UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 E3M 37S 
 
 fm) 
 
 iiiiir 
 
 ft=.: 
 
 t 
 

 
 
'~K\rj\ i^Ai rtt 
 
WORD S 
 
 THE WORKERS; 
 
 A SERIES OF LECTURES TO WORKINGMEN, 
 MECHANICS, AND APPRENTICES. 
 
 WILLIAM D. HALEY, 
 n 
 
 PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF ALTON, ILLINOIS. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 
 
 111 Washington Street. 
 1855. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 
 
 Crosby, Nichols, and Compant, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 MEICALF AND COMPANT, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
*43 
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 The following pages were written for work- 
 ers who wish for words of encouragement 
 and hope to strengthen them in their toil ; I 
 wish to forestall the critics, therefore, by say- 
 ing to them, " Gentlemen, these pages are not 
 for you." In the midst of many pressing 
 cares, I have endeavored to speak to an emer- 
 gency; and while I am sensible of the great 
 defects of my work, I permit my words to go 
 forth, because I believe I have spoken truth 
 which may be of benefit to a larger number 
 of the w^orkers than I can personally reach. 
 
 I am not unaware that the problem, " What 
 may best be done by Christianity for the 
 working classes?" may receive various solu- 
 
 i^2?0a'?l 
 
 
IV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tions, according to the surroundings of those 
 who attempt to explain it, and I would offer 
 my voice to the thinkers with all due humility ; 
 but it has seemed to me best to speak to the 
 workers, rather than to speculate about them. 
 
 Much of what follows borrows its com- 
 plexion from local circumstances ; but the 
 main difficulties and needs of life are the 
 same all over the world ; and so I have pre- 
 ferred to allow the Lectures to retain their 
 original form, save the addition of mottoes. 
 
 A difference of opinion may exist as to the 
 propriety of introducing the topics of the Lec- 
 tures into the pulpit on Sunday. I have pur- 
 sued this course, because I believe that a por- 
 tion of each Sabbath might be more profitably 
 devoted to subjects of the kind here presented, 
 than to abstruse philosophical speculation and 
 dry dogmatizing. JMoreover, in the West, 
 Sunday is the only day upon which the 
 Christian moralist may hope for a hearing 
 from those whose days and nights are full of 
 labor. Here the world is all busily engaged 
 in preparing to live ; the elements are yet 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 chaotic; and upon the faithfulness of the 
 clergy to the actual wants of society must 
 depend the future of the grand civilization 
 which is destined to exist upon either bank of 
 the Mississippi. Seeing this, shall we not be 
 justified in departing from accustomed forms, 
 and in speaking earnest words, and instilling 
 right principles, " in season and out of season" ? 
 Nay, shall we not be grossly culpable if we 
 sacrifice these great interests to the exter- 
 nalities and arbitrary customs of professional 
 etiquette and clerical dignity? Is not human- 
 ity worth more than an abstract idea, or an 
 established custom? These are questions 
 which every man must settle for himself. 
 I have been governed by my own convic- 
 tions of duty, and do not presume to dictate 
 to others what shall be their decision. 
 
 The fact is undeniable, however, that, while 
 Christianity is addressed to all classes, and has 
 a supply for all wants, thousands of toiling 
 men live in our cities, build our wharves, 
 navigate our ships, and erect our dwellings, 
 and never hear of Christian principle or Chris- 
 
Vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tian truth. The Gospel fails in its mission, 
 not for want of power, but for want of appli- 
 cation. Sectaries quarrel over the "respect- 
 able" members of community, and contest 
 for every new-comer with a desperation which 
 the poorer classes very naturally ascribe to 
 the lack of Divine strength on the part of 
 Christianity, and see in it proof of the de- 
 pendence and subordination of religion to 
 Mammon. It necessarily follows, that they 
 learn to neglect the Christianity which neg- 
 lects them, and so there grows up an antago- 
 nism which results in Sabbath desecration, 
 and general extravagance and dissipation. 
 I know that much of the existing state of 
 things is caused by fallacious reasoning and 
 imperfect logic on the part of the workers ; but 
 we have to deal with existing facts, not with 
 the philosophy of them, and these tell us in 
 unmistakable language, that, without our 
 works first demonstrate the earnestness of our 
 words, our sermons and our exhortations will 
 not reach the hearts of the working classes. 
 Much, indeed, of \he present condition of 
 
INTRODUCTION. VU 
 
 things is a necessary attendant upon the for- 
 mative condition of society : our churches are 
 not independent, and cannot be for many years 
 to come. This is a great evil; and yet, like 
 all seeming evils, patience will better accom- 
 plish its cure than the commission of a wrong. 
 Bound up with the affections, and based upon 
 the personal convictions of the people, the 
 Church of Christ in America will yet become 
 more gloriously diffused and permanent than 
 any temporarily endowed and state-supported 
 extern alism of older countries. There is a work 
 to be done for God and Christ and human 
 life upon this continent, and pure hearts and 
 earnest souls, and hands too " dignified " to 
 be limited to customs and worldly dictation, 
 must perform it. There is something nobler 
 for the men of this generation than the war- 
 fare of dogmatisms and the triumphs of 
 cliques. Out under the broad sky of Chris- 
 tian love, — in the free air of Pauline liberty, 
 — where the consciousness of rectitude braces 
 the nerves, and a reverent and filial trust in 
 the All- Good makes the soul strong with the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 might of the " noble army of martyrs," — the 
 sickles of the earnest workers ring against 
 the whitening grain. " Let us arise and join 
 them." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 Pago 
 The Pulpit and the Workers. — Dignity of Labor. — 
 "Fast Young Men."— The Abuse of Labor. — Labor 
 the Sacrament of Life. — The Rehitions of Labor and 
 the Professions. — The Unity of Labor. — The Relations 
 of Labor and the Pine Arts. — Immortality of Labor 
 and Art 1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Mutual Relations of Labor and Capital. — Indebtedness 
 of Labor to Capital. — The Mercantile Library and 
 "Washington Institute of St. Louis. — Abuse of Capi- 
 tal. — Thomas Puller. — Unity of the Mission of Labor 
 and Capital. — Indebtedness of Capital to Labor. — 
 Opportunities for becoming Capitalists open to the 
 Workers. — Want of Forethought. — Mutual Benefit 
 
CONTEXTS. 
 
 Societies and Savings Banks. — Intemperance and Ex- 
 travagance tlie Worker's Enemies. — True Temper- 
 ance. — Bank Failures. — Necessity for Faith in Hu- 
 man Integrity 26 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 Self-Education. — " Self-made Men." — Nero andhis Gold- 
 en House. — "What is Education 1 — What has been 
 done by Men of our own Times. — Hugh Miller, the 
 Geologist. — Elihu Burritt, the Linguist. — Hiram Pow- 
 ers, the Sculptor. — Horace Greeley, the Journalist. — 
 Aids to Self-Education. — Literature. — The Church 
 and the Pulpit. — Sunday. — Duty of Society. . . 54 
 
 L-ECTUEE IV. 
 
 Reading and Eecreation, or Helps to Learning and Hints 
 for Living. — A Freshman in the Pursuit of Knowledge 
 under Difficulties. — True Scholarship. — Directions for 
 Useful Eeading. — Method. — Fallacies about Study. — 
 Amount of Time needed for Study. — Genius. — Kind 
 of Eeading most useful. — Procuring Books. — Eead- 
 ins: Clubs. — Eecreation 78 
 
 LECTUEE Y. 
 
 On Character; addressed to Young Men. — The Claims 
 of the Young Men upon the Pulpit. — Importance of 
 the Subject. — Destiny of our Country. — Standards of 
 Character. — Poole the Pugilist. — Formation of Char- 
 acter. — Elements of Character. — Individualism.— 
 Partyism. — Tnie Manliness. —Profanity and Dissipa- 
 tion. — Immortality of Character 100 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 An Appeal to the Workers. — The Adaptedness of Re- 
 ligion to bless a "Working Life. — Religion and Theolo- 
 gy not the same Thing. — Need of Mental Culture. — 
 Education a Duty. — An Appeal to Society. — An Ap- 
 peal to Christianity 127 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. ITS RELATION, TO THE 
 
 PROFESSIONS AND THE FINE ARTS. 
 
 " Commit thy works unto the Lord." — Prov. xvi. 3. 
 
 I HAVE placed this passage of Scripture at 
 the head of my first Lecture because it breathes 
 the thought which I would have you keep 
 always before you, in the consideration of the 
 topics of this course of Lectures, — that labor 
 — the toil of the sinews and of the brain — is 
 not a detached necessity, for the ministration 
 to our physical wants, but part of the grand 
 allotment of discipline, out of which our spir- 
 itual characters are to grow ; that labor is 
 not merely a drudgery, but, faithfully per- 
 formed, returns a reward beyond the price 
 of its service, in its reflective effects upon our 
 own spirits ; that toil is neither an injury. 
 
2 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 nor a disgrace, but that every worker is per- 
 forming a holy task in the lowliest toil, if he 
 performs his task in the right spirit, and with 
 the true aim. This spirit and this object I 
 shall have much to say about before finally 
 leaving the subject ; indeed, I may frankly 
 say to you, that over and above the belief 
 that I may speak some practical and sober 
 words which may be of service, I am prompt- 
 ed to speak to you, as a class of society, by 
 the belief that false views of labor and arti- 
 ficial objections to honest toil lie at the bot- 
 tom of most of our great social problems, and 
 so far forth are legitimately within the sphere 
 of the thinker and the religious workman. 
 
 Workingmen — the men who toil for daily 
 wages, and literally eat their bread in the 
 sweat of their brow — have, I fear, had too 
 little assistance from the pulpit. They have 
 been left to their toil and their temptations, 
 while theologians have struggled for specu- 
 lative triumphs, and ecclesiastical organiza- 
 tions have endeavored to attach to themselves 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOK. 6 
 
 the wealth and influence of the country. And 
 there is at least a partial palliation for this, 
 in the fact that in our land, especially in this 
 Western portion of it, very few religious soci- 
 eties can regard themselves as in a permanent 
 position. We have no State Church, — and 
 thank God for it I for we escape the oppres- 
 sions and corruptions which grow out of the 
 union of religious and compulsory taxation, 
 — and under our voluntary system, some gen- 
 erations must pass before our churches can 
 be in a position of independence. I acknowl- 
 edge it frankly, religion is dependent upon 
 wealth in this country. But that is not equiv- 
 alent to saying that religion need become ser- 
 vile, or that the clergy are necessarily worship- 
 pers of the rich and neglectful of the less pros- 
 perous. It does involve the statement, how- 
 ever, that, in an early stage of religious effort, 
 the absolute necessity for gaining sufficient 
 wealth to base the churches on a firm founda- 
 tion will lead to the danger of overlooking 
 classes of society which need the co-operation 
 of the pulpit and the educating and hallow- 
 ing influences of Christ's Gospel. 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 Then, again, seeing the necessity for pecu- 
 niary means manifested by the churches in 
 the sale and rental of pews, some per- 
 sons, especially those who are not able to 
 acquire much wealth by their labor, are very 
 apt to regard all religion, and everything 
 emanating from the pulpit, as savoring of 
 Mammon. They do not go to church, be- 
 cause they suppose fine clothing, white-kid 
 gloves, and foppery in general, to be pre- 
 requisites for admission there : they regard 
 preaching too often as a luxury, which the 
 capitalist, the physician, the lawyer, and per- 
 haps the master-mechanic, may indulge in, 
 because they can afford to pay for it ; but for 
 them, Sunday and Idleness are synonymes, 
 and they cherish an antagonism against the 
 pulpit, which must necessarily make its influ- 
 ence in their favor very slight indeed. Per- 
 haps you will say that this state of things 
 ought not to be ; and I agi'ee with you : but 
 it does exist ; and something must be done 
 to obviate it, or the great truths of life re- 
 vealed in the Gospel of Christ will prove 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. *' 
 
 powerless and ineffectual to supply the world's 
 pressing need. 
 
 And what can be done, but the abandon- 
 ment on the part of the pulpit of any scru- 
 ples of professional etiquette, — the doffing, 
 if need be, of the white cravat, and the fore- 
 going of scholastic precision and nicety of 
 expression, — the sacrifice of all attempts at 
 merely literary elegance, and a descent to the 
 realities and commonplace experiences of the 
 workshop, and the mill, and the foundery ? 
 Christ's revelation is addressed as much to 
 men of toil, with the oil and rust of the ma- 
 chine-shop, or the dust of the mill, permeating 
 their clothing and soiling their skin, as to 
 dilettanti dwellers in Fifth-Avenue palaces, 
 who have been raised above the sphere of the 
 producer by lucky speculations in worthless 
 patent-medicines, or unprincipled frauds, com- 
 mencing with "woolly horses" and ending 
 with Crystal Palaces and pernicious and 
 brazen-faced Biographies. 
 
 Labor is of God's appointment ; and there- 
 fore, we must think, wisely and benevolently 
 
6 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 ordained. I know that some persons regard 
 its muscular demands as the result of sin and 
 curse ; but I know, also, that in the Bible, 
 which you and I can read for ourselves, it is 
 said of the first man, that his Maker placed 
 him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to 
 keep it. So that it would seem to have the 
 sanction of Scripture, when we say that labor 
 is an ordinance of God for our highest and 
 best welfare. Indeed, if we needed addi- 
 tional proof of the fitness and necessity of 
 labor, the experience of every workingman 
 could furnish it. Toil is imposed upon us 
 not less by our spiritual than by our physical 
 necessities. A lazy man is at once the most 
 despicable and the most miserable of objects ; 
 and a man willing to labor, and without occu- 
 pation, is the most unhappy of mortals. That 
 which is thus demanded by our existence, out 
 of which all strength, and all beauty, and all 
 true life, are developed, must be of God ; and 
 that which is of God is holy ; and so, rightly 
 viewed, every muscular effort will be a relig- 
 ious service,^ and every workshop a religious 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 7 
 
 temple. You cannot, if you would, separate 
 the interests of the world from your toil ; you 
 cannot labor without result ; you do not strike 
 a blow on the anvil, or erect a block of stone 
 to its place in a new building, without relig- 
 ious significance and religious result. We 
 cannot separate our individual interests from 
 the progress of the race ; nor can we labor, 
 even though our toil be dictated by our desire 
 to shun poverty, without contributing out of 
 our muscular or mental exertion to some pur- 
 pose of beauty, or of supply, which the over- 
 ruling Providence will harmonize into a grand 
 mosaic of human blessing. 
 
 Labor is honorable, for it is identified with 
 our wants and their supply, with our health 
 and enjoyment, and has a power over the 
 spirit in working off the excess of animal 
 demand, and so clears the breast of perilous 
 stuff. Labor is blessed, for it is ordained of 
 God, and bound up with all beauty and all 
 growth and vital action. God himself, the 
 Master Workman of the universe, hallows it 
 in his superintendence of his most wonderful 
 
8 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 mechanism for the blessing of his children ; 
 and his mechanical skill may be recognized in 
 every prau'ie-flower and in every snow-flake, 
 and his exertions seen when the forces of na- 
 ture are m'ged through the channels of vege- 
 table life, and the bare forests and brown grass 
 shoot forth afresh their foliage, and don again 
 their mantle of living hues ; when the ice- 
 bound streams, impelled by some mysterious 
 agency which we call gravitation, burst their 
 icy barriers, and, obeying a common tendency, 
 flow into a common ocean. It is customary 
 to speak of God as a Creator in the past ; 
 but who thinks worthily of what God's activity 
 and energy are daily accomplishing ? Who 
 recognizes in the mechanical arrangement of 
 the solar system, and the grouping of the 
 clouds, the lessons which might be learned of 
 the dignity of labor, and the dependence of 
 the beautiful upon toil and exertion ? From 
 the necessity of things, labor is universal. 
 We cannot escape it if we would ; and when 
 we think we have risen above it, we may find 
 it harder work to " kill time " than it was to 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 9 
 
 be busy about our mechanical or mercantile 
 employments. Look at " Young America " 
 for proof of this ; glance for a moment at that 
 pitiable class who, in sad irony, are called " fast 
 young men." (I would not have you look 
 longer than a moment, lest you should be led 
 to embrace the theory which considers man 
 as the result of vegetable life, and depicts his 
 regular development, as first mushroom, then 
 muscle, then fish, then bird, then ape, and 
 last, man.) But look in soberness at this 
 lamentable class of human creatures, whose 
 highest ambition is to drive a nobler animal 
 than themselves ; to talk big-sounding words ; 
 brawl in bar-rooms ; and die without a nobler 
 trait of character than the horses and dogs 
 which they abuse. What is the secret of the 
 abundance of this class of young men in 
 our large cities ? Why is it, that the sons of 
 grave and respectable votaries and possessors 
 of wealth become thus de-humanized ? Why 
 is it, that when our old men have toiled, and 
 are toiling, at honest occupations, their sons 
 affect to look with contempt upon a hard 
 
10 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 hand or a working-jacket? Why is it that 
 the wives and daughters of retired mouse-trap 
 makers affect to live in such style as is only 
 pitiable in the European descendants from the 
 feudal robbers who bore a red hand upon 
 their escutcheons as a token of their nobility ? 
 Is not the difficulty to be solved by the fact 
 that labor has been degraded from its proper 
 position in this most republican country ? 
 that it has been made a badge of disgrace 
 instead of a credential of honor ? Do you not 
 think that the young men of whom I have 
 spoken would be vastly more happy, and in- 
 finitely more respectable, if they lived for some 
 purpose of usefulness ? And would they not 
 do so, if it was in the world's esteem (I mean 
 the fashionable world) more respectable to be 
 an honest laborer than a swaggering idler ? 
 O, depend upon it, there was wisdom in that 
 Jewish proverb, touching the propriety of an 
 early induction into habits of industry : " He 
 who does not teach his son a trade, teaches 
 him to steal." 
 
 I know there is such a thing as excessive 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. U 
 
 toil ; an abuse of labor ; a continuance of ex- 
 treme application which destroys both body 
 and spirit. And whether this demand comes 
 from cupidity or ambition, from ourselves or 
 from others, it is wrong. Society has no right 
 to compel men, who work^ faithfully, to labor 
 so intensely for food and raiment and shelter 
 that the mind and heart must go naked and 
 famishing. Of the two, however, the life of 
 extreme toil is preferable to that of those who 
 rise in the morning with nothing to do, and re- 
 tire at night with the consciousness of having 
 accomplished it. But the extremes are both 
 wrong, and are working fearful injury to the 
 interests of society, undermining religion and 
 sapping our national and republican integrity. 
 Labor is neither a disgrace nor a curse. It 
 is the sacrament of life for our spiritual bene- 
 diction. We may partake of it lovingly, and 
 reap its more than golden reward, in th^ quick 
 pulsations of purity and rectitude which it will 
 urge through our spiritual life ; or endure it 
 complainingly, and feel its reasonable demands 
 to be a heavier yf^k^ than we can bear ; but 
 
12 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 partake of it we must, or the currents of our 
 life will flag, and forget to throb with their 
 healthful and strengthening influences. 
 
 But perhaps you will say to me, that all 
 do not labor, and that while one man tugs 
 at the printing-press, and another spends his 
 strength in striking the anvil, there are some 
 who are exempt from toil, and have little 
 to do but to speak a few words, or to draw 
 up a legal document, or to prescribe a rem- 
 edy for disease. You will point me perhaps 
 to the Professions, and to the Fine Arts, 
 as evidences that men do live without toil, 
 (as if the proof that men do exist without 
 labor were evidence of its propriety!) and fail- 
 ing to substantiate the positions drawn from 
 these fallacies, — for they are fallacies, — you 
 will recur to that fancied citadel of agrarian- 
 ism, the iniquity of capital, and shout, with the 
 French Socialists, " Property is a robbery ! " 
 Let me, therefore, speak to you, as I have abil- 
 ity, of the identity of Labor with the Profes- 
 sions and with the Fine Arts. 
 
 Among workingmen, and especially with 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 13 
 
 mechanic apprentices, the impression has pre- 
 vailed, that a professional man enjoys an im- 
 munity from labor ; their ideas of professional 
 toil are all limited to the preparation for a 
 diploma or admission to the bar; and these 
 once obtained, and the office taken, and the 
 sign hung out, they think there is little for the 
 physician and the lawyer to do but to sit still 
 and allow the money of the laboring man to 
 flow into their pockets. As to the clergyman, 
 it has become a pretty well settled theory, that 
 he only needs to think himself " called " to 
 live without labor, and his work is done, — if 
 he can find a parish to pay him for reprodu- 
 cing old sermons, and uttering prayers that 
 any one can learn from a book. 
 
 Now let me ask you what it is that consti- 
 tutes labor. All toil, you know, is not alike : 
 there are some kinds of mechanical employ- 
 ments which demand less muscular effort than 
 others. The watchmaker uses a much lighter 
 hammer than the blacksmith, and the engraver 
 works with a finer chisel than the stone- 
 mason ; and yet all these I suppose may lay 
 
14 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 claim to be called mechanics, and to earn their 
 bread by honest toil. Where, then, shall we 
 find the miity of -labor ? Clearly, it is not in 
 the amount of muscular demand. 
 
