who yet fails 
 to apprehend his position and his relation thereto, resists 
 their influences, antagonizes their purposes, perverts 
 their missions, cherishes selfishness, yields to sensual- 
 ism, ignores conscience, and lives without God ; when 
 in him I see sense ruling, flesh dominant ; when 
 tenderness cannot melt him, nor truth charm him, 
 nor purity win him, nor goodness constrain him 
 nor God attract him ; when through all this vast and 
 complicated system of aids and helps to moral domi- 
 nance, I see him pass defiant of their power to control 
 him, their skill to master him, so that by reason of his f 
 resistance to them he waxes coarser, ruder, baser 
 becomes bereft of all the fine feelings which once he 
 owned, and the lofty aspirations which once heaved 
 his spirit ; his career one unbroken course of squandered 
 forces, opportunities, appliances, until from earth 
 and from time he passes, bankrupt in all that befits a
 
 94: GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 moral being, and freighted with all that fits him for 
 the companionship of the ruined and qualify him 
 for eminence in perdition, then I look upon the sad- 
 dest specimen of waste. 
 
 If any thing said to-night should be so far blessed 
 by God as to save one soul here from such a result, 
 then my effort shall not have proved absolute, irrep- 
 arable, eternal " waste."
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 95 
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 
 
 I ACKNOWLEDGE the fascination of such a 
 theme as the history of Methodism. I confess 
 that I feel its enthrallment ; and I am happy to assert 
 the ever-fresh delight with which its study fills my 
 heart, as well as the ever-forceful stimulus which it 
 imparts to my being, urging me to a nobler life, and 
 impelling me to a bolder endeavor after the lofty 
 models of greatness, heroism, and holiness which it 
 presents for my admiring emulation. 
 
 To read of what my forefathers in this Church did, 
 endured, and sacrificed for their Master, that they 
 might win souls from death and fill our world with 
 purity, not merely brims my eyes and nerves 'my 
 spirit, but covers me with humiliation and scorches 
 me with shame. For I feel, I know, how unworthily 
 I have attempted to prosecute the labors assigned me, 
 and how feebly I have sought to enlarge and com- 
 plete the work in whose initial stages they displayed 
 a devotion so martyr-like and a faith in God so child- 
 like and so unwavering. To me the best preparation 
 for my Sabbath labors has ever been a Saturday even- 
 ing communion with the early Methodist preachers 
 through the media of their autobiographies and the 
 tales of their prowess as rehearsed by the historians 
 of our Church. And well do I remember seeing my
 
 98 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 own father himself one of the second generation 
 spell-bound by those simple annals ; and have often 
 marked the strange light which stole o'er his features, 
 and the rivulets of tears coursing down his cheeks 
 and damping the holy pages, as he forgot all else 
 save the trust and the trials and the triumphs of those 
 brawny and bronzed, yet gentle-hearted, giants of 
 departed days. 
 
 O'er how many young and chivalrous spirits these 
 heroes wielded their wizard wand, who dare say ? In 
 how many drooping hearts they distilled a healing 
 balm, from how many they expelled demons of de- 
 spair, eternity alone will declare ! 
 
 Were they not heroes, though a Carlyle heeded 
 them not, neither hath a Ralph Waldo Emerson as- 
 signed them a fresco in his galleries of " Representa- 
 tive Men " ? When another artist, such as he whose 
 portraits adorn the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, shall 
 arise, we may well believe that from the ranks of our 
 gray fathers not a few shall be selected to embellish 
 and enrjch the sacred halls. 
 
 What did they not dare? What did they not sac- 
 rifice? I see them hunted and hooted by brutal 
 mobs. I see them pelted with filth and driven from 
 judgment-seats by faithless magistrates. I see them 
 branded with vile epithets and endnngeoned in vile 
 prisons. I see them plunged in horse-ponds and im- 
 pressed by recruiting-sergeants for foreign war. I 
 see them feeding on all sorts of fare, and famishing 
 with hunger and relieved by blackberries. I see them 
 braving the rigors of severe winters and the perils
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 97 
 
 of flood and forest. I see them slumbering on hard- 
 est pillows and housed in lowliest hovels. I see them 
 with " threadbare coats that once were black," and 
 remember how often those coats had their fading 
 color restored by log-wood dye ; and how often their 
 fairest sides were turned to the sun, if haply decency 
 of aspect might be attained. I see them in their 
 work, and they are joyous ; in their trials, and they 
 are patient ; in their homes, and they are contented ; 
 in their journeyings, and the woods echo their songs ; 
 in their closets, and they have power with God ; in 
 their pulpits, and they have power with man ; in 
 their persecutions, and they pray for their enemies ; 
 in their old age, and they tell me they have not fol- 
 lowed " cunningly devised fables ; " in their death- 
 hour, and they are borne up on their shields " where 
 the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are 
 at rest ; " in their final home, and, as I ask, " "Who 
 are they, and whence came they?" lo! as the swell 
 of many waters the response : " These are they 
 who came up out of great tribulation, and have 
 washed their robes and made them white in the 
 blood of the Lamb ; thenceforth they are before the 
 throne ! " 
 
 All hail ! All hail ! ye conquerors of earth and 
 hell ! War-notes shall not disturb you, nor clarion's 
 voice summon you again to battle ! Rest, warrior, 
 rest ! Ye seed-sowers of imperishable germs ! the 
 biting winds of spring no longer smite ; the toil of 
 breaking up the arid soil shall no more waste or make 
 you faint ! Rest ! for the harvest-time shall be your
 
 08 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 great reward ! Ye benefactors of your species ! the 
 malice and the scorn of men cannot molest you ; nor 
 the insult and the strife of tongues enshadow your 
 serene spirits ; men shall yet rise up to call you 
 blessed, and to build monuments in their transformed 
 and hallowed lives commemorative of your holy 
 deeds ! May your heroism inspire us your zeal glow 
 upon our hearts your deeds rouse us from languor 
 and cowardice into fair and faithful emulation of the 
 spirit which nerved your hearts and lifted you from 
 feebleness and obscurity into peerless and unwasting 
 renown ! 
 
 The study of Methodistic history confirms our faith 
 in God's providential regard for and rule over our 
 world and our race. To me this lesson is as power- 
 fully taught by it as by the history of the Jewish 
 nation. 
 
 I thank God for my faith in his personal adminis- 
 tration of the affairs of our planet and its inhabit- 
 ants. My faith rests upon the sure sayings of God's 
 word, and is liberally strengthened by a study of the 
 history of mankind, but especially by the history of 
 the Church of Christ. 
 
 But for faith in this fact we would be, of all men, 
 most miserable. Terrible, were it true, to be com- 
 pelled to accept it as an established fact : God rules 
 not over, cares not for, takes no interest in, is indif- 
 ferent to, the fate, the lot, the destiny of this orb and 
 its teeming population ! Dreadful should be our state 
 of feeling were we driven to accept the last results of 
 so-called scientific investigation and induction, that
 
 WESLEY Aim HIS HELPERS. 99 
 
 Deity may have made and ordered all things, or may. 
 not ; that if he did, he interferes not with the course 
 of nature ; that ages beyond number he, perhaps, im- 
 pressed or inwrought certain forces and modes of 
 action upon all that then was ; and, having wound up 
 the mechanism and touched into oscillation its pendu- 
 lum, and let loose its wheels arid springs, since then 
 he has retired within himself heedless of the evolu- 
 tions of the gigantic machine ; beyond the reach of 
 creature's cry, of spirit's song, of man's appeal ; self- 
 absorbed and impassive ; a slave fettered by his own 
 hands, gyved by his own laws ; a captive imprisoned 
 within the walls " great and high " of nature and of 
 force walls whose foundation his own power laid, 
 whose glittering turrets his own skill piled, whose 
 immovable buttresses and battlements his own right 
 arm upheaved, and whose perpetuated endurance 
 dates back to the omnific fiat of his own decrees; 
 that not only can he not add a new law or suspend 
 an old one, but that he is even denied the right to 
 modify the action and effects of olden laws by special 
 combination of two or more of them, so as to further 
 an end grander, holier, than any effected by their un- 
 deviating or their remorseless and undiscriminating 
 revolution 1 
 
 No truth of inspiration is more clearly, more fully, 
 more frequently taught than the special interest felt 
 in the world's weal by its Maker and Builder. The 
 cross sums up all other arguments into concentrated 
 might, and renders the demonstration irrefutable and 
 
 the fact indubitable. That cannot be a forgotten race 
 
 8
 
 100 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 for whose redemption divine tears fell, divine blood 
 flowed. Nothing that appertains to the interests of 
 such a race is unworthy the notice or beneath the 
 overruling sovereignty of Him who " so loved " it. 
 That gift is the pledge of all others necessary to the 
 consummation of the design for which it was be- 
 stowed. It includes all others necessary to this end. 
 That end is none other than the moral and spiritual 
 redemption of our humanity, its elevation, purifica- 
 tion, civilization up into God's ideal of what a race 
 may and ought to be. 
 
 And just when his special interference is demanded 
 by the condition of mankind does he move forth 
 from behind the mysterious drapery in which he is 
 enfolded, and furnish the needed and the fitting help 
 for the emergency. The First Promise, the Flood, the 
 Calling of Abraham, the Mission of Moses, the Ad- 
 vent of the Messiah, the Upraising of Luther and his 
 compeers, and the Birth of Methodism are illustra- 
 tions of the law of the benevolent plan of Deity. 
 
 Wesley was born while Anne reigned. He died 
 when the third George ruled o'er the destinies of 
 Britain. 
 
 During his life-time Addison issued his inimitable 
 " Spectator," and Johnson compiled his dictionary. 
 While he lived Reynolds caught, transfixed, and im- 
 mortalized the beauty, grace, and dignity of England's 
 fairest, noblest, and most gifted sons and daughters, 
 by the sorcery of his unequaled, fresh, and time- 
 defying colors ; Cook circumnavigated the globe ; and 
 Wolfe, having conquered the French upon the height
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 101 
 
 of Montmorency, won for Britain the grandest of her 
 colonial possessions. During his life, England planted 
 her foot and* flag beneath the Himalayas ; and Clive / 
 and Hastings climbed to immortality of fame or in- j 
 famy. 
 
 While Wesley lived, Washington saw the light of 
 life, learned obedience by things which he suffered in 
 colonial struggles with the French and Indians, and, - 
 though he knew it not, gained the necessary training 
 fitting him for the solemn, sacred and sublime trust 
 to be committed to his hands and head and heart, by 
 his confiding fellows in the struggle for the inde- 
 pendence of the thirteen States of America. 
 
 While Wesley moved thousands by his calm but 
 mighty eloquence, Burke spell-bound the most critical 
 and exacting audience in the Old World by the 
 splendor of his imagination, the opulence of his learn- 
 ing, the breadth of his philosophic reach, and the 
 classical finish of his imperishable oratorical essays. 
 Garrick was the prince of actors ; Hogarth the prince 
 of caricaturists ; Brummel the prince of fashion ; 
 Handel the prince of musicians. 
 
 When Wesley was in the zenith of his power and 
 in the fullness of his vigorous life, two of the greatest 
 generals of their age were born. These two were 
 islanders by birth, and entered upon their splendid 
 careers in the same year, 1769. One was a Corsican ; the 
 other though he cared not to own it an Irishman. 
 Both were of small stature, and both were of capacious 
 intellectual power. The one sought to establish a 
 colossal military tyranny that should bestride the con-
 
 102 GUARD'S LECTURES AXD ADDRESSES. 
 
 tinent of Europe ; to the other it was given to shatter 
 the policy of the tyrant by a series of splendid battles 
 which reached their fitting climax in the sublime 
 struggle of June 18, 1815, when the lurid star of 
 tyranny went down in blood, and the Corsican was 
 swept from the height of Waterloo to his prison and 
 his sepulcher upon the lone volcanic cinder called 
 St. Helena, where the ever-surging sea chanted his 
 dirge and the rushing winds rehearsed the refrain: 
 " Yanity of vanities all is vanity." 
 
 When Methodism was but thirty years old, Scot- 
 land's most famous literary son saw the light of life, for 
 in 1771 was born the author of " Old Mortality," " The 
 Heart of Midlothian ; " the creator of Meg Merrilies, 
 of Jeannie Deans, of Rebecca the Jewess, of Dominie 
 Sampson ; the genius, which, in the width of his 
 range of subject, his subtle knowledge of human na- 
 ture, his power over the passions of the human heart, 
 his mastery over the emotions of wonder and rever- 
 ence, his wealth of antique lore, and his prodigality of 
 productiveness, claims rank but one step below that of 
 Shakspeare Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 In 1752, when Wesley was approaching his fiftieth 
 year, a serious-looking man of vigorous frame and 
 gray eyes might have been seen in one of the fields 
 in the vicinity of Philadelphia, flying a kite. It is 
 not a very manlike sport. There is a storm overhead, 
 too. The dark clouds are letting loose their pent-up 
 forces. Thunder-peals, preceded by lighting flashes, 
 startle the citizens, but wake no terror in the kite- 
 flyer's spirit. The cord of the kite is half silk, half
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 103 
 
 hemp; and where the two meet a key is fastened. 
 The kite has an iron point ; and see ! the lightning 
 plays around it, aye, strikes and travels down it ; un- 
 til, when the kite-flyer's knuckles touch the key, a 
 shock thrills his frame, while a strange gleam of 
 wonder and satisfaction lights the eye of the sage. It 
 is Benjamin Franklin seeking to prove the identity of 
 lightning and electricity. 
 
 What an era in physical science ! What an era in 
 human speculation ! What an era in the history of 
 human civilization ! It was the dawn of that period 
 within whose brilliant noon the electric telegraph 
 proclaims its victories; winging thought over con- 
 tinent and under ocean ; defiant of storm above and wild 
 waves' dash below ; binding distant nations into brother- 
 hood ; furthering the enterprises of commerce, the 
 purposes of philanthropy, the ends of justice, and the 
 designs of statesmanship ; and giving man a hint of 
 the possibilities for the facility of locomotion yet to 
 be developed when man's gross body shall have given 
 place to the body splendid and celestial in a higher 
 sphere of life. 
 
 A wonderful century was that in which Wesley 
 worked! filled with wonderful men and wonderful 
 deeds ! 
 
 As to the need of Wesley and his work, who can 
 question who reads the records of the reception ac- 
 corded Wesley and his helpers ? Remember he was 
 a clergyman of the Established Church ; that there 
 was nothing coarse, rude, vulgar in his spirit, speech, 
 bearing ; that when he preached in the open air he
 
 10-i GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 did so in the full dress of a clergyman with gown 
 and bands ; that his looks, his manner, his message, 
 all gave evidence of his impassioned longing to save 
 men from their lives of vice, their deeds of crime. 
 Remember he went not forth as a controversionalist ; 
 not to change men from one creed to another ; not to 
 make heretics orthodox ; not to create a spirit of 
 bitterness between the classes of society ; not to hound 
 on brutal, ignorant men against men of culture, of 
 position, of wealth ; not to fling firebrands of vile 
 epithets and vituperation against monopolists and aris- 
 tocracies but to save men from drunkenness, from 
 blasphemy, from bull-baiting, from theft, from licen- 
 tiousness, from ignorance, from poverty, from lives 
 of debauchery, from homes of strife and hate, and to 
 turn men from sin and Satan to holiness and God ! 
 Then, what think you of the state of society when 
 such a man met, in return for his noble and Christlike 
 efforts, slander and scurrility from the press, the 
 ribaldry of the ballad-singer and the sneer of the 
 witling, the cruel mockings of magistrates and the 
 base tauntings of the play-actor? "When he stands 
 up to preach the air is thick with stones and tremu- 
 lous with the furious shoutings of blood-thirsty 
 crowds ; and when he retires for shelter the house is 
 assaulted by the same mobs ; windows smashed ; doors 
 broken through ; roofs pulled off ; friends trampled 
 into the dust and gutter ; women brutally insulted ; 
 men haled to and plunged into horse-ponds and 
 rivers ; some of his helpers compelled to enlist in the 
 army; others shut up in jail as disturbers of the
 
 AND ins HELPERS. 105 
 
 peace. Clmrcli clerks are the ringleaders, under the 
 commands of the parish rectors ; towns are given up 
 to the rioters for days, as in Cork city ; the appearance 
 of a Methodist in the street is a signal for a general 
 " turn out '* of all the ruffianism of alley and court, 
 hooting, yelling, cursing, as though hell had been let 
 loose and every jail had been emptied of its scoun- 
 dreh'sm. Such scenes as these were of repeated occur- 
 rence in Christian England ! 
 
 Wesley came of a good and godly stock. This is 
 not to be overlooked in our study and estimate of a 
 great man. It is a cause for thankfulness. It is a 
 special vantage ground. It implies noble possibilities 
 and involves weighty responsibilities. He who is so 
 favored is the steward of jive talents rather than of one. 
 He may become a greater benefactor of his race. He 
 may scale bolder peaks of science. He may do busi- 
 ness in deeper waters of philosophic truth. He may 
 create a crisis in human history as a reformer, a rev- 
 olutionist, discoverer, and inventor. It does not in- 
 fallibly secure well being or well doing ; but it renders 
 such more likely. 
 
 Wesley's father was a scholar, a theologian, and a 
 poet ; and inherited from father and grandfather a 
 nature and spirit fearless in the maintenance of truth 
 and heroic in the defense of liberty. For each had 
 suffered for Christ's and conscience' sake under the 
 tyranny both of Church and State. 
 
 Wesley's mother even eclipses the fame of his 
 father. The daughter of a Puritan clergyman dis. 
 tinguished for his learning, his pulpit power, and his
 
 106 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 profound piety. She herself evinced the possession of 
 a spirit unquailing in its" loyalty to duty, and of an 
 intellect fit to grapple with the problems of theology 
 as might have become one of the giants of the Church 
 in her own or in other ages. The mother of nineteen 
 children and the wife of an underpaid clergyman, 
 she trained her children in the principles of piety, in 
 the elements of learning, and in habits of firm self-re- 
 liance and mutual helpfulness, with an unfaltering 
 purpose and an unmurmuring assiduity; combining 
 firmness with gentleness, and freedom with order, in 
 her administration, so as to command the esteem, con- 
 fidence, and admiration of her sons and daughters, and 
 secure for her memory a sacred enshrinemeut in their 
 affections amid the vicissitudes of their strangely 
 checkered lives. 
 
 Beautiful in person and queenly in visage, she was 
 a counselor of her boys when students at the Univer- 
 sity, and an adviser of her illustrious son in circum- 
 stances of novelty and perplexity. "With a heart as 
 tender as her intellect was clear ; quick to interpret 
 character, and prompt in her apprehension of the will 
 and ways of Providence ; calm amid scenes of pertur- 
 bation, and firm in her adherence to the dictates of a 
 finely educated conscience ; never forgetting her duties 
 as a wife, and never ignoring her responsibilities to 
 her own soul ; she lived beloved ; she died honored. 
 And though sainthood bound no halo round her brow, 
 yet in the halls erected to perpetuate the fame of all 
 those who served their species by the will of God, no 
 holier niche is filled with a spotless marble than that
 
 WESLEY AND ins HELPERS. 107 
 
 wherein reposes the bust of Susanna, " the mother of 
 the Wesleys." 
 
 Yes, John Wesley had never been but for such a 
 mother. Like many another eminent benefactor of 
 his race, he never forgot to acknowledge his obliga- 
 tions to her. To him she ministered the sagest coun- 
 sel, and by her judgment and advice John "Wesley 
 delighted to be controlled. To her he was indebted 
 
 O 
 
 for many a judicious suggestion. She it was who 
 persuaded John to the surrender of his High-Church 
 ideas regarding preachers and preaching. She heard 
 Thomas Maxfield preach, and told Wesley he was as 
 certainly called to preach the Gospel as was any or- 
 dained and gowned minister of the National Church. 
 She is the patron saint of " local preachers." To her 
 we owe the " lay ministry " of Methodism. And 
 Adam Clarke, the sturdy commentator, in his notes 
 upon the description of a perfect woman in the Book 
 of Proverbs, declares that he knew of none in ancient 
 or in modern times who might with such propriety 
 have sat for that portrait as Susanna Wesley. 
 
 To no one man is any great work of reformation or 
 revolution assigned by Providence. Christianity it- 
 self, when a completed edifice, shall be found reposing 
 upon " the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, 
 Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone." When 
 God engages in any such work he calls upon men to 
 become " workers together with God." " One soweth 
 and another reapeth." The Reformation exemplifies 
 the same principle. Luther needs Melanchthon; Flavel 
 needs Calvin ; the thinker needs the preacher ; the
 
 108 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 scholar needs the organizer ; the timid and sensitive 
 needs the bold and dauntless. And so Latimer's 
 sturdy common sense and mother wit, and John 
 Knox's impetuous spirit and indomitable will, his 
 rugged and unquailing nature these all contributed to 
 the success of the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 It was even so in Wesley's days, in "Wesley's work. 
 "Wesley's greatness was seen not merely in the work 
 he himself performed, but in the might with which 
 he persuaded others to unite with him in the execu- 
 tion of his plans. He attracted others, and assigned 
 them their spheres of labor ; and then, KKC a central 
 sun, maintained them in undeviating march and in 
 balanced order during the blessed period of his earthly 
 life. 
 
 One of the most trusted, most honored, and most 
 useful co-laborers with Wesley was a brother clergy- 
 man. A Swiss by birth, of noble family, he studied 
 for the ministry ; but, unable to accept the Genevan 
 Creed, he chose a military life. Failing, both in Ger- 
 many and Portugal, to realize his purpose, he visited 
 England, where he became a tutor in the " Hill fam- 
 ily." While there he heard of Wesley, sought and 
 found religion, received ordination in the National 
 Church, and at once joined Wesley, to become after- 
 ward his dearest friend, his confidential adviser, and 
 the most eloquent and powerful expounder of the 
 Evangelical Arminianism of Methodism. 
 
 To a nimble fancy and a vigorous imagination he 
 added the breadth of a philosopher's intellect and the
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 109 
 
 clearness of a logician's. When the great verities of 
 Methodistic Arminianism needed a defender, in John 
 Fletcher a controversialist was found who never lost 
 his temper ; and when the utmost power of Christ to 
 save, and the fullest power of the Gospel to beautify 
 fallen humanity demanded a living exhibitor, lo ! in 
 the spirit and speech, in the bearing and countenance 
 of Fletcher, the fairest embodiment of both on which 
 our modern ages have been permitted to gaze. 
 
 He was an incarnation of love. He trod the earth 
 as a celestial visitant. His face was a doxology. Purity 
 beamed from his seraphic features, and holiness. No 
 one could be in his company but to breathe its atmos- 
 phere and catch its inspiration. Wherever he went, 
 whatever he did, heaven encompassed him. And 
 when he died, men, as they followed the soaring 
 spirit, woke up to the assurance that they had enter- 
 tained an angel unawares. 
 
 Of the many of John Wesley's helpers, none seems 
 to have so won the confidence, the admiration, and the 
 love of Wesley, as the Irishman, Thomas Walsh. 
 During the preaching of Robert Swindells on the 
 parade-ground of Limerick, 1749, a young man of 
 solemn and serious aspect formed one of the congre- 
 gation who listened to a sermon on the text, " Come 
 unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I 
 will give you rest." The words at once won his ear 
 and possessed his heart. Rest had he been in search 
 of for years past. Listening to these words, the path 
 to grace opened before him as in perfect day ; and, on 
 Christ believing, he " entered into rest." Born a
 
 110 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Romanist, through the influence of his brother, a con- 
 verted Romanist, he had left Popery and entered the 
 Established Church, still seeking for his soul what 
 Christ alone could give. Through the humble preach- 
 er's instrumentality, the gifted youth felt the power 
 of the glorious Gospel, and at once became a mem- 
 ber of the Methodist Society. Soon he began to 
 preach, and speedily followed marvelous results. He 
 spoke his native tongue with great fluency. He ac- 
 quired the English, the Latin, the Greek, and the 
 Hebrew languages. With all but inspired facility he 
 mastered the Bible in its original tongues, spending 
 hours on his knees in the entrancing study. His famil- 
 iarity with the book was such that Wesley said, in a 
 few moments Walsh could say how often any word 
 occurred in the Old or New Testament, and its mean- 
 ing in each place. 
 
 He began to preach when twenty, and ceased at 
 once to preach and to live when twenty-eight. He 
 traveled through Ireland north and south preach- 
 ing in markets and fairs, within doors and without, 
 .with overwhelming power. His own countrymen 
 looked upon him as a saint ; his look was seraphic ; 
 his bearing was of moral majesty; his speech, as 'of 
 one who had for an hour left the better land to min- 
 ister to the souls of men in this one. 
 
 With God he held absorbing fellowship, passing 
 through life as though but the " vision splendid " won 
 his notice. Priests railed at him ; mobs roughly han- 
 dled him. In jail for Christ's sake, he was still 
 unflinching and fearless. The people crowded to the
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. Ill 
 
 jail window to hear him, to look upon him ; while, 
 far as his voice could reach, he preached to them the 
 glad tidings. 
 
 Often n've times a day he preached, fasting fre- 
 quently ; rising at four o'clock in the morning, even 
 while sick and dying, and into latest hours of night 
 prosecuting his laborious studies. Nature could not 
 endure it. He was old exceeding old at twenty- 
 six ; wasted, wan, yet still exultant in his work, 
 triumphant in his success. Of nervous tempera- 
 ment, of ardent spirit, and of intense purpose, the 
 frail tenement at last gave way. And when but 
 twenty-eight, a worn-out man, he passed to a sphere 
 of light and love altogether congenial to his hallowed 
 nature and his cultivated tastes. 
 
 WESLEY'S INTELLECTUAL RANK. 
 
 "Wesley's intellectual rank may be thought of for a 
 little. He was, without doubt, a philosopher by na- 
 ture and by disposition. He loved to reason and he 
 delighted to speculate. His logical power was prom- 
 inently developed and called into incessant play by 
 the defenses of his conduct and position demanded 
 by his numerous, and often bitter, foes. He was 
 quick to detect a fallacy, and swift to expose a false 
 premise or conclusion. To study him is to pass 
 through a course of lectures on logic. He demanded 
 a reason for every thing believed in and advocated by 
 him. 
 
 Physical science found in him an ardent admirer 
 and a fervent student. He saw the potencies lurking
 
 112 GUAKL'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 in electricity, and especially the services likely to be 
 rendered to diseased humanity by that subtle and 
 mysterious force. 
 
 Art won his regards and elicited his criticism ; 
 whether it were the hoary pile of architecture, the 
 chiseled and all but breathing bust, the glowing and 
 well-nigh speaking canvas, or the melodies and sym- 
 phonies drawn forth from pipe and string by the 
 mighty masters of harmony and concord. 
 
 In the immortal creations of the bards of Greece 
 and Rome, Wesley dwelt as in a realm all his own. 
 Their sublimities awed him ; their beauties, their felic- 
 ities of metaphor, their description both of character 
 and incident, found in him an enthusiastic apprecia- 
 tor ; one ever ready to enrich and embellish his own 
 productions by the verse, the stanza borrowed from- 
 the crowned monarchs, 
 
 "Whose distant footsteps echo 
 Through the corridors of tima 
 
 His power as a preacher must have been immense. 
 Not that he had the passionate, weeping persuasive- 
 ness of his brother Charles ; rather he seemed to be 
 ever the reasoner ; calm, commanding, clear, self-pos- 
 sessed, he spoke as one having authority and as though 
 commissioned to act and appeal as the ernbassador of 
 the King of kings. With but little gesture, and free 
 from all that would savor of dramatic manner, with a 
 voice capable of reaching twenty thousand people in 
 the open air, when he preached breathless atten. 
 tion proved the interest he awaked, while an over-
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPEES. 113 
 
 whelming solemnity descended upon the audience as 
 though one, a herald from the skies, stood forth to 
 reason and persuade. Fearless in denunciation of sin, 
 he was tender even to tears with seeking sinners. 
 Those who came to mock remained to pray. Perse- 
 cutors of fiercest spirit had but to listen and their 
 purpose forsook them, as they seized his hand as he 
 descended from his pulpit, and became his protectors 
 against the outlying mobs. 
 
 True, he was not the orator that Whitefield was. 
 God does not often make such men as George White- 
 field. As godly, as evangelical, and as consecrated 
 to one work as Wesley, he excelled in what may be 
 termed popular and effective oratory. With a voice 
 of matchless compass and flexibility, and with a face 
 radiant with love and rendered even rather fascinating 
 by the squint of one eye ; with a dramatic genius 
 which Garrick might have envied ; with a soul tuned 
 to the most exquisite sensibility ; with a burning pas- 
 sion for saving souls ; full of tact ; ever self-possessed ; 
 quick to seize and utilize every passing event and 
 every sudden emergency ; apt in his use of illustra- 
 tion ; he at once compelled the most unlettered to 
 melt under his appeals, and extorted the most flatter- 
 ing attention from the skeptic Hume, the courtier 
 Chesterfield, the man of practical common sense. 
 Franklin. 
 
 Whether on the open common, surrounded by mobs 
 and rioters ; or in the saloon of the Countess of Hunt- 
 ingdon, enzoned by the elite of British birth, grace, 
 and beauty ; or amid the hard-headed and logical sons
 
 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 and fathers of Scotland's kirk ; or when sweeping down 
 with eagle-like majesty and might upon the throngs 
 of Philadelphia and New England ; Whitefield is con- 
 fessedly one of the foremost of effective pulpit orators 
 since the days when Paul magnetized the sons of 
 Athens, and Apollos spell-bound the churches of 
 Corinth and of Macedonia by his Alexandrian elo- 
 quence. 
 
 WESLEY AS A SEARCHER AFTER TRUTH. 
 
 In no other pursuit than in the search after truth 
 is man so nobly employed, except it be in imparting 
 to others that which he may have discovered. 
 
 It is obedience to one of the most imperative of 
 the instincts of the human soul. For, if man be 
 made for any end, he is made for the acquisition of 
 truth. The sublimity of human nature bursts upon 
 our view when we witness the efforts put forth by 
 some of our fellows to attain this pearl of great price. 
 What perils they have braved ! What foes they have 
 aroused and battled with ! What agonies of soul they 
 have experienced ! What sacrifices they have made ! 
 Pilgrimages to distant oracles have been taken. Se- 
 clusion from the felicities of social life has been 
 submitted to. Scorn, doubt, opprobrium, outlawry, 
 imprisonment, horrid and ignominious death all 
 have been endured by the noble army of truth-seek- 
 ers. Often have such truth-seekers been looked on 
 as in league with the powers of darkness as having 
 pawned away their souls for a ray of revelation 
 upon some subtle bijt potent problem. They have
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 115 
 
 been looked at with terror, shunned as lepers, hunted 
 as wolves, cried down as doomed by heaven and by 
 the Church to hell's darkest and dreariest pit. 
 
 To none was Wesley second in his belief in truth, 
 and in his unabated zeal in pursuit of it. The truth 
 might have reference to God's method of forgiving 
 sin and bestowing rest and purity upon man's weary 
 spirit. The truth might have reference to church 
 government and the scriptural authority for episco- 
 pal ordination as necessary to a true .ministry. The 
 truth might have reference to doctrine, such as 
 Calvinism versus Armiuianism, or " the witness of 
 the Spirit" to man's adoption, or the nature and at- 
 tainableiiess of Christian holiness. The truth might 
 have reference to the rightfulness or expediency 
 of the separation of the Methodist societies from 
 the Church of England, and their independence as a 
 duly-organized Christian Church. 
 
 The truth might have reference to any one of the 
 sciences of his day, either that which weighed the 
 stars, or that which numbered the primary elements of 
 matter, or that which studied the properties of a sun- 
 beam, or that which sought to grapple with the mys- 
 teries of electricity, or that which sought to answer 
 the question by self-study What is man ? It mat- 
 tered not ; to all truth he turned a reverent gaze. 
 With all truth he desired to win acquaintance and 
 familiarity. 
 
 With what avidity he read ; with what care he 
 criticised ; with what caution he accepted ; with what 
 faithful accuracy he recorded sta^ments made to him,
 
 116 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDEESSES. 
 
 and sifted th evidence offered for their support, his 
 Journals bear ample testimony. 
 
 The "impulse to establish good is not more constant 
 in its activity than the desire to find out the true. 
 And in Wesley's case it resulted in growth of thought, 
 rectification and enlargement of opinion, together 
 with increasing respect for and toleration of all such as 
 differed from him. 
 
 How he ever welcomed suggestions from others, and 
 with genial courtesy acknowledged the letters of those 
 who wrote him their objections to his creed or con- 
 duct, his correspondence bears ever-recurring evi- 
 dence. 
 
 In matters of religion he ever turns to the Bible. 
 Nothing binds his conscience but as it may be found 
 in, or proved by, the Book. " O give me," he ex- 
 claims, " give me that Book." Satisfied of its divinity, 
 his only care is to know what it teaches, enforces, 
 warrants ; and then, how dear soe'ver the fond opin- 
 ion or long-cherished prejudice, both must yield to 
 the truth of the divine oracle. 
 
 Now, as a truth-seeker, "Wesley was progressive. 
 He made what was, in the broadest sense, a " new de- 
 parture." He had no chart by which to steer his adven- 
 turous bark over the mysterious waters of his evan- 
 gelist life. What could he do but make experiments ; 
 welcome light from whatever point it streamed upon 
 his course ; and, as the facts or principles warranted 
 him, push his keel onward, outward, into yet deeper 
 waters, if by any means he might " catch men " ? 
 
 Hence we find hijn growing a wiser man " with
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 117 
 
 the process of the sun." He knows more to-day than 
 yesterday, hence he changes his action. This exposed 
 him to the charge of inconsistency. But it was the 
 inconsistency of a noble heart and of a creature to 
 whom the future is not revealed whose knowledge, 
 as it grows, proves him to have been wrong yester- 
 day, and whose change of course is the evidence, not 
 of folly, but of wisdom ; not of vacillation of purpose, 
 but of fixedness of principle that principle none 
 other than this : Let me know what is right, and Til 
 dare to do it. 
 
 I ought to know more next year than I do this 
 year. I ought to have an ampler experience next 
 week than I had last. 1 ought, therefore, to be a 
 wiser man then than now ; and I ought, therefore, 
 to have sufficient courage to confess the same both 
 by practice and by word. The mortal who never 
 changes is very nearly an idiot. Infallibility is not 
 the gift of humanity, and, therefore, immutability 
 should not be the conduct of reasonable men. " When 
 I was young I believed every thing," said Wesley ; 
 " when I grew older I believed less. Now, I am not 
 quite sure of any thing not revealed in God's Word." 
 
 Hence his High-Church notions, one by one, melted 
 into thin air ; and with growth of experience there 
 came growth of liberality in opinion and expansion 
 of polity and practice. In one thing he was unal- 
 terable to do the will of God. Let that will be 
 made known by the word of God, or by the provi- 
 dence of God, or by the experimental knowledge of 
 life and men he had but to se it to be God's will,
 
 118 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 and then let men oppose, let friends forsake, let his 
 brother Charles object, and grow cold and suspicious, 
 it mattered not to Wesley. He dared to venture, he 
 dared to brave, he dared to make his own road and 
 then to tread it with faith in Providence, with foot 
 unfaltering, and with heart calm in the peace of God, 
 and conduct undeviating as the march of nature's 
 most august and far-reaching laws. Stars cannot 
 surpass him in the firmness of obedience, seraphs 
 cannot shame him by the cheerfulness with which 
 they obey the fiats of their Maker and their King. 
 If this be not greatness, then tell us what is ! 
 
 Did he never err ? Did he never make a mistake ? 
 Yes, he erred he made a mistake. But it was 
 where the best and the greatest men before and since 
 have erred and made mistakes. 
 
 Wesley married; that was his one great mistake. 
 He should never have married. His itinerant life, 
 like Paul's, could never have co-existed with married 
 life ; and it did not. Bishop Asbury, the apostle 
 and founder of Methodism in America, was right : 
 he never married. 
 
 Had Wesley a heart ? Some will ask : Could he 
 love ? He had a heart, the tenderest. He could love 
 the most intensely. He was altogether human. His 
 affections were as rich, as deep, as warm, as strong 
 as ever beat in human bosom. 
 
 But never man entered into married life so blind- 
 folded, and never man paid a heavier penalty for his 
 act of error. He married when nearly fifty. If he 
 married at all it should have been before his habits
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 110 
 
 had become rigidly fixed say before or about thirty 
 and one of age not more than his own. He mar- 
 ried a wealthy widow, but before marriage all her 
 money was settled on herself. Not a penny would 
 Wesley touch or use. But he married jealousy in- 
 carnate, and he married one by no means his equal 
 in education. Her jealousy was a disease the most 
 virulent, and the life he lived was a petty hell. Poor 
 man ! that she taunted him and tantalized him, 
 watched him, suspected him, railed at him, and let 
 him feel the power of her strong arm, evidence co- 
 pious exists to prove. 
 
 Yet John Wesley's wife was one of his helpers. 
 She helped him in that she " stirred up his nest " for 
 him with a vengeance, with a purpose relentless and 
 resolve invincible. She threw him out from the re- 
 pose of domestic luxury. Charles Wesley all but 
 ceased to be an itinerant after his marriage. John 
 Wesley was not designed for such a mode of life. 
 He was called to be the itinerant. This could scarce 
 co-exist with wedded life ; hence we might think, 
 with all propriety, that his was not a wise step when 
 he married. But even this was overruled. He was 
 called to exercise new virtues and develop new graces 
 and bear new trials. He was taught that he might 
 better sympathize with and succor all so tried and 
 tempted. Difficulties developed him. Fresh resolve 
 inspired and braced him. New consecration to his 
 work impelled him to his unremitting course. Yes, 
 John Wesley's wife helped him ! 
 
 Wesley aimed at the education and the elevation of
 
 120 GTTAED'S LECTURES AND ADDKESSES. 
 
 the masses of English life. Hence he availed himself 
 of the press as few men have done before or since. 
 He sought to scatter the seeds of truth, thus to secure 
 correct opinions and beliefs respecting all subjects of 
 importance, both secular and religious. 
 
 Fortunately, as I have often thought, in selecting 
 the leader of this great reformation God chose an 
 educated and a scholarly man ; one well trained by 
 the best education of his age and country, and, there- 
 fore, one capable of appreciating the benefits of edu- 
 cation to others. No one questions Wesley's rank as 
 a scholar. He won a fellowship in Oxford by right 
 of scholarship, as well as an appointment as Greek 
 lecturer. Wesley was eminently a Protestant in this 
 particular. He would have men think, and thus give 
 a reason for their conduct as well as for their beliefs 
 and hopes. He recognizes the rank of man as founded 
 upon this faculty; hence his "Appeal to Men of 
 Reason and Eeligion " in expounding and defending 
 the principles and mission of Methodism. 
 
 Many of his followers have been exceedingly ig- 
 norant ; but this was not Wesley's fault, and this is 
 no evidence of their consistency as followers and 
 disciples of Wesley. 
 
 Certainly, whatever a scholarly man could do to cult- 
 ivate a love of knowledge in the minds of his con- 
 verts Wesley attempted and performed. Recognizing 
 the disadvantages of many of those saved through his 
 efforts, he at once placed his literary power at their 
 service, and by a constant use of the press effected a 
 circulation of literature most marvelous in his day.
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 121 
 
 Tracts, letters, essays, compilations, compendiums, 
 treatises, poured forth in continuous stream to irri- 
 gate and fructify the else sterile and desert regions 
 of the common people of old Britain. Wherever 
 his preachers went they carried Wesley's books ; thus 
 they were itinerant booksellers and venders of the 
 elements of wisdom, knowledge, and joy. 
 
 The amount of mind saved from ignorance and its 
 dire evils by Wesley has not yet had its due appre- 
 ciation. Men who never thought began to feel the 
 pleasures of knowledge. Minds dormant felt the 
 breath of life passing over and through them. Tof- 
 por yielded to vigor. The germs of knowledge found 
 a fitting soil in the nature of men arrested from the 
 error of their vicious ways. For the first time men 
 opened their eyes upon the glories of existence and 
 the possibilities of being ; " all things " had " become 
 new." Great, indeed, was the amount of mind force 
 Wesley helped to develop and utilize ! 
 
 The course Wesley adopted at length developed 
 and brought into play powers of mind and of speech 
 in the persons of his helpers perfectly startling in their 
 strength, their brilliancy, and their effects. 
 
 There was Bradburn, the shoemaker; than whom 
 no greater orator spoke the English language or swayed 
 Christian audiences during the earlier portion of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 There was Thomas Olivers, also a shoemaker, Wes- 
 ley's assistant editor ; a controversialist of the keenest 
 logical powers ; and, as the author of " The God of 
 Abraham praise," a poet of the loftiest lyric order.
 
 122 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 There was Adam Clarke, a very prodigy of learn- 
 ing, a scholar of European fame, a preacher of over- 
 whelming power and of peerless popularity. 
 
 There was Samuel Drew, the shoemaker of Corn- 
 wall, a metaphysician with whom Sir "William Ham- 
 ilton would have delighted to converse and argue. 
 
 No adaptation for usefulness was permitted to slum- 
 ber. Thoughtfulness became the habit and mood of 
 the workers. From the realms of nature ; from the 
 pages of biography ; from the annals of history ; from 
 the hoarded treasures of the great theological fathers 
 yf the Church ; from the exhaustless mines of Holy 
 Writ, were these active thinkers and speakers drawing 
 nourishment for their understandings, material for 
 their sermons, illustrations to win the most stupid, and 
 arguments to convince the most resolute hearer. 
 
 But for Methodism what an amount of mind had 
 remained undeveloped ? Think of the hundreds of 
 thousands who owe their mental being to its moral 
 awakening power. How multitudinous the host upon 
 which it laid its apprehending hand ! upon whose 
 head it poured its benediction as it sent them forth to 
 bless their species by their messages of truth ! Think 
 of its ministry ; they number thousands. They have 
 been lifted, the majority of them, from social con- 
 ditions altogether unfavorable to intellectual develop- 
 ment and refinement. But for Methodism they had 
 remained encased in flesh-and-blood frames, bound to 
 the plow-shafts, harnessed to the sledge. Methodism 
 visited them, and with it the peace of God. They 
 accepted both. And then aye ! what then?
 
 WESLEY AXD HIS HELPEBS. 123 
 
 Methodism found gems which, but for it, had never 
 flashed their luminous light. Behind the plow and 
 flinging the weaver's shuttle ; plying the tailor's needle 
 and urging the carpenter's plane ; measuring ribbons 
 and forging horse-shoes; splitting rails and herding 
 flocks ; wielding the trowel and heating the baker's 
 oven ; Methodism found some of the rarest jewels set 
 in and flashing from the coronet of which it is said, 
 " Thou art a royal diadem in the hand of thy God." 
 
 WESLEY AS A WORKER. 
 
 Wesley was pre-eminently a worker ; not a specu- 
 lator ; not a theorist ; not a transcendental dreamer ; 
 not a weaver of gossamer webs upon which to float 
 away into regions of self -absorbing study, whither the 
 grim monsters of human sin and anguish cannot 
 intrude, and whither the dusky-winged specters of 
 want and crime cannot roam. He was not born for 
 the closet of the sage, with its atmosphere thronged 
 with the dancing atomies of dry-as-dust antiquarian- 
 ism ; nor was he born for the cell of the metaphysical 
 wrangler, whose huge stragglings seek to wrest from 
 the mysterious entity called Being the secret things 
 which Plato longed to see, and Pascal sighed to own. 
 
 No ; Wesley was not to shine as a bright particular 
 star in the galaxy of so-called philosophic sages ; though 
 to deem him unequal to the pursuit and unfitted for 
 the acquisition of such truths were to do him grievous 
 wrong. His calling demanded from him the sternest 
 self-denial in the surrender of pursuits altogether 
 classic and sage-like in their qualities and results. But
 
 12i GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 lie lived to work not to theorize, or dream, or speculate. 
 To save men this was tlie purpose of liis life. And 
 by its fitness to further this end, every study, every 
 friendship, every recreation, was at once tested as to 
 its intrinsic value. He was, in this respect, eminently 
 a utilitarian. 
 
 To turn wasteful lives into useful ones ; to transform 
 semi-savage dwellings into Christian homesteads; to 
 lift debauchery from its mire and filth and bestialisrn 
 into honor, self-respect, and manhood; to pour the 
 light-rays of knowledge athwart the thick darkness of 
 untrained broods of grimy, swarthy, factory and min- 
 ing families, and thus fit them for the duties of life, 
 the service of God, and the pure joys of heaven ; to 
 win the ruffian from his life of crime ; to turn the 
 drunkard from his swine-like habits ; to lift his dear 
 Old England into the healthful, honorable, blessed 
 place of Sabbath keeping, of home piety, of manly 
 uprightness, of gentle manners, of loving tempers, 
 and of generous sympathies and deeds this was Wes- 
 ley's aim and mission. 
 
 A quenchless passion for saving souls burned upon 
 the altar of his spirit. A consecration, all but se- 
 raphic, impelled him along his flinty, arduous career. 
 Only such a love for men as Christianity can inspire 
 could have sustained him in his never-halting, never- 
 wearying, never-murmuring course. Only the glad- 
 ness of spirit begotten of devotion to such a Master 
 as Christ could have flung its lustrous and exhilarant 
 light across his nature and along his path ; rendering 
 him ever a center of repose to vexed hearts, and a
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 125 
 
 fount of peace to such as had felt the irritations of 
 a world of endless chafing, and of ceaseless strife. 
 
 I am amazed as I contemplate the man's power of 
 work. Rest he scarce ever dreamed of. He econo- 
 mized time as with a miser's parsimoniousness. He 
 experimented upon his need of sleep, and finally dis- 
 covered the art of going to bed but to sleep, and wak- 
 ing but to rise. 
 
 Like Wellington who, when asked why, in Walmer 
 Castle, he slept upon a couch so narrow that he had 
 scarce room to turn on it, replied, " When I turn, it is 
 only to turn out." So with Wesley. At ten o'clock 
 he went to sleep ; at four o'clock he woke and rose. 
 At five o'clock he was in his pulpit, beginning the 
 first sermon of the day ; before that day closed he 
 had preached three times, and ridden on horseback 
 sixty miles. 
 
 Traveling then was not the sumptuous luxury it is 
 to-day, in this highly favored locomotive age and coun- 
 try, with its palace cars, its sleeping-berths, its glow- 
 ing stoves, its cushioned seats. Roads in England had 
 not yet been macadamized. This man rode on horse- 
 back in all weathers ; frequently setting out from Lon- 
 don for the North in winter, amid snow-storms and 
 pelting rains, undeterred and undismayed cheerful , 
 as a lark in summer morn, and brave as a Spartan hero 
 on his way to crush his Persian foes. And this all 
 the year round ! Eighteen hours work and six hours 
 slumber ! 
 
 He visits the Societies of London from house to 
 house. He meets his class on Thursday for counsel
 
 126 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 and encouragement. He corresponds with his con- 
 verts and preachers throughout the United Kingdom. 
 He reads all the literature of the day. He publishes 
 a " monthly magazine." He writes and issues tracts 
 on popular duties or sins or needs. He is sick in 
 Bristol and confined to his room; but, with such 
 strength as remains, he translates a commentary on 
 the New Testament, from the Latin of the famous 
 Bengel, upon which is based " Wesley's Notes on the 
 New Testament." 
 
 He writes four volumes upon Natural Philosophy, 
 for some time a class-book in Trinity College, Dublin. 
 He translates hymns for his congregations, and cor- 
 rects, with chastened skill and care, the exuberant 
 poems of his brother Charles. He compiles histories 
 of Greece and Rome for his school at Kingswood. 
 He compiles and publishes English, French, Latin, 
 Greek, and Hebrew grammars. He issues an edition 
 of eminent Christian authors, consisting of some sixty 
 volumes, containing the marrow of English divinity 
 and the strength of English composition. 
 
 He meets his preachers for instruction and sym- 
 pathy, not only in annual, but also in monthly confer- 
 ences. He is alive to all that can affect or interest 
 humanity politically, benevolently, religiously. He 
 writes replies to the many and manifold charges 
 hurled at him by bishops, rectors, editors, and non- 
 descript critics afflicted with the disease of scribbling. 
 
 Hiding on horseback or in chaise, his book is ever 
 in his hand ; or, if the scenery and spot be historic, 
 his eye is wakeful to detect the glories of landscape,
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 127 
 
 the beauties of mansions, or the site of battles fought 
 by warriors or by freemen. 
 
 I am terrilied by the quantity of labor performed 
 by this small man. One cannot imagine more work 
 squeezed and packed into a human life than he com- 
 pressed into his. There was orderliness and system, 
 even to the extreme of stern rigidness. He planned 
 with a luminous and far-reaching ken. Men had 
 learned to rely upon his engagements. They looked 
 for him even as the astronomer for the precise return 
 of a planet. 
 
 Such was his perfection of system, there were no 
 fag-ends of time, here and there, scattered through 
 his days and weeks. Every hour had its assigned 
 duty; and every duty found him prompt and equipped 
 for its discharge. He was always in haste ; but he 
 was never in a hurry. He saw the awful grandeur of 
 time ; he felt the august greatness of life. He lived 
 as ever under the inspiration of the judgment day. 
 He endured as seeing Him who is invisible. But 
 that his life was uninterrupted in its flow, it must have 
 seemed a very torrent in its force. Dare to arrest 
 it, and you shall prove that its measure of rush re- 
 sembles that of a planet round its orbit. Break up 
 his life into days, and you have in each the plunge of 
 a cataract the leap of a Niagara. 
 
 Keenly susceptible to the fascinations of social life, 
 and exquisite in his sensibilities as a lover of the fine 
 arts, yet from the one he must tear himself away, and 
 through the other pass with a half smile, half sigh, 
 deferring the enjoyments of such luxuries of life
 
 128 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 until life's stern, imperative demands shall have been 
 fulfilled. 
 
 With an immutable calmness of spirit, there was 
 associated a passionate intensity of resolve, which rose 
 in the presence of difficulty and waxed sublime in its 
 invincible courage in the midst of antagonism the 
 most threatening and malignant. And perhaps since 
 his Master said it, no disciple of that Master could 
 have ventured with more honesty to assert : " I have 
 finished the work thou gavest me to do." 
 
