UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES GIFT OF CAPT. AND MRS. PAUL MCBRIDE PERIGORD ma. \YY SUNDAY MEDITATIONS SELECTED PROSE SKETCHES. BY Author of "Memories of the Men who Saved the Union," "The Lone Grave of the Ftifnandoah, and Other Tales," "The Rev. Melancthon Poundex," "Poems and Plays," etc. CINCINNATI: ROBERT CLARKE & Co., PUBLISHERS. 1898. > f 1 ^ p ^4 JL ' :! tj O O COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY ELLA KIRBY PIATT. CONTENTS. PAGE. SUNDAY MEDITATIONS Preface v Searching for the Truth 21 Natural and Revealed Religion 32 Cheerfulness a Duty 38 The Courage that Suffers 45 The Giving of Alms 52 1^ The Poor in Spirit 59 Pity for the Fallen 66 What we Owe to Woman 74 The Casting Out of Devils 80 Good One Day in Seven 87 The Need of Faith , 94 Confession of Sin 100 The Love of the Beautiful 105 Blind by the Wayside Ill The Love of Children -. 118 Respectable Christians 124 The First of Democrats 132 Love for Our Fellow-men 139 Unjust Stewards 146 Son, Give Me Thy Heart 154 The Wonders of Nature 162 Avarice and Hypocrisy 167 Man's Intellect 174 SELECTED PROSE SKETCHES A Tribute to an Humble Friend 180 Little Christy's Christmas 190 The Worries that Kill 206 Humors of the War 214 Churchyard Reveries 223 (iii) iv Contents. PAGE. The World's Grumblers.'. 235 The Shaw in London 245 Our Inventive Cranks 255 Prorogation of Parliament 264 The Whig Party on its Travels 371 Berkeley Springs 282 Our Fever for Titles 290 The Death Penalty 295 The Dude in Literature 300 Vacant Pews and Worried Pulpits 30G Revenue Tariff, a Tax ; Protective Tariff, Extortion 314 The Kingdom of Satan ... 323 Murmurs of the Mac-o-chee 329 CELEBRATED MEN OF THE DAY Washington McLean 348 Robert Gumming Schenck 370 Henry Ward Beecher 388 Rosooe Conkling 400 Charles Stewart Parnell 411 James A. Garfield 418 Richard Realf. . . .431 The Christian mind of to-day, as it has been in the immediate past, is much disturbed by the claim of so-called science. This means that through cer- tain intellectual processes and discoveries Christian- ity is found to be erroneous and without the founda- tion of fact that should give dignity and power to its existence. The church, in its effort to tranquilize the troub- led mind, has committed the error found in an at- tempt to harmonize the two the so-called science and itself. There is not an intelligent mind on either side that does not recognize the futility of this attempt. They can not be reconciled. If it were left to what we are pleased to call the learning of the world, we would be not only without a recognition of God and life hereafter, but taught to disown both. We may as well face this fact at once. We gain nothing indeed we lose by shrinking from or at- tempting to blind ourselves to the true aim. We are conscious of God as we are conscious of sunlight, (v) vi Preface. and when we attempt to give one born blind a knowledge of light we are precisely in the same condition as when we seek to make God evident through human reason. Through all the ages of re- corded and unrecorded past of humanity in all parts of the peopled earth, no human being has ever been, or can be, found who did not or does not feel within himself the existence of a Maker. This is born in us; it can not be obliterated, however much through boasted human reason it may be distorted. In the same way each mortal is conscious of a part of himself that thinks, wills, and remembers that is distinct, separate, apart, and superior to the matter upon which and through which it acts. Our poor little processes of thought, dignified with the name of science, give this a name, and call it mind; the servants of our holy church call it soul ; but the name throws no additional light on the fact. It begins, continues, and ends in the consciousness of its existence. In the same way, but not with the same strength, we recognize life hereafter. The " I am" of the immediate second is the " I the am" of the next second. I know that I exist, I know that I shall continue to exist, and such knowledge comes from no subtle process of thought. Thought helps us to nothing. One step beyond the inner conscious- ness and we are in utter darkness. Preface. vii Philosophy, the vaunted philosophy of the schools, which means a knowledge of the fact and the reason for it, is a delusion. We have the fact, but the rea- son, or the power to comprehend the reason, has not been given us by our Creator, and therefore has no existence. I ask the learned man what is light, and he answers sadly that he does not know. The blade of grass at his learned feet is as much a mystery as the depths of space into which science drops its little pack-thread of measurement and solemnly makes record. It is not necessary to climb painfully to the outer verge of our little knowledge and gaze into boundless space to have our boasted reason reel back into insanity. The humblest thing about us brings the same result. Why, I do not know myself; I know only that I exist, I think, I will, I remember, and there it ends. How, then, are we to know God's works? We have the science of astronomy that begins and ends with an enumeration of a few worlds of unend- ing space that are as atoms to the whole. We have the science of geology that digs painfully into the mere skin of our little world, and from it measures epochs. Back of the geologist, with his little ham- mer, lie the countless ages the ages that had no beginning and before him countless ages again ; and in this line, as in limitless space, our poor science dis- viii Preface. appears. Small wonder, then, that the dim-eyed, heart- sick sage of science at the close of liie says, mournfully : " I end where I began, and all my years of study have only taught me that I know nothing." The difference between the extremes, educated and uneducated ignorance, is that the one believes there is knowledge, and the other knows that none exists. The height of all human knowledge is to know that we know nothing. What an error, then, it is for the ministers of our holy church to accept the pretense and attempt to harmonize religion and science. This is lamentable, but it becomes pitiable when a minister of God ac- cepts the challenge of a scientist as to the existence of God or the truths of religion. He passes from the altar to the rostrum, from the presence of Christ to the man-created idol of wisdom, and accepting the promises offered by infidelity suffers necessarily de- feat amid the ribald jeers and laughter of fiends in human shape. The first offense was eating the fruit of the for- bidden tree of knowledge as it grows on earth. Our latest crime is canning that fruit, under a supposed sanction of the church, for common use. Our blessed Savior appeared on earth, not to teach us scientific truths we can not comprehend, but to appeal to the better nature of humanity as Preface. ix God made it, and so render us fit for the life eternal that lies beyond the grave. All He taught was so simple and so clear that a child can comprehend. It appeals to what is in us and lifts our instincts them- selves into an intellectual guidance. To love one another, to be charitable to the poor and afflicted, to be just in our dealings and to love God, calls for no study by the midnight lamp or feeble groping amid the works of the Creator. The little space given life on earth can well be spent in preparing ourselves for the promised life beyond the, grave. The worst result of all this learned craze is that found in what we are pleased to call popular educa- tion. Education, of course, means that development of the mind which gives the largest and most satisfac- tory results of thinking. In the popular course it means a mere cultivation of the memory, through which great stores of facts may be accumulated. Education, in its true significance, is applicable to a few minds only, and those few differ so radically that no two are alike as to either quality or char- acter. The popular belief is that all are alike, and through one system the common run of minds may be lifted to the same level. Memory is common to all, and therefore memory is appealed to and used in a vast accumulation of facts. x Preface. The process is not only unintellectual but fatal to the little mind left us upon which to accumulate the so-called information. The training of the intel- lectual faculties is not unlike that of the body. A man is given a tool, or a set of tools, and trained to their use. What, then, is the good of a shop full of tools to a man who can not use one, arid what is the good of a congressional library to the man who can not utilize a single fact therein recorded? A mere cultivation of the natural or instinctive memory fails to give the necessary use ; on the contrary, it destroys the power to use. To understand this, it is necessary to know what the natural or instinctive