 Do you define it as production ? Is it that 
 mechanical or agricultural skill which produces 
 the comforts of life ? But from what kind of 
 skill will you exclude production ? The print- 
 er produces books and newspapers, and the 
 author produces the thoughts that make the 
 printer's work something more than lifeless 
 paper and ink. The copyist, too, produces 
 manuscript which may prevent fraud and in- 
 justice. The truth is, every man who is em- 
 ployed, whether with the head or hand, is a 
 laborer and a producer. The physician pro- 
 duces health, and the lawyer produces peace 
 and security. Nor only so, but professional men 
 must toil, and toil long years after the comple- 
 tion of their novitiate, or sink to the position 
 of pettifoggers and quacks. If you have a sick 
 child, to whom will you apply for help ? Is 
 it not to the skilful physician ? And do you 
 dream that skill in mitigating disease is some- 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 15 
 
 thing extraneous, which distils upon a man 
 from the clouds, or comes to him by spending 
 a year or two of his boyhood at a public insti- 
 tution, or in a private office, reading a few 
 pages, and perhaps dissecting a few limbs? 
 If you have property or reputation at stake, 
 to whom do you go for assistance ? Is it not 
 to the man who is versed in legal tactics, and 
 who carries Blackstone and Coke and Story 
 in his head, and rectitude and prudence in his 
 heart ? But do you imagine that three or four 
 years of desultory reading, or of bodily contact 
 with books bound in calf-skin, will make a 
 Solon, or a Lycurgus, or a Demosthenes out of 
 an unsophisticated country boy ? Depend upon 
 it, my friends, the fancied antagonism of head- 
 work and handicraft is without reason. We are 
 all laborers ; and if some wear working-jackets 
 while others don broadcloth, it is because it is 
 fitting that every man should array himself in 
 the garments which are best adapted to his 
 toil. And do not dream that muscular exer- 
 tion is the only labor ; for there is many a 
 studious man who would gladly exchange his 
 
16 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 aching head, and excited nervous system, and 
 sleepless nights, for the clear brain, and healthy 
 tone, and sweet repose, that of themselves 
 more than compensate for the severest muscu- 
 lar exertion. Indeed, the balance of ease is in 
 many respects in favor of the men who follow 
 the plough, or push the plane, or carry the hod 
 from morning till night. Their labor must at 
 least be limited, and it is varied with intervals 
 of rest ; but when once you set the brain in 
 action, you have accomplished the mechanical 
 dream of perpetual motion. Headwork, my 
 friends, knows no ten-hour regulation ; it can- 
 not be set aside when the sun goes down, or 
 suspended on account of the weather; but its 
 demands are ceaseless, and no compensation 
 of wealth can restore the balance, and bring 
 the head-worker to an equality of ease with 
 the handicraftsman. I know individuals may 
 be found in all departments who use a pro- 
 fessional position as a shield for their laziness ; 
 whose highest literary ambition is to be con- 
 versant with the insipid productions of brain- 
 less boys and masculine women ; who toil ex- 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 17 
 
 cessively to master the sublimities of Fanny 
 Fern, and Letitia Locust, and the rest of that 
 class of alliterative prodigies; who cultivate 
 their sensibilities by perusing incessantly the 
 yellow-covered trash which dishonors the 
 name of literature, and store their capacious 
 minds with the monstrous improbabilities of 
 sickly sentimentalism. I know individuals 
 may be found who are too slothful to become 
 skilled in their profession, and who will im- 
 peril the lives and property of their fellows by 
 their ignorance ; who act from purely merce- 
 nary motives, and with no real professional 
 zeal. I know men may sometimes be found 
 who will venture to handle the interests of 
 religion, and dare to deal with the momentous 
 truths of God, of the soul, and of the immor- 
 tal life, because they are too slothful to plough, 
 too proud to beg, and too ignorant to do any- 
 thing but to " preach " the " Everlasting Gos- 
 pel " ; and all these (save the mark !) are called 
 professional men, — Esquires, Doctors, and 
 Reverends. But, bear in mind, all lawyers 
 are not rogues, nor all physicians charlatans, 
 
18 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 nor all preachers dolts who have adopted that 
 profession as a last resort to obtain a living. 
 But what then ? Are there no lazy mechan- 
 ics who disgrace their calling ? Are there no 
 workingmen who will shirk their task, if they 
 are not watched ? And yet would it be just, 
 for the sake of these, to deny the skilful 
 mechanic and faithful laborer his title to the 
 merit of belonging to the class of producers ? 
 A true man feels that life is something more 
 than a scramble for wealth, or an opportunity 
 for vice, or a thing of sloth ; and whether his 
 pulses throb beneath homespun or are covered 
 with " purple and fine linen," he will be a 
 worker. The true professional man is as 
 much, in his sphere, a worker, as the lowliest 
 truckman or deck-hand is in his. A true pro- 
 fessional man will toil, without a master, as 
 hard as any hod-carrier or coal-digger. We 
 are all bound up in a brotherhood of labor, 
 and in a unity of interest; and the profes- 
 sional drone is no more respectable than a 
 lazy mechanic or an idling laborer. 
 
 Let us now carry this tenor of thought into 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOK. 19 
 
 an examination of the mutual relations of 
 Labor and the Fine Arts. 
 
 Art is defined by a German writer (Profes- 
 sor Thiersch) as all representations of the 
 beautiful ; and a master-mind of our own age 
 and country has defined Beauty to be adap- 
 tation. Certainly there can be no beauty 
 without adaptation. Adajbtation evidences 
 design, and these, it has long been conceded, 
 analogically infer evidence of mind. If we 
 find adaptation in Nature, we at once refer it 
 to the exercise of will ; and as in Nature, so 
 in the Fine Arts, there can be no beauty with- 
 out that designed adaptation which is of itself 
 evidence of exertion. Beauty as a sentiment, 
 may float in the mind ; but Art as a fact, the 
 expression of Beauty, the materialism of the 
 sentiment, must involve Labor. All repre- 
 sentation of the beautiful, we are told, is Art ; 
 and I think the definition is good enough for 
 our purpose. Certainly, then, there can be no 
 representation of Beauty without the expen- 
 diture of mental and muscular toil. Art, 
 we may say, is the expression, the body, of 
 
20 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 which Beauty is the soul; and the difference 
 between a beautiful creation and a clumsy 
 one, is the difference between an inspired 
 vitality and a lifeless and uncouth frame- 
 work. 
 
 Now, I have uttered these thoughts because 
 I wish you to recognize the unity and univer- 
 sality of all Labor. This spirit of Beauty, 
 which is the inspiration of the Fine Arts, and 
 which is dependent upon toil for its expression, 
 is not limited to painting and sculpture, but 
 it may be felt and evidenced in the most 
 monotonous of mechanical employments, — 
 the same in essence, but not in degree, as in 
 the most sublime results of Phidias's chisel 
 and Raffael's brush. Art and Beauty may 
 have place in the commonest calls for skill ; 
 and in nothing can they be more clearly evi- 
 denced than in that very substantial and com- 
 monplace occurrence, — house-building. In- 
 deed, it is true that " Beauty is much shown 
 in architecture," and no other art or employ- 
 ment has more significance, for it is a token 
 of the inward life. " Man skulking in a hut 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 21 
 
 is the same being whose architecture swells, as 
 his soul swells, into the temple, the fortress, 
 and the palace " ; in all he is the same, but his 
 creations of brick or stone may tell his inward 
 life-progress. 
 
 Let me appeal now to your experience for 
 confirmation of the identity of Art and Labor. 
 I would appeal to the lowliest worker, and ask 
 him if, beyond the price of his labor, and be- 
 yond the pride of accomplishing better work 
 than an inferior workman, there is not a 
 certain love of the work itself which inspires 
 him to seek after excellence ? I know he 
 will tell me there is. And what is it but 
 that beauty, that essence of art, which in- 
 spires the sculptor and the painter, that thus 
 strengthens the workingman in his drudgery ? 
 And what is this but a testimony that all art 
 is the result of toil, and all toil may be art ? 
 Indeed, the Fine Arts are the outgrowth of 
 the search for excellence in toil. Formerly, in 
 Europe, the mechanical occupations were con- 
 fined to women and slaves. Refinement, how- 
 ever, in the course of time, demanded greater 
 
22 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 
 
 skill than can be expected from those whose 
 task is compulsory ; and in the tenth century 
 freemen began to employ themselves in me- 
 chanical arts, and the spirit of beauty, fos- 
 tered by freedom, became developed until it 
 was honorable to be a skilful handicraftsman, 
 and the toil of the workshop became blended 
 with the Perseus and Medusa of Benvenuto 
 Cellini, the Last Supper of Da Vinci, and the 
 Theseus of Donatelli. 
 
 And so one may say of Labor, as of Art, 
 that it is immortal. It erects its own monu- 
 ment, as the record of the groaning toil of the 
 hundred thousand who, according to Herodo- 
 tus, were employed twenty years in building 
 the Pyramids, which still stand, while the 
 tyrant who extorted their toil has become a 
 perplexity and a myth. The Sphynx and the 
 Pyramids may be to all time a riddle, but that 
 human muscle and human skill were exercised 
 there, is as palpable as the colossal proportions 
 and majestic symmetry of both these marvels. 
 Nor only so, but all toil reaches beyond the 
 temporary and decaying, out into the immor- 
 
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 23 
 
 tal and infinite. You cannot, if you would, 
 limit the results of your labor to the present. 
 They will react upon your own spirits, and 
 through these upon the generations to come, 
 and upon your own immortal life. As you 
 cherish integrity and industry, without crin- 
 ging or niggardliness, your characters shall 
 grow strong, and your life reach out beyond 
 the workshop into the Temple of God. 
 
 Finally, let me entreat you to receive and 
 adopt as your own the sentiment that " all 
 labor is fitting and honorable," — fitting, be- 
 cause " the Great Ordainer has not dispensed 
 with it." " The world itself," says an eloquent 
 pleader for Labor,* " might have been a 
 mighty machinery for the production of all 
 that man wants. The motion of the globe 
 upon its axis might have been the power to 
 move that world of machinery. Ten thou- 
 sand wheels within wheels might have been 
 at work, ten thousand processes more curious 
 and more complicated than man can devise 
 might have been going forward without man's 
 
 * Dr. Dewev. 
 
24 THE DIGNITY OF LABOK. 
 
 aid. Houses might have risen like exhala- 
 tions, — gorgeous furniture might have been 
 placed within them, — soft couches and lux- 
 urious banquets spread by unseen hands, — 
 and man, clothed with fabrics of Nature's 
 weaving richer than imperial purple, might 
 have disported himself in these Elysian pal- 
 aces. ' Fair scene ! ' I imagine you are say- 
 ing ; ' fortunate for us had it been the scene 
 ordained for human life.' But where then, 
 tell me, had been human energy, perseverance, 
 patience, virtue, heroism? Cut off at one 
 blow from the world, and mankind had sunk 
 to a crowd — nay, far beneath a crowd — of 
 Asiatic voluptuaries. No, it had not been 
 fortunate ; better that the earth be given to 
 man as a dark mass whereon to labor ; bet- 
 ter that rude and unsightly materials be pro- 
 vided in the ore-bed and the forests, for him to 
 fashion into splendor and beauty." 
 
 It is time that opprobrium of toil were done 
 away, for that opprobrium is a relic of the 
 feudal days, "when serfs labored, and gentle- 
 men were known by their skill in fighting and 
 feasting.-' 
 
THE DIGXITY OF LABOR. 25 
 
 Ee not ashamed of toil, for it is honorable. 
 Be not ashamed of the " dingy workshop and 
 dusty labor-field, — of the hard hand, scarred 
 with service more honorable than that of war, 
 ' — of the soiled and weather-stained garments, 
 on which Mother Earth has stamped, midst 
 sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her 
 own heraldic honors. Be not ashamed of 
 these tokens and titles, and envious of the 
 flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and van- 
 ^ ity"; for to be ashamed of honest toil "is 
 treason to Nature, impiety to Heaven, and 
 breaking God's great ordinances. Toil, toil, 
 either of the brain, of the heart, or of the 
 hand, is the only true manhood, the only 
 true nobility." 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF LABOR AND CAPITAL. 
 
 THRIFT AND FORETHOUGHT. SAYINGS. NE- 
 CESSITY FOR FAITH IN HUMAN INTEGRITY. 
 
 " In getting riches, ye musten flee idleness ; and aftenvarde ye shulen 
 usen the riches -which ye have geten by youre wit and by your travail, in 
 such manner, that men hold you not too scarce, ne too sparing, ne fool 
 large, that is to say over large a spender ; for right as men blamen an 
 araritious man because of his scarcity and chincery, in the same -vrise he 
 is to blame that spendeth over largely." 
 
 " In getting of your riches, and in using of -em, ye shulen alway have 
 three things in youre heart, that is to say, our Lord God, conscience, and 
 good name. First ye shulen have God in youre heart, and for no riches 
 ye shulen do nothing which may in any manner displease God that is 
 
 youre Creator and Maker And Cassiodore saith that it is a sign of 
 
 a gentle heart, when a man loveth and desireth to have a good name." — 
 Chaucer. 
 
 Before proceeding further, it may be well 
 to notice a possible objection to the course I 
 am pursuing, in offering topics of such practi- 
 cal influence upon Sunday afternoon, in prefer- 
 ence to calling your attention to them upon 
 an evening during the week. I pursue this 
 
MUTUAL RELATIONS OF LABOR AND CAPITAL. 27 
 
 course designedly, because I wish you to iden- 
 tify religion with your life and with your la- 
 bor. Whatever Christian words I may have 
 to speak, — whatever department of life I may 
 wish to admonish, — I should deeply regret the 
 utterance of words on Monday or Wednes- 
 day that ought not to be spoken on Sunday. 
 I am led to the adoption of this method of 
 presenting Christian truth, by the belief that 
 there are pressing needs in our every-day life 
 which call for the toil of every true prophet. 
 He who speaks with a purpose, and who speaks 
 truly, is as much a Christian teacher when 
 dealing with the present interest of the race, 
 as he who expounds the mysteries of theo- 
 logical technicalities. A man may be a true 
 prophet without a garb of camel's hair or a 
 residence in the desert, and he may be a wit- 
 ness for Christ without constantly harping 
 upon theoretical intricacies, and even though 
 he descend to the common life which Chris- 
 tianity was designed to elevate and bless. 
 Look into your own hearts, and out upon the 
 world about you, and tell me if there are not 
 
28 MUTUAL PvELATIOXS OF 
 
 wrongs and evils in society that need a prophet- 
 like earnestness and directness of exhortation ? 
 The Christian ministry, and the Christian 
 Church, have too long been satisfied to find 
 their field of labor in the interior of Africa, or 
 in the stars ; in the remote past with Adam, 
 or in the still remoter future of speculative 
 spiritual condition. There is, Christian friends, 
 a great living cry coming from the present, — 
 an intensely perplexing problem of suffering and 
 sin to be solved now. Out of your workshops 
 and founderies. — out of your steamboats and 
 ships, — from your wharves and warehouses, 
 — from the abodes of wealth and the hovels 
 of poverty, — ascends that yearning petition, 
 " Who will show us any good ? " And. the 
 Gospel, and those speaking for the Gospel, 
 must meet this demand, — must satisfy this 
 craving, — must solve these problems, and 
 show the coincidence of all true life with God 
 and the Scriptures, or acknowledge Revela- 
 tion to be a failure, and Christianity insuffi- 
 cient for the world's extremity. It is in 
 vain to attempt an avoidance of this ordeal. 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 29 
 
 Sooner or later the test must be applied. The 
 same difficulties and doubts that agitate the 
 minds of pagan men are busily at work in 
 the hearts of our own population, and gener- 
 alities will not suffice ; — we must be explicit, 
 and carry the Gospel teachings into the black- 
 smith's shop and out on to the farm, and set 
 them up paramount there, or our religion will 
 be a thing of selfishness, and while evangel- 
 izing the antipodes, our own kindred and 
 townsmen will go hungry and famishing for 
 the living bread, and become as destitute of 
 the true Christian feeling and principles as 
 the dwellers of Paris in the worst days of 
 infidel anarchy. I do not indeed advocate a 
 police Christianity, to restrain ignorance and 
 vice, but a true co-operation of religion with 
 human experiences and human wants as they 
 exist, which, without cant or selfishness, shall 
 demonstrate the eternal fitness of the Gospel 
 for men's struggling work-day lives. 
 
 Closely connected with the topics of the 
 previous Lecture are the mutual relations of 
 
 3* 
 
30 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 Labor and Capital. I wish to show you that 
 the antagonism sometimes maintained be- 
 tween the laborer and the capitalist is not 
 only improper, but unnatural ; that whatever 
 is done by either class to injure the other is 
 wrong, and must react upon the aggressor ; 
 that there are natural interdependencies be- 
 tween them, which no fanaticism of the pre- 
 tended friends of the workingman can destroy, 
 and no impulse of selfish gain on the part of 
 the capitalist can ignore. 
 
 The antagonists of capital always seem to 
 forget the indebtedness of the laborer for his 
 employment to that very accumulation of cap- 
 ital which they so fiercely denounce. Now, 
 suppose their wildest desires realized, property 
 decla^red to be a robbery, and the moneyed 
 capital of the country portioned out pro rata 
 among the inhabitants ; what would be the 
 effect ? In a large city, the following results 
 would inevitably follow. " At one blow, the 
 banks, insurance-offices, and other financial in- 
 stitutions, would tumble to the ground. The 
 large mercantile houses, which give employ- 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 31 
 
 ment to many clerks, porters, draymen, coop- 
 ers, carpenters, and the like, would dwindle 
 into small retail shops. All the business 
 which now rests on a credit basis would 
 cease. Not a hammer would be heard in 
 the ship-yards. The silence of death would 
 replace the intolerable but productive clatter 
 of the founderies and machine-shops. .All the 
 spindles in the factories would stop at once. 
 Dismantled ships would deform the wharves. 
 Idlers and vagabonds would throng the streets. 
 Fresh prisons and almshouses would be need- 
 ed, and there would be neither funds nor credit 
 to build them." * Such is but a faint outline 
 of the disastrous consequences of carrying 
 out to their full extent the principles of Fou- 
 rier and Proudhon. Admitting that there are 
 great evils attendant upon the accumulation 
 of capital, this destructive and antagonistic 
 policy, which would «.rray in a class-warfare 
 the laborer and his employer, will not, I am 
 confident, meet and remove the evils. Far 
 better would it be, that each should learn its 
 *" Dr. Boardman. 
 
32 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 Christian identity with the other, and see how 
 interdependent are all the workers upon each 
 other. Nor should it be forgotten, that cap- 
 ital is not necessarily money, but that every 
 man is a capitalist, to the extent of his instru- 
 ments for the increase of values. Thus, even 
 the savage is a capitalist, to the extent of the 
 weapons by which he procures food, and the 
 amount of food which he possesses to enable 
 him to live until more can be obtained. The 
 tools of the carpenter and shoemaker con- 
 stitute their capital, and they receive their 
 wages, not only as a return for their muscu- 
 lar exertion, — which again is capital, — but 
 as a compensation for the use of their tools. 
 Certainly, without his tools a mechanic could 
 not build a house nor make a pair of shoes ; 
 but he does not regard himself as doing 
 'unjustly, because he obtains compensation 
 for the increased vali»e he gives the raw 
 material by the skilful application of his in- 
 struments. And yet the men who will ac- 
 knowledge this, will tell you that it is unjust 
 for the capitalist to receive compensation for 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 33 
 
 the increased value given to the raw material 
 of the earth and the elements by the use of 
 his instrument, — money. For money is but 
 an instrument, — a representative of power 
 to meet obligations, — a token by which the 
 exchange of equivalents is facilitated ; and 
 the capitalist who confines his operations to 
 the limits of fair enterprise is just as much a 
 producer of actual wealth, in furnishing means 
 for the construction of railroads, and levees, 
 and buildings, as the men who quarry the 
 stone with their chisels and make the cuts 
 and embankments with their shovels. True, 
 — very true, — it does not seem so pleasant 
 to be of those whose only capital is muscle ; 
 but even in that point of view, you find differ- 
 ences of muscular development among men, 
 which it would be just as reasonable to rebel, 
 against, as to denounce those whom Provi- 
 dence has blessed, as it has not blessed you 
 and me, with moneyed capital. The truth is, 
 these diversities are both necessary and fitting ; 
 and the Providence which ordained them has 
 appointed compensations to accompany their 
 
34 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 inequalities. Depend upon it, the capitalist 
 is a man of toil, as truly as the day-laborer ; 
 and if he is a man of selfishness, recognizing 
 no Divine significance in his condition, seeing 
 no religious importance and mission in his 
 command of means, — Hving for his wealth, 
 and seeking only its increase, — with no 
 thought of God, of humanity, and of duty, — 
 ah, my friends, if he is such a man, pity 
 him! for he needs the lowliest man's com- 
 passion : he toils harder, and for poorer pay, 
 than any coal-digger. But I belike such 
 men are seldom found, and that generally the 
 capitalist and merchant act from motives of 
 integrity higher than statutes of usury and 
 market-place morality. ' I believe — nay, I 
 know — that beneath all this stir of seeming 
 struggle for gain there throbs a generous rec- 
 ognition of the unity of human life, and the 
 interdependence of all classes for blessing, 
 culture, and happiness. Christianity is rapidly 
 taking its proper position in the Exchange ; 
 and much of the wealth which results from a 
 proper and legitimate use of capital is con- 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 35 
 
 secrated, not only to the technical " interests 
 of religion," but to those interests in the larger 
 sense, in which they embrace the philanthropic 
 and educational prosperity of the accumulat- 
 ing population of our country. If one needed 
 an argument for the defence of capital against 
 sweeping denunciation, and wished to find 
 that argument near home, perhaps there could 
 not be anything better required than the facts 
 of the Mercantile Library and of the Wash- 
 ington Institute at St. Louis ; — the first a 
 noble monument of Western culture, — a type 
 of the generosity with which Western capital 
 and literature go hand in hand, — a lasting 
 memorial of the love of art, and the insight 
 into the reality of existence, as it centres in 
 the beautiful and the educating, which ani 
 mates the mercantile prosperity of that city 
 Whence came that lofty building, which rep 
 resents one hundred and forty thousand dol 
 lars ? How is it, that the last yearly state 
 ment reports twelve thousand volumes, worth 
 nineteen thousand dollars, as the result of nine 
 years' existence ? Do you now cry, " Capital 
 
36 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 is a robbery"? Do you presume to assert 
 that the root of all this is in selfishness ? that 
 one man's contribution of thirty-six thousand 
 dollars is the representation of so much 
 desire to ride rough-shod over the toiling 
 masses who contribute their muscle to the 
 triumphs of his capital ? If it is so, it is a 
 profounder mystery than the inequalities of 
 Providence, which place one man in a bank- 
 ing-house and another on a dray. And the 
 other institution of which I spoke will bear 
 the same testimony even more forcibly ; for 
 it commences with the children, and provides 
 a thoroughly practical and theoretical training 
 for them, — and capital has lately been quietly 
 and unostentatiously providing for the ex- 
 penses, to the amount of some forty or fifty 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 Doubtless there are responsibilities which 
 capital does not always recognize as it ought 
 to do ; but the fault lies not at the door of 
 capital, but belongs to those who abuse it, — 
 who make it an instrument of fraud and op- 
 pression, instead of a minister of blessing, — 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 37 
 
 who set up to themselves false standards, and 
 follow low aims, vainly supposing they can 
 separate their business life from their religious 
 character ; but rely upon it, they who do so 
 are more literally serfs to their unsatisfied am- 
 bitions, and labor for a harder taskmaster, 
 than the poor whom they abuse. Fuller, an 
 old English divine, who expressed much truth 
 in his own quaint way, has left the follow- 
 ing comment upon the passage of Scripture, 
 " Your gold and silver is cankered ; and the 
 rust of them shall be a witness against you." 
 " The same word in the Greek (hs) means 
 both rust and poison ; and some strong poi- 
 sons be made of the rust of metals, but none 
 more venomous than the rust of money in 
 the rich man's purse, unjustly detained from 
 the laborer, which will poison and infect his 
 whole estate." 
 
 Rely upon it, my friends, there is a unity 
 of mission which should identify capital and 
 labor. The workingman ought not to curse 
 the capitalist for his wealth ; for it is that 
 wealth, circulating through the various chan- 
 
38 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 nels of business, which gives him the employ- 
 ment by which he earns his bread. He should 
 not object to the reproductive power of capi- 
 tal ; for it is that reproduction which stimu- 
 lates its investment in buildings, and boats, 
 and manufactures, in preference to allowing 
 it to lie idly in the rich man's coffers, and so 
 depriving the poor man of his share of its 
 productiveness. Indeed, I know of no abuse 
 of capital more reprehensible than the hoard- 
 ing of money, — the burying and hiding of 
 specie, by which its vitalizing power is with- 
 held from society. The man who hoards his 
 thousand dollars, or his one or two hundreds, 
 who is afraid to place it in bank, and so 
 over-conscientious that he will not take inter- 
 est for it, is a greater injury to society than he 
 who obtains an unusual interest for his capi- 
 -tal ; and he deserves to lose it. 
 
 On the other hand, the capitalist owes it to 
 the laborer, to esteem him as something more 
 than a curiously constructed machine of mus- 
 cles for the increase of his gain. He owes it 
 to every workman he employs, to regard him 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 39 
 
 as a human being ; as a joint heir with him 
 to the discipline of the present and to the im- 
 mortality of the future. 
 