 Think of the demands upon Wesley's time, thoughts, 
 prudence, wisdom, charity, long-suffering, by the su- 
 pervision of his preachers and societies. He visited 
 them once a year from Cornwall to Aberdeen 
 from London to Bristol from Cork to Derry; he 
 founded schools ; he appointed the fields of labor for 
 his helpers ; he corresponded with friends and with 
 foes ; his correspondence alone would have filled up 
 his time and taxed his mental energies ; he defended 
 himself against false attacks upon his teaching and 
 work ; he quelled discord ; he controlled enthusiasts ; 
 he advised his preachers ; he published tracts ; he print- 
 ed sermons ; he visited prisoners ; he preached twice a 
 day ; he traveled in all weathers ; he rode on all sorts 
 of horses and over all qualities of roads ; he slept on all 
 sorts of beds and fed on all sorts of fare ; he preached 
 in rooms, in chapels, on tombstones and on tables, in day- 
 light and in moonlight, in calm weather and in stormy, 
 when dew fell and when rain descended, before the 
 ignorant and before the learned, to miners and to 
 sailors, to rustics and to soldiers, before the judges of
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 129 
 
 his Majesty and the members of the University, suit- 
 ing his subject and his style to the audience, the place, 
 and the occasion, with a skill faultless and a tact mar- 
 velous, commanding the attention of the most illit- 
 erate and the admiration of the most fastidiously 
 critical ; in all, the faithful and the fearless embassa- 
 dor of " the Blessed and only Potentate." And this, 
 not for a year, or ten years, but from 1739 until 1791 
 for full half a century. 
 
 What a career ! Could more labor have been com- 
 pressed into half a century ? His energy never abated ; 
 his purpose never vacillated ; his cheerfulness never 
 forsook him. 
 
 You must remember Wesley's aim and purpose in 
 order to render him justice. He went not forth to 
 found a new system of moral or metaphysical science. 
 He went not out to establish a new sect of religionists, 
 or to found a new order in the Church. He went not 
 forth as a lecturer upon poetry, or painting, or physical 
 science. His mission was to win sinful men to ways of 
 righteousness, to lives of obedience to God, and habits 
 of sobriety, purity, and truth before men. He went 
 forth to fulfill the end for which Christ came to 
 our race and globe to turn men from darkness to 
 light and from the power of Satan unto God. His 
 end was, first and last Religion. Looked at in the 
 light of the New Testament Wesley must be, if we 
 would understand him. and justly estimate his rank as 
 a man, as a Christian, as a thinker, and as an organizer. 
 
 You will recall men who were peerless in the 
 realm of oratory. They could turn men's ears, and
 
 130 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 touch men's hearts, and move men's wills, and impel 
 men to brave and honorable deeds by the majesty of 
 their presentation of truth and the might of their ap- 
 peal to men's sense of duty. But they were not, 
 therefore, organizers of men or of societies. 
 
 You will recall men who were without rivals in the 
 realms of speculative thought ; before whose superb in- 
 tellects truth dispread her vast empire, creation unfold- 
 ed its mysterious secrets ; and the first principles of all 
 wisdom, and of all knowledge, and of all order, surren- 
 dered at their command. Men capable of all-absorbing 
 abstraction of thought, centralization of intellect upon 
 themes the profoundest with which created mind can 
 deal. But they were not organizers. 
 
 You can recall men repeat their names upon 
 whose vast imaginations beauty burst, before whose gaze 
 sublimity sat enthroned, through whose inner life con- 
 cords poured their harmonies and rhythmic waves ; and 
 their pens and their brushes or their chisels promptly 
 did their bidding in composing or creating visible and 
 tangible embodiments of the conceptions crowding 
 their inner world of thought ; until, by their poems, 
 nations were entranced ; before their canvas races 
 stood in breathless awe ; beneath their spell youth and 
 age delighted to move and live, to think and feel. 
 But they were not organizers. They were not rulers 
 or leaders of men, either in Church or State. 
 
 Distinct from all these endowments of soul and types 
 of manhood is he who can unite, harmonize, govern 
 and control masses of thinking, passionate, free-born, 
 moral beings, respecting the individuality of each, yet
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 131 
 
 combining all into a supreme unity of effort and con- 
 fidence of brotherhood. 
 
 Such men are kings by divine right crownless, 
 scepterless, throneless nevertheless monarchs of the 
 purest quality. 
 
 Loyola was such a one. Napoleon was such a 
 one. Wesley was such a one. He was born to the 
 purple if ever man was. He learned obedience by 
 the things which he suffered in younger days, and 
 thus became educated for the rank and work of moral 
 royalty. For wko best obey best rule ? Obedience 
 is the path to sovereignty. And never spirit of rev- 
 erence for law more true inhabited human body than 
 the spirit of John Wesley. 
 
 The capacity of his mind is seen in the perfection 
 with which it embraced the vastest and the minutest 
 circumstances and claims upon its regard and con- 
 trol. Surely this is a distinguishing characteristic of 
 greatness. Is it not the very greatness of Deity ? He 
 unites the immense and the insignificant. He " telleth 
 the number of the stars ; " " he bindeth up the broken 
 heart." What a contrast in the spheres of operation ! 
 Yet in each he is, and he acts like himself. He, 
 with one hand, holds the stars, and with the other 
 puts my tears in a bottle ; and the globelet tear is as 
 precious in his sight as the globe that marches in 
 pauseless majesty and ever-radiant splendor along the 
 frontiers of lonely space. 
 
 Wesley possessed this faculty and range of mind. 
 Thus was he fitted to become an organizer and an 
 administrator. 
 
 10
 
 132 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 He was certainly liberally endowed with the faculty 
 of statesmanship. He was a born ruler of men. At 
 the University of Oxford this was speedily and frank- 
 ly recognized and acknowledged. He was the fit and 
 efficient head of the " Godly Club " of students 
 who earned for themselves the nick-name of " Meth- 
 odists." To Wesley they looked up ; by Wesley were 
 organized and maintained in mutual interdependence 
 and concord. His aptitude for organizing was seen 
 and confessed by Whitefield. To it we owe it that the 
 fruit of Wesley's herculean labors remains in the 
 system called Methodism. 
 
 What he gained by conversion of souls he retained 
 by marshaling them into classes and placing them 
 under the oversight of leaders ; thus forming societies 
 and churches acknowledging him as their spiritual 
 father and working together with Mm in the great 
 mission of saving souls. 
 
 No braver hero ever trod this planet ; and no sterner 
 trials ever encompassed and assaulted a valorous spirit 
 than Wesley endured. 
 
 It seemed as though his presence in a town was the 
 signal for the letting loose of all the demoniac passions 
 of depraved humanity. Men became furious in their 
 rage ; women forgot their sex ; magistrates lost their 
 dignity ; clergymen became the patrons of the mob ; 
 oaths, ribaldry and obscenity rent the air ; stones were 
 hurled ; clubs fell with swift and deadly stroke ; mud 
 daubed the faces and stained the persons of the 
 preacher and his friends. They were hooted from 
 street to street ; chased for refuge within door and
 
 WESLEY AND ins HELPERS. 133 
 
 house, only to be dragged thence amid the wildest 
 rage of ruffians half-inspired by Satan and half by 
 whisky. They were haled to prison. They were 
 plunged in horse-ponds. They were trodden down 
 in the street. They were hunted like wolves from 
 hamlet to hamlet. Ballad-singers mocked them. Par- 
 sons from their pulpits exhausted Billingsgate in their 
 vituperation. Magazines opened their pages to the 
 pens of abusive scribblers. Bishops of London, 
 Exeter, Gloucester, denounced them and lampooned 
 them. Actors caricatured them in comedies infamous 
 for their coarseness and blasphemies. 
 
 John Wesley was denounced as a Jesuit and a secret 
 friend of " the Pretender." Charles Wesley and some 
 twelve of his assistants were presented by the grand 
 jury of Cork to the judge of assize as "common 
 vagrants." The city of Cork was for ten days in the 
 possession of a mob of persecutors headed by one 
 Butler, a common ballad-singer, by whom the houses 
 of the Methodists were smashed and the persons of 
 the Methodists insulted and wounded ; their lives were 
 held in perpetual terror ; their appearance in the streets 
 was the summons for a general assault by men and 
 women more like the citizens of Pandemonium than 
 of a town in Christendom with its mayor and magis- 
 trates and clergy. 
 
 And yet through all this Wesley's spirit never 
 quailed ; his self-control never forsook him ; charity 
 never left him ; pity for the souls of such wild, bar- 
 baric Christians filled his heart and flooded his eyes. 
 Sometimes his look awed the crowd into silence ; some-
 
 134 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 times his calm appeal to them, demanding what wrong, 
 what evil, he had done, thus to excite their malice, 
 turned the hyenas into lambs ; while, not seldom, his 
 very foes, tempted to listen to him, dropped their 
 bludgeons and wept as he addressed their hearts, 
 becoming actually his protectors through crowds 
 thirsting for his blood and sworn to take his life. 
 But his Master's spirit never faltered in his apostolic 
 nature. These sights and scenes but confirmed his 
 conviction of the need for such a work as that to 
 which he had consecrated his life and talents. 
 
 Perhaps history does not afford us a more striking 
 instance of the power of decision of character than 
 that furnished- in the career of Wesley. 
 
 He chooses his principles calmly, prayerfully. He 
 selects his methods with prudence and with tact. He 
 orders his action so as to fulfill his purpose. His aim 
 is noblest : the good the most lasting good of his 
 fellow men. To this he bends and constrains all 
 things. Friendship arid literature ; rest and recrea- 
 tion ; music and poetry ; science and philosophy ; his- 
 tory and biography ; scholarship and authorship ; the 
 power of the pen and the power of the tongue ; the 
 gift of organization and the genius which controls 
 men ; all these were concentrated upon the one ever- 
 present, ever-inspiring purpose of his life to save men. 
 
 Here was a focalizing object of life; and with 
 utmost intensity all his forces were condensed and 
 applied for its execution. He thought ; he read ; he 
 prayed ; he conversed ; he corresponded ; he endured 
 persecution ; he sacrificed home comforts ; he econo-
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 135 
 
 mized time ; lie lived by system ; he practiced self- 
 denial; he cultivated benevolence; he braved the 
 scorn of men; he dared the violence of mobs; 
 he endured slander; he outlived defamation; he 
 turned not from his purpose, faltered not in 
 his integrity, fainted not in his courage; but with 
 years grew m strength of resolve and in beauty 
 of character and in beneficence of influence and in 
 success of undertaking; meeting difficulties but to 
 surmount them ; opposition, but to obviate it ; suc- 
 cess, but to be invigorated by it ; failure, but to be 
 aroused by it ; until the age confessed his power, the 
 nation acknowledged his mission, and the Church 
 looked upon him as an instance of zeal, love, labor, 
 and Christian triumph equaled by none since the 
 days when apostolic evangelists went forth to "turn 
 the world upside down," to conquer the Roman Em- 
 pire and subdue the world to the obedience of Christ. 
 Self-reliant, self-possessed ; calm, clear-visioned ; 
 fearless, prudent; thoughtful, conscientious; tender, 
 strong; gentle, pure; rich in sensibilities, rigid in 
 logic ; open to all things lovely, recipient of all things 
 true; feeding the lambs, as well as guarding the 
 sheep, of the Christian fold ; onward the man moves, 
 undaunted, undeterred, uudistracted ; equal to every 
 crisis, master of every emergency ; a heart all aglow 
 with love ; a mind all luminous with truth ; a purpose 
 all clarified by simplicity; care cannot wrinkle his 
 brow; fretfulness cannot darken his eye; bitterness 
 cannot irritate his spirit. He moves in light ; and 
 sheds around his path gladness, serenity, as though
 
 136 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Ids life were " one grand, sweet song," compared with 
 which the fabled music of the spheres were dissonance 
 and discord. 
 
 Opposition confronts him ; but he simply replies, 
 " None of these things move me." New objects are 
 suggested to him ; but his response is simply, " This 
 one thing I do." His motives are maligned ; but his 
 answer is, " Whether I be beside myself, it is to God ; 
 or whether I be sober, it is for your cause ; for the love 
 of Christ constraineth me." If men would stop his 
 mouth and bishops threaten excommunication, his 
 ready spirit replies, " I cannot but speak the things 
 which I have seen and felt ; woe is unto me if I 
 preach not the Gospel of God ! " 
 
 THE HYMNOLOGY OF WESLEY. 
 
 Christianity began its career with music, and shall 
 celebrate its consummated triumphs with songs. Angels 
 sang, "Glory to God in the highest." Angels and 
 men shall one day join in singing, " Thou art worthy, 
 O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power." 
 Christianity shall perpetuate its influences under the 
 inspiration of music; for its redeemed immortals 
 shall " sing a new song." 
 
 And wherever Christianity has decayed, there 
 music has forgotten its spell. Despair and despond- 
 ency are not the parents of music. With Christianity 
 comes Hope, and this is the mother of music Love, 
 and this is the parent of song. 
 
 In every renewal of its power, Christianity has 
 " rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well "
 
 WESLEY AJJD HIS HELPEBS. 137 
 
 of music ; it lias taken the harp from the willow and 
 reset, retimed, reswept it. 
 
 'Twas so at the Reformation in Germany. Con- 
 gregational singing became a reality and a power 
 under the inspiration of the new life ushered in by 
 the instrumentality of Luther and his compeers. 
 
 'Twas so with the Wesleyan revival. Methodism 
 appealed to the heart through the conscience; first, 
 to sadden and disturb, then to pacify, purge, ex- 
 hilarate it. Wesley paid special attention to the sing- 
 ing of his followers, and wrote vigorously and re- 
 peatedly to urge effectiveness in this department of 
 public worship. 
 
 God gave him a rare helper to supply the need of 
 his converts and disciples in this matter. Charles 
 Wesley became the poet of the Methodist revival ; 
 and in many respects contributed as powerfully to the 
 perpetuation of that revival as did John. 
 
 No one who has studied the history of the Wesleys 
 has failed to appreciate the wisdom of the Highest in 
 selecting such an agent as Charles Wesley to be the 
 hymnologist of Methodism. His was a fervid nature. 
 He had all the sensibility of the poet : his impulsive- 
 ness, his fitfulness, his imagination. We are amazed 
 at the sweep of wing with which his genius was 
 endowed; to what altitudes he could soar; to what 
 depths he could descend ; o'er what an amplitude he 
 could gyrate ! Now he voices the wailings of a sin- 
 oppressed suppliant ; now he carols forth the exuber- 
 ant ecstasies of " a soul in its earliest love." Listen, 
 and you catch liiin chanting over the corse of a brother
 
 138 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 deceased ; hark ! for now he is pealing out the wel 
 come home of a spirit passing within the light of the 
 sapphire throne. 
 
 He goes forth with the workman to cheer him in 
 his faithful toil as he sings, 
 
 Thee may I set at my right hand, 
 Whose eyes my inmost substance see, 
 
 And labor on at thy command, 
 And offer all my work to thee. 
 
 He retires with the weary worker to his couch, and 
 soothes him into dreamless sleep as he breathes the 
 lullaby song, 
 
 Jesus protects! My fears begone I 
 
 What can the rock of ages move ? 
 Safe in thine arms I lay me down 
 
 Thine everlasting arms of love. 
 
 "Whether the believer work or watch ; whether he 
 Buffer or rejoice ; whether he fight or die ; whether 
 he bow down in closet fellowship with God, or blend 
 his sympathies with the chosen few, or throng the 
 temple with kindred worshipers ; whether he present 
 his babe for baptism, or celebrate his Master's dying 
 victory crowned love ; whether the saint be climbing 
 the hill, or whether from its burnished crests his 
 raptured eye travels over the landscape of the promised 
 Canaan ; whether the state be that of the backslider, 
 or that of the tempted, or that of the triumphant ; 
 whether Satan darkens the spirit with his dusky 
 wing, or deeper draughts of holy joy elate the exult- 
 ing heart as with " a chalice of the grapes of God ; "
 
 WESLSY AND HIS HELPERS. 139 
 
 whether entering into the life of faith here, or pass- 
 ing within the " choral circles of the sons of light " 
 hereafter for each, for all, of these experiences and 
 states the inspired music of Charles Wesley supplies 
 the meet and fitting vehicle of expression in his all 
 but Oriental opulence of composition. 
 
 It is impossible to say to how many thousands those 
 songs have carried consolation, from how many lonely 
 hearts they have expelled the demon of despair ; on 
 how many myriads they have distilled the healing 
 dew of divine assurance ; through how many they 
 have poured heroic fortitude, and floated foretastes 
 of the pleasures that are for evermore ; how many rude 
 tastes they have refined ; how many vulgar natures 
 they have cultured ; how many illiterate minds have 
 through them raised their hearts' impassioned long- 
 ings while in prayer they led astonished and grate- 
 ful worshipers beneath the shadow of the Almighty, 
 and before the mercy-seat. 
 
 The future of Methodism cannot but be an object 
 of intense interest to every student of history. That 
 she may be satisfied with long life, is the prayer of 
 her children ; and that that prayer may be answered 
 we also plead : Let the beauty of the Lord our God 
 be upon her, and establish thou the work of her 
 hands ; yea, the work of her hands establish thou it. 
 
 Of her present position, as to the numbers reached 
 by her ministry the world over, we have often heard. 
 Some thirteen millions listen to her ministrations of 
 truth, and share in her pastoral oversight. The sun 
 sets not on her dominion. Her people are found in
 
 GUARD'S LECTUKES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 every land, and abide in every zone. All climates 
 embrace them the winters of Hudson's Bay and the 
 suns of India play and beat upon them. They locate 
 in forests and they throng the marble city. Pacific 
 waves ripple upon their, shores, and peaks crowned 
 with eternal snow fling their shadows o'er their dwell- 
 ings. From the deep, dark mine and from the bank- 
 er's mansion Methodism gathers her congregations. Of 
 skins burned by tropic heat and of complexions fair 
 as the lily her scholars are composed. Tribes just 
 emerging from the h'lthiness of savagedom unite with 
 households embellished and enriched by all that cult- 
 ure and piety can impart in calling her blessed. 
 
 She has found men paupers ; she has made them 
 millionaires. She has found men ignorant ; she has 
 made them scholars. She has found men debased; 
 she has crowned them with glory and honor. She 
 has found men outlawed ; she has made them dutiful 
 and law-abiding, citizens. 
 
 She is in her second century ; and yet nor wrinkle 
 upon her brow, nor haze in her vision, nor stoop in 
 her form, nor halt in her step gives sign of wasted 
 energy and declining vigor. Still her sanctuaries are 
 Bethesdas, and her prayer-meetings Bethels. Still her 
 sons speak with the enemy in the gate, and her daugh- 
 ters are " all glorious within." Still she gathers in the 
 street Arab, and sends her missionaries to Orient 
 fields of toil and death. She multiplies her places of 
 worship at the rate of two for every day of the year. 
 Her doctrines are to-day as when Wesley died ; her 
 philanthropy is as broad, her relations to other
 
 WESLEY AND HIS HELPERS. 141 
 
 Churches as catholic as when Wesley said, " The 
 world is my parish, and we are the friends of all, the 
 enemies of none." 
 
 The world needs her; and she shall not perish! 
 The churches need her ; and she shall not perish ! 
 She believes still in conversion ; and she shall not 
 perish ! She still holds forth Christ crucified ; and 
 she shall not perish ! She still believes in the Holy 
 Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life ; and she shall not 
 perish ! 
 
 She has had dissension, but she lives ! She has had 
 bitter antagonisms ; but she lives ! A brighter future 
 is in store for her. The Spirit of Peace broods within 
 her council-chambers. The spirit of unity hovers over 
 her camps. Feuds shall be forgotten. Strifes shall 
 be no more named by her. 
 
 Baptized into the fullness of the blessing of the 
 Gospel of Christ, she shall move forth resplendent 
 with every virtue; all aglow with "the dew of her 
 youth ; " bright as the sun ; fair as the moon ; and 
 terrible as an army with banners ! And having con- 
 quered a world for her divine Head, and as she 
 reposes within the mild splendors of the latter-day 
 glory, even angels, as they bend o'er the scene, shall 
 exclaim : " How lovely are thy tents and thy dwell- 
 ings, O people ; the little one has become a thousand, 
 and the small one a strong nation ; I the Lord have 
 done it for mine own name's sake ! "
 
 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 "V. 
 
 SAVONAROLA, THE MARTYR OF FLORENCE, 
 AND HIS TIMES.* 
 
 IN the days of the Italian Republics the chiefs of the 
 sisterhood of cities were known by some special 
 epithet compendiously descriptive of their peculiar 
 charms and idiosyncrasies. Rome was the Eternal 
 City, Naples the Beautiful, Genoa the Superb, Lucca 
 the Industrious, Padua the Learned, Bologna the Fat, 
 and Florence the Gentle. This epithet, as a word, is 
 equal to our " genteel," but this word only partially 
 conveys the ideas comprised in the Italian word 
 gentili. In the mouth of an Italian the idea ex- 
 pressed by it includes all the amenities and agreeable- 
 ness which result from a high state of civilization and 
 social culture. It is of all words that which most 
 completely expresses what is, in truth, the especial 
 quality of the city of Florence and the Florentines, 
 and never was epithet more happily applied. It is 
 built upon the Arno, and is favored with the most 
 salubrious climate of the peninsula, and is the pride 
 of the refined and polished citizens. 
 
 Florence is indeed the city of flowers, and the 
 flower of cities. But it is not of the Florence of to- 
 day I wish to speak. We shall travel back full four 
 centuries ere we have reached the period in which the 
 
 * A lecture written partly in South Africa, atid partly in America.
 
 SAVONAROLA. 143 
 
 events occurred of which I propose to speak to-night. 
 The cycle of time embraced is full of the most thrill- 
 ing and startling events of the latter part of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 Savonarola was born in 1452, and suffered martyr- 
 dom in 1498, being forty-six years old when his ashes 
 were flung into the Arno. The year of his birth saw 
 the birth of the invention which, more than any other, 
 contributed to the elevation of humanity. It drew 
 forth thought ; it gave it circulation ; it secured for it 
 imperishable existence; it cheapened literature; it 
 emancipated conscience ; it sapped the basis of super- 
 stition ; it furnished the weapon of assault against all 
 forms of tyranny and all systems of error ; the friend of 
 freedom, the servant of truth, and the handmaid of sci- 
 ence. Before it ignorance dissolves as mists from the 
 pathway of the sun. Behind it stretch and rise and 
 flourish whatsoever things in heart are lovely ; what- 
 soever things in morals are just ; whatsoever things 
 in society are true ; whatsoever things in all worlds 
 are of good report, as refiners, educators, and ennoblers 
 of human thought, taste, and character. And all these 
 and more were born with the invention of printing 
 in 1452. 
 
 In 1453, when Savonarola lay wrapt in cozy blan- 
 kets, hushed to slumber by the melodious voice of his 
 Italian nurse, the thunder of Mohammed's artillery 
 burst and floated over the placid waters of the Bos- 
 phorus; opened pathways through the broken walls 
 of Constantinople for his fanatic warriors; pealed 
 forth the downfall of the empire of the Caesars, and
 
 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 X 
 
 planted the standard of the false prophet above the 
 cross which gleamed upon the dome of St. Sophia. 
 The conqueror was one of the most gifted and cult- 
 ured of his race and lineage. He was learned in all the 
 wisdom of his day; the master of five languages- 
 Arabic, Persian, Chaldean, Latin, Greek. He was 
 familiar with the geography of the world, with the 
 lives of Eastern heroes, with the principles of theology, 
 and with the arts of the sculptor and the painter. Early 
 bred to warfare, he was a successful soldier, if not an 
 able general, and the conquest of two empires, twelve 
 kingdoms, and two hundred cities is attributed to his 
 invincible sword. From the hour he ascended his 
 throne Mohammed resolved upon the conquest of Con- 
 stantinople, and he realized his ambition, while as 
 yet " our martyr " knew no braver joy than counting 
 his toes or admiring the nails upon his tiny fingers as 
 he lay upon his mother's lap, bathed in the mellow 
 light that streamed through the vine-leafed and mul- 
 lioned window. 
 
 The results of this historic tragedy were already 
 felt throughout the cities of Italy. The scholars of 
 the East fled from their city, from the relentless scim- 
 iter of the Turk, to find a cordial welcome in the 
 land of Yirgil, of Dante, and of Petrarch. They 
 brought with them the wealth of Orient literature in 
 manuscript, for whose possession cities were to rival 
 and outbid each other, even by fabulous sums. The 
 palaces of the nobles greeted those scholars as if they 
 had been princes ; the universities vied with each 
 other in the ardor with which they sought to decipher
 
 SAVONAROLA. 1-15 
 
 the time-soiled, almost sacred, scrolls of Grecian minds ; 
 Plato and Aristotle lived again and walked and ques- 
 tioned, idealized and floated upon the gossamer webs 
 of their sublime speculation, beneath skies as soft and 
 amid groves as fragrant as those of their beloved 
 Athens. The earthquake which shook the turrets and 
 bastions of the City of the Golden Horn to their 
 foundations upheaved the waters of literature from 
 their olden and narrow beds, and rolled them upon 
 other shores, there to scatter their spoils and give up 
 their hidden treasure-trove into what proved to be the 
 keeping of most enthusiastic guardians. 
 
 In 1482, while our heroic subject, immured in his 
 convent, studied the subtleties of the schoolmen of 
 the middle ages, sounded the depths of St. Augustine, 
 banqueted on the viands of Greek philosophy dis- 
 pensed before him in the manuscripts just named, 
 communed with such portions of the sacred Scriptures 
 as were accessible to him, the Moors of Granada had 
 bowed to the vigorous arm of Ferdinand, and ceased 
 to retain a strong hold upon the peninsula of Spain. 
 Hither they had attracted the learning of Arabia, of 
 Persia, of India, of Greece. Unlike him who hated 
 learning, and gave up the library of Alexandria to 
 heat the baths of the city, many of the Moorish 
 princes were the generous patrons of letters. They 
 were among the earliest discoverers of gunpowder, 
 and to them we owe the great invention of paper. 
 They were versed in chemistry, astronomy, and math- 
 ematics ; they encouraged the peaceful arts ; tropical 
 plants were introduced and cultured by them, as also
 
 146 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 irrigation and the production of sugar, while the 
 forms of their graceful, elaborate, and ethereal archi- 
 tecture were either mirrored in the soft-flowing waters 
 of full many a river, or reposed against the cloudless 
 azure of a Spanish sky. 
 
 After a possession of eight hundred years, the chiv- 
 alric, cultured, and warrior people succumbed to the 
 united forces of Spain forces improved by patriotism 
 and baptized into zeal for the true faith of a Chris- 
 tian. Granada was taken, and henceforth the Saracen 
 became an alien and an outcast from the most Catholic 
 of Catholic empires. What the Crescent gained upon 
 the Bosphorus was lost forever upon the banks of the 
 Guadalquivir. 
 
 And yet once more, in 1492, while Savonarola was 
 swaying the multitudes of Florence by his resistless 
 oratory, another Italian, born in the city of Genoa, 
 trained to the sea, given to the study of geography 
 and charts, and possessed by a sublime desire to pierce 
 the mists that hung upon the western wave, and teach 
 and plant the cross upon a new and wealthier shore, 
 wandered from city to city of Europe, visiting court 
 after court, with the intent of obtaining patronage 
 from the mighty for the furtherance of his magnifi- 
 cent dream. 
 
 To Yenice he had offered his project ; to Portugal 
 he had applied for help; to Henry the Seventh of 
 England he sent his brother, if haply he might win 
 his suit ; finally from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain 
 he obtained permission to expound his projects, and, 
 after prolonged and learned discussion, he obtained
 
 SAVONAROLA. 147 
 
 from them assurance of all needful help in the -prose- 
 cution of his daring adventure; and on the 3rd of 
 August, 1492, Cliristopher Columbus set sail for a new 
 world, and won a continent for his sovereign by the 
 majesty of his genius, opened a new and lofty porch 
 through which the luminaries of the Cross might pass 
 upon their benign embassy of " peace and good-will 
 to men," and spread new fields for enterprise, discov- 
 ery, and wealth before the frenzied gaze of Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 In 1498, five years after the conquest of Granada 
 by Ferdinand and Isabella, and while our hero was 
 suffering the last pangs of his martyrdom, passing to 
 heaven in his chariot of flame, a youth was singing 
 in the streets of a German town for daily bread and 
 for the payment of his school-master. Born of hum- 
 ble birth, but of honest, God-fearing parents, the 
 boy early evinced talent, and when placed at school 
 evoked the sympathies and won the admiration of 
 his teachers for his ease and grace in composition 
 and for his gifts of eloquence and elocution. Yield- 
 ing to influence he became a monk, rose to eminence 
 in liis convent, won the honors of his university and 
 a professor's chair. 
 
 Searching after truth and rest he visited Rome, and 
 returned thence disgusted and shocked with the pro- 
 fanity and hypocrisy of those in high places there. 
 In heart a Protestant, and in destiny the reformer of 
 Germany, the solitary monk that shook the pillars of 
 the fabric of popery proclaimed a new era for the 
 
 faith and freedom of men; gave his fatherland a 
 11
 
 148 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 classic tongue, and ushered in that day of progress in 
 science, in state-craft and civilization, under whose 
 splendid noon you and I bask and rejoice. 
 
 There could not be a more thrilling period, there- 
 fore, than that in which the cliief personage of our 
 lecture lived his eventful career. The night of the 
 past was gliding away, the dawn of this new day al- 
 ready gilding the horizon. 
 
 Florence had played no mean part in the drama of 
 European life. Her story, during the centuries im- 
 mediately preceding that in which our tale lies, had 
 been one of thrilling fascination. Her power resided 
 in her wealth. She was one of the first of Italian 
 Republics, Commerce created her wealth, her power, 
 her fame. Her nobles who aspired to place in the 
 rule of the Republic were compelled to learn and 
 practice trade as a necessary qualification. Guilds of 
 the trades were formed and framed by wisely defined 
 laws, and placed under the control of priors or deans. 
 There was but little scope for agriculture ; the citizens 
 were, therefore, compelled to manufacture. Silk and 
 cloth were the staples. To acquire the raw material 
 the East was visited even to China ; the north as far 
 as bleak, chill England ; the south to the States of 
 Barbary. The furs of Siberia, the cocoons of China, 
 the gems and gold of Golconda and Ceylon, the wool 
 of Spain and of France, all were levied to fill their 
 looms and load their hawkers and their galleys. These 
 Florentines were the chief bankers of Europe. Ninety 
 houses represented them in Turkey alone. They lent 
 to the monarchs of Christendom, and wielded the fates
 
 SAVONAROLA. 149 
 
 of peoples and states through their bankers and envoys. 
 Their customers included all ranks. Florentine 
 silks gave to the royal dame new beauty ; Florentine 
 tapestries covered the castle walls of British barons 
 with sumptuous and gorgeous colors. Along the Eu- 
 phrates and the shores of the Black Sea their vessels 
 pushed their keels. Popes were glad to borrow from 
 them ; and so influential had they become, that Flor- 
 entines were members of the principal and most 
 powerful embassies to the courts of Europe. 
 
 Foremost among the merchant families of this re- 
 nowned republican city was the house of Cosimo de 7 
 Medici. 
 
 The de' Medici family has made a deep mark in 
 the history of Europe civil and religious. The 
 founder, a Florentine merchant, won the esteem and 
 the confidence of his fellow citizens by his talents, his 
 wealth, his generous hospitality, and his public spirit. 
 He amassed a large fortune, which he made contribu- 
 tory to the embellishment of his city, the encourage- 
 ment of art, and the promotion of literature and 
 learning. 
 
 Of the descendants of Cosimo de' Medici the most 
 renowned in Tuscan life was Lorenzo, named the 
 Magnificent. All that scholarship could do to culture 
 and enrich his mind all that friendship and converse 
 with famed poets, artists, statesmen, could offer to 
 the refinement of his taste and the augmentation of 
 his knowledge was placed at his command by his 
 father during his youth, and by his own wealth and 
 taste when he had reached maturity of manhood and
 
 150 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 of power. His state was princely. Three country 
 villas were erected for his luxurious retreat from the 
 toils of political life and after the care of his bank- 
 ing-house. Here were collected busts, vases, cameos, 
 manuscripts for whose possession every city of Eu- 
 rope had been rifled, every library of Greece ran- 
 sacked. Here, in the cool of the evening, along spa- 
 cious and pillared corridors^ within the shadows of 
 poplar and citron and mulberry groves, with no music 
 save that of the nightingale or the mellifluous ripple 
 of the sportive fountain and the crystal cascade 
 here, and amid such scenes of munificence in art and 
 beauty in nature, met and talked the ripest scholars, 
 the sagest politicians, the painters most renowned, 
 the sculptors destined to perpetuity of fame in marble 
 and in bronze. Here one emulated Plato, another 
 rehearsed Aristotle, a third reasoned of immortality ; 
 until it seemed that Time had retraced his flight, and 
 the ages before the advent of the Babe of Bethlehem 
 revolved with all the far-famed splendor of the 
 teachers of Athens. 
 
 This Lorenzo gave a son to the Papacy in the per- 
 son of Leo X., upon whom, while yet a lad of thir- 
 teen, a cardinal's hat had been conferred by the 
 reigning pontiff. A son of Innocent VIII. married 
 one of his daughters ; from his house a second pope 
 was elected ; while from the same family descended 
 the queen-mother of Charles of France, through whose 
 policy of state-craft and pollution of court life the 
 Protestantism of France was all but crushed, and by 
 whose bloodthirsty treachery the massacre of Saint
 
 SAVONAROLA. 151 
 
 Bartholomew won for France a heritage of infamy, 
 for the miserable monarch a life of remorse and a 
 death of agony and terror, and for the she-wolf her- 
 self the detestation of her sex and her race wherever 
 her deeds shall be rehearsed and her name whispered. 
 
 This house had reached the acme of its power 
 when Savonarola filled the office of Prior of the 
 Convent of St. Mark. 
 
 The times, religiously, were dark and dreary ; re- 
 ligion existed but in name among the highest circles 
 of the Church. Pope and prelate and priest were one 
 in pollution, in worthlessness, and infamy. The lead- 
 ing orders of the Church, the Franciscan and Domin- 
 ican, had lost their primitive simplicity, purity, and 
 moral power. Sworn to poverty, they became afflu- 
 ent ; to humility, they were sated with ambition ; to 
 chastity, they were paragons of licentiousness. The 
 heads of the Church, it is well known, gained an un- 
 enviable notoriety for their licentiousness, avarice, 
 and mendacity. They were not ashamed to secure 
 wives for their illegitimate sons, and negotiate for 
 the hands of royal princes on behalf of their bastard 
 daughters. 
 
 But of all the vile ones that ever won the triple 
 crown of St. Peter, Alexander VI., who occupied the 
 papal seat during Savonarola's last years, bore off the 
 palm. Even the most loyal of Romanists are com- 
 pelled to confess with shame and loathing the vices 
 of the monster. He was of Spanish blood, a Borgia 
 by name ; he had studied for the law, but relinquished 
 it for a military life ; and thence was raised to a car-
 
 152 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 dinal deaconship by Pope Calixtus Y. Even then 
 liis infamies were public. When on ernbassage at the 
 court of Lisbon he was compelled to retire by order 
 of the king because of his shameless immoralities. 
 His avarice was unbounded. To gain his ends the 
 stiletto and the poisoned cup were ever at command. 
 No law, human or divine, hindered him in his desire 
 of gratifying his wishes or his whims. His court at 
 Rome might be termed a sty where human swine 
 wallowed ; a murderer's den where dark plots were 
 hatched and schemes of plunder, pollution, and death 
 concocted. He died from the effects of poison which 
 he had ordered for another, but which had been in 
 mistake handed to himself by his cup-bearer. 
 
 Thus perished the most infamous pope indeed the 
 most infamous man in history a proverb of reproach 
 and shame. He, more than any other, hastened the 
 Reformation of Luther. Such criminalities could not 
 but shock Christendom, and bring religion into uni- 
 versal and unmitigated contempt and derision. And 
 by so much was the course opened for the burly Ger- 
 man revolutionist. The system waited but the touch 
 of a firm and honest hand to shake it from its base- 
 ment and heap upon it the execration of a rejoicing 
 universe. 
 
 And if such were the head of the Church, what 
 could be expected of the members of that body ? 
 What but that which, sad to say, existed throughout 
 Italy? On the one hand was gross, brutal, stupid su- 
 perstition, with all its attendant impurities, false- 
 hoods, gross obscenity in practice, murders fearfully
 
 SAVONAROLA. 153 
 
 numerous, domestic trust violated, forms believed in as 
 powers for holiness, routine in services a satisfaction 
 for heinous sins and unconfessed iniquities. The 
 whole head was sick, the whole heart faint. Wounds, 
 bruises, and putrefying sores were there, without a 
 healing balsam or a skillful physician to arrest and 
 renovate. 
 
 And, on the other hand, where there existed supe- 
 rior intelligence and culture, what could be antici- 
 pated save skepticism, infidelity, mocking at things 
 sacred, sneering at the faith of Christianity, speak- 
 ing of religion as a mockery, and of the priesthood, 
 even to the highest officer therein, as but a means 
 for the acquisition of pelf or power or pollution ? 
 What wonder that Plato should rival Peter, that 
 Socrates should share the temple with the Saviour 
 of men, that Moses and Mohammed should claim 
 equal rank and wield an equal sovereignty ? Kings 
 intrigued against their rivals ; marriage was used as 
 a method for the acquisition of thrones ; the Church 
 was appealed to, by bribe and flattery, by either con- 
 testant in the arena of political warfare, and in turn 
 helped each, never failing to win aggrandizement 
 whatever might be the side chosen. 
 
 The light had become darkness, the fount of truth 
 had been poisoned, and its floods conveyed but pesti- 
 lence and death whithersoever they rolled. Men, 
 here and there, longed for some signal of the dawn 
 of a new and holier day. In cloister, in convent, in 
 university, was this feeling cherished were these 
 wishes fed. Dark days, it was felt, had visited our
 
 154 GIJAKD'S LECTUKES AKD ADDKESSES. 
 
 weary world. Are we forgotten by even God ? 
 Hath he shut up his tender mercies in anger ? Hath 
 he given up this orb to be pillaged by human fiends 
 and decimated by kingly tyrants ? Help, Lord, for 
 the godly man ceaseth ; for the righteous fail from 
 the children of men. 
 
 Savonarola appears upon the Italian sky a bright, 
 splendid, but evanescent star, sudden in its burst of 
 glory, brief in its hour of beaming, and gloomy in its 
 setting within a sea of blood. 
 
 The earlier period of Savonarola's life may be 
 briefly narrated. As the grandson of the physician 
 of the Ducal Court of Ferrara, he is advantaged in 
 the refining influences of the society with which he 
 mingles. He receives the best education of his age, 
 and proves an apt scholar and an accomplished stu- 
 dent. Disappointed in love and disgusted with what 
 he saw of the immoral life of the city and times, he 
 seeks refuge in the Dominican Convent of Bologna, 
 whither he fled without the cognizance of his parents ; 
 but to them he writes of his inflexible resolve to 
 henceforth devote his life to religious exercises. 
 
 He takes the lowest place in this convent, and per- 
 forms tasks most menial during the first year of his 
 conventual life. But his bearing, his culture, his 
 piety, his ability proclaim him fit for worthier station 
 and duties, and he is appointed lecturer or teacher of 
 the less erudite members of the brotherhood. His suc- 
 cess in this new role wins for him election as dele- 
 gate from his convent to a convention of the order, 
 held in Xorth Italy, where he meets with the most
 
 SAVONAROLA. 15^ 
 
 illustrious members of his order and the most culti- 
 vated thinkers of his age. % 
 
 Here, too, he could not be hid ; but, as a bright par- 
 ticular star, shone with such brilliancy and power as 
 to win the admiration of a distinguished citizen of 
 Florence Mirandola by name through whom the 
 great Lorenzo of Florence was informed respecting 
 the appearance of this new orb of first magnitude 
 upon the sky of Italy. 
 
 This resulted in his invitation to become an inmate 
 of the convent of St. Mark at Florence, of which 
 Lorenzo the Magnificent was the munificent pa- 
 tron. In Florence we find Savonarola, surrounded 
 by a confiding and admiring fraternity of monks, and 
 the object of much curious criticism in the literary 
 circles of which Lorenzo was the acknowledged 
 center. 
 
 His learning commands unbounded admiration ; his 
 humility and his aptness to teach render him a fasci- 
 nating lecturer to the brothers of the convent and the 
 citizens who join them as an audience when he dis- 
 coursed upon ethics, philosophy, and the arts beneath 
 the ample shadows of the noble trees adorning the 
 monastic grounds. 
 
 High are the hopes cherished by his friends when 
 he is selected as Lenten lecturer in one of the city 
 churches. An immense congregation waits upon his 
 words of wisdom, as for the first time he assumes the 
 office of preacher. But, alas, the doom of disappoint- 
 ment is their lot ! The speaker is in manner uncouth, 
 in speech hesitating, in voice unmusical and unskillful,
 
 156 - GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 in style of composition dry and shallow. The au- 
 diences dwindled as the course proceeds; until at 
 the close, but a handful remains within the spacious 
 sanctuary to greet the preacher's dispirited endeavor. 
 
 Ashamed, chagrined, disheartened, he retires from 
 the city and convent, and is lost amid the small towns 
 and scattered hamlets of Upper Italy for several 
 years. He returns a sadder and a wiser man. He 
 returns renewed, developed, matured welcomed as 
 before and loved as ever. Critical scrutiny warrants 
 his appointment again as Advent preacher ; when, 
 before a startled and dazzled crowd within the Cathe- 
 dral, an orator such as had not been since St. John of 
 Constantinople or St. Bernard of the Crusades bursts 
 upon the overwhelmed, the enraptured city ! Assidu- 
 ously had he cultivated his faculties of thought, of 
 language, of gesture, and of voice. The ungainly had 
 become graceful ; the awkward, dignified ; the un- 
 tuned voice responded with matchless flexibility to 
 the will of its sovereign its sovereign, for again the 
 pulpit had become a throne, and the monarch worthy 
 of it was the monk, the prior of St. Mark. 
 
 lie was a hero. The plague visits Florence. It 
 sweeps its thousands to the tomb ; they are buried by 
 seventy in a day. Commerce is paralyzed, business 
 suspended, local life stagnates. All who can, flee from 
 the fated city. Silence reigns in its market-places ; 
 the mourners go along its streets. They that look 
 out of the windows are darkened ; the daughters of 
 music are brought low. What an oppressive calm 
 broods over the fairest and gayest of people ! The
 
 SAVONAROLA. - 157 
 
 King of Terrors is upon the throne. He utters his 
 fiat he equips his emissaries he exults in the mad- 
 dening reign of his rule. The mighty and the mean 
 bow to him, the learned and the boor render him 
 homage. The fair and the foul give their necks to 
 his heel. But, while hundreds flee, and while even 
 the monks and nuns of the city in troops depart to 
 spots more healthy and salubrious, one abides. Savon- 
 arola will not abandon the sick, the dying, the 
 wounded, the bereaved ; he will even send the more 
 timid of his monks away while he himself remains to 
 organize metho'ds for the alleviation of the woe. 
 
 See his moral heroism courage. There is evil in 
 the city in its high places as in its low. There is 
 lewdness in their feasts and uncleanness in their lux- 
 uries of art. There is falsehood and deceit ; there is 
 rivalry and revenge ; there is materialism and infidelity ; 
 crimes are of constant occurrence ; the night favors the 
 assassin, the intriguer, and the libertine. The priest- 
 hood are polluted ; the monasteries are faithless ; the 
 nobles are tyrannical ; the merchants are false ; woman 
 is sullied ; life is a seething mass of vice. Over the 
 fated city the seer's eye beholds the tokens of a gath- 
 ering storm ; to his frenzied gaze an angel with drawn 
 sword hovers prompt to obey the behest of heaven, 
 and bathe its ethereal blade in the breast of the faith- 
 less commonwealth. And from the pulpit he thun- 
 ders forth the doom pending. He spares neither 
 prince, nor priest, nor pope ; evil is named and de- 
 nounced ; sin detailed and depicted ; from the most 
 pictorial portion of the Bible metaphors are selected
 
 158 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 as descriptive of Florentine life and of the penalties 
 of heaven against all who thus sin. 
 
 Lorenzo may frown, the young men of the chief 
 families sneer and satirize ; the pope may issue his 
 anathemas, the venal Franciscans may report him to 
 the pope ; and, greater than all, the offer of a car- 
 dinal's hat may test his courage and try his fealty to 
 conscience. Above them all he soars; upon them all 
 he looks down with an infinite repose. Though he 
 begins to feel the pyre being piled and the fagots 
 heaped and kindled, yet, like another reformer, none 
 of these things move him. His path may lead right 
 onward o'er the flint and thorn, across the burning 
 plowshare, up the chill, lone heights of sorrow ; ignor- 
 ing loss, yet o'er these he will tread ; for only thus can 
 the whiteness of the soul be kept, and thus not happi- 
 ness is greatness. 
 
 He was an orator. What are the essentials of elo- 
 quence ? There shall be intellectual vigor. Truth 
 shall thus be apprehended and logically arranged. 
 To make others see, the speaker must have clearest 
 perception of it. Let it be to him an enhazed object, 
 then to his audience it will be only a nebulous mass 
 and filmy, impotent to thrill and powerless to move 
 a passion or a purpose in the hearer's soul. He must 
 have something to say worth saying ; and that some- 
 thing must be to him a luminous, a living, and a lofty 
 reality, seen, grasped, believed. 
 
 There shall be imagination the philosophic imag- 
 ination. This is an imperial faculty. It is an invent- 
 ive power. It is that by which the mind combines
 
 SAVONAKOLA. 159 
 
 multiformity into unity ; and by the combination 
 produces a reality which at once satisfies the reason 
 by its truth and moves the heart into admiration by 
 its beauty or its grandeur. 
 
 Unlike fancy, imagination deals with the essence 
 of things. Fancy is light and airy in her movements ; 
 Imagination, stately and majestic. Fancy decorates 
 and embellishes ; Imagination creates and fashions 
 into massive and proportioned forms. Fancy is the 
 soft and silver moonlight in which lovers woo and 
 fairies dance ; Imagination is the sunlight through 
 which angels wing their flight on embassies of law 
 and goodness from luminous world to world, or in 
 which men of giant mold fight against and vanquish 
 the world, the flesh, and the devil, work and win the 
 food of truth by which great souls are nourished and 
 with which character far-famed and immortal is fed 
 and fashioned. ' This is the vivifying faculty of the 
 mind. This is the unifying power of the intellect. 
 This is the idealizing organ of the understanding. 
 
 With this power of thought Burke was pre-emi- 
 nently endowed ; so, too, was Webster. And in a 
 most extraordinary measure was it the gift of Emer- 
 son and the distinguishing characteristic of Thomas 
 De Quincey. 
 
 Fancy revels in variety ; Imagination exults in 
 unity. Fancy deals with the superficial ; Imagination 
 with the profound. Fancy delights in the accidental ; 
 Imagination in the essential. Fancy tabernacles in 
 the evanescent ; Imagination abides in the perma- 
 nent. Of Fancy it may be said, " the things seen "
 
 160 GUARD'S LECTUKES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 by her eye " are temporal ; " of Imagination it may 
 be said, " the things seen " by her " are eternal." 
 Fancy detects resemblances ; Imagination discovers 
 analogies. Fancy adorns by putting on Nature ; Im- 
 agination astonishes and adorns by bringing forth from 
 Nature. Fancy adorns by robing Nature ; Imagina- 
 tion adorns by disrobing Nature. The former adds 
 to Nature that wherewith she hopes to embellish ; 
 the latter lifts the veil and lets Nature reveal her 
 splendors. 
 
 There is the emotional endowment. We cannot 
 call him an eloquent man, in the noblest sense, who is 
 not generously equipped with emotional forces. In- 
 deed, his heart ought to be as deep and broad an ocean 
 of feeling as his understanding is exalted and vast as 
 a domain of thought. As the orb of night moves the 
 ocean into tidal currents, even so should his intellect- 
 uality sway and heave the orator's heart. Else, how 
 can he move his audience? Lacking this he may 
 convince ; but with it he both convinces and moves : 
 he both reveals the duty of the hour and impels to 
 its discharge, to its performance. 
 
 His emotions shall gleam in the eye, shall glow in 
 the feature, shall thrill in the piercing or tremulous 
 tones of his voice. The truth presented by him shall 
 set his own heart on fire, and then will enkindle the 
 heart of his auditory into a conflagration every heart 
 an active volcano. 
 
 Yet shall he be self-possessed, master of himself, 
 holding the winds in his fists, measuring the waters in 
 the hollow of his hands. He " rides in the whirlwind
 
 SAVONAROLA. 161 
 
 and directs the storm," both in his own and in his 
 hearers' breasts. For this alone is power over him- 
 self and over others. 
 
 Then there must be the moral the man behind all 
 these. This is absolutely necessary. He believes, and 
 therefore speaks. He cannot but speak the things 
 which he has seen and heard, thought out and felt. 
 Not as a rhetorician is he presenting his faultlessly fin- 
 ished passages and periods ; not as a hired, a mercenary 
 declaimer, to whom a brief has bees handed, and whose 
 business it is to make the worse appear the better cause. 
 Mistaken he may be, but he believes himself right. 
 For himself he has tested, sounded, the verity of that 
 whereof he speaks. It has passed through the fire of 
 his own criticism and experience. And he stands up 
 to proclaim in all ears, I know and I believe in that 
 I aver. 
 
 Earnestness and intensity are bred by this. He 
 pleads for truth ; he persuades for righteousness' sake. 
 Artifice and trickery he cannot tolerate. Interests of 
 momentous importance are involved. To them he is 
 consecrated. His theme possesses him. It is a fire in 
 his bones ; it is an impulse in his heart ; it is vigor in 
 his will. He is but the organ, the vehicle, through 
 and by which duty speaks, Deity voices his benign, his 
 imperative, decrees. For himself he seeks not. Favor 
 he craves not. Scorn he dreads not. One purpose is 
 his : conviction in his hearers' minds, surrender in his 
 hearers' hearts, reformation in his hearers' lives. 
 
 No thunder of acclaim can satisfy ; no wreath of 
 fame upon the brow can compensate. The one is
 
 1G2 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 breath ; the other is a weed. Manhood transformed, 
 conscience triumphant, justice enthroned these he 
 challenges as his only but exceeding great reward ! 
 
 What is eloquence ? It is a great soul filled with 
 great thoughts, moved by a strong conviction of their 
 truth, and pouring forth its utterances with lava-like 
 force of fiery relentlessness. There must be a clear 
 intellect to see, seize, and arrange truth. There must 
 be a powerful imagination to vivify, group, illustrate, 
 and adorn truth, to seize analogies and weave met- 
 aphor. There must be an honest and deep, pure heart ; 
 emotion equal to the demands of the intelligence and 
 the creations of the imagination ; wisdom and truth 
 coming into play gradually but certainly, under con- 
 trol mightiest when least boisterous ; exultant, severe, 
 tender. 
 