memory is. It is based on association. The mind is to its surroundings what the plate of the photographer is to the objects brought before it, save that instead of a separate picture there is a succession of pictures connected one with the other by what is called association. Through every healthy, natural mind there floats continuously a succession of images, and one seems to surest that which succeeds. Thus it is rain, the OO rain suggests a flood, the flood the ocean, the ocean the English navy, the English navy the bombard- ment of Alexandria. When this flow of images held together by asso- ciation is arrested and the mind dwells on one, or Preface. xi when it is confined to a few and the flow seems to be an eddy from which the mind can not escape, it is called insane. This is disease, and onr so-called common edu- cation brings it on. The first lesson taught through educational training is that there is no logical sequence between the image presented and that suggested. Take the example given. There is no logical connection of the rain and the ocean. The thoughtful mind real- izes this when asked what relation there is between the rain and the bombardment of Alexandria. In fact, there is no logical sequence in any of the steps that led from rain to the bombardment. As we strengthen the mind, then, we weaken and eventually destroy the instinct. A mere mem- ory is a mark of a weak mind. It is on this account that children, women, and negroes learn as it is called more readily than the more thoughtful. As the natural memory is broken up, the logical mem- ory has to take its place. Those things only are re- tained that have a logical connection. As there are but one in a hundred thousand capable of this, we can readily appreciate where our popular education is left. The public instructors having a glimmering sense of this difficult task are continually striving to de- xii Preface. stroy the natural memory, and, believing that all are capable of a like elevation through training, fetch about the same result that comes from disease. The nearer level of mind in the unfortunate pupils may afford enough to break in on the natural mem- ory, but have not sufficient to replace with the logical or acquired memory hence insanity. The ordinary result, however, is a cultivation to an abnormal condition of the natural memory and a consequent weakening of the intellect. If this were the only evil we might submit to it, but a worse re- mains. This unnatural training of the memory through all sorts of stimulants of competition, re- wards and punishments destroys the nervous system. It not only fills the land with educated idiots, but with invalids as well. That child that should be on a farm or in a work-shop getting health from reasona- ble labor, is not only shut in a hot school-room, de- prived of natural exercise and pure air for hours every day, that would kill an adult, but carries home a load of books to continue far into the night the death dealing process. All the tender joys of home, so dear to the mem- ory in after life, arc disturbed; all the moral influ- ences that grow from the hearth-stone arc destroyed to satisfy this Moloch of education. From the home comes all the good upon which not the state alone, Preface, xiii but social life exists and prospers, and the home is \vrecked. The state takes the child from its parents and of consequence the citizen from the church, that a popular superstition may be cherished, and the result is, after a century's experience, that insanity doubles upon us every ten }'ears, while crime is such that the question is no longer what are we to do with our criminals, but what will the criminals do with us. What else could we expect? Admitting for a moment that education elevates and culture refines, have we found the education, are we getting the cul- ture ? The fountain never rises above its head, and the crude, coarse machinery we look to as an educa- tional process grinds out only what it is capable of grinding. The mind is recognized as the most subtle, delicate and important part of us, easily disarranged and difficult to care for, and yet we turn this over to the stupid pedagogue who is capable of teaching pre- cisely in proportion as he is incapable of other pur- suit. Does sane mind carry his watch to a black- smith for repair? And yet a machine, as we have said, the most delicate that comes from the Creator, is given to a worse than blacksmith to hammer upon. The common schools are worse than Godless; they are idolatrous, for the false god worshiped is memory. The tender, youthful victims offered yearly upon the altar of this mumbo jumbo make life in the xiv Preface. interior of Africa or on the Cannibal Islands Christian and respectable. The Christian faith was not born of human knowledge, and is not dependent on that wisdom which comes of the intellectual processes. It was made part of us when we were first created, is there- fore an element in our nature, and while it may be disturbed can not be destroyed, any more than the action of our lungs, the circulation of our blood, or any other function necessary to our physical exist- ence. None know this better than the truly taught. All knowledge, when truly analyzed and sifted down, means merely giving a name to something that we can not comprehend. An event, when first recognized, is called a phe- nomenon ; when repeated, it is styled a coincidence; when it occurs a third time it is entitled a law, and as such is duly labeled and put to record. Its cause, nature and eft'ect are all alike unknown and unknow- able. When, for example, Sir Isaac Newton called attention to the fact that all bodies fell to the earth, and entitled the continued occurrence the law of gravitation, the learned apes in spectacles gravely nodded their hairless skulls and cried, " Great mind, learned man ; wonderful progress of science!" And yet what has become of this fact, so simplified as sup- posed by Newton, among the savants themselves? Preface. xv Newton himself, in his well known letter to Berkely, recognized the absurdity of the supposed explana- tion found in the name by admitting the impossibil- ity of such a law acting through a vacuum, and at- tempted an explanation by supposing all space to be filled with ether, as if that helped to understand what remains to-day an impenetrable mystery. The latest heard upon this subject came from a discussion be- fore the Berlin Physical Society, when two eminent scientists, known to the learned world as Professor Paul Du Bois-Reymond and Professor Von Helm- holtz, agreed that gravity was simply incomprehen- sible, but that it is an " inherent property " of matter. " Why is it, Professor," asked a student of the late astronomer Vaughn, who starved to death at Cin- cinnati, "that the sun is said to be the source of light, yet as we leave the earth and approach that great source we pass into outer darkness and cold ?" " My son," was the sad reply, " If you can tell me what light and heat are, I will solve your diffi- culty." The latest fad, to use an expressive cant word, among these dealers in scientific mysteries, is evolu- tion. Invented by the imaginative mind of Darwin, it was so improved on by the more logical intellect of Herbert Spencer, as to mean quite another thing from that intended by its inventor, and is to-day BO shadowy xvi Preface. and uncertain that no two of the learned pundits can be found agreeing upon the precise definition. It differs from gravitation in one remarkable feature, and that is, that while gravitation is a name given to a continuously occurring event, which, whether we comprehend it or not, seems a fact ; evolution, on the contrary, is the creature of pure speculation. It serves its purpose, however, and solves all doubt in the mind of its believer by the mere use of the word. When one of these aged phrase-eaters, of recognized scientific attainments, utters that magic word, an aw- ful silence of submissive humility follows, as a grove of little singers becomes mute when a fog obscures the sun. How little learning has done for humanity a slight investigation will demonstrate. The sum total progress is to be found in material existence. Through the control and manipulation of matter some of us a small minority are better sheltered, fed, and cared for than were our ancestors. Are we happier, more moral, or in better health than were our barbarous progenitors ? Alas ! no. Nicely ad- justed machinery, driven by harnessed steam, may pick up and carry us at the rate of sixty or a hun- dred miles an hour. Has it carried us from our sor- rows, sickness, and evil impulses? Xo, again. These are with us more positively secure than our epito- Preface. xvii mized worldly goods checked in the baggage cars. Antiquarians tell us of cave-dwellers among our remote ancestors, who were cannibals, and sucked the mar- row