 Too often, I fear, the fact of the laborer's 
 manhood and spiritual identity with the capi- 
 talist is lost sight of ; and he is looked upon, 
 not as a necessary and honorable agent in the 
 world's advancement, but as a lower order of 
 being, who is dependent upon the benevolence 
 of his richer and more prosperous likeness in 
 human clay. But without the laborer, what 
 would capital avail ? Where would be your 
 railroads, without those sturdy sons of toil 
 who make them ? Who would build your 
 palaces, if labor refused to perform its task ? 
 And what would your enterprise accomplish, 
 without muscle to give substance to your 
 thought ? All would be a dream and an air- 
 castle. It is labor which gives reality to the 
 conceptions of art, and which carries out all 
 the projects by which capital is enhanced. It 
 is labor to which we owe our comfort : our 
 houses are built by it ; we warm ourselves 
 by fires made of the fuel which toil has 
 
40 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 extracted from the caverns of the earth ; it 
 guides our ships, that come freighted with 
 silks and teas ; it governs and directs the lo- 
 comotive, that mighty power by which our 
 whole Western country is to be revolutionized ; 
 it presides over the magnetic telegraph, im- 
 planting its posts and stretching its wonderful 
 wires ; it patiently and swiftly picks up letter 
 by letter, and transforms the refuse of our 
 wardrobes into speaking leaves more precious 
 than the Sibylline oracles; it holds the plough, 
 and the wild prairie ceases to be a wilderness, 
 and bears upon its bosom waving fields of 
 grain, to feed distant nations and to enrich 
 our own. All that we have of comfort and 
 of prosperity we owe to the co-operation — 
 too often but a union of necessity — of Labor 
 and Capital. Let them, then, be one in a gen- 
 erous and Christian spirit; let them co-operate, 
 not because they must^ but because they oughtj 
 — because the world needs them both, and be- 
 cause their interests and welfare are identical. 
 In our country, capital ought not to be a 
 mark for vituperation, and a separating barrier 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 41 
 
 between the sympathies of classes ; for here 
 every man may become a capitalist, in the 
 sense of possessing surplus means beyond the 
 necessary expenditure for food and clothing. 
 I lay it down as a settled fact, that any man of 
 ordinary muscular development, of good health, 
 and industrious and temperate habits, must 
 necessarily become independent. In this West- 
 ern land, if anywhere, labor may hold up its 
 honest head, and feel itself equal to any class 
 of society ; for it is labor, muscle, toil, applied 
 to the more than golden treasures of our soil, 
 that the country mostly needs, and is most 
 anxious to obtain. Here the " hands " may 
 venture to talk about principles with the em- 
 ployers ; and are not in the condition in which 
 they are in some portions of this country, as 
 well as in England, — so graphically described 
 by Dickens, in w^hich the relations of laborer 
 and employer are to the " hands " " all a 
 muddle," — knowing nothing but the will of 
 their master, and dependent upon his ca- 
 prices for their bread. But, you will say to 
 me, many men who work hard do not become 
 
 4* 
 
42 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 capitalists : they do -nothing beyond barely 
 supporting their families through the year; 
 and I know very well that what you would 
 say is true. But it does not in the least de- 
 preciate my statement. There are causes at 
 work among our laboring population which 
 deprive them of the independence of position 
 which they might otherwise attain to. 
 
 There is a sad want of forethought, wliich 
 in many instances produces great suffering ; 
 and when that is not the result, it chains them 
 to a position of dependence which they ought 
 not to occupy. The average wages per diem 
 of mechanics and laboring men in our city 
 will probably be found to range from two dol- 
 lars and a half to one dollar and a quarter. 
 Men who in Europe would be glad to obtain 
 two dollars for a week's labor, in this city 
 will, at some seasons, look very contemptu- 
 ously upon the same sum for a day's work. 
 And yet there is poverty, and much of it, in 
 this city of Alton, as the Relief Committee 
 can abundantly testify. The greater portion 
 of it, indeed, is owing to the inadequate com- 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. - 43 
 
 pensation of female labor, by which, in sea- 
 sons of depression, poor widows, unable to 
 accumulate in the most prosperous times, are 
 deprived of support, and must be relieved from 
 the means of the more prosperous. Setting 
 aside these, and the usual amount of sick poor, 
 however, there still remains a class, who, with- 
 out being reduced to absolute want, and with- 
 out coming upon the hands of the Relief 
 Committee, are still under the necessity of 
 parting with their superfluous furniture and 
 clothing, and of obtaining credit at the pro- 
 vision-stores. And the question may well be 
 asked, How can this be, in the face of their 
 receipt of large wages during the long busy 
 season ? And here, I think, the proper solu- 
 tion will be found, not in schemes of Icarian 
 Communism, but in the hearts, and habits of 
 the working classes themselves. They need 
 above all things, and are most deficient in, 
 thrift and forethought. 
 
 There are two principal methods by which 
 these important characteristics may be devel- 
 oped and strengthened, — a social and an in- 
 
44 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 dividual plan. The first is by co-operation 
 among workingmen for mutual aid in sick- 
 ness and misfortune. The other agency is 
 the Savings Bank, in which the thrifty work- 
 ingman deposits every week, or every month, 
 some portion of his earnings, resolutely fore- 
 going any needless luxury or expense, that 
 the future of himself and his family may be 
 clear and cheering. Of the first of these I 
 have only to say, that, properly managed, 
 I have no doubt a Benefit Society may be 
 made a great blessing to the workingman. But 
 my preference is with the Savings Bank, be- 
 cause its results are so certain and so tangible. 
 Its benefits are based upon no contingency of 
 misfortune, but they are steadily and surely 
 accruing as the depositor places his earnings 
 in its safe-keeping. These institutions off'er 
 a premium for forethought, by paying interest 
 upon deposits ; and every workingman ought 
 to possess a bank-book with a fair account, — 
 at least until he has purchased and paid for a 
 home ; and every workingman may do it, by 
 reasonable prudence, and the avoidance of 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 45 
 
 expenses which are not only useless, but a 
 physical and moral injury. There are two 
 foes to the working classes which call for 
 more serious effort to dethrone them, and are 
 more practical, than the social evils, real and 
 fancied, about which most of your self-styled 
 philanthropists are wont to declaim. Extrav- 
 agance and intemperance are the working- 
 man's greatest enemies. It is a very common 
 thing to denounce the extravagance of the 
 rich ; but what do we mean by the term 
 extravagance ? Is it not a relative term, sig- 
 nifying a useless, an improper expenditure, — 
 the waste of capital upon articles which 
 could be dispensed with ? If, however, we 
 say this with reproach of the wealthy, with 
 what accumulated condemnation may it be 
 charged against those who live by their toil ! 
 A workingman, or a workingman's wife, may 
 be quite as extravagant in the purchase of 
 tea and silk, as a rich man in the purchase 
 of diamonds and pictures. When tea at fifty 
 cents is good enough, it is shameful extrava- 
 gance for a poor man to pay a dollar ; when 
 
46 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 a coarse garment is sufficient for decency and 
 comfort, it is extravagant to pay three times 
 its price for a fine one ; when homespun is 
 the best material for his use, the workingman 
 is a spendthrift who is ashamed to wear any- 
 thing less fashionable than broadcloth ; and 
 when calico is more appropriate, it is wasteful 
 folly to purchase silk. I know that the rich, or 
 the comparatively wealthy classes, have much 
 to answer for, in inciting to extravagance those 
 whose ruin it is to copy their example, but 
 who will ape them. I know the mercantile 
 and professional classes of society have a re- 
 sponsibility ; and in due time — so far as my 
 voice will reach — I shall be found reminding 
 them of it. But what a poor, unmanly plea 
 it is, that because others do wrong, we, like 
 patient sheep, must follow our leaders. What 
 a disgrace to manhood it is, to avow our thor- 
 ough want of independence, when following 
 foolish customs will make us servants all our 
 lives. 
 
 Intemperance has been so much agitated, 
 that one runs the risk of talking in vain when 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 47 
 
 remonstrating against it. But depend upon 
 it, there is a great work yet to be accomplished 
 by the working classes for themselves, before 
 we may cease to speak of the wrong done to 
 them by their too frequent over-indulgence. 
 Something like one hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars are annually expended in the bar-rooms 
 of this small city. Where do you suppose 
 that sum comes from ? From whom is the 
 iniquitous license fund of this city pilfered ? 
 Do you dream that the low dram-^ops of 
 the place are kept from motives of benevo- 
 lence ? Do you think there is a man con- 
 nected with the bar-rooms who will make a 
 personal sacrifice, for the purpose of swelling 
 the ill-gotten Pauper Fund ? No, my friends, 
 this money is wrung from the honest toil, and 
 filched from the hard work, of the laboring 
 men. It is money which ought to build their 
 houses, and clothe and educate their children, 
 and furnish their own minds with that equip- 
 ment of knowledge which will make their 
 work a thing of soul and religious signifi- 
 cance, instead of a dull routine of mechanism. 
 
48 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 Nor only so, but one may be intemperate 
 without entering a bar-room. I know of men 
 who are fierce enthusiasts upon the temper- 
 ance question, — who will scarcely counte- 
 nance religion, if it does not weave a temper- 
 ance lecture into every sermon, — and yet 
 these philanthropic hobby-riders are themselves 
 guilty of the worst form of intemperance, in 
 the excessive use of tobacco and snuff. They 
 need the soul of temperance, — that spirit of 
 self-denial which purifies, not alone a single 
 quality, but the whole interior man; which 
 labors at the fountain-head, and sets up duty 
 and right as the paramount principles for 
 life-guidance, and the invariable governors. 
 Let any workingman set resolutely about a 
 retrenchment of his needless expenses, and an 
 abandonment of his injurious habits, and, in- 
 stead of wasting his capital, let him place it 
 in the keeping of a Bank or a Savings Insti- 
 tution, and a very few years will suffice to 
 assure him of the fallacies of agrarianism. 
 Perhaps, however, a question may grow out 
 of the occasional suspension of banks, which 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 49 
 
 may be profitably treated here. During the 
 present winter, the monetary world has passed 
 through one of the most trying crises that 
 have ever visited it. Old-established and re- 
 liable banks have temporarily suspended ; and 
 at one time it seemed highly probable that 
 our whole Western valley would be involved 
 in a common ruin. What nobleness and dis- 
 interestedness prevented that calamity you all 
 know ; but there was a lesson for the moralist 
 in the excited crowds, who for a day or two 
 besieged the banks with impatient demands 
 for their deposits. It probably never entered 
 into their imaginations, that they were the 
 only dangerous and culpable parties to that 
 temporary excitement. They never dreamed 
 that, in most bank failures, the depositors, and 
 not the officers, are the cause of the calamity. 
 There are probably few banking institutions 
 in the country which could meet an instant 
 demand of all depositors for specie ; because 
 it is by keeping the money in circulation that 
 they are able to pay interest upon the depos- 
 its ; and it is in this way that they are serving 
 
 5 
 
50 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 and advancing the common interests of soci- 
 ety, — those interests upon which all culture 
 and art and religion most depend. And in 
 subserving these great purposes of social life^ 
 banks come within the sphere of Christianity, 
 and may be dealt with by the Christian teach- 
 er. But if the means of the banks must be 
 locked up in their vaults, if they are not to be 
 circulated upon sufficient security, how shall 
 they perform their Christian mission, and how 
 shall they be enabled to pay the interest upon 
 their deposits ? The insane, or at least in- 
 considerate, haste with which a certain class 
 of small depositors rushed upon the banks, 
 and caused the business prospects of this 
 whole valley to totter for a season, — and 
 would have caused them to fall but for the 
 vigorous and efficient counter-operations of a 
 few individuals, — if it teaches us nothing 
 else, ought to impress the truth of the neces- 
 sity for faith in human integrity. 
 
 * Schoolmen and theologians may speculate 
 as they will, but depend upon it, for this work- 
 day life of ours, we must have faith in each 
 
LABOK AND CAPITAL. 51 
 
 other; a faith in human action of a higher 
 order than JMachiavelianism ; a forbearance 
 of a nobler stamp than selfishness inculcates ; 
 and a cheerful hope, which will see in every 
 man something better than a designing villain. 
 Without this common confidence, the machin- 
 ■ery of society could not continue in action a 
 single day. If we must distrust each other, — 
 if the workingman must see in every capitalist 
 a born foe, and the apprentice regard his master 
 as a natural enemy, — if the different classes 
 and the different creeds of society have not a 
 common purpose, and a common labor, what 
 will become of civilization ? It would level 
 your cities, and destroy your improvements ; 
 it would bring back with accumulated vio- 
 lence the Dark Ages, without an intervening 
 " truce of God." In those dark days of feudal 
 violence, there were seasons when the Church 
 (honor to the Roman Catholic Church for it ! ) 
 could influence the unruly robbers, falsely 
 called nobles; and for a season every man was 
 safe, and fair fields again blossomed, and 
 goodly churches were built, until the cessation 
 
52 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF 
 
 of the truce brought back the former violence. 
 So is it with Christian faith in human integ- 
 rity. It goes abroad into the conflicts of clash- 
 ing interests, and asserts a religious truth 
 where too frequently no other religious voice 
 is heard. Do nothing, I pray you, to weaken 
 its power ; nay, rather, at sacrifice and injury 
 to yourselves, maintain it as the rule, that men 
 are honest, and rogues are the exception, — ■ 
 that all have a common mission in the world, 
 and that over the infinite variety of human 
 callings Christianity casts a mantle of brother- 
 hood, and will yet make their labors perfect in 
 the creation of a grand universe of fraternity 
 and mutual aid. 
 
 My friends, I am not unaware that I have 
 spoken commonplace words about common- 
 place things ; but I have been prompted by 
 the belief that it is precisely this common- 
 place life-experience which requires the co- 
 operation and strengthening of Christianity, 
 and which religion can and ought to minister 
 unto. If, therefore, I have mingled the sacred 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 53 
 
 and profane, it has been with the intention of 
 making the profane better by contact with the 
 sacred. Take these thoughts with you to 
 your working lives, and so apply them that 
 your work may be transformed from rude 
 drudgery into a messenger of blessing. 
 
 5* 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 " It is idleness tliat creates impossibilities ; and where men care not to 
 do a thing, they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be 
 done. The shortest and, the surest way to prove a work possible, is to 
 set about it ; and no wonder if that proves it possible that for the most 
 part makes it so." — South. 
 
 " I caU, therefore, a complete and generous education that which fits a 
 man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both 
 private and pubUc, of peace and war.'' — Milton. 
 
 When I hear of a self-made man, I am al- 
 ways tempted to inquire. Who is not a self- 
 made man ? Colleges and universities are 
 not institutions to supply a lack of brain to 
 the pampered sons of wealthy parvenus, but 
 they are the most democratic of organizations 
 for furnishing the minds of students accord- 
 ing to their native capacity and industry. 
 Suetonius tells us, that when Nero had com- 
 pleted his " Golden House," — as his gorgeous 
 palace on the Palatine Hill was styled, — he 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 00 
 
 walked through its magnificent extent, cover- 
 ing many acres, gazed upon a piazza consist- 
 ing of three rows of columns, extending more 
 than a half-mile in length, looked upon a sin- 
 gle room one hundred and forty-eight feet long 
 and ninety-eight feet broad, viewed its splen- 
 did statues, pillars, baths, fountains, quad- 
 rangles, and towers, — and then exclaimed, 
 that he had now a house fit for a man to live 
 in. As it has been well remarked, " There was 
 something of nobility, if there was more pride, 
 in the saying. And if he had remembered 
 that the men Severus and Celerus who built 
 it, ay, and every hod-carrier, dwelt in that 
 habitation whose foundation is earth, whose 
 pillars the mountains, and whose dome the 
 spreading heavens, — yes, if he had rightly 
 remembered this, his pride had been less, and 
 his true nobility greater." * But the point in 
 the illustration to which I call your attention 
 is this, — that the surroundings, while they 
 may minister to the man, do not make him ; 
 but he moulds them to his purposes, and out 
 
 " Dr. Dewey. 
 
56 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 of his use of them his character grows. Nero, 
 in his " Golden House," may have had fainter 
 conceptions of grandeur than some sheep- 
 watching peasant, whose devout soul w^alked 
 out into the illimitable space, and read in the 
 infinite distances and multitude of the stars 
 that beamed upon his lonely vigil the thoughts 
 of God and the human soul, out of which 
 alone grow all true culture and ideas of sub- 
 limity. And so of Education ; a man may 
 be sent to college, and even graduate there, 
 and yet as to education, in its true sense of 
 drawing forth the innate energies of his spirit^ 
 and widening his sympathies, and expanding 
 his whole nature, be may be the veriest dunce 
 that ever stumbled at the " Pons AsinorumP 
 So, also, he may be chained to a shoe- 
 bench, or fastened to a printing-press, by his 
 necessity for daily bread ; and yet, in his close 
 observation of men and things as they are 
 around him, — in his careful husbanding of 
 his spare moments, — in his judicious reading, 
 — he shall walk in fields of knowledge and 
 beauty; he shall feel the world growing larger. 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 57 
 
 and his own soul growing with it; he shall 
 see a significance in his being, and in the 
 world about him, of which the merely manu- 
 factured scholar has never dreamed. 
 
 But let me not be misunderstood : colleges 
 and self-education are not antagonistic or 
 rival agents of culture, but their purpose is 
 the same, and their spheres may be so blend- 
 ed that a young man may receive all the 
 advantages of our best literary institutions, 
 and yet be emphatically a self-made man, 
 in the fact that his term-bills have been settled 
 from the proceeds of his own toil, and while 
 availing himself of the best aids for culture, 
 and for furnishing his mind with facts and 
 ideas, like Paul of old in his devotion to the 
 Christian religion, his own hands may " min- 
 ister to his necessities." I do not design in 
 anything I have said, or may have occasion 
 to say, to depreciate the value of academi- 
 cal training in your estimation ; on the con- 
 trary, I hope for the day when the young men 
 of our country will have the privileges of a 
 thorough collegiate education, without money 
 
58 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 and without price. I would make the highest 
 order of intellectual training gratuitous, and 
 only limited by the personal merit of the 
 student; because it is the duty of the state 
 to educate its citizens. But I wish to teach 
 you, that it is practicable for any young 
 workingman to earn his education, even in a 
 literary institution ; and that, when the day 
 for this has passed away, there are opportu- 
 nities by the prudent and systematic im- 
 provement of which we may penetrate be- 
 yond the external seeming of things to their 
 inward reality, and so become living men, in- 
 stead of remaining mere toiling and suffering 
 and decaying machines. 
 
 Time would fail me to detail all the fa- 
 miliar narratives of the success of earnest 
 seekers after education- amidst the discourage- 
 ments of poverty. It will be enough to say 
 of the past, that it has had its Franklin, who 
 rose from the position of a printer's boy to 
 that of a prince among philosophers; that 
 Benjamin West has gone forth from his se- 
 cluded home, penetrated the spirit of Art, and 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 59 
 
 left his own name to go down to all genera- 
 tions who love his noble occupation ; that 
 from poverty and seclusion have risen the 
 foremost lights in Mechanics and Art and Lit- 
 erature which have beamed upon this young 
 nation. But there are men of our own times, — 
 men who breathe the same atmosphere that we 
 do, and who are now interested in the same 
 life that blesses us, — who have, step by step, 
 toiled up their glorious way from poverty to 
 renown, and are even now shedding the 
 brightness of their example upon our path. 
 Let us strive to profit by their career ; and if 
 not incited to scale the heights that they have 
 won, let us at least learn from them that 
 culture and art are not repelled by the brawny 
 hand of labor, or unapproachable by men 
 whose aspirations after excellence throb be- 
 neath homely garments, and who toil for their 
 bread. Too much of mere dilettanteism has 
 been associated with literature, and it has 
 too long been regarded as unable to minis- 
 ter to the intellectual wants of the masses. 
 Indeed, from the kind of literature which has 
 
60 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 been offered them, the masses might be jus- 
 tified in the belief that they have no intellect- 
 ual capacity. Now and then, some sturdy- 
 son of toil breaks through the barriers of his 
 condition, and asserts his right to the higher 
 order of intellectual food; but look at the 
 quantity of trash which the press of our coun- 
 try spreads before the masses, compare, if 
 you will, the current quality of fiction in the 
 so-called literary papers, — the " Flags," and 
 the " Banners," cum mullis aliis, — compare 
 these silly sentimental drivellers with the solid 
 and educating tone of literature which the 
 enterprise and true workmanlike zeal of the 
 Chamberses and Dickens furnishes for our 
 Transatlantic cousins, and you can but see 
 that here literature too seldom recognizes 
 its elevating mission ; it does not, as it should 
 do, assert its educating force ; it does not 
 permeate all classes, and cause the echo of 
 its inspiration to repeat " Excelsior I " from 
 every workshop and factory and forge in the 
 land. It does not assert its eternity, but is 
 content with an ephemeral glitter, and a 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. Gl 
 
 frothy reputation. The path to education, 
 therefore, is beset with difficulties for the 
 workingman ; and it is well that at the 
 outset we should recognize this fact, — that 
 we should be fully aware, that, when talking 
 about the self-education of workingmen, we 
 are philosophizing about that which can only 
 have reality as a result of as hard toil, and 
 a thoroughness of application equal to that 
 which the mechanic must bestow upon his 
 labor, to acquire a competence or to achieve 
 excellence in his calling. Self-education does 
 not receive the assistance from the press and 
 the pulpit, and from society, which it ought 
 to receive ; but, notwithstanding this, there 
 are men who rise above these additional and 
 improper barriers to their culture, and become 
 masters in the departments to which they de- 
 vote themselves. Among these we may find 
 profitable illustrations in the persons of Hugh 
 Miller, the Geologist; Elihu Burritt, the 
 Linguist ; Hiram Powers, the Sculptor ; and 
 Horace Greeley, the Journalist. 
 
 The first of these commenced his career 
 
62 
 
 SE-LF-EDUCATION. 
 
 under the most unfavorable circumstances, — 
 having but a slight preparation, and being 
 early put to the laborious and apparently 
 uninspiring toil of stone-cutting. While an 
 apprentice and journeyman stone-mason, he 
 studied geology, and read by fire-light to 
 such good purpose, that his name is now- 
 known everywhere as that of him who has 
 thrown new light upon some of the most per- 
 plexing questions in that department of sci- 
 ence. His mason's tools have opened new 
 volumes of Nature's truth, and given fresh 
 demonstration of the w^isdom and glory of 
 God. I know^ of no more delightful books, in 
 the whole range of literature, than the " Old 
 Red Sandstone " and " Footsteps of the Cre- 
 ator," w^hich the pen of this once illiterate, 
 obscure, and physically weak Scotch me- 
 chanic has produced. And I know of no work 
 so worthy of a universal circulation among 
 workingmen, — so well fitted to enkindle a 
 true ambition, and to form a text-book of self- 
 education, — as the " Schools and Schoolmas- 
 ters" of this same most instructive author. 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 Hugh Miller is himself at once an example 
 and a trophy of self-culture. From the bleak 
 and dreary quarries in which his boyhood was 
 spent, — from his lonely sea-side and moun- 
 tain rambles, — from his associations with the 
 illiterate, and his dismal lodging-places. Miller 
 has sent his power over two continents, and 
 America and France, as well as his own 
 " bonnie Scotland," rank him in the foremost 
 place among the geologists of his day. I 
 wall not attempt to sketch his history, nor in- 
 deed can I do this with any of the few illus- 
 trations which I shall offer you ; but depend 
 upon it, a perusal of his books will do you 
 more good, will cause you to feel more strength 
 and earnestness, will stimulate you to braver 
 attempts at excellence, and in every way re- 
 pay you better, than the same expenditure of 
 time and money in any other way. Such 
 works as his " Schoolmasters " form our only 
 hope for the working classes from literature ; 
 and until our own people cease to canonize 
 swindlers, and to purchase their biographies, 
 we must even depend upon foreign literature 
 of this cast for our national nutriment. 
 