 There must be voice fitted to give forth the thought ; 
 a suitable duct for the feelings, under wise guidance, 
 subject to well-known rules ; heard by the speaker, so 
 as to kindle feelings in his own heart akin to that 
 aflame in those of his audience. Gestures, more or 
 less, are suitable to the current of feeling, style of 
 thinking; appealing; persuading; entreating; wav- 
 ering ; reasoning. Presence has much to do with the 
 effect of eloquence : as to bulk of person ; height of 
 figure ; cast of contour. The whole man should 
 speak, from the smallest toe to the shortest and 
 youngest hair; every intonation, every wave of the 
 hand, every quiver of the muscle, every glance, 
 should let loose the soul to seize and shake, to soothe 
 and stimulate the uncaptured listeners.
 
 SAVONAROLA. 163 
 
 Savonarola was confessedly an orator at first of 
 most imperfect expression, uncouth manner, impulsive 
 rather than fascinating. Although saddened when 
 first he attempted to address a Florentine audience, he 
 little dreamed to what a throne and empire he would 
 yet climb as a master of sentences and of sounds. 
 
 He was in stature of middle height ; complexion 
 fair ; temperament nervous ; forehead broad and lofty ; 
 eyebrows overhanging ; a mouth of flexibility and 
 variety of expression ; nose liigh and aquiline. His 
 voice had gained a magic range and compass even for 
 an Italian ; now soft, low, subduing as a mother's when 
 she would soothe the passion-fretted infant to slumber ; 
 now swelling into organ-like massiveness and sublimity ; 
 again terrific when denouncing, awing, foretelling 
 approaching tribulation. Was there a note, or stop, 
 or key, or pedal, in the amazing organ-spirit of man 
 this magnificent genius could not draw forth and bid 
 to his imperial purpose ? 
 
 His mind had been well trained and well stored with 
 the scholarship and knowledge of his time. He was 
 metaphorical ; he was logical ; he was poetical ; his 
 power of pictorial description has never been sur- 
 passed ; his audience saw, as he did, the scenes he 
 described ; they heard, as did he, the crash of the bolt 
 and the rush of the storm of vengeance. The largest 
 building in Florence was too small to contain his 
 hearers. All night long the peasants from the ham- 
 lets, citizens of distant towns, journeyed, that by 
 earliest dawn they might reach the gates of the cathe- 
 dral and secure a sitting or a foothold for standing. 
 12
 
 164: GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Amphitheater-like the building was, for the time, 
 arranged, and swarmed with living, longing, heaving, 
 human hearts, drawn by the fame of the illustrious 
 preacher ; every corner contained its occupant ; every 
 niche its rapt listener ; they climbed around and clam- 
 bered up the pillars that they might gaze upon the 
 inspired speaker. Poets, sages, statesmen, princes, em- 
 bassadors, hung upon his lips, and few forgot the magic 
 of his manner and of his appeals ; they wept, they 
 sighed, they sobbed ; time was forgotten ; sin appeared 
 exceedingly awful ; memory revivified the past ; con- 
 science put on her robe of judgment ; duties neglected 
 stared them in the face ; death, judgment, immortality, 
 moved forth to receive, doom, and seal them. From 
 the reporter's fingers the pen falls as his entranced 
 spirit goes out to meet the preacher's ; no business is 
 transacted, day by day, until Savonarola has preached ; 
 immorality is abashed ; social delinquencies are 
 checked, seemliness in dress and songs becomes almost 
 universal. 
 
 Children feel the spell of the weird man; they 
 are especially thought of by him, and special services 
 organized in their behalf. Some thousands at a time 
 swarmed to the cathedral to listen to the matchless 
 teacher. They were formed into companies, and sent 
 forth through the city bearing a commission to visit 
 every house, explore every chamber, and demand 
 from the owners whatever of art, of jewelry, or of 
 luxury they owned that suggested impurity or fostered 
 vice. These spoils they collected and heaped into a 
 large pyramid in the principal square of Florence, and,
 
 SAVONAROLA. 165 
 
 surrounded by an immense crowd, and in the gaze of 
 the magistrates of the city, and in most solemn and im- 
 pressive spirit, the pile was fired and entirely con- 
 sumed. However we may condemn such conduct, 
 we cannot fail to recognize the almost despotic power 
 wielded by the monk reformer. 
 
 SAVONAROLA WAS A STATESMAN, NOT A 
 POLITICIAN. 
 
 There is a distinction and a difference between the 
 politician and the statesman. The politician is full 
 of temporary expedients ; the statesman of eternal 
 principles. The politician deems himself the center 
 of the system of government ; the statesman regards 
 himself as but one of the lights revolving round the 
 governmental center. The politician thinks of him- 
 self ; the statesman of his country. The politician 
 feeds upon his country ; the statesman dies for it. 
 The politician honors the government by serving it ; 
 the statesman is honored by being permitted to serve 
 it. The politician acts for the present ; the statesman 
 labors for the future. The politician travels in an 
 ever-narrowing orbit ; the statesman moves with maj- 
 esty of step around a pathway ever amplifying. The 
 politician surveys the state from the benches and 
 through the f nines of an ale-honse ; the statesman 
 climbs the watch-tower of serene, truth-loving philo- 
 sophic contemplation, whence he can look both before 
 and after, learning from the past how best to steer the 
 vessel of the state through the unexplored ocean of 
 the far-reaching future. The politician is inspired by
 
 166 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 love of pelf ; the statesman by loyalty to principle. 
 The politician is impelled by convenience ; the states- 
 man by conscience. The politician believes all men 
 are liars ; the statesman believes he can find good in 
 every man. The politician believes in chance ; the 
 statesman believes in God. The politician reaches his 
 end by crawling, and dust is the serpent's food ; the 
 statesman walks with eyes gazing beyond the stars, 
 and with step which beats time to the very music of 
 the harps of God. 
 
 Savonarola was a statesman. Into the civil, the 
 political life of his fellows he deemed it an imper- 
 ative duty to throw himself; indeed, upon the down- 
 fall of the Medicean family and tyranny, the citizens 
 naturally turn to the Friar of St. Mark as to the 
 only honest and capable man to whom might be 
 intrusted the helm of the Republic. He undertook 
 to reorganize the state and restore the venerable liber- 
 ties of the commonwealth. His ideal was a theocracy 
 " a city of God." He fancied it possible to be a 
 statesman and yet a godly man. He believed it to be 
 the divine purpose that those who ruled men should 
 fear God. He cherished the conviction that truth 
 could underlie, and interlace, and engird, and give 
 strength, and symmetry, and sanctity to the govern- 
 ment of his beloved Florentines. He believed it 
 altogether desirable that magistrates should spurn 
 bribes; and hold even balances and office, not for 
 monetary aggrandizement or family enrichment, but 
 for the liberty and life of the state. Perhaps he was 
 mistaken ; perhaps he was only another of many
 
 SAVONAROLA. 167 
 
 visionaries who so theorize ; perhaps he was before his 
 age, as others of his class have been. As yet the history 
 of political life does not seem to have made much ad- 
 vance upon the facts of those olden days. Men then, 
 as now, laughed at such a dream ; then, as now, they 
 left religion in the vestibule of their halls of parlia- 
 ment to keep company with their umbrellas and their 
 wet-weather overalls. 
 
 Seeing that I am not myself a politician, I am 
 scarce able to say, with any thing like authority, 
 whether or no Savonarola's theories are correct. As 
 politics have been, should they continue so to be, I 
 should not care to take an active part in them. As 
 a minister of the Gospel I think it is not advisable. I 
 should not like to " stump a campaign " for either Whig 
 or Tory. I feel persuaded there is more likelihood of 
 loss than gain of reputation and influence in such a 
 course as that adopted by our martyr hero Savonarola. 
 Our business is, as I take it, to purify political life in- 
 directly, by seeking to further the purification of the 
 men of the state. Our work above all is to aid men 
 into a nobler life of conscience and a nobler life of 
 soul. Ours is to aid men in seeking to know and 
 feel the obligation of the right, and in seeking to 
 further their endeavors after the love which sweetens 
 life. Let me then influence and transform men from 
 the least unto the greatest, and in my profession I 
 shall have done no mean part in fitting men for the 
 honorable calling in making laws and administering 
 them. I may, in the most solemn sense, mold the 
 Constitution, secure its purity, and guard it from all
 
 168 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 who might dare to violate its sacredness or annul its 
 sanction. 
 
 Savonarola felt it to be his vocation to aid directly 
 in the affairs of government, and doubtless the state 
 of affairs rendered his co-operation imperatively neces- 
 sary. There have been times in the history of peoples 
 when the men whose callings marked them out for 
 governmental work proved so unequal to the demand 
 of the occasion that all who loved order and life 
 gladly availed themselves of help from any honorable 
 quarter, and welcomed it whether from the palace, 
 the studio, the cobbler's stool, the printer's press, the 
 cloister of the monk, or the plow-shafts of the farm- 
 er. In such times the man of most brain power and 
 of most honest heart, of clearest thought and prompt- 
 est will, is the man upon whose shoulders will be 
 flung the robe of responsibility ; to whose hands shall 
 be committed the banner around which shall cluster 
 the forces of freedom the lovers of law. Such a 
 one was Savonarola. 
 
 And surely his was no unworthy dream, bred in the 
 effete brain of an emaciated ascetic, but one altogether 
 fair to look upon, and fit to become national. He 
 would have a people make their own laws and choose 
 their own rulers ; he would have justice clad in robes 
 of sanctity, and law based upon honor, veracity, and 
 impartiality. He would have every citizen the de- 
 fender and the exponent of liberty and love. Industry 
 should be held imperative, and labor deemed noble. 
 Life should be girt about with reverence, and home 
 made the nursery of virtue. Around every honest
 
 SAVONAROLA. 1G9 
 
 calling there should gather the sanctity of right, and 
 upon every institution of art, of science, of benevo- 
 lence, there should rest the benediction of Heaven. 
 Unity should bestow strength to toil, to suffer, to bear 
 assault, and to repel invasion ; and impartial rule 
 should give scope for the healthful growth of indi- 
 viduality and personality. Religion should promote 
 every enactment, circulate through the branches of 
 commerce, and bear fruit in generosity, gratitude, 
 and humility. Feebleness shall be maintained by 
 strength, indigence succored by wealth, suffering sol- 
 aced by sympathy, widowhood shall command re- 
 spect, innocence win protection, and age secure 
 reverence. Labor shall be worship, and wor- 
 ship noblest life. The fondest hopes, the fairest 
 visions of seer and saint shall greet the gaze of 
 wondering observers ; around all the invisible but in- 
 vulnerable shield shall be suspended, and upon all the 
 glory there shall be a defense. This was the monk's 
 ideal ; for this he breathed, for this he sat at council 
 boards and organized the magistracy. 
 
 But all this implies a material fitted to the plastic 
 hand of the statesman. This is beautiful in the 
 politician's study. It is a delectable idea, One's 
 heart heaves high while such possibilities hover round 
 the imagination. But, will it work? This is the 
 question. Such a splendid scheme demands men 
 not shams, but MEN. It demands intelligence ; it 
 needs conscience ; it pre-supposes unselfishness. It 
 needs not a few men, but men in the multitude in 
 the mass. Given such rnateml, to fashion from them
 
 170 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 a Christian nation is the practical problem. Hitherto 
 we have not had the type of manhood necessary to 
 such an edifice of political life ; and, therefore, in- 
 stability, rottenness, office-hunting, Tammany rings, 
 etc., etc., etc. Nevertheless, from such an ideal of 
 government good abundantly may emanate ; for, when 
 sincerely held by men of broad and vigorous souls, 
 efforts corresponding will surely be put forth to aid 
 in manufacturing the man-material of which to erect 
 Christian, freedom-loving, law-abiding government. 
 Education shall become every man's right and within 
 every man's reach. This^is good. Freedom of dis- 
 cussion shall be proclaimed, even thus leading to de- 
 bate, argument, investigation, and ventilation of 
 topics. This is good. Liberty of the press shall be 
 pronounced here, and thus the most thoughtful, the 
 most cultivated, the most experienced of the age shall 
 aid in guiding conduct, in educating opinion, in shap- 
 ing belief. This is good. The pulpit shall be held 
 in esteem, when worthy of it, and thus shall the 
 moral nature of man be purified, the moral tone of 
 man be elevated, the moral life of men become rec- 
 tified ; and this is good. 
 
 So that it is, after all, well that such an ideal as 
 Savonarola's exists. A nation, though not altogether 
 fitted for it, is yet less unfitted, and is, as the ages roll, 
 increasing in positive meetness for the inheritance of 
 civil and religious freedom, such as I rejoice to know 
 is the pride and glory of the land in which I have 
 made my home. 
 
 Threefold forces of ^foes, as a matter of course,
 
 SAVONAROLA. 171 
 
 thronged upon him, gradually, resolutely : those 
 wounded by his denunciations of immorality, those 
 checkmated by his political honesty, those aggrieved 
 by his exposure of the faithlessness and foulness of 
 the head and chieftains of the Church these last the 
 most virulent and sanguinary of the three, and prompt 
 to avail themselves of the passions and violence of 
 the former two. 
 
 Alexander VI. has his eye upon this disturber of 
 peace, and will soon have his mailed hand upon this 
 emissary of the righteous God. Reports of Savon- 
 arola's sermons are transmitted to him for inspection. 
 How his blood must leap and rush as he reads or 
 hears read the terrible invectives of the monk orator ! 
 With what ill-concealed rage he meditates the pur- 
 pose which shall strike him down ! Anathema is 
 threatened if the magistrates permit him to again oc- 
 cupy the cathedral. Should this fail, he shall be 
 placed under interdict. 
 
 The reformer retires, but, after a brief period, ap- 
 pears once more unhindered, unmolested, only to hurl 
 newly forged bolts and reiterate with heightened 
 fervor the charges preferred against the vicar of 
 Christ and his base minions. 
 
 Savonarola calls for a council of the nations and 
 Church, that reformation may be demanded and in- 
 augurated. But this only arouses for the final conflict 
 the haughty spirit of the pontiff. 
 
 Steps are taken to entrap Savonarola into a trial by 
 ordeal of his credentials as a heaven-commissioned 
 agent. The day, the place, have been selected. Im-
 
 172 GUAKD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 mense crowds throng the square. Magistrates preside 
 over the eventful scene. The friends of the rival 
 friars gather round their heroes. The piles of com- 
 bustibles have been heaped ; between them a narrow 
 pathway to be trodden by the Franciscan and Domin- 
 ican while in fury of conflagration. He who escapes 
 unharmed is thereby pronounced the true and faith- 
 ful emissary of the Most High. And now the Italian 
 throng heaves deep and high with excitement ; con- 
 tending passions struggle for ascendency ; Savonarola 
 will not go through the fire but with " the Host" 
 This is deemed sacrilege by his opponents. A debate 
 ensues ; time advances ; the day is waning ; signs 
 of a thunder-storm are hailed by not a few of the 
 more influential of the group. The rain descends 
 in torrents. The crowd breaks up disappointed, 
 enraged. 
 
 A reaction sets in against our hero ; it is seized by 
 his foes. With his monks Savonarola retires to his 
 convent and to his pulpit to rehearse the doings of 
 the day and explain his conduct. Outside disturb- 
 ances have occurred between citizens, his friends and 
 foes. An attack is made upon the convent, but to be 
 resisted by armed and brave men. The walls are 
 scaled ; the gates stormed ; conflict follows ; blood 
 flows. The magistrates interfere. Savonarola and 
 one of his chief friends are ceized, and conveyed by 
 order of the magistrates to prison. Their lives are in 
 peril as they pass through the streets. 
 
 Once in prison, Alexander's spies transmit the in- 
 telligence. Speedy work is made ; arid upon the
 
 SAVONAROLA. 173 
 
 charges of deceiving the people as a prophet, of hav- 
 ing vilified the pope and denied his sanctity and his 
 sovereignty, our martyr is arraigned before a com- 
 mission appointed by his holiness. 
 
 He is examined, but denies "the charges preferred. 
 Then he is subjected to the torture. His emaciated, 
 nervous, frail body is roped, lifted by pulleys until it 
 touches the ceiling then let go, to descend with 
 speed, and by the shock rend his framework, shatter 
 his joints. Unconsciousness follows. He is released 
 and conveyed to a couch. As he regains conscious- 
 ness they ply him with questions, and extract from him 
 confession and acknowledgment of the charges pre- 
 ferred against him. These are carefully taken down, 
 read to him when restored to full strength of mind, 
 but indignantly denied by him as his honest state- 
 ments. 
 
 Again is he hoisted, strained, let fall, dislocated, 
 shattered ; again released and removed ; again sub- 
 jected to questions ; again yields to the inquisitor, but 
 to once more reassert the falsity thereof when restored 
 to his wonted balance and strength of mind. 
 
 Rut it is enough for his foes. The papers are for- 
 warded to the pope ; returned with the decree that 
 he be handed over to the care of the magistrates, and , 
 by these doomed to death by burning. 
 
 And yonder, in the city of his fond affection, in 
 the square where pyramids of paintings, statuettes, 
 jewels, articles of virtu had, in his presence, been 
 consumed by the people who oft had yielded to his 
 mighty appeals, and responded by tears and sighs and
 
 174 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 reformations to his impassioned oratory, the deed is 
 done. The fagots are heaped and kindled ; the 
 sacred body of Italy's best son feeds the flames into 
 fiercer fury, and in a chariot of fire the mighty spirit 
 sweeps home to join the noble army of martyrs. 
 
 So perished one of the seed-royal of this earth ; 
 another of the " goodly fellowship of the prophets ; " 
 of stainless morals, of most unselfish life ; born out 
 of due time, perhaps ; leaving to his countrymen a 
 rich legacy in the memory of a life consecrated to the 
 holiest ends. 
 
 Alas ! so have the ages too often treated their truest 
 benefactors. Such men, like their Master, full oft 
 come unto their own, bearing with them untold wealth 
 of benefaction only to be for a time objects of won- 
 der and admiration, then objects of contumely and 
 outlawry, and finally victims of the gibbet and the 
 stake. 
 
 Heroes have ever had to front opposition ; to bear 
 up against opprobrium ; to win their way with fearful 
 death in prospect ; and for their reward clasp upon 
 their brows a crown of thorns, or bind around them 
 the robe of flame as the mantle of their knighthood 
 and the symbol of their chivalry as valiant for the 
 truth. Goodness on this planet hath ever had a life 
 of struggle and of conflict. To preserve, to perpetu- 
 ate, its existence, it has had to wrestle ofttimes against 
 dreadful odds ofttimes alone and unbefriended ; 
 sometimes forsaken and betrayed ; and yet, though 
 crushed to earth, still juvenescent, undaunted, and 
 undespairing bearing on its heart the prophetic
 
 SAVONAKOLA. 175 
 
 assurance of ultimate and universal and eternal 
 victory. 
 
 We are made to be attracted by the Sublime as 
 well as by the Beautiful in human character as cer- 
 tainly as in natural scenery. There is no sublimity 
 comparable with the morally sublime. There is no 
 beauty like the u beauty of holiness." The mount- 
 ain hoary with the rush of centuries may not rival 
 the man strong in integrity, of noble purpose, and 
 generous even to death in self-sacrin'cing devotion to 
 the weal of his nation and his race, in the elements 
 of grandeur which compose his character and life. 
 Such is the surpassing order of the spiritual and the 
 moral that we seek to set it forth by selecting from 
 material things the outward and visible symbols of 
 which the spiritual is the absolute substance. 
 
 The sentiment called the sublime is copiously pro- 
 vided for in the domains of matter. The physical 
 universe is so fashioned as to evoke the emotion of the 
 human spirit. The whirlwind in its inarch of devas- 
 tation ; the sea in its amplitude and mysteries ; the 
 midnight heavens with their pomp of worlds and their 
 dark depths of glowing, moving, ordered squadrons ; 
 the forests freighted with the brooding mysteries of 
 monster, of peril, and of age ; the ancient hills riven 
 by thunder-shafts, embrowned by winds and rains, 
 mantled with snow, helmeted with ice, unchanged 
 amid the revolutions of empires that long have flour- 
 ished beneath their sheltering shadow these all exist 
 as nourishment for the spirit's appetitive longing after 
 sublimitv.
 
 176 GUARD'S LECTUKES AXD ADDRESSES. 
 
 But these physical objects fail in reaching the ut- 
 most depths of the human spirit. The sublime as it 
 appears in the life of a person, as it fronts us in the 
 character of a true man, moves us with more of elec- 
 tric throb, and binds us with a spell more necromantic. 
 
 A life sworn to duty ; given up to truth ; conse- 
 crated upon the altar of humanity ; as tender as 'tis 
 brave ; as gentle as 'tis strong ; as beautiful as 'tis 
 stern ; inspired by a passion which pervades it with 
 unquenchable purpose, binds it into a harmonious 
 unity, impels it with resistless energy ; as strong in 
 suffering as in toil ; as equipoised in success as in- 
 vincible amid disaster ; true when alone au when sur- 
 rounded by myriads ; unseduced by love of power 
 and unenfeebled by flattery ; keen to appreciate 
 scorn, yet inflexible amid the bitterest peltmgs of the 
 pitiless tempest of contumely, invective, and contempt 
 this is the sublimity of the sublime, winning at 
 once the admiration of men, the wonder of angels, 
 and the " well done " of God ! 
 
 It matters not to what portion of the race such a 
 one belongs. It matters not what skin robes his skel- 
 eton ; what blood leaps along his veins ; what suns 
 have bronzed his brow ; what language voices his 
 thought. It matters not in what age he lived, neither 
 how many nor how deep and wide the great gulfs di- 
 viding him from us and from other generations ; de- 
 fiant of all such limitations the influence of such a 
 man's character diffuses itself like the circumambient 
 air ; radiates itself like the impartial sunlight ; and 
 darts its power through time like the attraction which
 
 SAVONAROLA. 177 
 
 travels through sunless leagues of space and binds the 
 star upon the frontier of creation into brotherhood 
 with the meteor most proximate to the center and the 
 fount from whence the mysterious potency emanates. 
 
 So have we thought while meditating upon the life 
 and character of Savonarola. 
 
 He was an Italian ; we are of Anglo-Saxon blood. 
 He was a Catholic ; we are Protestants. He was a 
 monk ; we are fathers and citizens of the world. He 
 lived and wrought in the fifteenth century ; we have 
 our existence in the nineteenth. Five hundred years 
 intervene since he began his brilliant but, alas, too 
 brief career. 
 
 Nevertheless, the man " being dead yet speaketh ; " 
 speaks with an eloquence as rich, and a persuasiveness 
 as sovereign as to those who gave to his appeals the 
 tribute of their tears, to his heroism the homage of 
 their hearts, and to his patriotism the acclaim of their 
 unspeakable gratitude and undying veneration. 
 
 Our martyr's spirit never ceased to live amid the 
 Tuscan people ; soon they repented of their folly and 
 their ingratitude. The memory of their patriot monk 
 waxed in sacredness as years of tyranny and wrong 
 rolled over the city, of his fabulous eloquence and 
 life-long service. Amid the deepest degradation the 
 name of Savonarola fanned the slumbering embers of 
 their hope of emancipation from ducal despotism. A 
 paper was printed bearing his name ; and not infre- 
 quently the fainting hearts of Florence cheered each 
 other by repeating their brave friend's oft-reiterated 
 words : " Italy shall be renewed ! "
 
 178 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 If it be, indeed, permitted the holy ones from 
 earth to witness the march of this world's events and 
 to know the progress of plans whose initial steps they 
 tended and protected, to gaze upon the harvests 
 whose seed they sowed and watered with tears of 
 blood ; and if, from such source, they draw any of 
 their fullness of joy, who dare describe the rapture he 
 must feel who can look down on his beloved "Italy, a 
 united kingdom? Her petty princedoms have van- 
 ished ; her endless strifes closed ; Venice and Genoa, 
 Florence and Naples, revolving in planetary order 
 and increasing luster around Rome, the center and 
 the capital of the chosen ruler of the loveliest of the 
 lands washed by the classic waters of the tideless 
 Mediterranean. Italy free from Alp to Apennine, 
 from Turin to Calabria ; free in her press, free in her 
 constitution, free in her worship ! No dungeon en- 
 tombing a captive for conscience or his country's 
 sake ! Education building schools and gathering 
 thousands of the dark-eyed descendants of artists, 
 poets, statesmen, and orators, who filled the world 
 with their fame ! Commerce again crowding her ports 
 and loading her quays. Industry kindling factory 
 fires, and steam traversing her valleys ! An open 
 Bible sold in all the streets and the Gospel again 
 preached without molestation in Rome ! What in all 
 do we does he behold but " Italy renewed ; " her 
 sepulcher empty ; her grave-clothes removed ; fire in 
 her eye ; life in her footstep ; nobleness in her gait ; 
 before her hope, bright-visioned ; above her, God . 
 and around her his everlasting arms ! She takes her
 
 SAVONAROLA. 179 
 
 place in the foremost ranks of the progressive nations 
 of the world, and gives pledge of a future as bright 
 and as serene as her past has been troubled^ cloud- 
 piled, and dark ; fulfilling the anticipations and as- 
 surances of one of her most ardent lovers as expressed 
 in his " Song of Italy : " 
 
 For times and wars shall change, kingdoms and creeds, 
 
 And dreams of men, and deeds ; 
 Eartli shall grow gray with all her golden things, 
 
 Pale peoples and hoar kings ; 
 But though her thrones and towers of nations fall, 
 
 Deatli hath not part in all : 
 In the ;iir, nor in the imperishable sea, 
 
 Nor heaven, nor truth, nor thee. 
 Yea, let all scepter-stricken nations lie, 
 
 But live tliou though they die ; 
 Let their flags fade as flowers that storm can mar, 
 
 But thine be like a star ; 
 Let PJngland's, if it float not for men free, 
 
 Fall, and forget the sea ; 
 Let France's, if it shadow a hateful head, 
 
 Drop as a leaf drops dead ; 
 Thine let what storm soever smite the rest 
 
 Smite as it seems him best : 
 Thine let the wind that can, by sea or land, 
 
 Wrest from thy banner-hand. 
 Die they in whom dies freedom, die and cease; 
 
 Though the world weep for these, 
 Live thou, and love and lift when these lie dead 
 
 The green and white and red. 
 
 13
 
 180 GUAKD'S LECTUBES A.ND ADDRESSES. 
 
 ^VI- 
 ST. PATRICK, THE APOSTLE OF THE IRISH.* 
 
 fTlHE bare mention of sucli a theme generally ex- 
 _L cites a smile, sometimes even a laugh, and not 
 seldom an expression of supercilious contempt. And 
 this is not the less probable when a Protestant pro- 
 poses to treat it. 
 
 Any thing Irish is likely to produce such results. 
 Yet just now Ireland and Irish matters have quite 
 another side than that which elicits merriment or 
 creates amusement. They are not in an exceedingly 
 merry mood just now over yonder on the Green 
 Isle ; and other feelings than those most pleasant 
 have been occasioned by Irishmen even in our own 
 State and city, f 
 
 It is not a little remarkable that there should be 
 such a power to call forth the lighter sentiments of 
 our nature by the mere name of Ireland or of St. 
 Patrick. Some may be disposed to attribute this to 
 a lack of earnestness, or of depth of purpose, or of 
 practical, steady, and successful conduct, peculiar to 
 the people. Others might attribute this feeling to 
 the levity and recklessness, the good-nature and love 
 
 * A lecture written and delivered but twice in March, 1880, in 
 San Francisco, and Oakland, California a few weeks previous to the 
 author's return to Baltimore. 
 
 f San Francisco, CaL
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 181 
 
 of ease, the ready wit and buoyancy of spirit slightly 
 characteristic of the nation. I shall not stop to attempt 
 an explanation. Smile as you may, or sneer as" you 
 choose, it abides an indubitable fact that there is such 
 a place as Ireland, and a people, or race, or remnant 
 of race, called Irish. 
 
 I beg in the most solemn manner to assure you, 
 gentlemen, that the island yet gems the western 
 ocean's bosom, and the people were never more cer- 
 tain of recognition, and iiever more resolved to live 
 and make themselves felt than to-day. They are a 
 force in the Old World, and, for good or evil, in the 
 New. They challenge attention no less emphatically 
 in the southern hemisphere than they have, for cent- 
 uries, in the northern. And lest they should pass 
 onward unnoticed by reason of their apparent hap- 
 piness, they have no difficulty and no hesitancy in 
 taking the world by the ear, and compelling it to halt 
 and listen to their tale of suffering and the wail of 
 their famine-stricken populations. 
 
 Few peoples have had a larger share of misfortune ; 
 by whom induced, it is not my purpose to say. The 
 annals of Ireland are among the most dreary, dismal, 
 and depressing of the man}' penned by the muse of 
 history. I speak this with all deliberation. The 
 people may be light-hearted ; but no student of their 
 melancholy past can rise from perusal of their history, 
 light-hearted. There is only one other people of 
 whom I could say this with any thing like equal 
 truthfulness : that other people, the Jewish race a 
 people great in their heroes, great in their poets,
 
 182 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 great in their legislators, great in their philosophers, 
 great in their patriotism, great in their artists, great 
 in their persistent and invincible vitality, but greatest 
 in the wrongs inflicted and the woes unvialed upon 
 them by the rude and ruffian hands of secular priests 
 and sanguinary princes. 
 
 The Irish race is very old. It is proud of its age. 
 All great families and peoples are. There is no rea- 
 son to doubt the assertion that it is as old as Noah's 
 flood. The Irish were in the ark. They were in 
 Paradise. As Levi in the loins of Abraham, so were 
 the Irish in the loins of Adam. 
 
 It is a respectable antiquity. They came from the 
 East. Their language proves tl^em one in original 
 stock with those who produced the " Vedas " of India, 
 the " Zendavesta " of Zoroaster, the " Iliad " of Homer, 
 the " Orations " of Cicero. Max Muller has proven 
 this fact with unusual copiousness of argument. 
 
 It is not improbable that the Milesian Irish landed 
 in Ireland from Spain; whither the Phenicians of 
 Tyre and Carthage, in ages most remote, had migrated 
 to establish commerce and colonies. Language ren- 
 ders this probable ; religion proclaims it probable ; 
 arts and habits proclaim it probable. Who were ab- 
 solutely the first to occupy the soil of Ireland the 
 most calm-headed and competent authorities upon such 
 matters are unable to say. 
 
 But, though it may be an utter impossibility to de- 
 cide when or how they reached Ireland, or whether 
 they sprang from the soil and were as indigenous to 
 it as the Greeks believed respecting themselves, Ire-
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 183 
 
 land and the Irish, I repeat, are today facts of history 
 most incontrovertible, stern, stubborn facts. For 
 evil or for good as a blessing or as a curse Ireland 
 lives, moves, and has her being in this the nineteenth 
 century of the Christian era. 
 
 Of small dimensions when compared with Texas or 
 the Territory of Dakota, she takes her place side by 
 side with states not larger in her power to influence 
 the world. The peoples who have most modified the 
 history of humanity have lived, like Irishmen, upon 
 comparatively circumscribed territories. 
 
 Egypt, first in architecture and astronomic science, 
 is of but insignificant extent ; the valley of the Nile 
 her home. 
 
 Israel, the greatest of peoples in power over the 
 conscience and heart of mankind whether as Jew or 
 as Christian occupied but a petty portion of the sur- 
 face of our globe. 
 
 Greece, first in art, great in philosophy, peerless in 
 eloquence what a contemptible plot was given to 
 her! 
 
 Rome, the mistress of the world, greatest of law- 
 givers, greatest of road-builders, greatest of organiz- 
 ers, and second but to Greece in the majesty of her 
 language and the splendid oratory of her sons, grew 
 up to world-wide might and empire upon a scanty 
 peninsula. 
 
 So that, of those who most educated the intellect 
 of man, best trained the will of man, and with great- 
 est benefit controlled the moral nature of man, it must 
 be confessed that the bounds of their habitation were
 
 184 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 extremely narrow indeed. Therefore, upon the score 
 of size of local habitation, the Irish may not be despised. 
 
 Nor is Ireland deficient in sea-board ; for she is an 
 island. The harbors are numerous and they are safe. 
 Lough Foyle, Carrickfergus and Carlingford Bays, 
 the Cove of Cork, the Shannon from the sea to Lim- 
 erick, Clew Bay as noble as that of Naples with 
 others, testify to the facilities for commerce created in 
 the coast-line of the island. Nor is she deficient in 
 water within her coasts. There is no dearth of stream 
 or river. There is no lack of fountain or of lake. 
 And as to rain well, in no spot might hydropathic 
 establishments be erected with less expense or incon- 
 venience. Eight months of the year there is rain. 
 
 Greener grass grows not than in her valleys. Fair- 
 er flowers bloom not than in her hedgerows. Fatter 
 hogs wallow not than in her ditches ; butter more 
 delicious than her Cork brand ; nor potatoes more 
 floury than those dug from her fields. And as for 
 the mountain dew that smiles at the gauger as it 
 trickles in mellow drops along the convolutions of 
 the worm of the still, far up in the glen, where only 
 the moonbeams see and the fairies hear it as for that 
 you must taste it for yourselves. 
 
 The inhabitants of Ireland to-day are not at all a 
 homogeneous people. They are quite as heterogene- 
 ous as the English, whose greatness has been by some 
 largely attributed to the varieties of the blood min- 
 gling in the modern Englishman's veins. 
 
 First came the Milesian Irish, the uncertainty of 
 whose origin I have already noticed.
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 185 
 
 Then there were the Norsemen the Danes the 
 daring, fearless pirates of the age in which they be- 
 gan their series of descents upon the Irish coasts. 
 Their career was one of blood, pillage, massacre. 
 They burned monasteries; they pillaged churches; 
 they ravished women ; they slaughtered young and 
 old with relentless, though oft-opposed, violence. Yet 
 they were never completely expelled from the land. 
 Though at Clontarf, near Dublin, one of the most 
 brilliant of battles was fought, and one of the bravest 
 of monarchs fell Brian Boroihme still, when the 
 Normans landed, they found Danes settled in Dublin, 
 Wexford, Waterford, and associated by marriage with 
 the native princes and peoples, as though they had 
 made up their former feuds. 
 
 Next came the Anglo-Normans, who began to 
 conquer and to win their way in the reign of Henry 
 II., and from whom descended the Fitzgeralds, the De 
 Lacys, the Barrys, the De Burghs; who finally so 
 fell in love with Ireland and Irish genius and Irish 
 manners and Irish girls that, losing their love for 
 England, they positively became, in hatred thereto, 
 " more Irish than the Irish." 
 
 There are the Scotch, planted in the North of Ire- 
 land by Elizabeth and James I., from whom de- 
 scended not a few of the men most brave in the 
 American Revolutionary struggle ; most sagacious in 
 the formation of the new Republic ; and, since then, 
 most successful in the commercial life of the great 
 mercantile centers of New York, Philadelphia, Bal- 
 timore, and Chicago.
 
 186 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 There are the descendants of the soldiers who 
 fought with Cromwell, and were rewarded by gifts 
 of confiscated estates and farms Puritans of the 
 Puritans. 
 
 There are the Huguenots, compelled to leave their 
 lovely France by the bigoted Louis XIV., and from 
 whom have sprung some of the ablest judges and 
 most eloquent divines. 
 
 There are the Germans of Limerick and Tip- 
 perary and Kerry, who, flying for conscience' sake 
 from the Rhine, found, under Queen Anne's govern- 
 ment, protection and farms on the banks of the 
 Shannon. 
 
 I do not think I ever closed a volume with sadder 
 heart than when I laid down the History of Ireland. 
 It is a dreary and a desolate record. It is the story of 
 a conquered people. It is a tale of woe, of strife, of 
 fighting with foes from without and foes from within. 
 I could not fail to perceive that the bitterest enemies 
 of Ireland were those of her own household. I could 
 not fail to see that their wretched system of provincial 
 kingships entailed naught but feebleness, and gen- 
 erated naught but envy, border war, incessant rivalries, 
 and interminable feuds. Unity was but a name ; by 
 no means a reality. How could there be other than 
 perpetual possibilities of antagonism, when an island 
 of such dimensions owned the sovereignty of at least 
 four monarchs ? How could there be other than im- 
 intermitting heart-burnings among a people by whom 
 provision must be made for the princely sons and 
 daughters of these four monarchs ?
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 1ST 
 
 The natural condition of society was war. The 
 very, inability to agree among themselves to-day, in 
 our city, characteristic of the Irish political clubs, is 
 a sure and certain proof of the lineage of their mem- 
 bership. Ireland lias always enjoyed a good fight. 
 It is her life her meat and her drink. In an atmos- 
 phere surcharged with elements of commotion she 
 Jives, moves, and has her being. 
 
 It is either a fight between physical-force and moral- 
 force men ; or between Home Rulers and Anti-Home 
 Rulers ; or between the Protestant Church and the 
 Roman Church ; or between Orangemen and Ribbon- 
 meii ; or between tenants and landlords ; or between 
 followers of James the Second and followers of Wil- 
 liam the Third ; or between the Irish outside the Pale 
 and the English inside the Pale ; or the house of Des- 
 mond against the house of Thomond ; or the house of 
 O'Neill against the house of O'Rourke ; or the Irish 
 against the Danes ; or the King of Munster against 
 the King of Ulster. 
 
 The annals are filled with tales of such petty and 
 pigmy conflicts. One could almost come to believe 
 that some dread, mysterious, and most cruel fate pre- 
 sided at the birth of a people whose history is such an 
 unbroken series of disaster and defeat, suicidal strife 
 and abortive effort. I have come to the conclusion 
 that the best thing left an Irishman who loves liia 
 birthplace is to leave it. 
 
 Sadness is met with in everything Irish -purely 
 Irish : in the deserted village ; in the mud-wall cabin ; in 
 the miserable potato plot ; in the half-naked children ;
 
 188 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 in the very songs chanted and in the minor-key music 
 so often set to them ; in the broken bridges of their tor- 
 rent streams ; alM, sadder still, in the sunken-arched 
 type of nose, characteristic of the Irish face ; every- 
 where appealing, to whatever of pity and sentiment 
 exist in a tourist's heart. In the grim shadows of the 
 past the people sit a crownless and broken-stringed 
 harp, the fitting symbol of the abomination of desola- 
 tion to which this race has been doomed. 
 
 Since the Eeformation the lot of Ireland has been 
 one of woe. Ireland never accepted the Reformation. 
 It was the religion of a foreign master, and this in- 
 tensified her antagonism to it. Her religion added 
 fuel to the fires of her hate of England. Her love 
 for the pope was ever superior to her regard for the 
 English monarch. And, as the Irish rebel was gen- 
 erally an Irish Romanist, when punished for his re- 
 bellion he could not persuade himself to believe that 
 he was not punished for his religion. Not because he 
 was a papist, indeed, was he punished at all times ; 
 but because the papist was also the rebel. 
 
 "Tis true he was also punished for the crime of loy- 
 alty to his faith. No one can have read the history of 
 Ireland in the eighteenth century, as told by Lecky, 
 without being assured that Irish Romanists, as such, 
 and because such, suffered every indignity, and 
 crouched beneath the cruelest and most unjust civil 
 disabilities. Every effort that English Protestantism 
 could suggest was put forth to compel the Irish to 
 forsake the faith of their fathers and receive the faith 
 of their conquerors. By education, by social contempt,
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 189 
 
 by laws of inheritance, by legislation excluding from 
 municipal office, by tithe rent for the support of the 
 Church of but one-seventh of the population, by laws 
 forbidding schools conducted by members of their 
 own religion, did the dominant class insult domestic 
 affections, love of country, sacredness of conscience. 
 
 No wonder the native Irish hate England. It were 
 not human nature to feel otherwise. And, however 
 we may deplore it, we are compelled to confess and 
 admit there has been no lack of cause for the unhappy 
 sentiment. 
 
 Ireland's history, however, is not within the scope 
 of my address to discuss; but with you to wander 
 back to one of the comparatively bright and pleasant 
 ages in that history. For few eras in the history of 
 my native land surpass that in which Saint Patrick 
 wrought, and over which his salutary influence was 
 most emphatically felt and appreciated. 
 
 What Saint Patrick wrought must have been of 
 highest worth to have secured for the worker an em- 
 balmment and enshrinement so sacred and so tender 
 within the hearts of Irishmen for 1300 years. No 
 Pharaoh found lodgment in a prouder pyramid than 
 that built for Saint Patrick of the myriad hearts of 
 grateful, reverential Irish believers. He died in the f 
 fifth century. Yet over the gulf of ages his influ- 
 ence has traveled. Through those centuries his life 
 diffuses its aromatic fragrance. His name is still a 
 magic spell. To spots supposed to have been hallowed 
 by his touch, or sacred from the shadow which he cast 
 upon them, hundreds in this age have paid their eager
 
 190 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 pilgrimage, persuaded that in such spots it was alto- 
 gether possible to obtain at once the blessed riddance 
 of sin's guilt and of the body's ills. 
 
 Such is the majesty of goodness ! Such is the im- 
 mortality of a consecrated life ! Such is the sponta- 
 neous homage rendered by unsophisticated humanity 
 to embodied gentleness, heroism, piety, and self-sacri- 
 fice ! Bad as we sometimes think our common nature 
 to be, its responsiveness to such a life as Patrick's helps 
 to redeem it from utter loathing and distrust. 
 
 No Homer-like singer was he ; weaving all loveli- 
 ness and grandeur of nature, all beauty and bravery 
 of man, all sublimity and sacredness of heroes and of 
 gods, into an imperishable epic. 
 
 No warrior was he, leading forth innumerous hosts ; 
 fired with one passion patriotism ; aiming at one 
 end liberty; in every action, victorious; over every 
 tyrant, triumphant ; peace for untold generations the 
 fruit of his endeavors ; and freedom for conscience, 
 life, and limb, the heirloom of unnumbered house- 
 holds, secured by his bravery. 
 
 No sage was he, as we in modern days are, or as 
 they in days Platonic were wont to speak. No sage 
 was he, from whose all-piercing ken no star withheld 
 its secrets ; no flower refused to blush its science ; no 
 living thing enveiled its meaning ; no depth had dared 
 to say nor height " 'Tis not in me." 
 
 No, no ; not one of these was he. Though, with 
 whatever was noble or was brave, was beautiful or was 
 true, his southward-looking soul delighted to hold en- 
 trancing fellowship.
 
 SATSTT PATRICK. 191 
 
 I have found it all but impossible to say where St. 
 Patrick was born. The statements of his sixty biog- 
 raphers have not settled the matter beyond power 
 of contradiction. The opinions entertained upon the 
 matter may be narrowed to two localities : one inclining 
 to the belief that he was born in France ; the other, 
 that he was born in what is now, but was not in his 
 day, Scotland, at a place called Kilpatrick. Certain it 
 is he was not born in Ireland ; but he was carried 
 there from one of those localities as a slave taken in 
 war, and for years performed the work of a slave for 
 one ISTulcho, a chieftain in that part of Ireland known 
 to-day as the County Antrim. While there he saw 
 the paganism of the people, and, having been trained 
 in Christian truth and grace in his father's house, his 
 soul burned with desire to bring the people of this 
 land into the possession of the new and better life of 
 which he had personal experience. 
 
 Escaping from his seven years' servitude to his 
 home, he never forgot the place or people of his 
 bond-slave life. In dreams he often saw them calling 
 on him to return to them and teach them some holier 
 truths than their own priesthood knew or taught. His 
 maternal uncle was Saint Martin of Tours, to whom he 
 paid a visit ; and at once devoting himself to the vo- 
 cation of the ministry in purpose, entered upon the 
 studies preparatory thereto. It is said he joined one 
 of the monastic orders of the south the Augustin- 
 ian visited Rome, saw and received the benediction 
 of the then Bishop of Rome, Pope Celestine ; from 
 whom he received a commission to take with him
 
 192 GUAKD'S LECTUKES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 twenty fellow-missionaries and make, to the Celtic 
 people, the offer of Christianity. He landed on the 
 coast of Wicklow, but not meeting with much wel- 
 come there, pushed out to sea, and finally landed in 
 what is now called Dundrum Bay, County Down. 
 
 In that neighborhood he began his missionary work. 
 From the chief men of the locality he received hospi- 
 tality and ready welcome for his teachings ; won many 
 to the truth, and dedicated his first church, which had 
 formerly been a barn. He sought out his former 
 master, Nulcho ; but in vain tried to win him to 
 Christianity. Yet he was not without fruit for his 
 labors among the inhabitants; many of whom ac- 
 cepted the Gospel, and from whom he selected and or- 
 dained priests and formed churches. 
 
 His wish was to visit Tara the seat of the monarch 
 of Ireland ; and to do so upon the occasion of a great 
 national religious festival. It was his fixed purpose 
 to seek first the favor and conversion of the kings and 
 princes and chieftains of the land, sure of winning 
 the people if once he had conquered their rulers. 
 
 Nor did -he attempt in vain. After deducting from 
 the results attributed to his labors by ardent and 
 venerating annalists, we are safe in believing that pa- 
 ganism as the national religion of Ireland gave place 
 to Christianity. Druidism lost its spell. The religion 
 of the Galilean once again conquered. Kings be- 
 came disciples of the Nazarene. Chieftains were 
 baptized into the faith of the Gospel. Children re- 
 ceived religious instruction, and became enrolled as 
 members of the Church of Christ. Pastors were
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 
 
 educated and ordained to the work of the ministry ; 
 and thereby the hundred lands were given for churches, 
 and this upon a very generous scale. Of the highest- 
 born were n't men found as overseers bishops. 
 Schools arose, and without difficulty were speedily 
 crowded to overflowing with earnest and diligent 
 seekers after knowledge. Christianity, in one word, had 
 won its way to supremacy without the sacrifice of a 
 solitary martyr's blood and life. Ah ! what a simple 
 saying ; but what a sublime one ! Christianity, with 
 its rest for weary hearts, and its peace for guilty con- 
 sciences ; with its gift of grace for the feeble will, and 
 its pledge of victory over evil for the selfish heart ; 
 with its benign doctrines of the Fatherhood of God 
 and the Brotherhood of Men ; with its might of 
 kingship over all things, and its sure and certain hope 
 of personal immortality, both for body and for soul ! 
 Christianity, waking intellect from torpor into manly 
 life of thought, investigation, and unending growth in 
 vigor of power and in acquisition of knowledge ! 
 Christianity, the friend of woman, of the helpless, 
 and of the slave! Christianity, parent of all arts and 
 patroness of all sciences! scattering witli unstinted 
 hand the germs of highest civilization, and summon- 
 ing the prostrate spirit from vassalage and lust, igno- 
 rance and superstition, into the liberty of enlightened 
 reason, sanctified affection, and rational belief ! Chris- 
 tianity, solace of the broken-hearted ! healer of the 
 wounded spirit ! f ulfiller of man's loftest aspirations 
 and nourisher of man's sublimest hopes lifting the 
 thing into the rank of a person, and the chattel into
 
 194 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the consciousness of a self -proprietor placing upon 
 the brow of the lowliest the diadem of sovereignt} 7 , 
 and on the spirit of the humblest the vesture of a 
 king and priest, for whose, culture all nature moves 
 for whose growth all forces act ! 
 
 Druidism : this was the name of the religion be- 
 lieved in by the Irish when St. Patrick began his 
 work among them. But little is known of Druidism. 
 Caesar and Pliny are the two chief sources of infor- 
 mation. And what they offer is indeed brief, though 
 suggestive. Gaul was once subject to Druidism. 
 Britain in Caesar's day was the center. Ireland be- 
 came a stronghold. The Roman conquerors of Britain 
 found it no small matter to crush out Druidism, but 
 they did, chasing the Druids from the mainland to 
 the island of Anglesea, where the priests were cut 
 off with a terrible slaughter. 
 
 The priesthood wielded an awful and vast control 
 over their votaries. Its members were carefully and 
 elaborately trained for their office, the education ex- 
 tending over twenty years. The secrets were for- 
 bidden to be written, carved, or graven ; they were 
 sacredly committed to memory. The sun was an 
 object of supreme worship. Fire, his symbol, was 
 deemed sacred. Once a year all households, having 
 extinguished their fires, kindled them afresh from the 
 chief Druid's altar. They taught the unity of God, 
 the immortality of the soul, and believed in trans- 
 migration, even as Pythagoras, as the Brahmin, and 
 as the Kaffir of South Africa. They were Magi the 
 wise men of the West, and their origin is, no doubt,
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 195 
 
 one with that of the wise men and fire-worshipers of 
 the far-off East. 
 
 They were students of botany, medicine, and as- 
 trology. They were free from military service and 
 from taxation. They were at once the clergy and the 
 educators of the Celtic people. They used the dread- 
 ful weapon of excommunication against all who 
 divulged their secrets or disowned their authority. 
 
 Groves of oak were their chosen retreats. The oak 
 was to them a symbol of the Divine. The mistletoe, 
 a parasite attached to the oak, was deemed of rarest 
 virtue ; and when removed from the oak ceremonies 
 the most impressive occurred. The priest the arch- 
 Druid dressed in white, moved forth, a golden knife 
 in his hand, gold upon his brow and girdle, severed 
 the mistletoe from the branch, and caught it in his 
 priestly vestment, two milk-white bulls being sacrificed 
 in celebration of the auspicious event. " The mistle- 
 toe was called the all-heal, and its virtues were believed 
 to be very great." 
 
 " But the most remarkable of all Druidical charms 
 was the anguineum or snake's egg. It was said to be 
 produced from the saliva and frothy sweat of a 
 number of serpents writhing in an entangled mass, and 
 to be forced up into the air as soon as formed. The 
 Druid, fortunate above his fellows, who managed, as 
 it fell, to catch it in his sagum. or cloak, rode off at 
 full speed on a horse that had been in waiting for 
 him, pursued by the serpents till they were stopped 
 by the intervention of a running stream." According 
 
 to an ancient authoritv, the egg was about the size of 
 14
 
 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 a moderately large round apple, and " when thrown 
 into the water would float against the current even 
 if encased in gold." * 
 
 Though learned, the ceremonies of the Druids in- 
 cluded most inhuman rites even to the extent of 
 human sacrifices. In mechanics they had attained to 
 no mean skill ; as may be seen by the remains of Stone- 
 henge, " which was the cathedral of the arch-Druid 
 of Britain." Avebury is also another remnant of their 
 architecture ; originally formed " in the shape of a 
 circle with a serpent attached to it the circle being 
 regarded as the symbol of the Supreme Being ; and 
 the serpent of the Divine Son." 
 
 Patrick found Ireland opulent in melody of music 
 and of songs. The bards held a dignified position. 
 They wore colors second but to the monarch's. They 
 were the historians of their day. Of most retentive 
 memories, they recorded upon these mental tablets 
 the brave deeds and the brilliant victories of chieftain 
 and of prince. They treasured up their virtues and 
 rehearsed them in days of feast and battle. They 
 chanted elegies over the dead, and poured valor into 
 the bosoms of the living by their heroic numbers. 
 