from the stone-broken bones of their fellow-men. The cannibals of to-day have their caves gilded with gold and graced with silken drapery. They live on champagne and canvaaba.ck.s, pdte de foie gras and ter- rapin, within walls so thick that they can not hear the moans of dying and cries of starving men, the marrow of whose bones they have sucked out, each cannibal absorbing the living of thousands. Man is to-day what man was thousands of years ago. Alongside the palace stands the penitentiary, the poor-house, and the asylum for the insane. Hovels multiply and crime grows bolder and more aggressive. "I knew I had struck a civilized land," said a ship-wrecked mariner, "for I encountered a gallows on the coast." That ghastly remnant of bar- barism is the one great distinguishing feature of civ- ilized life. From this dark and depressing view of how little learning has done for humanity, we turn with glad hearts to that which, if it has not lessened our sor- rows or lifted us above sickness, has enabled us to bear both with a hopeful recognition of a relief here- after a relief that is to come from our own recog- nition of our better selves. " That is all a delusion," 2 xviii Preface. cries the agnostic, who, professing to know nothing, claims to know all. " Your miracles on which you base your belief in the divinity of Christ will not bear the test of evidence. These so-called gospels are fictions, and all your Christ taught was known to the world long before He was born." Woe waits the poor believer who turns to dis- pute such questions as these. This learned agnostic, who measures God's creation with his little pack- thread, and gives nature's mysteries which he can not comprehend learned names, and so disposes of them, will make short work with the evidences of Christianity based on the so-called laws of human evidence. If the agnostic were called on to prove, through such process, the existence of his cherished gravitation, he would be as much at a loss as the poor Christian challenged to demonstrate the divin- ity of our Savior. If our faith is not in us, there is no intellectual efforts that will put it there; if it is in us, no such process will rob us of its blessed pos- session. Putting aside all claim of proof as to miracles, accept frankly and freely Hume's axiom, acknowl- edge that the gospels are not authentic, and what have we left? The Christ of to-day, that no subtle intellect of a Renan can displace. " Lo, I am with you until the end of time. I was Preface. xix with you in the beginning, and will be with you to the last of earth." It is the Christ of to-day we recog- nize, as he has been recognized through the ages. The truth that is as clear as sunlight to the see- ing is strangely disregarded in this blind chase after the vagaries of scientists. Our Savior made no such contention. He appeared on earth as a humble Naz- arene, the son of a carpenter, alid gathered about him as his apostles ignorant tent-makers and fishermen. He appeared to no school of philosophers, and made no attempt to teach that learning which we now hold to be so precious. His few years on earth were given to appeals to the better part of human nature, and to teaching us the divine truth, that in kindness that held charity and forgiveness to each other we could prepare ourselves for that happiness hereafter that can be found in the love of Our Father in Heaven. His mission, lasting but abrief period, ended in his cruel death ; and, search through the recorded gabble of the world, and we find stories of brutal conquests the rise of empires and the fall of kings, sages, and poets are told of, and their wise teachings and beau- tiful words come down to us ; but of Christ, of his life, sufferings, and crucifixion, there is a dead si- lence ; not a word was said, not a sentence went to record. The great, noisy world rolled on without xx Preface. Him. This mission of a carpenter's son was too in- significant to command the slightest mention. And yet the divine work went on. A ray of God's sun- light had pierced the gloom, and strengthened and broadened until it embraced all the earth. There are no miracles, they tell us ; and yet the low, solemn teachings of this Nazarene, left to the keeping of ignorant laborers, sneered at by scientists, fought by conquerors of all-else, the poor followers thrown into loathsome prisons to rot, given to wild beasts to devour, branded as criminals, and outlawed as con- victs hold the earth now and forever. This may not be a miracle, but it can be explained only by a true reading of our Savior's word, which taught us that he appeared to the Christ that was born in us when we came fresh from the hands of our Creator; that it is the better, stronger, and more vital part of our nature, and when awakened gives us a joy no words can describe. Such awakening calls for no learning, no culture, no burning of the midnight oil in vain study of what we can not comprehend. He is with us now ; He will be with us until the end of time. These thoughts, so long known to the church that they have come to be commonplace, are treated with lofty contempt by the learned men, who find more in a little geological specimen than in all the hopes, sorrows, and afflictions of humanity. SUNDAY MEDITATIONS. Searching for the Truth. It seems to me, while reading the touching life and beautiful teachings of Christ, that the English speaking people are nearer to God than those of any other tongue. This because of the simplicity and power of the pure old English into which these chronicles were translated. Other languages may have a wider scope and a more perfect construction. They may excel in that accuracy so necessary to sci- ence, be more musical in sound, more available for eloquent utterance, but they never approach our mother tongue in those qualities of simplicity that make it so easy of comprehension to the unlearned and so touchingly beautiful to all. And when we bear in mind the object of Christ's mission on earth, the blessing grows in worth upon us. His mission was to the poor, and his teachings intended to give consolation to the humble. Before his advent religion was confined to the rich and well- (21) 22 Sunday Meditations. born. Philosophers had reasoned out the immortal- ity of the soul, and priests had huilt to them gor- geous temples, where the wealthy alone found food for thought and a foundation for faith. With the mass of suffering humanity religion was a supersti- tion and a fear. To these last alone came Christ. He asked no learning, no subtle reasoning ; he proclaimed his truths and attested his authority by miracles mira- cles that leave one in doubt whether they were the result of charitable impulse or evidences of his au- thority. But all were addressed to the poor and op- pressed. Born in a stable, his brief, sad life was passed among the toiling millions and the wicked, to whom he gave words of comfort, the first that ever fell upon their ears. He was the first democrat in the history of hu- manity. His race was a despised race of laborers, hewers of wood and drawers of water. His asso- ciates were erring: women and wicked men. To these o he came, these he taught, and to such as these ho left his divine doctrines of love and forgiveness. Born in a manger, he died crucified between two thieves. Like the prophet of old, he smote the rock for the suffering multitude, and from its flinty heart leaped into light and life the waters not for the guKl Searching for the Truth. 23 and silver pitchers of the rich and well-born, but to flow into lowly places, where down-trodden and op- pressed humanity might stoop and drink, and go their weary way refreshed. To read this simple narrative through tears, one must divest himself of the error modern theology has thrown over the story. As it is narrated, Christ, the sufferer, is man. He has all the ills that flesh is heir to. He has the doubts, fears, anguish, and troubles of poor humanity. If he were while on earth a God, possessed of powers as such, the narra- tive loses all its significance in its loss of sympathy. Hector is. the hero of Homer's great epic, for Achilles was invulnerable. To get at the true meaning of the sacrifice, we must go back to the belief of his simple followers. They regarded him as the Son of God, but a man all the same. Judas Iscariot alone looked on him as the Christian world now regards him, as one who, through his divine pow r er, could protect himself and his followers from all harm. He took the thirty pieces of silver, believing a great miracle would be wrought in their behalf, to lift his master and themselves from the harm of their enemies. When he found what a cruel error he had committed, he returned the money, and went out in anguish to death by his own hands. Peter, in fear, denied his master. Christ himself passed the night in prayer, 24 Sunday Meditations. petitioning for what evidently Judas believed would happen, and that was that a supernatural power would interpose and save him from his enemies. Here is the narrative : "Then Jesus came with them into a country place which is called Gethsemane ; and he said to his disciples : Sit you here until I go yonder and pray. And, taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to grow sorrowful and to be sad. Then he said to them : My soul is sorrowful even unto death. Stay you here and watch with me. And, going a little further, he fell upon his face, praying and saying: My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh to his disci- ples and findeth them asleep, and he saith to Peter: What! could you not watch one hour with me? Watch ye and pray, that ye enter not into tempta- tion. The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. Again the second time he went and prayed, saying: My Father, if this chalice may not pass away, but I must drink it, Thy will be done. And he cometh again and findeth them sleeping; for their eyes were heavy ; and, leaving them, he went again, and he prayed the third time, saying the self-same words." He prayed for what? That he might be saved Searching for the Truth. 