64 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 Of Elihu Burritt it is enough to say, that 
 he pounded his anvil to such good purpose 
 that the " sparks " have flown all across the 
 continent ; and, what is stranger still, these 
 scintillations have an undiminished bright- 
 ness yet. His laborious life and successful 
 studies have blessed the sinking spirits of 
 many others, who, searching for a lower stand- 
 ard of excellence than he has attained, have 
 taken courage from his greater triumphs, and 
 so have felt the power of his " League of 
 Brotherhood." His life of earnestness is worth 
 a century of philosophy, and is a better hom- 
 ily on the dignity of Labor than mortal lips 
 can utter. A blacksmith and a linguist, he 
 has proved an " Apostle of Peace," and de- 
 serves greater glory than those who fight 
 their way to the nation's honors. He is a 
 living instance of what a poor, but industrious 
 and earnest man, may accomplish in our land, 
 and his life is a fact of greater glory to our 
 national institutions than all the eloquence 
 of July orations can exaggerate. His exam- 
 ple is of more consequence to the working- 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 65 
 
 man, if it be rightly studied, than a rise of 
 wasfes or a decrease of hours. He is himself 
 " an exposition of industry," and might almost, 
 for his varied acquisitions among the lan- 
 guages of all countries, be called " an Exhi- 
 bition of the Industry of all Nations." Let 
 our mechanics copy his example, and they 
 will find that excellence is as near and as 
 surely attainable to the mechanics of Illinois, 
 as to him of Connecticut. 
 
 Hiram Powers was a native of New Eng- 
 land, and was taken to Cincinnati a poor, 
 uneducated boy. While very young, he was 
 thrown entirely upon his own resources. Pa- 
 tience, industry, and temperance have had 
 quite as much to do with making him famous, 
 as his undoubted genius. " While a boy," 
 we are told, " he displayed a mechanical gen- 
 ius of the most remarkable kind. With a 
 common knife or file, he would shape a piece 
 of wood or metal into any. form to suit his 
 fancy. Without any previous instruction, he 
 succeeded in building an organ, and invented 
 
 6* 
 
66 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 a lathe for turning metals. Brass, iron, and 
 stone were equally manageable in his hands." 
 He probably obtained quite as much renown 
 in Cincinnati by the construction of a model 
 called the " Lower Regions," which seems to 
 have materialized Dante's Inferno, as he has 
 since gained all over the world by his Eve 
 and the Greek Slave. His residence in Rome 
 and Florence was the result of hard toil, the 
 means being slowly accumulated ; and he 
 probably owes much of his final success to 
 Greenough, who, like a true artist, extended 
 a helping hand to the struggling genius. He 
 is probably best known as the producer of 
 that more than classic creation, the Greek 
 Slave. The stern chastity of this piece of 
 statuary makes it, in the estimation of many 
 competent judges, even superior to that mas- 
 terpiece, the Venus de' Medici. For varied 
 and yet always pure and truthful expression, 
 the Slave is a masterpiece ; and yet one can 
 scarcely look upon his later productions, Eve 
 and the Fisher-Boy, without regretting that 
 the Greek Slave should seem to rob those per- 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 67 
 
 feet works of Art of their true glory. All that 
 Powers does, he performs well ; he has set a 
 grand ideal before him; he is indefatigably 
 laborious, and his private character is said to 
 be above reproach. These facts, and his 
 steady perseverance under the most difficult 
 and trying circumstances, are probably the 
 true secrets of his rise from the position of a 
 poor, friendless boy, in the streets of Cincin- 
 nati, to that of the world's greatest sculptor 
 in this age. And these same traits of char- 
 acter, faithfully developed and carefully guard- 
 ed, will raise any young workingman, or any 
 poor boy, if not to the same height of fame, 
 yet to the same position of actual nobility. 
 It is by these that our lives become actual, 
 and our poverty wears a nobler mantle than 
 Tyrian purple in the estimation of God and 
 all good men. There is a sphere into which 
 no wealth can purchase admission, — there is 
 a sanctity which cannot be bribed, and which 
 Mammon cannot control, — a sphere which 
 demonstrates the littleness of mere wealth, 
 without noble aspirations, and the folly of 
 
68 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 those who spurn their superiors in mind, be- 
 cause of a fancied inferiority of blood or of 
 possessions. I mean the sphere of the intel- 
 lect ; that into which any poor man may work 
 his way, and which demands the same toil of 
 all, ojr denies its degree to them. A man may 
 carry a rough exterior, and dwell in humble 
 lodgings, and yet he shall commune with the 
 kings and princes of thought, and pity the 
 Dives who looks from the wallow of his selfish 
 littleness with an air of contempt, as if he 
 really lived in a higher state. Believe me, my 
 friends, you may live in a garret, and know 
 more grandeur and sublimity, more fact and 
 philosophy, more of that intellectual spirit- 
 uality, which is the only real substance, than 
 those who mistake their poor external seem- 
 ing for reality, and worship the shadow, with- 
 out the power to understand the substance. 
 
 Horace Greeley is a man of our own 
 times, who, whatever may be the faults of his 
 judgment, is yet a good example of the suc- 
 cess of perseverance. He probably owes all 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 69 
 
 his present position of eminence as a jour- 
 nalist to the fact that he was a good work- 
 man when a journeyman printer. That he is 
 a man of crotchets and curious impulses, I 
 think his best friends will not doubt; that his 
 social theories are always practical, I think no 
 one will assert. But yet, with all the impro- 
 prieties of his judgment, and the palpable fol- 
 lies of his Fourierite dreams, — with the dead 
 weight of a heart too generous to learn to 
 look with stoicism upon the great social 
 wrongs which have become institutions in 
 our land, — he has succeeded in rising from 
 poverty to eminence, and has won not only a 
 competence, but the respect of men who have 
 very little respect for his theories. That he 
 has great goodness of heart, I think there can 
 be no question ; but it is to his earnest in- 
 dustry, to his manly resolution to make him- 
 self heard and felt, that he owes his elevation 
 to the post of " Tribune," — standing between 
 the two great classes of society, and endeav- 
 oring to sustain the lower against the oppres- 
 sion of the upper. The writer of a recent 
 
70 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 eulogistic biography of him has summed up 
 his excellence in a way that will answer the 
 point of my use of his life as an illustration, 
 and so I will borrow his language. " He be- 
 gan life as a workingman. As a workingman, 
 he found out and experienced the disadvanta- 
 ges of the workingman's condition. He rose 
 from the ranks to a position of command- 
 ing influence. But he ceased to be a work- 
 ingman with workingmen, only to become a 
 workingman /o>' workingmen." This much, I 
 think, we may all admit ; and it is from this 
 point of view that I wish you to gather 
 strength from his example, to make your toil 
 subservient to your higher life and grander 
 interests. Never, I pray you, be content to 
 labor for mere wages ; ahvays have a purpose 
 to your life, which shall raise it above the con- 
 sideration of money or clothing or posses- 
 sions as an end. Remember that you have a 
 life within you of more consequence than the 
 decaying interests over which the mercenary 
 struggle, and for which fools live and die, but 
 by which wise men are made more useful to 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 71 
 
 themselves and to others. Remember, that it 
 is educated mind which governs the universe; 
 that ignorance is the voluntary waste of the 
 noblest powers of our being, and is a waste 
 which ought not to be permitted. At the 
 proper time, I shall endeavor to show you 
 that there is no workingman, and no appren- 
 tice, who may not, by reasonable industry, 
 furnish his intellect with a good and sufficient 
 culture. One would think that no sentient 
 and rational creature could be content to live 
 in our world without knowing more of its 
 majestic beauty, more of its marvellous won- 
 ders, than commonly passes into the concep- 
 tion of men. Pick up a pebble, — examine a 
 wild-flower, — look upon the hills, " rock-ribbed 
 and ancient as the sun," — go forth when the 
 stars in their myriad diversities of sparkling 
 beauty are making the night a thing of glory 
 and of joy, — stand upon yonder ancient bluff, 
 on which Marquette gazed as his canoe floated 
 down this wonderful river, — look out upon a 
 sunset such as Italy cannot afford, — wander 
 out upon the prairies, when they are like a 
 
72 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 heaving ocean of verdure and of flowers, — look 
 within you, — listen to the mysterious past, 
 wdth its accumulation of goodness, of thought, 
 of science, and of art, — all for you. Behold 
 what passes before the eyes of every working- 
 man, however lowly his lot, every hour of the 
 day, and tell me if you are willing to tug and 
 strain for a morsel of bread and a change of 
 raiment, and then to die in the midst of these 
 mysterious sublimities, without knowing more 
 about them than the horse or dead machine 
 which you control and work with ? 
 
 But you will say to me, that you are not 
 content to be uneducated, — that the horizon 
 of your mental desires is continually w^idening 
 as you ascend the hill of knowledge ; — but, 
 you will say, " No one cares for us ; No one 
 lightens our heavy burden ; and though giants 
 in energy and mental power may succeed in 
 overcoming the obstacles to their pursuit of 
 culture, yet we shall faint, and must not at- 
 tempt the warfare unaided." You will say, 
 too, that you have claims upon the assistance 
 of others, and they are quite as guilty in neg- 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 73 
 
 lecting you, as you are in faltering at so 'great 
 a work. And while there is somewhat of fal- 
 lacy, there is also much of fact in this plea. 
 Let us see, then, what might be done to aid 
 the self-education of these persons. 
 
 Literature may aid this work, as Iliave al- 
 ready suggested, by furnishing an instructive 
 and useful class of reading at a moderate 
 price. I know of nothing in which an indi- 
 vidual could prove a greater benefactor to the 
 workingmen of our country, than by popular- 
 izing the great facts of science and art, and 
 presenting them in an attractive form. I am 
 convinced that a work upon the model of the 
 English " Penny Cyclopaedia," but brought 
 down to our own time and applied to our 
 nationality, would be of more service to our 
 country than the conquest of Mexico or the 
 purchase of Cuba ; and until such works 
 do exist in our country, public libraries and 
 familiar lectures must take their places. But 
 we owe it to our national welfare to frown 
 upon the introduction of so much, worse than 
 trash, into our communities, under the im- 
 
 7 
 
74 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 proper appellation of literature, and, so far as 
 our influence goes, to use it in favor of the 
 truthful and educating. 
 
 The Church and the pulpit, I can but think, 
 have a duty to perform in this direction, which 
 has so far been but feebly recognized and per- 
 formed. Too often, religionists and working- 
 men are both in error as to the use of Sunday. 
 The laborer tells us, " The Sabbath is made 
 for man " ; that it is a day of rest ; that it is 
 the only time for him to attend to his garden- 
 ing, to hunt, to fish, or to read silly novels. 
 The man makes a great mistake by deducing 
 false consequences from correct premises ; and 
 his logic leads to the loss of his best oppor- 
 tunities for strengthening and expanding his 
 spiritual life. 
 
 Sunday is undoubtedly the workingman's 
 day of rest. But muscular activity may not 
 be the best kind of rest for him, — as certainly 
 physical inactivity and mental dissipation are 
 not. He may rest his weary limbs, and yet 
 he may devote the hours of this day of rest 
 to profitable religious and educational exer- 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 75 
 
 cises. He may go to church, if the church 
 performs its duty to him, in furnishing him 
 with profitable food for thought; and if not, 
 he may stay at home, or wander out into the 
 fields, and learn from his books something of 
 the significance of his life and of the beauty 
 of his surroundings. But this involves that 
 vexed question, whether anything but dogmas 
 may be profitably advanced from the pulpit, 
 — a question which I have no difficulty about 
 deciding for myself, and cannot spare time to 
 settle for others. 
 
 Society owes a duty to the education of 
 the working classes, which exceeds even its 
 obligation to furnish the means of culture. 
 It is too true, that in our republican country 
 even the internal man is not regarded so 
 strictly as the external. Too often a fool or 
 a debauchee will be countenanced for his 
 wealth, when genius and learning in rags 
 would be spurned. We are governed too 
 much by the seeming, and do not often enough 
 penetrate to the reality. The mind is too fre- 
 quently valued less than the garments, and 
 
76 SELF-EDUCATION. 
 
 the stains of honest toil are deemed badges 
 of disgrace. These things ought not to be. 
 They are creating more social injury than we 
 dream of. Their effects are not limited to the 
 obstruction of the path to culture, or an inju- 
 ry to the feelings of sensitive and yet meri- 
 torious men, but they are the secrets of the 
 extravagance which induces our young men 
 to waste their means and their time upon their 
 attire, and adornment of their persons, while 
 their minds and hearts are allowed to go un- 
 furnished and uncared for. Do you lament 
 the absence of mental power and intellectual 
 tastes on the part of your clerks and mechan-. 
 ics ? Then, depend upon it, you must show 
 them that you value these things higher than 
 the fopperies of dress and falsities of fashion. 
 You must make the mind and heart the stand- 
 ard, and never give the young man reason 
 to infer that villany and meanness may pur- 
 chase their way into good society ; but rather 
 show them that the degrees of our social life 
 all rest upon distinctions of merit and of cul- 
 ture. Do these things faithfully, and you will 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 77 
 
 not long have to lament the absence of a love 
 for intellectual pursuits, or a scarcity of intel- 
 lectual workingmen. But the Golden Age of 
 Labor will be begun, and the workman will 
 love his toil ; and under his hand it will be 
 not less an embodiment of his spirit than a 
 thing of beauty. Then fair buildings will arise, 
 unsightliness will disappear, and cathedrals 
 and art-galleries will take the place of temples 
 of mere Mammon ; then our merchants will 
 be as princes, and as the honorable of the 
 earth ; our laborers will find an inspiration in 
 their toil, and the spirit of beauty shall be 
 given to the clods of the valley, and dwell in 
 our habitations for ever. 
 
LECTURE IV, 
 
 READING AND RECREATION, OR HELPS TO LEARN- 
 ING AND HINTS FOR LIVING. 
 
 " Overburden not thy memory, to make so faithful a servant a slave. 
 Remember Atlas was weary. Have as much reason as a camel, to rise 
 when thou hast thy fuU load. Memory, like a purse, if it be overfull 
 that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it. Take heed of a gluttonous 
 curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite of 
 thy memory spoil the digestion thereof. .... Marshal thy notions into 
 a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and 
 packed up in bundles, than when it lies untoward, flapping and hanging 
 about his shoulders." — Thomas Fuller. 
 
 "But because the spirit of man cannot demean itself lively in this 
 body without some repeating intermission of labor and serious things, it 
 were happy for the commonwealth if our magistrates, as in those famous 
 governments of old, would take into their care, not only the deciding of 
 our contentious law-cases and brawls, but the managing of our public 
 sports and festival pastimes."' — Miltox. 
 
 There is a traditionary story connected with 
 the library of one of our American universities, 
 to the effedt that, once upon a time, a new stu- 
 dent, upon drawing day, approached the li- 
 brarian, staggering under the weight of an 
 immense folio in black letter, w^iich had long 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 79 
 
 been a dusty ornament to the college library, 
 and the principal value of which was prob- 
 ably the pride of possession, — like a great 
 many other dusty books which cumber the 
 shelves of public libraries, and are an immense 
 expense, merely that it may be said that such 
 an institution possesses that rare black-letter 
 copy of somebody (whom nobody knows), 
 about something (for wdiich nobody cares). 
 Our Freshman, in the pursuit of knowledge 
 under difficulties, at last reached the librarian's 
 desk, and, depositing his camel's load of an- 
 cient nonsense, gravely requested the official 
 to charge that book to him. Surprised at the 
 unusual choice of the young man, and per- 
 haps cherishing a lurking hope that he had 
 stumbled upon some rare specimen of preco- 
 cious bibliomania, the librarian eagerly in- 
 quired his reason for selecting that book from 
 among the hundred thousand volumes of the 
 library. His reply was, that, as he supposed 
 he must read all the books before he gradu- 
 ated, he thought he would begin in that cor- 
 ner with the large ones, and so work down by 
 degrees I 
 
80 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 The anecdote is worth just this, that it illus- 
 trates the perplexity with which those who 
 are thrown among books, without an academ- 
 ical training, regard the whole subject of read- 
 ing. More time is lost by workingmen, and 
 by other men too, in deciding what to read, 
 and in reading what is useless, than \vould 
 serve to make a profound scholar of any man 
 of good native intellectual poAvers. A young 
 man may be earnestly desirous of furnishing 
 his mind with all the information he can ob- 
 tain, but he grows weary and disheartened, as 
 he toils through volume after volume with no 
 perceptible increase of his treasures. He does 
 not know, perhaps, that while he forgets names 
 and dates, and even facts themselves, his mind 
 is receiving its best reward for his toil, in the 
 discipline which it gradually attains ; he does 
 not understand that good books, like good 
 company, polish all who come in contact with 
 them, though the words and dresses of their 
 surroundings pass from the memory. And 
 so he tugs and strains to become a scholar, 
 with a false standard of scholarship before 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 81 
 
 him ; he despairs of becoming a self-made 
 man, while the process of self-formation is in 
 its most active stage. He looks too much to 
 the external, and too little to the internal ; 
 and perhaps reverences some pedagogue as 
 a type of scholarship, for his rapid utterance 
 of unknown tongues, and egotistical asser- 
 tions of unheard-of scientific hypotheses, and 
 confident riding of strange hobbies in Natural 
 Philosophy, which an Agassiz or a Liebig 
 would not dare to mount ; forgetting that a 
 parrot may be taught to do all this, but that 
 true scholarship, like the forces of Nature, is 
 always at work, but never noisy, accomplish- 
 ing most when not seen, and giving but a 
 faint expression to the outward of what exists 
 within. To meet these difficulties, and to 
 furnish a few plain directions for useful read- 
 ing, is the object, for the most part, of this 
 Lecture ; and as I wish to give practical di- 
 rections, you must pardon me if I seem to 
 descend to unimportant minutiae. 
 
 Method is a most important agent in cul- 
 
82 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 ture. Centralize the scattered and desultory 
 labors of a few years, and they will produce 
 more than you dare to dream of. For this pur- 
 pose, it is important to have a plan of study. 
 Set out with a resolute purpose of obtaining 
 a given kind of knowledge, and you will not 
 only obtain that, but a great deal more. 
 Commence, if you please, with the history of 
 your own country, and it will branch out into 
 Geography, Politics, Geology, Botany, Con- 
 chology, and Mineralogy.; and so will lead 
 to a study of all these branches of science 
 in the abstract, in their application to the 
 central subject with which you have started. 
 So that, in order to become a very respect- 
 able scholar, — or at least a very well-informed 
 reader, — it is not necessary to lay out a great 
 deal of ground. Start with some one central 
 idea, and faithfully follow up its developments, 
 and you will find the field always opening to 
 your vision, and the interest of the occupation 
 constantly increasing. Starting with Ban- 
 croft's History of the United States as your 
 sole text-book and preceptor, and keeping 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 83 
 
 within the relative and logical connections of 
 that work, you may in ten years acquire an 
 education, by the faithful use of spare hours 
 — fragments of time — - which are now wasted 
 in perusing worse than useless books, which 
 enervate your powers and rob you of true 
 wealth. 
 
 And just here I am led to notice some fal- 
 lacies which have become current, and which 
 are working injuriously in retarding the edu- 
 cation of our working classes. 
 
 One of these fallacies is, that a great many 
 hours per diem must be devoted to study, in 
 order to attain proficiency. The truth is, that 
 most mechanics waste more time than stu- 
 dents devote to reading. As a proof of this, 
 we may mention the fact, that the almost in- 
 numerable productions of Bulwer are the re- 
 sults of a systematic devotion of four hours 
 per diem to writing. Blanco White, when 
 quite advanced in life, devoted fifteen minutes 
 per day to the study of the Greek language, 
 and before he died he had fairly mastered that 
 tongue, and read most of its literaiture. 
 
84 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 Many of the first literary men in America 
 are engaged in other callings ; and perhaps 
 one might even risk the assertion, that the 
 larger portion of magazine articles and ly- 
 ceum lectures are the results of a frugal and 
 systematic investment of spare half-hours by 
 those whose lives are full of labor. It does 
 not require a great amount of time, but a 
 thorough system and regular perseverance, to 
 make one's reading profitable. If Bulwer can 
 in four hours a day produce so much litera- 
 ture, surely we may hope to acquire some 
 minor attainments by a rigid adherence to 
 the plan of setting apart two hours a day. 
 
 Let us see, however, whether the necessary 
 time can be spared from other occupations. 
 We will take the case of a mechanic who is 
 required to labor ten hours a day ; this leaves 
 fourteen hours, and, deducting three for eating 
 and recreation, there are still eleven left. Now 
 deduct two of these for study, say from seven 
 o'clock till nine in the evening, and we have 
 still a good margin left for sleep. 
 
 Two hours per day, in ten years, omitting 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 85 
 
 Sundays, will amount to six thousand two 
 hundred and forty hours. — nearly two years 
 of ten-hour days ; or, at the rate of six hours' 
 study per diem^ for the collegiate year of forty 
 weeks, equivalent to four years and twenty 
 weeks. 
 
 So that, in ten years, the faithful setting 
 apart of two hours a day actually amounts 
 to more than the time of an ordinary colle- 
 giate course. And yet we are told that our 
 workingmen have no time to study ; and for 
 want of opportunity to become useful, they 
 are condemned to idle lounging at the corners 
 of the streets, or at best become masters of 
 the art of checkers, or professors of profanity, 
 or develop the resources of the country by 
 becoming tobacco and whiskey consuming 
 machines. 
 
 Then some people — and there are a great 
 many of them — have settled it to their own 
 satisfaction, that they have no genius for 
 study ; and therefore they cannot obtain any 
 benefit from efforts at self-culture. Depend 
 upon it, there is no greater fallacy in the 
 
 8 
 
86 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 world, than that which would substitute gen- 
 ius for industry. It may be that there are 
 persons who seem to be born with an intuitive 
 appreciation of the most complex mathemat- 
 ical problems, but true genius is always de- 
 pendent upon culture. That order of genius 
 which can dispense with industry is a disease, 
 — an abnormal condition of some special de- 
 partment of mind, — and is as little desirable 
 as a physical superfluity of one part to the 
 injury of another. All true genius recognizes 
 and bows to the Creator's ordinance of toil 
 as the price of excellence, and is even pressing 
 on to greater heights of attainment and wider 
 expanses of mental horizon. The spirit of 
 beauty is hidden, as precious gems are stored 
 in the earth ; and though one may chance to 
 obtain a glimpse of it without great labor, — 
 as he may pick up a nugget of gold on the 
 beach, — yet the law is, that only by effort 
 shall the riches of the mental or physical 
 world be secured ; and he who waits for gen- 
 ius to kindle his lamp of knowledge may sit 
 in darkness all his days, while some patient 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 87 
 
 plodder shall mount to realms of light, and be 
 thrilled with the music of the spheres. Gen- 
 ius may "light its own fire," but industry 
 must keep it burning. Set it down, then, as 
 a determined fact, that you can accomplish 
 much with the methodical outlay of little 
 time, but that nothing can be done without 
 labor. And now let me offer you a few hints 
 which may be of service in enabling you to 
 read to the best advantage. 
 