 ]S r or were they silent when deeds of wrong had 
 been committed ; for with withering satire they could 
 lash or lance the tyrant or the spoliator. They fulfilled 
 the duties of our modern censor the press ; and 
 oft compelled abandonment of crime and threw a 
 shield invulnerable around the life and rights of the 
 lowliest of the people. 
 
 "Encyclopedia Britanuica," article -'Druidism."
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 197 
 
 They were masters of the harp, and to them 
 Wales disdained not to send her sons, that they might 
 learn the art of music, while from them Charlemagne 
 obtained professors for the colleges of both France 
 and Italy. 
 
 As to the character and the charms of Irish poetry 
 and music you have had frequent opportunity of 
 judging and of proving. Moore and Sir John 
 Stevenson traveled through Ireland, learning what 
 they might of its ancient songs and tunes. They 
 have been printed and are in circulation over the 
 broad earth to-day. Of " Rory O'More," and " Gar- 
 ry Owen," " The Meeting of the Waters," and " The 
 Last Rose of Summer," " The Colleen," and " The 
 Twisting of the Rope," I need not speak in your 
 hearing. In some of your memories there yet linger 
 the tones of her voice who, in the earlier days of 
 California life, touched and thrilled all hearts as she 
 drew tears from all eyes, while waking melody from the 
 shattered chords of 
 
 The barp that once through Tara's halls 
 The soul of music shed ; 
 
 or shaking dewdrops once and once again from the 
 fadeless leaves of " The Last Rose of Summer," her 
 voice, which I too heard, " The Limerick Lass," the 
 noble-hearted, the pure-souled Catherine Hayes ! 
 
 As we read the brief records of Patrick's life which 
 have come down to our day, we think of him as a man 
 of generous heart, keen and intense sensibilities, capa- 
 ble of toilsome and weariless labor under the inspira-
 
 198 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 tion of a burning passion for saving souls. He moves 
 through Ireland with the swiftness of lightning and 
 with the genial influence of a sunbeam. He is as fear- 
 less as he is gentle ; he is as fervently persuasive as 
 he is sagely judicious in his spirit and method. Now 
 he is in Kerry, amid the mists and glens and lakes of 
 that wild and picturesque region. Now he is in Mayo, 
 founding churches, ordaining ministers, and spending 
 the chief portion of Lent in lonely contemplation and 
 self-inspection and prayer upon the slopes and crests 
 of Croagh Patrick. Now he is at Tara, the center 
 and seat of the chief monarch of the island, instruct- 
 ing him and his family in the great truths of the new 
 faith ; assisting in the reorganization of the ancient 
 laws of the nation ; or mediating between conflicting 
 and embittered chiefs and princes. Now he is at 
 Armagh, discharging his functions as Primate of Ire- 
 land, arid founding the great seminary for the educa- 
 tion of the sons and scions of chieftains and kings and 
 people one of many such established and encouraged 
 by his ardent and unflagging patronage. 
 
 The Saint's work was not such as secular historians 
 care to dilate upon. And the rivalries of sections of 
 Christ's Church, and the bitternesses as well, together 
 with the mixture of fable with truth surrounding the 
 life of the Saint, have united to produce but meager 
 and unsatisfactory records concerning him and his 
 work. He displayed no mean degree of sagacity in 
 his methods. As the people rallied around their kings 
 and chieftains, and usually obeyed both the precepts 
 and examples of their leaders, Patrick's plans, as has
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 199 
 
 been already remarked, led him to seek first the con- 
 version of the rulers of the people and of the septs ; 
 thus gaining the highest sanction for his endeavors to 
 convert the people, and protection, as well, in the 
 peaceful prosecution of his divine work. 
 
 Indeed, such was the plan adopted by all his brethren 
 in their missionary work. Nor was any other so 
 judicious or so fraught with pledges of success. Thus 
 the Frankish king, Clovis, was influenced ; thus Au- 
 gustine won the king of Kent. The Eastern, or 
 Greek Church, gained its footing in the Russian Em- 
 pire in a similar fashion. 
 
 The people's sympathies being enlisted, they were 
 taught and trained as catechumens for the rite of bap- 
 tism, to which hundreds cheerfully submitted. 
 
 Then began the work of building humble places of 
 worship for the rites of the new faith. Then around 
 these sites of worship schools arose, and it was no less 
 the work of the missionaries to educate their converts, 
 old and young, in all the learning of the age, than in 
 the principles and practice of their religion. Very 
 noticeable is it that with remarkable avidity the peo- 
 ple sought after knowledge, and furthered every effort 
 to supply their families with the benefits of the clerical 
 masters. The pupils were numbered by hundreds of 
 both sexes. The utmost energies of the masters were 
 taxed in meeting the singularly ardent thirst created. 
 Irish schools became famous in Britain and over the 
 continent. They were centers of resistless attraction 
 to such as yearned for wisdom in Italy, Spain, France. 
 All the arts, seven in number, might be acquired there.
 
 200 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Through ages following, and when learning was all but 
 totally eclipsed on the continent, the seminaries estab- 
 lished through Patrick's efforts shed a steady and a 
 brilliant luster, in whose copious light the courts of 
 monarchs and the cells of monasteries equally shared. 
 
 Thus it was given to our Saint to prove that in the 
 Church of Christ, when true to her Master and her 
 mission, the intellect finds no less generous a patron 
 than the heart and conscience of mankind. 
 
 The laws of reasoning and the science of numbers ; 
 the principles of grammar and the elements of music ; 
 the science which seeks to interpret the secrets of the 
 heavens, and the art wherewith man seeks, by polished 
 period, pointed illustration, and impassioned appeal, to 
 convince and persuade while he instructs and delights 
 his hearers the art of rhetoric all found, in the 
 persons of the clergy, earnest, fervent, cultivated, and 
 apt professors. Indeed, from none other than they could 
 such learning have been obtained during the dreariest 
 ages of European life. These men found time to 
 study and to instruct. They scattered the germs of 
 civilization as well as went forth to sow the seeds of 
 the Gospel. They tamed the fiercest natures. They 
 polished the roughest tastes. ' They refined the grossest 
 tempers. They transformed the basest lives. By this 
 method their successors in the Church on the conti- 
 nent won immortality of fame. 
 
 Saint Patrick was a Christian missionary ; the son, 
 the grandson, of Christian ancestors ; his father a dea- 
 con, his grandfather a presbyter of the Christian 
 Church, probably in Scotland.
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 201 
 
 The Christian Church is, in principle and by Divine 
 authority, missionary. Its life is one with the spirit 
 of propagation, diffusion, aggression. No one can 
 mistake this, or fail to apprehend it as the genius of 
 her founder and his apostles. Lacking this, Chris- 
 tianity proves herself fallen from her high estate. 
 She has that which every nation under the sun needs, 
 and which but herself can adequately supply. 
 
 Her empire, by right, is a universal one, unre- 
 stricted by zones, races, or governments. And to win 
 to herself that which by right is hers, she must be 
 missionary. To all who have not what she has, she is 
 compelled to carry and offer her gifts. 
 
 Hence the Church in both her branches or families 
 Eastern or Greek, Western or Latin existed as a 
 vast " Society for the Propagation of the Faith." The 
 "Western or Latin Christianity proved true and faith- 
 ful to this idea, and sent forth into the barbaric nations 
 of Europe the men to whom Germany, Scandinavia, 
 England, Ireland, are indebted for whatever of Chris- 
 tian civilization they possess to-day. 
 
 The mission was an arduous one ; it w r as full of 
 peril, and called for skill, toil, and bravery ; for zeal, 
 compassion, and patience ; for the noblest human parts 
 and for the richest divine aids. 
 
 The peoples to be converted were fierce, sensual, 
 idolatrous. They rioted in war, .plunder, and rude 
 pleasures. In successive waves they had swept, from 
 the highlands of Central Asia, across the plains and 
 along the river-valleys of Europe, resistless as the 
 ocean, and terrific as the thunder-storm. Over the
 
 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Danube and across the Hellespont they rolled their 
 myriad hosts. The Alps could not stay them, nor the 
 sea deter. Defeated, they gathered courage ; and vic- 
 torious, they poured contempt upon the once irresisti- 
 ble legionaries of the Eagle and the Caesars. And 
 while some made the dry land their pathway of prog- 
 ress, others chose the sea as their road to conquest ; 
 till from Sicily to the Giant's Causeway from the 
 Bosphorus to the Atlantic from the shores of Africa 
 to the white cliffs of Albion they strewed Europe 
 with the spoils of battle, and planted Europe with the 
 seeds of a new and vigorous, a brave, heroic, and 
 freedom-loving race. 
 
 While Rome, secular, yielded to the o'erpowering 
 pressure of these innumerous hosts, Rome, spiritual, 
 arose in conscious might, girded up her loins, buckled 
 on her armor, and went forth to take captive these 
 very nations by weapons of celestial temper the 
 invincible principles of truth, purity, justice, love 
 " the glorious Gospel of the blessed God." 
 
 There were the perils of strange countries and of 
 untried and rigorous climates. There were the perils 
 of somber, vast, and untracked forests, and of the 
 monsters that found in them their breeding-places and 
 their feeding-grounds. 
 
 There were the perils of sanguinary priests and of 
 their superstitious votaries. Life was a cheap thing 
 with such, and its destruction but a pastime. Their 
 religions were gloomy, gory, ghastly. Their sports 
 were coarse ; their knowledge, scant ; their arts of 
 agriculture primitive and crude. The forest was their
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 203 
 
 home ; the scantiest dress covered them often none 
 other than a beast's raw hide, buckled round their 
 loins ; their hair long, shaggy ; their weapons of war 
 few in number and of simplest class : a sword, a pike- 
 a shield. On their shields they loved to lift the brav- 
 est of their tribe to the rank of leader ; and, obedient to 
 his will, went forth to spoliate, massacre, and possess. 
 
 Yet to these were the benefactions of Cliristianity 
 borne by the early evangelists of Europe ! 
 
 Wliat must have been the stuff of which such men 
 were made ? They were strong ; they were gentle ; 
 they were fearless ; they were tender. A large heart, 
 filled with a great love, inspired and impelled them. 
 
 Of the many fruits of Patrick's labor none has won 
 renown more signal and undying than the great apos- 
 tle to the Picts of Scotland Columbkill. His moth- 
 er was eminently pious, and of royal blood. His 
 father was of the great O'Xeills, and was also royal in 
 lineage. Columb was devoted to the service of God 
 and the Church by his mother, even from the hour 
 of his birth. He was of noble presence and of noble 
 spirit. He was by nature a poet, a soldier, and an 
 orator ; of fiery and impetuous spirit, yet of heart as 
 tender as a woman's. 
 
 He entered the Church, and devoted himself to the 
 monastic life. High-spirited, brave, he was fitted to 
 be a leader of men, and an apostle to strange and 
 fierce countrymen. He was especially the founder of 
 the monastic system of Ireland. From Durrow in 
 Queen's County, to the Hill of Oaks, Perry, he left 
 the impress of his genius.
 
 204 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 But it was upon the western islands of Scotland 
 that he won his right to everlasting remembrance in 
 the annals of Church history. For forty years he 
 ruled as Abbot of the Republic of lona, fearless in 
 the presence of monarchs as he was in the presence 
 of nature's fiercest, sternest forces of tempest and of 
 sea. 
 
 The monastic system gained a firm footing in Ire- 
 land. If monks and monasteries be an unalloyed 
 blessing to a land, great must have been the benedic- 
 tion bestowed upon the Irish land and people. 
 
 Of plain and unpretentious structure, of ample or 
 of scanty dimensions, monasteries might have been seen 
 on lonely island, on desolate headland, in lovely glen, 
 in sunny vale, by stern lake shore, amid the desola- 
 tion of storm-shattered cliffs, and where the only com- 
 panions were the bird of the night and of the tempest, 
 the only voices the weird wailings of the melancholy 
 wind or the sea's unresting monotone of sadness. 
 
 I am filled with amazement as I run over, column 
 after column, page after page of history, replete 
 with the names of the convents, abbeys, and nunneries, 
 erected in Ireland during and following Patrick's 
 days. Princes build and endow them ; chieftains 
 erect and spend their days in them ; the noblest born 
 become their abbots or abbesses. Weary of the end- 
 less wars ; disgusted with the perpetual treachery ; 
 sick of ever-recurring disappointments in love or in 
 ambition, votaries seek in them a shelter and a quiet 
 haven. Or worsted in the struggle of the flesh, or 
 filled with remorse and shame for lives of bloodshed
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 205 
 
 or deeds of hist, they fly to the cell for penitential 
 grief, and to the stern dictatorship of the abbot for 
 duties that shall appease and chastisement that shall 
 quiet the restless dialings of a guilty conscience. 
 
 The accumulation of real estate must have proved 
 an extremely perilous temptation ; and the transfer 
 of such a number of active spirits from the mass of 
 society could not but have seriously imperiled the 
 economic and industrial conditions of life. 
 
 I am not at all disposed to recklessly condemn, as 
 unmitigated nuisances, the monasteries of Ireland, or 
 of any other land. I do not say that they did not 
 mean well when founded ; or that within them there 
 were but idleness and licentiousness. For I have 
 read a little history, and I cherish a love for truth. 
 
 The monastic life rendered not a few lasting serv- 
 ices to our civilization. In darkest days monasteries 
 kept watch round the altar fires of learning as well 
 as of piety ; to them ardent saints fled for solace and 
 for nurture, and zealous scholars found within their 
 walls welcome, sympathy, encouragement. The no- 
 blest products of architecture were the fruit of their 
 skill and toil. The first principles of improved and 
 intelligent agriculture and horticulture gained their 
 recognition and their industrious and enthusiastic ap- 
 plication. Soil the most barren responded in fer- 
 tility to their assiduous culture. Fens and marshes 
 breeding but vermin, exhaling but malaria, yielded 
 to their persistent efforts, and gave place to gardens 
 ablaze with fruit trees, or fields in which cattle fed 
 knee-deep in verdure. Slavery gradually melted and
 
 206 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 dissolved in the genial sunshine of a religion which 
 proclaimed the serf as real a brother of the divine 
 Man as is the impurpled Caesar of the Western 
 Empire. 
 
 Hospitality of no stinted order welcomed guests 
 of all ranks to sit at her board and forget the perils 
 of travel and the pangs of hunger in the good cheer 
 of a homely or a sumptuous repast, and in the peace- 
 ful slumbers of a clean and sweet, though not luxu- 
 rious, couch. 
 
 Nor can we forget what seats and centers of in- 
 tellectual life these monasteries often proved. There 
 dwelt the annalist and chronicler, busy in his daily 
 record of the events of the world beyond his cell. 
 There dwelt the poet, composing songs of hallowed 
 aspiration, among the choicest of those chanted by 
 the churches and choirs of our own unmonastie age. 
 There dwelt the students of Aristotle and*of Augus- 
 tine, grappling with the most subtle and metaphysic 
 propositions "fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge 
 absolute," the necessary existence of God ; the how 
 and the wherefore of three Persons in the Godhead ; 
 the fall of man ; the origin of evil ; the philosophy of 
 th% atonement ; the nominal and the real in Reason 
 and in Nature ; the virtues of attrition and contri- 
 tion ; the origin and the end of all things. Never 
 were so many master minds engaged in vigorous, in- 
 trospective, metaphysic investigation, as when the 
 monastic system had attained the acme of its power 
 in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. 
 From monasteries came forth the sagest counselors
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 207 
 
 of princes, the wisest rulers of the Church, the me- 
 diators most judicious and most successful between 
 rival princes or strifeful nations. 
 
 In them grew up into immortal fame doctors an- 
 gelic and doctors seraphic ; doctors invincible and 
 doctors resolute ; doctors subtle and doctors irrefra- 
 gable ; doctors wonderful and doctors evangelical. 
 The results of their cogitations have not reached us 
 in a very tangible, readable, and popular shape. The 
 themes they discussed were not what we would term 
 practical. They dealt with problems exceedingly un- 
 like those which challenge the great thinkers of our 
 day. The physical sciences had not as yet, save in 
 Roger Bacon, won their notice. 
 
 The history of the decline and fall of the monastic 
 system it is not our province to discuss. That mon- 
 asteries became in Italy, in Spain, in England, in 
 Scotland, centers of depravity the most base, of un- 
 cleanness the most nauseating ; that the orders in 
 succession speedily left their first estate, and rushed 
 with resistless impetuosity adown the steps of the 
 earthly and sensual if not devilish no candid stu- 
 dent of history dare deny. Sworn to obey, they be- 
 came towering tyrants ; sworn to poverty, they rolfcd 
 in affluence ; devoted to purity, they wallowed in 
 filth ; monasteries, once seats of industry, became 
 hives of drones; shelters of virtues, they grew into 
 cesspools of vice, until monarchs and peoples united 
 in demanding either thorough reformation or utter 
 dissolution ! 
 
 Not the hospitality they had shown to weary trav-
 
 2G8 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 elers ; not the contributions they had offered to the 
 shrine of art ; nofc the wilds they had transformed 
 into beauty and fertility ; not the imperishable piles of 
 petrified music they had helped to rear in every city 
 of Europe ; not the piety of a Thomas a Kempis ; 
 not the ardent devotion and rapturous anticipations 
 of heaven breathing through the devotional poetry of 
 a Saint Bernard ; not one, not all, of these excellences 
 of former days could shield the fallen system from the 
 anathemas of nations whose sense of decency had been 
 outraged and reverence for religion insulted by the 
 vices and faithlessness of the once sacred institution ! 
 It has not reached us what were the doctrines 
 preached by Patrick. That he based his sermons 
 upon the gospels we cannot doubt, for he encouraged 
 honestly the study of these writings. That he urged 
 men to trust in the Crucified for salvation I heartily 
 believe. Possibly the Apostles' Creed may have been 
 the sum and substance of his teaching. But, as the 
 writings which have reached us are the scantiest, 
 consisting but of his "" Confession " and of his letter 
 to a Welsh prince named Caradoc, who had landed in 
 Ireland and taken captives from the inhabitants ; and 
 as*those to whom we are indebted chiefly for records 
 of Patrick's work and teaching deal not generally 
 with evangelical truths, we are left to conjecture as 
 to many articles of his creed. 
 
 WAS SAINT PATRICK A ROMAN CATHOLIC ? 
 
 Well, he was, and he was not. He was, so far as 
 his membership in the Latin Church and not in the
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 209 
 
 Greek Church might render him such. He was not, 
 if it is meant to say that lie believed and taught all 
 that a Romanist of our day believes and teaches. 
 
 The Church of Rome was not then the perfectly 
 formed and marvelously elaborated system that it is 
 to-day. Far from that very far, indeed! The 
 Church of Rome is a growth the growth of cen- 
 turies. It came not to perfection in an age nor in 
 many ages. We know not that it has as jet ceased 
 to grow ; for in our age we know of two dogmas 
 which it has stamped with its impress and rendered 
 binding upon the consciences of its votaries : the 
 dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin 
 and the dogma of the Infallibility of the Pope. 
 
 First. To-day no priest can marry. In Patrick's 
 day priests could and did marry. There were no less 
 than four married archbishops of Armagh, Ireland. 
 Priestly marriage was not absolutely forbidden until 
 the papacy of Gregory VII. Hildebrand. Patrick's 
 father, as I have said, was a deacon ; his grandfather 
 a presbyter or priest of the Church. 
 
 Second. The doctrine of transubstantiation did 
 not obtain as a dogma necessary to the salvation of a 
 Christian in Patrick's day. It was reserved for In- 
 nocent III., in the thirteenth century, to lift this 
 dogma into the rank of an article of faith. 
 
 Third. The doctrine of confession of sins to a priest, 
 as necessary to salvation, did not obtain in Patrick's 
 day. . It was also added to the dogmas of the Church, 
 in the thirteenth century, by Innocent III. 
 
 These are specimens or instances illustrative of
 
 210 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 what I assert regarding St. Patrick and his faith and 
 teachings. 
 
 No ; popery is a thing of development, as Cardinal 
 Newman tells us. The more ambitious the pope be- 
 came, and the more profound the ignorance and cre- 
 dulity of the people, so much the more did the one 
 decree as faith and the other accept as truth. 
 
 No one would be more astonished than Saint Patrick 
 were he, without previous intimation of the changes 
 effected since his day, to once more mingle with the 
 votaries of the Church of Rome, and contrast the 
 Church of the nineteenth with that of the fifth 
 century. 
 
 Slow, steady, persistent, has been that growth. 
 Events instructed, failures disciplined, antagonisms 
 strengthened, trials confirmed, schisms developed her. 
 "When men failed to succor, women furnished the nour- 
 ishment ; when wisdom proved purblind, semi-madness 
 breathed its inspiration ; when wealth proved impotent, 
 poverty became all-potent ; when the prince proved 
 recreant, the people proved faithful ; when the people 
 proved rebellious, the potentate proved her loyal 
 agent. Advance she must, let who will oppose. 
 Win she shall, whatsoever be the method adopted. 
 Scholasticism shall' beguile the intellectual. Art 
 shall woo the esthetic. The monastery shall attract 
 the pensive. The foreign mission shall afford an out- 
 let for the restless, the daring, and the adventurous. 
 Penance shall satisfy the worn-out sensualist. To 
 one shall be given the trust of ruling an order ; to 
 another, the trust of erecting a cathedral ; to an-
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 211 
 
 other, the trust of educating the young ; to another, 
 the trust of envoy to distant courts ; to another, the 
 purchase of real estate in localities where, though 
 now cheap, in half a century a bonanza shall be 
 found. To one the pulpit shall be assigned for his 
 eloquence ; to another, the professor's chair for his 
 erudition. 
 
 No idiosyncrasy is there for which Rome cannot 
 provide a sphere no gift she cannot utilize. She 
 caters for every taste. Student of human nature, she 
 knows its weakness and kens its strength. There 
 is not a corner of the human heart she has not 
 scanned ; not a spring she has not touched ; not a 
 motive she has not weighed. Whom to vanquish by 
 terror, and whpm to enthrall by passion, and whom 
 to captivate by pity, she fully understands. Nor 
 temperament, nor taste, nor tendency is there with 
 which she cannot deal. The cravings of ambition, 
 the yearnings of love, the thirst for knowledge, the 
 greed of gain, the love of the beautiful, the capacity 
 for ruling, the restlessness that burns for enterprise, 
 the adroitness that revels in intrigue, the suavity that 
 wins admiration, the frankness that inspires trust 
 all, all, are subject to her matchless mastery of skill- 
 ful adaptation to utility. She is at once the wonder 
 of the ages and the amazement of the universe ! 
 
 Whatever could enchant in music ; whatever could 
 impress in architecture ; whatever could fascinate in 
 color, form, or action, contributed to the potency of 
 the spell with which she bound and led captive her 
 
 entranced worshipers. She blessed the infant on its 
 15
 
 212 GUARD'S LECTURES AJSTD ADDRESSES. 
 
 entrance through the gate of life; she followed it, 
 with her benediction or her curse, as it passed through 
 the gates of death. At the marriage-feast she was 
 present to grant her sanction and to hallow the union. 
 In the council chamber of the prince she sat molding 
 the destinies of empires and controlling the fate of 
 races. Her whisper let loose the dogs of war ; her 
 fiat consigned a race to spoliation, eblivion, and the 
 tornb. Earth was her chess-board ; and all ranks, 
 callings, and conditions but the flexible puppets with 
 which she played her game of conquest, tyranny, am- 
 bition ! 
 
 Her eye is all but omniscient ; her influences all 
 but omnipresent. Where we least suspect, her agents 
 are operating. When we least fear it, we are talking 
 to one of her emissaries. The demagogue Kearney 
 can as effectually further her cause as the polished 
 Monsignor Capel. The basest politician that ever 
 sold his vote is as effectively economized as the sen- 
 ator fearless and immaculate as the far-famed Bayard 
 of chivalry. 
 
 Liberty she hates of thought, conscience, discus- 
 sion. Her alliance with liberty is a mesalliance. 
 The union is most unnatural. 
 
 Beneath the noble liberty of this free nation Rome 
 is steadily laying her foundations, amassing wealth, 
 concentrating power. She is, in very deed, a " king- 
 dom within a kingdom." She is preparing for the 
 future. Her genius is " to labor and to wait." The 
 moral incorruption of this nation is its only safeguard 
 against Rome. With its corruption, her hour and
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 213 
 
 power draw nigh. A conscience invincible by bribe 
 is what she dreads. It is the only human thing she 
 cannot hope to grapple and o'ermaster. Even as the 
 vulture finds in the carcass reeking with decomposition 
 his fitting prey and food, so Rome, turning with 
 loathing from any people in whom perfect moral life 
 abides, hovers over and sweeps down upon whatso- 
 ever peoples are sinking into a mass of moral decay ! 
 
 "With men without principle she knows how to deal. 
 Her methods are stealthy as the panther. As to her 
 spirit the eagle is not so rapacious nor the serpent 
 so subtle ; sin is not more deceitful, nor Satan more 
 treacherous. In ambition she surpasses Caesar, and 
 in assumption of " power to save and to destroy " she 
 rivals God! 
 
 It may most legitimately be asked : What benefit did 
 Saint Patrick's mission confer upon the Irish people ? 
 For thirteen hundred years the " leaven " which he 
 " hid in the measure of meal " has been working, and 
 in the midst of us, to-day, we witness the eifects. The 
 people upon whom he worked thirteen hundred years 
 ago have their descendants in our cities to-day. 
 These call him " Father" and " Saint," What must 
 they have been when he began to improve them, lift 
 them, civilize them, teach them decency, love of law, 
 i f these we see and hear are the improved ones ? 
 If these be the civilized, Christianized, the improved, 
 uplifted, what must have been the uncivil! zed, unchris- 
 tianized, unimproved ? If, by the evolutionary proc- 
 esses of thirteen hundred years, the type of to-day 
 is the result, what must that type then have been?
 
 214: GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 From what a deep must they have been lifted ? From 
 what anarchy must they have been translated ? 
 
 It is of no avail to tell me they are a conquered 
 people. Who conquered them ? Why did they sub- 
 mit to conquest ? Of what stuff were they made 
 that they so readily yielded ? No one could have 
 conquered them but with their own consent. No 
 one could have enslaved them had they not enslaved 
 themselves. There was no unity among them when 
 the Anglo-Norman effected a footing in their midst. 
 It was clan against clan monarch against monarch. 
 It was perpetual civil war. There was no security 
 for property, the fruits of industry, or life. The 
 waste of life was most shocking. Even the Danes 
 were not expelled from the country. Many battles 
 were fought between the natives and these Norsemen ; 
 but the Danes held Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, in- 
 termarried with the royal and other families of the 
 land, and aided one king, not unfrequently, in his 
 attacks upon a neighbor king. 
 
 There is much to be done even yet by such Chris- 
 tian civilizers as Saint Patrick among those who pro- 
 fess to venerate the great evangelist. Ireland is fa? 
 from being a " Happy Isle." Her sons are not all 
 saints. Many have been the vicissitudes through 
 which the race has had to pass. Even of those who 
 have bidden adieu to that green spot, and have found 
 a new home in this fair State, not all have entered 
 into rest. Like the troubled sea are many of them 
 even here, where there is utmost liberty for their 
 consciences, their thoughts, and their tongues.
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 215 
 
 What is it that is wrong with them ? Why is the 
 ancient spirit of turbulence and strife, of discord and 
 dissatisfaction, perpetuated ? Are they under a curse ? 
 Have they incurred a doom from which they cannot 
 free themselves ? Why is it that they persist in con- 
 duct such as brings the blush to the cheek of every 
 thoughtful Irishman ? May it not be that the rea- 
 son is to be partly found in the diet upon which they 
 have for generations fed ? Oliver Twist's disease was 
 not " madness," Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, tells us : no, 
 it was " meat" May not this be as near the solution of 
 the matter as any other reason given ? " Upon what 
 meat doth this our Cassar feed that he hath grown 
 so fat ? " asks Cassius, concerning " the noblest Roman 
 of them all." Nations are largely influenced by what 
 they live on. What can you expect from races that 
 live on blubber, oil, and x tallow candles? What can 
 you expect from races that live on yams, cocoanut, 
 and fat missionary ? What can you expect from races 
 who eat an ox half raw, and never leave him while 
 there is a shred of flesh on his bones ; and then drink 
 Kaffir beer, and lie down and sleep, and wake up and 
 smoke, and know not when they shall again have an- 
 other meal ; and when hungry buckle their belts another 
 hole tighter, and still another hole tighter, as hunger 
 gnaws them and famine starves them even as tribes 
 in South Africa do ? What may you not expect from 
 a nation that lives on plentiful beer, plum-pudding, 
 and roast beef ? And what can y^ou expect from a 
 people whose meat and drink for centuries have 
 been pig, " potheen," and potatoes especially potatoes
 
 216 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 and " potheen ? " Here you have the philosophy of 
 Irish unrest, vituperation, thunder-and-lightning har- 
 angues, fire and pillage and blood resolutions. 'Tis 
 the result of their diet. Had their daily bill of fare 
 been different during the centuries past, such were 
 not now the deplorable condition of affairs. 
 
 It was a drearily sad day for the Irish race when 
 Sir Walter Ealeigh landed in Youghal with his sack 
 of Virginia potatoes. He introduced the plague into 
 Ireland. The first new Irish potato eaten by a Celtic 
 lady in Ireland was simply a repetition of the scene 
 in Paradise : "And when the woman saw that the fruit 
 was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and a thing 
 to be desired to make one wise, she did eat, and gave to 
 her husband, and he did eat ; and the eyes of them both 
 were opened ; " and thence " death and all our woes." 
 The potato in the garden in Youghal was the forbid- 
 den fruit to Ireland. She has never recovered from 
 the fatal effects of that first dish of new potatoes ! 
 
 Strange that vegetable diet should have played such 
 a fatally destructive part in human history. It was 
 a vegetable that introduced sin the fruit of the for- 
 bidden tree. It was a vegetable that o'ercame the 
 second father of our race, and occasioned the first 
 curse, under whose ban, as some thought of it, slavery 
 was deemed a just and righteous thing : Noah sinned 
 by drinking himself drunk with the fruit of the 
 vine ; Ham, Canaan, negro slavery, war, lust, hypoc- 
 risy, followed affcer. "What fills our jails feeds our 
 gibbets crowds our mad -houses debauches our 
 homes softens brains digs suicidal graves ? The
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 217 
 
 chemically transformed extract of a vegetable whis- 
 ky ! What is one of the growing evils of this city, 
 of this State, of this country corrupting, debasing, 
 debilitating our youth, our men and women? The 
 extract of a vegetable the poppy ; that extract, 
 opium ! And tobacco is but another instance. But 
 perhaps you never until now thought of attributing 
 many of the miserable characteristics of the Irishman, 
 here and elsewhere, to his vegetable diet the potato. 
 What is the explanation of the special trouble in the 
 midst of us to-day ? It is largely to be traced to your- 
 selves, O American people ! Your great republican 
 system of government is too far in advance of poor 
 potato-eating Ireland. To wisely bear the burden of 
 citizenship under such a government demands a very 
 noble type of mental and moral manhood. Not to 
 childhood should such a responsibility be intrusted ; 
 not to boyhood should it be committed. It requires a 
 good conscience and an honest heart, but it also de- 
 mands a soundly educated understanding and a will 
 well-drilled in self-government, rightly to use, without 
 abusing, your grand institutions. We fathers do not 
 intrust our purses to our children ; nor place at their 
 unchecked service our revolvers and our razors. You 
 do not allow your American-born and educated sons 
 the right of the franchise until they are twenty-one 
 years old. Why do you treat the overgrown children 
 -of Ireland with the trust you deny your own children 
 until they have reached manhood ? Why not compel 
 the untrained, impulsive, hot-headed natives of the 
 land of bogs and floods to wait until something like
 
 218 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the intellectual manhood of twenty-one years shall 
 have been attained by them ? 
 
 You kill us with your excess of kindness. You are 
 too good, too generous. The ignorant Irishman is 
 puzzled and perplexed to know how to act in his effort 
 to use his suddenly acquired wealth of political power. 
 At home he has no voice in the choice of his landlord ; 
 he has no voice in the choice of his priest. His duty is 
 to do what he is told, asking no questions for con- 
 science' sake. And all at once he finds himself here 
 able to black-ball the nominee for Governor, Senator, 
 President. He is "A biger (sic) man than old Grant." 
 
 What can be expected from such a sudden leap out 
 of a state of pupilage, under the absolute will of 
 landlord and priest, into the maturity of your noble 
 freedom ? The troubles of this State need never have 
 been had men but loved their country as wisely as 
 themselves. You fill to the brim the goblet of political 
 privilege with the strong wine of republican liberty ; 
 you place it in the hands or raise it to the mouths of 
 my unprepared countrymen; and the liquor is of 
 flavor so delicious that when once their parched lips 
 touch it they empty the flowing bowl ! And before 
 they or you know it they are drunk with this new 
 wine. Nor need I tell you the madness produced by 
 drunkenness. 
 
 Yes, sirs ! those of my isle who have brought the 
 scorching blush to our cheeks are simply suffering 
 from the delirium tremens resulting from your strong 
 drink of liberty ! They are not able to bear it. 
 Whether they are on their feet or on their heads
 
 SAIXT PATRICK. 219 
 
 they scarce can tell. They are only partially responsi- 
 ble for their deeds. But others who know better are 
 responsible ; their priests are ; your politicians are ; the 
 press is yes, the press must be held accountable be- 
 fore the great white throne of American civilization 
 for its most selfish, its most sordid, its most mercenary 
 conduct throughout all this sad carnival of blasphemy. 
 It has lifted the demagogue into the rank of a hero. 
 It has become the clarion to which the demagogue 
 has put his lips, and which voiced his hideous howl- 
 ings over the continent. Aided by the press the 
 demagogue, having shaken his dice-box, has fancied 
 he heard thunder.* 
 
 The true method of celebrating Saint Patrick's 
 Day is worthy of a few remarks. 
 
 He best keeps in memory the life and deeds of a 
 good and great man who best copies his example and 
 emulates his deeds of goodness. He who most care- 
 fully treads in the footsteps of such a one, and per- 
 petuates his life by diffusing benefits akin to those 
 conferred by his patron saint, most truly keeps his 
 memory green and fragrant ; not drowning the sham- 
 rock in whisky ; not filling the air with incendiary 
 harangues; not fanning the flames of social hatred, 
 envy, and malice; not flinging vile epithets at the 
 laws and constitution of the new country in which 
 
 * Reference is here made to the " sand-lot " agitation in San Fran- 
 cisco at the time of the delivery of this lecture. Notwithstanding 
 the apparently merely local interest attached to this passage the editor 
 has thought best to retain it in the lecture, as illustrative of the 
 author's interest in the burning questions of the hour.
 
 220 GUAED'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 a generous welcome has been accorded him ; not by 
 conduct against which Patrick would be the first to 
 utter his protest and denunciation. 
 
 No, sirs, this is not to prove one's veneration for a 
 man than whom none was more humble, more peace- 
 loving, more prompt to be all things to all men, that 
 he might uplift and save them. 
 
 But however faultily it may have been shown, this 
 sentiment of veneration may well win from us all an 
 honest and hearty appreciation. Saint Patrick's Day 
 may seem to some of you a most absurd anniversary. 
 But can you not see in it the homage of the heart to 
 disinterested and self -sacrificing goodness ? It is not 
 an ignoble sentiment, this grateful remembrance. 
 You may laugh at the Irish Romanist, and pity his 
 superstition; but you should not despise the senti- 
 ment which impels him to venerate the great evan- 
 gelist to whom he owes his Christian faith. Most 
 unlike his patron saint the Patrick of our day may 
 be ; yet has he this excellence : in theory he all but 
 adores a life of purity and of consecration to the weal 
 of others. 
 
 Not lust of power impelled, not thirst of conquest 
 urged, not greed of gold inspired, not even the hunger 
 of the soul for knowledge actuated the great Saint. 
 But rather did he seek the uplifting and disenthrall- 
 ment of conscience from guilt ; of will from depraved 
 habit ; of heart from vile affections ; of life from ra- 
 pine and lust. He offered to the sinner a Divine 
 Saviour; to the sorrowing a Divine Comforter; to 
 the poor a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother ;
 
 SAINT PATRICK. 221 
 
 to the bereaved the hope of blissful reunion ; to the 
 dying the assurance of an immortality of growth in 
 rapture, wisdom, purity. 
 
 Yonder the august yet unambitious form stands 
 out against the background of the ages ! Through 
 the mists of thirteen centuries reverent eyes still gaze 
 upon the brave, heroic missionary, teacher, and saint ; 
 his hands uplifted in benediction upon the people of 
 his loving care and paternal counsel ! 
 
 If humility, which clothed him as a garment ; if 
 prayer, which was the habit of his life and the atmos- 
 phere of his spirit ; if study of the Holy Scriptures, 
 constant, earnest, and practical; if unwearying efforts 
 to make men Godlike by leading them to Christ and 
 training them in faithful living ; if a life of daily 
 dedication to the glory of the unseen but ever-present 
 Father, and of daily consecration to the immortal 
 interest of the visible and ever-present sons of men 
 if all these can make a man good, or prove him to be 
 one of the saints or excellent of the earth, then Saint 
 Patrick ranks with the most honored and honorable 
 of the noble army and the goodly fellowship ! 
 
 To me it matters not what name he bears what 
 the ecclesiastical origin of his mission what the 
 Church claiming him as her son and chief. Perish , 
 all such miserable narrowness and bigotry as would 
 deprive me of the honor of claiming a spiritual kinship 
 with him, and rendering him the honest and profound 
 homage of my head and heart ! Such men belong to 
 no sect ; they belong to humanity. The world claims 
 them as common property, for they are common
 
 222 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 benefactors. Broader than sect, broader than race, 
 broader than nationality, as the ages roll on, the cathe- 
 dral in which they shall find a shrine shall be not 
 that built up of Celtic hearts, Romanist believers, 
 alone, but built up of a love from all kindreds and 
 peoples and nations and tongues ; in which a Starr 
 King and a Bunyan, a Knox and a Luther, a Wesley 
 and a Patrick shall find co-equal veneration and co 
 eternal brotherhood 1
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 223 
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE: PHYSICAL, 
 MENTAL, AND MORAL* 
 
 subject is one of much fascination ; nor does 
 JL it lack instruction ; nor is it deficient in practical 
 application and import. Indeed, the topic is one 
 which must have formed a subject of serious study 
 and remark to every sober-minded, reflective observer 
 of human nature. It is a subject that touches every 
 one of us, as may be seen in the after discussion of it. 
 
 It appeals to us as to those who are responsible for 
 the government of themselves. It appeals to us as to 
 those who are, to a certain extent, responsible for the 
 well-being of others. It appeals to us as citizens of 
 time. It appeals to us as candidates for a blissful 
 immortality. And if " the proper study of man- 
 kind is man," then in the circle of this most illustrious 
 science the segment of the circle marked off by the 
 title of our evening's lecture can neither be over- 
 looked nor depreciated with impunity. 
 
 The life of the human race is a successively de- 
 veloped fact. We can conceive it to have been other- 
 wise ordered. 
 
 * A k-ctiire written, with exception of a few interpolations, in 
 South Africa, a few mouths previous to the author's visit to 
 America in 1871.
 
 224 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Sum up the myriad millions that have successively 
 appeared upon this planet since the first progenitor 
 trod its soil ; and instead of demanding so many re- 
 volving cycles for their appearance in time, we can 
 imagine their contemporaneous appearance. Each 
 one of the vast total would thus come immediately 
 into being, owing his existence to none of his fellows, 
 and tracing his origin directly to the omnipotent 
 Creator. Perhaps thus angelic creatures came forth 
 from non-existence into that fair and luxuriant state 
 in which, we are told, they live and move. 
 
 Then the relations subsisting between the myriad 
 millions of men must be that of contemporaries pos- 
 sessing the elemental properties of a common human- 
 ity, displaying infinitely diversified endowments and 
 capable of an equally varied mutual influence. 
 
 Influence each other they must ; they could not 
 avoid it. It were as possible to hinder star influen- 
 cing star, and atom, atom, or mountain, clouds, or 
 forests the atmosphere, as to prevent each member 
 of the co-existent population of our orb influencing 
 every other member ; each influencing all, and all in- 
 fluencing each. 
 
 But the human race, as a matter of fact, is a propa- 
 gated, and, therefore, successively existing, race. In 
 its history father and son, parentage and filiation, are 
 terms of significance and expressive of the divine law, 
 in accordance with which population multiplies, the 
 waste places of the earth become inhabited, and the 
 wilderness rejoices and blossoms as the rose. 
 
 We, therefore, meet with not only a contemporary
 
 THE LAW OF IMIKKITAACE. 225 
 
 relationship akin to that sustained by the imaginary 
 population referred to, but the much more intimately 
 blended relationship of parent and offspring a rela- 
 tionship of transmission in one word, of inheritance. 
 
 We influence each other as angels do ; and we also 
 influence each other as only those can who are depend- 
 ent absolutely for their existence upon those who have 
 existed before themselves. 
 
 Here I may be permitted to observe that, in the 
 twofoldness of our capacity of relation and influence, 
 we link together angelic life above with all forms of 
 life below and around us. We diffuse our influence 
 over the broad surface of the human life that exists in 
 the same age ; we transmit our influence down the 
 sloping ages of the future, as we have inherited from 
 the descending ages that have preceded us. Past, 
 present, future are centered in, and controlled by, the 
 human race. We are heirs, we are sovereigns of the 
 ages ! 
 
 We are thus prepared for the consideration of the 
 law of inheritance, to which my topic solicits your 
 attention. 
 
 It is not within the purpose of my scheme of 
 thought to criticise the Antiquity of Man, or the Ori- 
 gin of Man, or the Unity of Man. I am aware that 
 such themes touch upon that which I have chosen, 
 and that they are exciting interest in the scientific 
 world of to-day. ^Nevertheless, the temptation to 
 dilate upon them must be sternly resisted. 
 
 The law of inheritance co-operates with a law 
 known as the law of variety. The first secures the
 
 226 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 immutability of the species. The second imparts 
 diversity to that species and secures its adaptation to 
 the changing conditions of life, as well as adds agree- 
 ableness and pleasantness to what might be monoton- 
 ous sameness. The law of inheritance transmits the 
 type of the flower, the animal, the man. The law of 
 variety introduces differences of tint in the shrub, of 
 contour in the animal, and of color in the man. 
 
 When, by the law of variety, a peculiar modifica- 
 tion of the type takes place, say a higher excellence 
 or a deficiency, this becomes transmitted through one 
 or more generations by the law of inheritance ; and ? 
 if care be taken to select specimens in which the " va- 
 riety " occurs, that " variety " may become " fixed " 
 and almost ineradicable. Indeed, Darwin says it will 
 become a new species altogether. The " variety " may 
 be introduced by accident, or by intention, the result 
 of observation as in the case of Jacob and the flocks 
 of Laban, and as in the case of breeders of poultry, of 
 pigeons, of dogs, of swine, of horses, and other domes- 
 ticated animals ; and also by horticulturists. But 
 whether accidentally or intentionally, once introduced, 
 the " variety " comes under the operation of the law 
 of inheritance, and descends as an heirloom to succes- 
 sive members of the species. 
 
 The union of male and female must tend to modify 
 the characteristics of offspring. The qualities of the 
 dam mingle in the blood of the child with those of 
 the sire. Some have fancied it possible to say what 
 part of the constitution descends from each parent 
 the mental or the emotional, the moral or the appe-
 
 THE LAW OF IXHEBITAXCE. 227 
 
 titive, the locomotive or the digestive, the nervous or 
 the muscular portion of the complex being. This 
 has not jet gained the certainty of a law of science 
 in physiology ; nevertheless, it is worthy of and has 
 secured the attention and study of statisticians, some 
 of whom attempt to prove that the sexes in a human 
 family are regulated by a law dependent upon the 
 relative ages of husband and wife. There is, doubt- 
 less, some such law governing this matter ; though, as 
 yet, much mystery enfolds it, which careful and con- 
 tinued study and comparison will, perhaps, dispel. 
 
 The law of inheritance obtains striking illustration 
 in the permanency of the traits of physical, mental, 
 and moral nature distinguishing the primary divisions 
 of the human family. These divisions have had, among 
 many others, a threefold classification and a fivefold. 
 
 Dr. Darwin, in his " Descent of Man," says : 
 " There is the greatest possible diversity of opinion 
 among capable judges whether he (man) should be 
 classed as a single species or race, or as two, three, four, 
 five, six, seven, eight, eleven, fifteen, sixteen, twenty- 
 two, sixty, or as sixty-three." 
 
 There is the classification of Cuvier and Pritchard, 
 founded upon the skull and face, the cranial and phys- 
 iognomical : 
 
 1. The oval-shaped head and straight features: 
 Caucasian. 
 
 2. The pyramid-shaped head, flat face, and high 
 cheekbone : Mongolian. 
 
 3. The prognathous, retreating forehead, project- 
 ing jaw : !Negro. 
 
 16
 
 228 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 There is the classification founded upon color of 
 skin and hair : 
 
 1. The Xanthous : fair or sandy or golden haired. 
 
 2. The Melanous : dark, long haired. 
 
 3. The Leucous : white skin and hair, red eyes ; etc. 
 There is Blumenbach's classification, founded chief- 
 ly upon cranial conformation : 
 
 1. The Caucasian. 
 
 2. The Mongolian. 
 
 3. The Ethiopian. 
 
 4. The Malay. 
 
 5. The American. 
 
 This latter division is confirmed by a somewhat 
 similar classification of the languages of mankind : 
 
 1. There is the Indo-European, connecting Latin, 
 Greek, Anglo-Saxon into one common root, the 
 Sanskrit of India. 
 
 2. There is the Semitic, comprising the Hebrew, 
 the Aramaic, the Arabic, the Ethiopic. 
 
 3. There is the Turanian, comprising the languages 
 of Higli Asia, and of parts of Northern Europe ; also 
 the whole American family, as well as the Papuan 
 and Polynesian. 
 
 4. There is the monosyllabic Chinese and Indo- 
 Chinese, possessing affinities with Burmese, Tibetan 
 and Mongolian. 
 
 5. There is the fifth group, embracing the lan- 
 guages of the great region of Central Negroland, 
 which are found to possess affinities which place 
 them in relation to the Semitic group. 
 
 These races have perpetuated their characteristics
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 220 
 
 through a prodigious period and despite many in- 
 fluences unfavorable to the preservation of their 
 identity. 
 
 Take the color of the Negro and his features. These 
 have been transmitted, from generation to generation, 
 since 3700 before the birth of Christ. The monuments 
 of Egypt testify to this ; on them are still found the 
 cranial and facial conformations, the complexion and 
 the color of hair, which to this day characterize the 
 children of Ham.* The record of stone is not more 
 remarkable as an evidence of the transmitted qualities 
 of a race than confirmatory of the assertion that the 
 Negro mind, when cultured and developed, when 
 freed from superstition and from the tyranny of des- 
 pots, possesses powers capable of no unsuccessful ri- 
 valry with the races of fairer or less dusky hue. They 
 have a noble ancestry, though they are now but the 
 wild and untrained offshoots of a stem that was once 
 proudly luxuriant in the fruits of learning and taste. 
 Nor is Africa without her heraldry of science and of 
 fame. The only probable age which can be given 
 of the Negro tribes is: that Africa was peopled 
 through Egypt by three of the descendants of Ham 
 
 * See " Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution," by 
 Oscar Peschel. Also, Brngsch's " History of Egypt under the Pha- 
 raohs," in which he says: "The groat mixture of tribes in manv 
 branches who had their primeval homes in the wide region and marshy 
 districts of the Upper Nile, from the Egyptian frontier at the first cata- 
 ract, (close to the city of Syene,) have on the monuments the common 
 name of Xahasa. In the colored representations they appear of a black 
 or dark brown complexion, with unmistakable Negro features. There 
 can be no doubt that we have to recognize in tfiem the ancestors of the 
 Negro race of the. present day"
 
 230 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Cush, Mizraim, and Put. They found Egypt a morass 
 and converted it into the most fertile country of the 
 world ; they reared its pyramids, invented its hiero- 
 glyphics, and gave letters to Greece. The everlast- 
 ing architecture still remains, the wonder of the world, 
 though in ruins. Her mighty dynasties have yet 
 their record in history. She has poured forth her 
 heroes on the field, given bishops to the Church and 
 martyrs to the fires. And as for Negro physiognomy, 
 as if that should shut out the light of intellect, go to 
 your national museum, contemplate the features of 
 the colossal head of Memnon, and the statues of the 
 divinities on which the ancient Africans impressed 
 their own forms, and there see, in close resemblance 
 to the Negro features, the mold of those countenances 
 which once beheld, as the creatures of their own im- 
 mortal genius, the noblest and most stupendous monu- 
 ments of human skill and taste and grandeur. 
 
 In the imperishable porphyry and granite is the 
 unfounded and pitiful slander publicly and before all 
 the world refuted. 
 
 In the Jew we find another instance confirmatory 
 of the law of inheritance. The earliest records prove 
 him to have been the same in their day as he is now. 
 The beauty of Sarah still adorns her daughters. The 
 subtle skill of Jacob in taking care of his own finan- 
 cial interests and outwitting Laban still confronts 
 us in the mart of commerce and in the " struggle 
 for existence " on "Wall-street. The power of state- 
 craft winning for its owner supremacy over a 
 strange people, compelling haughty Egypt to bow
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 231 
 
 to the fiats of the alien Joseph, lives in the Jew 
 Gambetta and shines with meteoric splendor in the ro- 
 mantic career of Lord Beaconsfield ; while their love 
 of jewels, of silver and gold, and of song, burns with 
 a flame as steady to-day as when they spoiled the 
 Egyptians, and sang the song of Moses upon the 
 shores of the Red Sea. , 
 
 The Celt is, to-day, what history tells he was 2000 
 years ago. Whether met with in France, in Wales, in 
 Ireland, the pure Celt is still sensuous, sensitive, quick, 
 tmsteady. Full of fire, of wit, of eloquence ; hasty in 
 temper, impatient of toil, unequal to self-government ; 
 brave, and quick to quarrel ; vain, and fond of display ; 
 with little pertinacity, but capable of extraordinary 
 efforts ; liable to excessive discouragement and im- 
 measurable elation; intelligent, apt, credulous, and 
 easily ruled by his priesthood; seeking wealth by 
 plunder rather than by slow means his is a people 
 who fill the history of the past with the glory of their 
 conquests, but who found no permanent state, and 
 who are never willing to submit long to their own 
 constituted authority.* See a remarkable proof of 
 this law of inheritance in race in the Epistle to the 
 Galatians a Celtic people, every trait of whose char- 
 acter is hinted at by the writer. It might have been 
 written of the same race to day. 
 