25 the cruel tortures and horrible death in store for him at the hands of his brutal enemies. Any other version of this sad story robs it of all meaning. Without the intervention of the man, re- ligion is not only without comfort and consolation, but is impossible. To share with creation, the wor- ship of God is to reduce our earth to an atom and the human soul to a nonentity. Astronomy, lifting the heavens into the immensity of space that we can not comprehend, carried with it the old Hebrew the- ology that made God human that we might know him, and inhuman that he might be feared. We look over the edge of our little horizon, into that never-ending space, and shrink back in horror at a dreary immensity, to think of which threatens in- sanity is insanity. We can not go to God, and so Christ comes to us. lie is part of ourselves shares in our wants, weaknesses, hopes, and sorrows. In this direction lies our religion : o " The good we love and cherish most Lies close about our feet ; It is the dim and distant That we are sick to greet." As the home is to the \vorld, the religion of Christ is to modern theology, that, aided by science, 2C Sunday Meditations. seeks to become a fact and not a faith. It is cold and colorless, and without comfort. The church, " Like a dome of many colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity." It enters into all the sweet humanities and re- lieves the sad troubles of our afflicted life as a parent ministers to a child. It is this that gives us comfort in Christ, and from this want came the mother of Christ, fetching heaven nearer to home and nearer to the heart. To become as a little child, to accept without questioning the faith offered us, to keep our religion where Christ left it, within our own horizon, is all we can ask. It is certainly all that we. can get. The tragic end of Christ's mission on earth has been held before mankind through centuries as a sacrifice in which death alone is made the measure of the atonement. And yet, being man, and as such mortal, his enemies only anticipated by a few years what would have been his inevitable fate. It was a cruel death, it is true; one in which human ingenuity was tasked to extort pain ; but not more so than many diseases that to-day afflict humanity. The hu- man system is capable of only a certain amount of suffering. One would scarcely imagine a more hor- rible torture than to be nailed to a cross and left to perish from exhaustion. But the violence of the Searching for the Truth. 27 means used would defeat the purpose, for what with the loss of blood and intense agony, insensibility would soon follow. Nature, true to herself, kindly administers relief at the last moment, when powers of resistance are exhausted. In the horrible tortures invented and practiced in Europe when religious per- secution reached its inhuman limit, it was found necessary to prolong the suffering by restoring the victim through rest and stimulants. Insensibility and death baffled the fiends in human shape. It was death, and in the death relief, that comes sooner or later to all of us. If that were all we would find ourselves at a loss to account for the di- vine interposition in behalf of poor humanity. It is but true that the thought makes one's heart ache, that one whose pure life of charitable acts and God- like teachings of love and forgiveness made his life a miracle, should be howled down by a mob and tor- tured to death. But to understand and appreciate the blessing bestowed, we must look deeper and more wisely to find that there is something more in death than the pain of dying. To one who has watched the weary days and dreary nights by the couch of some loved one, this is painfully evident; for while the heart aches over the suffering it stands still at the thought of the separation. Therein lies the sting of death, therein exists the victory of the 28 Sunday Meditations. grave that no reasoning makes familiar, no religion can afford consolation. It was not, therefore, that ^Christ died, but that on the third day he rose again, that brought blessed consolation to the human fam- ily. For thousands of years the children of men had seen the grave close over the lost and loved, and from it come back no whisper, no sign, naught but a dead, eternal silence, that found relief only in forget- fulness, against which the heart struggled with an anguish no words could express. " Why do you weep?" asked the philosopher, "tears are unavail- ing." " Therefore do I weep," was the truthful ami touching reply. Christ threw the bridge of faith over the dread gulf. The grave gave back its answer. Our brief, wretched existence reached into the future of eter- nity, and what was doom before became only a trial calling for patient endurance instead of despair. Be- fore then religion was a superstition and a fear with the masses. The nearest approach that reason could fetch the intellect of the more cultivated was that our dread of annihilation and longing for immortal- ity were proofs of a future existence; but how slen- der, cold and comfortless the belief, if such it could be called, compared with the reality of the narrative, told with such simplicity that it leaves no doubt Upon the mind : Searching for the Truth. 29 "At that time Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome brought sweet spices that, coming, they might annoint Jesus. And very early in the morning the first day of the week they came to the sepulcher, the same being now risen, and they said one to another, who shall roll us back the stone from the door of the sepulcher? And Poking they saw the stone rolled back; for it was very great. And entering into the sepulcher they saw a young man sitting on the right side clothed with a white robe and they were astonished who saith to them : Be not affrightened ; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified; he is risen, he is not here; behold the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee ; there you shall see him as he told you." There are few events more illustrative of the new life that dawned on the world than those attend- ino; the death and resurrection of our Savior. " The o last at the cross *and first at the tomb" were these women. Of apostles, Judas had betrayed and Peter denied him, while all disappeared, hiding in terror from the storm that had so suddenly broken upon them. They who look on death when a human being is born were the first to learn that death meant life, and all that had wrung their hearts in agony on that dreadful day, as it had wrung the hearts of millions, 30 Sunday Meditations. was hut another and a more beautiful birth, carrying us from this earth of sin, sickness and grief to where the wicked cease to trouble and the weary are at rest. Ah ! me, what sweet consolation there is in the very music of those words! How life's struggles dwindle before them ; how disappointments lose their annoyances, and slander, abuse, desertion of friends and triumphs -of enemies all that the master mind enumerated : " The whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy take." All sink into nothingness before the thought that in a few brief years we will have passed beyond them, into life where their very memory will cease to trouble us. Through the iron gate of death streams the light of life hereafter, spreading its balm upon even our own earthly unhappiness, giving us a taste in anticipation of the blessings reserved for us in a higher sphere and more perfect life than this. Life on earth is what we have known as death, and death is life in reality. Even this dull, heavy matter of our present being feels a quickening in Searching for the Truth. 