 Read none hut good hooks. And by this I 
 do not mean that reading should be confined 
 to Baxter's " Saint's Rest" or Bunyan's " Pil- 
 grim's Progress," which — capital books as 
 they are in their sphere — would not serve to 
 fill one's mind with very accurate scientific 
 facts. But I mean that, in whatever depart- 
 ment you may wish to read, it is better to 
 read the best authors than to wade through 
 the dilutions of their works to be found in 
 ga.udily bound and badly printed " Gazet- 
 teers," and " Histories of the World," which 
 profess to contain in one volume all that the 
 ages have served to accumulate. More harm 
 
88 HEADING AND KECREATION. 
 
 is done by reading poor substitutes for good 
 books than any money or labor-saving can 
 possibly compensate for. Perhaps you will 
 complain that the style of these better works 
 does not suit you, — that it is " too dry," and 
 " too little like a story " ; that is because sto- 
 ries are not facts, and you need facts and not 
 stories. Story-writers have adopted an in- 
 flated and unreal style, and you can do no 
 better work for your culture than to read these 
 " dry " books until you can relish them with 
 a better zest than you now feel when poison- 
 ing your minds with buccaneer and bravo 
 improbabilities. If you read history, there- 
 fore, let it be of the type of Hume, Macaulay, 
 Grote, Bancroft, and Sparks. If poetry, that 
 of Spenser, Milton, Young, Cowper, and our 
 own Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell. For 
 style, read the Lectures of Thackeray, Giles, 
 Whipple, and Dewey. To attain logical dis- 
 crimination, read Story on the Constitution, 
 Marshall's Judicial Decisions, and Black- 
 stone's Commentaries. For a perception of 
 God's presence in the souls of men, and of 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 89 
 
 the beauty and glory of good and true lives, 
 read the Biographies of NefF, Oberlin, How- 
 ard, Buxton, Channing, Wesley, Knox, Swe- 
 denborg, and John Fox. For travels, peruse 
 Robinson's Biblical Researches, Lynch's Dead 
 Sea, and Layard's Nineveh and Babylon. 
 And so in philosophy and science, you may 
 make the acquaintance of the great minds of 
 Whewell, Wayland, Upham, Agassiz, and 
 Humboldt. 
 
 Do not try to remember all you read. You 
 might as reasonably attempt to recall to 
 your memories all the kinds of food by which 
 your physical system has been sustained and 
 strengthened during the last ten or twenty 
 years, as to burden your minds with the pre- 
 cise terms in which various authors convey 
 great facts or clothe great principles. You 
 need the nutriment, the substance, of books ; 
 and you cannot read a good book attentively 
 without deriving benefit from it, however im- 
 perceptibly you imbibe its good. To facili- 
 tate your grasp of the works you read, and 
 your apprehension of their spirit, it is well to 
 
90 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 make notes of the leading tenor of argument, 
 on the general direction of the narrative. 
 
 Besides reading for information, bear in 
 mind that all reading and all education has 
 its most important agency in its effects upon 
 your mental discipline. It is well, therefore, 
 as a matter of thought, to dissect a book oc- 
 casionally, — analyze it, — resolve it to its par- 
 ticles, — thfov/ it into the crucible of criticism, 
 
 — hold an imaginary conversation with its 
 author (Prescott or Guizot or Cicero, perhaps), 
 
 — show him his absurdities, — reveal his hid- 
 den follies, — bring up his mixed metaphors 
 to the scorn of a hypercritical community, — 
 and prove to him that he might have done 
 better, and that you certainly could. Thus 
 you may hold a revel in the charnel-house of 
 metaphysics, and a holiday in company with 
 hard style, which, if it does not put life into 
 the dry bones of the book, will certainly brace 
 up your own powers, and enable you to walk 
 more firmly upon the ascending Parnassus, 
 and to gaze without blinking upon the literary 
 luminaries. 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 91 
 
 There are means by which, without any 
 very great outlay, — without a greater expen- 
 diture than a mechanic's apprentice can aflford,' 
 — the use of the necessary books can be pro- 
 cured. But it is well, if possible, to possess 
 a few good books. . They form the pleasant- 
 est of acquaintances, and one soon learns to 
 regard these treasuries of the thought of the 
 good and earnest as living things, rather than 
 paper and print. A good library is an anchor 
 to keep a young man from roving, and a helm 
 to aid an old man to gain the greatest possi- 
 ble benefit from what remains of the breeze. 
 Books are the conservators of society, — they 
 are never carried off by temporary excite- 
 ments, nor bribed by office, but remain as 
 true to w^hat Plato thought and Cicero spoke 
 as though these great ones had never passed 
 from earth. A few shelves well filled are 
 greater ornaments, and surer indications of 
 the respectability of a young man, than outre 
 garments and mosaic chairs. They will cleave 
 to him when friends are false, and fortune 
 frowns ; and even though his poverty obliges 
 
92 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 him to part with them, they will linger about 
 his memory, and dwell in his heart, like the 
 •presence of a holy affection when death has 
 removed its object. By all means, have some 
 good books to call your own. Add to them as 
 rapidly as you can; and if you will curtail your 
 needless expenses, you can soon obtain a good 
 library. Give me the money which the young 
 men of our city waste in cigars, because it is so 
 genteel to smoke ; and in fine apparel, because 
 richer people wear it ; and in parties, because 
 everybody goes ; and in horses, because Sun- 
 day is a day of rest, for everybody to ride, — 
 and I will endow a free library, and free lec- 
 tures, and free schools, which shall make our 
 city so noted for literature, that all who wish 
 to come within the sphere of it shall flock 
 here to dwell, and fill our streets with build- 
 ings and our wharves with boats, and develop 
 the wealth, which is only waiting for more 
 capital and labor to enrich our city and en- 
 large its borders. 
 
 Form Pleading' Clubs. Let a few young 
 men associate themselves for the purpose of 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 93 
 
 mutual cultivation ; let them read the same 
 works, and devote a small portion of one or 
 two evenings in the week to a comparison of 
 their impressions. This, while it will help to 
 fasten the topics of their study in the mind, 
 will also furnish an incitement to careful read- 
 ing ; and, if the club can procure a very slow 
 reader as one of their number, let them prize him 
 very highly for his services in retarding their 
 too rapid skimming of the surface of books. 
 Such a person in a club would be worth more 
 than a professor in a college, and his slowness 
 would advance the real progress of the club 
 more than the fire of genius. The tendency 
 is always to too great a degree of rapidity in 
 reading, and our natural impulsiveness and 
 haste lead us rushing blindly over the beau- 
 ties and treasures of literature, skipping whole 
 chapters of good thought, because they seem 
 to a casual glance to be " dry," and leaping 
 over pages and sentences in an impetuous de- 
 sire to see how it ends. Indeed, our reading 
 public are generally too much like a mob at 
 a public execution, crowding and jostling. 
 
94 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 hasting and fuming, to witness the catas- 
 trophe. We are always in a hurry to reach 
 the end, — not alone of books, — but of wealth 
 and the growth of empire ; and too often in 
 our haste we overlook the facts of rectitude 
 and conscience, and those very " dry chapters," 
 — in the estimation of this "fast" age, — the 
 Decalogue and Lord's Prayer. 
 
 Do not expect too much. The amount of 
 culture which, under the best of opportunities, 
 can be obtained in this mortal condition, is 
 very small. The great mathematician, La- 
 place, when his earthly career was closing, 
 said, " That which I know is limited, that 
 which I do not know is infinite." And New- 
 ton, with his profundity of mental grasp, and 
 the great glories of his demonstrations shed- 
 ding a brightness upon his name, — even he 
 compared himself to a boy upon the beach 
 picking up pebbles of knowledge, with the 
 infinite ocean spread before him. We cannot 
 comprehend all knowledge, nor can we read 
 all that is written ; let us be satisfied with rea- 
 sonable progress, and judge of our faithful- 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 95 
 
 ness, not by the results, but by our diligence 
 in striving. 
 
 Let me add to these suggestions for reading 
 a few hints for living. The great purpose of, 
 life is too often overlooked, and we become so 
 immersed in our poor temporary excitements, 
 that we forget our higher and more permanent 
 interests. The proper rule for judging char- 
 acter is what the man is, not what he has. 
 We may make our life just what we please, 
 because our externalities will take their color- 
 ing from our inward life ; and so a man may 
 live, like Diogenes, in a tub, and yet the man 
 shall exalt his humble abode into a thing of 
 beauty ; or he may dwell in a palace, with a 
 spirit that will make his dwelling the meanest 
 of tubs. It is the man, and not his dwelling, 
 or his clothing, that constitutes the essential ; 
 and just as he is, so will his surrounding be. 
 He may make life a matter of toil and vex- 
 ation, and go down to his grave like the close 
 of a dismal day ; or he may walk erect on 
 the earth, as in the fair palace of God, and 
 evolve out of all his toil and discipline an 
 
96 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 harmonious and true life, which shall make 
 him joyous here and jubilant hereafter. 
 
 INIan is made to labor, but not to be a beast 
 of burden ; and, if he will chain himself to 
 endless and unmitigated toil, let him not 
 blame Providence, but his own want of man- 
 hood, which compels him to bow to the money- 
 seeking and wealth-possessing decrees of our 
 republican aristocracy. He may be a man, 
 and Christian, if he be as rich as Croesus ; 
 and so too he may be a true man, and a 
 happy man, if he be as poor as Job. Wealth 
 is a good, but not the highest good ; labor is 
 a necessity, but not the sole necessity. Our 
 spirits need recreation ; we need more play- 
 time than we get ; and we have no right to 
 rob our minds and souls of their Sabbaths, 
 or our physical systems of their sleep, in order 
 to obtain it. We have no right to toil and 
 tug through the week, and post ledgers and 
 work like day-laborers in our gardens on Sun- 
 day, or to strive to find recreation after a hard 
 day of toil in a harder night of exercise in the 
 ball-room. There are times more suitable, and 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 97 
 
 recreations more fitting, than these. It is 
 strange that the men whose lives are spent 
 in muscular exertions are those who seek 
 muscular amusements ; while those whose 
 lives are sedentary are generally found amus- 
 ing themselves with recreations which confine 
 them to the laboratory or study. 
 
 This matter needs a reform ; and if any one 
 must throw quoits and play ball, let it be the 
 ministers and lawyers, who die before they 
 ought to, for want of proper exercise. Much 
 may be done for self-education by judicious 
 recreation. Let our mechanics devote their 
 summer evenings to geologizing and botaniz- 
 ing, and their winter evenings to astronomy 
 and lectures, and educated and literary labor- 
 ing men will soon cease to be a rarity. But 
 beware of selfishness in your amusements. 
 A man may flatter himself that he is exceed- 
 ingly wise in arranging his life so as to make 
 the most money, and at the same time to cul- 
 tivate his tastes, when he is robbing the most 
 sacred and important parts of his being of 
 their due. Remember, there is a time to all 
 
 9 
 
98 READING AND RECREATION. 
 
 things, and to everything a season ; and Sun- 
 day is the time and season for religious and 
 moral culture: you have six days in which 
 to toil, and your toiling days constitute six 
 sevenths of your lives. Can you give the 
 whole of this great portion of your earthly 
 existence to unvaried scrambling after food 
 and raiment ? Ought you not to reserve 
 a portion of your working days for garden- 
 ing and scientific recreations? Ought you 
 not to seek rational and profitable recreation 
 out of doors, in God's free air, under his 
 broad sky and upon his speaking earth, rather 
 than to crowd into ill-ventilated billiard-rOoms 
 and groceries ? You cannot always work ; 
 but when you play, O let it be with a pur- 
 pose, and to good result! Ijet the fresh air 
 breathe its vitality into your lungs, — let the 
 cold water cleanse your labor-stains, — let the 
 earth reveal its stored wonders, — let the birds 
 sing for you, the flowers tell of God, the 
 great hills point toward heaven, and the 
 blooming prairie materialize the poet's dream 
 of Paradise. Play, — for your nature as much 
 
READING AND RECREATION. 99 
 
 as that of the child needs it, — but let it be 
 as you would seek pleasure in heaven; for 
 heaven is all about you, if you will but dis- 
 cern it. Make the earth your minister, and 
 be not its servant ; use it, but do not permit 
 it to abuse you. And so blending study and 
 recreation with a filial and devout spirit, you 
 shall understand the mystery of life,'and prove 
 religion a fact, and not a fancy ; a thing of to- 
 day, with its vital pulses full of sympathy, and 
 its warm heart throbbing, and its energies 
 active for all the human kind, and not a 
 frozen dream, an accumulated absurdity, and 
 a thing of forms and cant and hypocrisy. 
 Blend religion with your lives, and they shall 
 be full of generous deeds and loving thoughts ; 
 and each day bring you nearer to God, and 
 to the hearts of all the good men of all time. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 CHARACTER. ADDRESSED TO YOUNG MEN. 
 
 '• Young men likewLse exhort to be sober-minded " (or discreet^. — 
 Titus ii. 6. 
 
 " There is humilitas qucEdam in vitio* If a man does not take notice 
 of that excellency and perfection that is in himself, how can he be thank- 
 ful to God, who is the author of aU excellency and perfection"? Nay, if a 
 man hath too mean an opinion of himself, it wiU render him unserriceable 
 both to God and man.-' — Seldex. 
 
 "To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. Th« 
 Canaanitish woman Ures more happily without a name than Herodias 
 with one To subsist in Lasting monuments, to live in their pro- 
 ductions, to exist in their names, and predicament of chimeras, was large 
 satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysium. 
 But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief To Ure indeed 
 is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope but an evidence in 
 noble believers, 't is all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard as in the 
 sands of Egypt ; ready to be anything in the ecstasy of being ever, and as 
 content with six foot, as the moles of Adrianus." — Sm Thomas Browite. 
 
 Character is our national want. As a 
 people, we need positiveness. Nations, like 
 individuals, need age in order to maturity; 
 and so we may look upon our want of firm, 
 
 * Such a thing as a faulty exccsa of humility. 
 
CHARACTER. 101 
 
 settled national character as a result of our 
 national boyhood, which the natural accumu- 
 lation of years will in a great measure rectify. 
 But it sometimes happens to individuals, that 
 they grow to old age without passing be- 
 yond the boyhood of character ; and so it may 
 happen to the nation, if the individuals com- 
 posing it are not taught to recognize the im- 
 portance and necessity of a well-balanced and 
 thoroughly matured and manly character. It 
 is because I believe there is a necessity for 
 their attention to the subject, and that its 
 main interests and results depend upon their 
 course in reference to it, that I have ventured 
 to present this topic to the young men of Al- 
 ton, and to ask their attention to my thoughts 
 and expressions upon this most important 
 matter. The young men have especial claims 
 upon the attention of the pulpit ; and the pul- 
 pit, may I not say, has an especial claim 
 upon their sympathies. The vocation of the 
 pulpit is at once an educating and a con- 
 servative one. It utters, age after age, the 
 same exhortations to virtue, and the same 
 
102 CHARACTER. 
 
 warnings against vice, and knows no distinc- 
 tion of age or circumstance, but looks upon 
 humanity as the object of its solicitude. Con- 
 trary to a common fallacy, the pulpit does not 
 see in the substantial and wealthy men of the 
 community its most anxious charge. These 
 it may benefit more easily and more effectu- 
 ally than it can reach those whose habits are 
 not formed, whose characters have not assumed 
 a decided tone, and whose circumstances and 
 plans of life are all fluctuating and undecided. 
 Believe me, then, if I may speak for the pro- 
 fession from my personal feeling, it is the 
 young men of our country toward whom the 
 pulpit looks with its most serious and anxious 
 hopes. Upon their co-operation depend, not 
 only the safety and well-being of society ex- 
 ternally, but its internal soundness and vital- 
 ity. Upon the characters formed by the young 
 men of our own day it will depend whether 
 the future of our country shall be that of 
 ancient Rome, with its external glitter and 
 internal decay and death, or the rise of a 
 commonwealth, which, having Christian prin- 
 
CHARACTER. 103 
 
 ciple for its heart, shall enshrine the life of 
 Christ in its histbry, and become immortal in 
 its deeds. 
 
 God has not designed that we of this young 
 nation shall reproduce the old regal pomps 
 and childish externalities of those countries 
 and ages, when men could not discern be- 
 tween the tinsel and pageantry with which 
 despots amuse the masses, and the true vital- 
 ity of a golden age, when rectitude rules 
 without noise or show, and the pulses of a 
 free people throb with the common purpose 
 of accomplishing a grand destiny. We have 
 a nobler and more permanent mission than 
 the conquest of other tribes by the superiority 
 of our brute force over their brutal weakness ; 
 we have a destiny which requires the disci- 
 pline of the mind and heart, by more than 
 Spartan perseverance of application. For the 
 purpose which Providence has evidently con- 
 templated through the history of our country, 
 it is not sufficient that we have men of iron 
 muscles ; we must have those whose motives 
 and purposes are strong and well trained, and 
 
104 CHARACTER. 
 
 whose aspirations reach beyond the shadow, 
 which is ever fleeting, to the substance, which 
 is ever permanent. We need men with souls 
 as well as bodies ; and the merely trading and 
 accumulating animals are not much better for 
 the purposes of our national destiny than the 
 merely physical. 
 
 A great proof of the world's progress may be 
 seen in the different standards of character re- 
 quired of the masses. In Sparta, I doubt not, 
 Poole, the Pugilist, might have earned a greater 
 triumph than in the metropolis of America ; 
 but here his life has been useless and an 
 injury (save in one thing, — that he has de- 
 monstrated the possibility of physical existence 
 with a bullet lodged in the heart). But while 
 demagogues may catch at a ruffian's death, 
 and make it a patriot's martyrdom, this is an 
 exception to the general course; the rule 
 proves the necessity for the prominence of 
 the intellectual and moral man, in order to 
 permanent and substantial social eminence 
 and usefulness. 
 
 No young man should permit himself to 
 
CHARACTER. 105 
 
 pass the age of twenty-two years without a 
 thoroughly definite object for his life, and a 
 well-defined plan for pursuing it. Previous to 
 this period, he is of course under guardians 
 who have the responsibility of forming his 
 character ; but even then much will lie within 
 himself, for he must choose his own associ- 
 ates, and upon his choice of them will depend 
 his influence upon the world. Let him set 
 out, then, with a worthy purpose and a clear 
 aim. Let him not be deceived by the seeming 
 acquiescence of society with practices which 
 will not bear the test of the grand ordinance, 
 " As ye would that men should do unto you^ 
 do ye also to them likewise ^ Let him not 
 be deceived into the fatal error of imagining 
 that rectitude and virtue are old-fashioned 
 externalities, which are dependent upon the 
 maxims of men. Let him not dream that 
 any practices of trade, any falsities of so- 
 cial custom, any demands of an employer, 
 or any line of conduct on the part of those 
 around him, which depart from the spirit 
 of right and duty embodied in the Gos- 
 
10'6 CHARACTER. 
 
 pel, can be justified to his own conscience 
 or beneficial to his true interests. Let him 
 learn that there is a grander object for his life 
 than the ministry to its physical necessities, 
 in the production of an harmonious and 
 strong character. 
 
 Permit me, now, to point out one or two 
 elements of true character which may be worth 
 your attention, and by developing which, even 
 at great cost of patience and discipline, you 
 will be greatly benefited, and at the same time 
 confer a lasting blessing upon the coming ages, 
 as they depend upon the influences of the 
 present. 
 
 Individuality is one of the important ele- 
 ments of character which both the tendencies 
 of our synthetic times and the habits of our 
 trading and accumulating people are likely 
 to make more obscure than is consonant with 
 the best interests of the race ; and therefore I 
 shall call your attention to it, at the risk of 
 overlooking other principles, which, being more 
 frequently urged upon your attention, may 
 not suffer by any neglect of them. Our ideas 
 
' CHARACTER. 107 
 
 of humanity are too generally associated with 
 the race, rather than with the individuals of 
 the race. We think of man as building cit- 
 ies as belonging to bodies ; even the Chris- 
 tian man is so generally associated w^th 
 the idea of a multitudinous church, that it is 
 a very common thing to doubt if a Christian 
 man can be found outside of that organiza- 
 tion. This generalization of our ideas of 
 humanity leads us to a distrust of our in- 
 dividual powers, and a mistaken notion of 
 responsibility. The tendency of it is to lead 
 us to throw our responsibility into a common 
 stock, and to feel that, if the great body does 
 well, we have contributed towards its accom- 
 plishment ; but if it does ill, our influence as 
 constituents in the mass is so very little, that 
 our responsibility must be proportionably light. 
 And then from humanity we are very likely 
 to carry our reasoning up to Providence, and 
 to regard it as a power which governs the 
 great current of events, with very little care 
 for or acquaintance with the rills and streams 
 from which the current is fed and derives its 
 
108 CHARACTER. 
 
 importance. It is very natural, indeed, that a 
 young man, looking upon all the living tribes 
 and busy interests by which he is surrounded, 
 should cry, " What am I among so many? 
 What is one among the thronging crowds 
 and succeeding generations of the earth ? 
 Shall I not pass my day in the same fretful 
 dreams which have visited others, and pass 
 away to be replaced and forgotten by others ? 
 Of what consequence is one among so many 
 myriads of existences? Have not millions 
 before me lived the same life, endured the 
 same sorrows, partaken of the same joys, 
 t)eheld the same sunshine, and tilled the same 
 earth ? And in doing all this, were they not 
 the recipients of some common endowment 
 of fixed fate, and absolute, unalterable natural 
 necessity ? If anything in the universe directs 
 the affairs of men, is it not with reference to 
 their totality ? and if there be a Providence, 
 is it not a Providence which regards the race, 
 but does not stoop to isolated cases ? " These 
 questions, I say, are very common among our 
 young men ; and yet they are not discourag- 
 
CHARACTER. 100 
 
 ing, for they show that the religious nature 
 is workinof like leaven in their hearts. But 
 when made in a tone of discouragement, they 
 are not wise. He who puts these questions 
 to himself, and, failing of a satisfactory answer 
 from his own hasty and imperfect philosophy, 
 and from the opinions of men as embodied 
 in the creeds of churches, abandons the sacred- 
 ness of his individual life, or perverts it to 
 merely selfish and temporary uses, not only 
 wars against the spirit of the New Testament, 
 but he contradicts the plainest teaching of 
 his own experience. Lay aside, now, for a 
 moment all Christian teaching; ignore rev- 
 elation ; and regard the teachings of Jesus, 
 either as mysteries too subtle for the ordi- 
 nary intellect to grasp, or as the feverish 
 dreams of an enthusiast ; sweep away at one 
 stroke all faith in the authenticity of the 
 miracles ; — and yet, in the diversities of the 
 individualities in the race, your own experi- 
 ence shall reveal as profound a mystery, as 
 marvellous a miracle, a fact as unreconcilable 
 with the idea of a merely temporary and 
 
 10 
 
110 CHARACTER. 
 
 sensuous existence, as any recorded in the 
 Evangelic narratives. It is true, there are 
 general necessities and general influences, 
 which modify the individual to some extent : 
 but underlying all these there is a person- 
 ality which no general or social influences 
 can absorb. Every man, after all, is a unit ; 
 his experiences are his alone; his tastes are 
 peculiarly his; and, with all the general traits 
 of character, each mind is in some respect 
 different from every other mind. And the 
 difference is that which gives color to all the 
 rest; the distinctive feature is chief, and all 
 the others are subordinates and dependencies. 
 Every man's knowledge of himself will assure 
 him, that, behind all the results of training, .of 
 social influence, of inheritance, and of good 
 or ill fortune, there yet remains what all 
 these can only modify, — himself; that, des- 
 pite the steady flow of influences which would 
 seem naturally to merge him into a common 
 vortex, he is a distinct personality ; that, while 
 associating with others, he is separate from 
 them, a being within himself. And if this 
 
CHARACTER. Ill 
 
 is the teaching of experience, it is not less the 
 teaching of revelation; for what is it but 
 a repetition of Paul's inquiry, " What man 
 knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit 
 which is in man ? " — the declaration of a 
 persgnality whose depth up external eye may 
 fathom, whose powers none other may know, 
 and whose energies none other may exercise. 
 And is not this united testimony a testimony 
 to positive, sacred truth ? Is there not a spirit 
 within us which is but faintly shadowed to 
 the outward ? Is not the silence of sympathy 
 more expressive than the utterance of lan- 
 guage ? And, after all attempts at expression 
 and description, is there not, either in grief or 
 gladness, a residue of experience, or sensation, 
 which we feel to be incommunicable? Let 
 the experiences of life be ever so common 
 and general, each individuality gathers them 
 into a fresh combination; and every new 
 combination of them is a new life ; it con- 
 stitutes an identity never to be lost ; it sepa- 
 rates and distinguishes every soul among the 
 teeming generations from every other soul. 
 