 The English nation the Anglo-Saxon is an em- 
 bodiment of the qualities of those races or families by 
 whom England has been successively occupied and 
 conquered. There is Celtic blood, hence wit and 
 
 * Brace's " Races of the Old World."
 
 232 GTJAED'S LECTURES AND ADDEESSES. 
 
 valor and eloquence ; there is Norman blood, hence 
 dignity and chivalry ; there is Danish blood, hence 
 hardihood and love of the sea ; there is German blood, 
 hence love of order, pertinacity of purpose, high es- 
 teem for women, love of land and reverence for re- 
 ligion and for law ; besides, there is Jewish blood, 
 hence love of commerce ; there is Roman blood, 
 hence love of power, of conquest, of colonization. 
 And if there be any other blood which contains any 
 element of greatness, no doubt that, too, might be, 
 yea, must be, found commingled in that race which its 
 members believe to be destined to the sovereignty of 
 the world. 
 
 Rather, perhaps, are these elements found in the 
 Anglo-American race.* This, after all, is only Anglo- 
 Saxon, resuscitated, replenished, renovated by an in- 
 fusion of blood from the most vigorous portions of 
 the Teutonic European. 
 
 There is Anglo-Saxon ; there is Scandinavian ; there 
 is Hollander ; there is High German ; there is Scotch 
 Celt ; there is Irish Celt ; there is the compound of 
 Anglo-Saxon and Celt. And there is the choicest 
 extract of all these ; choicest as to energy, vigor, dar- 
 ing, resoluteness. There is also a large proportion of 
 restlessness, insubordination, lawlessness, hatred of 
 antique customs, contempt for precedent, for mon- 
 archy, for caste. And these all combine to form a 
 positively new race, inheriting the distinctive pecul- 
 iarities of the best of the Teutonic and Celtic and 
 Latin tribes of the Old World ; and under fairest, 
 
 *This was written previous to the author's coming to America.
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 233 
 
 widest, and most auspicious conditions we see tliis 
 race putting forth titanic powers, marching with 
 giant strides from east to west of the magnificent 
 continent occupied by it, and big with the belief 
 that to it America, from pole to pole, must ulti- 
 mately pass, and by it the destinies of humanity be 
 controlled. 
 
 Just here Darwin's " selection of species " obtains 
 marked illustration. The " struggle for existence " in 
 the nations of the old continent and the mother 
 country has resulted in the going forth of the hardi- 
 est and most self-reliant, and through them the forma- 
 tion of what they themselves are wont to deem the 
 last and choicest result of time, in the great American 
 people. They are distinct from all others. With 
 length of hair, amplitude of cranium, opulence of limb 
 and shoulder, affluence of sinew and muscle, they are 
 made to push onward, as their wedge-shaped head and 
 cruciform features indicate; and with every variety 
 of climate, every species of production, vegetable and 
 animal, every class of mineral, in a land touching two 
 oceans, intersected by rivers that are seas in ceaseless 
 flow what may not be predicted of such a people ? 
 They needed one thing to perfect them ; and that came 
 in due time : the fire of a great, common, sorrowful 
 trial civil war. This knit .them into a firmer com- 
 pactness, and lifted them into a loftier zone of pur- 
 pose and feeling. 
 
 They inherit the elements of all the people whose 
 blood mingles in their complex systems. Perhaps a 
 keen analyst might be competent for the exciting
 
 234 GUARD'S LECTUKES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 task of detecting the presence of each of those many 
 peoples in the existing compound, and measuring the 
 proportion which each has contributed to the erection 
 of the unique edifice. 
 
 I am sure I detect the Irish Celtic element if 
 not in their blood, or bones, or bloom, or breadth of 
 shoulder and of brow certainly, in the oratorical 
 effusions which now and then are poured forth in 
 senate hall and on hamlet stump. 
 
 Coming, as I do, from a land where eloquence is 
 indigenous ; from the land of Grattan and of Flood, 
 of Burke and of Curran, of Shiel and of O'Counell, in 
 whose orations brilliancy and strength, erudition and 
 logic, imagination and philosophy, tenderness and 
 sublimity, sarcasm and invective, all united ; it may 
 be permitted me to express a belief that I can detect 
 some traces of Celtic genius in the great people over 
 the water, the countrymen of Clay and Calhoun, of 
 Patrick Henry and of Wendell Phillips ; but I fear 
 I must in truth assert that there is a sad degeneracy 
 in such whimsical out-pourings as the following : 
 
 Fellow citizens and horses, hurrah ! There's got to be a war. 
 I'm for whipping Great Britain right off, without stopping for 
 compliments. We must hustle the British lion heels over head 
 out of the everlasting borders of this here western continent. 
 Hurrah for the annexation of Canada! We must have the 
 critter heels and neck, if we have to wade in blood to our 
 knees to pull it from the horns of John Bull. We must do it. 
 Where's the 'possum whose little soul don't echo them senti- 
 ments ? He aint nowhere, and never was. Can't you, and I, 
 and every one of us, rouse up the wolf of human nature till 
 he'll paw the whole of Old England clear down below the low>
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 235 
 
 water mark ? Yes, sir-ee. Every citizen of this tall land 
 from the owl on the hemlock tub to the president in his great 
 arm-chair is in favor of this all-thundering and liberty- 
 spreading measure ! Just let them glorious ideas pop into the 
 United States' cranium rairly, and see if an earthquake shout 
 from 26,000,000 of India-rubber lungs don't shake the whole 
 earth, crack the zenith, and knock the very poles over! I tell 
 you there is nothing on this side of the millennium like our 
 own everlasting institution ; for you can't scrape up a flock of 
 civilized beings on the face of the universal terra firma who 
 know so well how to defend and spread them. Where's the 
 Yankee who wont vote for his country within three-quarters of 
 an inch of his life, if it tries his soul, yes, and his upper-leather, 
 too ? What's England ? Why, it aint any thing at all, 
 scarcely. Uncle Sam will take it yet for a handkerchief to blow 
 his nose upon when he gets a cold. We are bound to wake up 
 snakes, and no mistake. Let us once get hold of the job in 
 right earnest, with all of Uncle Sam's boys, and if we don't 
 dig a hole as deep as eternity with the spades of Yankee pluck, 
 and scum the grease spots off the face of the world, and pitch 
 them clear to the bottom of it, then I am no two-legged croc- 
 odile. When this is done, you will set the great roaring eagle 
 of liberty like a big rooster crowing on the top of a barrel. 
 Why, you are all ready and primed for the onset all you want 
 is a live coal or two of fire dropped on devoted heads to touch 
 you off. Methinks the flashes of fire in your eyes to-day fore- 
 bode blood and thunder only mind you don't flash in the pan ! 
 If you all do your bounden duty in this crisis, you'll sjnt the 
 tobacco juice of determination into John Bull's eyes till he has the 
 staggers, when you can take him by the tail and swing him beyond 
 all recollection ! Rouse ye, rouse ye, to the rescue. Let the shout 
 penetrate every nook and cranny in North America from the 
 tip-top of the Arctic regions clear of the Straits of Giberaltar. 
 Canada and the United States forever! begot in a war-whoop, 
 born in blood, cradled in thunder, and brought up in glory.* 
 
 * " Man ; or the Old and New Philosophy: " IUv. B. W. Saville, M.A.
 
 236 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 But the topic of racial heredity is far too exten- 
 sive and suggestive to allow of more than cursory 
 
 oo */ 
 
 mention. 
 
 Let us now trace the workings of the law of inherit- 
 ance in the individual members of the human race. 
 It may not be amiss to mention the opinions which 
 have been entertained upon this question by eminent 
 thinkers of the past and present : 
 
 First. Plato, first of Grecian thinkers in the sub- 
 limity of his conceptions, the range of his compre- 
 hension, the suggestiveness of his theories, entertained 
 the belief that the soul came direct from the gods. 
 This is known as the doctrine of pre-existence. With 
 him thinking was chiefly reminiscence, the re-awak- 
 eiiing of ideas and notions in the mind that had been 
 present to the mind in a prior stage of being ; when, 
 as yet, the mind dwelt in the Deity with whom all 
 ideas originated. This, of course, forbids the action 
 of the law of inheritance, or modifies it exceedingly 
 as to the mental nature and constitution of man. 
 
 Wordsworth, first of modern philosophic poets, 
 sympathized with this theory, and embodied it in one 
 of the noblest odes in the English language his " Ode 
 on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of 
 Early Childhood." One stanza is well known, and 
 is that in which he has voiced his sentiments upon 
 this theory : 
 
 Our birtli is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And cometh from afar ;
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 237 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God, who is our home: 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing boy. 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it flows 
 
 He sees it in his joy; 
 
 The youth, who daily farther from the east 
 Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
 And by the vision splendid 
 Is on his way attended ; 
 At length the man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 Second. There were, in the early days of Chris- 
 tianity, those who, having pondered these themes, 
 cherished the belief that it was not given to man to 
 propagate the higher principle and property of his 
 nature the spiritual, that which apprehends truth, 
 justice, duty, God ; that a constant creative co-opera- 
 tion between Deity and man took place; that God 
 creates afresh the immaterial and immortal principle 
 of our nature ; that man transmits the material, the 
 organic, only. 
 
 This theory has had not a few able and gifted sup- 
 porters in ancient and in modern days. They are 
 known as " Creationists." 
 
 Third. There were, and still are, those who believed 
 that to man it was given to transmit body, soul, and 
 spirit to his posterity, without any special and imme- 
 diate act of the Deity. These see no more difficulty 
 in transmitting spirit life than animal life ; and in 
 such texts as, " Adam begat a son in his own image,"
 
 238 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 and " God rested from his works," together with the 
 oft-repeated statements respecting the native sinf ill- 
 ness of humanity, find sufficient scriptural ground for 
 their belief that man is the parent of man by original 
 Divine appointment. St. Augustine, one of the 
 mightiest thinkers, and most philosophical of the 
 fathers of the Church, inclined to this idea. The 
 Romish Church also entertains it. I may say, also, 
 that it is my own opinion. 
 
 It will be at once perceived that these theories can- 
 not but modify the opinions entertained by those who 
 hold them, as to the range of the action of the law 
 of inheritance. One of these must believe that only 
 the physical is inherited ; others, that the physical and 
 psychical are transmitted that the influence of the 
 parent extends over the whole nature or only over part. 
 
 Fourth. With this it should be stated, that the 
 metempsychosis of Pythagoras and the Brahmin must 
 compel those who believe it to limit the influence of 
 parentage over offspring to the material portion of 
 the child. Take a leper. He must have sinned hid- 
 eously in a former state of being ; else he had never 
 been doomed to such a horrid condition of existence 
 now. Or take the young widow of fourteen years of 
 age who has never lived an hour with her betrothed. 
 She must have been guilty of some huge offense against 
 the gods ; else she had never been doomed to per- 
 petual woe, mourning, serfdom, and contempt; for 
 she is an accursed object, hated by the gods, despised, 
 crushed by man, for the crime of being an unwilling 
 widow.
 
 THE LAW OF INHEKITANCE. 239 
 
 Fifth. To these may be affixed the theories of those 
 who are known as " Transmutationists." They teach 
 that man is but the last known result of a prolonged 
 series of developments, beginning with matter uncon- 
 scious and unintelligent, into which, by some physical 
 means, the spark of life was struck, and that then 
 organic being began in vegetation ; that from this, 
 life traveled on, on and up into animal being, in the 
 form of some simple jelly-like substance; that thence 
 life crept on through mollusk and crustacean into fish, 
 into bird, into reptile ; thence along an all but inter- 
 minable pathway of progress, in which every family, 
 order, class, genus, species, variety of animal existence, 
 were included, until man appeared, the flower, the 
 fruit, the crown, the apex, the culmination, the god, 
 or any other name by whicli you can describe the final, 
 the ultimate end, of l>eing. 
 
 The theory is an old one. It has often been revived 
 after centuries of dreary entombment. Frenchmen, 
 Germans, Scotchmen, Englishmen, have successively 
 summoned it from its sepulcher and its cerements, and 
 loosed and let it go. Lamarck entertained the thought. 
 The " Vestiges of Creation " made it popular. The 
 " Origin of Species " has ushered it once more into the 
 arena of science. 
 
 As propounded in the " Yestiges of Creation," and 
 by Darwin, the theory is not atheistic. Darwin ac- 
 knowledges a Creator and a creative act giving exist- 
 ence to life, for he denies spontaneous generation ; but 
 both confine, limit, the creative act to the formation 
 of the earliest, simplest, lowest form of life; since
 
 2iO GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 which God has never interfered with his creation, 
 but, having dowered the initial form of life with a 
 capacity of developing a higher, and that again a 
 higher, and so on, has left Nature to work out its own 
 potentialities by the " law of development ; " until, lo ! 
 the being called man, with all his endowments, looms 
 upon the horizon of time, touches the earth his home, 
 and begins his mysterious and unique career of unlim- 
 ited and endless growth in knowledge, wisdom, and joy. 
 
 There is one simple and small difficulty in the way 
 of our acceptance of this sublimely comprehensive 
 hypothesis ; it is this : that no man has, as yet, wit- 
 nessed the birth of an animal from a plant, of a bird 
 from a crab, of a mammal from a crow, of a man from 
 a monkey. 
 
 Plants have been seen producing plants; crabs, 
 crabs ; hens, chickens ; eels, eels ; baboons, their de- 
 lectable offspring ; but where is the accoucheur who 
 has ever issued his bulletin announcing that : 
 
 At twenty minutes to three o'clock, P. M., Madame Gorilla 
 gave birth to a boy. Mother and son doing well ! 
 
 Signed, SAIREY GAMP. 
 
 Bodily characteristics are inherited. 
 
 Both parents unite in transmitting such character- 
 istics to their offspring. It lias been suggested that 
 the father modifies one portion, the mother another 
 portion of the frame as already hinted. 
 
 In seeking for evidence of this, lineage must not be 
 forgotten. All progenitors, paternal and maternal, 
 influence the living offspring of the present genera- 
 tion. Frequently the likeness of the child cannot be
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 2-tl 
 
 traced to either father or mother, yet may be found 
 in the grand-uncle or in the great-grandfather. 
 
 Two maiden ladies are alive in England * of gen- 
 tle if not of noble birth, altogether unlike any of 
 their family at present in existence, and unlike any of 
 their ancestors for two or three generations. But 
 there is a well-preserved oil painting of a member of 
 their family, some two hundred years old, in which 
 the most striking resemblance to the ladies is at once 
 detected. The term by which inheritance thus modi- 
 fied is described, is "Atavism." It cannot be ac- 
 counted for; nevertheless it cannot be denied or 
 questioned. 
 
 The House of Austria is distinguished by a mal- 
 formation known as the "Hapsburg lip." Large, 
 thick, hairy, it was introduced into the family by 
 marriage with Mary of Burgundy, three hundred years 
 ago, and has never been extirpated. The Hanover 
 House of Guelph, now upon the English throne, in- 
 herits a blue eye, a fair complexion, a short upper lip. 
 The Bourbons have an aquiline nose. 
 
 Gait, gesture, and attitude, are hereditary. Often 
 entire families are left-handed, even those members 
 who have been withdrawn from them in infancy. G. 
 is born of a family where the use of the left hand is 
 hereditary ; he is not left-handed himself, but his mar- 
 ried daughter is so, and all her children likewise ; his 
 son is married and has a daughter in the cradle, who 
 is left-handed to a strongly marked degree. 
 
 Fecundity is hereditary. Giron gives a remarkable 
 
 1871.
 
 242 GTJAKD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 illustration of this. One mother had twenty -four chil 
 dren ; of these, five daughters had forty-six ; one 
 grand-daughter, sixteen. Even the power of produc- 
 ing twins may be an inherited one. 
 
 Stature is hereditary. Every one knows the efforts 
 made by the great king of Prussia to obtain a regi- 
 ment of giants ; by what fair and foul means he con- 
 trived to tempt giants of other nations to enlist ; to 
 what an extent he pushed his fancy, even to kidnap- 
 ping. Travelers were waylaid and villages infested 
 with recruiting bandits. An Austrian embassador to 
 George II., on his way through Prussia was kidnapped 
 because of his size ; nor could he be released until he 
 had produced his credentials. From home, from 
 trade, from Church, were men haled to Potsdam. To 
 England, Holland, the Tyrol, the Arno, the Pyrenees, 
 even to Egypt and the fairs of Asia, were emissaries 
 sent to search for men of six feet and upward. No 
 man "was safe who had the misfortune to be born with 
 a tendency to altitude of stature. One poor carpenter 
 of six feet, good Rhenish measure, was requested to 
 make a cupboard exactly his own height. The chest 
 was no sooner brought home than the carpenter was 
 shut down in it and carried off to Berlin. One thou- 
 sand thalers were paid for six-foot men ; if taller, the 
 price was raised. Twelve millions were thus spent. 
 The most expensive bargain was one Kirkland, an 
 Irishman, to whom nine thousand thalers were paid 
 to induce him to remain in the king's service. He 
 had been entrapped : first he was engaged as footman 
 for three years, then handed over by his master, the
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 243 
 
 
 
 ambassador to England ; lie obtained his liberty, finally, 
 only by the interference of the English Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Well, what of this? What but an elevation of 
 the average stature of the Berlinese ; for these tall 
 men intermarried with the women of the city where, 
 for fifty years, the guards had resided. 
 
 Longevity is hereditary. Large numbers of cases 
 confirmatory of this have been gathered. Near the 
 Ehone lived a family of five brothers and sisters, 
 of the same father and mother, whose aggregate ages 
 reached four hundred and thirty years the eldest 
 ninety-two, and the others following, male and female 
 alternately, at intervals of three years each. Madame 
 de Montgolfier, of Paris, lived a hundred and ten 
 years, retaining her vigor to the last ; and her chil- 
 dren, the youngest of whom had reached fourscore, 
 gathered around her coffin. A well-known literary 
 character, a Frenchman, M. Quersoniere, was alive in 
 1842, aged one hundred and fourteen, in perfect en- 
 joyment of his faculties. He said : " My family 
 descends from Methusaleh ; we must be killed to die ; 
 my maternal grandfather was killed by an accident 
 when one hundred and twenty-five years of age ; and 
 I," he added, smiling, " invite you to my burial in the 
 next century.'' 
 
 These facts are well authenticated, and are so far 
 relied on as to form an important element in the cal- 
 culations of the actuaries for insurance societies. 
 
 Idiosyncracies are inherited. 
 
 In some entire families the slightest amount of 
 17
 
 244 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 m 
 
 opium or mercury acts as a virulent poison. In one 
 family, named by Zimmerman, coffee produced the 
 effect of opium, while opium was inert. Louis XIV. 
 was voracious and gluttonous, and all his family in- 
 herited the habit. Disgust to animal food runs in 
 some families ; in others, cheese is an object of abhor- 
 rence ; while, again, an unaccountable propensity to 
 eat human flesh has been noted. One case is named, 
 by Boethius, of a young girl, whose father had this 
 horrible propensity. Father and mother were both 
 burned before the girl was a year old ; the girl, though 
 brought up in refinement and affluence, yet also gave 
 way to this unnatural practice. 
 
 In some families there is a tendency to produce six 
 toes and six fingers. Lawrence remarks that, were 
 persons so distinguished to marry only those of like 
 peculiarities, within a given time a permanent race 
 might be produced possessing this number of toes 
 and fingers. 
 
 The porcupine man exhibited before the Royal So- 
 ciety in 1731 was a remarkable personage. His name 
 was Edward Lambert. His whole body was covered 
 by a thick, horny, scaly, or bristly integument, rustling 
 like the quills of a hedgehog shaven within an inch 
 of the skin. He was then fourteen. Twenty-six 
 years after he was in good health, but still covered as 
 before. He had twice been salivated, and once had 
 the small-pox, at which times he lost his covering, 
 but regained it quickly. He had now six children, 
 all of whom were similarly robed ; in each child the 
 integument appearing, as with the father, nine weeks
 
 THE LAW OF INHEEITANCE. 245 
 
 after birth. Two brothers, John, twenty-two, Rich- 
 ard, fourteen, grandsons of the original porcupine 
 gentleman, were shown in Germany, and had this 
 cutaneous incrustation. From all of which one may 
 infer that, by carefully selecting and marrying these 
 persons, an entirely new species of man might have 
 been produced. Dr. Pritchard states that he saw a 
 man, similarly affected, who asserted that he was a 
 descendant of the original porcupine man. 
 
 Sir H. Holland, in his "Medical Notes," supplies 
 many instances of the inheritance of diseases and 
 morbid states of the nervous system. Gout runs in 
 families ; nor need they be, in every case, the most 
 noble or the most honorable. So, likewise, is hare-lip 
 hereditary; so are apoplexy, epilepsy, hysteria, and 
 tendency to hemorrhage. 
 
 Here, without indelicacy, may it be asserted that 
 consanguineous marriage results in irreparable injury 
 to offspring. Should there, for instance, be an in- 
 herited tendency to disease in two brothers, and their 
 children intermarry, as cousins often do, the diseased 
 tendency would be strengthened in their offspring, 
 and would, in all likelihood, break out, as a spring 
 swollen by rains forces its way through the imposed 
 stratum of clay or pebble. On the other hand, mar- 
 riage into a new and pure-blooded family may arrest 
 the tendency to disease, hold it in check, and, by wise 
 management in matters of regimen, altogether stay the 
 march of the plague-virus of consumption or epilepsy. 
 
 There is heritage of mental power and aptitude. 
 
 It is admitted that, in this department, there is
 
 246 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 much more difficulty in fixing and defining the law 
 of inheritance, than in the physical. Nevertheless, 
 facts carefully collected, sifted, assorted, compared, 
 warrant us in our belief in the transmission of mental 
 characteristics. The law by no means explains the 
 sudden appearance of talent and genius in families of 
 humble origin, unknown to fame, and unchronicled 
 in books of heraldry. Of such there is an abundance. 
 Nor do we doubt the existence of a prodigious quan- 
 tity of mental talent in regions of society not yet 
 mapped upon the atlas of genius. 
 
 Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
 
 The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; 
 
 Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 
 
 From humblest origin have there sprung men 
 mighty as rulers of the state, as chiefs in the camp, 
 as pontiffs in the Church, as discoverers of scientific 
 truth, as writers of deathless song, as students and 
 scholars, as pioneers of civilization in pagan lands, as 
 orators at the bar, in the senate, and in the pulpit, as 
 sculptors, painters, mechanicians; men who carved their 
 own shields, and illuminated and covered them with 
 illustrious quarteriiigs, and who won their own way 
 to the starry heights of race-wide honor, trust, grati- 
 tude ; men needing not marble to confer upon them 
 the greatness which their own bravely and wisely 
 cultivated powers helped them to win and wear. Far- 
 aday and Carlyle are among the freshest instances of 
 this. 
 
 On the other hand, weak-minded offspring have
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 247 
 
 been found among the descendants of illustrious men. 
 There have been boobies whose fathers were giants in 
 mental might and prowess. But this surprises us, is 
 contrary to our anticipation, and is generally received 
 as a deviation from an established law of nature. The 
 power of the mother's mind plays here a prime part. 
 I believe it may be asserted that, unless there be bodily 
 disease impeding and cramping the mental forces of 
 the child, we may, with certainty, anticipate greatness 
 in that offspring whose parents stood high in the king- 
 dom of intellectuality. 
 
 We have but to recall George Stevenson of railway 
 fame, to remember his yet more illustrious son, Robert. 
 We have but to think of William Wilberforce, the 
 Christian statesman and philanthropist ; small of stat- 
 ure, but capacious of soul ; with a mind capable of the 
 highest feats of statesmanship ; with a voice of match- 
 less charm ; with a genius for oratory, whose orations 
 extorted eulogiums from the first critics of the senate; 
 and we shall at once recall the fact of his three sons, 
 each of distinguished abilities, but one, especially, 
 without a superior in England for magnificence of 
 utterance as to voice, manner, and overpowering 
 rhetorical skill and art the sometime Bishop of Ox- 
 ford the present Bishop of Winchester.* 
 
 Henry Hallam, the prince of philosophic thinkers, 
 whether the subject were literature, law, or history, 
 will suggest to you his equally gifted son, who gave 
 promise of a career as splendid and a fame as solid as 
 his father's. Poet, essayist, philosopher, early alas, 
 
 * 1871.
 
 24:8 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 to us of earth, too soon summoned from tins world 
 of imperfection and sorrow to a sphere more conge- 
 nial to his expansive and aspiring nature. And yet, 
 perhaps, not too soon ; for to his early removal do 
 we not owe that peerless monody wailed and chanted 
 over his bier by our Poet Laureate the costliest 
 chaplet ever plucked and woven and laid upon the 
 tomb of evanished beauty the choicest, the stateliest 
 memorial of departed excellence ever reared by the 
 genius of bereaved and lamenting friendship. True, 
 his great sire found a resting-place beneath the dome 
 of England's grandest mausoleum, and slumbers sur- 
 rounded by the remains of warriors, statesmen, poets, 
 heroes ; but give me rather to rest beneath the yet 
 more costly cenotaph carved and piled above the 
 sacred dust of Arthur Hallam by the genius and 
 affection of Alfred Tennyson, in his immortal "In 
 Memoriam." The abbey shall crumble ; the bust shall 
 yield to time's relentless touch ; but the poem shall 
 outlive the ages and outshine the sun. 
 
 Those of you who know any thing of Isaac Taylor 
 know that in him were combined the moral and the 
 mental sage, the biographer and the historian ; equally 
 at home when descanting upon ancient Christianity 
 and when discoursing of Hebrew poetry ; when 
 analyzing the morbid frailties of the fanatic and 
 the enthusiast ; when delineating the founder of 
 the Jesuits and mapping out the world of mind ; 
 when speculating upon the physical theory of another 
 life, and when sketching for his household the out- 
 lines of home education. But he came of a parent-
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 249 
 
 age of mental power ; owned a sister of no mean tal- 
 ents as a poetess ; and has left a son who, both as an 
 author and us a minister of Christ, gives promise of 
 a fame not unworthy his illustrious lineage. 
 
 Aud were it not wearisome to you, and were it not 
 deemed verging on sectarianism, I might venture to 
 give you yet one more evidence of this law of mental 
 heritage. 
 
 There lived a man in the last century whose influ- 
 ence npon his generation, his nation, and the world's 
 moral history it were impossible to exaggerate. He 
 was a scholar and a fellow of his college, though but 
 twenty-nine years of age. Keen as a logician, exqui- 
 site in his classic taste, and of soul capable of sym- 
 pathizing with all that was beautiful in art and true 
 in science, of philosophic cast of mind, and of insa^ 
 tiate appetite for knowledge, he added to these all a 
 power over others and a skill in governing men and 
 organizing institutions worthy of a Richelieu. Yearn- 
 ing to benefit his fellows, he devoted his talents and 
 his learning to the mental and moral enlightenment 
 and elevation of his age compiling histories, manu- 
 als of science, grammars of ancient and modern lan- 
 guages ; writing tracts, publishing a periodical, writ- 
 ing comments upon the Old and New Testaments ; 
 preaching three times a day ; traveling on horseback 
 and in chaise in all weathers and over all manner of 
 roads ; maligned and lampooned by the press ; pelted 
 and chased for his life by ruffian mobs headed and 
 encouraged by squire and parson, by bribe and brandy ; 
 yet never flinching, never halting ; sleeping six hours
 
 250 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 and working eighteen, daily, for fifty years, until he 
 lived to see his persecutors changed into admirers, 
 and to receive from towns whence he had been driven 
 by brutal crowds ovations worthy of a prince. A 
 true and loyal son of the Church of England, but 
 flung forth from her as though a leper ; yet cherish- 
 ing an affection for her which rose with every insult, 
 and beat as high when in " age and feebleness ex- 
 treme " he passed hence 
 
 As doth the morning star, 
 
 Which goes not down behind the darkened west, 
 But melts away into the light of day. 
 
 His brothers were poets. His sisters were as witty 
 and as intelligent as they were beautiful in person 
 and unfortunate in their marriages. His father had 
 won fame as a Hebraist and as a poet. His mother in- 
 herited a fair face, a sound constitution, a firm faith, 
 a godly leaning, and a capacious intellect from her fa- 
 ther. She corresponded with her sons, while at col- 
 lege, in a manner worthy of a doctor of theology, 
 and, in instances not a few, furnished them with 
 counsels and opinions in matters of faith and conduct 
 fit to be inscribed in letters of gold. From the 
 mother one son inherited the love of order and 
 power of ruling ; another son, from the father, the 
 gift of song ; and no fairer or more faithful con- 
 firmation of the law of mental heritage could we 
 present than that furnished by the history of him 
 who said " The world is my parish," and of his 
 brother, of one of whose poems Dr. Watts confessed
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 251 
 
 lie would rather be the author than of all he himself 
 had ever composed.* 
 
 There is another instance in which I would fain 
 hope we shall prove that the law of heritage in mind- 
 power holds true. 
 
 Lately, very lately, have we had to mourn a largely 
 gifted man. He could play with infinite ease upon 
 the chords of our nature ; now evoking laughter, 
 long and loud ; now, sadness even to tears ; now, dis- 
 gust and loathing ; now. exuberant sympathy with 
 goodness and self-sacrifice. He could tickle one 
 almost to death with his feather. He could blanch 
 the cheek of warrior with horror. His laughter 
 chased full many a social evil to the pit. His satire 
 sapped the foundations of not a few legal tyrannies, 
 and rang the knell of their departing cruelties. 
 Weariness was forgotten and care lulled to repose by 
 the magic of his wand. He lashed hypocrisy as with 
 a sevenfold scorpion scourge. He plead the cause of 
 the outcast and of the pauper with resistless pathos. 
 From all classes he gathered admiration ; from all 
 nations he is sure to obtain the guerdon of delighted 
 readers. Sentimental benevolence found in him a 
 merciless foe. Royalty sought his friendship and 
 offered him his choice of honors. The senate house 
 
 * The obligations of John and Charles Wesley for their mental 
 powers to their parentage has also been touched upon in the author's 
 lecture upon " Wesley and his Helpers." We deem it hardly neces- 
 sary to omit this passage from its position in this lecture because of 
 the fact referred to. Eight or ten years elapsed between the writing 
 of tin's lecture and the completiou of the other. EDITOR.
 
 252 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADUKESSES. 
 
 lias quoted his character, nor has the pulpit disdained 
 to borrow from him when it would point or feather 
 an arrow for a fatal flight to some pampered selfish- 
 ness within the precincts of professed holiness. All 
 men have united to do him honor ; and while yet of 
 an age which promised large increase of power and 
 product he is gone to join 
 
 The innumerable caravan which moves 
 
 To that mysterious realm whore each shall take 
 
 His chamber in the silent hulls of death. 
 
 When we remember that eulogy has been exhausted 
 and metaphor beggared in seeking to express the es- 
 timate cherished of him by the thousands of his 
 friends ; when we remember the simple-hearted Pick- 
 wick, and the renowned Mrs. Bardell, and the inim- 
 itable Samuel "Weller ; when we recall the meanness 
 of a Heep, the villainy of a Pecksniff, and the per- 
 petual vivacity of a Mark Tapley ; when we weep at 
 the recital of the heroism of Little Nell and clench 
 our fists at the repulsive monstrosity called Quilp ; 
 when Bleak House throws its chill shadow o'er our 
 spirits and Little Dorrit evokes our sympathy with 
 changed fortune, demoralized human nature, and 
 triumphant virtue, and then think that the genius that 
 catered for us in these realms of fancy shall no longer 
 regale or renovate our flagging spirits, we long to be- 
 lieve that the mantle of the social reformer has fallen 
 upon shoulders not unequal to the burden and the 
 glory which form the heritage of Charles Dickens the 
 Second.* 
 
 * This has not been quite justilied, as yet, by the facts. EDITOR.
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 253 
 
 It were easy to multiply instances of this sort. 
 Take up any well-compiled Biographical Dictionary 
 and you will be surprised with the many instances il- 
 lustrative of transmitted talent and aptitude for spe- 
 cial excellence in artistic, philosophic, and mathematic 
 attainments. 
 
 There is the Kemble family, including the illus- 
 trious Siddons ; the Keans, Edmund and Charles ; 
 the Sheridans, Thomas and Richard Brinsley and 
 Mrs. Norton ; the Herschels, Sir William and his 
 illustrious assistant, Miss Herschel, liis sister, and his 
 equally gifted son, Sir John ; Lord Chatham and his 
 son, William Pitt, Premier of England when but 
 twenty-five years old ; Sydney Smith and his daugh- 
 ter, Lady Holland, the authoress of "his "Life;" 
 Raphael, the son of a painter ; Mozart, the son of a 
 musician ; Thorwaldsen, the son of a sculptor ; the 
 Adams family ; the Coleridge family, Samuel Hart- 
 ley, Sir John, Judge Coleridge and his son, the pres- 
 ent* Solicitor General. It has been noted that 
 the legislative faculty descends through families for 
 generations. It has also been observed that the ascent 
 of intellectual power culminates and wanes after 
 three or four generations. 
 
 As a point of practical moment it may be said that 
 it is possible to gradually elevate the mental capacity 
 of a house by continuous and thorough cultivation 
 in the successive families. Culture will produce apt- 
 itude for higher attainments in offspring. The 
 nervous and mental forces become enriched in sus- 
 
 1876.
 
 254 
 
 ceptibility and tendencies. The children of the third 
 generation of an educated family are sure to display un- 
 wonted facility for scholarly excellence. It has been as- 
 serted that it is next to impossible to train the children 
 of totally uneducated parents in classical knowledge. 
 We thus sway the future of our race for good, for ill. 
 Ample observation assures us that mental deficiency 
 is inheritable. Madness is certainly transmissible. 
 Idiots beget idiots. There is a globule of madness in 
 every man's blood. Indeed, the majority of the race 
 is mad ; the small minority sane. It is " a mad world, 
 my masters." It does not follow that this assertion is 
 false because we deny it and may give proofs to sus- 
 tain the opposite assertion. Colney Hatch, with its 
 six or seven hundred patients, would do the same. 
 Indeed, our planet is but a Colney Hatch upon a large 
 scale. Now and then the madness assumes a specially 
 virulent form as when gold is discovered, or a dia- 
 mond bed is dug into, or a South Sea Bubble Com- 
 pany is formed, or joint-stock associations sweep mill- 
 ions into a bottomless abyss like Milton's pit. On 
 all sides terrible and fabulous prices are given for 
 land, and railroad shares are at a premium of 125 ; 
 or a rage for tulips sets in, and then for fuchsias, 
 and then for skye terriers, and then for high-heeled 
 boots and pagoda -shaped head-dresses. Why, the 
 French nation is just now* suffering from an acute 
 attack of madness. The insufferable vanity of the 
 Gallic cock is but madness. He must crow above 
 and crow over .all others, to prove that he is " game." 
 
 *1871.
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 255 
 
 What cares he for the blood which may be shed in 
 the gratification of his inordinate ambition ! "Where- 
 fore does he possess spurs if not to flesh them in 
 the carcass of " Spanish " or other fowl ? Was not 
 Europe upheaved from ocean's depths by earthquake 
 Titans that the bird might have a " pit '' in which to 
 gratify his belligerent propensity ? 
 
 Bismarck becomes possessed of an idea, or an idea 
 possesses him. He will have German unity. There- 
 fore a war with Austria ensues ; and the idea costs 
 45,000 men, who were killed at the price of 1,500 
 per head. 
 
 The royal houses of Europe are terrible instances 
 of the law of inheritance. They would intermarry. 
 None but royal blood shall flow in their veins. Ger- 
 many shall be the nursery ground for the heirs to 
 empire. Russia, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Naples, 
 Austria, England, shall draw thence the mothers of 
 their future sovereigns or the husbands of their 
 princesses ; and these, again, shall wed their offspring, 
 it matters not how enfeebled in nerve, how enervated 
 in mind, until, as the result of putting too fine a point 
 upon the royal breed, lo, mind itself becomes pointless. 
 
 The Crimean war, which lost 784,000 lives at the 
 price of 483 per head, was nothing but the crime 
 of a mad, proud despot resolved that the Russian Bear 
 should have a breakfast on the Sick Man of Turkey. 
 Nicholas inherited insanity. The present Emperor* 
 is mad. Nearly all the monarchs of Russia displayed 
 madness. It is an awful heirloom of the house. 
 
 * The late Alexander II.
 
 256 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 The Prussian royal house inherits madness, since the 
 days, at least, of Carlyle's hero's father. A royal gen- 
 tleman, whose custom it was to cane his son, fling pokers 
 at his daughter's head, and when the fancy takes him, 
 to spit upon his daughter's plate, and seek to strangle 
 his son with the curtain cord that such a man should 
 have had such charms for Carlyle, and that the high- 
 priest should have offered such incense and homage 
 to his grim deity, compels one to the painful belief 
 that even he, too, is not exempt from the malady of 
 our species ; but whether an immediate heritage from 
 his parents, or an ancient one transmitted through an 
 interminable line, I am not able to say.* 
 
 Nor is tliere wanting evidence of the heritableness 
 of moral qualities and tendencies. 
 
 That this should be is as likely as that the phys- 
 ical and the mental should be transmitted. Certain 
 forms of vicious tendency are hereditary, such as 
 falsehood, theft, sensuality, drunkenness. 
 
 The terrible effects of opium-eating upon the child 
 are frequently noticed by physicians. Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge is the most notable example. His mental 
 power is well known. Profound as a metaphysician, 
 and matchless as a talker, he gave way to opium, 
 until it became an omnipotent tyrant. He often 
 wished to be placed in an asylum that he might be 
 delivered from its power, and finally had an attendant 
 whose duty it was to see that the drug never reached 
 him. His state of feeling he describes as agony, as 
 
 * All the facts developed since Carlyle's death were not, of course, 
 known at the time of writing. EDITOK.
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 257 
 
 hell ; the insatiate craving, then indulgence, then re- 
 action from the raptures of elysium, at once plunged 
 into the fierce fires of Tartarus, similar to those pangs 
 endured by De Quincey. The moral results were : 
 total separation between will and conscience ; an all 
 but absolute impotence of volition in all the relations 
 of life ; engagements unfulfilled ; promises forgotten ; 
 friendship ignored ; and a condition more allied to 
 insanity than to reason, his miserable doom. His son 
 Hartley inherited the morbid condition both of body 
 and soul. Stimulant he must have, though it be 
 alcoholic; and with this, weakness of volition, in- 
 tense sensibility without power of control. To the 
 slightest temptation he yielded. He shrank from 
 mental pain. He could not open a letter without 
 trembling. Yet, well aware of his weakness, in one 
 of his books he wrote the following : 
 
 O woeful impotence of weak resolve 
 
 Recorded, testify the writer's shame. 
 
 Days pass away, and Time's large orbs revolve, 
 
 And every day beholds me still the same; 
 
 Till oft-neglected purpose loses aim, 
 
 And hope becomes a flat, unheeded lie. 
 
 The results of inherited tendency to drunkenness 
 are of a horrifying nature. This tendency is called 
 dipsomania. It displays itself as a susceptibility to 
 nervous excitement in the first generation, and, if 
 yielded to and indulged in, becomes an irresistible 
 craving in the third. It is, indeed, a disease of the 
 moral as of the physical constitution. Motives are 
 powerless it matters not what they be. Self-esteem,
 
 258 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 love, religion all are urged in vain. The victim in- 
 dulges, and, having recovered, promises amendment ; 
 but the cycle revolves with it the thirst, the longing, 
 which becomes an overmastering one, to whose impe- 
 rious fiat the unhappy victim is compelled to yield 
 obedience. There is no regard for truth, for honor, 
 for domestic ties. Children may starve; the wife 
 pine in rags; his own person present every aspect 
 of neglect and dissipation. He heeds not ; nor can he 
 explain the motives which impel him to a life of vaga- 
 bondage. 
 
 The children of intemperate parents are sure to in- 
 herit morbid tendencies intellectually. They live up 
 to a certain age, when mental growth becomes ar- 
 rested, and gradually they sink into imbecility or 
 idiocy. M. Mord records the case of a young man 
 whose father was a drunkard. This son gave way 
 to the crime. He had seven children, of whose his- 
 tory this is a summary : 
 
 The first two died of convulsions. 
 
 The third, a son, attained some skill in handicraft, but be- 
 came an idiot at twenty -two. 
 
 The fourth, a son, attained a certain amount of intelligence 
 which he could not exceed, and relapsed into profound melan- 
 choly with tendency to suicide, which ended in harmless 
 imbecility. 
 
 The fifth, a son, is of a peculiar and irritable disposition, 
 and has broken off all connection with his family. 
 
 The sixth was a daughter, with the strongest hysteric tend- 
 encies ; profoundly impressed by the sad spectacle of her 
 family. She has been seriously troubled in her reason re- 
 peatedly.
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 259 
 
 The seventh is a remarkably intelligent workman, but ex- 
 tremely nervous and depressed ; he indulges in the most 
 despairing anticipations with regard to his life and reason. 
 
 A most melancholy picture this, it will be con 
 fessed. 
 
 Habits of gambling propagate a tendency in the 
 children. A lady is named who possessed great 
 wealth, and who passed her nights in gaming ; she 
 died young of pulmonary disease. Her eldest son 
 was equally addicted to play, and also died of con- 
 sumption at the same age as his mother. Her daughter 
 inherited the same passion and the same disease. 
 
 1. There is augmented propensity transmitted. 
 
 2. There is enfeebled volition transmitted. 
 
 3. There is moral obliquity and obtuseness trans- 
 mitted. 
 
 4. There is nervous predisposition Transmitted. 
 The history of the House of Stuart is a remarkable 
 
 illustration of the transmission of bad and vicious 
 qualities. 
 
 Starting from the Queen of Scots, and ending with 
 the Chevalier, there is a striking display of evil ten- 
 dency, evil conduct, and evil consequences. The 
 beautiful Mary inherited, with a Stuart nature, one 
 infinitely worse : that which, through her mother, she 
 brought over from one" of the basest families of 
 France the House of Guise. The members of that 
 family, whether in the Church, in the State, in the 
 camp, in the court, displayed every-where cruelty of 
 heart, sensual propensity, virulent bigotry, vaulting 
 
 ambition, total contempt for truth, exalted notions of 
 18
 
 260 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the " divinity that doth hedge a king." With them 
 murder was one of the fine arts, and to be assiduously 
 cultivated. They lived in an atmosphere of lust and 
 duplicity. They were capable of vast reach of 
 thought, of high appreciation of art. They perished 
 in the fourth generation, abhorred, despised, accursed. 
 The fiercest fires of persecution were kindled by their 
 breath and fagoted by their hands. The Barthol- 
 omew massacre found them equipped for the shambles 
 and prompt to shed blood. The Queen of Scots was 
 doomed to spring from this parentage, to lap this 
 milk and inhale the inspiration of this ancestry. She 
 was beautiful a perfect witch in manner and in 
 speech but she was lustful, cruel, treacherous. 
 James, her son, was a pedant, not over careful of 
 veracity, and a tyrant. Charles I. loved the fine arts 
 and patronized them, but he loved power more ; and 
 at his ease forgot his oaths and ignored the liberty 
 and laws of his people ; every inch a tyrant. No 
 Englishman's life was safe while Charles sat upon the 
 throne. His death was the last effort of imperiled 
 men to avert their own murder. Charles II. was a 
 clebauche, too vile to permit us to characterize him. 
 Kead Jesse's " Court of the Stuarts " for confirma- 
 tion. He seemed an incarnation of unclean spirits. 
 Witty for he never said a foolish thing but indif- 
 ferent was he to the glory of his kingdom so long as 
 his parasites pandered to his lewd desires and supplied 
 him with additional stimuli to his exhausted appetite. 
 James II. was a morbid, superstitious, cold-blocded 
 tyrant ; full of deceit, treachery, cruelty. No one
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. . 201 
 
 could trust his honor. He sold his nation to Louis 
 for French gold. And, weary of him, Britain chased 
 him from her throne and banished him from her 
 shores, to seek a shelter and a tomb within the nation 
 from whose fated family of Guise his race inherited 
 the vices that entailed this doom. 
 
 And this is, verily, a solemn thought for us parents. 
 We do not live for or to ourselves. Onward the evil 
 lives after us, in children and in children's children. 
 There is not a vice I cherish, nor a forbidden pleas- 
 ure in which I indulge, nor a sin against honor, 
 against veracity, against honesty, against chastity, that 
 does not, from me, move down to those who own me 
 as their sire. In them my habits shall germinate. I 
 entail upon them, if not actual, visible suffering, in- 
 ward and more real woe. I render their fight for 
 virtue more difficult. Through me, they feel the 
 stirrings of base emotions, and feel them, in less easily 
 vanquished force, clamoring for indulgence and cry- 
 ing out for sovereignty. It may break out in disease 
 of body ; it may come forth in disease of heart ; it 
 may appear in moral obliquity and social crime ; but 
 in any case the wretched inheritor of my selfishness 
 might well turn round and hiss a red-hot curse upon 
 the sire to whom he owes his infamous legacy. 
 
 We can, on the other hand, transmit a higher and 
 huler and holier type of moral sympathies and apti- 
 tudes. We cannot give them piety ; that must be 
 their own choice and duty. But we can render the 
 choice less difficult, less repulsive. We can lessen the 
 obstacles hindering the choice. We can, I firmly
 
 262 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 hold, propagate affinity for certain moral virtues, so 
 that our children shall hate meanness, reverence truth- 
 fulness, respect others, and come into being with a 
 moral soil more disposed to welcome into its bosom 
 the good seed which is able to save the soul. 
 
 And this arrangement is another aid to a virtuous 
 life in me. Many are the aids, the incentives, to this 
 life by which I am encompassed and appealed to. 
 My health will be preserved ; my reputation im- 
 proved ; my self-respect upheld ; my peace of heart, 
 of home, promoted ; my future prospects brightened. 
 These all are some of the manifold incentives to a right 
 and godly life by which I am appealed to. 
 
 And there is this among others : an appeal to our 
 natural affection as parents. 
 
 This is a deep thrust. This is a fresh evidence of 
 the purity of the moral government of God. Even 
 this affection shall be engaged, be subsidized, in the 
 benign work of slaying corruption and inducing men 
 to a career of goodness. 
 
 Your offspring ! Aye, there they stand, though 
 yet unborn the boy of broad brow ; the girl of glossy 
 curls and beaming face and coal-black eye. There 
 they group around you and appeal to you and pray 
 to you as their father, to have pity, have pity, have 
 pity, upon them. Spare them shame ! Spare them 
 self-contempt ! Spare them contempt for you ! Aid 
 not the devil and the world by aiding the flesh your 
 flesh ! Render not their life a fierce and awful fight 
 with themselves with a body from which they can- 
 not free themselves; a fight with proclivities they
 
 THE LAW OF INHERITANCE. 2G3 
 
 had never known but for you ! " J)eny yourself for 
 us," they say. " End, end your self-indulgence, for us ! 
 Dash the cup from your lip and flee the bed of adul- 
 tery, for ns ! We must suffer for your pleasures ; for 
 your hour of enjoyment we must pay the penalty of 
 a life of feebleness, if not of penury. Pity us in our 
 beauty, in our frailty ! Rather say we shall never be 
 never see the light never live to curse the day of 
 birth than gratify yourself ! "* 
 
 * The last page of the MS. of this lecture was lost. We have been 
 compelled to terminate it with the close of the above paragraph. 
 This will account for the abruptness with which the lecture ends. 
 EUITOK.
 
 264 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 THE YOSEMITE AND ITS LESSONS.* 
 
 TWICE has it been my privilege and my joy to 
 visit the Yosemite Valley. Had it been seven 
 times instead of twice the seventh visit had been 
 more instructive and ennobling than the sixth. With 
 each return to spot and scene the wonder grows, the 
 admiration kindles into flame more ardent, and the 
 satisfaction waxes in intensity and depth. Xo de- 
 scription be it by poet, painter, writer, orator can 
 be thought of as approaching the reality. " The half 
 was not told," must be the exclamation of the en- 
 tranced beholder and listener. 
 
 We start, say, from the Palace Hotel ; cross the 
 San Francisco bay ; enter the cars for Merced City ; 
 and, if the mosquitoes will but condescend to permit 
 us, enjoy a good night's sleep in preparation for the 
 day's staging. Twelve hours at least are spent before 
 reaching Clarke's Hotel ; and, having rested and slept 
 a second night, we either move on to the Yalley the 
 day following, or remain to spend that day in visiting 
 the Mariposa trees. Upon the third day, if we choose, 
 we reach the Valley by one o'clock, and become the 
 guests of Black or Hutchings. 
 
 There are at least three modes of entrance to the 
 Yalley ; that by which I entered passes " Inspiration 
 
 * A lecture partly written in 1877, partly in 1879, and partly in 1880.
 
 THE YOSEMITE AND ITS LESSONS. 265 
 
 Point." This is the point from whence one gains the 
 first view of the glorious spot. We halted and gazed 
 with bated breath and brimming eye. What an im- 
 pertinence is language in presence of such a scene ! 
 I thought of Moses as, from Nebo's crest, "God 
 showed him all the land," from Hermon's snowy 
 helmet to where the desert of the south touches Im- 
 manuers soil, from where Jordan winds its tortuous 
 way to where the waves of the Great Sea lave the 
 foot of Carmel, from where Engedi's groves of spice 
 lade the breezes to where Sharon's roses bloom and 
 Gilead's forests bleed their balm. There we caught, 
 indeed, the inspiration which has never left us or 
 forsaken us since. 
 
 On we dashed, by zigzag but well-constructed road 
 down, round, back, on, round, backward, onward, 
 downward until the level of the Merced River was 
 safely reached ; thence through shrubbery and o'er 
 sand and streamlet, until we landed in presencje of 
 the " Eagle's Nest," and within the musical thunder of 
 the Yosemite Falls. 
 
 The Valley is about nine miles long, and one mile 
 and a half wide. It is forty-one hundred feet above 
 the level of the sea. Through it flows the Merced 
 River. The walls of the Valley are gray granite, 
 nearly vertical, and from three thousand to six thou- 
 sand feet above the level of the Valley, thus from 
 seven thousand to ten thousand feet above the level 
 of the ocean. 
 
 The highest fall in the Yosemite is two thousand 
 six hundred and thirty-four feet high. This cataract is
 
 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 composed of three falls : the first, one thousand six 
 hundred feet ; the second, five hundred and thirty-four 
 feet ; the third, five hundred feet high. The Nevada 
 fall is the most massive ; there the main body of the 
 Merced, fresh from the eternal snow and ice of the 
 Sierras, leaps six hundred feet, or nearly four times as 
 high as Niagara ; it is sixty feet wide. From thence 
 the river rushes with resistless impetuosity through a 
 narrow gorge over the huge debris of boulders with 
 a noise "as of many waters," forming one of the 
 grandest and wildest scenes of the Valley. 
 