31 the change. Science teaches us that this hand that traces these lines, that is held in form through life, passes after the change into the elements of which it is composed so swiftly that in a brief period all save the bones disappear. Death then means life, not only in the release of the soul, but of the body itself. The tendency to clothe a simple fact in religion with a mysterious faith in something greater than the fact, has nearly robbed us of the true meaning of Christ's mission. What can be more sublime, beautiful, or more consoling than what he has taught us in the resurrection ? 32 Sunday Meditations. flatwal and fievealed Religion. We know God as we know unending space; as we know eternity ; as we know all things without be- ing able to comprehend any thing. It was never de- signed that we should. We have just enough intel- ligence given us to make a living out of this hard earth on which we are destined to exist for a brief space. That such intelligence should be given man that makes him capable of a better life than the brutes beneath him. with qualities that, if developed, will lift him to a higher plane and prepare him for a better and purer existence, is all upon which we can base our religion. By religion I mean that divine Power which can satisfy the want born in us that craves divine protection, without which earth is a hell, and existence a horror. This condition is common to all humanity. Wherever found in the more dense, or in the remotest and most solitary places among the barbarous, or more civilized the man is haunted and oppressed, with the same sense of dependence, and has the same eager longing for help, and utters the same prayer for pro- tection. There is no man walking erect, and possessed Natural and Revealed Religion. 33 of any mind, but feels this want. There is no intellect, however cultivated, but recognizes its existence. This is the condition to-day, and such it has been throughout the ages. All the world's sand-buried records found in Egypt that tell of a high civilization in the dim, forgotten past, has but one clear story, and that is of religion. The tale of empire, the records of great conquests, the history of dynasties, of king-haunted wars, are all blurred and dim, almost beyond comprehension, but deeply engraved on im- perishable stone sculptured and yet bright in paint runs on and on the story of religion. The huge temples were palaces, and the palaces were temples, and the god they worshiped was a god of war and vengeance. Swarming about these sand-covered ruins of these gigantic memories of a mighty past are the naked Arabs, and they have one thing in common with these once illustrious dead, and that is the same natural religion. To the ignorant it is one of fear; to the more cultured, one of despair. The savage hears the awful voice of God in the thunder, sees his vengeance in the violence of the tempest, and tremblingly prays to be protected from the very god to whom he petitions in his prayers. They who are lifted by our little learning above this groveling con- dition may pronounce such belief superstition with- out freeing themselves from the very fear that brought 34 Sunday Meditations. such superstition into existence. The god of science, the great first cause is the most terrible of all. Be- yond human conception, lost in the realms of space at the mere thought of Him, the heart is stilled in terror as the finite mind reels hack upon itself in dazed insanity. This is natural religion, a great realty, a fact that gives our faith its firm foundation. It was the field prepared for the seed our Savior found, and gives us reason for the quick growth that clad the earth with such abundance in His presence, then, as now, and through all time. When asked, then, to prove that once upon a time far back in the centuries, our God, in the form of man, lived and suffered, we say that it is the Christ of to-day who concerns us. His divine teachings through His church have never ceased, and that which won humanity in the beginning wins us now. How strong this was and is, the awful persecu- tions, that sought to stamp out the truth of God tell us, and we are not to be moved by the sneers and scoffing of modern unbelief. Of all the stored information among men, the least available in seeking to gratify the religious want implanted is the logic legalized in what is called the law of evidence. This which comes of human expe- rience, and is so useful in our tribunals when we seek to punish the guilty and protect the innocent, fails to Natural and Revealed Religion. 35 be of any service when applied to religion. It is based on the offspring of evidence we call belief, that is involuntary, and has in it, therefore, no merit. And this evidence runs exclusively on human experi- ence. How utterly futile and impotent is this little machinery when applied to God's works, when our brief experience is lost in eternity, and measures less than a mote in boundless space ! " We can not believe a miracle,'' says this rule of evidence, " until it would be a miracle to disbelieve it." We present a miracle in evidence of our belief and are calmly told to prove our miracle. Of course this is correct in our earthly court, but what be- comes of the wise axiom in a creation where to us all things are miracles ? Lifting my right arm in re- sponse to a thought is as great a miracle to me as lifting one from the dead. The motion of my arm has come to be a common occurrence, and therefore probable ; the return of the dead happened but twice in the centuries, therefore is it so wonderful that it becomes improbable and can not be believed. Nevertheless the mystery remains. No frequent, repetition of the event solves its deep obscurity. The horizon of human knowledge lies close about us. It is almost within reach ; beyond is blank darkness. And the mystery is in all things, as much in the blade of grass at our feet as in the endless star-lit realms of space. 36 Sunday Meditations. And we recognize as divine, the teachings of Christ, as they reach us through His Church, because they come to us with all the warmth and light of the sun. They respond to the want within us for divine guidance and sympathy that is more potent than in the body is the appetite for food, or the demand for breath, or loving impulse, and it can not be set aside, silenced or satisfied by the intellectual processes any more than hunger can be gratified by dreams of food, or the lungs be filled and life made stronger by arti- ficial inflation of the lungs. Ask for proof in accord with the human law of evidence that Christ lives, as well ask a child to prove the existence of its mother. The awakened soul hears the voice of its Savior, and a strange peace follows the call. The belief is not that of our courts, but a longing faith that prays to be made firmer by divine interposition, as the drowning sailor clinging to a spar calls on God for strength. True, one is fed, but not satisfied. We believe while longing to believe, and why not? The teachings are sweet, wholesome and life-giving. To live by such precepts and self-denial is to reach a higher plane, and breathe a purer air and be as near content as our life on earth allows. Why should I put all this aside at the arrogant bidding of a man whose pretense to su- perior learning is a miserable mockery ? Let one, returning from the grave of buried love, Natural and Revealed Religion. 37 when the very heart seems torn out and left with the dead, be asked to abandon the consolation found in the faith that tells us this is not the end, there is a life beyond, and the mourner will realize the bless- ings of Christian belief. It is thus we are made bet- ter and we are made blessed. From the dreary thoughts of an awful universe ; from the cares and ills of life; from the pains and agonizing grief caused by disease and death, we turn to the Church of our Savior to find refuge, peace and that calm content that surpasses in value all the gifts of the world. In its divine results we find its divine origin. No man can read the touching story of our Savior's life on earth, no one can hear His teachings without re- sponding eagerly to both. A vine planted in a dim cellar grows blindly, groping its way to the ray that penetrates a crevice, and, finding the outlet, struggles into light and life. And so the poor soul, all ignorant or lost in the learn- ing of the world, turns longing to the light, that it may live. There is no comfort in the cold teachings of science, no consolation in a godless world. Home- less, helpless, hopeless and half insane, the soul seeks the ray dropped through the crevice for light and life, found as the blessings of our beautiful religion. 