112 CHARACTER. 
 
 saves it from being ingulfed in a vortex of 
 humanity, and crowns it with the glory of 
 heirship and participation in the Divine. 
 
 In our day of busy generalization, we need 
 to recognize the important element, Individ- 
 uality, in forming o.ur characters ; to withdraw 
 ourselvesi for a season from the hurrying cur- 
 rent, and inquire what we are and whither 
 we are tending, and what part we have in 
 deciding our sphere and the results to the 
 future of our existence. We necessarily feel 
 the influence and recognize the government 
 of our individualism in our ordinary life 
 experience, in our buying and selling, in our 
 eating and dressing. But do we as fully rec- 
 ognize its importance in the formation of our 
 characters as w^e should do ? 
 
 It is the great source of our temptations, 
 or rather our yielding to them, that we un- 
 dervalue the sanctity and importance of our 
 own souls, and over-estimate the significance 
 of the voices of the multitude. We allow 
 custom to dictate rules which we are con- 
 scious are not only distasteful but injurious. 
 
CHARACTER. 113 
 
 If fashion set up an idol, which in our inde- 
 pendence we despise, we fall down and wor- 
 ship it, at the dictate of the many. What is 
 it but a lack of confidence in the strength and 
 value of our absolute individuality, which 
 causes us to be so fearful of the world's cen- 
 sure that we hesitate to follow to the furthest 
 and remotest point the leadings of our own 
 thought ? And what is it but a manifestation 
 of this same distrust in their individualism, as 
 operated upon by Christian truth, which causes 
 religionists to frame creeds, and to fortify 
 themselves by denunciations against departure 
 from the well-beaten track of established be- 
 lief? We too often lose sight of the fact, that 
 revelation is addressed to us as individuals, 
 and that religion is a personal matter ; and 
 we strive to reduce it to generalization, we 
 invent religious machinery, which shall accom- 
 plish the culture of the whole mass, instead 
 of viewing it as a matter of solemn personal 
 responsibility, and with that word, Responsi- 
 bility, on our lips, we dictate the form of be- 
 lief, the color of the emotions, the shape of 
 
 10* 
 
114 CHARACTER. t- 
 
 the impulses, which must prevail in each case 
 of recognized religious experience. Now all 
 this is radically wrong. Religion must be 
 brought home to our individualism ; it must 
 be applied to that inner being, which under- 
 lies all external manifestations ; it must form 
 the bond of contact between the soul and God. 
 And to do this effectually, it is not sufficient 
 merely to produce a given mental attainment, 
 or to create an intellectual soundness, but it is 
 necessary that one's individuality be preserved 
 unmarred, and that so the influences of re- 
 ligion reach and act upon it. 
 
 Pardon me for this theological digression ; 
 I will leave this part of the subject to your 
 own thought. But, believe it, young men, 
 man is created, not to be an atom of some 
 majestic structure, with his identity crushed 
 out by the greater mass of his surroundings ; 
 he is not even a shining particle in some bright 
 orb, whose brilliancy engrosses his individual 
 lustre ; but he is a Living Soul, separate, dis- 
 tinct, and independent, to a certain extent, of 
 every other soul, with distinct traits and offi- 
 
CHARACTER. ' 115 
 
 ces of character, methods of influence pecu- 
 liar to himself, and an individual mission to 
 perform. While, therefore, you may copy the 
 good example of those whom you reverence, 
 do it, not because it is their example, but be- 
 cause it is good. Be independent in thought 
 and action, and be bound to those about you 
 by a community of feeling, and not by a tie 
 of conventionality. 
 
 One might almost venture to assert, that in 
 the general absence of this element of indi- 
 viduality in the characters of our people is 
 to be found the solution of the problem of 
 our partyism, and the facility with which 
 demagogues in politics, and quacks in the 
 professions, and schemers in the arts of spec- 
 ulation, rob the people of their rights and 
 health and substance. It is the secret of cau- 
 cuses and wire-pullings, of sectarian triumphs 
 and dogmatic meannesses, of honesty and rec- 
 titude in rags, and drunkenness and rowdyism 
 ruling the nation. It leads young men to the 
 billiard-saloons, because their companions fre- 
 quent them ; causes them to incur need- 
 
116 CHARACTER. 
 
 less expenses, lest " others " should jeer them ; 
 teaches them vice and drunkenness, because 
 " others " are adepts in them ; and obliges 
 them to waste their leisure time in foolish and 
 extravagant pursuits, because "others" follow 
 them. Be firm in your individuality ; — not 
 selfish, not mean, not morose ; but manly, and 
 erect, and independent in the integrity of that 
 nature which God has given to you. 
 
 True Manliness is an element in the for- 
 mation of character which is liable to be over- 
 looked or warped by the selfish practices of 
 the world, or to be confounded with things 
 which, while they pass in the estimation of 
 young men for being very manly, are not 
 so at all. Thus, it is not manly, whatever 
 may be the practice of the world, to be pro- 
 fane ; because man came from the hand of 
 God, receives his bounty "fevery hour, is his 
 child, and the heir to an immortal life ; and 
 profanity, while it adds no years to a youth's 
 existence, is irreverent and improper. It is a 
 maxim, that " no gentleman will swear in the 
 presence of a lady"; it would be better to 
 
CHARACTER. 117 
 
 say, " no gentleman will swear at all," for if 
 it be improper and unchaste in the presence 
 of pure mortals, how can it be justified at 
 other times, when God, who is purer than 
 mortals, is ever about us ? Depend upon it, 
 it is not an evidence of manly character either 
 to be profane or dissipated ; these things sink 
 a young man nearer to the sphere of the ani- 
 mal, instead of raising him to a position of 
 lordship over the lower races. Manliness is 
 not to be measured by late hours, boisterous 
 rowdyism, big-sounding words, pistols, and 
 pipes ; but by integrity of purpose, resolute- 
 ness of will, when temptations to fraud or 
 vice are presented, and earnestness of applica- 
 tion to legitimate work and wholesome play. 
 These will make a true man, when the fash- 
 ionable follies, and dangerous, if not dis- 
 graceful, courses in which many young men 
 engage, even in this city, will result, if not 
 in premature death, at least in permanent 
 physical and moral injury. Be manly, if it 
 cost you the loss of all companionship ; and 
 if, beyond your own pleasures, the practices 
 
118 CHARACTER. 
 
 of trade involve the loss of rectitude, then be 
 manly enough to leave your employment, and 
 seek an honest living, if it be a poorer one, in 
 some other avocation. Have a strong, earnest 
 purpose of rectitude and justice underlying 
 all your acts, and shining through your mi- 
 nutest deeds; so that it shall not be necessary 
 for you to advertise your Christianity, but 
 men seeing you may take knowledge that 
 you are permeated with Christian principle, 
 and not glossed over with Christian profession. 
 Have a purpose of ultimateness in all your 
 life-plans. Look beyond a few months or 
 years to the aggregate of your existence ; con- 
 sider what your whole life may accomplish ; 
 and remember that you cannot detach months 
 or years from the grand sum of your exist- 
 ence ; that you cannot recover wasted time ; 
 that there is no provision in the providence of 
 God for renewing the hours that are past; and 
 remember too, while we speak, the present 
 becomes the past, and the future is present; 
 and that all time is wasted which is not de- 
 voted to some pm'pose of usefulness. Em- 
 
CHARACTER. 119 
 
 ployment and pleasure may consume some 
 portion of our time, and yet the time will not 
 be wasted if the employment is serving the 
 great purposes of life, or the pleasure minis- 
 tering to our strength. But dissipation of 
 mind or body is a thief; robbing us of jewels 
 of such inestimable worth that empires cannot 
 replace them. Finally, a recognition of the 
 immortality of character is one of its most 
 important elements, and the grandest incentive 
 to a true life. A noble building or a beautiful 
 picture is the em^bodiment of an artist's idea, 
 and in it the thought of the artist lives while 
 the fabric of his creation endures ; the work, 
 however, is perishable, and the human frame 
 even more frail, so that, long ages before time 
 shall have disintegrated the particles of his 
 work, the name of the author may have passed 
 from the memory of men. But a pure and 
 strong and blessed character is imperishable, 
 and in it our lives may outlast the Pyramids, 
 and outlive a thousand generations. Slowly 
 and by degrees the character of the world, 
 like that of individuals, is formed, and every 
 
120 CHARACTER. 
 
 good or bad life advances or hinders its prog- 
 ress. And how much of solemnity is wrapped 
 up in this thought ? You and I cannot be 
 bad or good to our own loss or profit merely ; 
 but the interests of the world are linked in 
 with our individual growth, so that we must 
 bless or curse it. You cannot live to your- 
 selves, you cannot die to yourselves. Your 
 life must send its currents throbbing through 
 the social fabric, to be felt till the end of time. 
 Not to your own sad and bitter injury alone 
 can you be a drunkard, gambler, or miser; 
 the world — the world — must /eeZ your life! 
 Not alone the great and the famous of the 
 past live with us, — not only have Plato and 
 Socrates, inciting us to the pursuit of virtue 
 and wisdom, — not only Moses, teaching faith 
 in Israel's God, — not only Jesus, revealing 
 God and heaven and immortality, — but thou- 
 sands of nameless ones, who perished at the 
 stake, and in the arena, or patiently endured 
 and toiled in lowly cares, and whose tomb- 
 stones, all mossed over, lie crumbling in ob- 
 scure graveyards, and cease to tell the history 
 
CHAKACTER. 121 
 
 of the sleeping dust beneath them, — these 
 have all sent their influences down to us, 
 blessing us in a thousand ways we think 
 not of, — making virtue preferable to vice, and 
 exalting goodness above evil in the estimation 
 of the world. 
 
 How much has been done for virtue since 
 the days of Spartan morals and Roman licen- 
 tiousness ! How many corrupting customs 
 have been dethroned ! How many false prac- 
 tices have been repudiated by the world ! 
 How much that was wrong has been con- 
 quered by the Gospel of Christ I And all this 
 is the result of individual character, and has 
 been accomplished by slow and patient indi- 
 vidual faith and toil. And oh! how much 
 remains for the same process to accomplish I 
 Believe me, my brethren, we are not unin- 
 terested spectators of the world's struggles, 
 but participants in them. However calmly 
 we may close our eyes, and fold our hands, 
 and grudge our energies, we are taking part 
 in the grand interests of God, of Christ, and 
 of humanity. As the process of vegetation 
 
122 CHARACTER. 
 
 proceeds silently and surely, while we sleep, 
 even so our own characters are unfolding, 
 whether we labor for good or evil, — whether 
 we have a positive life or a negative one. 
 Just as nature is always active, and, when 
 the earth is not properly cultivated, will cause 
 it to produce weeds, so these characters 
 of ours will live, will develop their vitality 
 in some direction, and every day's experience 
 gives a greater intensity to their direction. If 
 we give them an habitually religious tone, their 
 reverence will grow imperceptibly stronger ; 
 if we slacken our moral grasp, if we for a 
 season lay the reins upon the necks of our 
 passions, they will carry us farther than we an- 
 ticipated, — they may carry us beyond control. 
 Character is the governor of our outward 
 expression; we may fence ourselves about 
 with worldly prudence, but the real man will 
 show itself in spite of us. Let a man cherish 
 dishonesty in his heart, and his dishonesty will, 
 somehow or other, find expression in his life ; 
 if not in stealing, then in meanness ; if not in 
 large frauds, then in sixpenny cheatings. We 
 
CHARACTER. 123 
 
 may disguise it from others, and even from 
 ourselves, for a season ; but sooner or later it 
 will appear that we are just what our princi- 
 ples make us. And this involves a truth more 
 momentous than questions of dogma and 
 form. It is this actual condition of our 
 character, — this real position of our inner 
 being, our spiritual life, — the state of the 
 actual unseen motive-springs which lie at the 
 basis of all our outward expression, — which is 
 the important matter. Compared with this, it 
 is comparatively of little consequence whether 
 a man be a Christian or a Pagan or a Jew ; 
 for a bad Pagan or a bad Jew is quite as 
 good as a bad Christian. 
 
 Remember, then, that, however you live, 
 your lives cannot be without results. Be 
 they ever so lowly, and to your own estima- 
 tion insignificant, your experiences are of 
 infinite worth. In the lowliest places of life 
 you may and must create characters, disposi- 
 tions, and affections which shall outreach the 
 temporary and influence the permanent. In 
 the future world, we shall be the same per- 
 
124 CHARACTER. 
 
 sons we are here, else must all identity be 
 lost. We are every day, therefore, creating 
 tastes and forming attachments which must 
 permeate our being and give character to 
 our spiritual existence. We may have a 
 settled purpose of goodness, toward which we 
 are slowly and almost imperceptibly assimi- 
 lating, but our character is forming. We 
 have a life which reaches far down below 
 the cares and customs of our external exist- 
 ence, — there is something within us with 
 which we commune at times, and whose 
 presence and government we recognize and 
 obey in our lives. It is all important to a 
 young man that this inner ruling principle 
 should be right. Make the fountain pure, 
 the stream cannot fail to be pure ; make the 
 tree good, the fruit cannot be bad. Be true 
 to your nature and to your manhood, and you 
 will be true to God. Live, I pray you, as men 
 for whom life has a reality; who look upon 
 existence as reaching beyond a little food and 
 dress and accumulation, and feel that you are 
 bound up in a common brotherhood of interest 
 

 CHARACTER. 125 
 
 and duty with the race ; so that injuring your- 
 selves you injure others, and defrauding others 
 you rob yourselves. How different an aspect 
 would our social relations wear, if we some- 
 times remembered that our characters are our 
 only immortality. O that we could feel it 
 in all its intensity, this great truth of the con- 
 tinuity of character! Then we should not 
 divide oar life into the earthly and the 
 heavenly, nor restrict the external life to a de- 
 pendence upon the limitations of poor human 
 thought, but we should bring the future into 
 contact with the present, and so elevate all 
 our pursuits with the inspiration of the Divine. 
 Go forth, then, and " be strong, quit you 
 like men," for. while all the outward shall 
 fade as the leaves do fall in the autumn, your 
 characters can never die. All else may fail. 
 Knowledge may be so superseded by a grander 
 science as to be of little worth, beauty may 
 pass away, granite and iron may moulder 
 back to dust, but the spirits that listen here to- 
 day shall never die. Think of it, this most 
 divine heirship, and say, " What manner of 
 11* 
 
126 CHARACTER. 
 
 persons ought ye to be in all holy conversa- 
 tion and godliness?" A great and glorious 
 capacity is given to every one of you ; a press- 
 ing emergency is everywhere about you ; a 
 law of your being obliges you to labor in 
 some direction, — will not permit you to be 
 idl6; and what will you do? O, let your 
 goodness live for ever ; let its pulsations be 
 strong and regular ; and the work you do 
 in weakness, and without daring to aspire to 
 the ostentation of established forms and recog- 
 nized modes, God's providence will abundant- 
 ly protect, and cause your lives to be felt long 
 ages after men shall have forgotten your 
 names, and the stone that affection placed 
 above your poor framework has returned to 
 its former particles. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 AN APPEAL. 
 
 " Another peculiar excellency of our religion is, that it prescribes an 
 accurate rule of life, most agreeable to reason and to our nature, most 
 conducive to our welfare and content, tending to procure each man's 
 private good, and to promote the public benefit of all, by the strict ob- 
 servance whereof, we bring our human nature to a resemblance of the 
 Divine." — Bakeow. 
 
 In closing this course of Lectures, I wish 
 to impress upon you that we have been con- 
 sidering facts which are of real consequence, 
 and that, while our attention has not been 
 given exclusively to matters, of direct theo- 
 logical bearing, we have been dealing with 
 subjects of religious significance and conse- 
 quence. I have endeavored to speak to you 
 in words of practical soberness, because I 
 have felt that the topics upon which I have 
 dwelt were of immediate and pressing ur- 
 gency. Other words there are which I should 
 
128 AN APPEAL. 
 
 like to speak ; there are other topics which 
 need treatment ; but the time has not come 
 for their utterance. Let me, however, cau- 
 tion you against harboring the impression, be- 
 cause I have spoken to your known^ wants, 
 and have dealt with every-day facts and 
 commonplace words, that therefore I ignore 
 religion. The difference of my position in 
 this matter from that of some who have seen 
 fit to censure me is, perhaps, just this, that I 
 believe you can '•'•have religion" to aid your 
 spiritual growth, and to assist you under your 
 difficulties, when you make true and earnest 
 efforts for your fullest expansion of intellect, 
 as well as when you limit your endeavors to 
 the cultivation of the emotions ; that, Avhen , 
 religion has work to do, like yourselves, it as- 
 sumes a working garb, but is none the less 
 religion in its work than in the temple, as the 
 laborer is not less a man in his working-jacket 
 than when he dons his Sunday broadcloth. I 
 appeal to you, therefore, to make the bearings 
 of rehgion upon your practical life a matter 
 of thought and reflection. Ask yourselves 
 
AN APPEAL. 129 
 
 what is the religious significance of your 
 lives. Consider whether you ought to regard 
 religion as a distinct operation of your voli^ 
 tion, or a power growing and strengthening 
 with your toil and development, fostering your 
 purposes of rectitude, and inciting you to 
 strive for excellence, from love of that which 
 is ever beyond. When we limit religion to 
 Sunday, and Sunday to strictly theological 
 speculation, we run the risk of creating the 
 impression that this is the extent of religion. 
 But why, I ask, may we not see religious im- 
 port in every day's work, in every good pur- 
 pose, and every pure thought ? It may be 
 good — and it is good — to sing hymns and 
 offer prayers in concert ; but there is a paean 
 that might ascend to the Infinite, from the 
 hearts of all in their toil, which too often the 
 merely legal tone of religion smothers, and 
 offers the empty tinkling of hollow services 
 in its place ; there is a prayer which may arise 
 clear and distinct above the clamor of pon- 
 derous hammers, and the screeching of hoarse 
 machinery, — " Thy will be done on earth"; 
 
AN APPEAL. 
 
 but too often religion is placed in the clouds, 
 and he who dares bring it to earth must run 
 the risk of the anathema of the Church. 
 
 But religion, and the adaptedness of religion 
 to bless and ^strengthen a working life, and 
 the necessity Tor the co-operation of religion 
 in order to raise^hat life above the existence 
 of the animal, are not less facts, because as 
 facts they are too often misunderstood and 
 misapplied. Whatever may be the intellect- 
 ual difficulties thrown around the subject by 
 the apparent forgetfulness of humanity in the 
 metaphysics Ipf theology, — whatever may be 
 the repugnance iwhich what you may deem the 
 improper temper of theologians has created in 
 your minds about the whole subject of relig- 
 ion, — and whatever may be the mutual re- 
 lations ofrtheology and religion, — too often 
 confoiandedi as the same thing, — depend upon 
 it, you cannot do without the religious spirit 
 and power in your lives. Very often, indeed, 
 we do not recognize the presence of religion, 
 when it is working its most potent influences ; 
 but without that presence, recognized or un- 
 
AN APPEAL. 131 
 
 recognized, we cannot be said to have a full 
 life; indeed, without its recognized presence, 
 our lives are shorn of their fairest attributes, 
 and our experiences lack their finest features. 
 
 You need a manly, earnest, sincere religious 
 character above all things, and more than all 
 things. And you can have that character, 
 not only without a forfeiture of your manli- 
 ness, but as its highest type. Learn to regard 
 it, I pray you, as your natural and normal 
 condition, — as independent of rites and forms 
 and theories, but reaching down to the cares 
 and perplexities of our common life, and ex- 
 alting the transitory to a position of perma- 
 nence. Learn to cherish it as the fountain of 
 good principle, and let it expand the whole 
 range of your being, and teach you to regard 
 truth and rectitude as of an innate worth and 
 beauty far transcending temporary success or 
 loss, pain or pleasure. 
 
 Be religious, that you may have a proper 
 standard of effort, that you may learn to judge 
 of right, not by success, but by truth. Do 
 not be deceived, I pray you, into shipwreck, 
 
132# AN APPEAL. 
 
 by false lights along the coast ; let not a false 
 glitter betray you into fraud or knavery ; know 
 that a man may be a successful swindler, and 
 yet be none the less a swindler because of his 
 success. It is the motive, and not the result, 
 by which you are to judge actions ; and while 
 you cannot penetrate to another's motive, you 
 may always analyze your own. 
 
 Make religion, therefore, a matter of calm, 
 serious thought, and mature deliberation I 
 Let it have the outward expression which 
 best suits your temperament ; but have it en- 
 shrined at the seat of your life, as its control- 
 ling principle, and I care little whether it finds 
 its manifestation in shoutings or in medita- 
 tion. Make religion your deliberate choice, 
 not because of the future only, but because 
 of the present. I do not urge you to do so in 
 order to shun the hell of the future, because 
 my conscience will not allow me to offer you 
 so mercenary a motive. I do not wish you 
 to make the rewards of religion a matter of 
 bargain and trade, and to incite you to pursue 
 virtue as men sink coal-mines, because, while it 
 
AN APPEAL. 133 
 
 is laborious, it is also a profitable investment ; 
 but I beseech you to be religious, because 
 without it there is no true life, because God's 
 love entitles him to a return of your affections, 
 and because the power and tenderness of God, 
 manifested in Christ Jesus, ought to quicken 
 your mortal aspirations into sympathy with 
 that effluence of the Most High, which, dwell- 
 ing in the Son richly in all fulness, is all about 
 us now, as well as when he went about doing 
 good in Palestine. Be religious, then, " for it 
 is not a vain thing," it is not a mere expedient 
 to save you from the consequences of sin, — 
 " it is your life " ; it will purify your inner, 
 spiritual reality of the desire for sin, and so 
 will obviate the necessity for an escape from 
 its consequences. It will make your lives pure 
 and useful, and, accomplishing this for you, 
 you need not fear to die, for your character is 
 immortal, and no contingency of sickness or 
 death can affect its sure results. 
 