 We climbed, partly on foot and partly on horseback, 
 to Glacier Point. The travel is perfectly safe ; the 
 horses are well trained ; the road is broad and well 
 defended. On horseback there is but little fatigue 
 experienced. And even were the fatigue fourfold 
 greater one is well repaid for the toil by the " vision 
 splendid " which greets him from the projecting table 
 which, three thousand two hundred feet above the 
 level of the Valley, and seven thousand four hundred 
 feet above the ocean, permits him to look out, up, 
 down on one of the most superbly sublime pan- 
 oramas of this or any other orb. 
 
 The cloudless blue is above us ; the far-roaming 
 snow-robed plateaus of the Sierra beyond us ; the Cap 
 of Liberty and Cloud's Rest to our right ; Starr King 
 and Mt. Whitney ; South Dome and North, rounded 
 and polished by the gigantic glacier's chisel and 
 plane ; El Capitan to our left ; the Three Brothers, 
 and the Cathedral Spires on either side of the Valley ; 
 the river but a thread of moving water ; the Yosemite
 
 TlIE YOSEMITE AND ITS LESSONS. 267 
 
 with its threefold plunge ; far off the subdued thunder 
 of the Nevada and Vernal falls. 
 
 Immensity, almightiness, age, time, eternity, the 
 littleness and the grandeur of man, the glory and the 
 vanity of earth, the self-sufficiency and the incessant 
 activity of Deity, all in turn seize the spirit, move, 
 awe, subdue, yet elevate and inspire the heart. I 
 could not speak amid such magnificence. Even 
 thought -seemed paralyzed in the presence of such 
 symbols of the majesty of nature and the surpassing 
 greatness of Him who, through ages innumerable, and 
 by agencies titanic, had upheaved and sculptured, dis- 
 pread and massed, consolidated and embellished this 
 august and sacred shrine in earth's far-spanning tem- 
 ple! 
 
 You are impressed with the thought that here all 
 zones and climates, all forms and colors, all aspects 
 and motions, all elements of strength and beauty, of 
 sternness and repose, conspire and combine. There is 
 the valley and the gorge ; there is the still radiance of 
 the lake and the glad motion of the rushing river ; 
 there is the meek wild-flower and the stately pine; 
 there is the gleam of the many-tinted butterfly and 
 the majestic movement of the soaring eagle ; there 
 is eternal winter on the summit, there are the luxuries 
 of tropic summer in the dell ; there is mountain and 
 there is water ; there is beauty and there is sublimity. 
 Dew sparkles ; timely rains descend ; zephyrs glide 
 or loiter ; wild winds swell and sigh ; thunder crashes, 
 and lightnings blaze their banner o'er the dusky sky. 
 The eye is regaled ; the ear soothed. Now serenity
 
 268 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 broods within you ; and now exhilarating ecstasy 
 flashes and flushes and flows over in eye and' cheek 
 and lip. The adventurous is dared, the explorer chal- 
 lenged, the studious wooed, the observing rewarded. 
 Earth's dreary noises are unheard, and man's mam- 
 mon-worship is forgotten. The cares and fretfulness 
 of life, the strife and rivalry of time, depart. Nature 
 in her divinest forms alone takes possession of the 
 spirit, and man, hushed and reverent, bends to catch 
 the speech of God. 
 
 One ought to be very much better for a trip like 
 this. One's threefold being spirit, soul, body 
 should return largely benefited. And it is almost a 
 sin if any one go and return unimproved. When 
 such is the case there must be some deep-seated un- 
 healthiness, both in body and in soul. 
 
 What do you need to take with you so that you may 
 make the most of a visit ? No one ought to go there 
 who does not take with him clear, open eyes, a 
 wakeful, thoughtful mind, an honest, pure, tender 
 heart, arid a soul in sympathy with the great and 
 benignant Creator, Father, and Friend of man. 
 
 I will not stop to say that you need a good, a well- 
 filled purse. Nor will I stop to say that you need a 
 friend or two, full of enthusiasm, of vigor, and of 
 susceptibilities. But I will say in one word what 
 you cannot do without, what you must take with you, 
 so as to return most weightily laden with most worthy 
 benefit. That word is health ; health of body, so that 
 you can climb and ride without pain and faintness> 
 and laugh and cry in turn ; health of heart, purity,
 
 THE YOSEMTTE AND ITS LESSONS. 2G9 
 
 love, meekness, docility, reverence, wonder, admira- 
 tion, gratitude ; health of intellect, the clear thought, 
 the keen vision, the quick ear, the elastic nerve of 
 soul-health ; health of your entire manhood or woman- 
 hood. 
 
 Sympathy is essential to the full, remunerative en- 
 joyment of the Valley and its wonders. There are 
 ears, I believe, incapable of distinguishing one note 
 from another. There are eyes positively color-blind. 
 There are men who see nothing in Milton's " Paradise 
 Lost," because it does not mathematically demonstrate 
 any problem. There are natures so thoroughly pet- 
 rified by sordidness and sensualism that, for their 
 delectation, the Yosemite exists in vain. There are 
 self-conceited, self-idolizing creatures who see nothing 
 to admire in nature. Over the Mirror Lake they 
 sail, and into its depths they glance ; it is the only 
 spot in the Valley they enjoy. And why ? Because 
 it is the only spot in which, as in a glass, they can 
 look upon themselves reflected ! Such as they have 
 reached a stage of culture in which the faculty of 
 admiration works not, for it is not. The wonder 
 of ingenuous and self-forgetting youth has given 
 place to the hard, cruel, unfeelingness of a blasted, 
 cinder-like muscle once called a heart. f 
 
 Sourness and bitterness of spirit disqualify for the 
 Valley. Meekness and humility, sun pie faith and fer- 
 vent adoration largely equip for its due and keen 
 appreciation. The clearer the understanding, the 
 tenderer the heart, so much the more is it likely " thine 
 eye shall see the beauty of the Great King," in such
 
 270 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 a spot as this. You must go with every fiber of your 
 being tremulous and strung ; with every sense awake 
 and vigorous ; with all of memory in play, and all of 
 imagination in lofty mood and tone. You must go 
 with your soul having, as it were, " a look southward, 
 and open to the whole noon of nature." As seen 
 through the lenses of some atrabilarious natures, there 
 is neither form nor comeliness in the loveliest land- 
 scapes. 
 
 Nor may you hope for success in your visit if you 
 take with you only the Peter-Bell-like spirit : 
 
 A primrose by the river's brim, 
 A yellow primrose was to him ; 
 And it was nothing more. 
 
 Rather take the spirit of him who wrote of the 
 " Daisy ; " of him who, placing the orient sea-shell 
 to his ear, heard through the convolutions of the 
 smooth-lipped conch the cadence of the ocean in 
 whose depths the lovely thing was fashioned ; of 
 him who followed the skylark beyond the cloud and 
 heard him carol at the bars of the gate of gold, till 
 seraphs ceased to harp and learned to sing, taught by 
 the frail denizen of the clover and the sod ; the 
 spirit of him who, having looked upon a pond mar- 
 gined by daifodils, sat down and wrote : 
 
 I wander'd lonely as a cloud 
 
 That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
 
 "When all at once I saw a crowd, 
 
 A host of golden daffodils ; 
 
 Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
 
 Fluttering and daucing in the breeze.
 
 THE YOSEMITE AND ITS LESSONS. 271 
 
 Continuous as the stars that shine 
 
 And twitkle on the milky way, 
 
 They stretched in never-ending line 
 
 Along the margin of a bay; 
 
 Teii thousand saw I at a glance, 
 
 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 
 
 The waves beside them danced, but they 
 
 Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: 
 
 A poet could not but be gay, 
 
 lu such a jocund company! 
 
 I gazed and gazed but little thought 
 
 What wealth the show to me had brought: 
 
 For oft, when on my couch I lie, 
 
 In vacant or in pensive mood, 
 
 They flash upon that inward eye 
 
 Which is the bliss of solitude, 
 
 And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
 
 And dances with the daffodils. 
 
 And, last of all, take that state of heart which 
 voiced itself in the well-known lines : 
 
 Not to the domes whose crumbling arch and column 
 
 Attest the feeblene.' s of mortal hand ; 
 But to the fane, most catholic and solemn 
 Which God hath planned; 
 
 To that cathedral, boundless os our wonder, 
 
 Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply, 
 Its music, winds and waves its organ, thunder ; 
 Its dome, the sky ; 
 
 There, amidst solitude and shade, to wander 
 
 Through the green aisles, or, stretched upon the sod, 
 And by the silence, reverently ponder 
 The ways of God. 
 
 I thought, as I stood in the Valley, for how many 
 uses and ends has the Great Creator " given the earth 
 to the children of men ! "
 
 272 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 There is the bodily life provided for ; light there is 
 for the life of the eye, and air for the life of the 
 lungs ; and corn and wine and oil to build up the 
 framework, and knit it into gracefulness. And there 
 is the cotton plant and the silkworm ; the woolly 
 sheep and the flax fiber ; fur of seal and beaver ; the 
 hide of goat and ox ; the pelt of rabbit and of rat ; 
 the flesh of fish and of fowl enough, enough to 
 satisfy the need and minister to the comforts of the 
 myriad millions who tenant this fair globe ! Eipened 
 by the sunbeam, enriched by the rainfall, nurtured by 
 the stream, vivified by the gale, in our Father's house 
 there is bread enough and to spare. From hill and 
 flood, from glen and valley, from deep that coucheth 
 beneath, and from far-spreading and soaring heights, 
 he compels our supplies ! 
 
 You will not be long in the Yalley until you have 
 learned that man is a bartering and a money-making 
 being ; and that the earth serves one great end in 
 supplying man with the materials for a life of trade. 
 And an eminently useful end it is. Commerce has 
 a marvelous tale to tell. Commerce has been a civil- 
 izer and a discoverer: Commerce has brought distant 
 nations into contact and broken down many a wall of 
 prejudice. Commerce has had her heroes, and one 
 day may have her historian, and perhaps her poet, to 
 describe in graphic page and glowing numbers her 
 toils and triumphs, her vices and her virtues, her 
 mission of conquest and of civilization o'er the earth. 
 In the trade carried on in the Yalley, in the hotel 
 life prevailing, in the gardens tilled and the cattle
 
 THE YOSEMITE AND ITS LESSONS. 273 
 
 fed, and the saddle-horse conveniences for traveling 
 and climbing, we have man's secular use of the earth 
 illustrated. 
 
 There are also those in the Valley for purposes of 
 recreation. They have time at their command, and 
 money. Worried and exhausted by the battle of life, 
 most wisely do they hasten to the Yosemite. It is 
 such a contrast with the fogs and dust of San Fran- 
 cisco. It is such a retreat from the banking-house 
 and the ball-room, from rivalries and passion fevers. 
 
 Few investments bring in so large returns as money 
 and time devoted to absolute rest amid the grand- 
 eurs of mountain or of ocean, amid the calmness 
 of storm-sheltered valley or the bracing breezes of 
 upland cottage. In our age of high pressure, from 
 our cities with their uttermost of artificial and flip- 
 pant pleasures, O, it is good to fly away to nature, to 
 honest, frank, and tranquilizing nature ! Away to na- 
 ture to gather the wild flower and chase the wild 
 bird ! To lose yourself in the wood primeval, or 
 plunge into the cafion amid the ancient hills ! 
 Away to sunbeams untainted by the smoke of fac- 
 tories and winds unsoiled by the dust of crowded 
 avenue and street ! Away to talk with the stars and 
 greet the sunrise and shake the cowslip's ear and 
 breast the breaker in the swift-oared skiff! Away 
 from man ! I will not say from woman ; for you had 
 better take her with you for very many reasons ! 
 
 Head and heart and hand shall win a store of health 
 there, wherewith you shall return to the duties of the 
 home, and of the store, and of the counting-house,
 
 274: GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 with brain restored and blood renewed and nerve re- 
 strung, confessing that, in the language of the im- 
 mortal Gougli, " It pays to recreate ! " 
 
 And for the mental life God has provided. He has 
 put us here that we might be educated, intellectually 
 developed, strengthened, stimulated, enriched. He 
 has put a thought into every thing he has made. 
 There is nothing, therefore, thoughtless, above, be- 
 neath, around ! " Sermons in stones " there are, most 
 literally ; testimonies to his being and character in the 
 rocks ; poems in rippling rivulets ; anthems in storms ; 
 choruses in cataracts ; psalms in zephyrs ; alleluias in 
 ocean billows and in forest tempests ! 
 
 There, in the Valley, we had the specialist in science, 
 and the amateur as well, each endeavoring to find 
 laws in the facts of nature. There were those whose 
 department of investigation included the moss, the 
 hyssop, and the cedar. There were those whose taste 
 led them to the study of the ant, the butterfly, and 
 the beetle. There were those whose sympathies led 
 them to the rocks, the rivers, the eternal snow, the ac- 
 tion of water, or of fire, or of ice, of volcano, of 
 earthquake, of flood, or of glacier upon the shape of 
 the mountain and the depression of the valley. 
 
 Yonder you read the name of Joseph Hooker and 
 the autograph of the State geologist. I met, while 
 there, one of the most gifted of men of science, a 
 self-taught scientist, a man of most modest spirit, but 
 of most vigorous intellect. He has made the region 
 his home for years. He is perfectly familiar with its 
 flora. Above all he has studied its geological story.
 
 THE YOSEMITE AND ITS LESSONS. 275 
 
 He has the eye of a scientist and the mind of a phi- 
 losopher, and he has the genius of a poet. When he 
 writes he fascinates by his descriptive power ; and Ids 
 skill in graphic pictorial delineation is truly that of a 
 master. He is, I thought, as I learned his history, 
 talked with and listened to him, the Hugh Miller of 
 the Yosemite. A Scotchman, by-the-by, he is; as 
 simple as a child and as reverent as a saint. He has 
 studied the architecture of the hills. He has climbed, 
 at peril of life, to the region of the glacier. He be- 
 lieves in the action, not so much of earthquakes, in 
 cutting out or depressing the valley, as in the slow, 
 continuous, and potent action of ice, cleaving, grind- 
 ing, floating, carving, molding, polishing the hoary 
 granite. And those who have listened to his facts 
 and reasoning are much disposed to adopt his theory. 
 None meet him but to feel his magnetic spell ; and 
 doubtless, soon or late, the scientific world will 
 hear of, and delight to confer justly merited honors 
 upon the massive and well-balanced brow of John 
 Mnir. 
 
 Within that Valley might, therefore, have been 
 seen illustrated the relations of the physical universe 
 to the intellect of man. 
 
 The material and the organic in nature serve a lofty 
 purpose when they teach the greatest of pupils man. 
 For this end, certainly, were they fashioned. From 
 a Thinker they emanated ; therefore is nature full of 
 thoughts. Therefore may man, the thinker, obey the 
 command of Job when he says, " Go to the earth and 
 
 ehe shall teach thee." 
 19
 
 276 GUAJKD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Whence what we call SCIENCE ? From the facts, the 
 forms, the motions, the colors, and the relations of 
 nature. Science is man's correct interpretation of the 
 meaning of nature. Science is possible because na- 
 ture is the production of a Planner, whose thoughts 
 have been wrought into the texture and the structure 
 of the plan of nature. Searching out nature, we are 
 convinced of the success attendant upon our search 
 only when behind nature and before nature we see a 
 Thinker working out his thoughts in the majestic 
 system of the^universe. 
 
 In every upheaved peak ; in every geometric snow- 
 flake ; in every veined leaf ; in every lustrous wing ; 
 in every sweep of ocean billow ; in every swell of 
 landscape ; in every hue of shrub ; in every rush of 
 cataract ; in every tinted cloudlet ; in every globe of 
 dew ; in every march of tlmnder-storm ; in every 
 smooth-lipped shell ; in every adaptation of plant to 
 soil, of insect to temperature, of food to wild goat, 
 we behold thought. We, therefore, may construct a 
 science which shall be the reflection from the human 
 mind of the conceptions wrought into the creation by 
 the divine, the infinite Intelligence. That the human 
 intelligence may converse with the divine, nature is. 
 Nature exists, the permanent medium of intellectual 
 intercourse between Creator and creature. God spake 
 all the words of this vast volume, and left the folio 
 that through this his child might talk with him, 
 hence win instruction, and thus unfold his latent 
 faculties and begin his never-ending growth in knowl- 
 edge, wisdom, beauty.
 
 THE YOSEMITE AND ITS LESSONS. 277 
 
 And to develop to the utmost all man's mental 
 powers, see what provision the Infinite One has made ! 
 The power of comparison is called into play ; for 
 there is resemblance. The power of discrimination is 
 called into play ; for there is dissimilarity. The 
 power of generalization is called into play ; for there 
 is unity of plan and method. For man is analytic, 
 synthetic, and philosophic, as a thinker and observer. 
 
 Moreover, effort is necessary to the full develop- 
 ment of man's mental nature. Concentration of 
 thought is called for. The sovereign force called at- 
 tention is demanded. Not by any effort, howsoever 
 will-less, can he win in the race of discovery. Not by 
 any method, howsoever methodless, can he extract the 
 secret of the mystery. Earnestness must characterize 
 him. Vigor, even to intensity of resolve, must im- 
 pel him. " As for hid treasure " must he pursue his 
 quest. Sweat of brow, and wrinkle as well, shall 
 proclaim him a stalwart and valorous chieftain in the 
 struggle to achieve the mastery of nature's meaning. 
 Into the far depths of midnight shall he push his in- 
 vestigation, as from minaret or watch-tower he peers 
 into the calm and silent skies. Up ere the roseate 
 aurora hath bathed the valley in its flood's elixir shall 
 lie be found bending over his crucible. Out 'mid 
 snows and torrents, down through Alpine valleys or 
 the miner's sunless corridors shall he press on with 
 foot persistent. For only thus may yonder temple 
 dedicated to truth see him pass within its portals and 
 seated beside its sons as one of the laureled victors in 
 the good fight for truth.
 
 273 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Here is one of nature's noblest services : to wake 
 mind into sleeplessness ; to move mind into restless 
 activity ; to excite in mind insatiate appetites ; to 
 slake the thirst of mind for truth by knowledge, and 
 yet create a thirst more fiery ; to dare mind into a 
 mood of conquest ; to enkindle wonder, admiration, 
 rapture in the pursuit as in the acquisition ; to lift the 
 infantile into the masculine ; to knit the loosely hung 
 into the compactness of a mailed mediaeval knight, 
 by hardy and enduring effort ; to broaden the soul's 
 capacity, and deepen it as well ; to light the eye with 
 the quenchless luster of intelligence ; and thus train 
 the children of the King Eternal for the august func- 
 tions which await them when, of full age, they shall 
 " have dominion " and " inherit all things ! " 
 
 We have here suggested the provisions made by 
 our Creator for our emotional nature. Our emotions 
 are various. There are emotions arrestive, such as 
 wonder, curiosity ; emotions acquisitive, as thirst for 
 knowledge, for power, for wealth ; emotions benevo- 
 lent, such as pity, compassion ; emotions impartative, 
 such as prompt us to communicate knowledge ; emo- 
 tions perfective, such as cry out for faultlessness, for 
 grandeur, for the beautiful. Now for these last 
 named there is an opulent provision. " The beau- 
 tiful," " the sublime," are to be met with every-where. 
 The mere necessary is not all. There are the luxuries 
 of life and of heart as well. 
 
 " What a God is ours ! " must be the spontaneous 
 expression of heart and lip. 
 
 And I would like to conclude by leaving the same
 
 THE YOSEMTTE AOT> ITS LESSONS. 279 
 
 impression upon your hearts that the Valley left on 
 mine. Every thing seemed to suggest God. ^ 
 
 As I gazed upon the massive battlements rearing 
 their heads to the heavens; when I remembered He up- 
 heaved these gigantic masses, I thought of his power : 
 " He girdeth the mountains with strength ; " " The 
 strength of the hills is his also ; " " He toucheth the 
 hills and they smoke." And I thought, too, this 
 power is ours ! For, " as the mountains are round 
 about Jerusalem, so is he about his people." And as 
 they are changeless " the lasting hills " even so 
 " His righteousness is as the great mountains," im- 
 movable. "When I thought of their age I remem- 
 bered his eternity : " Before the mountains were 
 brought forth, thou art God ! " 
 
 See here in the Valley his goodness ! In all he 
 gives what gladness he imparts ! See it in the sun- 
 shine and in the star ; in the bliss of the eye and the 
 rapture of the ear ; in the joys of friendship and in 
 the rejoicing of a good conscience : in the pleasant 
 odors of the grove and in the delectations of the fruit 
 of vine, and peach, and orange ; in the exultation of 
 the discoverer and in the ecstacies of the seeker after 
 laws more subtle, more ample, and more profound ; 
 in the delight felt when gazing upon the clouds which 
 chariot the sun across the skyey pathway, and when 
 tracing the serpentine meanderings of tranquil rivers 
 through emerald meadows,and 'neath nodding willows, 
 and past daisied banks. Can we refrain from exclaim- 
 ing, ' O how great is thy goodness, and how great is 
 thy beauty ! "
 
 280 GUAKD'S LECTUKES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Thus every thing in the Valley suggests God. If 
 the ^lley can be thus thought of, it is no less than a 
 temple. If the Yosemite be but the- vestibule, what 
 must the palace of the Great King be ? If it be but a 
 part of his footstool, what must the throne be 2 If it 
 be but the outer court, what shall it be within the 
 veil where we shall dwell for evermore ?
 
 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 281 
 
 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS.* 
 
 A LLOW me to say (what you have often heard re- 
 J\. peated by the many visitors to your State and 
 city) how much I have been surprised, amazed, de- 
 lighted with the many wonders, beauties, and excel- 
 lences of your Golden State and its metropolis. Your 
 all but perfect climate ; your fabulously productive 
 soil ; your f raits worthy of Paradise before " the 
 fall ; " your hills veined with silver and aglow with 
 gold ; your bay, land-locked, picturesque, and spa- 
 cious enough to harbor the fleets of many nations ; 
 the access to your city, both by land and water ; the 
 perils of flood you have survived ; the perils of fire 
 above which you have risen, so as to warrant me in 
 applying to you two lines of one of Charles Wesley's 
 hymns : 
 
 Like Moses' bush you mounted higher, 
 Arid flourished unconsumed in fire. 
 
 And there is, though last-named, not least in impor- 
 tance, your flourishing association. I am delighted to 
 learn that this association is all but as old as your city, 
 and within two years of the age of its sister associa- 
 tion in New York. Every thing in the title of the 
 society is suggestive. 
 
 * Delivered at the twenty-second anniversary of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association of San Francisco, Sept. 19, 1875.
 
 GUARD'S LECTURES A*ND ADDRESSES. 
 
 It is an association. Wherever we turn, we meet 
 with association ; there is nothing alone in the uni- 
 verse. Matter displays the association of chemical 
 affinities, and is subject to the sway of that of gravita- 
 tion, whereby stellar and solar systems are fashioned. 
 There is not a star that is not one of a group ; nor a 
 comet that is not one of a brotherhood ; nor a sun that 
 is not part of a galaxy. Atom is bound to atom ; 
 gas commingles with gas ; dewdrop clusters with dew- 
 drop ; mountain leans on mountain ; ant w r orks with 
 ant ; grasshopper marches o'er valley and plain, one 
 of a myriad host of destroyers; buffaloes troop in 
 herds, and wild fowl wing their flight from northern 
 to southern feeding-grounds in squadrons and battal- 
 ions. Isolation is unknown from lowest existence 
 up to the bright and beatific hosts who cry out and 
 shout : " Our fellowship is with the Father, and with 
 His Son, Jesus Christ." Pre-eminently is this a 
 characteristic of humanity. The home is the initial 
 stage of the law ; the citizenship of a tribe or nation 
 is a further stage ; and the fraternity of the Church of 
 Christ is the highest earthly stage. The age we live 
 in owes not a little of its greatness and its glory to 
 the- sovereignty of this principle. 
 
 The commerce which gives its vessels to plow every 
 sea with their keels, and utilize every breeze with 
 their sails, is the fruit of association. 
 
 The science which plucks from the ocean its mys- 
 tery; from the lightning its meaning; from the sun- 
 beam its message ; from the forest its wonder ; from 
 the " ancient hills " their story ; from life its laws,
 
 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 233 
 
 and from death its lessons ; the science which hath 
 tracked the meteor, and heaved the lead in the abys- 
 mal depth of the human spirit this science is none 
 other than the fruit of association. Humboldt works 
 together with Livingstone, Herschel labors side by 
 side with Agassiz, Kant toils a bond-slave with Ham- 
 ilton, Darwin is yoked with Dana, Stuart Mill cheers 
 on Spencer ; association is their law. 
 
 And liberty is a fruit of the same great force. If 
 men to-day are freer than they ever were if larger 
 numbers of men are freer than they ever were 
 why is this so ? Not by one brave hero's toil, or 
 trials, or triumphs, hath this been won. Essayist 
 wrote to win this ; poet sang to win this ; sage pro- 
 pounded to win this ; artist painted to win this ; his- 
 torian penned his glowing paragraph to win this ; 
 martyr patriot fought and bled, rotted in dungeons, 
 and climbed the scaffold to win this ; Hampden and 
 Sidney, Locke and Washington, Lafayette and Gari- 
 baldi, yielded their sweat of brain and sweat of heart 
 to water the immortal seeds of that tree of liberty 
 beneath whose ample and grateful shadows we find 
 a sanctuary to-night. Our freedom is the fruit of 
 association. And indeed, so convinced are tyrants of 
 the power to upheave their throne, lurking in and 
 ready to leap forth from associations, that they bend 
 their utmost efforts and energies to the purpose of 
 breaking up all such bands of conspirators against 
 their dynasties of despotism. It is one of the sure 
 and certain evidences of the reign of freedom when 
 associations multiply unchecked for the defense and
 
 28-1 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 propagation of opinion. They are the terror of ty- 
 rants, they are the favorite offspring of liberty. And 
 inasmuch as all associations make their members very 
 much purer, and nobler, and braver men than they 
 would otherwise be, or else very much baser, and 
 fouler, and falser, no one can hear of a new associa- 
 tion with indifference or without some measure of 
 interest. 
 
 Such is the strength of association that even the 
 Anarch of Pandemonium recognizes it. He has a 
 kingdom. He is not so foolish as to be "divided 
 against himself." "Distinct as the billows, yet one 
 as the sea," his forces rally round his dusky banner, 
 catch his will, and hasten forth to further his be- 
 hests by strewing the earth with havoc spoils. So 
 also one man "chases a thousand," but, such is the 
 might of union, two shall put, not two, but " ten 
 thousand to flight." The advent of Christianity tes- 
 tifies to the same principle, for there the disciples 
 were all "with one accord in one place." Associa- 
 tion it is a confluence of many streams ; it is a 
 gathering of many forces ; it is a combination of 
 many talents; it is a concentration of diversified 
 experiences. And if in union there is strength for 
 good or evil, how solemn the state of mind in which 
 we ought to contemplate an addition to the associa- 
 tions of the age such as this ! 
 
 For it is an association of young men. 
 
 Ha ! What a magic in the words " young men ! " 
 Who would not be a young man ! What snowy- 
 headed sage would not be again a young man ! What
 
 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 285 
 
 a halo of romance encircles the brow of a young man ! 
 What hopes cluster around him ! What hearts beat 
 deep and high by reason of his possibilities ! What 
 forces lurk, what founts of poetry lie unsealed within 
 his breast ! What perils haunt his pathway ! What 
 gins and traps are spread and laid for his unwary 
 feet ! What baits are held forth to lure him ! What 
 seductive voices float in upon his ear ! What mere- 
 tricious visions swim in upon his imagination ? What 
 impulses heave him ! What passions thrill and throb 
 his being ! To what a height may he hew his way ! 
 With what a robe of honor may he fold his spirit ! 
 From what a throne of moral kingship may he not 
 dispread, and through what ages may he not transmit 
 his influence ! He touches chords that shall vibrate 
 throughout eternity. He is beginning to form char- 
 acter. Whose ? His own pre-eminently, as well as 
 others. All things wait upon him to serve him, to 
 ennoble, to enfranchise, to adorn his character. What 
 will he do with himself ? How does he purpose using 
 himself? To what depths shall he descend? With 
 what foulness shall he clothe himself? How far 
 from God shall he drift, drift, drift, driven by the de- 
 moniac passions of falsehood and foulness ? How soon 
 shall all tenderness pass away, all beauty vanish, all 
 truth give up the ghost, and all manhood be pawned 
 for pleasure the most sensual, and his very soul, like 
 Cleopatra's jewel, be dissolved in the swine -trough 
 of debauchery, until only the omniscient God shall be 
 able to detect amid the utter spoliation evidence the 
 most filmy that such a monster was once a man !
 
 286 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 As an association of " young men " it commands 
 our attention, it elicits our sympathy. It must either 
 benefit or curse them. Association is not always and 
 absolutely beneficial. Men do not always encourage 
 one another to noble deeds and honorable principles 
 in their associations. Not unfreqnently they meet to 
 frame iniquity by a law, to concoct schemes of plun- 
 der, to devise methods for corruption of morals and 
 the seduction of the innocent. Their chambers of 
 assembly may witness the rapid flight of shuttles, 
 weaving webs of cunning workmanship, wherewith 
 to enmesh the raw, and crude, and simple-minded. 
 What is the guarantee of safety ? The peril of as- 
 sociation is lessened by another thought suggested 
 by the third term in the title of the association. 
 
 It is " a Young Men's CHRISTIAN Association" 
 
 Yes, this is the guarantee of safety. An association 
 formed upon, and framed to promote Christian prin- 
 ciples, and abiding under the sanction of the Divine 
 Founder of Christianity. This tranquilizes our fears 
 and allays our anxieties. 
 
 From what we know of our Christian religion we 
 unhesitatingly assert, a society steeped in the spirit of 
 Christianity, and true to the same, cannot but be 
 beautiful in the truest and best sense. For we are 
 not in the dark as to what our faith is, as to what 
 it teaches, as to what it leads. We have but to 
 study it in the life and in the teachings of its Founder 
 to be assured that it is the friend of all that is just ; 
 the patron of all that is pure; the parent of all 
 that is " lovely and of good report ; " that it is
 
 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 287 
 
 God's own last, fullest expression of peace and good 
 will to man. Christ is Christianity in essence, in 
 spirit, in embodied power. He lived out his own 
 peerless teaching, leaving us an example that we 
 should tread in his steps. 
 
 A system called by his name cannot but respect, 
 if not revere, humanity. It must be lustrous with 
 the loveliness of Him who was fairer than the chil- 
 dren of men ; in whom was no guile who was the 
 friend of publicans and sinners ; who saved not 
 himself pleased not himself that he might save 
 others. There shall be nothing mean in it ; for he 
 was magnanimity. There can be nothing false in 
 it ; for he was truth unadulterated. There can 
 be nothing foul ; for he was holy, harmless, unde- 
 filed. There can be nothing harsh ; for he was 
 meek and lowly in spirit. There can be nothing 
 bigoted ; there can be nothing sectarian ; for he 
 spake the parable of the man who fell among thieves, 
 and received favor from a Samaritan. There can be 
 nothing fastidious in philanthropy; for he forgave 
 " the woman who was a sinner." He cared for men's 
 bodies, and so does this association. He cared for 
 men's heart sorrows, and was the friend of the death- 
 bereaved family of Bethany ; and so does this associa- 
 tion. He cared for men's soul his whole life and 
 death were given to this object and so does this as- 
 sociation. 
 
 No ; we are not afraid of this society. It is salt 
 in the midst of corruption. It is light in the midst 
 of moral gloom. It is a shelter for defensclessness.
 
 288 GUARD'S LBCTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 It is a home for forlorn and forgotten ones. It is a 
 temple whence flow living waters, whose rivulets 
 touch and turn barrenness and aridity into blooming 
 garden and verdant vale. 
 
 All hail ! all hail ! we cry out and shout from the 
 bottom of our hearts : live ; live long ; live vigorous- 
 ly ; live honored ; live beloved ; live to multiply in 
 numbers, in power, in influence ; live " forever bless- 
 ing and forever blest ! " 
 
 I, for one, tender this association my most sincere 
 sympathy, and whatever of practical aid it may be in 
 my power to render, because of its eminently catholic 
 spirit. 
 
 True, I love my own garden ; I love to pluck a 
 tinted flower from its odorous beds ; I love to saunter 
 beneath its orange grove ; I love to linger near its 
 mimic cascade, and bend over its fern-margined pond 
 where gold-fish sport and lilies float. But I do also 
 take delight in visiting my neighbor's conservatory ; 
 and can revel in the luxuries of his tropic plants and 
 palms ; regale my taste from the purple cluster of his 
 generous vines ; and cherish a healthy rivalry of prod- 
 uce in all that can minister delectation to sight or 
 smell. And I love, as well, to hie away beyond gar- 
 den wall and hedgerow, and lose myself within the 
 mazes of a people's park, where the free winds sport, 
 and the unwindowed sunlight bathes wide acres of 
 shrubbery and pensive glade or gentle undulation in 
 its ample wave, and then robes them in its cloth of 
 gold. 
 
 To me, such is this Association in its reach of
 
 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 2S9 
 
 principles and in its range of purpose ; and I there- 
 fore wish it Godspeed. 
 
 I have been requested to address some remarks 
 specially adapted to the young men who may be pres- 
 ent to-night. I do so with an earnest prayer that 
 something said may reach some heart, and win some 
 wanderer unto ways of righteousness and peace. 
 
 Young men, we want vou for our Lord and Mas- 
 
 c> * t/ 
 
 ter's service. The Church needs you. Her Head 
 looks to you. The future of our religious life and of 
 our country's weal is at your disposal. In the strug- 
 gle for the truth, swiftly drawing nigh, we wish to 
 feel that you follow " the banner to be displayed be- 
 cause of the truth." That struggle is imminent. The 
 hosts are mustering. The plan of the campaign even 
 now lies mapped before our antagonists. The chief- 
 tains in the ranks of our fold are bronzed warriors 
 cool, calm, clear-visioned. The battle shall not be 
 with tramp of war-horse, or peal of clarion, or rush 
 of scythed chariot, or plumed helmet, or glittering 
 spear. No ; the weapons are of substance more 
 ethereal ; but the combat is, therefore, the more 
 fierce and stern. Principles ! Principles ! Thought ! 
 Spirit ! these are the implements and enginery of 
 the struggle. Despotism against Freedom ! Priest- 
 craft against Manhood ! The struggle shall thicken 
 around the corner-stone of our republican institu- 
 tions our public and free school system. To pluck 
 that from its "coign of vantage," and then hasten 
 and look for the crash of the stately edifice of our 
 national liberty this is the sworn object of our
 
 290 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 foes. And for its accomplishment they are resolved 
 to subsidize aid from heaven an'd earth and hell. 
 We would have you swell our ranks ; we would have 
 you fitted for the hour of trial. 
 
 We would, therefore, persuade you to-night to de- 
 cision. With many of you, all you need is decision 
 for Christ. You know your duty more light is un- 
 necessary. It is yours to step out from the ranks of 
 ungodliness and become now, at once, enrolled with 
 the hosts who serve the God of your mothers. Why 
 not ? You would live a consistent life, you tell us. 
 You cannot bear the thought of inconsistency. Your 
 sense of honorable manhood shrinks from such a pos- 
 sibility. And, from what you know of yourself, and 
 of the perils of a life of disloyalty to Christ, you see 
 no prospect of stability were you to profess yourself 
 a member of Christ's Church. Well, we appreciate 
 your sentiments ; we admire your ideal of true man- 
 hood. 
 
 But let us remind you of a few facts. There is 
 danger from within your heart. But decision se- 
 cures for you that renewal of your heart whereby you 
 become " a new creature." Conscience is enthroned. 
 Will is enfranchised. Heart is transformed by no 
 less power than the love of God shed abroad in it by 
 the Holy Ghost given unto you. Now, when you 
 would do good, you can' for you are made free from 
 the law of sin and death. 
 
 You tell me of the dangers lurking in your l>ody / 
 of appetites, whose seat and instruments are there ; 
 of senses, avenues of ill ; and that, with such, it is
 
 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 291 
 
 impossible to struggle and win. But your very body 
 becomes " the temple of the Holy Ghost," by whose 
 inworkings all its members become servants of right- 
 eousness ; every impulse is refined, every function 
 regulated by the subjugating and may I say so? 
 the sublimating operation of the " Spirit of Holiness ;" 
 so that every particle of the living frame shares in 
 the transferred purity, and becomes as precious in His 
 eye as was, to the Jew, the dust of the sacred shrine 
 which once adorned Zion's crest. 
 
 You tell me of the devil of his subtlety, his viru- 
 lence, his experience ; of the hosts with him ; the re- 
 lentless hate they cherish, and the unwearying, pause- 
 less purpose they pursue with a persistency indomita- 
 ble and a resolve unyielding as the laws which bind 
 the spheres. They know him who he is. They 
 crouch at his footstool ; they tremble at his glance. 
 And against their hosts we ask your open vision to 
 behold the squadron of the sons of light. For every 
 lance hurled by hell there is a seraph shield to catch 
 and shiver it. For every falchion thrust there is an 
 angel scimiter, of edge as keen and temper as high, 
 wielded by hand as skillful, and guided by eye as 
 quick, as vigilant, as swift to parry, as strong to shat- 
 ter; for, "are they not all ministering spirits sent 
 forth to minister to them who are the heirs of sal- 
 vation ? " 
 
 You tell me of the power of the society by which 
 you are encompassed its blandishments; its scorn; 
 its bitter mockery, taunt, sarcasm. True, these are 
 
 vigorous forces ; they have won full many .a victory. 
 20
 
 292 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Sturdy is the spirit equal to their onslaught. To en- 
 dure such contradiction of sinners with meekness ; to 
 return good for evil ; to rein back the soul and in pa- 
 tience possess it, implies no mean portion of the mar- 
 tyr's spirit. But we remind you of the brotherhood 
 of the Christian Church prepared to welcome, and 
 ready to give you scope for your new activities, and 
 channel for your new affections. There may you find 
 companionship ; there obtain sympathy, and amid 
 such fellowship wax courageous, and acquit you like 
 men. The friendship of the world abandoned, lo ! 
 there is the friendship of the excellent of the earth, at 
 once your solace and your shelter. 
 
 You mention the power of " things seen " the vis- 
 ible, the palpable, around, above you such as Satan 
 dispread before the eye of our Great Master the 
 pomps and pleasures of this present evil world. We 
 admit it all. But the Christian is one endowed with 
 a sixth sense. He is a clairvoyant in the deepest 
 meaning of the word. He lives, he walks, he endures, 
 he conquers "by FAITH." This soul-faculty pierces 
 the clouds and veils of sense ; places the spirit under 
 the sovereignty of things not seen ; gives substance, 
 reality, definiteness to them. By its constant action 
 the potencies of the invisible play upon you ; pervade 
 you ; uplift, impel you ; brace, nerve you. In their 
 presence earth relaxes its grasp; the splendors of 
 sense fade and blanch; the pleasures and pains of 
 time dwindle and minify; eternity in all its august- 
 ness, grandeur, sways the soul ; life swells into pro- 
 portions worthy of such realities ; character assumes
 
 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
 
 a measure and stature congruous with such immensi- 
 ties. The wonder then is, not that we should endure, 
 but that we should FAIL to come off " MOKE THAN CON- 
 QUERORS," seeing "we look not at things seen, for 
 they are temporal, Tbut at the things that are not 
 seen, for they are eternal." 
 
 My brother, become one with Jesus Christ through 
 humble submission to and hearty acceptance of him, 
 and you step within a more than enchanted circle, 
 and become the focus of all the forces of God's moral 
 empire ; upon you they shall center, on your behalf 
 combine ; on your unsealed ear there shall float from 
 the realms of light, as the sound of many waters, the 
 choral shout : " We know that all things work together 
 for yood to them that love God" Then, Creation ful- 
 fills its purpose, Providence realizes its design, Re- 
 demption achieves its end in you. Every step you 
 take shall be a triumph ; every note you utter, a con- 
 queror's ode. Habit shall strengthen you. Peril 
 shall educate you. Toil shall harden you. The law 
 of development shall work in and through you. It 
 dotli not yet appear what you shall be ; and, passing 
 hence in God's good time, your character shall pro- 
 claim you " meet to be partakers of the inheritance 
 of the saints in light." Should such be the issue of 
 this night's appeal, then you shall have cause for 
 eternal thanksgiving, that you were permitted to take 
 part in the twenty-second anniversary of this Young 
 Men's Christian Association.
 
 294 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN.* 
 
 has not been any dearth of exhibitions in 
 JL our metropolis during the last few months. I can- 
 not imagine a type of taste for which exhibitions have 
 not most liberally catered. 
 
 There have been political exhibitions, and of these 
 a greater variety than the creative genius of America 
 has ever before dared to produce ; indeed, no less than 
 a perfect quartet soprano, alto, tenor, bass. I shall 
 not venture to say which is soprano, and I shrink from 
 suggesting which is the bass ; nor am I prepared to 
 say to what concord of sweet sounds this quartet 
 may yet constrain us to hearken. The air around us 
 is tremulous with melody, and the symphonic billows 
 of this political quartet break in silver spray upon 
 Mt. Shasta's slopes, blend congenially with the hid- 
 eous howlings of the Cliff-House lions, swell the ca- 
 dence of the Yernal and Yosemite falls, and die into 
 silence amid the murmurs of the honey-laden bees 
 that haunt the orange gardens of the City of the 
 Angels. 
 
 And then there has been the far-famed Pedestrian 
 Exhibition in the great pavilion of this Association. 
 
 * The substance of an address delivered at the Grand Opera House, 
 San Francisco, upon the occasion of the opening of the Mechanics' 
 Institute Fair, September, 1879.
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF N.AN. 295 
 
 "Who lias not heard of that exhibition ? From what 
 classes of society were spectators not drawn, to wit- 
 ness the sublime feats of the contestants for the dia- 
 mond belt ? Who among us is competent to describe 
 the extremely salutary influence of that pedal dis- 
 play ? In what a chastely fascinating aspect it pre- 
 sented woman ! What a winsome example it lifted to 
 the admiring gaze of " our sisters, and our cousins, 
 and our aunts ! " What a refining agency was sug- 
 gested to the lovers of American culture ! In what an 
 economic light it placed the female members of our 
 families ! " Hard times " may become easy of endur- 
 ance if we can but train the limbs of our girls into 
 speed of motion ; and, hushing all the objections 
 springing from their pure and gentle bosoms, urge 
 them to the saw-dust ring and the voluptuous leers of 
 lewd gamblers, where they may barter away thg price- 
 less pearl of their womanhood for thirty pieces of 
 silver. Yes ! ours is truly a progressive age ; but it 
 behooves us narrowly to watch in what direction the 
 progress tends. 
 
 At last we have reached our own exhibition. And 
 I congratulate you on this auspicious occasion. Our 
 exercises to-day are a sort of prelude, to which I have 
 the honor of contributing a note. 
 
 I am to offer you a few thoughts, suggested by our 
 annual fair. It is impossible for any but the most 
 frivolously minded to linger within the pavilion dur- 
 ing an exhibition such as this without acquiring material 
 for most remunerative study. Indeed, this is one of 
 the many benefits which accrue from such an institu-
 
 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 tion. It invites inquiry ; it provokes discussion ; it 
 wakes the mind from stupor, and impels it to investi- 
 gation ; it excites the fancy ; it regales the imagina- 
 tion; it refines the taste. And whatever elicits 
 thought and compels the mind into meditative mood ; 
 whatever enlarges the comprehensive outlook, and 
 strengthens the apprehensive grasp of the under- 
 standing ; whatever augments our control over the 
 activities of the mysterious spirit within ; whatever 
 gives us enfranchisement from the tyranny of the 
 senses, and independence of the pleasures which ma- 
 terialism ministers ; whatever lifts us into the region 
 of pure ideas, and wings us for flight o'er the serene 
 and luminous realms of truth and beauty ; commands 
 our most fervent gratitude as an educator of the hu- 
 man race. ' 
 
 If you ask me what is the prime and most master- 
 ful thought suggested by my visits to " The Fair," I 
 at once reply : " The Sovereignty of Man." 
 
 Every-where, around, above, I recognize tokens of 
 this ; I look upon the tribute which, as a sovereign, 
 man has extracted from nature. The dominion is a 
 noble, it is a vast, it is a varied one. Here in the 
 exhibition are proofs of man's sovereignty over 
 winds and over water, over light and over heat, over 
 chemic and over mechanic energies. From the 
 marching season and the timely rains ; from the 
 hidden wealth of mountains and from the wealth 
 more real of the generous soil; from the products 
 of the forest and of the flock, of the field and of 
 the far-resounding sea, man draws revenues and
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN. 297 
 
 service. Lightning is his courier, and sunlight his 
 artist. Trade-winds waft his white-winged argosies, 
 and snows gather on Sierra crests to swell the floods 
 wherewith his ample acres shall be irrigated. Flow- 
 ers, by their weird alchemy, transmute dew and gases 
 into aromatic odors for his delight; and change sun- 
 beams and dull clays into hues emerald, purple, and 
 roseate, wherewith to greet his kindling glance, as 
 he moves out to gaze upon an inheritance, over 
 which " far as the breeze can bear the billow's foam," 
 it one day shall be true, man's nod is empire, and his 
 footfall law. Silkworms spin for him ; oysters se- 
 crete pearls for him ; for him lime becomes marble, 
 and carbon, diamonds; rocks are turned into silver, 
 and plants become coal. Rivers leap to light from 
 lofty fountains in the hearts of hoary hills that, 
 utilizing the law of gravitation, man may make them 
 turn his ponderous wheels and whirl his myriad 
 spindles. The wild fowl "nurses" the plume that 
 shall wave upon his victor helmet ; and the cotton 
 and the flax plant offer the fibers of which to fashion 
 the banners beneath whose folds he shall move forth 
 to conquest, or repose unharmed amid the fruits of 
 his free and honest industry. Force guards him 
 sows, reaps, threshes, and grinds for him, as in ages 
 past it toiled in fashioning his dwelling-place. Art 
 breathes inspiration. Music reveals her mystic laws 
 to his modulating genius. The block becomes a thing 
 of beauty. The canvas glows with the tints and 
 flush of life. Arch and pillar, capital and dome, 
 \pring from earth and soar to heaven, obedient to his
 
 298 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 all but necromantic touch. Homer, wrapped in his 
 singing robe, wet with the dews of the morning of 
 the ages, chants his immortal epic, to find in the 
 broadening centuries a whispering gallery, round 
 which his melodies shall swell in musical thunder ; 
 Dante, gentle as he is sublime, tender as he is stern 
 a violet in the rift of an Alpine glacier, or the " Vic- 
 toria Regia " of the Middle Ages ; and Milton, blind 
 with excess of light, laden with the lore of classic 
 and of sacred thinkers, clarified by waters of sorrow 
 and chastened by fires of fierce scorn, his harp upon 
 his shoulder, daring the seraphim to a trial of their 
 strength of passion and their sweep of thought 
 these all proclaim the extent and opulence of the 
 sovereignty of man. 
 
 This sovereignty is based upon and maintained by 
 knowledge of and obedience to the laws of nature. 
 
 In our age it is superfluous to attempt to prove the 
 unity and universality of law. The truth is axiomatic. 
 The gem and the snowflake are crystallized according 
 to law. The cloud floats and the bud bursts into 
 blossom in accordance with law. Atoms combine, 
 birds migrate, tears are molded, and planets wheel, 
 obedient to law. Logicians reason, poets create, and 
 orators persuade by reverence for law. " Her voice 
 is the harmony of the universe, her home the bosom 
 of God." 
 
 Man must rule nature, in stern and strict conform- 
 ity to the " constitution of nature." And so fault- 
 less is the constitution that no amendments are possible. 
 Not to amend nature's laws, but to know them and
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN. 299 
 
 obey them, is man's duty, and "in the keeping of 
 them " prove " there is a great reward." Man can, 
 indeed, unite those laws; can effect a combination 
 of several of them, and by so much augment his 
 power. And this is being constantly done. Every 
 building erected is the result of combination of many 
 laws of nature; every organ built is another result 
 of such combination of law's forces ; every telescope 
 is the product of many laws in combination ; every 
 strong man is a concentration of laws selected from 
 the chief departments of nature's immense domain. 
 
 This makes science a necessity. For, to rule, you 
 must know the subjects ruled their numbers, their 
 natures, the conditions of their existence and well- 
 being. Ignorance is incompatible with efficient gov- 
 ernment. One of the most important points to be 
 secured by the civil ruler is this : that he know the 
 temper and the habits and tone of thought character- 
 istic of the people ruled. The great Chatham knew 
 the English people ; and this made him supreme in 
 the councils and supreme in the affections of his coun- 
 trymen, who loved to speak of him as the " Great 
 Commoner." 
 
 To truly rule yourself, it is of highest importance 
 that you study and seek to know yourself. There- 
 fore, " the proper study of mankind is man." 
 
 Nor less is this tnie of the sovereignty now spoken 
 of. All the sciences were included, therefore, in the 
 decree, " Have dominion, replenish the earth, and 
 subdue it." Study the properties of plants and shrubs, 
 of flowers and fruits, of grasses and herbs. Botany is
 
 300 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 here. Study the properties of animals, of fishes, of 
 birds, of beasts ; their habits, their foods, their in- 
 stincts, so that they may be utilized for commerce or 
 for domesticated ends. Natural history is here. Study 
 the secrets of atmosphere and water; of heat and 
 light ; of soils and rocks ; and of the mutual in- 
 fluences of all these upon organic life. What is this 
 but chemistry ? And so of the mechanical sciences ; 
 and so of the science of navigation. This at once 
 proclaims the sovereignty of mind, thought, intelli- 
 gence ; and embraces all the progressive acquaintance 
 with the facts and the forces of creation, gained by 
 man during his process through the ages past and 
 yet to come. 
 
 The clearer the mental eye of the sovereign, the 
 better equipped for the scepter of his empire. Thought 
 is the ruler. Ideas are the conquerors of all things: 
 physical, political, moral, and religious. The man of 
 most ideas the man who knows best how to express 
 and embody the greatest number of the greatest 
 thoughts is, by " divine right," fittest to rule. 
 