38 Sunday Meditations. Cheerfulness a Duty. We begin life with the discovery that all good things are dull, and we are apt to end considering all dull things good. What there is in Christianity as taught hy Christ to make one sad or even serious, is more than a reason- ing being can answer. We are moved to sorrow by the struggles and suffering of one whose brief life was full of trouble, but his teachings are those that should make the heart glad. He brought good-will to men on earth, taught them forgiveness, love, and sympathy, and, that greatest boon of all, he lifted the dark veil of death and showed us that beyond our close, narrow horizon, was life, immortal life. Aside from this, however, there is no merit that we can discover in being melancholy. On the con- trary, a grave man is simply endured, while a sorrow- ful man is pitied, a morose character is detested. Xo one thinks it necessary to look upon such a condition as meritorious. Why then should we believe that we are commending ourselves to our Maker by an O ,/ exhibit of solemnity? And yet intense solemnity is about the only religion in a majority of mankind. A few, at long intervals, compromise upon a smirk Cheerfulness a Duty. 39 that is only skin deep in feeling, and has in it more conceit than a sense of humor, the last being guarded against as a deadly sin. They treat their God as if he were on the watch to catch one of his saints in a broad grin, indicative of that broad way down to eternal punishment, when the grin is impossible. And yet nature has made this sense of humor a distinctive mark of humanity. Man is the only ani- mal that laughs. What can be more beautiful, and beautiful in its innocence, than the merry laugh of children, unto whom Christ compared the kingdom of heaven ? Or the hearty bursts of early youth, full of hope and health ? The man or woman who can not laugh is to be feared. Such a creation is but half made up a monster seeking to possess what he or she can not enjoy. The sense of humor is to hu- manity what light is to earth, and light is not the sense of seeing it is life. We only share in every emotion the beneficial results of some law that ex- tends to all creatures. The man, then, who would divest himself of the healthful influences of humor, would be as wise as he who would destroy his sight lest the enjoyment of light might prove sinful. His sight would be gone, but the light remains. This dark and dreary view of religion is a rem- nant of the superstitious fear that haunted poor hu- manity before the coming of Christ. The God of 40 Sunday Meditations. the Jews, as told in those naked chronicles of a cruel race, is a God of vengeance. His patriarchs and propjiets were famous, and should be infamous for crimes their God sanctioned. He was the God of war, pestilence, and famine. The little life of his followers was bounded by misery, with no beautiful hereafter to alleviate their suffering. They were not taught to love their God, but commanded to love God and fear him the last only being possible. Are we commanded to love Christ is the child com- manded to love its mother or the mother the help- less little creature that is born of her body, but never from her heart ? Does one need any command to love the dear, helpless invalid dependent upon one's care? To claim such feeling as a merit is in itself the tangled end of a confusing superstition. The heathen mythology, as it is called, wherein poets and priests created deities out of their passions, was of the same sort. The speculations of its phi- losophers were like rockets shot np into the night, that to the ignorant seemed to reach the stars. They exploded only to leave the night darker than before. But what was poetry to the cultured was superstition to the masses, and only one remove in its touches of humanity from the dark and dreary belief of the Jews. How gladly we turn from all this murky night Cheerfulness a Duty. 41 of ignorance and terror to the beautiful dawn of life that came in with Christ. While His life was brief and full of sorrow, there is nothing in His teachings or example to encourage the puritanical sourness so generally mistaken for religion. Because life here- after is made to appear beautiful, it does not detract from the healthy sweetness of this life. There is no reason for the belief that Christ was of a sorrowful temperament. They who tell the story of his life are BO filled with memories of his miracles, teachings, tragic death, and resurrection, that they give no space to aught disconnected from what they considered of such vital importance. But a close study of their testament leaves no impression upon the unprejudiced mind that he was a stern man. The popular mind in this respect gets its impression from the sad, weak face painted by the old Italian masters. ISTor is it likely that lie differed from humanity in His manner or ways beyond what His mission de- manded. That His first miracle was wrought at a wedding feslivity, and was done in aid of the enjoy- ment the poor people sought to further beyond their means, is in proof of what we assert. Let any one read the story as told, and divesting one's mind of the glamor of divinity that for our sake Christ re- nounced, being man among men, and see how 4 42 Sunday Meditations. sweetly the character comes out from the dim records left in this respect so obscure. Here is the story : "And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee. And both Jesus and His disciples were called to the marriage. And when they wanted wine the mother of Jesus saith unto him: They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her: Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. The mother saith unto the servants : Whatsoever He saith unto you do it. And there were set there six water pots of stone, after the manner of purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them : Fill the water pots with water. And they filled them to the brim. And He saith unto them : Draw out now and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bore it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine and knew not whence it was (but the servants which drew the water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom and saith unto him: Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and when men have drank, then that which is worse ; but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth of His glory, and His disciples believed in Him." That this miracle of the wine was wrought from Cheerfulness a Duty. 43 no desire to proclaim His divine power is evident. At the marriage feast to which He and His humble followers were invited the poor women, mortified at the lack of refreshments, moved His pity; and what meant His divine interference in this light is shown by his reply to His mother, " Mine hour is not yet come;" that was the hour in which His divine au- thority was to be tested by His miracles. And from the conversation and the confidence in which she re- gards His effort, it is evident that He had imparted to His mother the fact of His divine mission before He gave it to the world. To have been a welcome guest at this feast He could not have been the austere, unhappy man, such as His many misguided followers and imitators are to-day. What that feast was the ruler of it tells us when he refers to the practice of giving the good wine first, that, under its stimulating influence, the bad may pass unnoticed. It must have been a merry occasion ; and as to that enjoyment Christ has so materially contributed, it is not likely Tie dampened the festivities by a cold, forbidding manner. The tendency to distort through the uncultured imagination of the multitude has well nigh deprived us of a knowledge of Christ. One, in reading the gospel, has to clear away centuries of exaggeration and error. The love that is part of adoration is soon 44 Sunday Meditations. lost in awe and fear. We are not willing to accept Christ as Tie came to us. We work His manger into a cradle of gold, and we banish from our minds as blasphemy the fact that He was reared a mechanic. It is shocking to think that He was a guest at a wed- ding festivity and enjoyed the feast as other young men. "Ah ! " says the Rev. Chadband with a snuffle, "He sought to give the sanction of His divine pres- ence to the holy sacrament of matrimony." Let the Rev. Chadband study the Hebrew law regulating marriages of that day, and he will see what a holy sacrament our Savior is said to have sanctioned. No, He went to the feast as He walked the earth, clad in His humanity, and doubtless found in its in- nocent enjoyment a pleasant rest from the mystery of His mission and the dark forebodings of His own fate. He grew in grace and stature, and He sought to win His brother men to His side by reason and per- suasion, and men marveled at His words of wisdom, that were as sweet as they were truthful, and He who brought such great joy to men could not Himself have been cold, austere and forbidding. The Courage that Suffers. 