 I appeal to you to cultivate your mental 
 powers, and to avail yourselves of the educa- 
 tional means which are spread before you. 
 
 12 
 
134 AN APPEAL. 
 
 I have already shown you that culture is 
 practicable ; and surely you cannot prize 
 sloth and useless dissipating follies higher 
 than the power which is the only sure indi- 
 cation of nobility among men. You may 
 grovel and get gold, and men may worship 
 your shrewdness and palliate your cheatings, 
 — because you are so successful ; but de- 
 pend upon it, the hour will come when you 
 will curse the folly that chained you to such 
 senseless and useless serfdom. Culture is the 
 only true manhood, and the only worthy in- 
 vestment of one's ability ; and he who seeks 
 and obtains this, has a wealth which can never 
 diminish ; he has a possession which no mor- 
 tal vicissitude can deprive him of ; and if it be 
 chastened by a reverent and filial trust in 
 God, he has attained an eminence which em- 
 pires cannot purchase. But aside from its 
 effects upon themselves, I would that the 
 workingmen of this great valley rightly per- 
 ceived their duty to acquire culture. Here, 
 where the seat of the empire over the conti- 
 nent must at last be planted, — here, midway 
 
AN APPEAL. 135 
 
 between the two great seas of the world, 
 where the iron-horse must pause in his jour- 
 ney with the silks and teas and spices of 
 India, and meet upon midway ground the 
 productions of the Atlantic countries seeking 
 a passage to the Pacific, — here, where towns 
 and cities in ten years spring up over the ru- 
 ins of solitary log-huts, — here, where the chil- 
 dren of many countries and divers tongues 
 find the long-sought " Novis Atlantis," — here, 
 where worth and industry must at last find 
 their proper level, — here, if anywhere, the la- 
 borer should be educated, and the unity of 
 muscle and mind should be recognized. But 
 we must look to our own efforts, and not 
 depend upon external assistance for the ac- 
 complishment of the work. You have a 
 grander mission than the building of rail- 
 roads and canals, or even the erection of 
 sphinxes and pyramids. The hearts which 
 are beating in the Mississippi Valley to-day 
 are destined to send their pulses throbbing 
 through a grander civilization than Rome or 
 Greece ever dreamed of. You may die, — 
 
136 AN APPEAL. 
 
 and will die, — but your thought and culture 
 will outlive the ages ; as your buildings stand 
 when the scaffoldings are destroyed. Upon 
 the amount of energy bestowed in the found- 
 ing of libraries and mechanics' institutes and 
 free schools, depends the future of this key to 
 the Union. Let the INIississippi Valley sink to 
 the intellectual condition of Mexico, and the 
 growth of our country will be a growth of 
 death ; but let the West be true to its duty, 
 and it can hold North and South to their equi- 
 librium, without pandering to the fanaticisms 
 of either. 
 
 Here there is less excuse for the working- 
 man or apprentice who does not apply him- 
 self to securing his culture ; because here we 
 can realize, what elsewhere seems but a philo- 
 sophic dream, that as all art has grown out 
 of the first rude essays after excellence, so the 
 difference between the higher and lower orders 
 of toil is just the difference of the culture they 
 involve. The mechanic may work his way 
 to the highest position of mortal distinction. 
 It is not a disgrace to the judge that he has 
 
AN APPEAL. 137 
 
 pounded the anvil, or to the minister that he 
 has worked at the printing-press ; and so all 
 the mechanical employments may become 
 preparatory schools to the responsible posi- 
 tions of society ; and this must not only con- 
 tinue, but increase, as the creation of new 
 arteries of trade causes the currents of pros- 
 perity to multiply. We need educated, clear- 
 headed, and studious workingmen more than 
 we need new territory, — and the means for 
 the increase of these will be more beneficially 
 applied than an increase of our army and 
 navy. Let us have these means in schools 
 and colleges, in free libraries and lectures, 
 and the investment will pay better interest 
 than bank-stock or railroad bonds. 
 
 I appeal to society, to remove the false and 
 improper distinctions which are based, not on 
 merit, but upon possession. Let wealth be 
 honored, when it is the result of honorable 
 effort. Let it be reverenced, as the represent- 
 ative of energy and worth, but not as an in- 
 trinsic value in itself. Teach these young 
 men, I pray you, to regard wealth as the re- 
 
 12* 
 
138 AN APPEAL. 
 
 ward of integrity and principle, — but not 
 as the end of life. Do not permit them to 
 harbor the impression that riches obtained in 
 any way, — stained with fraud and dishonesty, 
 tainted with meanness and hypocrisy, and 
 loaded with iniquity and extortion, — can 
 purchase the esteem of good men, and the 
 countenance of " good society." Let the re- 
 proach of social disfranchisement fall upon the 
 rogues without the penitentiary walls, as well 
 as upon those within them. Let the honest 
 man who strives for an expansion of his 
 mental and moral life be honored, however 
 lowly his condition and however homely his 
 garments. Society owes it to itself to reform 
 the tendency of existing ideas of wealth and 
 position, or it will entail upon the coming 
 generations the sad retribution of licentious- 
 ness without limit, and vice without a check. 
 Once destroy the conservative element of 
 social life, once establish the fact that society 
 rests upon money, and not upon merit, and 
 you have laid the axe at the root of the tree 
 of our republican hopes. For with us who 
 
AN APPEAL. 139 
 
 have no hereditary and arbitrary distinctions 
 of birth, there must be a nobility of worth, 
 as the balance-wheel of our social life, or we 
 shall fall into a Red-Republicanism of unprin- 
 cipled scrambling for wealth, without regard 
 for virtue and integrity. You cannot escape 
 the responsibilities of your position, you 
 cannot harbor a spirit of meanness and nig- 
 gardliness in providing for the education of 
 the working classes, without reaping sad 
 and bitter losses in consequence. You owe 
 it to the apprentices and clerks of your coun- 
 try to provide wholesome nutriment for their 
 thoughts, and just and pure examples, dis- 
 criminating between the seeming and the re- 
 ality, for their lives. You owe them these 
 things, not as a benevolence, but as a duty. 
 Fail to discharge this obligation, and you 
 will inflict an injury upon your country which 
 no growth of empire can compensate for. 
 
 I appeal to society to provide wholesome 
 recreations for those whose days are spent in 
 toil. Give from the abundance of your in- 
 creasing possessions the means for warming 
 
140 AN APPEAL. 
 
 and lighting and furnishing good reading- 
 rooms, which shall be open to all whose de- 
 portment is proper, free of expense ; it will 
 prove a better investment than building new 
 jails and court-houses. You can do it, and 
 you ought to do it. There is no sufficient 
 reason for leaving our community without a 
 single proper place of resort for our clerks 
 and artisans. Look at the matter as it exists. 
 Take a population of eight or ten thousand 
 people. The workers of the community are 
 crowded, by the high prices of boarding, in- 
 to small and inconvenient and ill-ventilated 
 chambers, or sleep in the places of their toil. 
 When the day's work is ended and the store 
 or workshop closed, and the spirits need a 
 change from the exhausting and monotonous 
 labor in which the day has been spent, 
 where, I ask, are they to seek recreation? 
 You virtually condemn them to seek bil- 
 liard-saloons and bar-rooms, or, if some good 
 mother's prayer lingers about their hearts and 
 restrains their feet from these paths of folly 
 and vice, they have no alternative but the 
 
AN APrExU.. 141 
 
 formation of store-loafing habits, and uselessly 
 exhaust the evening in uttering and in listening 
 to idle talk and foolish jarrings. You know 
 that this picture is not overdrawn, and you 
 must correct the evil or incur the responsi- 
 bility of becoming accessories to the waste of 
 countless lives. In a few years, the young 
 men of the West will have the destiny of the 
 country in their hands, and then when dying 
 you may bequeath to education what you can 
 no longer use ; but it will be too late to accom- 
 plish the work which you may now live to 
 see rightly performed. Do not wait for the 
 end of life to discharge your social obliga- 
 tions, but perform them now, and let men 
 have more reason to thank God for your life 
 than for your death. Work luhile the day lasts. 
 I appeal to society to supply motives of 
 thrift, and to discountenance the habits of 
 reckless extravagance which are fast becoming 
 standards of respectability. Our lives are 
 saddened and shortened by the arbitrary rules 
 of dress and living, which, without being any 
 better for anybody, involve those whose means 
 
142 AK APPEAL. 
 
 are limited in ruinous expenses. A clerk or 
 an apprentice will often spend a month's 
 wages for some poor imitation of an article 
 he sees in the possession of a wealthier man ; 
 and so many young men waste their whole 
 income, and being furnished with means to 
 carry out their extravagance by their unwise 
 parents, they are a constant temptation to 
 their companions, who, having no such re- 
 sources to fall back upon, commit acts of folly 
 which finally entail that most ruinous attend- 
 ant upon a young man's career, debt, and 
 sink in early manhood to a position of de- 
 pendence, when they might have risen to a 
 competency. I should be glad, indeed, to see 
 a greater amount of manly independence upon 
 the part of poor young men ; I should rejoice 
 to see them spurning the temptation to dress 
 for a part which they cannot perform ; but 
 society must inculcate by example and pre- 
 cept the true ideas of respectability and inde- 
 pendence, before we have a right to look for 
 their general recognition among our working- 
 men. Let us teach our young mechanics and 
 
AN APPEAL. 143 
 
 laborers that they may be neatly and respect- 
 ably clothed without spending all their earn- 
 ings in chains and rings and perfumery; let 
 us show the wives of workingmen that satins 
 and velvets are not the only sure indications 
 of gentility. You may do this, and do it 
 effectually, and while not forfeiting a luxury 
 which your ample means may afford ; yet by 
 keeping within limits, and by making quality 
 and texture the object of expense, rather than 
 show and a gairish overloading of quantity, 
 a proper medium may be kept and a right 
 standard of expense established. But without 
 a reform, depend upon it our young men will 
 learn to prize the external appearance more 
 than the internal reality, and the means and 
 time which ought to be expended upon their 
 preparation for the responsibilities of life will 
 be wasted upon dress and livery-stable ex- 
 travagances. 
 
 Finally, I appeal to Christianity, to come 
 from the clouds down to our work-day world, 
 and to inspire our toiling existence with its 
 most divine energy. Let the religion of the 
 
144 AN APPEAL. 
 
 New Testament cease to be directed exclu- 
 sively to the intellect, and let it lay hold of 
 the interests and perplexities of our present 
 life. I would make it none the less Divine 
 because needed by humanity, — nor would I 
 lift it above the great wants and ever-chan- 
 ging emergencies of the race because of its 
 Divinity, — but I would have it recognized as 
 the friend of man, when preaching homely 
 wisdom and practical morality, as well as 
 when speculating over human nature in the 
 abstract and heaven in the future. There 
 are great and pressing wants and earnest ne- 
 cessities all around us, and true Christian men 
 have no time to squabble over the differences 
 of their theories ; let them apply the working 
 power of Christianity to the social wrongs 
 and the dangerous tendencies which beset the 
 young man ; let them make Christianity felt 
 in society, and let its great principles and 
 divine power be recognized in the lowliest of 
 the occupations of life ; let them demonstrate 
 that Luther was not mistaken when he ele- 
 vated the substance, the fact, of Christianity 
 
AN APPEAL. 145 
 
 to its rightful position of pre-eminence over 
 the merely speculative, by saying, " The maid- 
 servant who sweeps the house, with the love 
 of God in her heart as its controlling princi- 
 ple, is as truly serving him, and as surely ac- 
 cepted of him, as the preacher dispensing his 
 Gospel, or the martyr defending his truth." 
 Go forth. Christian men, and let the world 
 judge of your Christianity by the rule estab- 
 lished by Christ himself, — let your works, 
 not your words, testify to the truth of religion. 
 Cease your poor jarrings, that the grave will 
 soon close over, and learn the spirit of Him 
 who proved his mission by his deeds. Re- 
 member that the Gospel is many-sided, while 
 your vision is limited ; that to restrict its truth 
 to your thought is to claim equality with its 
 Author. There are human w^ants and perplex- 
 ities that you may never have dreamed of; 
 there are glories in the Gospel that you may 
 have no eye for. O, then, let it go forth to 
 bless all ! Do not shackle it with your poor 
 speculations ; do not limit the mode of its 
 application to your own temperament and 
 
 13 
 
146 AN APPEAL. 
 
 habits of thought ; remember that all men are 
 not alike, and cannot think alike ; but let 
 Christianity be the philanthropy of heaven, 
 let it bless and strengthen those whom your 
 own theories may not reach, let it comfort 
 those upon whose ears your words fall coldly 
 and ineffectually. Labor appeals to Chris- 
 tianity, it stretches up its hands, and cries for 
 the benediction and counsel of Heaven. Shall 
 they be withheld for false and foolish notions 
 of human dignity ? Shall the clergy fear to 
 stain their lawn and broadcloth by speaking 
 to the sons of toil on the first day, when 
 Christ rebuked the Pharisees of Jerusalem for 
 forgetting humanity in their Sabbath-day 
 zeal? 
 
 Ah, no I " Say not ye there are four months, 
 and then cometh the harvest; behold, I say 
 unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the 
 fields, for they are white already unto harvest, 
 and he that reapeth receiveth wages and gath- 
 ereth fruit unto life eternal." 
 
 THE END. 
 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, 
 
 A LIST OF BOOKS 
 
 RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY 
 
 CEOSBY, NICHOLS, & CO., 
 
 Ill WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON. 
 
 A MEMOIR OF WILLIAxM ELLERY CHANNING, with 
 Extracts from his Correspondence and IManuscripts. Edited 
 by his nephew, Wm. Henry Channing. Comprised in three 
 volumes, of frgm 450 to 500 pages, each, uniform with the best 
 edition of the Works. Two very superior portraits of Dr. 
 Channing appear in the volumes ; one from a painting by All- 
 ston, the other by Gambadella. Price $ 1.50. 
 Contents. — Part f/rs?, — Parentage and Birth; Boyhood; College Life; 
 Richmond; Studies and Settlement. Part Second, — Early Ministry ; Spirit- 
 ual Growtli ; The Unitarian Controversy ; Bliddle-age Ministry ; European 
 Journey. Part lliird, — The Ministry and Literature ; Religion and Philoso- 
 phy ; Social Reforms ; The Antislavery Movement ; Politics ; Friends ; Home 
 Life; Notes. 
 
 NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " A more interesting and instructive biographical work we have never read. 
 High as was our opinion of Channing, — of his intellectual and moral worth, — 
 the perusal of this work has convinced us that we never duly estimated iiim. 
 
 His letters reveal his character more fully than his sermons and essays. 
 
 In his letters he lays his heart entirely open ; and no man, no matter what his 
 opinions or prejudices, can read them without saying, — ' Channing was, in- 
 deed, a great and good man, — one who lived for the world ! ' V — Christian 
 Messenger. 
 
 " Only one who was similar in purpose and temper, — who felt like aspira- 
 tions, hopes, and faith, — could at all do justice to the distinguished .subject. 
 The present book must, therefore, we are sure, give us Channing's character 
 in its completeness, and true harmony and proportions of parts." — Salem 
 Observer. 
 
 " These memoirs of a great and good man will, we apprehend, obtain an un- 
 commonly extensive circulation, not only among the denomination of Chris- 
 tians in which he ranked himself, but with all who reverence purity of charac- 
 ter, an enlarged philanthropy, and eminent talents, guided by virtue and piety." 
 — Salem Register. 
 
 " If we mistake not, now is the very time in God's providence when the bi- 
 ography of William Ellery Channing could best make its appearance. We have 
 heard that a distinguished divine, of different speculative religious views from 
 Dr. Channing, has recently said, — ' Channing is greatly needed among us at 
 this present moment.' Behold him here ! We doubt not that the biography 
 thus prepared is to make a great impression on the age that is passing, and that 
 is yet to come." — Christian Register 
 
2 CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 MEMOIR OF MARY L. WARE, Wife of Henry Ware, Jr. 
 By Rev. Edward B. Hall. With a fine engraving oa steel. 
 Seventh Edition. 12mo. Price, $1.25. 
 
 " A book like this is a great gift to the world. It is a light in the pathway of 
 
 every-day life It is a judicious, affectionate record of a strong, earnest, 
 
 consistent Christian life It is delightful to see a character so t^horoughly 
 
 religious as was Mrs. Ware's." — Buffalo Com. Advertiser. 
 
 "Among the biographies of Christian women, eminent for their piety, their 
 meek devotion to tlieir religious profession, and their holy conduct in all the 
 walks of life, this Rlemoir of Mrs. Ware deserves to take a high rank." — Phil- 
 adelphia Bullet ill. 
 
 " No one could desire, for sister, daughter, or friend, a more instructive, pleas- 
 ing, or touching lesson of the quiet, unobtrusive, simple virtues of domestic life, 
 tlian this unpretending volume, prepared by one at once so appreciative of the 
 virtues of his subject, and so well qualified to do them justice." — Boston Atlas, 
 
 " The book is a treasure, and belongs to the permanent riches of our devotional 
 literature." — Christian Inquirer. 
 
 THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF 
 BLEABURN. 1 vol. 16mo. Price, 50 cents. 
 
 "The story is one that no person will think of laying down, when once they 
 begin to read it, until the last word of the last page has been reached." — 
 Traveller. 
 
 THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF THE OLD TESTA- 
 MENT. A Series of Sermons preached in the Chapel of 
 Lincohi's Inn. By Rev. Frederic Denison Maurice, Chap- 
 lain of Lincoln's Inn, and Professor of Divinity in King's Col- 
 lege, London. Second Edition. 12mo. Price, $1.25. 
 
 " Rich in learning and thought and practical views of life." — Christian Ob- 
 server. 
 
 " We can assure our readers that the volume will be found fuU of instruction 
 
 and eminently suggestive We have followed his instructive pages with 
 
 delight." — Christian Examiner. 
 
 THE CHILD'S MATINS AND VESPERS. By a Mother. 
 Comprising Meditations and Prayers for Morning and Evening, 
 &c. Second Edition. 32mo. Price, 37^ cents. 
 
 " A capital little book to lay on your child's table beside the Bible, that good 
 and holy thoughts may be the first and last every day." — Ohio Inquirer. 
 
 "The parent who wishes to keep the heart of the child pure, to form habits 
 of prayer, to inspire the young mind with profitable reflections, and lead the 
 early years into proper spiritual habits, will be greatly assisted by this little 
 volume." — Christian Era. 
 
 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. By Rev. WiLr.iAM G. El- 
 iot, Jr. 1 vol. 16mo. Price, 62^ cents. 
 Contents. -- An Appeal. Self- Education. Leisure Time. Transgression. 
 
 The Ways of Wisdom. Religion. 
 
 " The practical wisdom, the habits of close observation, and the sincere piety 
 of Mr. Eliot, united with what we must consider an essential element in his suc- 
 cess, — his sympathy with the young, — have fitted him to discharge his task 
 successfully." — Christian Examiner. 
 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO/s PUBLICATIO^fS. 3 
 
 LECTURES TO YOUNG WOMEN. By Rev. William G. 
 Eliot, Jr. 1 vol. 16mo. Price, 62^ cents. 
 
 Contents. — An Appeal. Home. Duties. Education. Follies. Woman's 
 Mission. 
 
 " We know of no book which wo can recommend so unhesitatingly as this of 
 Mr. Eliot." — Christian Exainiyier. 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF THOUGHT AND FEELING. By 
 
 the Author of " Visiting my Relations." 16mo. Price, 75 cts. 
 
 '•'A very interesting, piquant book, and every body is reading it It 
 
 will do a great deal of good by clearing up people's morbid moods of mind, and 
 showing that an entire trust and reliance on God are the best medicine of the 
 heart. This work shows how valuable a book can be written out of the history 
 of a private life." — Cincinnati paper. 
 
 GOD WITH MEN ; or, Footprints of Providential Leaders. 
 By Rev. Samuel Osgood. 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 SERMONS. By Rev. A. A. Livermore. 1 vol. 12mo 
 
 HOW I BECAME A UNITARIAN, explained in a Series of 
 Letters to a Friend. By a Clergyman of the Protestant Epis- 
 copal Church. 12rao. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 SERMONS IN THE ORDER OF A TWELVEMONTH 
 
 By Rev. N. L. FrothIxVgham, D. D. 12mo. Price, $ 1.00. 
 
 "As a writer, Mr. Frothingham ranks among the best of New England di 
 
 vines His sermons are prepared with great care, and possess, on account 
 
 of their moral tone, their fervent spirit, their earnest pleadings for duty, a high 
 value." — Neto Covenant. 
 
 THE MISCELLANIES OF JAMES MARTINEAU. Edited 
 by Rev. Thomas Starr King. 12mo. Price, $ 1.25. 
 
 " jMr. Martineau's productions are distinguished by a loftiness of tone, a cath- 
 olic candor, a severity of logic and intellectual fidelity, a clearness of moral dis- 
 crimination, and an affluence of imagery, and vigorous precision of expression." 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE FORGIVENESS 
 OPSIN. By James Freeman Clarke. 16mo. Price, 50 cts. 
 '•' This is the work of a thoughtful, serious man ; on a topic of great practical 
 
 importance It contains much that richly deserves the serious consi.lera 
 
 lion of all readers. ' ' — Traveller. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS; an Al 
 
 tempt to convey their Spirit and Significance. By Rev. John 
 Hamilton Thom. 12mo. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 " Its deeply religious and tolerant spirit, and its clear expositions, will render 
 it an instructive and agreeable book to the Biblical scholar and devout Christian 
 of every faith." 
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS. By William 
 
 voK Humboldt. 16mo. Price, 62^ cents. 
 
 "It cannotr be read without imparling strensth and comfort, especially to 
 those who are called to endure the misfortunes of life." — Christian Witness. 
 
 " To read them seems like being admitted to a personal and privileged inter- 
 view with one of the greatest men of the age." 
 
4 CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 COMMUNION THOUGHTS. By Rev. Stephen G. Bul- 
 FINCH. Author of "Lays of the Gospel," &c., &c. IGmo. 
 Price, 62^ cents. 
 
 " We especially commend it to all those who are desirous of becoming religious 
 
 professors, bul hesitating about their fitness No one can read it without 
 
 becoming better." — Taunton Whig. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN PARENT. By Rev. A. B. Muzzey, Au- 
 thor of "The Young Maiden," &c., &c. 16mo. Price, 75 cts. 
 
 " We regard the jook as one of the best of its kind which has appeared for sev- 
 eral years, ..... and we would, after a careful perusal of this volume, own 
 our obligations to the author for very many valuable hints and suggestions set 
 forth with clearness and force." — Cambridge Chronicle. 
 
 THE STARS AND THE EARTH; OR THOUGHTS 
 UPON SPACE, TIME, AND ETERNITY. Third Amer- 
 ican from the Third London Edition. 18mo. Price, 25 cents. 
 
 " It contains a vast amount of thought, clothed in a religious garb, and through- 
 out which flows an exalted view of argument, inducing lofty aspirations and 
 clearer views of the wisdom of our Creator, as the reader proceeds step by step 
 from the opening page to the close." — Taunton Whig. 
 