 All sovereignty wielded by man hitherto has been 
 preceded by struggle and subjugation. I cannot rule 
 myself unless I subdue myself. Self-conquest pre- 
 pares the way for self-government. Full oft the 
 struggle to subdue involves awe-inspiring efforts. 
 The subjugation of the appetite, of the temper, of 
 the desires, of the tongue, of the senses, and of 
 the thoughts. Ha ! what battles are suggested by 
 words like these ! Marathon, Waterloo, Bunker 
 Hill, and Gettysburg these are but gala day fights
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN. 301 
 
 in comparison. No eye may have witnessed, no 
 stranger have been cognizant of, the strenuous, stern, 
 but sublime endeavor to put down and o'ermaster, 
 so as to rule the spirit with calmness and keep it in 
 hallowed harmony. Only in the blaze of the great 
 white throne, and when crowned by the all-seeing 
 One at the last day, shall it be known how many 
 the heroes whom history never emblazoned on her 
 pages, whom poets never lifted to fame by their im- 
 perishable odes. 
 
 The freedom of to-day is the fruit of struggle. 
 Freedom of thought in society ; freedom of opinion 
 in religion ; freedom of action in politics all secured 
 by straggle. Tortures were endured, blood spilled 
 like water, life offered without stint, without com- 
 plaint. But so the fetter melted from the bondsmen ; 
 so the tyranny of superstition bit the dust of irre- 
 trievable defeat ; so the despotism of autocrats dis- 
 solves and " leaves not a wrack behind." 
 
 Even so God wills it to be in the sovereignty re- 
 ferred to in niy theme. " Subdue it," he says, as he 
 points to the sea ; and man builds his breakwater and 
 floats his navies. " Subdue it," as he points to the 
 morass ; and man begins to drain it and build his cause- 
 ways o'er it. " Subdue it," as he points to the forest ; , 
 and man wakes echoes from the primeval shades with 
 his axe's, and kindles fires around the venerable monarch 
 of the woods. " Subdue it," as he points to the 
 Sierras ; and man cuts out his iron pathway o'er them, 
 tunnels his course through them, and waves his flag 
 of triumph upon their loftiest summits. " Subdue
 
 302 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 it," as lie points to the lightning ; and man plants his 
 conductors to draw down and tame its fire, and spreads 
 his wires that o'er them the invisible and fleet-footed 
 force may bear his message. " Subdue it," as he 
 points to the wild horse of the plains ; and man puts 
 a bit in the mouth and a bridle on the neck of the 
 steed, until " a little child shall lead him." 
 
 The struggle for existence and for sovereignty, 
 implies and demands labor. Work is demanded, 
 both in the study of the facts and forces of nature, 
 and in the development' of the physical resources of 
 nature. 
 
 It were a grievous mistake to imagine that none 
 save those who fling the shuttle or drive the plow are 
 laborers, or workingmen. Think you that the brave 
 men who have gone forth to explore and discover the 
 extent of the domain given to man for his possession 
 are not members of the guild of honest and noble 
 workmen ! Livingstone, Franklin, Kane, Baker, Stan- 
 ley are these not laborers as truly as the man who 
 wields the hoe and hews down the forest ? No men 
 have better right to their " spurs " than such knights 
 as these. Think you that they who follow the comet 
 or foretell its approach ; who bend over the crucible, 
 and ply the scalpel ; who untwist the sunbeams and 
 analyze the light-wave propelled by Sirius upon the 
 shores of our small planet ; that they who read the 
 epitaphs carved upon the rocky tombs of fossil plant 
 and saurian monster ; who watch the birth-hour of the 
 tornado and signal the moment of its advent of terror 
 and desolation that these, and such as these, eat the
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN. 303 
 
 bread of idleness, or sleep the sleep of the sluggard ? 
 Nothing is more remote from truth than such a 
 thought. Every furrow on their ample brows is the 
 record of a conqiiest as truly as that every crow's-foot 
 wrinkle round their eyes of unquenched fire is a scroll 
 written over with fragments of " the fairy tales of 
 science, and the grand results of time." 
 
 Free from the law of labor man cannot hope to 
 live. With cessation of the need of labor barbarism 
 begins, and reversion to savagedom becomes a law of 
 life. Naturally, man is lazy. He loves the idea of 
 " labor-saving machines." Scientists, perhaps, might 
 tell us that in this indisposition to work we prove our 
 ancestry back to the South American sloth. Be that 
 as it may, it is not good for man that he be exempt 
 from the law of labor. The more one ponders the 
 matter, the profounder the conviction of the divinity, 
 the dignity, and the blessedness of work. It has the 
 approval of my reason, the sanction of my conscience, 
 the well done of my God. Working, I develop my 
 being ; I restrain my animalism ; I win self-mastery. 
 Patience is cultivated ; perseverance becomes a habit. 
 Draining yonder marsh, I may be aided in draining 
 one as sour within my own heart. Rooting out yon- 
 der brier, I shall be helped in checking the growth of 
 a vice as pestiferous in the soil of my own spirit. 
 And, knowing right well the drift and tendencies of 
 my nature, the benign Father of all, " for my sake" 
 for my weal, " cursed the ground" not CURSED LABOR 
 the philosophy of which it is not my business now 
 either to discuss or to defend.
 
 304 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Again, we say, Labor is the law of life. All things 
 living, on earth or elsewhere, move in harmony with 
 it From God, who worketh ever, upholding, renew- 
 ing, restraining ; consoling, inspiring, defending ; 
 bidding worlds from nothing into being, and feeding 
 the fires of ever-burning suns, from age to age ; 
 nerving saints for heroic battle against wrong, and 
 welcoming them from their fields of toil or their fur- 
 naces of martyrdom into quietness and assurance for- 
 ever from this God down to his tall angels, "who 
 now work in bearing up a little one along his path 
 lest he dash his foot against a stone, and again work 
 in wafting the spirit of a pauper upon their unmolt- 
 ing pinions whither the storms of this world cannot 
 travel nor its mist of darkness float ; down to the 
 coral-builder that faints not, neither is weary in its 
 toil masonic beneath bright tropic skies, and cheered 
 on in its silent labors by the choral chantings of Pacific 
 waves labor is life, is gladness, is beauty. 
 
 And let the thought be repeated and emphasized 
 the labor of life is a battle. It is a fierce strife. 
 Vigilance is ever demanded ; forethought in ceaseless 
 play. For floods challenge, tempests call in trumpet 
 tone, and drought, and locust, and prolific weed- 
 growth dare man to wrestle with and vanquish them. 
 And if man were as wise as he might be, then should 
 he hail the struggle as his opportunity for achieving 
 that " to which the whole creation moves" MORAL 
 
 MANHOOD SELF-SOVEREIGNTY ! 
 
 The peril in the midst of us is great in this particu- 
 lar : that work shall be deemed ignoble. But, in truth,
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAJT. 305 
 
 in no land beneath God's generous sunlight is honest 
 toil more honorable than in this free country. The 
 spirit of gambling has been in our atmosphere quite 
 long enough for the health of our sons and daughters. 
 It creates feverishness, restlessness, impatience, con- 
 tempt for slow, steady processes and deferred results 
 and profits. We would move but when swept by 
 lightning express or " two-twenty trotters." The old 
 method of honest, intelligent, persevering, plodding 
 toil, as that by which honor shall be won, competence 
 gained, and well-being realized, may have served in 
 generations past. But young Calif ornian Americans 
 cry out against all such " old fogy ism." 
 
 No thoughtful observer can have failed to recog- 
 nize in this Fair an illustration of the laws of co-opera- 
 tion and division of labor. These products had never 
 been but for diversity of gifts in the endowments of 
 men; diversity of adaptation as the result of those 
 endowments ; and then, union of all these, in endeav- 
 ors to supply the wants of humanity. 
 
 Single-handed, single-hearted how feeble is man ! 
 What a narrow map of survey ; what a superficial 
 acquaintance with the facts within that circumscribed 
 domain ! What hope can he cherish of victory over 
 nature's forces single-handed! The highest type of 
 animal life presents us with the greatest diversity of 
 organs and functions co-operating to one end. The 
 loftier the life, the greater the number of forces focal- 
 izing to sustain such life. The functions of the lowest 
 living thing are fulfilled by one organ. Loftiest life 
 is nourished by a score. Savage life, as contrasted
 
 306 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 with civilized, illustrates the same principle. It is 
 before us most truly in our exhibition. 
 
 There is the product of the worker in iron and the 
 worker in marble. There is the herdsman with his 
 wool, and the grape-grower with his wines and raisins. 
 There is the manufacturer of blankets, and the pro- 
 ducer of beeves, of butter, and of beet-root. There 
 is the spinner of steel wire and of hemp rope, by the 
 former meeting the needs of our street-car companies, 
 and by the other supplying the demands of that ex- 
 tremely necessary adjunct to our civilization the 
 common hangman. 
 
 There is the tooth-extractor, with its pleasures of 
 hope, and the toy for the infant just cutting its teeth. 
 There are Cinderella slippers for fairy-footed belles, 
 and there are the no less fair and fairy edifices 
 " castles in the air " called bonnets. There are 
 sweetmeats for "billing and cooing" lovers, and pre- 
 served meats for sallow-cheeked, desiccated, and melan- 
 choly bachelors. There are crystal goblets from 
 which to quaff that elixir of life and home of living 
 things called " Spring Yalley water ; " and then there 
 are brooms and "combination mops," over which 
 Mrs. Partington must shed tears of ecstatic joy, and 
 large enough to sweep into limbo all the cobwebs that 
 ever clustered in the antique corners of an old City 
 Hall, and to cleanse the filthiest floor o'er which the 
 disgusted members of a political caucus expectorated 
 their contempt and chagrin. Here are cradles in 
 which may be rocked into dreamland the future sav- 
 iors of their commonwealth ; and here are revolving
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN. 307 
 
 lounges, upon which the fathers of these precious 
 creatures may gyrate, as they study the problems of 
 state-craft and of the Stock Exchange. Here are 
 materials for the printing-press, and for the circu- 
 lation of opinions that are reformations in embryo 
 and revolutions in the germ. 
 
 And here are organs and pianos for man longs for 
 rest, and yearns to forget his woes ; and would fain 
 voice his hopes and antedate his immortality in that 
 ethereal speech called music. And here is our " gallery 
 of the fine arts." For man is made for the " beautiful." 
 Nor is he satisfied with the provision for his craving 
 furnished in the forms and colors and motions of crea- 
 tion. There is no stint, it is true, in nature's supplies. 
 There is the tint of the fox-glove, and the gleam of 
 the gem, and the pomp of the cloud-storm, and the 
 grandeur of the snow peak, and the mirror-like re- 
 pose of the land-locked lake, and the plumage of 
 tropic bird, and the majesty of sunset, and the swell 
 of the foam-wreathed billow, and the serenity of eve, 
 and the valley all afire with morning sunbeams steeped 
 in pearls of dew. Yet this is not enough. The artist 
 must extract from these their fairest, their purest, 
 their noblest ; and of the extract fashion scenes not 
 more true to nature than they are true to the loftier 
 ideals with which imagination loves to commune. 
 
 Every new discovery places another force at the 
 service of man. Every new discovery reveals another 
 appliance for the mitigation of some physical woe, 
 the lessening of some social burden, the increase of 
 
 the value of human life. 
 21
 
 308 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Nor is there any reason to believe that man has 
 touched the goal of ultimate discovery. He is but 
 breaking the shell and crust. He is but turning 
 up the soil to the depth of a few inches. He has 
 but skirted a few leagues of the immensity of being. 
 He has but mapped out a few departments of the vast 
 empire of matter. He has but climbed, comparatively, 
 a few feet of the soaring peaks of outlook. He some- 
 times mistakes the ant-heap for an Alp. Having 
 dredged his gold-fish vase, he exults as though he held 
 the ocean in the hollow of his hand. But where is 
 he who has chronicled the last fact of nature, plucked 
 the last flower from her forest, weighed the last star 
 in her galaxies, waked the last Titan force from its 
 slumber and sent it forth to work, a willing and glad 
 slave in man's behoof I 
 
 " Onward ! " is the impassioned cry. The bounda- 
 ries amplify ; the goal becomes a starting-post ; the 
 loftiest peak but a step in the ascending stairway that 
 climbs from darkness up to God. We are but learn- 
 ing the letters of the alphabet ; whether we have as yet 
 discovered them all, or not, \vho knows ? Or we are put- 
 ting the letters into words ? or we are putting the words 
 into sentences ? or the sentences into paragraphs ? or 
 the paragraphs into chapters \ Ah ! when shall the 
 volume be completed ? When shall the index be fur- 
 nished ? When, the preface written ? When, the folio 
 issued and the first edition put into circulation ? Echo 
 answers, " When ? " 
 
 Yes, the sovereignty is a progressive one. Slowly, 
 steadily, has man advanced in discovery, conquest,
 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN. 309 
 
 government of nature. Steadily, in our later ages, 
 has advance been made in the knowledge of the 
 secrets of the skies, and the secrets of the air, and the 
 secrets of the Water, and the secrets of forces em- 
 bodied and unembodied. 
 
 Alchemy has given place to chemistry. Astrology 
 has yielded to astronomy. The oil-lamp surrenders 
 to the gas-burner ; and the gas, in turn, is in peril of 
 extinguishment by the light of electricity. Messen- 
 gers on horseback give place to mail-carriers in steam- 
 cars. Messages by steam are slow in the presence of 
 the message by telegraph ; and that, in turn, may 
 become a triviality compared with the lines along 
 which we shall whisper our wishes of good cheer. 
 
 The future, the coming man or race, shall have 
 something left for it to do. 
 
 There is Vesuvius : and the problem to be solved 
 is, how best to utilize such a huge f umace ? There 
 is Niagara : how make use of its water-power in work- 
 ing our machinery ? There are earthquakes : how shall 
 they be compelled to upheave and o'erwhelm, and 
 shiver and split, 'without injury to the engineer under 
 whose direction they shall be placed ? There is the 
 Gulf Stream : shall it not be altered in its course and 
 poured in upon the Sahara, subject to powers of con- 
 trol not, as yet, clearly seen by the canal-cutters of 
 our day ? Who knows but that in some future age 
 when, war having broken out between this great repub- 
 lic, with its two hundred millions of freemen, and the 
 insolent little islanders yonder in the north-east, the 
 latter shall be compelled to submit ? for we shall freeze
 
 310 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 them into icebergs by simply deflecting the Gulf 
 Stream, and letting it flow right through Central 
 America into the Pacific. And there are the " North- 
 ern Lights" the Aurora Borealis: when we shall 
 have exhausted oil and tallow and wax and gas and 
 electricity, and whatever of light element might be 
 extracted from lakes and pools and seas and oceans, 
 shall we not hear of the formation of a stock company, 
 with unlimited liabilities, for the supply of light to 
 cities by means of the utilization of this phenomenon 
 of nature ?
 
 THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD. 311 
 
 THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD.* 
 
 I HAVE been requested by the proprietors of tliis 
 great work of art to seize the opportunity which 
 it presents for making a good impression upon the 
 hearts and consciences of my school and charge. I 
 wish it to be understood that I am not here to-night as 
 an art critic. If any one has been led to anticipate a 
 lecture upon painting by reason of the ambitious title 
 of my address, he is doomed to a bitter disappoint- 
 ment. The selection of the title of Victor Cousin's 
 most suggestive work, " The True, The Beautiful, and 
 the Good," is altogether Mr. Derby's choice. Alive 
 to the promise held forth by such a title, I demurred 
 to its adoption. But all in vain. 
 
 Let it then be understood that, more for conven- 
 ience' sake than for any other reason, the presumpt- 
 uous selection was made ; and that I may wander at 
 my own sweet will through the ample breadths of 
 thought and sentiment dispread before the meditative 
 mind by this masterpiece of genius. 
 
 It is all but impossible to say any thing new upon 
 the parable of the " Prodigal Son." It is old ; and 
 still it is young. Of Hebrew origin, it spurns na- 
 
 * An address delivered on tlie occasion of the exhibition of Du 
 Boenfs painting, "The Pryuigal Son," at tlie Masonic Temple, Balti- 
 more.
 
 312 GUARD'S LECTUEES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 tionality in its appeal to and sovereignty over the deep 
 places of the human heart. Children feel its spell. 
 Scholars yield to its fascination. Orators gather 
 inspiration from it. Art has taxed its resources in the 
 endeavor to crowd upon its canvas the scenes wherein 
 ineffable wisdom and tenderness depicted the decline 
 and fall, the repentance, return, and restoration of a 
 " creature capable of God." 
 
 Upon entering this hall the thoughts suggested by 
 this work of art will be found as manifold as the 
 types of mind and grades of culture met with in those 
 present. 
 
 One shall at once exclaim : See ! here we have an- 
 other instance of the influence of the Bible upon hu- 
 man intellect and the indebtedness of art, as of phil- 
 osophy and morals, to the truths of Holy Writ ! For, 
 indeed, this owes its existence to the sacred volume. 
 And once again are we reminded of the power of 
 that old book over the mental life of humanity. We 
 run over in our thoughts the instances so numerous 
 of literary and artistic obligation to the scenes, charac- 
 ters, and events of this volume. 
 
 In music, there is Haydn's u Creation ; " there are 
 Handel's " Israel in Egypt " and the u Messiah ;" there 
 is Mendelssohn's "Elijah;" there is Costa's "Naa- 
 man ; " and others familiar to the daughters of song. 
 
 In the drama, there is Byron's " Cain ; " there are 
 " Samson " and " Saul," as lately presented by Sal- 
 vini ; as well as the large obligation of our own Shak- 
 speare for some of his finest passages and more 
 than one of his characters to this volume.
 
 THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD. 313 
 
 In poetry, where shall I begin? Milton's "Para- 
 dise Lost " and " Paradise Regained," and his " Ode 
 on the Nativity;" Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 
 " Drama of Exile " and " He giveth his beloved 
 sleep;" Byron's and Moore's "Hebrew Melodies;" 
 Pope's " Messiah ; " Montgomery's " World before 
 the Flood;" Keble's "Christian Year;" Longfel- 
 low's " Divine Tragedy ; " besides the countless beau- 
 ties of metaphor and diction strewn o'er the fields of 
 literature for which the authors were indebted to the 
 Bible. 
 
 And, as most naturally of all suggested by this 
 work, painting : the " Deluge " in its terror ; the 
 " Last Plague " in its desolation ; " Sinai " in its gran- 
 deur of law-giving; David "as he plants his foot 
 upon the prostrate Philistine;" Elijah at Carmel, 
 Iloreb, and in his chariot of fire ; " The Goodly Fel- 
 lowship of the Prophets ; " the " Epiphany ; " the 
 " Temptation ; " the " Transfiguration ; " the " Cruci- 
 fixion,"* the "Ascension" of our Divine Master: 
 Paul on his way to Damascus and on Mars' Hill. 
 
 These, and others not remembered now, are illustra- 
 tions of the mighty influence of this book upon art. 
 Indeed, not more deeply indebted are literary and art- 
 loving men to the scenes and colors of nature than to 
 the characters and events of revelation. 
 
 Nor is it possible to overestimate the benefits con- 
 ferred upon and maintained by our sacred book, apart 
 from its purely religious mission. The mental life it 
 has awakened, the energies it has developed, the in- 
 spiration it has breathed, the taste it has cultivated,
 
 314 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 the subtle sympathies and delicate affinities with all 
 that is lovely and fair it has evoked, time would fail 
 me to enumerate. 
 
 The title chosen for the utterances of to-night is 
 full of suggestions. Its triplicity of terms is not a 
 mere jingle of words without meaning. Every term 
 includes an idea and signifies a faculty and a function 
 of the human spirit ; and also implies an objective 
 reality suited to the subjective power of the soul. 
 There is truth. There is beauty. There is goodness. 
 Truth is sought for by the scientist ; beauty, by the 
 artist ; goodness, by the moralist. Man, as he ascends 
 the scale of worth, grows in depth of conviction that 
 there is such a substance as truth ; that there is such 
 a reality as 'beauty ; that there is such a verity as 
 goodness. These are felt to be fundamental and im- 
 perishable principles of his nature. And his endeavor 
 is to seek after and possess them. The faculty which 
 seeks truth is pure reason ; the faculty which seeks 
 beauty is emotion guided by reason ; the faculty which 
 seeks goodness is conscience aided by reason and at- 
 tended by emotion. 
 
 Once these three existed but in God. He is infi- 
 nite truth, infinite beauty, infinite goodness. lie 
 created to the intent that he might exhibit these per- 
 fections. Nature exists to show forth his glory as 
 possessor of these essences. Hence there is truth, 
 physical and metaphysical ; truth, mathematical and 
 moral. Hence there is beauty, material and spiritual ; 
 beauty of color and of contour ; beauty of fitness and 
 of adaptation ; beauty of moral principle and of social
 
 THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AXD THE GOOD. 315 
 
 act. Hence there is goodness, evidenced in obedi- 
 ence and in well-being, in affection and in sympathy, 
 in loyalty to the right and in devotion to the true, in 
 heroism on behalf of the suffering and magnanimity 
 toward the erring and the repentant. And these 
 three are exquisitely interwoven. That which is good 
 cannot be false ; and it cannot be hideous. The im- 
 moral is ever the untrue as it is ever the loathsome. 
 And so the true must ever be the beautiful, and it 
 must ever be the good. And so, also, the beautiful 
 must be the true and the good. No artist commits a 
 greater crime than he who presents beauty as spring- 
 ing from a lie and as in antagonism to the right. 
 
 This holds good of beauty or the beautiful in every 
 department. There are true lines and true colors and 
 true tones. A beautiful painting cannot be secured 
 at the expense of truth in shadow and light of fore- 
 ground and of perspective. And hence the artist 
 must ever be guided by the faculty which decides 
 upon the true and the false, even reason. And that 
 cannot be, as a painting, a " thing of beauty," if it 
 war with the good. He commits a high crime and 
 misdemeanor as an artist, as well as a moralist, who 
 seeks to make vice lovely, lust admirable, envy se- 
 raphic. This is to be false in the most absolute sense. 
 For let the whole soul speak out and it will, without 
 feebleness or faltering, declare avarice hateful, mean- 
 ness despicable, treachery loathsome, ingratitude hor- 
 rible ; in a word, vice abominable. And the abomina- 
 ble, the horrible, the despicable, the loathsome, the 
 contemptible, can never be the beautiful. Vice shall,
 
 310 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 therefore, be painted as she is ; and when seen, shall 
 shock and sicken, revolt and repel, disgust and deter. 
 For the beautiful is ever one with the good and in 
 concord with the true. 
 
 It might be said, perhaps, that the beautiful is not, 
 as are the true and the good, necessary to an intel- 
 lectual and moral life ; that the beautiful is a luxury, 
 not one of the necessities of our existence. Food is 
 necessary to our existence ; but the agreeableness of 
 flavor and pungency are not necessary. Hearing is 
 necessary to our existence ; but sound need not have 
 been capable of all the modulation of harp and organ, 
 of flute and violin, or even of the human voice. 
 There is melody, there is harmony, where there need 
 not have been other than a shriek or a growl. Sight 
 needed not, for the fulfillment of its function, that 
 cloudlets should be dyed in purple, shells tinted with 
 vermilion, plumage of birds plunged in iridescent 
 floods. 
 
 No ; God has not limited his gifts to a bare supply 
 of the imperative demands of life. " He has given 
 us all things richly to enjoy." His ideal of life is a 
 royal banquet. Existence to him must be exhilarant, 
 exuberant, ecstatic. He could not love us as mere 
 mathematic calculating machines. Nor would he 
 have us in the service of goodness valiant for the 
 right without one sentiment of admiration and de- 
 light to quicken our pulse and flush our brow. Hence, 
 in the faculty of the beautiful, and in the provision 
 for its gratification, God has added to our table ele- 
 gancies and delights. We shall banquet ; but it shall
 
 THE TKUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD. 317 
 
 be upon apples gold-orbed from baskets of silver. 
 We shall walk through life ; but it shall be through 
 atmospheres laden with fragrance, and through forests 
 clad in mantles of many colors, and beneath skies 
 arched and over plains paved by an architect who 
 loves to blend together, in all that he does, the 
 "strength and beauty" of his own most perfect 
 nature. 
 
 A great painting is a great poem. The language 
 in which the painter speaks differs, 'tis true, from 
 that in which the poet speaks ; but the end he contem- 
 plates is the same. His language is form and color. 
 The speech is not heard ; there is no voice nor lan- 
 guage; yet may he eloquently address us and pro- 
 foundly move and sway us. 
 
 The greatest painter is the man who conveys to us 
 the greatest number of the greatest ideas in the most 
 perfect language of his art. Estimate the quality, 
 measure the quantity of his ideas, and then infer the 
 rank of his genius. The manner of expression is ever 
 inferior in importance to the matter expressed. There 
 may be perfection of expression ; but the idea expressed 
 may be petty and mean. There may be lack of finish in 
 expression ; but the thoughts conveyed are of loftiest 
 type and most sacred bearing. Therefore, in buying 
 pictures, deal as you would in buying books, prose or 
 poems. Have none but the best ; though there l>e 
 paucity in number, let there be opulence in worth. 
 Commune but with the mightiest minds. Converse 
 but with the most suggestive thinkers. 
 
 The educating power of a gallery of great works
 
 318 GUAED'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 of art cannot be overestimated. Wedded to science, 
 and thus freed from all debilitating influence upon 
 character, the effect must be humanizing, softening, 
 refining. Man is freed from the grasp of material- 
 ism ; enters the large places of pure and serene de- 
 light ; forgets the cares and irritations of life ; realizes 
 a thirst for good and for excellence which moth can- 
 not corrupt nor rust destroy. 
 
 The utilitarian philosopher need not turn from high 
 art as though it were antagonistic to the purpose of 
 his life and teachings. Every thing created by God 
 is capable of serving man, of ministering to his well- 
 being. But man's being is a manifold and complex 
 one. His ranges of life sweep from the material up 
 to the divine. He rests upon earth, but he fronts the 
 skies. He must " labor for the meat that perishes ; " 
 but he can "eat angels' food." Is it nothing to man 
 that you give him a new idea? that you make his 
 happiness less dependent upon the body ? that you 
 give him an eye to interpret the handwriting upon 
 nature's walls ? that you enlarge his apprehension of 
 the glory of living in such a world ? that you unseal 
 his ears to catch the melodies of being that float around 
 and ripple o'er him ? that you apply an eye-salve that 
 shall clarify his vision to detect the wealth of loveli- 
 ness lurking in leaflet and in flower-bell, in insect's 
 pinion and in wild bird's buoyant wing so that he 
 shall linger within nature's vastnesses as within a 
 Gothic cathedral ; wander through nature as through 
 a cosmopolitan gallery of fine art ; repose in nature as 
 in a conservatory of music;, and commune, through
 
 THE TKUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD. 319 
 
 nature, with the Builder and the Maker of all things ? 
 Is it nothing to add another chord to man's harp 
 of many strings, and lift him beyond the grossness of 
 things seen into ever-rapturous contact with the se- 
 rene and sacred realities and denizens of that city 
 where dwells "the King in his beauty," and where 
 abide and abound the archetypes of all the beauty 
 of which poet ever sang or painter ever dreamed ? 
 
 If ever there were an age in which this was de- 
 manded, this is that age. We are growing rich. Earth 
 is yielding her treasures to our bidding. Science is 
 delving in mountain and digging in river-bed for pre- 
 cious things wherewith to embellish and enrich. All 
 things are being turned into gold. Air and water, 
 light and lightning, forest and prairie, monsters of the 
 deep and fowls of the heaven, brain x>f man and mus- 
 cle of brute all things yield to the alchemic touch, 
 and are changed into gold. With what intent ? That 
 man may have rest and leisure, scope and sphere, for 
 the unfoldment of life which gold cannot nourish. 
 Gold gained is but the means to an end nobler, loftier : 
 the culture of humanizing sentiments ; the gratifica- 
 tion of moral instincts ; the erection of homes for 
 age and indigence, imperiled youth and fallen wo- 
 manhood ; the sustentation of religious enterprises 
 and benevolent institutions ; and the development of 
 the amenities and tastes of our aesthetic nature. To 
 purchase a bust ; to pay a landscape gardener ; to add 
 a product of the old, or of the young, masters of brush 
 and canvas to your frescoed walls ; to endow the hall 
 of art and throng it with keen and quivering spirits,
 
 320 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 hungering and atliirst after whatsoever things are 
 lovely believe me, these are just as divinely appoint- 
 ed uses of money as your contributions to the Or- 
 phans 1 Home and your donation on behalf of the mis- 
 sions to the cannibals of the South Sea. 
 
 Deem not this waste. Nothing spent on the en- 
 largement, invigoration, refinement, purification of 
 soul, is waste. So thinks not God. He has not lim- 
 ited himself merely to such utilitarian ideas. Every 
 thing he has made is useful ; but he hath, as well, made 
 every thing beautiful in its time and season. Clouds 
 are our water-wagons. They refresh the fainting, 
 panting earth. But they are inlaid with divers colors 
 and built after the similitude of a gold, ebony, and 
 ivory Roman triumphal chariot. And so of the sea- 
 sons: they serve us and wait upon us in ordered 
 regularity and steady stateliness. But they are beau- 
 tiful, whether snow clothe them, or azure vesture 
 them, or purple fold them, or cloth of gold mantle 
 them. 
 
 The beauty of the Lord our God is on every thing 
 and in every thing in the curve of the wave ; in the 
 molding of the hillock ; in the murmur of the ring- 
 dove ; in the pipings of the winds ; in the aurora of 
 daybreak ; in the burnished pomp of sunset ; in the 
 palm-tree's feathery plume ; in the glow of the 
 opal ; in the flash of the fire-fly ; in the sweep of the 
 seafowl's showy form ; in the flutings of the ancient 
 hills ; in the geometric crystals of the snow-storm ; in 
 lakelet framed in granite ; in the sinuous meanderings 
 of the laughing, rippling rivulet^-O, hath not God
 
 THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD. 321 
 
 proved to us that in beauty, as in usefulness, his 
 heart finds an exceeding joy ! 
 
 Nor can we more worthily prove ourselves the chil- 
 dren of our Father than by celebrating and sanctify- 
 ing the everlasting union in our hearts and lives and 
 destinies of the true, the beautiful, and the good. 
 
 Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; 
 Do noble things, not dream them, all day long ; 
 And thus make life, death, and the vast forever, 
 One grand, sweet song ! 
 
 A great painter is as certainly a gift from God to 
 his nation, his race, his age, as was even one of Is- 
 rael's prophets. He is as veritable a teacher as is the 
 sage of science or the priest of piety. He bears a 
 message and fulfills a mission. While one messenger 
 appeals to the moral faculty, and another to the log- 
 ical, and a third to the practical, the great artist of the 
 brush and of the chisel appeals to the imagination. 
 Their work is one ; their methods are multiform ; their 
 commission equally divine. Such men are not chance 
 stragglers from the realms of silence and of night 
 into the living kingdom of humanity. As certainly 
 as the great statesman, the brave general, the heroic 
 patriot, the magnanimous discoverer, the martyr refor- 
 mer, are God's gifts to man, even so certainly is the 
 great painter. Raphael was as truly an embassador 
 from heaven's court as was Columbus. Milton had 
 ,an authority to sing from the " Lover of concord," as 
 Cromwell from the "Lover of liberty." Hundreds 
 never reached by the reason are mastered by the 
 singer; and within hearts impervious to the official
 
 322 GUAED'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 appeals of the black-robed parson, the high-priest of 
 beauty obtains an audience for his sacred oracle. Of 
 the multitudes glorified, it will be found true that 
 not a few entered into the temple of godliness through 
 " the gate that is called Beautiful" 
 
 Each of us is afresh summoned to the duty of fash- 
 ioning a life that shall be true and beautiful and good. 
 The pattern life exists. It should be ever before us ; 
 to it we should ever look ; after it, ever aspire ; by 
 it ever be stimulated. Help is available. The spirit 
 of this high art, the Author of all genius, is your 
 friend. Under his inspiration, by his guidance, your 
 conduct cannot fail to fashion a life as strong, as beau- 
 tiful, and as true as it is good. Every man cannot 
 paint after this fashion ; but every man can be a liv- 
 ing picture. Every man cannot sing like Tennyson ; 
 but every man can live a poem. Every man cannot 
 compose an anthem ; but every man can have his life 
 a doxology unto the Father and the Son and the Holy 
 Spirit. Let this be one result of the presentation of, 
 this superb work of art, and it shall have vindicated 
 to you, at least, its right to rank as an embodiment of 
 the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS. 323 
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS.* 
 
 TO your request that I should deliver an address to 
 your order, I cordially accede. It gives me 
 pleasure to see you and speak a few words as suggested 
 by your association. I have read and studied the 
 principles of your order, and confess my admiration 
 of them, as well as of the practical benefits flowing 
 from their application during the past year. I tender 
 you my good wishes, accompanied by my .sincere 
 prayer for your continued and enlarged prosperity. 
 
 The moral principles expressed in your motto are 
 noble : " Friendship, truth, love." They are worthy 
 of that religion by which they have been taught, exem- 
 plified, and honored as by none other believed in by man. 
 These principles found their sublimest expression 
 in Him whose name we bear as Christians. He was 
 indeed the Friend of all men, of all classes, of all 
 conditions ; the "' Friend that sticketh closer than a broth- 
 er." He was truth in all its grandeur, in all its beauty, in 
 all its beneficence. In him was no guile. He was love ; 
 high as heaven ; broad as the universe ; lasting as 
 eternity ; equal to any service ; capable of any toil ; 
 undaunted by any suffering ; " stronger than death." 
 
 * Delivered before the Independent Order of Mechanics at Mt. 
 Vernon Place Church, Baltimore, Sunday evening, April 23, 1882. 
 22
 
 324 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 In him, indeed, this trinity of moral virtues met 
 and blended, as in none other known to the ages. His 
 example is your ideal ; his spirit your inspiration ; 
 his benediction your pledge of success, your guarantee 
 of existence while sun and moon endure. And, 
 indeed, your institution is one of the fruits, rich 
 and ripe, of that fair tree of life which he planted 
 with his own hand, and watered with his own most 
 precious blood. 
 
 Yours is the law of mutual help. This law is one 
 of the most widely operative in the universe. I can- 
 not think of any spot over which God's good scepter 
 stretches in which it will not be met. Nothing exists 
 for itself alone. Every thing depends for its com- 
 pleteness upon some other thing. Uniformity there 
 is not, but unity there is; and unity depends on 
 diversity and mutual helpfulness. 
 
 Minerals exist to serve vegetables ; vegetables exist 
 to nourish animals ; all exist to help man. Soils need 
 sunshine and showers. Oceans need dry land and 
 rivers. Yalleys need hills ; and hills need clouds and 
 snows to robe, to crown them, and to nourish their 
 fountains and springs of water. 
 
 The great nations of the earth need each the other, 
 and each the other's products and genius. Not on 
 one of these has God bestowed all things, except it 
 be upon your fair land, where all climates and soils, all 
 products and capacities, seern well-nigh lavished. But 
 even here you need something to be found in other 
 and older lands and people. 
 
 The human family is one, by reason of diversity
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS. 323 
 
 of gifts and co-operation for common benefit. It is a 
 vast organism composed of many members ; and all 
 have not the same office. The loftier the being, the 
 greater the variety of organs and of functions found 
 in such being. There shall be the thinker and the 
 singer ; the inventor and the artisan ; the healer 
 of bodily diseases arid the healer of mental and 
 moral maladies. There shall be the tiller of the 
 soil and the herder of cattle. There shall be the 
 manufacturer and the vender of the factory products. 
 There shall be the seaman whose business is in 
 great waters, and the builder of the ships manned 
 by the hardy sailor. There shall be the teacher of 
 youth, and the builder by whom the college dome 
 shall be heaved, beneath which the student and the 
 teacher shall gather for instruction. There shall 
 be the author, and the type-setter whose skill 
 shall scatter broadcast the author's tares or wheat. 
 There shall be the statesman, and the voter by whose 
 ballot the men of wisdom or of folly shall be floated 
 to the halls of legislature. "The king is fed by the 
 field." The feller of forests works together with the 
 carpenter; the grimy miner is in harness with the 
 smith ; the marble cutter with the architect ; the man 
 of muscle with the man of brain. Capital depends 
 on labor, and labor on capital; and both upon the 
 government by whose wise, impartial, and powerful 
 administration, liberty of action is secured, and peace- 
 ful enjoyment of the fruits of industry assured to all. 
 The poet sings for us. The historian makes past 
 ages yield instruction for us. The sage draws
 
 326 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 lightning from the clouds for us. The daughter of 
 music pours out her floods of song for us. The 
 poorest helps the richest ; the weakest helps the 
 strongest ; the stupid helps the quick-witted ; the 
 boor helps the scholar ; just as truly as the opulent, 
 the wise, the brave, help to retrieve and uplift and en- 
 rich the recipients of their many favors. None can 
 live without, and none can afford to despise, the 
 other ; for " we are all members one of another." 
 
 I am reminded of the dignity of labor ; for I ad- 
 dress an order of workmen, and an order of no mean 
 rank. 
 
 Work is the law of life by His appointment who is 
 ever working. The normal condition of all created 
 existence is labor; from the lowest life up to the 
 loftiest ; from the dullest to the most vivacious ; from 
 the life narrowest in its area of activity to the life by 
 whose vocation stellar systems are embraced and trav- 
 ersed. The first Adam was a gardener ; and the second 
 himself bent over the bench ; for, as a Jew, he learned 
 his trade and practiced it. He was a mechanic. Paul 
 wrought at his trade as a tent-maker. Founded upon 
 infinite reason, justice, love, the apostolic principle 
 abides until this day : He that will not work neither 
 shall he eat. 
 
 Health of body and health of heart, health of con- 
 science and health of mind, are the legitimate off- 
 spring of honesLfpanly, intelligent toil. Work of brain 
 or of brawn ; work, beading the brow with sweat ; 
 bronzing the skin with sun and weather ; knitting 
 the frame into elastic firmness ; giving to the fingers,
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS. 32 T 
 
 deftness ; to the arm, girth ; to the eye, keenness ; to 
 the touch, delicacy ; to the stroke, precision ; to the 
 soul, force ; to the will, resolve ; to the whole man- 
 hood, vigor, agility, and kingly poise and port aye ! 
 surely this is of God ! and, therefore, well becomes a 
 man ! 
 
 I cannot conceive it possible that an idle man Can 
 be a saint. I cannot believe that self-respect can 
 possibly co-exist with do-nothingism. "Why stand 
 ye here all the day idle ? " seems to be the challenge 
 that falls upon the ear and soul of the idler, in tones 
 now soft and tender, in notes now piercing and startling. 
 From the toiling workers by whom the coral reefs 
 are piled, to the light-beam that hastens from the por- 
 tals of the morn to revive a drooping flower or cheer 
 a wakeful, weary watcher by the bed of pain ; from 
 the earth-worm that burrows and tunnels to let in the 
 rain-drops and air upon a buried seed or feeble root- 
 let, to the tempest that speeds its purifying mission to 
 some fever-haunted or plague-tainted court and alley ; 
 from the bee that cheerily careers o'er clover field and 
 wild-flower glen, to the burning seraph that stoops to 
 shut a lion's mouth, refresh a world's Redeemer in his 
 agony of lonely struggle, and wave his wings of 
 rapture o'er the death couch of a Livingstone, or a 
 Lazarus, and waft his spirit safe within the gates of 
 pearl and the secret place of the Almighty ; from 
 these undisputed centers of blessed and beneficent 
 services, doth not the query rush impetuous : " Why 
 stand ye here all the day idle ? " Here, where there 
 is a call for workmen ! Here, where there is profit
 
 328 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 in working ! Here, where there is bliss in working ! 
 Here, where want departs, woe vanishes, weakness 
 yields, wickedness itself is stemmed in its torrent 
 sweep by honest, brave, and noble labor ! 
 
 In you I see agents in our modern civilization of 
 no mean importance and power. Indeed, I do not 
 know how we could have reached our present proud 
 position, but for you and your fellows in the great 
 army of mechanics. We have our forests, but how 
 could they have been cut down without axes which 
 you helped to shape and whet? How could these 
 forests have been floated but for barges which your 
 hands helped to frame and build ? How could they 
 have been sawn but for mills which you helped to 
 construct and engines you helped to fashion ? There 
 are mountains full of precious things, such as coal, 
 lead, iron, silver, gold; but how tunnel these with- 
 out your tools and toil ? How transform these ores 
 into useful shapes and adaptations, but for yonr 
 handiwork, your strong limbs, your inventive genius, 
 your manipulating touch, your power to endure the 
 heat of furnace and the expenditure of energy in 
 long hours and \vearying labors ? We have quarries 
 where slumber slate, and marble, and granite, and 
 green-stone ; but every crow-bar speaks of you ; 
 every chisel owns your paternity ; every trowel and 
 drilling-tool came forth from your mechanic work- 
 shop. Here is glass ; but you helped to melt or 
 blow or stain it. Here is masonry ; but you climbed 
 the scaffolding and scaled the turret. Here is gas ; 
 but you made the meters, and you molded the
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS. 329 
 
 piping and flung out the bolt and screw and nail 
 wherewith the factory was held together, the fluid 
 extracted, and the light air transmitted to this very 
 temple in which we worship to-night. Yonder organ 
 is your handiwork ; these seats are the fruit of 
 your doings. 
 
 The past is as full of your achievements as the 
 present. The P} T rainids are your monuments. The 
 Parthenon should flush your brow with pride ; for 
 what could Phidias have achieved without your skill 
 and power? The Pharos, whose kindly light led 
 many a pelted bark to quiet haven ; the cathedrals of 
 the Middle Ages, with all their time-defying massive- 
 ness and beauty, breeders of solemn thoughts and 
 elevators of earth-prone passions and desires ; the 
 asylums where want and wretchedness, where sadness 
 and despair, are sheltered from the strife of tongues, 
 the arrows of outrageous fortune, and the pangs of 
 penury and oblivion ; the breakwaters and bridges 
 wherewith ocean is beaten back, and gulf and flood 
 are spanned ; the tombs and mausoleums where repose 
 our dead and hang our wreaths of friendship and af- 
 fection ; the watch-tower whither the sage climbs to 
 track the star ; the glass in which the distant orb is 
 mirrored ; the laboratory where the chemist cross- 
 questions atoms and extorts from earth and air their 
 hoary secrets, and the very instruments of glass and 
 steel whereby he prosecutes his explorations these, 
 and such as these, proclaim the triumph of your art, 
 the debt we owe you, and the honors to which you are 
 most justly heirs !
 
 330 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 You, indeed, contribute unstinted service to man 
 in his endeavor to " replenish the earth and subdue 
 it." Aided by you, man wins back his forfeited 
 crown and scepter of sovereignty over matter and its 
 forces and adaptations. Surely, when God bade man 
 have dominion and subdue the earth you were in- 
 cluded in the plan. To all that man can effect in this 
 subjugation you necessarily contribute. The spade, 
 the plow, the harrow, the reaping-hook, the thresh- 
 ing-machine, the wagon, the mill all included in 
 raising food for man are the products of your me- 
 chanic skill and labor. 
 
 We travel on stage-coach : you constructed it. 
 "We travel by horse : you shod him, and you helped 
 to fashion the nails that bind the hoof and shoe to- 
 gether. We travel by rail : you constructed the loco- 
 motive and laid the tracks. We travel on water : 
 
 We know what master laid the keel, 
 What workmen wrought the ribs of steel, 
 Who made each mast and sail and rope, 
 What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
 
 in constructing the noble creature that night and day 
 " in sunshine and in stormy weather," plowed the 
 hoary main, and bore you to Occident or orient 
 lands for wealth, for culture, or for recreation. 
 
 You cannot create matter, but you can transfer it 
 from one spot to another ; you can mold and polish 
 and give new luster to the raw material by the mani- 
 fold adaptations and uses for which your dexterous 
 manipulation can shape it. You are not creators of
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS. 331 
 
 raw material, but you are almost so. Every stroke 
 invests with worth ; every delicate impression en- 
 hances value. Whether it be the clay you change 
 into brick, or the brick you change into a dwelling ; 
 or the sand you change into a sheet of glass, or 
 the glass you change into a window or mirror or the 
 lens of a telescope ; or the cocoons you spin into 
 threads, or the threads you change into robes for 
 the dames of court and square and avenue yes, 
 you come very nigh the rank of creators, indeed. 
 And your work, undoubtedly, has raised the earth 
 we tread to an infinitely higher rank than that earth 
 filled when man first opened his eyes upon its fair 
 and ample landscapes. 
 
 Earth was so constructed by our God that some- 
 thing was left for man to accomplish ; some latency 
 to call forth ; some adaptation to apply ; some crude- 
 ness to culture ; some feebleness to strengthen ; 
 some luxuriance to prune. And thus scope was left 
 for the development of the forces of mechanic art 
 and labor. 
 
 I have been impressed by the three terms selected 
 by you as the motto of your society Friendship 
 Truth Love. It is a delightful combination. These 
 elements are capable of producing a very noble type 
 of social life. 
 
 You exist to foster friendship. He is, indeed, 
 a poor man who has not found a friend. No doubt 
 the existence of such a man is a rare exception. 
 Friendship is absolutely necessary to the develop- 
 ment of human nature. Man is scarcely human
 
 332 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 lacking friendship. He is made for society. Within 
 the soul there lurk capacities whose final end is 
 friendship. To enrich the heart, to enlarge the 
 understanding, to fashion character, there must be 
 friendship. There must forever remain an undevel- 
 oped region of our being till some friendship hath 
 been formed. Then the shaft is plunged, the secret 
 place of our nature is struck, and may be worked into 
 positive productiveness of mental and moral being. 
 
 " Faithful are the wounds of a friend," therefore 
 accept reproof when kindly offered. Let no friend 
 of yours have occasion to say, as said Paul to some of 
 old : " Am I therefore become your enemy because I 
 tell you the truth ? " 
 
 Friendship is seen in defense of your reputation 
 when absent. Friendship is seen in steady faithful- 
 ness amid vicissitudes of fortune. The true friend is 
 born for adversity. Tenacity is one characteristic of 
 this true friendship. Its grip is steel-like. Its bonds 
 are adamant. Not when honor wreaths your brow ; 
 not when fame trumpets your deeds ; not when pros- 
 perity turns all you touch into gold and all you plan 
 into fortune ; not then doth friendship most truly 
 prove itself. Alas ! there is much of this abroad. 
 Success enrings us with troops of friends. Power 
 attracts to us the flatterer, and wealth the parasite, 
 and honor the incense-wafter. But such as these 
 vanish with change of weather. Let the skies above 
 us darken ; let the scene around us put on winter 
 vesture ; where are they ? Let the residence be no 
 longer in the square, but in the modest retirement of
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS. 333 
 
 the third-rate street ; let the equipage no longer 
 sweep you round the park, but the simple five-cent 
 horse-car become your chariot ; where are they ? 
 True friendship feels not the change of conditions ; 
 it is rooted in character. It is no tropic or hot- 
 house plant or flower. The pine of Alpine snows ; 
 the oak of England's hardy winters these be the 
 symbols of that which you call friendship! Born 
 for adversity, it "sticketh closer than a brother." It 
 flourishes amid poverty; it fruitens in disaster. 
 When the winds scorch, it is a hiding-place ; when 
 the soul faints with the burden, it is the " shadow of 
 a great rock in a weary land." May such " friend- 
 ship " ever be yours ! 
 
 Truth it is the basis and the bond of friendship 
 as of society. Indeed, it is what gravitation is to the 
 solar system ; without it there could not be society at 
 all. Where there is no truth there is no trust ; where 
 there is no trust there is no co-operation ; where 
 there is no co-operation there is no civilization. For 
 civilization implies a community of interests and of 
 life , citizens are civilians, that is, civilized human 
 beings. So that truth is the foundation of all that 
 we hold most sacred and valuable in modern life. It 
 is an absolute necessity to civilization, as much so as , 
 air or light or food. Therefore a society aiming at 
 the cultivation of veracity, and sworn to practice it, 
 is worthy of all commendation. 
 
 Truth is honor ; truth is honesty. And it must not 
 be limited to words. It must pervade our daily 
 deeds. Into all we do we must put truth, as into all
 
 334 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 we say. The truthful mechanic is an honest, a just 
 mechanic. Whether seen or not, the work is true 
 work. Into all he puts his best skill, his best expe- 
 rience, his best patience. There is nothing slurred 
 over ; there is nothing slovenly ; there is nothing su- 
 perficial. Thoroughness characterizes all he purposes 
 and all he performs. Truth in quantity of work 
 done ; truth in quality of work done. Ah ! this is a 
 noble ideal ! Here is room for conscience. Here is 
 the sphere of principle. A well-driven nail ; a' well- 
 planed plank ; a well-painted back-door ; a well-riveted 
 bolt ; a well-shod wheel ; a well-stitched harness here 
 is truth and truthfulness ! 
 
 Nothing else wears ; but this does. The false wears 
 out; but truth wears on, and brightens as it wears, 
 " unto the perfect day." Veracity this is what we 
 need to-day above all else. Truth in the coffee-dealer ; 
 and no horse-beans instead of coffee ! Truth in the 
 milk-dealer ; and no water, chalk, or flour instead of 
 milk ! Truth in the gas-man ; and no false reading 
 of the meter when the family are at the seaside ! 
 Truth in the butcher ; and no more bone in the beef- 
 steak than a fair proportion to the quantity of meat ! 
 
 Truth! O when will it spring out of the earth? 
 Our political life is fearfully accountable for the lack 
 of veracity in social life. Men gentlemen whom 
 we never knew to prevaricate in social intercourse 
 will trifle with truth for a partisan and for a party. 
 There is an insidious process of dry-rot furthered 
 by this, until all down through society it spreads, and 
 until the whole is eaten into dust and into decay.
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS. 335 
 
 The very spirit of exaggeration in humorousness 
 such as Mark Twain and others of his type indulge in 
 is perilous. It destroys reverence for the truth. 
 It encourages the young to trifle with the truth. It 
 familiarizes the talker and the listener with exaggera- 
 tion in statement for the sake of a laugh. 
 
 High are the encomiums paid to truthfulness. We 
 read of him " who speaks the truth in his heart ; " of 
 one of whom it was said the " law of truth was on his 
 lips, and in his spirit there was no guile." O, this is 
 wealth of soul ! This is soundness of spirit ! This is 
 repose and satisfaction unutterable of heart ! This is 
 manhood in its most regal form ! This is heaven come 
 down to earth! God. the God of truth, give you 
 grace to " speak the truth every one to his neighbor ; 
 for you are members one of another ! " 
 
 All hail, then, to any order whose motto pledges its 
 members to truthfulness ! 
 
 In one sentence : 
 
 This above all, To thine own self be true; 
 And it must follow, as the night the day, 
 Thou canst not tlien be false to any man. 
 