45 The Courage that Suffers. With all the humanity, the charity, the loving forgiveness, and good will for man shown in the mis- sion of Christ, one is struck with the store placed on courage. Non-resistance based on courage makes of that high quality its truest and purest test. To pa- tiently submit to wrong, insult, and pain, is to be brave without the aid that comes from resistance, however hopeless. No one knows this better than the officer who has seen actual service. There is no duty more trying than to hold a reserve under fire. Men who will go into a charge with a dash, or receive one with coolness when fighting, falter before the danger that can not be resisted. Not the least trying part of the ordeal is the sense of degradation that accompanies non-resistance. No one questions in the abstract that to .submit calls for a higher courage than resistance ; but the sufferer asks of himself: Who and what am I that I should bo trampled upon ? It is hard to realize that Christ appealed to the divinity of our nature from that brutal part which is based on might, and not on true courage. To got at the true meaning of this, one O C? O / must occupy a more elevated plane than that of poor '46 Sunday Meditations. material humanity. Once enabled to look down upon earth, how monstrous and grotesque are our quarrels! Our brief existence is one long struggle with pain, trouble, sorrow, and full of the crudest disappoint- ments. Why should we seek to add to these afflic- tions by quarrels, persecutions, and abuse of each other? Frail specters of a brief existence, why wantonly shorten that existence ? Passions of a wrathful, aggressive sort are therefore insane and brutal. To look at them from this Christian light, and act upon such knowledge, demand the highest in- telligence and the purest courage. To these Christ appealed in his teaching of non-resistance. We must not delude ourselves from these facts, that a Christian life is here or hereafter one of peace. We are promised a re-existence hereafter. How that life is maintained, at what cost it was gained, and how held, are questions that come to us; for evil did not begin with this life, nor does it end here. Through all the teachings of Christ, through all the blind experience of humanity, we are taught that evil is immortal. A vast shadow resting upon the edge of this life swings out, dark and foreboding, through all space and all eternity. It is evil, and it wars forever with good, as good with evil, and it seems to us as if the one immutable law of our na- ture is war. The dread chills the heart that the evil The Courage that Suffers. 47 nearly equals the good in power. Of a surety so far as this life goes, the evil is in the ascendant. Will it continue beyond the grave ? One might comfort himself with the thought that our brief experience on earth, between the cradle and the grave, is so unsatisfactory that we can not tell, can form no idea of what our mortal existence is to be hereafter. It is as if one born in the begin- ning of winter were to mature and die as the winter ends, without knowledge of the spring, summer, and autumn that follow. But revelations give us no such comfort. In them evil is immortal and war eternal. That to the virtuous a heaven is promised, that the children of men who have accepted the faith and fought the good fight shall find a home with Christ, where the wicked cease to trouble and the weary are at rest, is true, but it is the safety afforded helpless women and children of a great army, where the com- batants only are exposed. What is this horrible, ghastly shadow that haunts our life, and is never from our thought? That it is not of this world alone we all know, as earth carries daylight in the heart of night, and that but a little way beyond our little circle sun, moon, stars, all dis- appear in an eternal blackness, later science teaches us ; and how much of God's moral light, that like the physical seems to prevade all space, is really lim- 48 Sunday Meditations. ited, who can say ? Without being spoken in words, the fear haunts the holy writing from end to end. When Christ says to Peter, " Upon this rock I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," He speaks exultingly, as if the fortress had at last been found against which the powers of evil could not prevail. What are these gates of hell that seem to defy the son of God ? Whatever they may be, courage is the one great quality most dwelt upon, as most necessary to the Christian. And how cairn and brave through all his perils was our Savior ! lie alone felt and realized the trial in store for him. His simple, ignorant followers, regarding him as possessed of supernatural powers, saw nothing in their future to create alarm. lie fore- saw, and looking beyond this life into that eternal hereafter, we can not tell what he saw to so cast him down that he prayed to be spared the sacrifice. This depression came upon him, according to St. Matthew : " At that time Jesus said to his disciples: You know that after two days shall be the pasch, and the .son of man shall be delivered up to be crucified. Then were gathered together the chief priests and ancients of the people into the court of tlie high priest, who was called Caiaphas; and they consulted together, that by subtlety they might apprehend The Courage that Suffers. 49 Jesus and put Him to death. But they said: Not on the festival day, lest perhaps there should be a tu- mult among the people. And when Jesus was in Bethania, in the house of Simon the leper, there came to him a woman bearing an alabaster box of precious ointment, and poured it on His head as He was at the table. And the disciples, seeing it, had indignation, saying : To what purpose is this waste ; for this might have been sold for much and given to the poor? And Jesus knowing it, said to them : Why do you trouble this woman, for she hath wrought a good work upon me ? For the poor you have always with you ; but me you have not always. For she, in pouring this ointment upon my body hath done it for my burial." Of all the tragic utterances ever recorded there is not one like this: "For she, in pouring this oint- ment upon my body, hath done it for my burial." At that feast of unsuspecting friends and fol- lowers, the ghastly phantom of death sits unseen by all save the son of God, whose body is being already anointed for the burial. A little while longer and these simple believers, these fisherman and tent- makers who have left their humble callings to follow Christ, will have the poor with them, but not their God and prophet. They will look no more upon that face whose quiet courage gave them confidence, as his sweet voice gave them comfort. Scattered, per- 50 Sunday Meditations. secuted, driven like beasts from the haunts of man, putting the mark of death upon all they baptized in the new faith, they will each find his sad end wide apart from the others, and looking from earth to the sky into which he disappeared, and see the sun rise and set, and the stars take in eternal silence their glittering way, but no Savior. There will be left to them, as to the children of men for all ages to come, only the memory of His sweet words, the high future of His heavenly promise. He taught them the wis- dom of God, He bequeathed them the courage of martyrs. They were to learn that as the children of earth come into life through the throes of death, and die from insiduous disease or slow decay, so all good is born of violence, and is lost through fraud. So long as religion meant life hereafter, that antago- nized the comforts and luxuries here, it was met with a deadly resistance. Since it lias accommodated it- self to the enjoyment of the good things of earth, peace reigns among men. We never weary of reading and meditating upon the briefly but beautifully told story of that feast where the woman annointed the head of our Savior. His mission was drawing to a close. Alreadv His O v deadly enemies, the high priests and the ancients of the people, were gathering about Him to compass His death. He sat at the feast loved and worshiped, The Courage that Suffers. 51 and all about Him seemed peace and pleasantness. But after the precious ointment was poured upon His sacred head, under our zealous remonstrance, He revealed the dark forebodings He had concealed. He says sadly and with such true force in its sim- plicity : " For she, in pouring this ointment upon my body, hath done it for my burial. " The days of brutal abuse, the horrible persecution and the horrible death, all were gone, and the poor lifeless remains alone were being anointed. To the son of God came the same strange warning that often visits the children of men. As the great Ger- man poet has said : " There is no dcnibt that there exists such voices, Yet I would not call them Voices of warning, that announce to us Only the inevitable. As the sun, Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image In the atmosphere ; so often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow." And what a morrow broke on humanity ! After the ages of chaos and night, what a calm, sweet dawn came to us of earth ! 