 ECHOES OF INFANT VOICES. 16mo. Price, 50 cents. 
 
 "The selections are made with good taste and judgment, from the best Eng- 
 lish and American poetry of Caroline Bowles, Mrs. Hernans, Longfellow, Lowell, 
 Bryant, W. B. O. Peabody, and others. The little work seems admirably cal- 
 culated to accomplish its mission of sympathy and kindness." — Cambridge 
 Chronicle. 
 
 SUNDAY SCHOOL AND OTHER ADDRESSES. By 
 
 Frederic T. Grat, Pastor of the Bulfinch Street Church. 
 
 Price, 62|- cents. 
 
 " Blr. Gray speaks from personal knowledge, and the Addresses before us con- 
 tain facts of great interest, which, but for some such record, would soon be lost." 
 — Christian Examiner. 
 
 FAMILIAR SKETCHES OF SCULPTURE AND SCULP- 
 TORS. By Mrs.H. F. Lee, Author of "The Old Painters," 
 " Luther and his Times," " Cranmer and his Times," &c.j &c 
 2 vols. 16mo. 
 
 DISCOURSES ON THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT AND LIFE. 
 
 By C. A. Bartol, Junior Minister of the West Church, Bos- 
 ton. Second Edition, revised, with an Introduction. 12mo. 
 Price, $1.00. 
 
 DISCOURSES ON THE CHRISTIAN BODY AND FORM 
 
 By C. A. Bartol. 12mo. Price, $ 1.00. 
 
 "The highest praise that we can give these Discourses is, to say that they 
 have all the marks and features of Christian sermons. ...... Their eloquence 
 
 is that of deep religious conviction, and of fervor as calm as it is earnest, as ear 
 nest as it is calm." — Christian Examiner. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES *AND AN- 
 TIQUITIES. By John G. Palfrey, D.D., LL.D. Volumes 
 Three and Four. 8vo., cloth. Price, $ 5.00. 
 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. 5 
 
 SERMONS ON CHRISTIAN COMMUNION. Designed to 
 promote the Culture of the Religious Affections. Edited by 
 Rev. T. R. Sullivan. 12mo. pp. 403. Price, 75 cents. 
 This work is not confined to the subject of the Lord's Supper, but "forms 
 a series of practical discourses of the persuasive kind, relating to repentance, 
 or the duty of commencing the Christian course, — to edification, or the en- 
 couragements to progressive Christian improvement, — and to the eucharistic 
 service, as aflTording exercise for all the grateful and devout affections of the 
 heart in every stage of its subjection to Christian discipline." — Preface. 
 The following is a list of the writers : — 
 
 Rev. G. E. Ellis. Charlestown. 
 
 " G. PuT.vAM,'D. D., Roxbury. 
 
 " J. H. MoRiso.v, Milton. 
 
 " A. YoTNG, D. D., Boston. 
 
 " E. B. Hall, D. D., Providence. 
 
 " S. G. BuLFixcH, Nashua. 
 
 " O. Dewey, D. D.. New York. 
 
 " S. Osgood, Providence. 
 
 " A. Hill, Worcester. 
 
 " W. H. FuRNEss, D.D., Philadelphia. 
 
 " N. L. Frothingham, D.D., Boston. 
 
 " E. Peabody, Boston. 
 
 " S. K. LOTHKOP, " 
 
 " C. A. Bartol, " 
 
 " A. B. MuzzEY, Cambridge. 
 
 Rev, H. A. Miles, Lowell. 
 
 " F. Parkman, D. D., Boston. 
 
 " S. JuDD, Augusta. 
 
 " F. D. HuxTiNGTONj Boston. 
 
 " C. T. Brooks, Newport. 
 
 " N. Hall, Dorchester. 
 
 " J. I. T. Coolidge, Boston. 
 
 " G. W. Briggs, Plymouth. 
 
 " A. A. Livkrmore, Keene. " 
 
 " J. Whitman. Lexington. 
 
 " J. W. Thompson, Salem. 
 
 '• H. W. Bellows, New York. 
 
 " E. S. Gannett, D. D., Boston. 
 
 " A. P. Peabody, Portsmouth. 
 
 " J. Walker, D D., Cambridge. 
 
 " C. RoBBiNs, Boston. 
 
 " The design of the work is admirable, and we doubt not it is admirably 
 executed, and will promote the best interests of our churches. We chanced to 
 open at Sermon XVIII., on Christian Education, and were pleased to see the 
 idea of Dr. Bushnell's celebrated book on * Christian Nurture' illustrated and 
 urged in a sermon by Dr. Putnam, preached two years before Dr. Bushnell's 
 book made its appearance." — Christian Register. 
 
 " The tone of these sermons, their living interest, their unpremeditated vari- 
 ety in unity, fit them well for this purpose, — close personal influence on minds 
 of widely differing views, united in the one great aim of a Christian life. We 
 shall probably take an early opportunity of making some selections." — Chris- 
 tian Inquirer. 
 
 "We think the volume is upon the whole one of the best volumes of dis- 
 courses ever issued from the American press." — Boston Daily Atlas. 
 
 THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES, their Origin, Peculiarities, 
 and Transmission. By Rev. Henry A. Miles. 16mo 
 pp. 174. Price, 50 cents. 
 
 This work is designed for families and Sunday Schools, and contains a com- 
 parison of each Gospel with the education, life, and character of its author, 
 and with the purpose which he had in view in its composition ; as also an ac- 
 count of the transmission of the Gospels down to our time, and the evidence 
 of their uncorrupted preservation. 
 
 '•' This volume by l\Ir. Miles has substantial value. It is by the circulation 
 and use of such books that Christian knowledge is to be extended, and Chris- 
 tian faith confirmed. By a thorough study even of this small work in child 
 hood, many persons might have the satisfaction of carrying through life a clear 
 and connected idea of the biographies of Jesus, and of the nature of the exter- 
 nal evidence in their favor, instead of remaining in vague uncertainty on the 
 whole subject. Bringing into a simple and popular form, and small compass, 
 information not hitherto accessible, except to a limited number of persons, the 
 ' Gospel Narrativ;j3 ' will be interesting to the general reader, whether youthful 
 or adult. It mnst, without doubt, be" introduced in all our Sunday Schools, 
 and will ra^^k among the most important manuals." 
 
b CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 NAOMI ; or Boston Two Hundred Years Ago. A Tale of the 
 Q,uaker Persecutioii in New England. By Eliza Buckmin- 
 STER I,EE, Author of " The Life of Jean Paul." Second Edi- 
 tion. 12nio. pp. 324. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 The first edition of this popular book was exhausted within a month after its 
 publication. 
 
 "Mrs. Lee has given the public a most agreeable book. Her style is ele- 
 vated and earnest. Her sentiments, of the pure and the true. The characters 
 are well conceived, and are presented each in strong individuality, and with 
 such apparent truthfulness as almost to leave us in doubt whether they are ' be- 
 ings of the mind,' or were real men and women who bore the parts she assigns 
 them in those dark tragedies that stained this ' fair heritage of freedom ' in the 
 early days of IMassachusetts." — Worcester Palladium. 
 
 " We have been exceedingly interested in this book, and recommend it as 
 a beautiful picture of female piety and quiet heroism, set in a frame of history 
 and tradition, that cannot fail to please every one connected, however remotely, 
 with the land of the Puritans. The accomplished author of ' The Life of Jean 
 Paul' has produced an American novel which we should like to see followed by 
 others illustrative of the facts and manners of the olden time." — Christian 
 Inquirer. 
 
 THE MARRIAGE OFFERING. Designed as a Gift to the 
 Newly-married, Edited by Rev. A. A. Livermore. 16mo. 
 pp. 215. Price, 62 cents. 
 
 " It was a happy thought that suggested such a volume. We were not aware 
 before that there was so much and so various Christian literature on the sub- 
 ject." — Christian Register. 
 
 MARTYRIA ; a Legend, wherein are contained Homilies, Con- 
 versations, and Incidents of the Reign of Edward the Sixth. 
 Written by William Mountford, Clerk. With an Introduc- 
 tion to the American Edition, by Rev. F. D. Huntington. 
 I6mo. pp. 348. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 "The charm of the book lies in the elevated tone of thought and moral sen- 
 timent which pervades it. You feel, on closing the volume, as if leaving some 
 ancient cathedral, where your soul had been mingling with ascending anthems 
 and prayers. There is scarcely a page which does not contain some fine strain 
 of thou2ht or sentiment, over which you shut the book that you may pause 
 and me5itate. 
 
 " AVe recommend the volume to our readers, with the assurance that they 
 will find few works in the current literature of the day so well worth perusal." 
 — Christian Register. 
 
 " This is really an original book. We have seen nothing for a long time 
 more fresh or true. The writer has succeeded wonderfully, in taking himself 
 and his readers into the heart of the age he describes. What is more, he has 
 uttered words and thoughts which stir up the deep places of the soul. Let 
 those read who wish to commune with the true and unpretending martyr-spirit, 
 the spread of faith and endurance, courage, self-denial, forgiveness, prayer. 
 
 " Of all the treatises we have ever read on marriage, we have seen none so 
 good as one here called a ' Jllarriage Sermon ' ; not that we would ask any 
 couple to hear it all on their marriage day, but we commend it to all who are 
 married, or intend to be. The whole book is precious." — Provide?ice Journal. 
 
 "There are few religious books which breathe a finer spirit than this singu- 
 lar volume. The author's mind seems to have meditated deeply on the awful 
 realities of life. In the thoughtful flow of his periods, and the grave, earnest 
 eloquence of particular passages, we are sometimes reminded of the Old English 
 prose-writers. The work is a ' curiosity ' of literature, well worth an attentive 
 perusal." — Grahams Magazine. 
 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. 7 
 
 A TRANSLATION OF PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE 
 ROiMANS, with an Introduction and Notes. By William 
 A. Whitwell, Minister of the Congregational Society in 
 Wilton, N. H. l6mo. pp.116. Price, 5U cents. 
 "We would express a high opinion of the book, and can assure the Chris- 
 tian reader who will compare it carefully with our common version, that he 
 will rise up from the joint perusal of the two with a better understanding of 
 Paul than he had before." — Christian Register. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY THE DELIVERANCE OF THE SOUL 
 AND ITS LIFE. By William Mountford. With an In- 
 troduction by Rev. Y. D. Huntington. 16mo. pp. 113 
 Price, 37^ cents. 
 " Mr. Mountford is full of warm religious feeling. He brings religion home 
 
 to the heart, and applies it as the guide of the life." — London Inquirer. 
 
 SELF-FORMATION ; or the History of an Individual Mind : 
 Intended as a Guide for the Intellect through Difficulties to 
 Success. By a Fellow of a College. 12mo pp. 504. Price, 
 $1.00. 
 
 " The publishers have done good service by bringing forward an American 
 edition of this work. It may be most unreservedly recommended, especially to 
 the young." — Daily Advertiser . 
 
 "Your gift of ' Self-Formation' is truly a welcome one, and I am greatly 
 obliged to you for it. It is a work of quite original character, and I esteem it 
 (in common with all I know of, who have read it) as possessed of very rare 
 merit. I am glad, for the cause of good education and sound principle, that 
 you have republished it, and I wish every young man and woman in the com- 
 munity might be induced to read it carefully. It is several years since I looked 
 into it in the English edition, —but I yet retain a vivid impression of the great 
 delight it afforded me, and I shall gladly avail of the opportunity of renewing 
 it." — Extract from a Letter. 
 
 " This is emphatically a good book, which may be read with profit by all 
 classes, but more especially by young men, to whose wants it is admirably 
 adapted. The American editor is no doubt right in saying, that it is almost 
 without a question the most valuable and useful work on self education that 
 has appeared in our own, if not in any other language." — Neto YorkTribune. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON MORAL AND SPIRITUAL CULTURE. 
 
 By Rev. Robert C. Waterston. Second Edition, revised. 
 
 16mo. pp. 302. Price, 62^ cents. 
 
 This book has met with a ready sale in this country, and has been republished 
 in England. A London periodical, in reviewing it, says: — "We will ven- 
 ture to predict that it will soon take its place on the shelves of our religious 
 libraries, beside Ware 'On the Christian Character,' Greenwood's ' Lives of the 
 Apostles,' and other works to which we might refer as standard publications, 
 the value of which is not likely to be diminished by the lapse of time or the 
 caprices of fashion." 
 
 " The sense of duty in parents and teachers may be strengthened and elevated 
 by contemplating the high standard which is here held up to them. The style 
 has the great merit of being an earnest one, and there are many passages which 
 rise into'genuine eloquence and the glow of poetry." — N. A. Review. 
 
 " The Lecture ' On the Best Means of exerting a Moral and Spiritual Influence 
 in Schools,' no teacher, male or female, possessed of any of the germs of im- 
 provement, can read without benefit." — Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary of the 
 Board of Education. 
 
8 CROSBY, NICHOLS, &c CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 DOMESTIC WORSHIP. By William H. Furness, Pastci 
 of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Philadelphia 
 Third Editi.on. 12kio, pp. 272. Price, 50 cents. 
 " We are glad to see this book. It is a work of great and peculiar excellence. 
 It is not a compilation from other books of devotion ; nor is it made up of 
 conventional phrases and Scripture quotations, which have been so long em- 
 ployed as the language of prayer, that they are repeated without thought and 
 without feeling. It is admirably adapted to the purpose for which it was writ- 
 ten ; and it may be read again and again with great interest and profit by any 
 one, who desires to enrich his mind with the purest sentiments of devotion, 
 and with the language in which it finds its best expression. Here we have the 
 genuine utterances of religious sensibility, — fresh, natural, and original, as 
 they come from a mind of singular fertility and beauty, and a heart overflow- 
 ing with love to God and love to man. They seem not like prayers made with 
 
 hands, to be printed in a book, but real praying, full of spirit and life 
 
 So remarkable is their tone of reality and genuineness, that we cannot bring 
 ourselves lo regard them as compositions written for a purpose, but rather as 
 the actual utterances of a pure and elevated soul in reverent and immediate 
 communion with the Infinite Father." — Christia7i Examiner. 
 
 LAYS FOR THE SABBATH. A Collection of Religious 
 Poetry. Compiled by Emily Taylor. Revised, with Addi- 
 tions, by John Pierpont. 16mo. pp. 288. Price, 50 cents. 
 
 " It is simple and unpretending ; and though some of the pieces are probably 
 familiar to most readers, they all breathe a pure and elevated spirit, and here 
 and there is an exquisite effusion of genius, which answers to the holiest wants 
 of the soul. 
 
 " Not only great pleasure may be derived from such a volume, but lasting 
 and useful impressions. Many are keenly alive lo the harmony of verse and 
 the fresh outbursts of poetic feeling, who would pore with delight over such a 
 volume, and many might thus be won to high thought and serious reflection." 
 
 — Christian Examiner. 
 
 THE YOUNG MAIDEN. Seventh Edition. By Rev. A. B. 
 MuzzEY, Author of " The Young Man's Friend," " Sunday 
 School Guide," etc., etc. 16mo. pp.264. Price, 62j^ cents. 
 
 Contents. — The Capacities of Woman ; Female Influence; Female Educa- 
 tion ; Home; Society; Love; Single Life; Reasons for Marriage ; Conditions 
 of True Marriage ; Society of Young Men ; First Love ; Conduct during En- 
 gagement 5 Trials of Woman and her Solace ; Encouragements. 
 
 " The sentiments and principles enforced in this book may be safely com- 
 mended to the attention of women of all ranks. Its purpose is excellent 
 throughout ; and as it is everywhere governed by a just and amiable spirit, we 
 believe it is calculated to do much good." — London Atlas. 
 
 " A little work, well worthy, from its good sense and good feeling, to be 
 a permanent and favorite monitor to our fair countrywomen." — Morning 
 Herald. 
 
 A HISTORY OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS and of Religious Edu- 
 cation, from the Earliest Times. By Lewis G. Pray. Embel- 
 lished with two Engravings. 16mo. pp.270. Price, 62^ cents. 
 
 "The author has been for a long period engaged in the cause of which he 
 has now become the historian; and if ardor, perseverance, and faithfulness in 
 that service qualify him to write its history, we know of no one to whom it 
 could have been more properly confided." — Portsmouth Jouryial. 
 
 " A volume of great interest to all who have at heart the subject discussed " 
 
 — Literary World. 
 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. 9 
 
 LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM. Essays, by Harriet Marti- 
 NEAU. With an Introduction to the American Edition, by 
 Mrs. Follen. Second American Edition. 16mo. pp. 19b. 
 Price, 50 cents. 
 
 "For the principles which it inculcates, for the exalted iJeal it presents, 
 for the renovating spirit with which it is filled, the book cannot fail to be a 
 blessing to humanity." — Christian Examiner. 
 
 EUTHANASY, or Happy Talk towards the End of Life. 
 By William Mountford. Author of " Martyria." IGmo. 
 Prices 1.00. 
 
 " This is a book which will prove an incalculable treasure to those who are in 
 sorrow and bereavement, and cannot be perused by any thoughtful mind with- 
 out pleasure eind improvement." — Christian Examiner. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN PARENT. By Rev. A. B. Muzzey, 
 
 Author of " The Young Maiden," &c., &.c. 16mo. Price, 
 7.5 cents. 
 
 RELIGIOUS CONSOLATION. Edited by Rev. Ezra S. Gan- 
 ifETT. 16mo. Price, 50 cents. 
 
 Contents. — The Good of Affliction; The Mourner Comforted; Erroneous 
 Views of Death ; The Departed ; Death and Sleep ; Immortality ; Trust in God 
 under Afflictions; Filial Trust ; The Future Life ; Friends in Heaven; Hope; 
 Thanksgiving in Affliction; Trust amidst Trial ; Life and Death ; The Voices 
 of the Dead ; To the 3Iemory of a Friend ; A Prayer in Affliction ; Duties of 
 the Afflicted ; The IMourner Blessed; Consolation; The Dangers of Adversity ; 
 Trust in Divine Love; The Promises of Jesus; The Believer's Hope; The 
 Uses of Affliction : Time Passing; The Christian's Death; The Hope of Immor- 
 tality ; God our Father. 
 
 THOUGHTS ; selected from the Works of William Ellert 
 Changing, D. D. 32mo. pp. 160. Price, 37^ cents. 
 
 "This is a diamond of a volume, the purpose of which is well expressed in 
 the following ' thought ' from Channing, which is put on the title-page : — 
 
 " 'Sometimes a'single word, spoken by the voice of genius, goes far into 
 the heart. A hint, a suggestion, an undefined delicacy of expression, teaches 
 more than we gather from volumes of less gifted men.' 
 
 "Those who differ in theological views from the gifted Channing will of 
 course find many thoughts in this little volume not to their taste. But those to 
 whom any theological views have ever done much good will nevertheless prize 
 the book for its thoughts. Thoughts they are, not faint reflections of thought. 
 And those who would be wise above all things prize to know what can^ 
 thought on all sides of every important subject.^ To enrich our columns we 
 borrow a gem or two." — Chronotype. 
 
 " A collection of noble thoughts, that may well take its place by the side of 
 the celebrated thoughts of Pascal, which have in them more of metaphysics, but 
 less that touches the human heart. It makes a beautiful pocket volume." — 
 Christian Examiner. 
 
 "We have long desired to see a book of this kind, and now, from a slight 
 examination, believe tbat it is well done. It is a beautiful collection of beauti- 
 ful thoughts, and must be a welcome possession, not only for all who agree 
 with Dr.~ Channing in his peculiar religious opinions, but for all who value 
 lofty sentiments worthily expressed, and who by the influence of such thoughts 
 would be strengthened to duty, or raised to a higher sphere of contemplation." 
 — Christian Register. r 
 
10 CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 DAVID ELLINGTON. By Rev. Henry Ware, Jr. With 
 other Extracts from his Writings. 18mo. pp. 192. Price, 
 37^ cents. 
 
 " I\Ir. Ware has left very few things which will do so much towards pro- 
 moting the great object for which he lived and labored. The simple story of the 
 every-day life of a good man, told as these stories are told, finds a response in 
 the hearts of those most indifferent to the great concerns of virtue and religion ; 
 it reaches and touches what nothing else, not the eloquent preaching of an 
 apostle, could reach and touch." 
 
 CHRISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. Sermons designed to fur- 
 nish Comfort and Strength to the Afflicted. By Rev. A. P. 
 Peabody, Pastor of the South Church, Portsmouth, N. H. 
 I6mo. pp. 320. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 " We welcome with almost as much surprise as satisfaction the appearance 
 of a volume of discourses as excellent as those of Mr. Peabody. They are ricti 
 in thought, and of a high order of literary merit." — N. A. Review. 
 
 THE GENERAL FEATURES OF THE MORAL GOV- 
 ERNiMENT OF GOD. By A. B. Jacocks. 16mo. pp. 94. 
 Price, 37^ cents. 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
 NATURE : with an OutHne of some of its recent Develop- 
 ments among the Germans, embracing the Philosophical Sys- 
 tems of Schelling and Hegel, and Oken's System of Nature. 
 By J. B. Stallo, A. M., lately Professor of Analytical Mathe- 
 matics, Natural Philosophy, and Chemistry in St. John's 
 College, N.Y. 12mo. pp.532. Price, $1.25. 
 
 '■'It grapples with the most abstruse problems, and tugs fiercely to pluck out 
 tiie heart of their mystery. No difficulty is too great for the author to meet, 
 and none seems able to upset his theory. In truth, the book is one of the most 
 profound ever published in Boston, and whatever opinion may be given regard- 
 ing its principles, none can gainsay its vigor of understanding and reach of 
 learning. The pertinent question, Who reads an American book? will change 
 somewliat its meaning, if American literature takes the abstruse direction indi- 
 cated by I\Ir. Stallo 's volume. In that event, our books will remain unread, 
 not because they are too shallow, but because they are too deep." — Boston 
 Courier. 
 
 MORNING AND EVENING MEDITATIONS, for every Day 
 ^n a Month. By Miss Carpenter (daughter of the late Dr. 
 Lant Carpenter). 16mo. pp. 312. Price, 62^ cents. 
 
 " The compiler of this work has rendered good service to all possessed of 
 Christian sympathies." — Literary World. 
 
 "We like its spirit, and believe it will prove an excellent closet companion 
 for those who will faithfully use it." — Christian Register. 
 
 THE WORDS OF CHRIST ; from the New Testament. 16mo 
 pp. 150. Price, 50 cents. 
 
 ""Phe compiler has most happily collected the words of Christ, so that, by 
 the slightest reference possible to the tables, every text is ascertained under the 
 several heads. It will prove very beneficial to the Biblical scholar, clergyman, 
 and Sunday-school teacher."— Christian World. 
 
RETURN TO the circulation desk of any 
 University of California Library 
 or to the 
 
 NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station 
 University of California 
 Richnnond, CA 94804-4698 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 2-nnonth loans nnay be renewed by calling 
 
 (510)642-6753 
 1-year loans nnay be recharged by bringing books 
 
 to NRLF 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days 
 
 prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 JUL 1 3 1PS2 
 
 \ ,,,,,,,00r.-7,-40(6 
 
VB 19130 
 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
.''\\ 
 
 ' mh 
 
 
 1 '^''' 
 \ ■ 
 
 1 ■■< 
 
 'Ml 
 < \ '. 
 
 \'if