 Love this is a fitting climax. It is the topstone, 
 and may be laid with rejoicing. It is the fruit of this 
 stem and root, and the golden fruit as well. Love ! 
 which prompts you to " look every one not alone on 
 his own things, but also on the things of others." 
 Love ! which worketh no ill to one's neighbor ; and 
 therefore is the fulfilling of the law. Love ! which 
 spurns limitations and calls every man "neighbor,"
 
 GUAKE-'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 whatsoever his creed, condition, calling, or country. 
 Love! without which creed howsoever orthodox, 
 almsgiving howsoever profuse, and zeal for a cause 
 even to martyrdom, are nothing. Love ! gaining that 
 it may give ; making us charitable in our judgments ; 
 forgiving in our dispositions ; gentle in our tempers ; 
 generous in our sympathies ; self -forgetting and self- 
 sacrificing for the weal of others. Love! that can 
 be brave even to heroism ; constant even to death. 
 Love ! the peacemaker and healer of strife. Love ! 
 that is as eyes to the blind, speech to the dumb, feet 
 to the lame. Love ! . that " bears burdens," shares re- 
 proach, weeps with them that weep. Love ! free as 
 the air ; healing as the sunlight ; fresh as spring ; 
 gladdening as songs of birds ; and full to overflow- 
 ing as the ever-bubbling fountain in the mountain's 
 breast ; free from all fleshliness, yet glowing as ar- 
 dent, tropic, summer skies. 
 
 O yes! this is, indeed, worthy of all praise as the 
 chiefest of the three : Friendship, Truth, Love. If 
 there be love, there will be friendship. If there be 
 love, there will be truth. For love is attraction ; 
 and, therefore, friendship. Love worketh no ill to 
 the friend ; and therefore is truth. Let me have the 
 last, and the others must follow. Let not the others 
 attempt to live without the last. 
 
 And inasmuch as, though made to love, sin has 
 made us selfish ; though made for truth, sin has made 
 us false ; though made for friendship, sin has made 
 us enemies that these three may be the inspiration 
 of your lives, the soul of your soul, the spring of
 
 ADDRESS TO MECHANICS. 337 
 
 your motive, the energy of your conduct, O, let me 
 say, religion is necessary, and that the religion of our 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He was friendship 
 " I have called you friends." He was truthful " full 
 of grace and truth." He was love " as I have loved 
 you." In his glorious Gospel these three are provided 
 for ; these three are generated in human hearts ; these 
 three have been developed as by no other religion. 
 Of this religion become personally possessors. Let 
 it dwell richly in you. 
 
 Cultivate its principles ; bring forth its fruits ; and 
 go forth assured that the Master Worker shall one 
 day hail you with his " well done," and make you 
 sharers together of his fullness of joy pleasures for 
 evermore.
 
 338 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 EMERSON, DARWIN, AND LONGFELLOW. 
 
 THE death-roll of April, 1882, will not soon be for- 
 gotten ; and it will not speedily be surpassed in 
 the number of the brilliant names it bears. 
 
 Death is no respecter of persons. The prince bows 
 to him as truly as the peasant ; the millionaire, as 
 surely as the pauper ; the saint, as certainly as the sin- 
 ner ; the sage, lore laden, as verily as the clown scarce 
 more intelligent than the clod he cleaves with plow or 
 spade ; youth, with all its pride of beauty of form, of 
 color and manner, one with the time-worn, care-trusted 
 veteran. All types of autocracy bend the knee to, 
 yield to, the withering touch of the scepter of this 
 King of Terrors. The young have vanished from us ; 
 the hale and middle aged have departed ; the men of 
 trusted honor, tested integrity, and copious experi- 
 ence leaders in enterprises of pith and progress 
 have passed beyond the sight, the touch, of those who 
 loved and honored and confided in them. 
 
 But I now think chiefly of the three whose names are 
 on men's lips and in men's thought above all others, 
 as having in this month of buds and blossoms, of 
 sunshine and of showers, of music in bower and glen, 
 from bird and brooklet passed over to the other 
 side. Singular, is it not, that three such stars should 
 set beyond our ken within one brief month ? Stars
 
 EMEESON, DARWIN, AND LONGFELLOW. 339 
 
 were they, indeed, of no mean magnitude and of no 
 common splendor. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that these three men were 
 all monarchs in the realm of thought, of mind, of 
 ideas. They were leaders and commanders of the 
 people, not because of their vast hoards of wealth ; not 
 because of- their military prowess and achievements ; 
 not because they made the harvests grow by the " red 
 rain " shed in the battles they fought ; not by reason 
 of any materialistic might possessed or wielded. It 
 was with minds they dealt ; with truths they f ellow- 
 shiped, with thoughts they grappled, with the es- 
 sences and qualities and principles of things they 
 cherished, enhancing and ennobling friendship. They 
 were mental monarchs. Thoughts they sought to ac- 
 quire. Truth they endeavored to scrutinize. Beauty 
 they pursued, expounded. Not a hill did they tun- 
 nel ; not a bushel of corn did they plant ; not a stock- 
 market did they " bull " or " bear ; " not to make 
 dollars did they plot and plan, cogitate and calculate ; 
 theirs it was to study nature and read men, to write 
 essays and chant songs. 
 
 They were monarchs in the realm of mind, again 
 be it said. Whatever power they wield to-day and shall 
 continue to wield, will be the power of thoughts; 
 of noble, pure, just, beautiful thoughts ; thoughts dis- 
 covered in hills and flowers and shells ; thoughts 
 extracted from history, biography, and tradition- 
 thoughts in harmony with fact, with verity ; thoughts 
 lifting men out of superstition, freeing them from 
 
 prejudice, clarifying men's eves so that they might 
 23
 
 340 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 read and interpret nature, purging men's judgment 
 so that they might estimate accurately the force of 
 facts, the value of theories, the worth of realities. 
 Greater than the word of conqueror; greater than 
 the scepter of czar, is the grasp of these chiefs of 
 men. Each could wield the pen. Each was master of 
 words. Each had the eye or the ear for whatsoever 
 things were true or wise or fair. This is enviable 
 sovereignty. No throne is equal to the throne of 
 truth. No kingdom can compare with that within 
 the souls of men. No homage is so genuine or so 
 grateful as that offered those by God's own hand 
 crowned, robed, and sceptered, kings by divine right 
 and by the grace of God. 
 
 Not all great minds are to be admired ; not all 
 thoughts conceived and expressed by great minds are 
 entitled to admiration. The thoughts by which con- 
 science is aided in her sovereignty over conduct and 
 character ; the thoughts by which hearts are purged 
 from baseness, made large by lovingness, made more 
 generous, more pitiful, made brave for duty daily 
 duty ; the thoughts by which gloom is chased from 
 our sides, life's work is performed with courage, 
 and death's bereavements borne with the patience of 
 hope ; the thoughts by which our conceptions of God 
 are made more luminous, ample, inspiring, and hal- 
 lowing ; the thoughts by which soul life is nourished, 
 built up, and amplified O, these are the thoughts 
 which constrain us to thank God for the men who 
 conceived and felt and wrote and sang and painted 
 and lived them! The thoughts that give a new
 
 EMERSON, DARWIN, AND LONGFELLOW. 341 
 
 meaning to the meanest flower ; a new splendor to 
 the setting sun; a new grandeur to the tumbling 
 ocean ; a new awe to the hoary forest ; a new sublim- 
 ity to the midnight skies ; a new luster to goodness ; 
 a new dignity to a holy life ; a new rapture to Sab- 
 bath worship ; and a new attraction to the " city that 
 hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God " 
 these are the thoughts to which we offer the palace of 
 our understanding, the throne of our conscience, and 
 the shrine of our heart ! These thoughts do not die. 
 They are heirs of the ages. They are the offspring of 
 immortal spirits. They outlive empires. They oat- 
 live Declarations of Independence. They survive the 
 earthquakes and the floods of revolutions. They are 
 vestured with robes that wax not old. They wear 
 crowns of life. They own an inheritance that fadeth 
 not away. 
 
 Of the three men, Emerson seems to me to have 
 specially emphasized the dignity of spirit, the grand- 
 eur of the human soul, the native divinity of truth, 
 the peerless greatness of those verities that eye can- 
 not see, nor hand handle, nor time assail or dissipate. 
 
 If any man of this age and race believed in the 
 spiritual and invisible, in the powers that are not seen 
 and that are eternal, Emerson was that man. Infinite 
 antithesis was he to the sneering, sensuous materialist. 
 He sought to reach the immutable behind the chang- 
 ing ; the real beneath the seeming ; the absolute 
 beyond the accidental. "With the deep things of 
 existence it was his delight to speak, and from them 
 draw meaning. I confess, indeed, that I do not
 
 342 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 always understand him. But why should I expect so 
 to do ? It needs a pinion strong as his own to follow 
 him, and an eye as eagle-like in its strength and keen- 
 ness as ids to gaze without fatigue and faltering 
 upon the profound verities and essences in which he 
 found his chief joy. I accept by faith what Emer- 
 sonians assure me their great high-priest teaches. He 
 was a clairvoyant ; I am not. He could float on a gos- 
 samer web as on a chariot, when my throbbing brain 
 must grow dizzy, could move in air too rare for my 
 coarse-tissued lungs. But when I can understand him 
 I am refreshed ; I feed on the finest of the wheat. 
 He is broad-souled in his sympathies ; he is catholic- 
 spirited ; he sees good in every thing, and finds it in 
 every one. To Mm God is in every thing and in 
 every one. 
 
 Sometimes I think him a pantheist. He recognizes 
 divinity ever present with and acting through nature 
 and man ; but seems 'scarce to believe in a personal 
 deity existing apart from his creatures. He is opti- 
 mistic. He believes in the progress of man, in the 
 growth of goodness, in the triumph of truth and 
 righteousness. 
 
 His thoughts are polished pebbles ; many of them 
 are diamonds. They are crystallizations of far reach- 
 ing observation and arduous introspective study. Yet 
 are these thoughts of his, I think, but for the few ; 
 but for those who haunt and linger in the Delectable 
 Mountains of abstraction and introspection. I do not 
 believe the thoughts of Emerson have ever so told 
 upon the practical life of noble workers for God and
 
 EMEKSON, DAEWIN, AND LONGFELLOW. 343 
 
 man as Carlyle's. Carlyle lived again in Kingsley, in 
 Robertson, in Frederick Maurice, and in many others, 
 by the generative force of his teachings as the prophet 
 of reality against shams, of work against sentirnent- 
 alism, of earnestness of conviction as against formal, 
 traditional beliefs. 
 
 Emerson's thoughts required " bodies celestial " for 
 their expression. Carlyle's thoughts found them- 
 selves at home in "bodies terrestrial." I know the 
 glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the 
 terrestrial is another; and I should not dare at- 
 tempt to dim the splendor of the ethereal by any 
 thing I say in appreciation of the sublunary form in 
 which Carlyle has walked the earth and worked out 
 righteousness. 
 
 Dr. Darwin needs no such imperfect, inadequate 
 eulogy as my poor powers might offer to his memory. 
 Xo one who knows what he is talking about ques- 
 tions Darwin's immense ability as a scientist in his 
 special department He inherited the gift, even as a 
 beaver or a bee inherit the architectural power pos- 
 sessed by each. And he faithfully stirred up the gift 
 that was in him. He traveled with this intent. He 
 read, conversed, studied, and observed, as very few 
 men have done. He is worthy of all praise for the 
 accuracy, the keenness, the conscientiousness of his 
 observations. He sought to interpret nature. Almost 
 weariless diligence characterized his efforts. 
 
 He loved truth ; no doubt of this. Any price 
 would he pay for a fact. He valued them, for he 
 knew how rare they were. He knew the difference
 
 344 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDEESSES. 
 
 between fact and fancy. Facts were to him all es- 
 sential as tlie basis of his theorizing. 
 
 And he was courageous as well. He had the 
 courage of a hero. He was courageous enough to 
 confess his errors. He was courageous enough to 
 confess that facts were lacking to sustain his theory 
 or hypothesis. No man was fairer as an antagonist. 
 He put the opposite case as frankly as man could. 
 He admitted objections, acknowledged defects, and 
 calmly waited further revelations. 
 
 He believed in God. He believed in the Creator 
 of life. And he believed that his hypothesis presented 
 a worthier conception of God than the views enter- 
 tained by those who differed from him. 
 
 His writings are classics ; they are matchless for 
 their purity of style, their clearness of statement, 
 their evident honesty of aim arid spirit. And though 
 you differ from him, you say, " This is a gentleman 
 as truly as he is a scientist." 
 
 Man is made to study nature. " The works of the 
 Lord are great; sought out of all them that have 
 pleasure therein." In such study mind is made 
 vio;orous, agile, masculine. For nature's is God's 
 
 O ' O ? 
 
 handwriting, and every line written by God is full of 
 thoughts. No hue of summer ; no voice of autumn ; 
 no motion of star ; no form of landscape ; no instinct 
 of animal, no rush of tempest, but enclasps a thought. 
 To find the thought develops mind ; to gain it en- 
 riches the understanding. 
 
 Nature is thus full of Deity. And to discover his 
 plan, to read off his method, is the glory, as it is the
 
 EMERSON, DAKWIN, AND LONGFELLOW. 345 
 
 joy, of man. Once man had no other Bible. True, 
 his eternal power and godhead were understood by 
 the things which were seen and studied. But much 
 more now. To fully study the works of God men 
 needed to catch the spirit of his word. And to-day 
 only where the spirit of that word permeates society 
 and molds opinion, character, and life, do we find 
 the works of God correctly read and passionately 
 studied. 
 
 Our age is pre-eminently distinguished by its love 
 of nature and its acquaintance with nature's proper- 
 ties, forces, laws. Such studies as Darwin's, added 
 to such philosophic generalizations as Spencer's, give 
 to my own mind clearer apprehension of the great- 
 ness of God ; the harmony of God's plans with his 
 attributes. They increase my faith in order, in sys- 
 tem, in plan, in law. And if in plan, then in a 
 Planner ; if in purpose, then in a Designer ; if in law, 
 then in a Law-giver ; if in unity, then in one all-com- 
 prehending and all-perfect Spirit, expressing the es- 
 sential oneness of his being in the profound harmony, 
 because unity, of his works. 
 
 Man is made for the beautiful. The beautiful is 
 made for man. This is one of the luxuries furnished 
 us by him who made us. It is evidence that we are 
 not treated as mendicants, but as sons. It gives us 
 rare hints of the riches of his goodness, with whom 
 we have to do. He wishes us to understand that life 
 is not sheer existence ; it is a feast of fat things. 
 Therefore the sentiment lurks within us awaiting 
 contact through the senses, with that without us
 
 34:6 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 which shall appeal to, call into play, and gratify, the 
 love of the beautiful. 
 
 Therefore are we in such a world as this. For is 
 not this a museum of art ? Listen to its sounds : is it 
 not an academy of music ? Gaze upon its landscapes : 
 is it not a gallery of tine arts ? Wander through its 
 glens and groves : is it not a conservatory filled with 
 fragrances and forms and hues that can inspire the 
 breast with ecstasy and compel us to exclaim, " How 
 great is thy goodness, and how great is thy beauty ! " 
 Just now it is altogether true. The trees putting on 
 their mantles of many colors ; the green grass carpet- 
 ing the park and garden with its glossy velvet ; the 
 glorious sunrisings and the pomp of golden or em- 
 purpled eve ; the freshness and balminess of the 
 upturned sod and mellow air; these all tell us of a 
 God who loves to till our hearts with gladness through 
 the senses and the imagination. 
 
 And there are men now and then raised up specially 
 equipped, physically, mentally, morally, for this task 
 of love ; with the gift of eye and ear ; of brain and 
 sensibility ; of intuitional ken and fancy ; of heart 
 to throb responsive to, and tuned to draw forth from, 
 all in nature and in human nature that is fair to look 
 upon, lovely to remember. They may have special 
 fitness for transferring all they see of beauty to can- 
 vas ; they may have fitness to transcribe it to marble ; 
 they may have fitness to voice it in melody ; they 
 may have the gift of language, of words, whereby, in 
 stanza and in idyll, the thing of beauty shall live and 
 work forever.
 
 EMERSON, DAKWIN, AND LONGFELLOW. 347 
 
 And such a one was Longfellow. Was he not a 
 poet ? Was he not a maker ? Was not his the eye 
 in which resides the faculty divine? Was not his 
 the ear fit to catch all modulations and harmonies? 
 Was not his the harp seolian, whose every string 
 changed all that breathed upon it into song? Was 
 not his a mastery of words, vivid, picturesque, rhyth- 
 mic, equal to the utterances of all such thoughts as 
 long for outlet from the ivory palace of his chaste, 
 cultured heart and memory? 
 
 Surely he was a singer. Surely he was sent to serve 
 his generation as truly as the inventor of the eewing- 
 machine, the telephone, the electric light, or as the 
 famous manufacturer of Colt's revolver and the 
 self -helpful, self -depend ing bowie-knife of the Texan 
 frontiersman. 
 
 Blessed and divine gift ! the gift of poetry. The 
 sorrows turned to joys; the dismal nights filled 
 with music ; the lonely backwood huts illumined as 
 with light from angel forms ; the specters of doubt 
 chased away ; the broken, shattered lives repaired for 
 blessed work ; the toilsome journeys o*'er tuftless, 
 tawny sands gladly traveled ; the fierce battles bravely 
 fought; the fretful cares lulled to slumber; the high 
 aims bred and nourished within us ; the Sabbath 
 repose distilled upon the enfevered heart ; the visions 
 beatific gained while the poem hath been read or 
 repeated will all tell us how generous the boon 
 conferred when God sends one of his children, clad in 
 " singing robes," to mingle with the denizens of this 
 sad world.
 
 348 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 But all this must not, sliall not, render me oblivious 
 to the fact that from not one of these great men has 
 the world received testimony to their faith in and 
 loyalty to my Saviour. 
 
 I am not here to sit in judgment upon their 
 inner life ; that is with God, with him alone. But 
 these three men were the product of a Christian 
 civilization. Their mental being grew up under 
 Christian conditions ; in social laws and maxims and 
 customs altogether Christian. They were not the 
 children of Brahmins, the sons of Buddhists, the off- 
 spring of Mohammedanism. The schools in which 
 they studied were Christian ; the universities in 
 which they taught were Christian. The tongue they 
 spoke was a Christianized tongue. The great poets 
 and sages they loved so well, from Spenser to Ten- 
 nyson, from Shakspeare to Wordsworth, were all 
 the product of Christianity. What had they that 
 they did not receive from Christ ? What did they 
 not owe to Christ? Wherefore did they not, like 
 honest men, confess their debt to Christ, aye, pub- 
 licly, so that no man might doubt their faith in 
 him ? What proof have they left us that they were 
 honest enough to acknowledge the claims of such a 
 benefactor upon their heads and their hearts ? 
 
 In such an age as this silence here is disloyalty 
 silence here is treason. The nobler you make them, 
 the more mysterious their action. If so noble, why 
 not confess the Christ? Could any thing be more 
 worthy a noble soul? With all their culture they 
 were crude ; with all their catholicity they were sec-
 
 EMERSON. DARWIN, AND LONGFELLOW. 349 
 
 tarian ; with, all their breadth they were narrow ; 
 with all their subtlety they were stupid; with all 
 their wisdom they were fools. 
 
 Never shall I think or feel otherwise. I cannot 
 give my utmost respect or admiration to any scholar, 
 to any honest truth-seeker, to any sage in Christian 
 lands in this nineteenth century, who withholds from 
 my divine Saviour the supreme confidence, affection, 
 homage, to which he is entitled. Though I have all 
 knowledge and understand all mysteries, though I 
 speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have 
 not love, I am nothing. And " if any man love not 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema." Moses, 
 not Mohammed Paul, not Plato Christ, not Con- 
 fucius, for me ! Let all the sages of the past appear. 
 Let them rehearse and recount their teachings. Lis- 
 ten to their melodious utterances. Do full justice 
 to their subtle themes. Admire their marvelous 
 glimpses. See in .them beams of the light "that 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 
 But behold the man ! And as you contrast them 
 with Him, all exclaim; "A greater than Plato is 
 here!"
 
 350 GUARD'S LECTUKES AJSD ADDRESSES. 
 
 M ( 
 
 MASONIC ORATION.* 
 
 "OST WORSHIPFUL GKAND MASTER AND BRETHREN 
 OF THE GRAND LODGE : I am but a novice in 
 Masonry, for " I am but of yesterday " as to my mem- 
 bership, compared with many of the sage and vener- 
 able brethren before me. This will plead for me 
 should I fail in my endeavor to express a few of my 
 convictions regarding our honorable fraternity. But 
 what I lack in age of membership may be made up 
 by fullness of youthful fervor and ardent admiration 
 of the system into whose mysteries I have had the 
 honor of initiation. To me it has all the fascination 
 of novelty, and in me there burns all the enthusiasm 
 of a first love. From the freshness of my emotions 
 I give utterance to the thoughts of the hour. 
 
 Our system has many elements of attraction, and 
 seems to me to have incorporated not a few principles 
 fitted to impart stability and guarantee a noble im- 
 mortality. 
 
 I. It potently appeals to us by its antiquity. We 
 are so constituted by our Creator as to be susceptible 
 of such an appeal. Yastness of duration gratifies our 
 sense of the sublime, inspires us. with awe, lifts us into 
 a mood of reverence, chastens and subdues the spirit. 
 
 * Delivered before the Grand Lodge E. & A. M. of California, Oc- 
 tober 10, 1878.
 
 MASONIC ORATION. 351 
 
 Thus the ocean touches us, for it is old. Navies have 
 swept its waters and commerce plowed its billows ; 
 but it is older than the white-winged ships of Tarshish 
 or the men of war that roamed amidst the Isles of 
 Greece, at once repellers of the Persian tyrant, and 
 defenders of their own most sacred liberties. Old ! 
 Who knows when it lay in the hollow of God's hand, 
 even as a dew-drop within a rose-bud, until he had 
 carved for it a dwelling-place in earth's deep bosom, 
 and there set it to be the everlasting mirror of his 
 own infinitude ? Its age overpowers and spell-binds 
 us. But even this aged thing is as nothing compared 
 with his age who is the Supreme Architect of the 
 Universe, and in whom we place our trust. He is the 
 Ancient of days. When not a billow heaved, not a 
 wild bird sang, not an ancient hill kissed the heavens ; 
 when not a ray of light had traveled, not a planet 
 wheeled, not a sun burned ; when not a seraph had 
 waved his pinion, or, with the wing wherewith he 
 swept into the presence of his Maker, veiled his face 
 then was he, the All-Sufficient, the I Am ; and in 
 his Nature, the very principles which form the essence 
 and strength of our ancient Order truth, justice, 
 love, dwelt ; having neither beginning of day nor end 
 of life. Our principles are as old as God. 
 
 And, going back to the distinguished persons of 
 whom we speak as the historic founders of our Order, 
 through what centuries are we borne ; on what ruins 
 of empires look we down. Dynasties blotted out ; 
 seats of kingdoms transformed from oriental to west- 
 ern capitals, from southern to temperate zones ; the
 
 352 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Cresars no more ; the Ptolemies forgotten ; the teach- 
 ers, artists, poets, orators, statesmen, of Greece, but a 
 name an<J a memory. But in us there glows the fire 
 of an unwasted youth. "We, after the rush of centu- 
 ries, renew our youth like the eagle! We, despite 
 the perils and trials and slanders of foes, secular and 
 spiritual, ask our enemies to trace a wrinkle upon our 
 brow, or pluck a gray hair from our exuberant locks. 
 We, like Israel's great leader, after the lapse of near 
 three thousand years, move forth, bathed in the dew 
 of the morning, with eye undimrned, with form erect, 
 with natural strength unabated, destined to run a race 
 with time, and prove, in our principles, heirs of a ra- 
 diant and rapturous immortality. 
 
 II. It appeals to ns by the elements of the myste- 
 rious. This susceptibility of our nature is incessantly 
 touched, from the moment of our entrance upon life. 
 We enter at birth a universe in which wonder is 
 excited, curiosity elicited, investigation challenged, at 
 every step of our progress from the cradle to the tomb. 
 Every leaf incloses a mystery, every atom is a world, 
 and every insect an abyss of wonders. The ceaseless 
 play of life within me, the genesis of a thought, the 
 growth of a habit, the formation of character a 
 mystery, over which a Plato bends with fervent gaze, 
 and in whose mazes a Locke may well lose his way. 
 And this mysteriousness, investing all things, is no 
 mean stimulant in the breast and brain of traveler and 
 explorer; of scholar poring over dusty scroll; of 
 scientist, as he follows the comet ; as he deciphers 
 the fossilography of the hoary hills ; as he " fixes a
 
 MASONIC ORATION. 353 
 
 sunbeam," and cross-questions it by his spectrum ; as he 
 heaves the lead in the ethereal waters of his unseen 
 spirit ; or as, with Bancroft, he explores the sepul- 
 chral ruins of the tribes that once lived and roamed, 
 hunted, fought, and died, when our forefathers wor- 
 shiped Thor, or burned incense at the shrine of 
 Woden. 
 
 Man is " Nature's Priest," and as he pursues his re- 
 searches he is but lifting, fold after fold, the veils 
 suspended in Nature's temple ; and each parted veil 
 at once admits him within a light of revelation more 
 startling and enravishing, and gives his clarified eye 
 to look upon another curtain of mystery, behind 
 which lurk secrets yet more subtle wonders still 
 more entrancing. The greater the mysteries solved 
 the profounder is the conviction that these are but 
 transparencies compared with the thicker curtains 
 that yet shall dare the trembling fingers to lift or 
 part them. No one is so alive to the fact of mystery 
 as the man most wealthy in his acquisition of the lore 
 of physics and of metaphysics. And yet the mystery 
 is not because of scantiness, but because of super- 
 fluity of the element. " It .is dark with excess of 
 light." 
 
 The light of morning revealing, after a starless 
 night of tempest, while it dissolves the mystery of 
 the gloom, spreads before and around me new mys- 
 teries : a mystery in every pebble and in every plant ; 
 in every insect's instinct and in every wild bird's 
 plumage ; in every snow-flake and in every gem ; in 
 every laughing, leaping school-boy's spirit; and in
 
 354 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 every venerable politician who assures us that he has 
 expended the vitality of his brain and being in self- 
 sacrificing service for his country's weal. Mystery ! 
 mystery ! It is every-where : and when, by dying, 
 we shall pass " within the veil," while upon much, if 
 not all, the mystery of this life explanatory light 
 shall fall never as then shall the soul apprehend the 
 inscrutability of being. Then, as for the first time, 
 shall the marvels of existence move the fountain of 
 the great deep of our nature, and bear us away and 
 away for aye in effort to solve, discover, and explore. 
 This is one of the charms of the life that now is ; it 
 shall be no less an element in the felicity of the life 
 that is to come. 
 
 Our Order gratifies and provides for the healthy 
 play of our nature by its sublime mysteries. And 
 these are not mysteries of iniquity. Slanderous 
 libels have been uttered respecting them, I know. 
 They are but the spiteful, the malignant fabrications 
 of sanguinary fanatics or of a depraved priesthood. 
 With ignoble deeds of darkness we have no sym- 
 pathy. Of what we do, of what we teach, we fear 
 not any criticism. Honor is sacred ; reputation is in- 
 violably shielded ; and every brother can exclaim, " I 
 dare do all that may become a man ! " 
 
 Who can object to or oppose such a system as ours ? 
 Is. he a moralist ? Then here may he learn the purest 
 ethics and practice the most manly virtues. Is he a 
 patriot ? Then here may he be helped in the culture 
 of those principles which uphold government, rev- 
 erence law, and promote that righteousness which
 
 MASONIC ORATION. 355 
 
 exalts a nation. Is he a philanthropist ? Then we 
 can assure him that no less profoundly than he do we 
 believe that pure Masonry, and undeh'led before God 
 the Father, is this that we visit the widow and the 
 fatherless in their affliction, and keep ourselves un- 
 spotted in the world. Is he an antiquarian ? Then 
 here are hoary annals for his study and antique cus- 
 toms for his scrutiny. Is he a poet ? Then here are 
 symbols for his fancy and sublimities for his imagina- 
 tion. Is he a presbyter or priest ? Then we tell him 
 that religion shall find in us one of her most useful 
 auxiliaries, one of her most fair and generous hand- 
 maidens, and that the theology which he inculcates 
 we live to embody. We, as he, believe in one God ; 
 as he, in one great light of conduct, the Holy Bible ; 
 as he, in one great comfort and help in all seasons of 
 trial, peril, woe even prayer ; and, as he, anticipate 
 another and a better world. 
 
 III. It appeals to us as made for self-government. 
 At an early stage we are reminded of the duty of 
 self-rule. The compass is the impressive symbol of 
 this capability of our nature. This is manhood. "What 
 is manhood without self-rule ? Our nature is placed 
 in our own care, subject to our own control, at the 
 will of our own capacity of self-disposal. What we 
 shall make of ourselves depends upon self-government. 
 To what extent we shall develop our being depends 
 upon self-government. "Whether our career shall be 
 one of beauty and of blessedness, or one of meanness 
 and of malediction, depends upon self-government. 
 
 Self-government restrains, but, by restraining, 
 24
 
 356 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 conserves by restraining, intensifies. This makes 
 man noble. Matter, the servant of mind ; instinct, 
 the servant of reason ; impulse, the servant of duty ; 
 pleasure, the servant of principle aye, this is man- 
 hood, and this is to be a Mason. This is to be a Free- 
 mason. Free there is melody in the word there is 
 divinity in the thought free ! freedom ! This hath 
 given eloquence to the tongue of the stammerer; 
 this hath breathed inspiration through the heart of 
 the prosaic and made him a poet : this hath studded 
 the duskiest heavens of tyranny with most lustrous 
 orbs the heroes of all ages ; this hath impelled the 
 chariot of human civilization ; this hath peopled the 
 forest with those armies of the invincibles of our race, 
 who, rather than pawn away their birthright of lib- 
 erty, dared the perils of tempest and of billow, of 
 wildest savage and of fiercest clime ; gave up their 
 all of home and country; bade farewell to the sepul- 
 chers of their holy dead and to the shrines of their 
 holy faith ; that, beneath foreign skies and on virgin 
 soil, they might lay broad and deep the basis of a new 
 temple, within whose walls freemen should worship, 
 think, and breathe, unharmed by priest, unawed by 
 king ; truth its only but all-sufficient strength ; purity 
 its chief but never-fading ornament ; and love the 
 light-bathed atmosphere in which it should repose, 
 long as the sun and moon endure. And, as builders 
 of that shrine and guardians of it, we Freemasons 
 vow to practice the sublime craftmanship of self-gov- 
 ernment ; remembering that " he who striveth for the 
 mastery is temperate in all things : " never forgetting
 
 MASONIC ORATION. 357 
 
 that " greater is he who ruleth his own spirit than he 
 who taketh a city." 
 
 And what a province of self-government is that of 
 the tongue ! We are men, for we can speak. We 
 can engage in a commerce of thought by language. 
 All I have, of feeling, culture, motive, by speech 
 may be .yours, to thrill with ecstasy, to inflame with 
 rage, to pollute fancy, or to purify taste. For there 
 is the witty tongue, with its lightning-like flashes, 
 rapid combinations, subtle and exquisite affinities of 
 strange extremes, eliciting at once the wonder and 
 the admiration of all who listen. There is the elo- 
 quent tongue, moving all hearts with its pathos, in- 
 structing all understanding with its condensed wisdom, 
 and marshaling all wills into harmony of purpose and 
 unity of action by its impassioned pleadings. There 
 is the tongue of the tale-bearer, scattering seeds 
 of strife and sowing germs of suspicion in the hearts 
 of trusted friends and honored brethren. There is 
 the tongue of the false, ever weaving webwork of de- 
 ceit to enmesh the innocent, the unwary, and the in- 
 genious ; full of all subtlety, sophistry, or innuendo ; 
 moving but to blight reputation ; acting but to en- 
 gender an universal doubt which may fittingly voice 
 itself in the exceeding bitter cry "All men are 
 liars." And there is the tongue unclean, with its 
 iilthy joke, its lewd story, its obscene double meaning ; 
 and all to win a laugh to court a smile. Good God ! 
 what a perversion of this glory of our manhood ! 
 A man unsluicing the fountain of his filthy heart, 
 that the fetid torrent may rush forth to carry along
 
 358 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 its desolating course corruption that shall foul the 
 memory and stain the imagination of all through 
 whom, as hearers, the loathsome current flows. Ah ! 
 this is enough to make the angels weep. Talk of a 
 living, moving leper, touching but to taint, breathing 
 but to poison the physical life of man 1 He is health, 
 he is beauty, compared with him whose speech is mil- 
 dew and death to all that is fair in fancy and sweet in 
 feeling in the nature of the youthful listener. Breth- 
 ren, here is a most legitimate sphere for the applica- 
 tion of self-government. Let us renew, again and 
 again, our oath and obligation to repress and put down 
 all and every tendency to such speech as, if indulged, 
 insults the. genius of our venerable Craft. Remem- 
 ber that you cannot recall your words. You might 
 as well attempt to call back the light of morning, 
 once it hath streamed from the fountain of the Orient ; 
 you might as well hope to arrest the lightning, once 
 it hath leaped from the secret place of thunder ; you 
 might as well hope with a gossamer web to stem 
 Niagara, in its fury of resistless rush, as to recall the 
 word let loose by your consent. It has become one 
 of the active energies of the universe. It is destined 
 to immortality by the law of conservation of forces. 
 Its history henceforth shall be one of ceaseless blessing 
 or ceaseless curse. And once again shall the speaker 
 hear it as it travels round the whispering gallery 
 of space. 
 
 IV. There is the law of mutual help. This was 
 one of the prime movers in the breasts of those 
 who fashioned the frame-work of our fraternity.
 
 MASONIC ORATION. 359 
 
 This has never been lost sight of by the master- 
 builders of our institution. This is the cement which 
 binds, as with the law of gravitation, the edifice of 
 Masonry into imperishable strength. Remove that 
 principle and the structure totters, crumbles, and be- 
 comes the very " abomination of desolation." Mutual 
 help it is a divine law. By it the Supreme Archi- 
 tect orders and upholds all things. Around us and 
 below us and above us, we meet with it in ceaseless 
 operation. The flowers live for the insect and the 
 insect for the flower ; the hills live for the valleys and 
 the clouds live for the hills ; the ocean lives for the 
 dry land and the rivers of the dry land live for the 
 ocean. Every thing leans on and helps to bear up 
 every thing beyond, below, or above itself. The 
 heavens lean on the earth, and the earth reflects the 
 splendor of the heavens from its laughing valleys, its 
 snow-capped sierras, and its ever-changing seas. 
 Earth lives for man and man lives for the earth, to 
 develop, defend, and decorate it by his wise and gen- 
 erous sovereignty o'er it. And shall not man live for 
 his fellow-man? Shall not experience instruct art- 
 lessness, learning enlighten ignorance? Shall not 
 gladness dispel sorrow, and youthful might give its 
 arm to tottering age, and affluence become the almoner 
 of heaven to homes of penury and victims of bereave- 
 ment and disaster ? Thus the poverty of my brother 
 may mfke me rich in goodness ; the feebleness of my 
 neighbor may make me strong in sympathy ; the lone- 
 liness of my companion may make me opulent in all 
 the social affinities or affections of my being. Mine
 
 360 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 is an altogether ampler and loftier being by so much 
 as I live beyond myself ; receive but to give ; acquire 
 but to distribute ; and go forth under the impelling 
 conviction that. I am debtor to every man less happy, 
 less cultured, less honored than myself. Let sorrow 
 wail, I weep ; let laughter clap its hands with joy, I 
 swell the glad acclaim by laughter just as load. 
 
 What is a man, left to himself ? Less than nothing 
 and vanity ; an embodiment of impotence and igno- 
 rance, crudeness and uncouthness ; his powers palsied, 
 his faculties torpid, his being a dwarfed and shriveled 
 abortion. He is made incomplete because made for 
 another to be his help-mate ; a hook without an 
 eye ; a ball without its socket ; a mortise without its 
 tenon. 
 
 Civilization is impossible without mutual help. 
 United, man unlocks the treasures of his heart, lets 
 loose the fountains of his fancy, wings the pinion of 
 his reason, develops the potencies of his speech, 
 educes the skill of his fingers, the ken of his vision, 
 and the music which slumbers in his chords of hear- 
 ing. United, he beats back the ocean or levels the 
 Alps ; from sand-hills calls into glorious existence the 
 Queen City of the Golden Gate ; and from the mo- 
 rasses of the lake bids a Chicago into splendid being, 
 'as by the fiat of an omnific necromancer. 
 
 No mutual benefit association are we ; yet live we 
 to prove that we are " our brother's keeper," tnd that 
 only as we " bear one another's burdens " are we ful- 
 filling the law of Masonry. 
 
 V. To me it seems a most beautiful thing that we
 
 MASOXIC ORATION. 361 
 
 should have as our first Great Masters those whose 
 craft engaged them in the building of a temple. 
 Others might have been selected. For builders of 
 that age there were other than Solomon and his com- 
 panions. But not by chance was it that the historic 
 founders of our fraternity were men engaged in a 
 work so God-like. Not from the midst of masons 
 engaged in piling pyramids wherein Egypt's despots 
 might, as embalmed mummies, slumber ; not from the 
 hosts of masons engaged in building palaces wherein 
 luxury and licentiousness might revel and rule pal- 
 aces, symbols of cruelty, of blood, and fraud ; not 
 from the circles of masons employed in constructing 
 triumphal arches beneath which conquerors, laureled 
 with victory and sated with applause, might pass 
 conquerors whose pastime was murder, whose hordes 
 were minions of tyranny, whose career was devasta- 
 tion, and whose blood-letting sufficed to " incarnadine 
 the ocean, making the green one red ; " not from cir- 
 cles of men engaged in any or in all of labors such 
 as these : but from masons whose skill and toil were 
 consecrated to a work so holy as that of building a 
 temple for the worship of the one living and true 
 God as if to tell us that our Masonic life springs 
 from religion, is nourished by religion, and must ever 
 repose and flourish engirdled by religion, even as the 
 worshipers within the sacred edifice on Zion's crest. 
 
 VI. And then, the Builders, the Master Masons 
 and Grand Masters. Who were they ? They were 
 of different nationalities ; they were of different 
 social standing. There was the Hebrew and the
 
 362 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 Phenician ; there was the Jew and the Gentile ; there 
 was the monarch and the subject ; there was the opu- 
 lent Solomon and there was the needy artisan, the 
 son of "the widow woman." Again a beautiful 
 symbol, or series of symbols. Within our fraternity 
 nationality is unknown. Here I, though an Anglo- 
 Saxon, grasp the hand of a son of Abraham I one 
 of the descendants of Japheth, he one of the descend- 
 ants of Shem. Here, royalty sits side by side with 
 the chief magistrate of a republic. Here, opulence 
 grasps the horny fist of him who wields the chisel or 
 who drives the plow. And here loneliness and want 
 and sorrow find sure help and solace, for the widow's 
 son may leave a widow and a son as well the objects 
 at once of our tenderest pity and our most generous 
 benefactions. 
 
 YII. Immortality is ours. Yonder our system 
 warrants us in looking. The acacia sprig speaks of a 
 life that survives the grave of a being that smiles at 
 death's darts of a manhood " born to the purple " of 
 an immortal kingship. For that we are urged to 
 live. From that we are urged to gather inspiration 
 for the life that now is. Our ranks are suffering loss 
 by the removal thence of honored and trusted broth- 
 ers. They are not lost. They still practice their 
 sublime art in building up edifices of knowledge, 
 wisdom, and joy, in some distant region of the Su- 
 preme Architect's domain. "We shall meet them, if 
 we be true and humble and faithful men. Aye, we 
 shall meet them in possession of highest Masonic 
 honors, and within the enclasping shelter of the most
 
 MASONIC OKATION. 363 
 
 perfect of Masonic workmanship ; most perfect ; for 
 is it not a " city which hath foundation ? " Is it not 
 a city " foursquare," having gates north, south, east, 
 and westward ? Is not that Masonic ? And we shall 
 have our Great Light, even the Builder and Maker 
 himself ; and there shall be no need of the light of 
 the candle. And there shall be no temple no tem- 
 ple, as there shall be no tomb ; no tomb, for all shall 
 be life ; no temple, for the spanless city is itself the 
 temple " the house not made by hands, eternal in 
 the heavens." Within that foursquare city our broth- 
 erhood is gathering as the stream of time flows 
 onward. 
 
 They come from the ends of the earth, 
 
 "White with its aged snows ; 
 From the bounding breast of the tropic tide, 
 
 Where the day-beam ever glows. 
 
 From the east, where first they dwelt, 
 
 From the north and the south and the west; 
 
 Where the sun puts on his robe of light, 
 And lays down his crown to rest 
 
 God grant us all to meet there, and answer to the 
 roll-call of the Grand Lodge of a glorified humanity.
 
 364 GUARD'S LECTUKES AND ADDKESSES. 
 
 CENTENNIAL ADDRESS.* 
 
 A HUNDKED years old! Our first century of 
 IJL life as a nation, completed ! From how many 
 tongues shall these words fall ! In how many tones 
 shall these sentences float out into illimitable space ! 
 Over how many heart-chords shall responsive feelings 
 sweep ! By how many outward and visible and audi- 
 ble tokens shall the nation's joy be revealed ! The 
 boom of cannon, the shout of myriads, the blazonry 
 of banners, the orator's eulogy, the psalm of reverent- 
 ly joyous congregations, the festive gathering and 
 greeting, the mimic battle upon land and sea, the 
 merry pic-nic, the thronged streets, the suspended 
 trade, by these and such as these methods, shall a 
 nation tell forth its ecstasy and congratulate itself 
 upon its birth, its growth, its vigor, its hope, its toils 
 well endured, its battles nobly fought, its victories as 
 wisely improved as they were heroically won, its 
 broadening territory, its developed wealth, its pro- 
 gressive intelligence, its augmented morality, its am- 
 plifying and robust piety, its flag uiirent and floating 
 over a united people, at home prosperous, abroad 
 
 * Being fragmentary notes of an oration at Howard-street M. E. 
 Church, San Francisco, on the centennial anniversary of the Inde- 
 pendence of the United States of America, July, 1876.
 
 CENTENNIAL ADDRESS. 365 
 
 honored, admired, wondered at, and, doubtless, "en- 
 vied by less happy lands." 
 
 **** 
 
 The people had undergone a fitting discipline for 
 the great work assigned them by providence. 
 
 The struggles with inclement climate, the conflicts 
 with Indian tribes, the wars with the French, all 
 educated them into a higher capacity for the fatigues, 
 perils, and stern duties of a military life ; so that, 
 when the clarion summoned them to the field, they 
 surprised the veterans of Europe by their endurance, 
 their strategy, their bravery. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Give us room this was needed for the new re- 
 public room wherein we may expand ; room whereto 
 we may invite and welcome the refugees from Old 
 World tyranny and wrongs ; room to build a tem- 
 ple of such dimensions that all the oppressed may 
 find beneatli the roof a shelter, and within its walls a 
 sanctuary, from the strife of men and the rough hand 
 of persecution. 
 
 And here the Quaker found a quiet resting-place. 
 Here the Huguenot obtained relief from the Edicts of 
 cruel Frenchmen. Here the Waklensian fugitive es- 
 caped from the wiles of his relentless foes. Here the , 
 Puritan and Presbyterian from England and from 
 Ireland defied their enemies to molest and immolate 
 them. And when of such blood the new republic 
 was composed, no wonder if its foundations were 
 laid of adamant and its walls of granite, immovable 
 amid the perturbations of less favored peoples and
 
 366 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 inviolable through all the vicissitudes of this transitory 
 
 world. 
 
 **#*## 
 
 Yes, religion must surely wane, decay, expire, un- 
 less upheld by governmental aid and patronage. 
 Villages shall grow up in godlessness. Towns shall 
 forget there is a sabbath. Cities shall be found with- 
 out a solitary temple of prayer. The poor shall be 
 left to rot, and the aged to die without a single word 
 to soothe, or hand to wipe the death-damp from their 
 furrowed brows. Infidelity shall become rampant; 
 conscience become a mockery; God a lifeless, will- 
 less law of nature; and man a highly organized 
 material machine. Houses of mercy shall be unnum- 
 bered among the dwellings of such a people. Chil- 
 dren shall wax daring in infamy. Households shall 
 be nurseries of crime, of falsehood, and of Inst. And 
 soon shall such a people deserve the doom of Sodom 
 or the deluge of the Antediluvians; traitors against 
 the majesty of God, the sacredness of virtue ! Yes, 
 this, such as this, may have been the prognostication 
 of the false prophets who beheld the birthday of a 
 government which proclaimed the divine right of 
 men to liberty of conscience, of worship, and of creed. 
 But have such been the results ? A thousand times, no ! 
 
 Nowhere is conscience so free ; and nowhere are 
 the products of religion so many and so manifold as 
 here. Where is the hamlet without its church? 
 Where is the village without its Sabbath - school ? 
 Wherever the log-hut rears its humble roof the rustic 
 chapel invites to prayer and praise. Where has so
 
 CENTENNIAL ADDRESS. 367 
 
 much money been spent in the erection of noble 
 shrines; where so much salary paid to able pastors; 
 where greater energy in benevolent enterprise ; where 
 a larger number of religious periodicals published ; 
 where a profounder interest taken in church and pas- 
 tor, than in this land where every one may choose 
 his own creed ? 
 
 ****** 
 The men of the Revolution started without a State 
 Church ; but they started with an open Bible, with a 
 heaven-planted conscience, and with the blessing of 
 the God of heaven. These three were enough of 
 capital, I dare say. These men had too firm a faith in 
 conscience, in truth, in God, to think of leaning upon 
 human government for support in the maintenance 
 of that which they esteemed more precious than ease, 
 than profit, than love of country ; aye, than love of 
 life. The men who fled from Louis XIV., as Hugue- 
 nots, might not they be trusted to feed the fires of 
 piety ? The men who fled from the hills and gorges 
 of the Waldenses from Sardinian tyrants, might not 
 they be trusted to keep their piety pure ? The men 
 who fled from the crooked-hearted Stuarts of England, 
 for conscience' sake, might not they be trusted with 
 the holy art of godly worship ? 
 
 ****** 
 Grand as the past has been, the future shall far 
 surpass it. The best days are all before, not behind. 
 The populations of the earth are but a handful com- 
 pared with what they shall be. The productions of 
 the soil are but a handful compared with what they
 
 308 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 shall be. The resources of the hills are but a hand- 
 ful compared with what they shall be. The knowl- 
 edge gained by science is but a boy's primer com- 
 pared with what shall be the mastery over nature's 
 forces wielded by man ; but child's play compared 
 with what shall be. The spread of virtue is but 
 narrow compared with what shall be. The enlighten- 
 ment of man is but unlight compared with what shall 
 be. This nation is destined to live, not die ; live, not 
 droop ; live, not shrivel ; live, not drivel ; live a deep- 
 er life in thought, a purer life in morals, a calmer life 
 in effort, a rounder life in culture, a diviner life in 
 charity, in love. 
 
 Why should the mother of the seas be still young, 
 active, advancing, though a thousand years old, and 
 her daughter die ? Progress is the law of history, of 
 God. Let the fullness of Christian principle be as- 
 similated by our nation, and we are sure of conserva- 
 tion with progression. Christianity is the salt which 
 repels corruption and disintegration, and conserves in 
 vigorous vitality. Whatever it touches it immortal- 
 izes ; whatever it controls it preserves ; whatever it 
 transforms it imbues with immutability. For it is 
 " the word of our God which abideth forever." 
 
 The nation lives by morality. Morality flows from 
 piety. Morality is never purer than its source. Mo- 
 rality never rises higher than its fountain. Pagan 
 nations owned not divine religion ; their gods were 
 monsters and their morals foul. What is left for this 
 nation to choose? To which of the saints shall* she 
 turn ? To none of them to none of them ; but to Him
 
 CENTENNIAL ADDRESS. 369 
 
 who is the King of Saints and the King of Nations. 
 And as it was in the beginning, so is it now and 
 ever shall be. O God ! to thy care she commits her- 
 self for another century. God of her Fathers ! be the 
 God of their succeeding race. Make us true, lipright, 
 just, pure, humble, generous, grateful. Hallow our 
 joys ; sanctify our sorrows ; chasten us when haughty ; 
 guard us when imperiled ; crown us with such glory 
 as we are able to bear ; and upon all 
 
 ****** 
 
 Freed from some of the weights with which the 
 republic began a hundred years ago, she to-day begins 
 a new career unhand icapped. For instance : she began 
 with slavery ; that weight is gone ; that cancer cut out 
 by the sword. It shall never stick its roots again into 
 the commonwealth. It shall not debauch the con- 
 science of commerce or of the Church or of the family. 
 No, thank God, that is of the past, no more to clog, 
 cripple, or cramp. With an honest heart and uplifted 
 brow the nation may front the future so far as that 
 is concerned. 
 
 That there shall not be other foes with which to 
 struggle we dare not say. The world is not yet all 
 righteous, true, loving. Wealth may breed pride ; 
 pride, haughtiness. Wealth may breed luxury ; lux- 
 ury, indolence; indolence, lust, animalism, and cor- 
 ruption. The struggle for political office may engen- 
 der falsehood, create hatred, bring forth jealousies, 
 and diffuse discord and seeds of anarchy. But it need 
 not, though it may. Personal piety is the specific 
 antidote, is the mighty defense, against such peril.
 
 370 GUARD'S LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 The influx of immigrants may become such as to 
 all but swamp the native-born, and all but deluge the 
 religious customs, belief, worship, of this great Prot- 
 estant people. How to meet this without sacrifice of 
 liberty is the problem. To maintain liberty in the 
 fullest, loftiest sense, you will be compelled to repress 
 by moral, only moral, means any and every system 
 which lives but upon ignorance and flourishes but 
 through bigotry. For freedom's sake you must set 
 your face as flint against all that, in politics, can place 
 power in the hands of such as have never failed to 
 prove that they hate freedom of thought, freedom of 
 speech, freedom of conscience and of worship. If 
 there be in the midst of us, under our flag, and favored 
 by our institutions, a system of religious belief I do 
 not say there is ; but if there be whose history is 
 written in blood ; whose throne is built up of tyran- 
 ny ; whose career has been one of persecution, and 
 which never changes in principles or in purpose ; 
 which lives as truly as a thousand years ago ; which, 
 wherever it has had the power its own, one day has 
 used it to expel all religions but its own ; against that, 
 as the sworn, undying, unalterable foe of liberty, let 
 the wisest, soundest, manliest defense be maintained. 
 That is one of the perils. To me it is a simple axiom 
 that, whatever party of politicians leans upon that 
 power for support, and wins success by so leaning 
 that party, whether it knows it or not, is the subtle 
 and certain and deadly enemy of this free common- 
 wealth. 
 
 THE END.