52 Sunday Meditations. The Giving of films. "Take heed that you do not your alms before men to be seen of them ; otherwise you have no re- ward of your Father who is in heaven. " Therefore when thou doest thine alms do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you they have their reward. " But when thou doest alms let not the left hand know what thy right hand doeth : " That thy alms may be in secret and thy Father, who seeth in secret Himself, shall reward thee openly. "And when thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. Verily I suy unto you they have their reward. "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." What a sweet, subtle knowledge of our nature and its needs is found in the above passages, where The G-iving of Alms. 53 charity and prayer are classed together and so beau- tifully defined. That which is done for a reward must be satisfied with the reward. The man who, through an exhibit of his piety, strives to win the admiration of his fellow men, must be content with that compensation. The true Christian, who seeks the approbation of Christ through a purification of himself, will find his reward in the harmonizing and improved health of his own nature. Both charity and prayer are for the benefit of the one who gives and petitions. Prayer is but an- other name for confession, that follows a recognition of our own sins from which we seek to cleanse our- selves ; while charity has little good beyond the de- velopment of all that is kind and generous in our own nature. The centuries have but little changed our na- ture. The Jews had, as we have, the men who sound trumpets over their giving, and standing in public places, pour out their prayers for the ears of men and not the heart of Christ. Doubtlessly the Hebrews were besotted then, as we are now, with the thought that charity was meant almost exclusively to benefit the recipients and not the giver. They, too, proba- bly, had their organized charities, orphan asylums, homes for aged poor, and hospitals for the penniless sick. And these fat, substantial citizens, who by 54 Sunday Meditations. close dealings and hard bargains had accumulated wealth, gave pennies from hoarded thousands to or- ganized charities, and thought thereby to have pur- chased a peace with their Creator. How our Savior must have amazed that people, of all mankind the most avaricious and hard, by these strange doctrines! What a struggle he had to obtain a hearing and secure any consideration. But that he spoke to the poor, and that his wise, kind words went to their hearts, where they were treas- ured, his revelations would have been lost to hu- manity. It is well for us that his advent was in advance of an enlightened press. How the leading journals of Jerusalem would have sneered at, ridiculed and reviled the poor carpenter and his ignorant follow- ers! The subsidized organs of a commercial people would have seen in him only a dangerous communist or an insane fanatic, making an attack on the vecy foundations of social organization. The Moses and Sons, Aaron and Brother, Rothschilds, and other lead- ing citizens, did not differ in any respect from the same class of to-day. "We, too, have our Christian statesman, whose charity is accompanied with trum- pets, and who gives God good advice in a loud voice in public places. Then, as now, the charity was reserved to the The Giving of Alms. 55 deserving poor. The old delusion exists to-day that the sole purpose of chanty is to help the poor, as that prayer is a cunningly devised process through which to conciliate God. We can not help the needy. Were all the accumulated property of the world thrown into a common heap and divided equally, it would not be many days before the strong and cunning would leave the improvident and weak to suffer. " The poor ye have always," said Christ ; and so long as we have wicked, selfish men, weak men must suffer. And how utterly hopeless we-make the task of relief when we restrict our efforts to the deserving poor, and how little of Christ is there in the restriction. When Christ bade us administer to the sick, He did not say the deserving sick ; nor when we are bid to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, does He qualify by saying the deserving hungry and the deserving naked. We know that the wicked stomach and the sinful back suffered as keenly as the righteous stom- ach and back, and both sorts were His children. De- serving people indeed ! His beautiful life was passed amid the poor and sinful. He was the associate and friend of vicious men and fallen women, and died at last between two thieves who were not deserving 1 in O the eyes of men, yet lie carried the poor wretches with Him into heaven. The i>Teat heart went out to 56 Sunday Meditations. all the children of men, and it teaches us that true charity is a charity to ourselves, an elevating, healthy impulse, and not a calculation. Does one ever reflect how little we can do for the poor? The difference between wealth and pov- erty are most imaginary. The beggar in his rags has about as much happiness as the millionaire in his fine linen. Happiness is not in the linen nor the lack of it in the rags. Pain and privation are posi- tive evils, but pain comes to the rich as well as the poor, while hunger" and nakedness do not call for much, and are of small account, if their relief were all when placed to our account with God. Let us build an orphan asylum of the stoutest walls, and beautify it with all that art can give, and we can not replace a mother's love, that makes in its loss the orphan. It is the giving that makes the good ; and the poor sister of charity, half mother and half angel, who gives all she has to the poor and sick, little dreams in her self-sacrificing privation that she is getting a reward here that she prays for in the hereafter. Ah ! God lift us from the hell of self-torture this sense of sin, this loss of self-respect and give us content with ourselves, and the heaven of the hereafter is the heaven of to-day. The lesson of charity taught by Christ has been The Giving of Alms. 57 taken up from time to time through the ages, and repeated mostly by women to the human family. 'Well we remember when a child walking unawares with Christ and being taught that lesson by one whose memory is watered with tears, although she died many years since, after eighty-four years of goodness on earth. It lias been indeed since the death that a clearer sight of her sacred life has been given, for the moistened clay that restored sight to the blind man, told of by the chroniclers of Christ, is the clay of the grave moistened with tears, when we see too late all that we have lost. It was one of the coldest days of midwinter, when on her way along the freezing street, this mother encountered a thinly clad, shivering woman, evidently very poor, and evidently, alas, very de- graded. Her thin, ragged gown was in tatters, and her face bore all the brutal marks of intoxicating drink. But she was suffering; how she did shiver in the bitter, freezing wind, and as we stopped she gave such a wistful, hungry look out of her inflamed eyes, as a suffering beast would. The woman ap- pealed to looked anxiously up and down the street; no one w r as near, and, hurriedly taking the warm shawl from her shoulders, she wrapped it about those of the sufferer, and then hurried on. 58 tiunttay Meditations. Of course, she knew that the shawl would bo pawned for liquor, but the impulse had its reward in the charity given to her own heart hungering for good works, and in the lesson that survives to-day as vividly as when it was given. The Poor in Spirit. 59 The POOF in Spirit. "And seeing the multitude He went up into a mountain, and when He was set His disciples came unto Him, and He opened his mouth, and taught them, saying : " ' Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' ' These, according to St. Matthew, are the first recorded words of Christ, and how pregnant of meaning and how beautiful of utterance they are. The multitude followed him to the mountain. It was a multitude made up of the poor and op- pressed. Probably in all that multitude there was not one even well to do in the world's goods. The rich and well-born of that day, as of this, did not seek Christ, nor were they sought for by Him. He had said in the synagogue on the Sabbath day: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are bruised." 60 Sunday Meditations. Blessed words, that after all the centuries come to us now as fresh as when uttered. "As